“If I don’t come out of this better, the plane should have crashed.”
I went a long, long time in my life feeling like such nothing that I didn’t realize I had an effect on people at all, like not one bit. Like I could disappear, and no one would really notice.
I remember when that changed too. 6 years ago, a phone conversation with a girl I have known since I was 7 years old. She said her mother always asked about me and worried about me. I figured Mama Plowright had heard tales of my self-destruction through the rumor mill that is the main industry in all small towns and was just being kind. She is a kind woman. But it wasn’t pity, it was because she actively cares about me, even now almost 40 years later.
Another high school friend’s parents saw me at a concert later that year, and I dreaded seeing them. My best friend from back in the day had wreaked havoc on their family and I could only assume they found me guilty by association. But they didn’t. They showered me with the same love they had given me pre havoc and before I divorced the shitty friend and ran away from that town and didn’t go back for 20 years. They hugged me while I cried tears of relief and consoled me in thick Scottish accents. Told me they always knew it wasn’t my fault, that they always thought I was a good girl. I was happy to be thought of at all.
Then Good Karen came along and told me she found me a few hours after she came out of a coma and this blog helped her recover. My Colorado Viking Witch said the same, not including the coma.
I suppose I never really made the extrapolation that I affect people who I have never met or spent limited time with. The concept is foreign to me.
I am still trying to figure out why I have to fill buckets with love and favors before I can ask for an eyedropper in return. I have a therapy session this week. I suppose we will find out then. I asked her and then stopped thinking about it.
But that is really neither here nor there.
I touched on feeling helpless to stop anything that is happening in the world right now, mine or otherwise. And then I stumbled on a Mother Teresa quote about saving people close to me.
But they are pretty okay, all things considered.
So I decided something.
I am 46 years old and I am going back to school. Seems ridiculous I know. But if I don’t do it now, I’ll be 50 and borrowing money off my kid to get by because some bar just cut my waitressing shifts.
I’d rather be 50 with a degree.
I had a few things in mind. I do love writing but if the last few months have taught me anything its that my muse wanders off often and I have a hard time managing too much free time. I want a job. I like the structure and discipline of having a schedule.
So I rewind in my head. When was I happy and productive?
Milton, after the ex moved out. I worked Monday to Friday. Got up early every morning to write. Up at 6 like a rocket, dogs out, coffee on, scribble scribble scribble, shower and off to work. A thousand words a day. Probably a thousand dollars a week too, maybe more. Saturday was housework and visitors and Sunday was city visits. I remember amusing myself weekly by forgetting that I had made my bed with clean sheets Sunday morning and I was always so pleased climbing into bed Sunday night. I liked my little life.
The bar I worked at then is closed now, before the plague sadly. I miss it. Those were the good old days and I didn’t know it at the time. And now earth is closed.
But I kept that routine into the next house, and the one after. When I worked at the brewery and the stadium. It was a good life.
Then I turned into a very drunk Bill Murray circa Groundhog Day on the island of fuckboys and never got my shit together. I stopped writing, I had no time, no clarity and nothing good to say.
Then this last phase of prolific word smithery on the island and off which I am currently hiding away and a book that I can’t write the next chapter to. And honestly? Even if the stadium was open, or the brewery hiring, or the bar open. It’s not enough. They were disposable jobs and I am tired of temporary.
So what do I want to do…
Honestly? I would like to be a staff writer for a tv show. But I have no idea how to break into that business. Set decorator for movies would be fun too, but I would want everything to be pretty and perfect and they would inevitably be torn down and I would be sad. See above where I am trying to shed temporary.
I could decorate houses for rich bitches with too much money and no soul, but…see the problem there? I wouldn’t like my clientele and my face is incapable of lying, they’d know. Plus I suck at selling myself. Apparently, every space I make is Pinterest worthy, but I wouldn’t know. I use it for quotes, if ever.
Those are practical/non practical things. The general consensus amongst my tribe is I would have made an amazing lawyer, but…that is a lot of school, like a lot. I helped a buddy study for the bar in my 20’s. So that ship has sailed.
Hmmmm
Ships, sailing, harbors, lighthouses…
No, I don’t want to build boats or work on the docks.
Newfoundland.
When was I my happy, powerful self there?
Rarely really.
But
The only thing I miss about Newfoundland is stepping in between big mad drunk dudes bent on destruction and having them stop because I said so.
I was never afraid, not even the first time.
Because ever other time they were a mess it was my belly the cried into while I held them and coo’ed and they trusted me and respected me.
And I trusted them and respected them.
Drug dealers and delinquents sure, but I treated them like friends because they were.
There is something about me that inspires honesty from the dishonest, growth from the stagnant. I have long been a rehabilitation center for lost boys. I am a walking safe place. I was a really good lighthouse in a really bad harbor.
I remember feeling satisfied, loved even.
The only fights I failed to stop were always when I was on stage. Couldn’t help them and I felt bad. Yelling accomplishes nothing, dulcet tones and a well placed hand soothes beasts.
And once I was outside smoking during a fight, and I felt bad that I chose to walk away even though I saw the signs and knew it was coming. The shitty baby bouncer we had wasn’t listening and I secretly hoped he’d get popped in the mouth for mouthing off to me.
I asked the guy who started that fight “would you have stopped if I asked you to?”
He screwed his face up funny as he gave it some thought. “For you? If you asked me in the same voice you just used asking me now? Ya, I would have.”
We weren’t even super close; he knew me more by proxy than anything. But that made me feel good.
I miss feeling that satisfaction of being the virgin sacrificed to stop the volcano from erupting; and emerging unscathed to stop more volcanoes and other natural disasters another day.
Since I am too small to be a bouncer and there is no actual job for professional soother of angry men, she who gets lions to calm the fuck down or she who magically stops bar fights before they happen with one hand and a word. Why not criminals? I already know how to handle them outside in an uncontrolled environment, in stilettos no less…
I have been preaching till I lost my voice about how the system is fucking broken.
And I don’t think I can fix the whole thing, but what about one small corner.
Today I try to figure out how to get Alice back from Newfoundland, file for travel exemption so I can go get her, reclaim my car and whatever other juju and tings I left there. And apply for a grant to go back to school for social work with a focus on prisons.
I think it would be very satisfying to make someone’s sentence a little easier while they are stuck inside and try to make sure they don’t fall back into old habits once they’re out.
(*title by Hozier)