My Two Cents on it All (war)

It is the people in a war that make it real.  There is an enormous gulf between singing a cadence about killing commies and being faced with a young child, his arms reaching out to you because he knows that there is a chance that you will throw him some scraps from your lunch.  The people I met were not faceless terrorists, their only desire to end my life.  They were mothers, fathers and children, all just trying to survive in a place where either side of an armed conflict could shatter your world in an instant, and never give a second thought.  The people of Uzbekistan and Iraq welcomed us into their countries as we came to overthrow their governments.  They trusted us with a mission that would destroy their lives as they knew them.  They cheered our convoys as we made our way to their capital.  How could they have possibly known that we wouldn’t just liberate them; that we would stay and become a magnet for groups of militants who would further terrorize their cities and level their homes?  These people changed the war for me.  Instead of a random enemy they became faces and stories I cannot forget.

Oh Brother...

I text my brother well past the hours of socially acceptable telecommunications; asking “You still awake brother”?  You see I have just experienced Sarah Kay’s poem “Brother”, and am inspired.  My brother too was “never meant to fill my shadow”.  I find myself inspired by the force that is my younger brother.  He is good and kind and will serve his fellow man with all that he is until the day he dies; and I want to be him when I grow up.  He was always thus.  Back when I was obsessed with playing soldier and acting out destruction, in our conservative, thoroughly American home he was a pacifist, and not afraid to say so…. Despite the merciless mocking and tormenting of his older sister.  He saw the value of life from the start, and I had to learn it the hard way.  So I tell my brother, my hero that I would dedicate the work to him were it my own, and he is flattered.  And I tell him that he should be, that I hold few in as high esteem as him, and he replies that he loves me too, and my insides warm as I bask in his ambient goodness.  He would probably be embarrassed by something so praising of him, that’s his way, and it makes him even more…..

And I'm a Woman

AND I’M A WOMAN!!¹

28 January 2013

            I’ve spent most of my life trying to convince myself of certain things.  Among these are that I am, in fact, female, a girl, a chick, and eventually a woman.  For the vast majority of my life I truly believed that inseparable from this was a strict adherence to heterosexuality.  And so I put a great deal of effort into trying to mold, pound, force myself into a role that I was never meant to fill.  I made a very conscious effort to slip hetero sentiments into conversations, with everyone that I knew.  In fact, I got quite adept at these comments which were almost all centered on the attractive nature of the male form or heterosexual sex.  Of course these were all lies.  I’ve never in my life felt compelled of my own accord, and for myself only, to ogle any of the male sex, but I am by my very nature a student of life and a people watcher.  With these tools in my box I made an extensive study of heterosexual women and their comments and hoped beyond hope that if I imitated enough, I would one day become a real girl, a real woman.  The real crux of the matter in all of this is that after awhile it became something so far back in the recesses of my conscious mind that I didn’t even notice I was doing it anymore.  It had become mental muscle memory, simply repeating over and over again what I had trained it to do. 

            My world of dissolution came crashing down around me several years ago when I had reached a mental breaking point, and could no longer deny, at least to myself, that I am not in fact heterosexual.  One small, three lettered word, would end my fragile existence that I had spent decades building.  GAY.  Oh my god, can this really be?!  It was earth shattering, mind blowing, unthinkable, disgusting, sinful, and wrong….. wasn’t it?  Well of course it HAD to be.  It made me something that I hated most of all, a liar, and a hypocrite.  Or that’s how I felt at the time.  I refused to believe that from birth I was inundated with homophobic rants and slurs from nearly everyone whom I held in high esteem, and that those years of brainwashing could have anything to do with the self-loathing that I was now experiencing.  Hadn’t I prayed hard enough?!  Hadn’t I read my scriptures religiously and with fervor, doing everything “right”.  Hadn’t I married in the “right place” and to the “right” gender?  Hadn’t I done everything that I knew to make this horrific thing just go away?! 

            My resolve was then doubled that I would stay the course.  I had CHOSEN to marry a man, and to have children.  I had known my options; hadn’t I?  I had made conscious choices about the kind of life that I wanted to live, and the end result of exaltation that I wanted with my “eternal family”.  That had to be the end of the internal discussion I was agonizing over…. But the problem with this new conviction is that my brain is inherently intractable.  I lack the basic ability to cling to ideas and not be swayed by a good argument and supporting evidence.  Perhaps even more significant is the fact that with as much of a scholar as I am, and with as much reason as I labor to employ, I am just as much moved by my gut, my feelings, my conscience, my…whatever it is that you choose to call it.  Intuition perhaps is an adequate form.  As much as my head was convinced that I could overcome my nature, my gut was not completely swayed. 

            It was at this impasse that my brain and intuition came to rest for several more years.  It should perhaps be noted that I was not terribly happy with the conscious choices that I had made so many years ago.  My marriage had never been a happy or healthy one.  I had married a man whose nature was so contrary to my own that we could never come to a peace on anything.  To his credit, he had no clue what my nature was.  I had hidden it so well from everyone, myself included.  After years of combat, both in the army and in my own perverse psyche, I had come to believe that I was just an angry person.  This moniker was something that I wore like a badge of courage, something that I had earned in the war.  Once the PTSD label was added it all seemed to finally make sense, or so I thought.  I was crazy.  What a simple explanation to a lifetime of inner struggle! 

            Counseling was the beginning of the end of this life for me.  God, what a cliché!  “I found myself in counseling”.  Well, this was only partly true.  What I found was a very scared little girl who had never forgiven herself for things far beyond her control or capacity to understand, and who had never allowed herself to move from the tiny corner where she had huddled for twenty plus years.  For the first time in longer than I could remember, I was learning to own that word.  “Scared”.  In that instance I was no longer angry.  In that instance I realized that I had been living my entire life out of petrifying fear.  I was afraid.  I was scared.  I was terrified.  And all of those things were perfectly acceptable emotions!  Acceptance, this was another word that I learned to use, and to love.  I didn’t have to hold on, or fight off anymore.  I could simply accept that things had happened beyond my own control, and that I had continually made decisions that served to propagate this vicious cycle that had become my prison.  I didn’t have to regret these decisions.  I didn’t have to be angry anymore, at people, at my life.  After all, it was MY LIFE!  I didn’t owe anything to anyone, and nobody owed me anything either.  In these realizations I found a freedom and redemption that came without a single string or covenant attached. 

            After an immense upheaval and chain of events that included a divorce and a major move with my children, I found myself at a crossroads.  Once again, I could choose to stay the course, find another good Mormon man and marry and hope for the best, or I could finally shed the last remnant of shame that I had been carrying and finally admit to myself and to everyone else that I was never made for the standard mold, that I was gay.  The first time that I committed that word to paper in my long-neglected journal it was genuinely painful; agonizing even.  The first time that I said it aloud was even worse.  So with my newfound self awareness in hand, I constrained myself to writing it again, and then to saying it again.  Once I had done this enough to finally find some amount of comfort with it, I made myself tell others.  I mumbled my way through this process several times, dozens of times, before I could say it with a sense of pride and ownership. It wasn’t long before I could say it with fervor, unapologetically, and joyfully. 

            Perhaps most surprising to me in this whole journey was the vast outpouring of love and support that I received from friends and family.  This was not everyone’s reaction of course, but even those with the most ardent objections have begun to come around and see that I am no longer going through the motions of life, miserable but steadfast in my resolve to stick it out.   Even my harshest critics have begun to see merit in that.  It was very recently that my dear sister mentioned to me that I appear to be much more feminine than I ever had before, and upon reflection I realized that she was right.  I was finally FEELING like a woman.  I wasn’t just a mechanic, a mom, a hard worker, a good NCO.  I can finally happily own that I am all of these things, AND I’M A WOMAN!

1. Johnson, Kasey.  I stole this title.  No regrets because now I've cited my source and in academia that makes everything ok.

Fierce Fireworks, and Stuff

Sometimes you just need a good cry.  I have been told this by numerous friends over the years, friends whom I valued, and whose opinions I trusted.  This did not stop me from having serious doubts about this assertion anyway.  Don't get me wrong, I have certainly had my fair share of moments when life seemed beyond cruel and it was all I could do to just keep breathing.  In fact, I've had far more of these moments than I care to remember or admit to.  I have been so far down at the bottom of my emotional well that even the thought of suicide provided no relief.  Even at these times, I knew that I had two options.  The first was to just swallow any and all emotion, and put every conceivable energy into suppressing them.  The second was to just let go (at least as much as I was capable of at the time) and cry.  Inevitably in those moments when I've chosen to cry, I have only felt worse after my tear duct pyrotechnics took center stage.  It not served to make me feel vulnerable on top of everything else.
Given all of this, it was with great anxiety that I found myself slipping further and further down the rabbit hole not long ago.  The reality of my third move in eight months, once again doing it nearly entirely on my own and dragging my kids along with me, was setting in.  The Niagra Falls of other emotions crashing down the back door as the Move  assaulted from the North was only serving to add to the avalanche that I could feel coming any moment.  And then it happened.  As I sat on my bed, rolling coins, of all things, I came across my ring.  This ring that I picked out, that represented me better than any physical manifestation I've found before or since, came rolling out of a jar of coins and almost into my lap.  And that was the proverbial straw that broke this camels back.  The flood gates opened, and my body heaved as everything that I've been clinging on to and forcing down for dear life came streaming down my face. Suddenly months of anxiety, and fear, and regret, and anticipation, and suppressed emotion and repression were suddenly gone.  I knew that they had not left completely, and that I still had things I needed to work through, the weigh of them came crashing to the floor like the shards of a shattered mirror.    I that moment I had no choice but to laugh, and for the first time ever, I felt, and I felt better.
I never doubted my dear friends when they said how much better they felt after crying, I just didn't think it was possible for ME.  I didn't think that this opening of soul, this allowance of vulnerability and weakness could have any other outcome than shame and pain, not for me.  How wrong I was.  The question now is.....what the hell do I do with that?!

Learning to Live Again

Ah the joys of starting all over again.  I pretty much constantly have the Garth Brooks song Learning to Live Again playing either in the fore or background of my mind these days.  “Heaven knows how long it’s been, since I’ve felt so out of place, wondering if I’ll fit in… but I’m gonna smile my best smile, and I’m gonna laugh like it’s going out of style, look into her eyes and pray that she don’t see, that learning to live again is killing me.”  Such a grand description for this iteration, this process of going out, of putting myself out there, again and again, in so many respects.  I’ve got a job interview in just a couple of days for which I am painfully unprepared.  I haven’t the clothes, or shoes, or the just plain old experience to even know what to expect.  So I do what I do best, research.  I ask all of Facebook to chime in on the dress code question, and get more than one answer, which is to be expected, but just serves to further confuse my very simple brain.  In Jamie’s Utopian aspirations there are very few reasons to wear much more than jeans, with a button up shirt and perhaps a vest thrown in for more fancy occasions.  I’m certain there’s a way to be able to don clothing that falls into the “Business Professional” genre without feeling like a complete monkey….. I just haven’t a clue how, yet.  And this is but one tiny aspect of “this learning to live again”.  I’ve basically shed my previous life en masse.  There are small remnants, but none of the structural nature.  I’m learning day by day just how much I’ve never learned.  I don’t know how to date.  I don’t know how to not look to the future and plan from the very beginning.  I don’t know how to handle this barrage of feelings and emotions that seem to be crashing past every barrier that I’ve labored to build.  I don’t know how to hold back the geyser that resides within me that I never knew existed.  There are moments when I feel like it’s going to explode and incinerate me in the process.  But there are also moments when I have felt more at peace and more comfortable in my own skin than I ever have before.  Perhaps a boomerang would be a good visual explanation for my emotional and mental goings on.  It is flung with incredible force out into the expanses of who knows where, and flies unfettered until, maybe even against its will, it begins to turn, and then return to its origin.  And my god the ride is exhilarating!  And my god it’s exhausting, and terrifying!  And, when is the next ride…?

Ghosts of Goonies Past

I should probably preface this by relating that in the past week I've had one dead car battery and a flat tire (on a new tire, sigh).  So when I got a call from my sister-in-law this morning that our other SIL was sick, I headed out to pick up her kids.  Well, I TRIED to go get her kids that is.  Once again, the car battery was dead.  I'm starting to understand why my brothers call the Wal-Mart Everstart batteries "Neverstarts".  So, moving on, no biggie right?  I am a mechanic after all, and the Motor Sergeant of my Reserve unit to boot.  I could totally handle this.  I would just jump on my motorcycle and head up to get the kids (trading the bike for her van of course).  It was at that moment that I realized that the fifty times I had forgotten to go to her house to get my keys back found me stranded yet again.  That's twice in like, five minutes.  So, being the resilient and ever professional Staff Sergeant that I am I realized that I have like three bicycles at my disposal.  Win-Win right?  Get a little exercise AND still get the mission accomplished.  WRONG!  Every single tire was flat.  Now I was 0 for 3.  It was at this exact moment as I shook my head, fighting to hold back the onslaught of expletives that was bubbling to the surface, that I spotted a glimmer of pink and purple.  That's right, my 9 year old niece had left her bike at our house.  Providence?  Perhaps.  The setting-up of hilarity?  Definitely!

So I proudly mounted the Pink Pariah and headed out.  Now, you should keep in mind that this trip of mine was no more than a couple of blocks, but most of that is uphill, and I am horribly out of shape.  As I panted and pedaled, panted and pedaled, I slowly made my way up the hill.  My muscles were on FIRE, and I'd only ridden about twenty feet.  I really should have just stopped and walked at this point, but I'm much too stubborn (and not terribly intelligent) for that.  Cars started passing me at this point, and my brain was swimming with the comments that must be swirling around in them.  And who could blame them?  If I were passing a grown woman with bodacious bed hair, raggedy mismatched clothes grabbed off the floor at the last minute, riding a tiny pink and purple bike, gasping for air and sweating like a whore in church, there's no way I would let that go without a massive burst of laughter.  At this precise moment I had a flash of Brand (the older brother from The Goonies) riding the stolen little girls bike, chasing after his kid brother.  Cyndi Lauper suddenly started singing "Good Enough" in my head, and then everything was ok again.  Somehow being horribly embarrassed is completely nullified if it reminds you of someone else's similar moment, or at least that's how my defective brain works.  And I'm ok with that.  

For now I'm going to go run and see why my four year old just yelled "Oh my spine!"...

This is basically what I looked like this morning, except without the training wheels or sweats.  

New Starts in New Cities

Well, it's time for a new adventure again.  Through a series of events that even bore me to tears, we came to live in Enoch Utah, on one of the most beautiful plots of land that mother nature has to offer.  Towering trees whose branches and leaves hang down, creating canopies and secret hideouts stand guard around the perimeter, keeping at bay the trendiness of the suburbs that seems to be sweeping the nation.  When we got here the yards (front and back) were overrun with weeds so high the kids could easily get lost in them. Over a couple of days, and with the assistance of my awesome brother Greg's lawn mower and weed eater, I've finally managed to get down to some actual grass!  It's gorgeous!  Better yet, in the process I found an array of random odds and ends that still has my head spinning.  For instance, there were two unicycles, because having only one would just be silly.  There is something that could either be a giant shot-put, or a cannon ball.  Either way, it's a good conversation piece.  :)  I think my favorite is the rusty machete.  It's almost as if the prior residents were out, chopping down the brush with their machete (because who DOESN'T use a machete to cut grass and weeds) and was finally engulfed by the weeds, forced to drop the beloved machete and run for higher ground.
The house has been yet another adventure.  I've replaced door hinges and handles for doors that simply wouldn't close, killed countless mice that had taken over the kitchen, and had two different water leaks.  Luckily the repairs come off of the rent.  Talk about a win-win.  I get to tinker around and stay busy, they get an improved home when they (the owners, who are in Columbia at present) get home, and I get cheaper rent.
I am sure there will be countless more adventures to record, most of which will never make it to this blog since, let's face it, my memory is about as long as a Sponge Bob episode.  So for now...... um, I don't know, go do something productive.  I cut down a friggin JUNGLE today for goodness sake!