A local Truckee boy just barely into his seventeenth year throws himself off a bridge in a location where he is unlikely to survive. He knows he will hit pavement because he has probably thought about where and how so many times. Maybe he imagined it over and over again because he wanted to be certain there was no chance he would live. Those of us who have had suicidal thoughts as our occasional or steady companion in the darkest of dark times consider the finer details of carrying it out. "Will I live if I do it this way? And if so, who will bear the burden of my survival? I may be a quadriplegic who must be looked after twenty four hours a day if I live. No...that will never do. I must be sure I die."
I attended his memorial service today which was called a "celebration of life." A celebration of life seems far more appropriate when the deceased is 95 years old and life has been lived to its fullest potential, or when a disease has chosen the time of death. When death by suicide remains the only choice for ending suffering, a celebration of life seems a denial of what was true. This young man screamed for a message to be heard. Did anyone hear him? What was it that haunted him day and night? What made life so brutally painful that he chose to jump off a bridge in broad daylight on a Friday just a few days after his seventeenth birthday? And why is it that the topic of conversation at his memorial service was his preference for pasta without any sauce and the kind of socks he wore? When a teenager dies by a choice he makes after years of suffering shouldn't we be holding his suffering and at least making it a primary topic of discussion at his memorial service? Should we not embrace and tenderly hold his suffering as part of our own? Shouldn't we be talking about the bullying in schools that we close our eyes to and simply write off as 'stuff teenagers do'? What about the pressure he might have felt from our culture's relentless infatuation with academic test scores and grades? Shouldn't we be asking his friends what really happened and did we do them a terrible disservice by asking them to keep it light at his memorial service?
From where I stood, it seemed his church wanted memorial attendees to remember his smile and his wit and his love for video games. Maybe his parents preferred to keep the rest of the story private and I honor their need for privacy in this time of great pain. Yet his story and his pain is also ours. While I want to remember this young man for his wit and his quirks and his choice of socks, I also wanted us to talk about the wounding caused by cruelty perpetrated by teenagers toward their peers, and the real harm it causes, especially to those more fragile than others. There was no mention of the darkness and struggle he must have awakened to each day, no mention of the tension he held in his heart that found no relief, even in the love his family had for him. I wonder what this young man really wanted us to know about what it was like to live in his skin. Maybe he couldn't bear the thought of growing up and being out in this world where the competition leaves little room for those who cannot toe the line when the clock turns eighteen. And there is no medicine to change who one really is, gay or straight, addict or straight edge, black, white and every color in between, Christian, atheist, Jew or Muslim. And when there is no soft place to be who one is, no embracing of difference and diversity, the softest place to land is death. Even when the landing is solid pavement.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Really? You're going to F**k with me about this? More from "The Good Enough Mother"
She gets up at 4:30 to have her half hour on the treadmill in her living room. The house is still asleep, thank the good Lord (if there is such a thing). Then she has to get in the shower, get dressed and start making breakfast before her daycare kids arrive at 6AM. She took on more because they need the money. Some weeks they only have fifty bucks to feed a family of four and it just won't do at all.
In her sacred half hour, she dreams. Step by step, her shoes hit the strip of rubber on the treadmill and she breathes in a predictable rhythm. Her boy is a few months shy of eighteen and she knows she's in for a fight to get him placed in a group home. He is part of her, flailing arms, limbs that won't behave and big geen eyes fringed with thick black lashes. Seizures grip him in the night and she wakes up to make sure he hasn't bitten through his tongue. She tenderly changes the sweaty pajamas, cleans up the pee and slobber and tucks him back in. His clothes hang off a body misshapen by scoliosis and he struggles to stand up straight. When he's excited, he shakes his hands as if he might be ready to reach for the controls of his favorite video game. Sometimes, she wonders whether she wants her freedom from being a 24/7 caregiver or whether she feels she must give him up because her husband has threatened to leave her if she doesn't find placement for him the second he turns eighteen.
"Maybe I'll just take him and we'll leave. I handled him just fine before I married my husband. Seems like now I'm dealing with trying to make things okay for him and trying to take care of my son too. But I really am so tired..."
She fantasizes about leaving him on the doorstep of the government agency whose mission statement is to serve families with disabled children but whose actions fall far short.
"Here is is," she imagines saying. "You won't place him. Well fuck you. He's yours now. He's homeless cuz I got nothin' left." She says this to me while we sit on her sofa as all the babies nap to the sound of Sugarland on the radio. It's our little secret that she wants to run far, far away.
"He wet the bed three times over the last two days," she says. Her eyes fill. Then the phone rings and she picks up. It's the orthodontist's office calling about what they can't or won't do for her son who has a snaggle tooth that needs to be pulled or it will abcess.
"He is disabled, THAT'S why he's on Medicaid," she says rolling her eyes. She is used to fighting this fight day in and day out to get medical services, supportive services and other kinds of assistance for her boy. "We have really good insurance through my husband's work. But his secondary is medicaid. You don't bill them? Well then refer me to someone who will...You don't do that? Well who can...I have to call Medicaid to find a preferred provider? I already did and nobody...You're sorry? Really? Well why is this so difficult to bill the primary and then bill Medicaid for the difference? No I am not going to pay out of pocket...Can't you tell me who will just pull the goddamn tooth and bill the insurance? Yeah...okay. Fine. I will do it myself."
She hangs up and looks at me. "This is what I do eevery day every time he needs medical attention. You would think in this country that a child would not have to go without medical care. But it's always a struggle."
She dreams of days on a lake. She dreams of starting a business. She dreams of dressing up in leather and riding her Harley. "I have lots of ideas," she says. "But they die when my treadmill stops."
She has that frantic look again. "I am eating too much again," she says. "I once spent my days in the gym. I worked there and I worked out. I was so ripped. A guy with some big bodybuilding competition even offered to sponsor me and I said no. Can you believe I said no? How different would MY life have been."
I look at her and remind her that she is the most astonishing example of strength and patience I have ever witnessed. I could no more do what she does in one day than I could fly to the moon. We talk about hunger and how to feed it. Right now it's with food. So what...when her time comes, food will be the last thing she will feed that hungry soul with. But once in a while, she can feed that hunger by standing up and maybe issuing a definitive statement to her husband when he complains that the furniture is dusty or that there is a ring around the tub. That's when she rises up and puts her hands on her hips. She looks down at him while he sits on the sofa in judgment of her mothering, in judgment of how she won't have sex with him on account of her being tired all the time and how the tub needs a scrubbing. And she silently walks into the kitchen. And then the sponge flies across the room past his face followed by a plastic bottle of Soft Scrub. She breathes out and shakes that honey blond hair out of her face and moves like a panther through the living room and into her bedroom to her closet. She digs around way in the back and something rattles. It's the buckles, all ten of them. She puts on those leather pants and the matching jacket without a word. And when all ten buckles are buckled, she walks past him out to the garage where her motorcycle waits. And she mounts it like an Amazon and rides into the night.
In her sacred half hour, she dreams. Step by step, her shoes hit the strip of rubber on the treadmill and she breathes in a predictable rhythm. Her boy is a few months shy of eighteen and she knows she's in for a fight to get him placed in a group home. He is part of her, flailing arms, limbs that won't behave and big geen eyes fringed with thick black lashes. Seizures grip him in the night and she wakes up to make sure he hasn't bitten through his tongue. She tenderly changes the sweaty pajamas, cleans up the pee and slobber and tucks him back in. His clothes hang off a body misshapen by scoliosis and he struggles to stand up straight. When he's excited, he shakes his hands as if he might be ready to reach for the controls of his favorite video game. Sometimes, she wonders whether she wants her freedom from being a 24/7 caregiver or whether she feels she must give him up because her husband has threatened to leave her if she doesn't find placement for him the second he turns eighteen.
"Maybe I'll just take him and we'll leave. I handled him just fine before I married my husband. Seems like now I'm dealing with trying to make things okay for him and trying to take care of my son too. But I really am so tired..."
She fantasizes about leaving him on the doorstep of the government agency whose mission statement is to serve families with disabled children but whose actions fall far short.
"Here is is," she imagines saying. "You won't place him. Well fuck you. He's yours now. He's homeless cuz I got nothin' left." She says this to me while we sit on her sofa as all the babies nap to the sound of Sugarland on the radio. It's our little secret that she wants to run far, far away.
"He wet the bed three times over the last two days," she says. Her eyes fill. Then the phone rings and she picks up. It's the orthodontist's office calling about what they can't or won't do for her son who has a snaggle tooth that needs to be pulled or it will abcess.
"He is disabled, THAT'S why he's on Medicaid," she says rolling her eyes. She is used to fighting this fight day in and day out to get medical services, supportive services and other kinds of assistance for her boy. "We have really good insurance through my husband's work. But his secondary is medicaid. You don't bill them? Well then refer me to someone who will...You don't do that? Well who can...I have to call Medicaid to find a preferred provider? I already did and nobody...You're sorry? Really? Well why is this so difficult to bill the primary and then bill Medicaid for the difference? No I am not going to pay out of pocket...Can't you tell me who will just pull the goddamn tooth and bill the insurance? Yeah...okay. Fine. I will do it myself."
She hangs up and looks at me. "This is what I do eevery day every time he needs medical attention. You would think in this country that a child would not have to go without medical care. But it's always a struggle."
She dreams of days on a lake. She dreams of starting a business. She dreams of dressing up in leather and riding her Harley. "I have lots of ideas," she says. "But they die when my treadmill stops."
She has that frantic look again. "I am eating too much again," she says. "I once spent my days in the gym. I worked there and I worked out. I was so ripped. A guy with some big bodybuilding competition even offered to sponsor me and I said no. Can you believe I said no? How different would MY life have been."
I look at her and remind her that she is the most astonishing example of strength and patience I have ever witnessed. I could no more do what she does in one day than I could fly to the moon. We talk about hunger and how to feed it. Right now it's with food. So what...when her time comes, food will be the last thing she will feed that hungry soul with. But once in a while, she can feed that hunger by standing up and maybe issuing a definitive statement to her husband when he complains that the furniture is dusty or that there is a ring around the tub. That's when she rises up and puts her hands on her hips. She looks down at him while he sits on the sofa in judgment of her mothering, in judgment of how she won't have sex with him on account of her being tired all the time and how the tub needs a scrubbing. And she silently walks into the kitchen. And then the sponge flies across the room past his face followed by a plastic bottle of Soft Scrub. She breathes out and shakes that honey blond hair out of her face and moves like a panther through the living room and into her bedroom to her closet. She digs around way in the back and something rattles. It's the buckles, all ten of them. She puts on those leather pants and the matching jacket without a word. And when all ten buckles are buckled, she walks past him out to the garage where her motorcycle waits. And she mounts it like an Amazon and rides into the night.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Hanging On
I hang on
when I really need to uncurl my fingers
and let my self fall
like a red scarf in the desert wind
floating fearlessly against the sandstone canyon walls
I hang on the hook like an old pink coat
with a frayed neckline
where you put me
when you have something better to wear
I sway slightly when you walk by
hoping you might choose me this time
I lean against the wall
brushing my threadbare hemline
against the tops of your boots
Just noticing the rough leather
against the softness of cashmere
and remembering the smell
of your skin on my pillow
One day you will take me off the hook
and wear me as if it was our first dance
and for the moment I forget
that you will hang me up again
It's just the perfect dance
round and round like a red scarf
floating upon the trustworthy wind
toward the sun and the moon
Until you decide it is time to stop
and I dance on alone
upon those waves of desert wind
against the sandstone canyon walls
when I really need to uncurl my fingers
and let my self fall
like a red scarf in the desert wind
floating fearlessly against the sandstone canyon walls
I hang on the hook like an old pink coat
with a frayed neckline
where you put me
when you have something better to wear
I sway slightly when you walk by
hoping you might choose me this time
I lean against the wall
brushing my threadbare hemline
against the tops of your boots
Just noticing the rough leather
against the softness of cashmere
and remembering the smell
of your skin on my pillow
One day you will take me off the hook
and wear me as if it was our first dance
and for the moment I forget
that you will hang me up again
It's just the perfect dance
round and round like a red scarf
floating upon the trustworthy wind
toward the sun and the moon
Until you decide it is time to stop
and I dance on alone
upon those waves of desert wind
against the sandstone canyon walls
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Garmin ForeRunner 405 Causes Woman to Fly Into Murderous Rage
Lurch gave me a Garmin Forerunner 405 sometime in the spring of 2009. I should never have agreed to be Lurch's girlfriend, we were better off as friends. But I was out of my mind with heartache when I decided to try. I thought maybe I needed a man who wasn't interesting and exciting. Lurch was neither. Predictable and mechanical, he works like one of those oil drilling machines near Bakersfield. Up, down, up down, get the oil, up, down, here is my oil, in a rhythmic fashion with a very predictable yield. Sex was similar which is why we only had it once, and even that single episode lasting eight minutes and thirty two point five seconds brought my dinner up to my throat.
Lurch likes to measure everything, a pastime that makes him delightfully happy and which I hate with a screaming passion. The ForeRunner 405 he gave me with such high expectation that I would love it, was like wearing Big Ben on my wrist. It was supposedly genious enough to tell me how far, how fast, where, when, what and how I was doing every single second of whatever physical activity I was engaged in. I didn't even take it out of the box for two months because I knew I would hate it. I just want a watch with maybe two buttons at most. A start/stop button and a button to reset it is plenty for me to manage.
Lurch also gave me a hanging toiletry bag because he had one made my the Swiss Army people and I coveted it because the bottles all stood up straight inside of it and you could tell which was the shampoo and which was your lotion and it had lovely little toothbrush holders. But he gave me a cheap one he found at a sidewalk sale which was just a lousy excuse for a toiletry bag and I just resented him for it. And he gave me a car cover because he had one and his main priority aside from measuring every inch and every detail of his daily runs was keeping his car clean at all times. I hated this thing he paid $500.00 for because it took forever to unfold and secure onto my car which didn't mind being dirty. I didn't mind either and I always had better things to do than wrestle a car cover over my car at 6PM when I got home from work and was ravenously hungry and annoyed with pretty much everything including Lurch.
I had passive agressive responses to these gifts that Lurch so proudly gave me. He called every night at exactly 8:00PM and his first question was, "Have you learned how to use your Garmin yet?" And I took a fiendish sort of delight in replying, "No...I couldn't carve out the four and a half hours it would take to learn how to use it today and I've used up all my vacation time. Maybe in a couple of years when I'm done with life as I now know it, I will take it out of the box and read the manual which requires a degree in computer science."
Besides, I was not sure I liked him enough to accept a gift worth over $300.00 especially if I wasn't planning on sleeping with him, and spent a lot of time dreaming up reasons why I could not sleep with him. In fact, that is where most of my vacation time was spent, and I came up with brilliant reasons for why I could not have sex with him. But I digress...
When he asked if I was using the car cover, I told him my car preferred a heavy coating of grit and mud since she was a tough girl and not a sissy who was afraid of a little dirt.
So anyway, I finally took the ForeRunner out of the box after about two months as I said. It was so complicated to understand that I cried and had a tantrum right in front of an elementary school trying to use it for the first time. I had only about 40 minutes to go for a run and I spent about 32 minutes trying to pull up all the right menus using the watch's bezel. I think I dropped to the sidewalk in tears and cast a spell upon Lurch in that moment.
When the ForeRunner did work, it often gave me information I did not want. If I ran for two and half hours on hilly terrain, I wanted it to tell me I burned 6,000 calories because it sure felt like I burned enough to justify three martinis and half a chocolate cake. Instead, it would tell me I only ran ten miles and burned 600 calories. Again, on the sidewalk on my back sobbing and cursing Lurch for giving me this horrid device.
On long bike rides, it would go blank in the midst of what was intended to be an 80 mile ride. I was then left to my imagination which is not particularly concerned with being precise; it prefers to embellish based upon perceived effort. The ForeRunner was supposed to measure distance and time, but would decide it did not want to measure these elements on a particular day and would decide instead to beep every time I turned left or right and would tell me how far away I was from San Bernardino. In century rides, it would quit for no apparent reason, or freeze which made me furious. When I couldn't have the most essential data, I became very anxious and realized in these moments that it was all Lurch's fault that I was becoming like him.
I decided to call Garmin and lobby hard for a replacement or a simpler device which would not require an advanced degree in computer science. It turns out that the wait time was at least 45 minutes for customer service so I emailed instead. A representative named Aaron wrote me a two page email describing what he thought the problem was and how I could troubleshoot by plugging in the USB wireless transmitter and then making sure the watch was set to ANT+ settings. And then there was a long list of things I had to do to update the software and then go through the troubleshooting procedure. I became fatigued and felt my bloodsugar drop to dangerous levels when I read Aaron's list of procedures, so I emailed him and told him I would prefer to pay the $79.95 to have Garmin do all this stuff. He was resistant to this idea and encouraged me to take a week off from work to learn these procedures for updating the software and testing the device using my heartrate monitor and engaging in activities I would normally use the watch for. This would have required a prescription for a benzodiazapene and additional medical insurance in case a had a stroke while cursing my way through this procedure so I emailed him again begging him for the address to the repair department. He emailed back and told me this was a complicated procedure because of the distance between the repair department and the financial department. The repair department is apparently in Kansas and the financial department is in Norway, and the two don't communicate other than by steamship. So my check for the repair would have to be sent to Norway via Iceland and when received, they would send an albatross to Kansas with verification that my check had been processed. Then the Kansas repair team would immediately fly into action to repair the device and would ship it back to me via Volkswagen to California since devices shipped by air tend to mess with the settings. I also told Aaron that the watchband had broken and would need a new pin. He informed me that this would be a simple matter of sending away for a new pin to Thailand for an addition $19.95 shipping not included. I should receive my device back by Christmas of 2012 at which point, I would need to send it back to Kansas to update the software again.
Lurch spends his life doing stuff like this which is why I grew more and more intolerant of him. It was simply a match made in Hell, that's all. His job, for which is highly overpaid, is to measure race courses and order Porta-Potties and he has it down to a science. He never tires of running his same route day in and day out with his Garmin measuring each and every step and he delights in knowing that he shaved off .00045 seconds off his time from last Wednesday.
I left Lurch and took the ForeRunner with me, but I wish I hadn't. I returned the toiletry bag and the car cover though.
Lurch likes to measure everything, a pastime that makes him delightfully happy and which I hate with a screaming passion. The ForeRunner 405 he gave me with such high expectation that I would love it, was like wearing Big Ben on my wrist. It was supposedly genious enough to tell me how far, how fast, where, when, what and how I was doing every single second of whatever physical activity I was engaged in. I didn't even take it out of the box for two months because I knew I would hate it. I just want a watch with maybe two buttons at most. A start/stop button and a button to reset it is plenty for me to manage.
Lurch also gave me a hanging toiletry bag because he had one made my the Swiss Army people and I coveted it because the bottles all stood up straight inside of it and you could tell which was the shampoo and which was your lotion and it had lovely little toothbrush holders. But he gave me a cheap one he found at a sidewalk sale which was just a lousy excuse for a toiletry bag and I just resented him for it. And he gave me a car cover because he had one and his main priority aside from measuring every inch and every detail of his daily runs was keeping his car clean at all times. I hated this thing he paid $500.00 for because it took forever to unfold and secure onto my car which didn't mind being dirty. I didn't mind either and I always had better things to do than wrestle a car cover over my car at 6PM when I got home from work and was ravenously hungry and annoyed with pretty much everything including Lurch.
I had passive agressive responses to these gifts that Lurch so proudly gave me. He called every night at exactly 8:00PM and his first question was, "Have you learned how to use your Garmin yet?" And I took a fiendish sort of delight in replying, "No...I couldn't carve out the four and a half hours it would take to learn how to use it today and I've used up all my vacation time. Maybe in a couple of years when I'm done with life as I now know it, I will take it out of the box and read the manual which requires a degree in computer science."
Besides, I was not sure I liked him enough to accept a gift worth over $300.00 especially if I wasn't planning on sleeping with him, and spent a lot of time dreaming up reasons why I could not sleep with him. In fact, that is where most of my vacation time was spent, and I came up with brilliant reasons for why I could not have sex with him. But I digress...
When he asked if I was using the car cover, I told him my car preferred a heavy coating of grit and mud since she was a tough girl and not a sissy who was afraid of a little dirt.
So anyway, I finally took the ForeRunner out of the box after about two months as I said. It was so complicated to understand that I cried and had a tantrum right in front of an elementary school trying to use it for the first time. I had only about 40 minutes to go for a run and I spent about 32 minutes trying to pull up all the right menus using the watch's bezel. I think I dropped to the sidewalk in tears and cast a spell upon Lurch in that moment.
When the ForeRunner did work, it often gave me information I did not want. If I ran for two and half hours on hilly terrain, I wanted it to tell me I burned 6,000 calories because it sure felt like I burned enough to justify three martinis and half a chocolate cake. Instead, it would tell me I only ran ten miles and burned 600 calories. Again, on the sidewalk on my back sobbing and cursing Lurch for giving me this horrid device.
On long bike rides, it would go blank in the midst of what was intended to be an 80 mile ride. I was then left to my imagination which is not particularly concerned with being precise; it prefers to embellish based upon perceived effort. The ForeRunner was supposed to measure distance and time, but would decide it did not want to measure these elements on a particular day and would decide instead to beep every time I turned left or right and would tell me how far away I was from San Bernardino. In century rides, it would quit for no apparent reason, or freeze which made me furious. When I couldn't have the most essential data, I became very anxious and realized in these moments that it was all Lurch's fault that I was becoming like him.
I decided to call Garmin and lobby hard for a replacement or a simpler device which would not require an advanced degree in computer science. It turns out that the wait time was at least 45 minutes for customer service so I emailed instead. A representative named Aaron wrote me a two page email describing what he thought the problem was and how I could troubleshoot by plugging in the USB wireless transmitter and then making sure the watch was set to ANT+ settings. And then there was a long list of things I had to do to update the software and then go through the troubleshooting procedure. I became fatigued and felt my bloodsugar drop to dangerous levels when I read Aaron's list of procedures, so I emailed him and told him I would prefer to pay the $79.95 to have Garmin do all this stuff. He was resistant to this idea and encouraged me to take a week off from work to learn these procedures for updating the software and testing the device using my heartrate monitor and engaging in activities I would normally use the watch for. This would have required a prescription for a benzodiazapene and additional medical insurance in case a had a stroke while cursing my way through this procedure so I emailed him again begging him for the address to the repair department. He emailed back and told me this was a complicated procedure because of the distance between the repair department and the financial department. The repair department is apparently in Kansas and the financial department is in Norway, and the two don't communicate other than by steamship. So my check for the repair would have to be sent to Norway via Iceland and when received, they would send an albatross to Kansas with verification that my check had been processed. Then the Kansas repair team would immediately fly into action to repair the device and would ship it back to me via Volkswagen to California since devices shipped by air tend to mess with the settings. I also told Aaron that the watchband had broken and would need a new pin. He informed me that this would be a simple matter of sending away for a new pin to Thailand for an addition $19.95 shipping not included. I should receive my device back by Christmas of 2012 at which point, I would need to send it back to Kansas to update the software again.
Lurch spends his life doing stuff like this which is why I grew more and more intolerant of him. It was simply a match made in Hell, that's all. His job, for which is highly overpaid, is to measure race courses and order Porta-Potties and he has it down to a science. He never tires of running his same route day in and day out with his Garmin measuring each and every step and he delights in knowing that he shaved off .00045 seconds off his time from last Wednesday.
I left Lurch and took the ForeRunner with me, but I wish I hadn't. I returned the toiletry bag and the car cover though.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)