JoBiv vs. Dickinson, the Pandemic edition

Isn't this the space where I tell you I'm lucky, just in case you want to judge my anxiety or compare it to your own? Emily Dickinson has an answer to that - I measure every grief I meet - by the way, but I do want to tell you I know I'm lucky.

I'm still getting paid in this pandemic. Most of the preschools run by my company have furloughed all of their staff, including administration. My center expects some proof of life while they pay us, thus we're doing online trainings, Zoom sessions with families, homework of a sort... and up until this week it was hard to keep up with their demands. They required 20 hours of work per week, but somehow that felt impossible. How does one read articles and write responses when your phone keeps lighting up with all the people who are desperate to connect, when your thoughts wander to that catastrophic news article, when you just want to go to the dang store but you're too anxious to leave your block?

This week, the leadership teams from our schools asked for a different kind of work. We still had articles to read and Zoom calls, but Fridays were set aside for "reflection" and "self-care." If those quotation marks feel loaded, they absolutely are. I can't help raising my bullshit shield when a buzzword flies by my ear.

One of our choices for reflection was this prompt:

Self-Reflective Activity: “Developing hope in times of change…” Please answer the following questions:

• What does this quote by Emily Dickinson mean to you? “Hope is the thing with feathers.”
• Where do you believe your sources of hope come from?
• Where do you look for hope in your life? What are three things you hope for?
• How have your hopes changed as you have grown up?
• How has hope affected decisions you have made? How will you use the message of hope in the future?

When I tell you this prompt hit me right square in the Enraged English Major... well, let's just say I was shocked to find boiling anger so close at hand.

First of all, what a trite reduction of Dickinson's already short, very digestible poem. WHY? Why reduce it to this line, which I'm sure appears on many a tattoo and journal cover and inspirational poster separated from its not-even-that-complex context?

I'll tell you my assumption: because they Googled "reflections about hope" or "journal prompts hope" and got this in a little package. Tada! (And they're also worn out and stressed and hanging on from a swiftly unraveling thread.)

Second, we're in that Too Little Too Late period of this quarantine. This prompt, this concentration on self-care and reflection, comes at the same moment that we're hearing about new protocols for reopening.

We're being handled, and I feel the sticky touch of every awkward manipulation.

And I wonder how Emily Dickinson would have coped in the midst of a pandemic. Honestly, I think we know. She would have: 1. isolated, per uzh 2. written a buttload of elegant angst-ridden letters and poetry, per uzh.

Nonetheless, I answered the well-aimed provocation. And you may read it. In the end, did it get me writing? Yes. Did it give me an avenue of expression during a time when I feel powerless and stifled? Kinda. I'm sharing with a sense of cringey self-awareness that I chose to respond with a slap, and somehow still didn't communicate the layers of barriers between myself and any kind of hope.


“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

-Emily Dickinson

I never had a favorite Emily Dickinson poem, of all the pages and pages of poetry I analyzed, critiqued, emulated, shared throughout my undergrad and graduate education. She came off cold and distant, always using familiar words in oblique formations, hedging all of her most passionate declarations with quick self-censure and theological metaphor. It’s not that I didn’t like Dickinson, I just felt she was trapped in herself, winding around in a web of strict morality and this urge to wedge her fierce needs into acceptable forms. Reading her work resonated with me in uncomfortable ways, I know that for sure.

And this poem brings all of that right to the fore. Dickinson speaks of “Hope” - already carefully framed in delicate quotation marks - being something so light that it perches. She contrasts this lightness, the sweetness of its song, with its constancy and persistence, even “in the Gale” - a storm of emotion, doubt, crisis events, who knows? And lastly, she tells us that despite its steadfast presence, it never asks for anything in return. For something that seems so fragile and sweet, how can it also be so permeating, immovable and humble? She also seems to say, this “Hope” is inside her, actually within her soul, and therefore she can always hear its voice, even over the cacophony of her own internal storms.

Dickinson often contemplated divinity and aspects of Christianity in her work (even her odd poetic form is closest to hymn structures) and perhaps that’s where she loses me. But maybe I also simply disagree. I believe “Hope” is a light thing as well, something that wants to rise and pull us with it, and its voice is sweet and strong, but I do believe it needs feeding. In my experience, the cost of maintaining this sweet little bird works against its function, because it often requires the same resources I need to battle the actual crisis. In order to invest in hope, to turn and focus the ray of my thoughts on hope, I somehow have to turn my efforts away from what needs to be done in the moment. I can’t be bothered with setting up some carrot-on-a-stick contraption to motivate myself through harder moments.

Or is “Hope” is too vague and abstract for me, with its “tune without the words,” and instead I rely on what I know for certain: I have survived worse, over and over. I have defied death and disease and grief, and limped onward through life, knowing that every hard thing eventually becomes soft if I work at it. Everything that is heavy eventually wears down to something lighter. Is that hope? Is it pragmatism? Even knowing this for certain - that no circumstance or feeling is permanent - that knowledge has nothing to do with feathers or sweet bird song. It has everything to do with pushing through the storm.

I think this is the point where my personal philosophy brought me to Children’s Literature. Despite assumptions that children’s books are “cute” and “sweet” and safe and optimistic, many of the most successful books - the books children ask for - are full of courageous journeys rife with danger and challenges. They give children access and validation for feelings they know: defiance, frustration, fear, and the inner drive to resolution. I think of books like Where the Wild Things Are, Harold and the Purple Crayon, and of course We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. All of these stories are carefully crafted to show children who take risks, push through, problem-solve, even enjoy aspects of the journey, and find their way back home.

How strange is it that this crisis, this journey, took place in our homes? The challenge is more that home itself has changed, that the “beyond” is beyond us, and that we yearn for the most mundane of our weekly rituals. In that sense, this hope - the hope that we will return to some kind of normal - should be within our reach, yet it still seems depressingly distant. My hope, which is more of a knowledge, is that I will show a child how to put on her own jacket again, that I will hear a boy singing his favorite song to himself on his nap mat again, that over months and years I will hear countless young voices declaring “I did it!” with that resounding song of self-accomplishment. I know these things will happen, but it will require a deeper commitment to showing up each day, to being present with each tantruming child, to balancing my own needs with those of growing, hurting humans. My hope certainly needs feeding, and reminding, and perhaps a mantra beyond any “thing with feathers.”

So, I offer you this, from Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt:

“We can’t go over it.
We can’t go under it.
Oh no! We’ve got to go through it!”

The Guy Who Called Me Girlfriend

I broke up with the Manboy about three weeks ago, although he doesn't seem to have fully comprehended the news. He texts me to tell me his work is boring today, or to complain about how much reading he has to do. He keeps asking me to join him for dinner or lunch, or Easter Brunch at Eastern Standard. I would, mostly because my weekly grocery budget hovers around $14, but I am pretty much done listening to him talk about his fairly manageable life in overly dramatic terms. And interrupting me. And one-upping every. damn. thing.

I still can't tell you how we wound up dating for six months. This past year has become a miasma of awfulness in my mind. I met The Guy Who Calls Me Girlfriend (after a month of staggered dating) right around the time I was hospitalized for 8 days due to a majorly infected central port. I emerged from that with a PICC line and a visiting nurse and syringes of medication and total exhaustion. My immune system has been utter crap since.

Basically, I was tired, unable to work, automatically ill whenever I did work (kids are germy, you know), and Manboy decided he would take care of me.

I was too tired to beat him away.

Not a stellar start for a relationship, you say. "Yeah, I know. I'm still not sure what's going on," I would say, every time someone asked me about him.

Things got worse with his temper tantrums, his hypochondria, his constant and persistently terrible "advice" to get my life back together. And then came the suggestions for how I could dress sexier for him, lose more weight (while he gained weight), "get over" my depression. Apparently I was supposed to call him and text him to remind him to study for his classes. It was my fault he didn't do well on his exams. And if I tried to introduce a new restaurant, suggested going to the movie theater, suggested pretty much anything outside of his habitual comfort zone, I was admonished and punished with angry silence. I learned to stay quiet and let his constant outpouring of opinions and emotions sweep over me. I learned that all his moods and outbursts were temporary, and if I just hunkered down and became as still as possible, as small as possible, they would pass.

I didn't notice the slow accrual of a kind of emotional silt. I was constantly fearful of the next outburst or indirect attack. Things he said about my body and my capabilities swirled around my head for days, then months... but I believed them already, so it was easy to catalog them with my own self-hating mantras. I knew I had become both more indefinite and more weighed down and it was a horribly familiar state.

But I needed somewhere to be that wasn't my apartment. And I really liked his cat.

I grew used to having him in my life. His gestures became familiar, and it was nice to have someone to touch. I don't let people touch me, especially in my city life. My personal space is sacred. So when I give permission, that effort, that act is momentous and painful. Once I allow someone in I am far too worn out by the process to close him out again.

He loved me. He introduced me to his best friends, his mother, paraded me around his workplace and called me his Special Lady, his Darling.

But I knew part of me had gone dormant. Whatever he loved about me... well, it wasn't me in full bloom. He couldn't know me because I couldn't trust him enough to actually inhabit myself.

And I wasn't comfortable bringing him around my friends. At one point he told me that I need him because I clearly didn't have anyone else in my life. Although that sometimes felt true in my lower moments, I knew I could access people who cared about me and that I had purposely kept them separate.

I was ashamed, not of him, but of how I allowed him to control me.

I noticed, at some point, that part of me had fled. I was protecting and withholding something very dear. I was behaving like a prisoner who had given up hope of freedom. I had taken on the role of a victim. He never attacked me physically, and I kept telling myself (and he kept telling me) that my wariness was my depression taking over. But the ever-present shame and anxiety had grown overwhelming.

It took an incredible effort to end it. I invited him over and I could tell he knew it was coming. He unwrapped his scarf and took off his kermit-green hat and said, "I love those glasses on you. I'm going to make you wear them more." I brought him to the brightness of the kitchen and got us both a glass of water while he complained about his day. I sat and pretended to listen, trying to find an opening.

Eventually, his monologue tapered to a few ready phrases. He took a deep breath and my eyes were already welling up with tears.

"What is it?" he asked. He took my hand and rubbed my knuckles with his rough thumb. I couldn't look him in the eye. I was suddenly awash with the thought that I didn't want to hurt him. To hurt him.

But I had to. I pulled my hand away and found a tissue for myself, mostly fiddling with it.


"This... we're not..." I desperately needed a script. How could I be so useless at a time like this? The tears burned down my cheeks and pooled at my chin, and of course my nose started running. Gross.

"What? What are you trying to say?" His turquoise eyes burned into me as I wiped my nose and chin.

"I can't... This isn't..." I had worked myself up with fear, uncertain of his reaction. Would he jump up and yell? Throw something? Slam his chair against the wall? Would he go through the list of reasons I was mentally unfit to make decisions? Try to convince me of my own feebleness?

"This needs to end," I said, kind of warbling through the snot and tears.

"Yeah," he said, almost whispering. "I was wondering when..."

We sat there and I cried, ablaze with the shame of crying.

"You're gonna make me cry," he said, and his eyes did grow red and wet.

He stuttered through several unfinishable phrases about his lack of surprise and his sadness about losing me. He told me, again, that I was his Special Lady. He repeated over and over that we would still be friends.

I didn't respond, but I never did respond. He must have decided, as always, that no response was a form of permission.

Eventually he stood up and we hugged in the kitchen. He squeezed me extra hard, held me out at arms length and kissed my forehead before hugging me again. In the foyer he kissed my head again before awkwardly scrambling to put on his coat, locate his hat and scarf.

"I'll talk to you soon," he said as he opened the door. "I'll text you."

God, I need to learn how to say no again.

And I need to wash this silt out of my brain.

When in doubt, list.

This March has been such a blazingly shitastic

No, no, that's not the way to start a post.

I want to kill everything, and I'm pretty sure, at this point, I could do it with my raging feral hatred and a piece of silly putty

Hmm. Nope. Take a deep breath, Jo.

Some general advice to self-critical bloggers and diarists: Don't write things.

Kee-riste. Okay, forget it. There's got to be a way to quickly update my meager readership without setting off a three-day emotional breakdown.

Oh yeah, a list! No expansions or deep explanations necessary, just a presentation of facts and events. Those who know me will know that each item has caused my self-hatred and anxiety and isolation to completely take over, and I may be able to avoid my customary proclivity toward dwelling on awfulness. Sure, that's it. (I'll try to limit myself to 12 items.)

March:

1. My Aunt Diane died after a ten-year battle with ovarian cancer. I couldn't attend the funeral.
2. My mom is convinced that I am the only confidant she has left on this planet.
3. Dad is acting strange - sold his car, doesn't seem to be working, calls drunk.
4. I broke up with the Manboy.
5. I am working on all the manipulative undercutting and controlling bullshit I allowed during my relationship with said Manboy.
6. Passing out, or nearly passing out, first thing in the morning has become a regular occurrence.
7. It took me two weeks to complete a phone call to my doctor's office. Appointment scheduled for mid-May.
8. I have no work.
9. I was turned down for a $10/hr job at a childcare drop-off center in a gym. Because, master's degree.
10. My usual references are dead, overseas, or otherwise non-responsive.
11. I've been living with a narcissistic,gun-lovin', fundamentalist Christian bulimic who chews with her mouth open for nine horrific months.
12. Despite efforts to invest in my friendships, I'm alone. All the time. The fact is, I don't rate.

Okay, I can't help it...

13. Shane's deathiversary.

Now just imagine the full-blown pity party. I was thinking I could market Pity Party Packages, complete with sad-face balloons, Elliot Smith albums, half-eaten Chinese take-out from that place that's not as good as that other place, and a massive chocolate cake. (It is a party after all.)

On the bright side, I posted in March.

Snow, Snot and Super Bowls

Is that a great title or WHAT? I mean, really... I almost wanted to change it to Snooper Bowls just for the sake of poetic silliness. But I didn't. Such restraint!


Oh, Boston. Why do you entertain me so?

The hiatus between snow storms will end tomorrow morning, according to the many over-excited meteorologists. The lines at the grocery stores, atrocious on any normal weekend, are amplified by the cataclysmic collision of the Patriots playing the Super Bowl and the storm panic. Shelves are empty; staff cannot keep up with restocking the various items New Englanders require in these circumstances: toilet paper, milk, eggs, avocados, beer, chocolate.

Here I sit, surrounded by piles of dirty clothes, strategizing my next attack on our building's laundry room. Will it be crazy because of the storm? There are only two washers and two dryers for a building of 15 units, about 60 people. Will it be easier once the game starts? I know it will be impossible after the snow; too many concrete stairs exposed to the weather for my limpy legs to handle.

I'm not attempting the world outside otherwise. I have a snotty, sinus-y cold. I have my medicine and plenty of tissues. The Guy Who Calls Me His Girlfriend* brought me guacamole and chips, and then ran out the door before my evil germs could invade his healthy self.

I had to cancel my one steady job, a two-year-old in Belmont (two unreliable bus rides and thus an hour and a half away) because I assumed the parents won't want a coughing, sneezing, green-snotted sitter in their home. I believe the little guy gave me this cold. He was coughing a bit last week and his nose was still crusty and red from constant wiping. I've been waking up (which means I slept at some point - that's nice to know) with my mouth open and dried out and my face just crammed with nastiness. I got up to eat something and take meds and wound up back in bed, curling up with tissues and making myself drink water now and then.

But it's so quiet.

Roommates are gone. The whole apartment is still and nearly silent. The cat sleeps on the big chair, radiator steam whistles and bangs here and there, humidifier gurgles. My fingers tap on the keyboard. I have cups of tea and oranges and guacamole. I have laundry to lug outside and down stairs and back again. I have an impending Super Bowl to watch, I guess.

I have time to think.

Please, God, don't let me think.





At least I like the snow. Without a car to dig out or a commute to worry about, snow becomes a beautiful marvel. I loved watching it fall during the last storm; first the innocent meandering flakes that seem to get distracted on their way down, catching upward gusts and collecting on sidewalks in a sheer, lacy layer. Then the slanting, heavy attack, pounding that first fragile layer and battling every available surface with seeming intentionality. The wind picking up, blowing a fierce wall of snow off of the tall drifts. It's impossible to tell how much has accumulated because it refuses to fall straight. Then the eventual calm... Every little twig holding up a slim pile. Sidewalks, stairs and streets completely buried. All the hard edges we construct, the steel and stone and gravel... all of it softened and encased and conquered by billions of intricate snowflakes.

And the quiet. Snow muffles the city. It stops the traffic and the trains, the frantic walking and shouting and coffee cup balancing, the birds, the cabs, the cash registers, the kitchens. No sirens. No planes passing overhead. The occasional plow comes through, but the snow is too deep for them to scrape against anything. They make this gentle, constant noise, a hushhhhhh.

Eventually people will venture out. Kids break out of their homes in bright snowsuits and throw themselves into the tallest drifts with squeals and giggles. College kids assemble layers of jeans and sweaters and sled down the hills on plastic trays and storage bin covers. Seasoned residents shovel at least the first layer off of their cars and stairs. Some people, like me, venture out simply to witness the transformation of the buried city. We struggle through thigh-high, sometimes waist-high snow just to experience it, just to look around and wonder at it. Everyone smiles as they pass, friendlier than usual, united by the frustration of the weather and a kind of relaxed resignation. Not much you can do in a storm like this. Just exist, witness, play, and head back inside to warm the hell up.

Then we all wait. We start to hear the scraping of plows against salted roads. Then the occasional siren. Then the slush, traffic slowly starting back up and carving into the slippery streets. People return to work, as people must. The piles become problems, shoulder high icebergs on every side of the intersections. Funny little paths appear along the areas we know are supposed to be sidewalks.

Life is almost normal out there, I'm told. When I went out yesterday, every street was cleared and most sidewalks were bared and salted. There were still massive, dirtying piles and slushy puddles making any kind of travel rather uncomfortable. Walking, driving, T-ing, bussing... the city is still putting itself back together and there is simply nowhere to PUT all of the snow. We're forced to stomp it down and press it into icy mush. I truly pity people with cars in a city where there are already too few parking spaces. And the snow isn't pretty anymore. It's dimpled and dirty, lumpy and inconvenient.

So I look forward to this next storm. I can't really say that aloud because I think I'd get punched in the face. But I like these moments of suspension from real life. Maybe I like that everyone, the entire population, is forced to join me in the pursuit of nothing. Maybe I'm jerk that way. Or just increasingly lonely and jealous of functional society, more sensitive to a feeling of exclusion.

Can I learn to enjoy the quiet?

I think it's a good sign that I'm writing a bit, but I'm always worried that I'll wind up exposing something... too fragile, I guess? Something that I can never hide completely after exposing it to the air. I have this sense that I'm looking out over my thoughts and witnessing them, fascinated as I am with the snowstorm. But if I voyage out into them I will either wind up smothered completely or sullying something that cannot ever be made pure again. And then what? Is it wise to navigate any of it while I'm completely on my own?

For now, I have cold meds and tea. I have laundry. I have the tangible, physical world to deal with. I will surely have hollering neighbors at some point tonight as the game gets underway, and I'll be grateful for my seclusion.

Right?


*Current Manboy, in constant danger of being fired. Long, intensely boring story.

Go outside!

Can't claim ribald health when I have to carry this card on me at all times.

Also, I now have a plastic port-a-cath in my chest. And a massive bruise on my boob, and two areas with super sticky bandages that are meant to keep the stitches in place. And a general, all-encompassing confusion when people say, "You look great!"

Bullshit.

And my ex (Sir Knight) decided we should get together to catch up and talk. About him. We did get together. We at least went to see Guardians of the Galaxy or whatever it's called - amusing, big-Hollywood style theater enjoyment - and that soaked up some time from my infinite, underutilized day. We talked, or rather he talked, about his upcoming schooling in Massage Therapy. I'm having difficulty comprehending... Well, he didn't like touching me, after all... I don't know. Something doesn't connect.

Not much connects at the moment. I'm just not capable of anything heroic, even in my own interest, and going outside seems heroic at this point. (Thus the reminder.)

I'm so easily hurt at the moment. I think hibernating may be wise.

Oh, manboys.

The manboy I'm trying not to love was sleeping with everyone. EVERYONE. I have been trying to salvage whatever was salvageable, discussing misunderstandings (apparently I wasn't clear about expecting him to reserve his body for me), attempting to spend time together, and it seemed to be going well. I tried to reach him yesterday, suggested hanging out, and lo, he was unavailable for hours. He tells me today, "Sorry about that. I was with someone."

"I'm thinking of giving up on you," I say.

"Honestly," he says, "I think you should. The more chances you give me, the shittier I feel about the whole thing."

The shittier HE feels. Hmm.

But, the timing... I had finally trusted him enough to talk about some Big Scary Things (psych history). I trusted him enough to talk about my family a bit (forced to, due to an impromptu trip to Rottenchester to see my brother who had drunkenly fallen into a fire pit and required surgery). I let him keep a toothbrush here. I let him keep deodorant here. I introduced him to friends and invited him to parties! Me! I did!

So, what now? Oh, right, obviously, stop talking to him forever.

But, what if the rest of your life is pukey (totally a word) and your friends are all distant and you have no steady income and your Dad is harassing you about abandoning the medical supports you have? What if you haven't left your apartment in three days and your symptoms are worsening and you're avoiding your roommates so you don't have to speak to other humans? What if you're getting a subcutaneous port surgically placed into your chest this week and already feel like you don't have much support, even a ride home from the hospital? What if you just need someone to hold, just for a minute... Just for a second...

Doesn't matter. Stop talking to him. Forever.

Or at least until he grows up. (Which could be Forever.)

Longevity and brevity

Buying a new bedspread. Why? Because the current quilt has stains of depression all over it, literal and figurative, blood and tears. How do you explain that to the next man you allow past this threshold? Ha, like you'll be around long enough. Just make a gesture to live cleanly, away from these things. But what's the point? It will come back, in a fierce wave. It always does. Don't spend too much, because you may need money if you are to continue living, possibly without much income. Might as well get a nice one, though. the softness on your skin... that will feel good. In the moment. They're always saying to be in the moment. Don't be reckless. Don't screw yourself. Take the next step, knowing there are millions more to take. That's right. Don't do anything to alarm anyone. Act as though you're planning for life, for living. Just act, in the moment.


Buy a calendar, at least a new insert for your daily planner. To pretend to be living? To plan what you have so far. January work dates. Should you really be working? Yes, I guess... it makes the moments pass. Makes days pass, little breathers from solitude. You could sustain that! Maybe you could sustain that! But maybe you can't, and a little kid would be depending on you. A family would need you. Being needed sucks. Being needed is salvation. To be saved for what? Buy the damned calendar. Live and plan and see it all visually stretching out. Birthdays in April and May and July... Of people who keep forgetting you exist. Stay forgotten. Don't let the roots grow. They want me there for birthdays and graduations and weddings. I should be there for celebrations. Artificial celebrations that are actual torture. Does any day matter more than any other? Make it matter. It's on you to make it matter, to notice the bigger patterns and consciously enter into them. It will be easier once you decide to join in. Easier for a while, but the long-term always disappoints. I always disappoint.

Make dinner, enough for leftovers. Seriously? Why? You need to eat something, even if you don't feel like it. Sure, cereal maybe. Why cook? You need meals for the week, especially if you're feeling this way. I should just use up what I have. A cup of Rice Krispies is fine. But you should eat something green, something with protein. Why? To nourish a body I don't want? To encourage this disgusting mass to keep growing? I don't think so. Your nails are splitting. Your hair is falling out. You can't keep this up. I'm not planning to "keep this up." I'm not PLANNING. You should be. Just let me get a handle on the current moment. Let me breathe a little bit and see what it's like. You let a whole year pass while you were trying to breathe. It just passed, and you're still struggling. Start with something little. Make yourself dinner. I can't. I need to breathe. You can. Make some pasta, something easy. I can't right now... just for right now, I think. It's so easy and small, considering things you've accomplished, things you WILL accomplish. Just boil water and you'll have food for the week. The whole thing strikes me as pointless. As pointless as putting one foot in front of the other.

Status variabilis

Tell me how this melody can break out of white noise. How can an entire chorus stop a busy station in its... um... tracks?

My psychiatrist bought a used copy of the Carmina Burana and knew I'd be amused that he found it far more colorful than he'd expected. He also took a Lactaid in front of me, added milk to his coffee, looked at the expiration date on the little carton and read aloud "July 3, 2013." He looked into his mug. "Well, it didn't curdle." I'm in good hands.

He told me that the "Echay Grahtoom" is his favorite track. I resisted a lecture on Germanic pronunciation of Latin texts. Not that he would have minded; the man's a nerd of the first class, but by then my brain had corrected him and moved halfway through the piece at a nice gallop. Iamiam cedant tristia! Sadness has ended! Spring has come again!

I still get excited when I see those first green shoots of crocus and tulip and daffodil. I still feel my heart thudding in my chest when I hear a beautiful melody spun out of thin air. I have to believe in change, at least in a cycle, that sometimes plunges me under but will eventually raise me up again. Maybe my "up" is still below the surface, I don't know. I have to hope I'll be able to poke a finger through to the sunlight, that that will be enough.

Too soon?

Things that maybe one should never joke about:

1. Suicidal ideation
2. ECT treatment
3. Psychiatric inpatient stays

Well fuzz that shiz, I'm crossin' the line, people!

(If you haven't seen Mary and Max, perhaps you should. It has chocolate and insanity and poo-colored birth marks. Need I say more?)

I have been assured by many, nearly all, that Electroconvulsive Therapy has come a long way since, say, The Bell Jar (although it isn't portrayed terribly negatively in that novel). I will not be lobotomized, will not have my memory wiped, will not be communicating with aliens, etc. I have better chances of having SOME benefit, whether it's infinitesimal or not, than having any kind of bad reaction.

The doc asked me lots of nosy questions, most of which I couldn't quite pinpoint for him. Dates, admissions, prescriptions, attempts... I spend so much time batting all of those things away. They exist together in a kind of gnatty buzzing cloud that follows me around, the kind that makes me constantly fearful that I'll swallow a piece of it or breathe it in or have something get stuck under my eyelid. Gross. Bat, bat, batting away.

My patient psychiatrist is taking my latest dip a tad personally. "What's the point of me if I don't make you feel better?" he asked. I shrugged. He told me I usually laugh at his bad jokes. I told him I laugh at the good ones and he didn't have any this time. He took this as evidence that my sense of humor is still intact.

But there's another reason to live: so my psychiatrist will not see himself as a failure. I like the dude. How was he to know not to take me on? That I'm impervious to treatment, apparently? How could I make him believe that, but then how would that belief alter his sense of adequacy and effectiveness? How do I, Hippocratically, do no harm (and why do I adopt this as an oath)?

All of this aside, and sensing that this cloud is ever descending, I will try to be cognizant of others while I'm slipping away from myself. I will, perhaps, send postcards from the hospital. "Shocked to hear from me?" Or how about, "Thinking of you... and guess what Freud thinks about THAT." Or, perhaps the meanest of all, "Wish you were here!"

Adventures in Humiliation

Turns out I didn't have to worry or prepare for work nearly as much as I did. I suppose that should be a lesson to me. It would be if I hadn't been blindsided by an unforeseen (redundant, I know, but I'm shocked) demotion.

That's right. After four years of reinventing a system that was inherently broken, the very few but loud voices of the insecure win out over the many who offer logic and praise. 

It's the kind of thing that could send a girl to a mental hospital.

So here's the damage control mantra of the moment: They're paying me the same hourly wage. They're paying me peanuts, but still, I'm getting the same money for less demanding (I hope) work. I'm basically working the front desk, which seems eerily similar to working for the Bux. You can imagine, my master's degree keeps me up at night with its baleful sighs.

Or was that me keeping myself up with self-indulgent pity parties? Enh, six o' one, half dozen of the other...

Reechersall, In which our heroine tries on excuses to use at work whence she returns thither

I imagine it will go something like this:

Typical Colleague (to be referred to as TC from here on out.): Hey Jo, it's been forever! How have you been?
JoBiv: Oh, hi Typical Colleague, how are you?
TC: Good, but how are you?
JoBiv: Oh, you know.
TC: No, I've been worried about you. Where were you? You were gone for three months.
JoBiv: Ummm...

And this is where I should say something, don't you agree?

Here are some contenders, with some possible mind-read follow ups.

JoBiv: I had a sex change and I didn't like it, so I had it reversed. Kinda messy.
TC: No ya didn't.

JoBiv: I had not cancer.
TC: That's not funny.

JoBiv: I won the lottery and I took a trip around the world, and then a pageboy in Turkmenistan stole the rest of the money, so no, you can't have any.
TC: Bullshit.

JoBiv: If I tell you, I'll have to kill you.
TC: Do you own a gun?
JoBiv: I'll kill you with my mind.
TC: Doubt it.

JoBiv: I went crazy and wanted to kill myself and wound up at McLean.
TC: Tee emm aye.
JoBiv: You asked.

JoBiv: I've been ill but I'm getting good care now.
TC: Sooo you went crazy and wound up at McLean?
JoBiv: AGHH!!
TC: You know that's selfish and we were screwed and everyone hates you now.
JoBiv: Sigh. I know.
TC: Whelp, I have to get back to hating you with every fiber of my being! So long!

 Possibly that last one will go better than I've imagined, but it's nice to have a few backups. Suggestions welcome, of course...

The crux

My grandmother passed away, finally*, at age 94 back in October. She died in her sleep. More importantly, she died dreaming of my grandfather (or rather in a haze of dementia) and repeatedly mentioned that he had asked her to marry him.

"What should I say?" she asked my father.

"For godssake, say yes, otherwise I won't exist," said my father. She laughed as though she got the joke, and she may have, because she was a sharp lady.

I love to think of her suspended in that giddy moment of young love, the moment just before her life settled into its track and took off barreling toward pregnancies and houses and addictions and celebrations. I see it as a conductor raising her arm for the downbeat, the gesture before the music, the instruction to draw bows and breath.

Yet, when my grandmother died, I had a sudden and explosive thought; I had been waiting for her to die before allowing myself to consider suicide. It was a simple rule, and it worked for years. While she was alive I could spare her needless pain and confusion. How would this woman, who only knew the kindest, most patient side of me, ever reconcile that image with the desperation of my truer self? Why force sobs from her? I assumed, too, that my father would very likely lie to her, and how could I make him do that. How cruel would I have to be to force him to make that decision?

And so she fell asleep, and so she never woke, and when that word popped into my head I had nothing handy to bat it away.

Suicide.

At first, the thought itself was so upsetting that the anxiety swept me into fits. Every moment of solitude or quiet brought on hyperventilation and tears.

Then I started really thinking about it; how I had drawn away from friends and I could recede even more, how I could sell my things, throw away papers. We already had a temp at work, which just proved (in my mind) that everyone is replaceable. I had already stopped enjoying the usual pastimes; reading, writing, singing, hanging out with friends, even eating. The world had become two dimensional, blank cardboard cut-outs of the actions of living. And so it was time.

Of course, I'm an asshole, and this is why.

My father hinted to it on the phone but I didn't believe him at the time. He was drunk. But then again, he had just lost his mother. I cut him a little slack, at least. He mumbled something about Grandma's will, and I decided to dismiss it. Then my mother mentioned something and credibility came into the picture. And then I went home to see my aching family and touch them to make sure they were solid and okay.

Mom and Dad were puttering downstairs, clearly waiting for me to get ready. I came downstairs to the two of them on either side of the kitchen counter, suddenly hushing themselves. My father had something in his hand, barely hidden.

"Johanna Mary... your grandmother loved you very much." He then went on to describe the many ways I was good to her; sending cards and letters, insisting on seeing her on my trips home, making sure my brothers remembered her at Christmas time and her birthday. And then he talked about his mother meeting his father, how dear they were to each other.

And then he showed me the ring, and told me Grandma wanted me to have it. She only mentioned four people in her will, and I was the only grandchild. She left her wedding band to Aunt Depresso, her pearls to Aunt Klondike (I think), and her engagement ring, a cushion-cut diamond flanked by the tiniest chips of diamond in an art deco setting, to me.

I cried. A lot. My parents hugged me. They couldn't know that every part of me wanted to reject the gift. If I had really been a good granddaughter, I felt, I would have called. I would have sent the card I bought for her last week and she would have loved it. I would have gotten my license and seen her on my own, and often. But then again, here was proof that she knew I loved her.

Four months later, my brother said the thing I needed to hear, and maybe couldn't absorb until this moment.

"Grandma didn't want you to be buried with that ring."

He also soliloquized about how special I am and how important I am and blah blah blah - nothing I could believe besides that one thing. I was given a ring in hope that I would have a piece of her, know she loved me, maybe someday find my own love. She could never have thought that I would kill myself mere months afterward and scramble to think of someone more worthy of the ring. She was clear in her gesture: I am worthy. Whether or not I believe it, I am worthy of her love and love from any direction.

I still don't believe it, but I do accept that she believed it. In her honor, I live.

*"Finally" sounds harsh, however, Grandma was fed up with birthdays and suffering daily shame from merely existing in a facility where she did not leave her room or cultivate friendships. Some of that is her own fault. I also find myself saying "finally" to continue convincing myself that death is quite final. It's a one-way street. Unless you're Wesley from The Princess Bride and you wind up "mostly dead," but I digress.

What do you do with a broken JoBiv, what do you do with a broken JoBiv

What do you do with a broken JoBiv ear-lye in the mornin'...

To be honest, I don't care to hear your answers. I don't want to think or grow or challenge anything at the moment. I want to shrivel up and blow away. Alas, that only happens in Indiana Jones movies.

Let's talk about ol' Indy, then. Here I am at a facility where the VCR still works and there are such choices as Karate Kid I and II alongside White Chicks and Somersby. We chose Indiana Jones, which brought up the line (internally) from The Last Crusade, "You have chosen... wisely."

Of course I forget how unspecial the effects can be, how over-orchestrated the score can be, how completely bizarre the plot can be. For whatever reason, the lead actress wound up dressed in long silky white gowns - the better to be torn and frayed and reveal more skin? Clearly the production team looked at the story boards, loved the look of the shroud on the woman's body, and thought, "Hmm... but how can we get her in a gown? Officer's ball in Cairo? ... That's ridiculous. She's a... seamstress! And carries samples with her everywhere! ... No... How about we get a pervy Frenchman to dress her up like a doll in a random drinking scene! Yeah, that's the ticket!"

And then how much more ridiculous is it that I wound up incorporating this idea in my unavoidable nightmares? I have sets of them, to make it easier on myself. There are Exposure nightmares, Responsibility nightmares, Victim nightmares and Oh My God I Have the Sickest Mind nightmares. And then there are night terrors, but I digress.

So the Exposure nightmare goes like this: They (y'know, Them) ask me to put on the same dress this woman wears in the film. Of course it's a size 4 and I'm a size 40 and there's no spandex (was there spandex in 1981? I'll have to research. Or perhaps they were going for historical accuracy.) At any rate, the dress doesn't go on over my head or up my legs. I can't get in it sideways or backwards or upside down. But they're knocking on my door and asking to come in to complete the "fitting." I also have a large wound on my back that's bleeding and it's staining the dress and I know I will be in trouble on top of being too fat to fit in the dress. And then it rips. Ffrrrreep. Fuck.

Now the costume crew come in and they yell at me, and then I'm sort of stuck in this dress but I have to pee, and no one will let me leave the room, and I start crying and they yell at me some more, and there's no more material to make a new dress and it was spun from Chinese silk from the ancient Wang Chun dynasty or some shit...

In case you were idly wondering whether or not I'm able to see the humor in these dreams, the answer is... not while I'm dreaming them. I feel the red hot shame and misery and fear, and any comic elements elude me until at least the next day, sometimes two days later.

Did you know there's a med for nightmares? Or I should say there's a med for high blood pressure that has an off-label use as a nightmare cure. I'm on it now and it mostly works - that is, I've had fewer flashbacks and night terrors. But I still have these Exposure dreams and Responsibility dreams (where I'm juggling nine babies with brittle bone syndrome and the oven is on but empty and my grandmother is slowly but steadily rolling away in her wheelchair toward a massive cliff). Of course, this miracle drug makes me dizzy and - go fig - messes with my blood pressure, but I like to think these are just the adorable quirks of a new friend I'm gettin' to know. As long as it doesn't chew with its mouth open, I think I can take the quirks.

I suppose, then, we have our answer: What do we do with a broken JoBiv?

Fill her up with drugs that make her dizzy! Fill her up with drugs that make her dizzy... etc.  Or perhaps,

Send her to McLean and watch her closely?

Oh, gosh, these are fun... Verse three: Throw out all her shit and plan her funeral!

All right, that's not funny. Outside of McLean, anyway.

Send her off to sleep and never wake her
Make her eat her food and take her showers
Call her on the phone and make her blubber...

Tell her to go back to work already...

Honestly, I could go on. Laugh at all her jokes as if they're funny!

Groundhog Day - do not repeat

5:38 am: Nightmare about my parents’ toilet being set across from the front door of the house without walls or doors. I’m stuck there in the middle of being very sick and the doorbell is ringing. Alarm wakes me and I run to the bathroom.

6:20 am: Showered, teeth brushed, puffy eye noted, hot compress deliberated. I decide I don’t have time. We just got a buttload of snow and I already know my commute will be slow. Throw on undies, bra, dress, take ibuprofen, sit on my bed to put on tights. Everything hurts. I get the bad foot in one leg of the tights and the pain is exhausting. I lay back in my bed and set the alarm for eight minutes, thinking maybe the drugs will have started working. Note that my stomach is iffy and blame it on the meds. Ignore everything, close my eyes…

6:30 am: C’mon, Jo, keep moving keep moving keep moving… Mrs. Not My Boss has been watching every little move, every minute I’m late, every put-off phone call. Get up and go, dammit. Tights are on… knee-high socks over them. Holy hell the pain… Eight more minutes.

10:20 am: Panic.

10:30 am: No longer snowing, not really raining… My coat isn’t quite waterproof and through the foot and a half of snow there are about two inches of slush against the sidewalk. I didn’t bring a purse, knowing it would throw my balance off. I can’t go down St. Paul Street because I know I’ll slip down the hill. Catching myself from slipping every three feet. My back hates me.

10:40 am: Call my manager from the T stop, tell her voicemail I’m on my way. Don’t have any story to tell, other than my body continually telling me I shouldn’t be awake today, which doesn’t seem valid.

11:10 am: Train finally arrives. My phone has been in my pocket but it’s wet when I take it out to tap my T pass. Ugh.

The train is blissfully empty. I sit across from a dad in a kind of Indiana Jones-esque hat and a curly-haired blond kid, about seven, in full snow gear. The father has just said, “record store.”

Kid: What’s that?

Dad: What’s what?

Kid: A record store?

Dad: It’s a place to buy records.

Kid: Yeah, but what’s a record?

Dad: It’s like CD’s, but before CD’s. For decades it was records.

Kid: Are there CD stores?

Dad: Umm.. I guess not really. I mean, a few.

Kid: Why are there CD stores?

Dad: For people who still have stereos, I guess.

Kid: Oh.

Dad: I’ll show you a music store, okay? There’s one in Cambridge.

Kid: Okay.

11:20 am: Arrive at Park Street station. The acrid scent of oily smoke rises from the Red Line stairways. Several stairways are blocked off by big yellow expandable gates. I head down the stairs to yet more smoke, crowds of bewildered passengers, and an Ashmont train that’s been stopped several yards back from its usual position. In front of it, a blazing light and the source of the smoke: the third rail is somehow exposed in three blindingly bright places, flickering and sparking against the water continually dripping from the masses of snow above.

Three men in T uniform stand with hands on their hips and clearly have no idea how to handle the situation. One man, the brightest, I believe, turns around to tell passengers that this train won’t open its doors here, and he doubts they’ll let the Alewife train stop either. Find alternative routes.

I head up the stairs and call my co-worker, tell her the train is en fuego and I’ll slide down the hill from Government Center, knowing… God, knowing how much that’ll hurt and how likely I am to fall and kill myself.

11:44 am: I arrive at work, near tears, stomach wobbling, sharp pains shooting through my back and leg. My feet are soaked as the waterproof function of my boots has apparently given up. My co-worker is on the phone but gives me a thumbs-up to acknowledge my arrival. I sit and contemplate coffee. Stomach won’t allow it. Headache seems to be begging for it. Should eat something… get up to grab saltines and ginger ale from the stash we keep for chemo patients. I’m likely going to hell.

12:00 pm: Answer several emails, get responses letting me know that all has been sorted before I got to work today. I’m on the edge of tears and put on the internet radio just in time to cover a slight sob.

12:04 pm: Mrs. Not My Boss takes a look in our cubicle and says, “Anyone in here in the mood for Viva Burrito? They’re delivering…” She takes one look at my face and has her answer, strides down the corridor to more likely punters.

12:30 pm: Still haven’t spotted my boss to tell her I’m at work. Trying to get my brain to function against rising nausea. Co-worker also not healthy, and she hasn’t been for at least a week. I fear I’ll have to withstand nausea as long as she has and wonder at her fortitude. In the meantime I open up my timesheet to make sure I record that I got here at 11 effing forty. Don’t allow myself to check my paycheck to see how much Earned Time I have because I know it’s depressing.

At some point I get up from my chair and return to notice that the edge of the seat is soaked. Looking at my dress there is an equator of soaking material, about a foot and a half of skirt that ought to be wrung out. Yet another opinionated co-worker says I should find an air dryer. We don’t have them on our floor and we all contemplate that absurdity.

1:13 pm: Mexican food arrives. I take two tums, one green and one pink, hoping it will settle my stomach but truly doubting it. Answer some phone calls and make a few more, covering my nose to keep the scent of seasoned beef at bay.

1:15 pm: Run out of the clinic past desks with open dishes on them on all sides, hand over my mouth and nose. I use the outside bathroom, hoping for something vile to come out of me the usual way and praying not to puke. Spend an extra minute washing at the sink, letting the scent of the soap fill my nostrils. I come out and sit in the hallway, looking out the glass wall at Beacon Hill and the continual snow and sleet. I breathe deeply. A man with a hospital pass sits next to me. Really, dude? This hallway is empty and you sit here? Well, at least he doesn’t smell like refried beans.

I think I’ve gotten control over my stomach. I head back in. Head to my desk. Co-worker is trudging along with OR calls and doctors invading our space. I mention something about Mexican food sucking ass when you’re nauseous, and then suddenly I’m running for the bathroom.

Pink and green spots. The ginger ale isn’t as vile coming up as I thought it might be. Maybe it’s the Tums. I’m crying and puking, yet detached somewhere, thinking these things.

1:26 pm: Shaking and crying and trying to get a grip, chills rolling through my body… Co-worker has quietly ordered me to go home, bless her. I write an email.

To: Manager

From: Jo

Subject: Puked. Going home

1:28 pm: Mrs. Not My Boss strolls by.

Mrs. NMB: Oh no, Jo, are you not feeling well?

Jo: (still can’t stop crying) I’m sick.

Mrs. NMB: You should go home.

Jo: I’m trying.

Mrs. NMB: You really shouldn’t be here if you’re sick.

Jo: (closing computer programs and putting away patient files) I don’t know how I’m getting home… (thinking of hellish train ride, envisioning puking on the exposed third rail. Then envisioning cabbie on the horrendous roads, sliding into a triple-car pile up.

Mrs. NMB: Just take a cab, why don’t you?

Jo: (bites tongue, wanting to say, “I’d love to, but since I won’t get paid for today I have to watch my wallet a bit, don’t I?” Still gulping back tears, because puking makes me think of my grandmother who died after I watched her puke for eight hours straight.)

I’m so embarrassed… I don’t want to be crying.

Mrs. NMB: Just go. Take a cab. Go down to the cab stand.

She wanders away. I zip up and head out.

Co-worker: (sees me through the glass and looks alarmed) Your purse??

Jo: (shaking head.)

Co-worker: Oh yeah, you fall over.

Jo: (Nodding head.)

Co-worker: Go!

1:35 pm: The cabs are hidden behind an eight-foot mound of plowed snow. There’s no access except to walk into the middle of the busiest intersection of the hospital straight at traffic. I slip. I catch myself. A little self-pitying sob escapes me as a lance of pain shoots through my back. The cab at the front of the queue is a small SUV type with snow tires, at least. Clean, no smoky smells. Bless this cab. After what feels like hours he drops me across from my apartment at a driveway that’s been cleared so I don’t have to step through five feet of snow. The meter reads $12 something. I give him a twenty and thank him for driving on the shittiest day Boston ever made.

1:58 pm: Changed into pj’s, tell roommate I’m sick and quarantining myself, gingerly put myself to bed. I want my mommy and Pirates of Penzance. She always made us watch it when we were sick in case we were faking. She thought it was punishment but we all secretly loved it. I’m falling asleep while trying to remember things you’re supposed to do when you’re sick. Jell-o? Fluids? Should I check for fever? Pull the trash can closer to the bedside and pray I don’t need it…

10:40 pm: Awoken by roommate making toast. Analyze stomach ickiness to be low, but definitely not hungry. Get up, pee, take pain pills for back, face down on the pillow and I’m out.

Seventh grade. I carried six notebooks most days for each subject, six binders, the occasional steno pad and calculator, all in a tired backpack populated by whole villages of broken pock-marked pencils and non-functional pens. The school year waxed and waned and my notebooks became predictably tattooed with notes, doodles, stains and other batterings.

I carried one folder. Inside this folder I kept the loose leaf collection of the awkward stories I wrote and let no one see. They were halting, haunting and very likely unfleshed. At the time I thought writing could only be an organic process – an unplanned and unsupervised ride powered by some punch-drunk muse.

The stories were universally dark… about suicide pacts, deadly car accidents, people wasting away with horrible diseases. If I had known what Goth or Emo meant, I might have found a niche. Perhaps not… I was horrified by the nightmare highway my muse continually chose. I was afraid and fascinated by my own propensity for darkness. It was manageable, however, because no one else knew.

It was eighth grade. That was the year terrible things began to happen. A classmate, already socially shunned and ridiculed, found out that his mother died during the school day. He disintegrated before our eyes into a mass of howls. That same year another classmate’s obese sister was found dead. There were rumors; she’d overdosed on diet pills, she’d had a heart attack, she’d choked on a sandwich, her brother killed her with emotional abuse. I felt I knew the truth then. These horrible things happened because I wrote them.

I remember so well the feeling that the events around me were like a camera’s iris, closing into tighter focus. I was choking inside that aperture like it was a 360 degree guillotine. Now I see that my brain was ready for all of it. I was an open soul, begging to be trod on and tried. I didn’t create the events; they blazed inward, highlighting pre-existing sensitivities. It was as though I had an acute sunburn in the winter time and was utterly surprised when dishwater scalded me.

I think of this today because my vocabulary of this life has expanded once more and opened me to new sensitivities. Where before I thought of cancer as a general, unfathomable disease, I can now hear the word cancer across a crowded subway train and it sets my brain reeling. I think of the women who call me at work begging for an earlier surgery. I think of the wheelchair-bound patients in the elevator with their wigs askew and their fragile, bare ankles. I think of how a nurse talked of one of her patients, how he already smelled like death.

So at my brother’s wedding my ears twitched open to the family friend, the woman we call “Aunt” and whose husband we call “Uncle.” Her cancer, I hadn’t known, was one I deal with daily. She asked me if I could pull strings to have her seen at Mass General. I told her, honestly, that I’m new there, and I have no idea. I didn’t want to discuss it further. I hated the immediacy of knowing the possibilities.

And now, a month later, another family friend was claimed by cancer. I saw the New York area code on my work phone but it didn’t click until halfway through my, “This is Jo, how can I help you.” My dad told me to call my mother tonight. Our old neighbor died after a long and strenuous fight. I asked about the kind of cancer, how long it’s been going on (and no one told me). She had a gynecologic cancer, the kind I deal with. She had metastases in her lungs.

Is it possible I was so self-involved before that I never noticed that the women I love on this earth are dying? Is there some energy in the world that draws these coincidences together? I want to believe that it has to do with this sensitivity, like the honing of a musical skill. I can hear the pitch and color of the word cancer in its full spectrum now. It existed before I could hear it and won’t stop its cacophonous echo now that I can.

the incredible shrinking jobiv

I truly am disappearing. There's a positive aspect, at last: I'm losing weight.

I can't figure out how I'm doing it, either. At first it was pure poverty, and maybe the stress of running between four different jobs, never quite remembering my stomach needed feeding. There were several nights when I'd get home at 10 and realize that it was far too late for dinner.

And now, I think, it has something to do with financial security. I can't completely connect the dots, but perhaps it's that I grab and gulp less. I used to devour food whenever I could get my hands on it because it seemed like a precious commodity - one I couldn't afford most days. Now I'm at leisure to choose what I consume. Very new.

On the dark side of all this is my increasing need to become invisible. I am full to bursting with a distressing dichotomy: I'm ever so happy in my work life and find the rest of the world outside of it deeply embarrassing and troubling. More and more I find myself sending brainwave imperatives to those around me: "Don't look at me. Don't look too closely. I'm not here. Don't notice me."

This is apropos of the need for new clothes, by the way... I've been shopping because my clothes look funny on me - too big - but find myself shying away from colors I used to love. My wardrobe is a limited and muted spectrum of gray, beige, black and brown.

I am a cloud passing through. Don't notice me. I am a mud puddle. Avoid me. I am blending with the pavement, shiftitng my chameleonic skin to the steel of subway stations. I'm invisible.

Why, though... I push my thoughts out to grab at answers and they come back empty handed.

Once again, that deep ache has solidified my ribcage. It's the ache of impossibility, I think. By that I mean I keep wanting the course of my life to shift to something it can't be. I want it to shift to loving families and exciting work and a healthy body. How is it that I can't get there? It's this Alice-y feeling of frustration - just barely catching a glimpse of the right path and not getting my feet on it in time.

To clarify; the ache isn't merely that I don't have satisfying work, it's that I don't have the courage to find it. It's not that my body isn't functional, it's that I have one more layer added to the nonfunctionality of my already messy body. It's not that it's my brother's 30th birthday tomorrow and I can't be there, it's that he doesn't want me there.

I feel my ribs hardening and cracking and resisting the expansion of my lungs. I can't make any of it right. I can't write a script for my life that anyone else will read out with me. "Just do this, stand here, and say the following," I want to say. It never, ever works that way.

Labors of love

I've been working on projects for the little people in my life, because it's all I can do, financially. I can't even afford birthday cards, but I can sew a little, so I'm trying out my Project Runway skills.

Here's an apron I made for the little one I babysat:

She's officially THE Starbucks baby, so it seemed appropriate. I'd show you a pic of her wearing it but I don't think her parents would appreciate it.

I made this as a going-away present. The mean terrible parents moved to Seattle without asking me. How selfish!





And then Baby Girl turned the big FIVE this week. I called her up on her birthday and she answered saying, "I'm five years old and it's my birthday all day!" She'd had a bit of sugar at that point.

I went home this weekend and it wasn't terrible, considering my brothers are still douche booketts and my mother is chronically coughing and my dad is a bag of awful. It was all worth it to see Baby Girl in my latest creation. I give you... the princess cape!


I know you can't tell that it's purple brocade with a satin lining (which, together, cost me less than $10) but it IS and it's beautiful and she seems to like it!

Score one for Aunt Jo!

I'm back early from my trip home, by the way, because I have lovely white dots on my tonsils. Strep, I believe, to be confirmed after a 3:30 doctor's appointment that I cannot afford to go to. Sigh.

Just so ya know...

The following things, since I know you've been wondering, have crawled up my ass of late:

1. Lost my T pass. The monthly one. The $60 one. I'm simultaneously stranded and strapped for cash.

2. Just paid my September rent yesterday. Can't imagine getting the funds together to pay October, especially since rent goes up Oct. 1.

3. My roommate ignores me or returns all queries with growls and grunts. Won't explain why, but I imagine it has to do with her passive aggressive attempts to get ME to call our landlord about HER mouse problem. I did call, and got yelled at by the surly receptionist because someone else has been calling her nonstop.

4. Three panic attacks at work in five days. Bad ones. Crying, gulping, gagging bad. So fucking embarrassing. Usually follow my trip home to Brookline with a straight-to-bedroom-shut-door cryfest. Could contribute to roommate's testiness.

5. Local babysitting job drying up abruptly, as the family shall abscond to Seattle tomorrow. Dealing with my mini-bereavement because, as usual, I have fallen utterly in love with the little one.

6. Did I mention the money problem? Have no insurance, stopped going to physical therapy (or any other therapy for that matter), thus in pain. Keep selling my stuff hoping to boost my finances - s'long file cabinet, stereo, maybe guitar next. Returned PAYLESS shoes I bought for interviews because a) I can't afford $12 shoes right now and b) I'm too gutless for interviews. What was I thinking? Also can't leave the house because (refer to item 1) I can't afford to go anywhere, see friends, eat food...

7. The Baby Girl's birthday is October 9th. Raise your hand if you can afford (mentally, physically, financially, emotionally) a trip home to Le Victoire - NOT SO FAST JoBiv!

8. Losing weight. Not on purpose, but none of my clothes fit correctly. Paradoxically always feel dumpy and gross and fat in my clothes.

9. Election season. My wee brain and shrinking faith can't take another bad one.

10. Because there might as well be 10... JoCD is back in full force. Lists, scratches, bald spots, blatherings...

But what is she DOING?

Because people seem to be wondering, I shall provide you with the following mundane list of the crap that fills my days.

1. Avoiding phone calls.
2. Making unavoidable phone calls.
3. Carefully timing all checks sent to landlord and utilities.
4. Putting various band-aids on various lacerations/blisters/vulnerabilities on my still-mostly-dead foot.
5. Making corporate coffee. Avec smile. (Sometimes genuine.)
6. Buying more band-aids whilst postponing rent checks.
7. Babysitting a ten-month-old baby girl who screams at the top of her lungs for the first fifteen minutes. EVERY TIME I WATCH HER.
8. Lying awake.
9. Avoiding you. Yes, even you, although I love you and want to have something wonderful to say to you about my life. I don't, and so I am quiet.