Tag Archives: Drama

Second Chances To Do The Right Thing

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dawn-1634578_960_720Some of the most dazzlingly beautiful moments in life are when I’m making amends for past bad behavior. Perhaps because I was in trouble often as a kid (at school, at home, at friends’ homes, in public) I’m more comfortable with being in the wrong than others. Of course, this comfort has made me both terribly antagonistic and great at apologizing. I admitted in an earlier post that I used to be an incorrigible mean girl, treating my classmates horribly from elementary school on up through the grades.  In fact, I only stopped the two-faced, shit talking, exclusionary cruelty when a colleague I was trying to make into a friend recoiled in horror when I tried to start a mean-spirited gossip sesh about our coworkers. I was twenty-two and getting much too old for that shit. It was eroding my soul, isolating me with my demons, leaving a trail of hurt feelings and broken friendships in my wake. Bad karma was everywhere, and my life was low-level, grinding misery, even when I permanently dropped the mean girl act. And then, I was unexpectedly presented with a second chance to do the right thing. Continue reading →

Possession Obsession

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imagesI’ve had a complicated emotional relationship with money since I became aware of its awesome power. As a kid I believed my family was on the brink of destitution. I thought this because I had limited perspective and because I wore hand-me-down clothes and my parents said no every time I whined for them to buy me things when we were out shopping. We were austere, eating endless leftovers, owning the same single car from the time I was five until I left home for college, rarely eating out, our vacations road trips.

My dad would sit at the dining room table elbow deep in papers doing our bills and finances. It was a soothing ritual for him, but I sensed tension. I lay awake at night worried about whether we were poor and what we would do. My perception was that we didn’t have the things our neighbors had, or my friends’ families had–new cars, new clothes, mountains of toys–and I reasoned it must have been because we were living on the edge of poverty. Continue reading →

Sensation-Seeking

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1924041_32418773345_8384_nI once read that there are two types of drinkers–the type without a family history of alcoholism and the type with. The type with history was known as sensation-seeking. I can’t help but feel like this phrase describes my life now. I feel like I am out there looking for sensation constantly, the next high. I’m not talking about substance abuse here. Since getting married I feel even less settled and certain about the future, in the most unexpected and delightful way. I’m reminded of a question we ask our survey respondents at work: did you want so much to engage in pleasurable activities that you ignored the risks or consequences? Every time I ask that question I see myself in it. It’s like I’ve connected with a part of me that I thought I lost long ago–the impulsive Kate who is always looking for a rush of some sort. It feels so good that I can’t help but wonder if there will be a crash. And when there is will I even care?

These words, written by my 28 year-old self in a facebook “note”, (if anyone remembers that apparatus), revealed itself to me in an fb memory from 2008, the year I married and took a nosedive off the wagon. I shuddered reading it, and remembered writing it. Continue reading →

Gaslit, Pt. 3

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gaslitContinued from Tuesday…

As I wrote, read and re-read Tuesday’s post I kept having to step away and come back to it, because it was confusing and didn’t flow. I couldn’t get it to flow with better clarity. I was frustrated. Then I remembered that being gaslighted is inherently addling, non-linear and maddening. Naturally, trying to write about it might produce something just that.

People who gaslight are desperate to control others. They are desperate to be right and to have the last word. They are desperate to manipulate reality to conform to their image. They are very sick people who lack empathy and basic problem-solving skills. They are desperate because they lack a stable identity, and are filled with vast empty inner spaces that threaten to collapse on them, causing total personal disintegration. They are living, breathing black holes, and they are desperate to avoid exposure. The deeper the desperation, the stronger the need to manipulate and control. The greater the fear of exposure, the louder the grandiosity. Continue reading →

Gaslit, Pt. 2

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gaslitI reject the notion that the incoming presidential administration represents a new normal we must “get over”, accept and even (fuck, no!) embrace. Absolutely not. Absolutely not, because I refuse to be gaslighted. I refuse to allow a person or group shape my reality in order to elicit my consent in an attempt to hold absolute authority over me. No. I refuse to allow a person or group to distort the truth to their own ends, in their quest for unlimited success, power and ideal love. No. I refuse to allow a person or group to attempt to manipulate our common understanding of reality in an attempt to meld it to their will and pleasure. No. I refuse to allow a person or group’s desperate need to be right, to have the last word to superceed the needs of the common masses. If we can come to a common understanding of gaslighting, to recognize it, challenge it and root it out, we will have a shot at avoiding a dystopian nightmare. Continue reading →

Surveying The Boundaries

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20161216_170650It’s that time of year again…the holiday hangover after the wringer of family expectations, beginning with Thanksgiving and ending with whatever December holiday we celebrate. I’m telling you, the ill-at-ease, creeping dread isn’t just due to overindulgence in food and booze. The heavy fatigue isn’t just from the abundance of parties and late nights and rushing around to get everything done. The urge to hibernate isn’t just the cold dreary weather that feels no longer a winter wonderland. No, the cluster of symptoms is, for many of us, related to the crush of family expectations and our inability to hold them at bay, to keep our resolutions that we’ll not let them bowl us over this time.

We let them bowl us over this time. And, as in years past, dating back as far as we can remember, things looked and felt and went as they usually do. Sighhhh. Continue reading →

Exploring The Borderline, Pt. 2

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ceramic_280Continued from Tuesday…

I met him at a time my friend group was at a low number, having moved back to my hometown after years away. I’d not left home with many friends, and those few did not remain when I returned. I was seeking friends, and a lifestyle that conformed to the way I felt the back half of my 20s should look–parties, going out, popularity among groups. He was cool, an icon of hip bachelorhood in the social circles in which he moved. He was legendary–people spoke his name as though it was a state of being or personality type. Because of his reputation I expected him to be unapproachable and coolly removed. Instead, he was friendly and engaging right back at me, and I was attracted to his twinkling eyes and ready smile. It turned out we were both interested in music, and liked a lot of the same bands, and so making that first invitation, to hit a show together, was easy and obvious. Continue reading →

Exploring The Borderline

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brick-texture-1390574943JHjThe way I knew to do relationships was to find the least available, most aloof, detached, disinterested person in the room and fling myself at them, a full-court press. I dazzled them with my attention, affection, caring and consideration. The more they ignored me, the more I wanted them. I would make myself into someone they wanted, prove to them my worthiness. I would do this by showing great interest in their experience, asking about them and listening intently, remembering details. I would do this by showering them with thoughtful little notes and gifts. I would do this by making myself completely available to them, their whims and fancies. I would do this by giving them anything I perceived them as wanting, and asking for nothing in return. The lengths that I would go to…just to prove I was worth loving. It was extremely dysfunctional, it didn’t work, and I got hurt a lot. I scared people off with my relentless pursuing, or attracted the wrong people. I went along this way for nearly the first three decades of my life before I realized I was going to need to make some major interpersonal changes if I was going to have the kind of life I wanted. This was the way I attracted Borderlines to me. Continue reading →

Have You Ever Heard Of Sex Discrimination, Sir? Part 1

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I didn’t know what had coalesced in my unfolding adolescent sense of self in the summer of 1972 when I subverted gender-segregated work roles at a suburban Atlanta McDonald’s franchise. I hadn’t intended to when I looked in the eye of my shift manager and declared, “Have you ever heard of sex discrimination?” He had denied my request for a lateral move from my front-of-the-store counter service assignment to the male-exclusive crew on the cooking grill. At age 17, my freshman year of college under my belt and working the summer in a collective of temporary teenage hires, I had recognized a female ghetto when I was in one: girls worked the counter, boys worked the grill. Girls served the customers and boys cooked the meat. And I wanted to work the grill. Continue reading →

It’s Never Over

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20160515_152539What do we do with loss that isn’t from death?

Has it happened to you? A bad breakup with a friend, a head-on collision where both parties limp off in separate directions? A passive drift into silence, the years without contact piling up like snow? Being tossed into the trash by another, sold down the river, cut out like a malignancy? Friendships end. I’ve become more comfortable with and accepting of this truth, the older I get. It’s the ones that end when I don’t want them to, when I feel strongly it’s not for the best, that I have trouble taking.  Continue reading →