I’m posing a recent email I wrote to the therapist I used to go to in college…Somehow, despite doing my best Will Hunting routine (now with 99% less mathematical genius!) back when I was client of his, we’ve maintained a friendship over 20 years. As crazy as I can be, I can be just as charming, I guess.
I am posting this email in lieu of a real entry because I don’t have time/energy to rewrite something that is mostly sufficient in updating. Mainly, I am posting this to justify the $3 I spend every month to come on here and see 5000 entries clogging the front page with promises that you will win the lottery, lose 100 pounds of ugly fat and get fucked to 3 orgasms in rapid succession by a well-hung and polite Nigerian prince all on the same day just by calling some witch doctor.
The only thing I promise anyone if they call me is that I probably won’t pick up. Text that shit, darling, we don’t need to tawlk.
Anyway, le mwah. (<-French kiss to all you cool kids NOT clogging the front page with spammer bullshit.)
Heya Chief,
Been meaning to write, but seems so hard to find a few minutes to steal away where my brains aren’t addled by exhaustion…The kids and I spent a lazy morning watching KPop Demon Hunters—which much to my chagrin, I really, really was into…despite not liking KPop (because, hey, it doesn’t sound like the usual Sad Dad Band shit I listen to)…Not quite as good as the Spidey Verse movies-which this same team also made, but I would watch it even if the kids weren’t here…
Oh hey, is this my life now?
Yeah. It is.
Strange to think of all the places and people you’ve been—and look at yourself in your 40s.
Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
Ben Folds played in my area not too long ago…Ben Folds has been a favorite artist of mine since my freshman year in high school when my sister bought a used copy of Whatever & Ever Amen at a cd sale when she was away at that expensive private college in Westchester. She gave it to me as a Christmas present-after she had already listened to it and decided they were not for her. I think I wanted to dislike this album mainly based on the way my sister bought it for herself and offloaded it onto me for a Christmas present. But after I listened to this album a few times, I was hooked. It reminded me of the 70s singer songwriters my dad listened to—Al Stewart, Warren Zevon, Elton John….but was also…somehow cooler in its ironic nerdiness. There were no cd stores around us, I remember I convinced my mom to take me to Listen Up, a used cd store about 30 minutes away, so I could order their other albums. The cashier thought 14-year-old me was fucking rad for ordering that and not something stupid like Britney Spears. And I mean, yeah, I was. Still am. (Hang on, let me cue up KPop Demon Hunters Soundtrack at 42 years old.) Anyway, I loved the albums so much, I remember making my father a mixed tape (ah, good ol’ days of dubbing things onto a Maxell) of Ben Folds’ music. My sister & I decorated the tape and case with these iridescent fish stickers and bubbles, which we wrote the track names in. We left it on the table with a note. The tape sat there for days. He never even pretended to listen to it. He gave it the same amount of attention that he gave to tampon commercials—just an intentional stonewall to anything that made him uncomfortable. And I always made him uncomfortable. After a week of the tape sitting ignored on the table, I just took it back. This didn’t dim my love of Ben Folds. Instead, I began learning his songs by ear…and then, I began writing songs on piano. I joined the email forum for his fans, The Magical Armchair–and met my high school boyfriend, Charlie on it. (Actually, in the name of accuracy: I met his stepdad, Herb, who connected me with Char. Herb ended up being a big ol’ creepo, by the way. Charlie couldn’t keep it in his pants either, but I digress.) I have gotten to see Ben Folds perform in concert several times & got to meet him a couple of those times. (The first time I met him in my late teens, he read through a piece of music I had composed for my high school choir. I brought it for him to sign, but he took the time to sightread it & then he complimented me on my part-writing. Boner SPRUUUUUNNNNG..) Anyway, he’s been a pretty significant musical artist in my life.
So, I bought tickets and dragged the kids’ babysitter-cum-friend, Edie, along with me to the concert. (Edie is a tough, older lesbian who is good chaos in human form. She’s flighty and fun and fearless–mostly everything I’m not. Her mouth is always writing checks that her ass can’t cash-in the name of sticking up for others. Once saw her bring a bag of soup cans to a drag queen story hour, in case she needed “to swing on someone” for harassing the drag queens or children present.) When I walked into the venue, I almost literally ran into my best friend, Abby, from high school/early 20s. (In fact, we were so close that she was my maid of honor.) There are many entries where she is mentioned in the early years of my OpenDiary. (We were the bad influences in our group of friends. I was totally the kid I warn my daughter about.) The first “rock” concert we both went to, was Ben Folds at East Harro ballroom in Rochester with our2 other besties, Cai & Luke. I didn’t even see her at first, but she called out to me as I entered the venue. “I have been thinking about you all week—wondering if you would be here, if I would see you.” You know how babies have no object permanence? I am a reverse baby—in that I think once I’m not in view that I disappear to everyone else—I was so surprised that she even remembered my love, nay, obsession with Ben Folds…let alone that I existed. We chatted for a few minutes & discussed getting together for brunch next month. Don’t know if we actually will, I hope so—but know these things don’t pan out sometimes. For a few minutes I saw us again as the 16-year-old girls we were. We both came from dysfunctional families. (She was a poor little rich girl. I was just poor.) As I sat there at the concert thinking about both of us as 16-year-olds, it occurred to me that neither of us were the bad kids that we thought we were.
When I think of my life at 16, I see myself fighting to prove that I was going to survive—even if it was only out of spite. I was sleeping on the floor (and had been for years). My bed was broken and my parents refused to replace it. I always saw it as my parents didn’t think I was worth having a bed-even though the other kids all had one. (I would lay my head on the hardwood floor and focus on the piano lines of my Ben Folds Five albums to distract myself from how uncomfortable it was to sleep on the floor.) My mom was physically and emotionally abusive while my dad was at work-and it was only escalating. (And my dad was always at work.) I was being made to reside in a house just feet away from a person who had tried to kill me, raped me alongside his greasy, fatfuck friend for years, and stalked and tormented me well into my teens. The adults surrounding me were unloving and neglectful at best, but mostly sadistic and cruel…I spent most of my early life (and a great deal of my adult life) trying to convince others that if I wasn’t worth loving, I was at least not worth hurting. And I was largely unsuccessful at that even. Looking back-I wasn’t a bad kid, I was a kid just trying to fucking survive. (As was Abby, although her survival included boosting thousands of dollars from stores at the mall-unbeknownst to me-even though she could have easily afforded all of the items she stole…whereas my survival included cutting and branding my skin and planning my suicide in more detail than I planned my fucking wedding. [Aside to my earlier aside: Abby later got caught stealing a $3.50 pair of flip flops from H & M and her Dad shipped her off to California to live with an aunt…. Which is exactly what she wanted.]
I got a little sentimental thinking about the kid I was. She didn’t think she was going to live past 21. (Almost didn’t.) She thought her life was going to be spent in and out of mental hospitals, that her life was going to be all suffering and pain and devoid of love. I wonder what she would think of herself at 42… Look, things haven’t been easy, but I’m still here and MOSTLY stable. I have been able to hold down the same job for 15 years. My career has been one of helping others & I find meaning in that. I am keeping 2 kids and a dog and several houseplants alive. Something I never even considered would be a possibility as a 16-year-old who could barely keep herself alive and worse yet, didn’t even know if it was worth it to do so. I have been lucky enough to keep a few friends in my life who see me in soft and forgiving lights and hang in there even when I’m not my best self. I have the love and adoration of a good and decent and kind man. I never thought someone would be able to see past all the damage and want to stand in the eye of the storm with me. Any time I am with him, I just feel everything still within me. I never knew that Calm is exactly what I wanted, that it is the least fucking boring thing to behold. My life is not what I thought it would be and thank God for that.
I would hope teenage Roxy would be proud of me, of what I’ve built with her incredible resilience and my relatively newfound emotional maturity. (“Emotionally preoperational” no more, as you once called me. LOL.)
I am mostly sober for the first time since both pregnancies. (I allow myself 1 drink every week. I can pick whatever day and whatever drink-but I get one…and then I have to wait till the next week.) I have mostly maintained this since November…and don’t feel like I usually do, where I am just waiting for an excuse to go back to the nightly diet of too many vodkas. I don’t want to get too cocky, because, well, we both know I don’t have a good track record. But for now, I am mostly sober and that is enough. It has to be. I know they say you have to do it for yourself…but the thing that has really kept me focused are my kids. Their father is an alcoholic. He drinks heavily every day…from 5:00 pm till bedtime. They see it. They make comments about it. It bothers them. They tell me he’s going to drink himself to death. He probably is. I can’t do that to them, too. Because he is such a disappointment in all regards, I must function for both of us. And it is both a blessing and a curse…Some days I resent it like hell, but I also know it is what keeps me steady, upright. To breakdown like I used to, is a privilege I can’t afford…And my kids shouldn’t have to pay on that bill either.
I am driving down to see Chris next weekend in Virginia. It’s about a 6-hour drive. When I was 20, that would have been nothing. I would’ve hopped in my half-broke down jalopy with a paper map printed off the computer and no credit cards or cell phone and blasted through state lines on a few cups of high octane gas station coffee….but now, I’m 42 and on 24/7 sensory overload and nightblind. Last time I drove it, I hit Harrisburg at rush hour—had an anxiety attack and puked in my mouth. (I was driving a rental…so, like, options were limited…had to just swallow it, crying and hyperventilating as I switched lanes.) (Another aside: When I told my best Judy, Rach, about the horror show I was starring in, she said, “Well at least you didn’t throw THAT back up and have to swallow a second time.” Have I told you how much I hate positivity? Lol.) But still, I’d drive through Harrisburg a million times over to see him. (I like that I make driving through Harrisburg sound like Orpheus’ trip to Hades. Drama be thy name, Rox.)
I worry about him all the time due to his health. [Paragraph redacted.] I often worry we are running out of time to be together. Nothing seems to be aligning, other than our unconditional love for one another. And he just seems to get sicker. He always tells me, “In the next lifetime, find me sooner.” I don’t know if I believe in any of that stuff, but for him, I might start. After all, I love him so much, how could it be contained in just one single lifetime? I would need at least a thousand to take the edge off.
The whole thing just feels so cruel, Jeff. Like what was this all for if I never get to actually be with him? I do not want to be tempered by the fire of loss. There is no lesson worth this grief.
Anyway…Tucks heart back in chest Zips up my skin Face resets to default resting bitch face
My own health has not been the most amazing…I’ve been experiencing a continuation of the physical issues I had back at Fredonia that led me to see you in the first place. Ok, so it was less my joint pain and more me threatening that doctor that probably led to me being introduced to you. (In retrospect, responding to her question of “If you don’t have family, where are you going for the holidays?” with “To your house, to put a lit firecracker under your pillow” probably wasn’t the wisest thing. But hey, .) After being out in the sun, I can’t move—I’m in so much pain and so fatigued. My hair is thinning so much I had it cut short. I have brain fog. Chris gently suggested, “Could it be lupus?” I put my symptoms and ChatGPT and it spat back at me, “These symptoms are concerning and hint at a lupus diagnosis. Do you want me to help you compose a list of tests you could ask your dr to run?” Well shit, ChatGPT, that got serious quick. I ended up in the ER a few weeks ago after experiencing a bad flare up. I had gotten some routine lab work done in anticipation of a yearly physical. My doctor called me at 7:30 in the morning and told me to go to the ER immediately because my potassium was so high I was in danger of having a cardiac event. And not a fun one. So I spent a day in our shit local hospital so that they could get my potassium down enough to discharge me. Uh, don’t you want to diagnose what’s causing it? Ya know, so this doesn’t happen again. “No. We’re only interested in lowering it enough to safely discharge you.” Oh, ok. (I had this happen 2 years ago where my potassium was super high during a flare up of pain/fatigue. At the time, they thought it might be due to diet—so I was put on a low-potassium diet and have stayed on it…so it’s definitely NOT diet causing this issue now. Although, the hospital didn’t listen to me about that either and put it in my discharge summary that I should look into a low-potassium diet. Of course, they also wrote that I was a 22 year old complaining of asthma symptoms in my discharge summary…Ah yes, that’s me —the 22 year old asthmatic, just pounding dem bananas like Donkey Kong.) So…yeah, good times. Still no idea what’s going on with me. My primary has no idea either…ran lab work again, but I wasn’t in a flare up, so nothing showed up really…Yay for wasting time and money! Everybody’s gotta be good at something, I guess.
Anyway, this is already too long… (that’s what she said.) (16-year-old me approves of that joke. As does current version of me.)
Hope you’re having an awesome summer and the fam is doing well.
With love & friendship & skinwalker tendencies,
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