Godammit, I’m Mad!

Understanding the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder doesn’t help to alleviate them, but it’s good to know that others have felt as angry, numb, desperate and insane as oneself.

I wish I’d learned about this earlier, thereby to have avoided lashing out at everyone in my path, but oh well, what’s done is done.

I’m reading a book that explains about triggers – things that reignite the original trauma, making you relive it, over and over again. But I can’t avoid the triggers and I don’t even know which traumatic event to begin with.

Meanwhile, I went to my first meeting of a Bereaved Parents group. Cancer, suicide, it’s all the same agony. We are each clinging to our dead child’s mattress. We are all members of an elite group: the walking wounded pariahs whose stories are too awful for civilians.

A nice lady held my hand and gave me her phone number. There are no steps and no Higher power, just the bond of shared grief. I wish the group met more often.  I have problems up ahead, like ordering a gravestone and Mother’s Day. Lucky for me, I have a supportive husband who never says to hurry up and Get Over It.

Today I stared at tumblr images for five hours. I’ve stopped caring about Libya, fashion, and Mrs. Palin. Sometimes I sleep in my clothes so I don’t have to get dressed the next day. I even forgot to blog about how I smashed my finger with the trash can and had to have the ENTIRE NAIL REMOVED.

I am still sort of me, though. We watched a new episode of New York Housewives and I cursed at them aloud with the same happy contempt. Is there a German word for that?

*photograph via here.

I didn’t watch The L Word, but The Real L Word, a new show about Real Lesbians, is providing plenty of excitement at my house. My husband finds it for me on the Showtime channel, and I sit back and talk to the TV for the whole 30 minutes.

My favorite Real Lesbian so far is Whitney, a tough white girl with dreadlocks who acts just like a horny stud. She insists that she’s a slave to her “chemistry” with nearly every woman she meets. She keeps saying “chemistry” like it’s a scientific fact and an iron clad excuse for making out with someone. “I have to admit there is chemistry,” she confesses to a needy girl in a bar who wants to know where they stand. In short, Whitney is just a dude whose balls will explode if you deny him sex.

I also like Mikey, a swaggering blond hipster who can’t get over her own awesomeness. She revels in telling us how stressful her high-powered job is. She loves to boss people around and flaunt her tattoos.

The only time I’ve had to scream out loud was when Tracy revealed the names of her girlfriend’s three children: Nickos, Daughtry and Jagger.

Why isn’t there a fine for saddling your children with awful names? I don’t think I could even be friends with someone who would name their kid ‘Daughtry’. Some things are unforgivable.

As long as the Real Lesbians don’t make me watch them have sex, I’m in. I don’t plan to follow their blogs or tweets, or to buy their special Lesbian iPhone App, but I like all the posturing and soul-searching and unusual facial piercings. I’m also convinced that if Whitney met me, she’d feel the chemistry.

A dead “swimsuit model” in a suitcase doesn’t seem very interesting at first glance. I remember another one they found out in the desert somewhere, murdered by some guy on craigslist.

But now the story has branched out in several directions, promising a perfect storm of sensationalist trash.  The murder suspect is a former reality show contestant who has just finished filming another reality show.  And not only that, but the cops have revealed that the victim’s teeth and fingers had been “removed.”

That is where I draw the line, and I hope you agree.  If you have to kill someone and stuff them in a suitcase, so be it. But the teeth removal, no fucking way. It’s just too awful and unfair. It’s such an insult in every way.

Now VH1 will have the choice of scrapping season 3 of “I Love Money,” out of concern for the murder case, or going ahead with some inane excuse that there’s a moral imperative to air the show.  They must be flipping out at VH1, thinking, “God, what a break! Our ratings will go off the chart!”

I don’t know where this will lead,  in terms of creating a frenzy to distract us from the lack of new Michael Jackson minutiae.  But for now we can all be grateful that we’re not stuffed in a suitcase somewhere without our teeth.

And when we watch a reality show and marvel at how crazy those people are, we will know there’s a chance theyr’e even crazier than they look.

My husband discovered a new show for us to watch late at night, now that we’ve developed the habit of following Reality TV so we can jeer at stupid idiots and feel infinitely superior. “Watch What Happens Live” is like something your TV would watch if it could hold the remote.

A TV show about the denizens of Reality TV (and notice how I was moved to use the word ‘denizons’ as an homage to awfulness!) is like the end of civilization. TV cannibalizing itself is surely the end of the road, at least the road as we know it. What’s left? Two commercials interviewing each other?

So anyway, this guy named Andy Cohen sits around getting drunk with his guests, and shows promos of various Housewife Reunions. Last night I saw some Atlanta Housewives screaming and threatening each other and it was very exciting. I only caught a couple of the Atlanta shows, so I was very intrigued by the animosity between a big obnoxious tranny named Kim and a poor alcoholic woman called NeNe (sp?) Fucking fantastic!

Then, Andy asked his guest, Isaac Mizrahi, which of them was the gayest. Whoa! Complete toss-up, as Kelly Ripa concurred, whoever she is. Andy also asked Isaac which of them was more Jewish!  My husband and I looked at each other in amazement and delight: Two Jewish fags sitting around drinking and talking shit!

Where the fuck is my Reality show?!?!? An angry depressed unemployed Venice Housewife, getting in fights with the whole world….I could invite my gays and talk shit about other bloggers! I would even drink, if necessary.

In this new reality show, eight women with “differing disabilities” will compete before a panel of judges to prove they have what it takes to be a mainstream model.

Huh?

Is there something wrong with me or is there something wrong with this premise for a show?

On the one hand, I support the disability rights movement. On the other, I’m squeamish about any fetishistic appreciation of the disabled. It feels like exploitation to me, even when the disabled person is so willingly seeking the attention. One of the contestants on the show will be Debbi, who has recently posed for Playboy and says she’s met more men since she lost her arm than before. Here’s Debbi.

This whole thing is making me feel like a cunt for not celebrating the moxie or whatever it is that drives these disabled women. They’re kind of pissing me off, in fact. It’s like, I’m missing a toenail, so why don’t I try to be a foot model? Or, My voice has a limited range, so why don’t I compete to sing opera?

No, those are bad analogies. And that guy who “needs” to be paralyzed is going to be mad at me again.

Can anyone help me to articulate what is wrong with this show? Or if not that, what’s wrong with me?*

*No saying It’s because I’m a cunt, since I’ve already admitted it a million times.