Godammit, I’m Mad!

I’m thinking of getting a version of this tattoo, just because it makes me smile. I can’t think of anything else to do with myself.

I am almost a vegetable. I stay up all night doing nothing. When I wake up, I do some more nothing. At 3 a.m. I like to watch a TV show called “Morning Joe,” where a loud Republican guy and a nice blonde woman sip coffee and bicker about politics. At this point, I think of them as friends.

I’m reading a book called “Seven Choices: Taking the Steps to a New Life After Losing Someone You love.” I don’t like any of the choices. I’m nearly at the end, at the part where you commit to being a new person with a future you care about.

Easter was difficult. I used to love making baskets for my boys. Max believed in the Easter Bunny for an  unusually  long time. This year, I   forced everyone to listen to my story about driving Max somewhere with his friends, who were impressed with his new Motley Crue   record.   One of them asked where he got it, and he answered: “The Easter Bunny.” No one challenged this. It was such a funny and sweet moment.

When I don’t write, it’s because I can’t stand to think or feel. I can still waste time at Tumblr though. Have a look, if you like. And get back to me about the tattoo.

I recently had the pleasure of spending an evening with an old friend who is now divorced from the husband who used to boss her around and make her have sex with him three times a week without regard to her own lack of desire. He’s out of her life now, for the most part, but she still hates him.

In fact, she plans to hate him forever, just as I hate my ex-husband.  I have forgiven nearly all my grudges, even ones I swore to take to the grave, but I will never stop hating my ex-husband. Looking back at my old journals, I discovered that I hated him even before I married him!

I once read that a large percentage of divorced women admit to having married a man they didn’t love. This was supposed to be shocking news. It probably explains why they ended up divorced. It’s a bad idea to marry someone you actually hate, so make sure you never do it.

I married my ex at 20, after four years of living with him. I didn’t know what to do with my life and I think I hoped he would take care of me. I don’t like taking care of myself, although I am more than happy to take care of  others.

Anyway, I hated him. I hated the way he walked and I hated the way he smelled. I hated his repressed personality and I hated his petty criticism of everything I did or thought. I hated the way he’d point to a girl with close-cropped hair and say “You know, you’d look good like that.”   Why would a man marry a woman with waist-length hair only to ogle girls with crew-cuts? What a fucking cunt™.

Finally, after 17 years together, we got divorced. By then, I hated the way he breathed and the way he drank his orange juice.  I was shattered by the process of divorce, but gradually came to relish my freedom from his oppressive presence.

The only thing we agreed upon was our love for our son. But we always disagreed about what he needed and what was good for him.

After a long  struggle in rehab, our son stayed clean for a while but had a relapse and was on a binge. We took him to a treatment center where he was supposed to stay for thirty days. After ten days, they thew him out: We couldn’t meet their demands for $250 per day, even though they were being paid by our insurance company. Meanwhile, Max had called me after the first few days, anxiously reporting that he shared a room with convicts who stayed up all night playing cards. He was cold, but he wasn’t allowed to have an extra blanket. He said it was the scariest place he had ever been.

His father picked him up on the morning they kicked him out. During the long drive to my house, his father screamed at him for being a failure. His tirade was cruel and relentless. He accused Max of ruining everyone’s life, and told him he was “one step from living on the street.”

I didn’t want Max to have his car.  He was going to stay in a sober house where he wouldn’t need it. But the ex wouldn’t listen to me and brought the car over.

Max seemed traumatized by the ride home and I tried to comfort him. He was worn out and anxious, still detoxing, even though I didn’t know it. All day, I tired to console him with the fact that it wasn’t a catastrophe, it was only a relapse and everything would be fine. I kissed him goodbye when he left for the sober house. Early the next morning, he drive to a cliff and jumped.

During the first few days at the hospital, I would corner my ex in the hallway and tell him it was all his fault. I showered him with invective, hysterical with rage and worry and grief. Even now, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if my ex had just taken Max out for breakfast instead of berating him so mercilessly.

I wish I could kill my ex.  My sister has asked me, Isn’t it enough to know how miserable he is? As if that could mitigate my hatred, which is eternal, steadier than the beat of my heart, and faster than the speeding bullet that belongs in his head.

As Whitney Houston keeps dying on TV, I am transfixed by envy, bitterness, and grief.

Her narrative has been transformed from the tragic untimely death of a dope addict to an adoring farewell to an angel. And why not? She was a person, not just a joke about crack.

I can’t help thinking about Max’s burial and the service we had at the grave. Just a small gathering of people in shock, numb or sobbing. Those who could speak talked about what Max was like and what they would miss. We shoveled some dirt and someone threw in a guitar pick. A moment later, nearly every man present stepped forward to throw in a pick. With the exception of me, we are a tribe of musicians.

Where was the big choir singing about taking him home? It isn’t fair.

I don’t believe in god but I wish I could hear about how He was waiting to hold Max in His loving arms.

This is what you get for being an unbeliever.  My husband told me that I could believe in god “if I wanted to.” I find this a preposterous notion. I do want to! Look how comforting it is for believers.

I want a church full of black Baptists, and I want them to sing their asses off, to testify that Max is an angel who was called home.   I miss him every moment that I am conscious. I try to be conscious as little as possible. I’m pretty sure that he hated Whitney’s music but he loved a good wailing gospel tune.

Maybe I can arrange something for his birthday in March. I don’t know if my heart is up to it. I’m not through with denial.

Let us play Omelette and let us say amen.

I knew immediately that Jean-Paul Gaultier‘s spring 2012 couture collection was a tribute to Amy because I did the math. Behive + eyeliner+”Marilyn” stud = Amy Winehouse.

What a wonderful feast of crazy hives and mish-mash of retro vampy girly excess!

It makes me happy to know that Amy’s influence will live on. Her swagger and her vulnerability, her beautiful voice, her tiny little body supporting all that hair…she will haunt me forever. This collection is an  homage that’s right on point, as Amy liked to say of her beehive.

Lindsey Wixson is especially adorable in her purple hive and I can’t get  enough  of her.

Check out the beauty details here.

Also, did everyone see the new Karl Lagerfeld stuff at net-a porter this morning?   Horrible, right? What is he thinking?!   Please let me know if any other runway shows are worth looking at. Right now, I only have eyes for Amy.

Last night I discovered a girl named Chrissy who killed herself after several years of paralysis caused by a swimming pool accident.

I learned about her in a forum on the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation website. I came upon the website a few months ago, and struggled with the mystery of why some people want to go on living and some do not.

Chrissy was a beautiful girl who had  recently  fallen in love and was looking forward to everything. The story of her accident and its aftermath is horrifying but it happened and I had to read it. Horrible things happen but few things can be this horrible. Still, Chrissy endured for several years. In the end, she simply didn’t want to continue a life under the circumstances dictated by her condition.

On her blog, she explained:

A big part of me died back on June 5, 2005 and my life was never the same. Everything has felt empty, and bittersweet. Every memory tainted with sadness, over everything that I’ve lost, everything I miss doing, and everything I had planned to do, and hoped to be.

I  understand. Max  left  me a message saying something similar, even though his disabilities weren’t as extreme as Chrissy’s. For him, they were intolerable.   Going back to her blog just now, I couldn’t help but cry. What a brave girl she was. I salute her honesty and her incredible, heroic struggle.

~

Tonight, I learned about a photographer and writer, Edouard Levé, who shot himself a few days after completing a novel called Suicide. The novel is  fiction  but obviously reflects Levé’s preoccupation with suicide. Perhaps he he planned his death as an artistic statement. Or perhaps he lingered too long on the subject of death, turning it over in his mind until it seemed like the only rational conclusion to his obsessive and inward-looking existence. He was only 42 but seemed to have focused closely on life’s absurdity.   Here is what the narrator of Suicide says:

“You didn’t like the selfishness of your suicide. But, on balance, death’s reprieve won out over the painful agitation of life.”

It bothers me that Levé threw his life away even though he wasn’t paralyzed. It bothers me that I can’t understand why some people are resilient and some aren’t. It bothers me that you can’t leave this world without smashing everyone around you. It bothers me that no one has the power to decide which suicide is justified. It bothers me that I don’t know where Chrissy is, meaning I don’t know where Max is. It bothers me that I can’t forgive Levé for hanging himself because I can’t find the compassion for his obscure suffering.

It bothers me that I have to keep pondering death like a difficult math problem that might  yield  an answer if I stick with it. It beckons to me and repels me and it continues to break my broken heart.

Goodbye to Dad

Two walkers, December 2009

High School graduation, June 2011

Max and Pico

Playing guitars

and finally this photo by Antanas Sutkus. I can’t describe how much I love it. It is so exquisitely tender! It sums up everything for me. I want to kiss the little child and to reassure her. But I know she is me.

My dad died last night, at home in bed. He would have been 90 in November and we thought he would live forever. His health has been failing for the last year and a half but suddenly in the last week he took a bad turn.

My brother and my nephew have given their all to keep him alive but metastatic cancer is a  vicious force of nature that won’t be tamed.   All the kids gathered at my dad’s house to be with him. When he could still talk, he managed to tell me “Your….hair….looks…. dry.” I laughed and agreed.

Last night I sat by his bed and sang to him. He was unconscious but I imagined a slight reaction. I tried to offer comfort and peace. I wanted him to feel my loving  presence, and I told him that everything was good, everything was perfect, in case he was feeling any fear.

I joined the other siblings in the living room. There are seven of us, from 18 years old to 60.

My dad didn’t really care about me, but I was the Genius. He loved the other ones, though: The Artist, the Ladies Man, the Homemaker, the Weightlifter, the Looker and the Tennis Star.   He had asked us what we would like to have after he died. I asked for his old wedding band, mostly because everything   else was taken – his piano, his Rolex watch, his cars, his paintings, etc. The ring was in an envelope in a locked box with his will.

Sure enough, my sister noticed the envelope last night, torn open and empty. One of the siblings explained that our dad had decided to sell the ring, with the help of his caretaker. The story changed a few times and I left the house sobbing after screaming at the Tennis Star.

It couldn’t have ended any other way.

I’m reading a book about addiction that Max read last year. He told me I might like it. I also remember him writing to his girlfriend that the book caused him to review his childhood, which he always thought was “pretty normal.”

The book, by Gabor Maté, a physician and psychiatrist, is extremely compassionate toward the addict. In fact, he explains at great length why the addict never really had a chance: Improper bonding during infancy harms the infant’s brain and sets him up for addiction.

Maté recounts study after study to underscore his thesis. When rats are removed from their mother for only one hour a day, their brains show damage. In human babies, this faulty bonding fucks everything up. The child is forever doomed to suffering and attempts to extinguish the suffering.

I can’t read too much of this book. Someone needs to do a study on my brain, to show how much harm the book has done.

Maté  ends the long chapter about the origins of the addict’s malformed brain by assuring us that he’s not saying it’s hopeless! People can be healed, he says, through the  indomitable Spirit that lives within all of us.

Meanwhile, I am compelled to look back in time and question everything. I remember loving my baby at first sight. I remember adoring his every expression, every gesture, every hair on his head. I remember nursing him for 14 months. I remember friends coming over just to admire him. I remember dressing him in his little outfits, reading to him, cuddling him, singing to him.

But I was a depressed mother. Depressed mothers ruin the brain as well. I forgot to say that. The baby picks up on the mother’s depression and is  irreparably  fucked.

I wish I could talk to Max about this. I want to know if he blames me. Or rather, if he forgives me.

His addiction must have been a nightmare for him. So much worse then the nightmare it was for us. It was such a long struggle. I never really felt it was my fault, until now.

My own mother hated me and told me so, but I didn’t want to become a drug addict. There was no comfort anywhere, from anyone, when I was a child. I have my problems but I never wanted to stick a needle in my arm. If everyone with an imperfect or depressed mother needs to escape their pain through opiates, who’s left?

I’m caught in this argument.   Depressed people don’t all become addicts. But my son did, and it’s my fault.

I wish it was nobody’s fault. I wish it was a wrong turn that led to more wrong turns. I wish he had been able to overcome his addiction and the pain that caused it. I wish I could comfort him and convince him that he was loved and he was perfect, addicted or not.

Mothers and children, what are your thoughts?

No matter how awful everything is, Toby Keith has given us a priceless gift in the line about his “daddy’s right eye.”   I laughed at it then and I still laugh when I think about it. Please enjoy his idiotic take on September 11.

~

“Knowing what our core values are and cleaving to them, even in times of testing, must be a lesson when we see the results of situational ethics and temporary, expedient treatment of basic   rights. America  should not again panic and overreact to terrorist attacks against this country…….the cost of 9/11 has been billions of dollars spent, an unneeded war, and thousands of lives lost.” -   Richard A. Clark (Former  US  National Security Chief)

~

For me, September 11 is inextricably linked with Max, who worked at the financial Trade Center, next to the Twin Towers. It took hours before I could make contact and learn that he was okay. He ran for his life and later learned that his office was sheared off by fire.   I was so relieved, and so grateful, and so sorry he had to experience such trauma.

But life is trauma. And that’s why we need Toby Keith to lighten our burden.

Yesterday, I made the stupid decision to google “Sister Wolf.”

It’s weird to see yourself as others see you. I’m used to interacting with strangers on my own territory but finding yourself being discussed elsewhere is the equivalent of hearing what people say behind your back. And naturally, they want to talk shit about you.

I was so pleased to find several people who loved my blog! But the pleasure gave way to annoyance when I came across a website devoted to criticizing bloggers. There was even a forum for the critics to chat among themselves, but I didn’t read it. It was enough to find some people dismissing me as crazy, with one commenter even noting disgustedly that I should be getting grief therapy instead of blogging.

It has never even  occurred  to me that people might disapprove of my grief.  And I never think of myself as crazy, or even weird. I think the critics were upset that I outed a troll, and that’s something I’ve thought about a lot. Upon reflection, I’d do it again, because that’s the only way to effect a consequence for cowards who want to hide behind anonymity.

Well, you can’t please everyone, right?   It’s better to not google yourself. It’s the one instance where ignorance actually is bliss.

But then, I was buying my kid a wallet at Ross Dress for Less, when a sales assistant asked me if I was aware of their Every Tuesday Discount for seniors. Sure enough, my reflexes are so slow that I didn’t slap her in the face for suggesting that I am a senior. She went on to explain that it’s for people “55 and older.”

I glared at her and said something like, Okay, I’ll take the discount but you’re not supposed to think I’m 55 or older. She smiled back, sweetly and blankly. What a fucking cunt! ™

God, it’s so awful how you can’t control people. I’ll never get used to it. But I can write to Ross Dress for Less and complain about this assault on my self-esteem. It might be fun to try to get them to apologize. I could even call it grief therapy!

Good idea or not?