Stalled

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This time, I was gonna get it right.

I waited in the bathroom stall

until the other girls were gone

and I silently prayed as hard as I could.

Please, God, make me be better.

Please, please, make me like Katie.

She is so perfect!

Her long, brown hair so straight

she can sit on the ends if she wants to.

She’s so thin and pleasant and neat.

Not like me – plump, awkward, shaggy-haired.

If I pray hard enough, it will happen:

I will become her. On the count of three.

One — Fingers crossed tight….

Two — When you wish upon a star…

Three — please please please please please…

Ok. Here I go. The new me. I am Katie Koening now!

I open the stall and look in the mirror.

I seem taller. I smile her smile and think Katie thoughts.

Head out into the hall, head held high,

floating on my hope.

I get to the classroom

and enter, waiting for heads to turn.

My heart dives back into my stomach.

No one notices a thing as I go to my desk.

I am just same old me.

God has failed me again.

 

Inspired by The Daily Post word prompt: better

 

Old Baggage

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When I was in junior high school, I begged my parents to go in on a purse that I was desperate to buy.

Not just any purse. It was a Gucci Speedy/Doctor bag. (We didn’t call it that then. I only know that’s its name from researching this…it is now considered vintage! Ouch!) It probably cost a couple of hundred dollars, which was a lot in those days (at least to my family) to pay for a purse, or anything, really.

Everybody had one, or so it seemed to me.

I went to a large public high school, so there was a mix of economic and racial backgrounds, kids from many different backgrounds.

On any given day you would see the many different lifestyles reflected in the fashion of the different groups. Sometimes what a kid was wearing reflected their socio-economic status, but not always.

There were “Stoners” (or “Partiers.”) The “Kickers” (this was Texas after all — so these kids were cowboy/farmer types.) It being the 80’s, there were the “Punkrocker” or “New Wavers.” ( I know, this is beginning to sound like the movie “Pretty in Pink.” That movie resonated for a reason, right?)

It was the height of the Preppy or Preppie craze, and though Houston, Texas was not NYC, we did get the fashion trends, albeit maybe a season or two behind. So the other main group was the “Preppies.”

The majority of kids in the Preppies definitely came from upper middle class to wealthy families. Looking back, for a public school, there were quite a few kids that came from great wealth.

I didn’t really fall into any one group. While my family was white-collar, sort of upper middle class, my father, having come from next to nothing, wanted to be sure that we were not spoiled. We never wanted for anything, but we lived fairly simply in comparison to some of the other kids in my school.

I was never one of the popular kids. I was an outcast until I lost a bunch of weight at 14, when suddenly I became of more interest to the “in” crowd. Though my outsides changed, my insides were the same. So though I was allowed around the in crowd now, I never felt a part of it.

There were others like me. We found each other and created our own group. We didn’t have a name, at least that I know of.

We were sort of mysterious: people knew we had fun going out to clubs and bars and hanging with older college kids. Though we had friends across all the groups, we would hang with just each other outside of school. We dressed in a mix of all of the fashions of the day.

But back to that bag. The bag that “everyone” was getting. I just had to have one. I had some money from babysitting, but not enough for THAT bag. So through the implementation of Chinese water torture on my dad, I promised over and over dramatically that “I would never need to buy another purse again for as long as I lived if I had that bag!”

Eventually, I wore my parents down. I got THE bag.

I have no recollection as to whether or not obtaining the bag actually brought me any pleasure whatsoever. I ‘m pretty sure that the amount of time I actually used it was very brief, much to my father’s chagrin.

Years later, after my Mom died, when we were sorting through some of her things, my Dad reminded me of that bag and that promise. We laughed about it, but I felt a cringe of guilt at how easily I had let go of that bag after having fought so hard to get it.

I think it’s because I really had no connection to the bag itself. Only to the way I wanted to be seen carrying it. The lifestyle to which I wanted to be associated. Which was not reflective of my own style at all, or even who I really was or even wanted to be.

But I wanted to feel like, or to be wanted by at least, (or to be seen by others as being wanted by or as one of “them,”) those popular girls, and so I got the bag. It didn’t make me feel any more a part of the “it” group than I ever had. I was an outsider and I always would be, bag or no bag.

It makes me sad that the girl I was then didn’t feel good enough in my own esteem to have seen that bag for what is was: a status symbol. It wasn’t the bag I really wanted. I wanted status. How I wish I could go back in time and tell that myself that being an outsider was actually pretty cool. Now I know the kind of status I needed would never be able to come from anything outside of my own heart. I wish I hadn’t sold myself so easily and so cheaply.

After my Dad died, I found that old Gucci purse in a box in the garage, where my Dad had kept it for me all these years. It was in mint condition, barely used.

Maybe you are hoping I’ll say I started to use it again. Or that I sold it at a profit on Ebay.

I gave it to the Salvation Army, where I hope it became a found treasure for someone who really wanted it for its beauty. I hope it is being put to good use in the world, as should all things.

Today I carry a very practical Lug Moped Day Pack bag as a purse. It costs about $35.


It’s light, leaves me hands free and has just the right ratio of open pockets, zippered pockets, divisions and space. (As it turns out, I am quite finicky about a handbag’s function, would love to design my own ideal bag, but this is as close to my ideal as I have found to buy.)

I have no interest in designer handbags. I may admire their beauty sometimes, and be amazed at and appreciative of the women who pay for them, love and carry them. But they were never my style and probably never will be.

I can live with that.

#purses #handbags #self-love #Iamnotmybag #theeighties

Inspired by The Daily Post word prompt: lifestyle

The Folly of Youth

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I never made it to my prom.

I had the date, the dress, the corsage. My parents were actually going to BE there, chaperoning for an hour.

For the big night, my friends and I had set up what we thought was a brilliant plan for us and our dates. We had pre-prom plans and post-prom plans. It was a whole weekend of events.

Pre-prom looked like this: we would start at one of our houses for appetizers and “drinks” (we were all underage, of course,) go to the next house for dinner, and to a third for dessert. Then on to the prom.

After the prom, we’d go to another person’s house to watch the sun come up. Then we’d all drive to Galveston, where we’d spend the weekend in two rented beach houses.

On paper, it looked great.

In reality, in retrospect, it was a plan rife with flaws. At least the pre-prom plan. There were 10 of us girls, and we’d each be taking separate transportation, supplied by our dates. This was in Houston, TX, a city that is spread way out. It’s huge.

The prom was being held in a space downtown, which is east Houston. The houses we’d be going to beforehand were in far west Houston. Even if alcohol hadn’t entered the picture, we were still pushing the odds by having ten cars driving all over the city like that. Why none of use thought to rent a big bus, I do not know. MADD had been formed, but perhaps it was not in the forefront of every parents’ mind yet the way it is now.

And alcohol was in the picture. A lot of it.

My date was Ron McPure (names have been changed to protect the guilty.) He was a very cute boy who drove a 1960 cherry red Mustang convertible, and he made me laugh. I hadn’t met him at high school. I’d met him at a bar one night. He was a freshman at college. SMU, I think. (My parents didn’t know that of course. I told them he went to a neighboring high school, which he had, just the year before, but that was a little detail I left out.)

In retrospect, he also had a bit of a drinking problem already. But I digress.

We started our pre-prom journey with drinks at the first house, moved on to the next, having more drinks with dinner, followed by dessert, and yes, more drinks. I think we’d told each house’s parents that it was just the one drink we’d all be having. By the time we were all heading off to the prom, we were well-lit, floating. None of us should have been driving anywhere.

As we were about to get into the Mustang and head off for the prom, Ron got a stash of two huge bottles of vodka and some mixers out of the trunk and presented them to me with flourish, “Taa-daa!!” He mixed us each a drink in jumbo red plastic Dixie cups.

We headed off on the 30 minute drive across town to the prom venue.

I don’t recall much of that drive. Laughter, yes. Traffic. The light of late afternoon and early evening turning into pitch dark night.

But then (maybe I sort of sobered up a bit,) I realized that we seemed to be driving a long time and that where we were didn’t look like downtown Houston at all. I suggested we turn around, that we’d gotten lost or something. Ron agreed, pointed to a parking lot ahead and said he’d turn around there.

He pulled into the parking lot and looked for a place to turn. He decided to turn down a ramp that led to what looked like an underground parking garage. I didn’t want him to for some reason, but he was adamant, so we did.

That decision sealed our fate. As we drove down the ramp, we suddenly found ourselves nose to nose with a sheriff patrol car. Of all the places to choose to turn around, we had happened to drive into the parking lot of the Sheriff Department!

As he hurried to put the car into reverse to back out before anybody noticed, Ron quickly directed me to put the bottles of booze in front under my dress (which I did.) The car, being a classic, did not go into reverse easily or quickly, and before he could do so, a trooper was heading over.

Ron put the car into park, and told me to wait while he went in to calmly say that we were lost and to ask for directions.

This plan seemed perfectly reasonable to our alcohol-soaked brains. No matter that we must have reeked of booze and he was nothing but cohesive. He got out, adjusted his tux, and walked a somewhat straight line over to the trooper and into the building.

That’s when it happened. I was suddenly struck quite sober, and in the next moment, I panicked big time. I guess in my logic, I could get us out of this by moving the car. That THAT would be the determining factor against us getting out of this. It would look less bad for us if the car weren’t facing the wrong way.

So I hiked up my dress, straddled over the gear shift, and put the car in reverse. Unfortunately, the car being a classic, it did not actually have a very good pickup to go reverse uphill from a standstill, and the car started to slowly inch towards the sheriff’s car.

It was the luck of the Gods that I hit the brakes in time. I put the car back in park, and just at that moment, another patrolmen came out, walking towards me in the car. I popped a mint and tried to seem collected.

He told me that my boyfriend was suspected of driving under the influence and said I had to get out and come in. I willed every fiber in my being to walk as steadily as I could, following him into the building. Once inside, I was led to a waiting area.

I think because we’d been on the way to prom, he took pity on me. He said I needed to call my parents to have them come pick me up. It turns out, we were in Pasadena, which is about a 20 mile drive out of Houston.

I got really panicked then, as I recalled that my parents weren’t home, they were actually AT the prom. I started tearing up as I explained this to the cop, and he asked if there was anybody at home. My older brother John, I said between sniffles.

So I called my brother, who somehow got word to my parents (this was before cell phones, so maybe they called home when we hadn’t shown up to see if I’d called.) Somewhat relieved, I expected my brother to pick me up. But it was my parents who turned up an hour and a half later.

Ron was actually released to their custody. That ride from the Pasadena Sheriff’s Department to drop him off at his home was one of the most uncomfortable car rides of my life. And Ron was not especially helpful to the situation. He would not look at me, and he gave tense monosyllabic answers to my parents’ questioning on the eternal drive back.

I will say this though: my father showed particular restraint. Still, it was awful, as well it should have been. We had really screwed up big time, and were damn lucky to be alive and to not have hurt or killed anyone else.

Of the 10 of us and our dates going to the prom that night, three couples did not make it. Don and I, and then another couple who had gotten a ticket on the way and had (smartly) decided to go back home. A third couple had had a serious wreck. The boy had to have his jaw wired shut and was bedridden for months.

I wish I could report that any of that had a significant impact on us and our ideas around “partying,” but it didn’t. What is it about youth that creates such stupidity? I reflect back often on how lucky we all were that nothing worse had happened.

I am forever grateful to have survived my own stupidity that night, and that no one in our car (or on the road) was hurt. That was the last time Ron and I went out together, understandably. My parents were not too keen on him after that.

I’ll always wonder what the prom was like. But it seems a small price to pay for being spared from tragedy as a result of my own poor, irresponsible decisions.

Inspired by The Daily Post Word Prompt: panicked

 

A Skin Horse Awakening

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I come from a long line of control freaks.

Which is to say, my people, like many, are highly motivated by fear. Highly.

Particularly my father. I will never know why or how he developed into such a fierce perfectionist. I only know that it is a trait that definitely carried over into my own makeup, much to my chagrin.

I am a recovering perfectionist. But a perfectionist nonetheless.

It’s an exhausting way to live. And exacting.

My father was incredibly hard on himself and set extremely high standards of behavior for himself, and for others.

This led to a family dynamic that was often painful, confusing, sometimes dangerous, often maddening, and, ultimately, costly. Costly, because it affected the quality of relationship between us all.

At least that’s been my experience and belief. I am sure everyone in my family could offer their own. But this is mine.

Without wanting to sound like someone justifying an abuser’s bad behavior, I do believe, truly, today, that he was coming from a well-meaning intention. He genuinely loved us as best he knew love to be, and he wanted us to succeed at life.

I can say that today. But if you also grew up with a controlling, perfectionistic parent living from unconscious fear, you know that there are many other feelings that have preceded this place of understanding, this perspective of compassion.

I felt so controlled in my childhood. There are moments still when I can feel the ghosting sensation of a yoke on my neck and shoulders. No, I was not made to wear a literal yoke. But I felt so managed, so handled, that there is a tension, a ‘cautiousness’ in my body that literally feels like an actual yoke.

Granted, I was the youngest child. I think most youngest children feel to some degree that they were expected to just go where they were told to by the others.

But in our family, for me, this went much deeper.

There was an unspoken agreement that everything in our household revolved around my father’s needs and wants.

He had a way he wanted things to be done. A way he wanted our family to be seen by others. He had an idea in his mind of a Rockwell-painting family.

And we fell short. Way short. And I think, on some level, he must have felt tesponsible for our “failure.” Or carried a deep-seated fear that other people would see him as being responsible for his failure.

I am not exaggerating by saying that he was controlling. He once demanded that my brother chew his food a certain number of times, feeling that this would solve his weight gain following an injury sustained during football training.

I saw him become enraged at our dog because she would not “behave.” I feared for her life on more that one occasion, and my own as well.

These were tangible expressions of his attempts at control. But much more affecting in my opinion were the much more subtle ways. With his tone, with his body language, he could command our collective sense of well-being. Depending on the kind of parents you grew up with, you may not quite grasp how this could be so destructive.

He was a big and tall man. Rage in him was quite powerful. Though he never lifted a finger to me (I was spared, I think, being female,) his energy was quite a weapon deftly wielded.

In order to please, I learned to exist, even to breathe, very carefully. I practiced sitting, walking and expressing myself so as to be what I thought would be most well-received. I watched myself, learning to be incredibly self-conscious so that I could, to the best of my ability, create behavior that would be acceptable and not create any negative response from my father. I learned to present a version of myself to my family and to others, to project and maintain an “image,” to try to “control” what I thought (hoped or feared) you thought of me. This, I have learned since, was a way of living I developed in order to feel safe.

Safe. That is a concept I am still unravelling. It was not a word that was on my radar until quite recently. I did not consciously realize that I lived in body that felt unsafe 100% of the time until several years ago. The constant state of “shell shock” felt normal to me. With help, I learned that I had a right as a person to feel this state of being, this “safe.”

I work with my body on that. Catch myself holding my breath and body steeled against attack as I go about mundane tasks wherein there is no perceived threat. But my body doesn’t seem to operate from that knowing there is no threat as its usual state of being. Instead, it is on high super alert 24/7. As I said, exhausting. But this behavior, this conditioning, having been learned (it is not what my body came into this world doing…my true essential nature is not fearful) means that I can learn other behavior and condition myself towards it.

As with all personality traits, there were positive benefits from his exacting and controlling ways. They served him well in his profession. He was, in his career, incredibly respected and successful as a result of his dedication and sheer will.

He built an empire from poverty. Amazing, really.

But the price he paid for it was not worth it in the end, I feel confident saying that. He and I found our way to a relationship at the end of his life. For that I am forever grateful. But as a result of many things, his controlling behavior being key, we lost out on having any real father-daughter relationship early on. A deep loss for each of us, I know.

I am in the midst of doing a deep, deep clearing of all of my belongings. I just found and read a letter he wrote to me when I was in my 20’s. We’d been years into a very volatile relationship. Once I was no longer under his roof and had independence, I began to fight back in passive aggressive ways, using my own finely honed talent for control to withhold and manipulate his attempts to connect.

I don’t recall reading it then. I am sure I was too filled with hurt and rage then to even “see” him in its words.

I do remember my mother telling me at the time it was a huge deal that he’d written it, but at the time, I couldn’t comprehend or appreciate that. He was maybe 10 years older then than I am now. He was looking back at his life and seeing things from wiser eyes. He was aware that his time left to resolve our issues was limited. He was trying to break out of his own exquisitely built shell, perhaps.

Today, I can feel the real man/the bewildered boy he was in those sentences, in the words he carefully chose. It’s funny, he uses the word “ghost” to describe how it feels for him to try to keep trying to get close to me. That it is as if there is some ghost there that he can never meet or see in order to face the problem.

He was so right, though I could not deal with it then. There were several ghosts there, ghosts that I am still living with today.

But I have been befriending mine. Compassion is key. The last thing my internalized father-bully needs is to be bullied. I have awareness, and I have choice. I do not have to live out of control and perfectionism in order to feel OK in the world. I give myself the fathering my father must never have had himself. And I work hard at my relationships with others so that I do not make them feel the way I felt growing up.

It takes work, but like the Velveteen Rabbit, today I am alive and Real and I have real, loving, healthy relationships with other people.

Inspired by The Daily Post word prompt: control

The Apprenticeship

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I bound myself to you

My love master

Studious and eager

I leapt in full-hearted throttle

Since you’ve left

I see that what I learned

Had nothing to do with love

I grow my own heart now

The Daily Post word prompt: apprentice

#selfrealization #healthylove #dailypost

Spinning Art

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Inspired by The Daily Post: Yarn

I come from a family of storytellers.

My earliest memories are of the family folklore as told by my father, his cousin, his two sisters.

It was something I loved as a child. Listening as they worked their tongue magic, savoring details, their limbs and faces in lively animation. Laughter would erupt from all of the adults and the older kids, and I would feel buoyed by the effervescence in the room. I couldn’t follow the stories per se, but I loved the way the room felt.

My father was perhaps the best of them. He had a presence that commanded attention and he used it well. He also had an understanding of the use of a pause for dramatic build, and used this as deftly as Bruce Lee used his signature one inch punch.

However, my Aunt often elicited the strongest responses with the often shocking sexual innuendos that she had learned to weave into the fabric of her tellings. She worked bawdiness like a pro, and often had us teary-eyed with aching sides.

Once I became a teenager, of course, I became less than enthusiastic of their talents, these yarn-spinners.

I had no appreciation then that these stories had been developed over many re-tellings. That what might appear to an observer to be a spontaneously shared anecdote was actually a nuanced and practiced yarn, carefully spun over time, punchlines and timing finely honed through repeated sharing at family gatherings over the years.

I also had not yet developed an understanding or respect for this kind oral storytelling, that it is actually an experience wherein the storyteller and the audience create live art together. As an actor, as a human, I appreciate that more and more every year.

I think they call it a yarn for this reason: the storyteller connects the listeners together through the shared experience of the story itself. My memories of our family together are held together by the colorful threads of those yarns. I am connected to those people by these invisible strings. They live on in my heart.

Today, I relish my memories of these two masters at work. My Aunt still holds court at family gatherings, but my dad has since died. I have to rely on conjuring up sense memories of his booming voice and that devilish timing. My husband tries to re-create some of the best around his family. I’m glad they are given continued life through his breath.

Fortunately, I married into an Irish family. To my delight, I am able to witness an even stronger oral storytelling tradition through them. Talk about masters at weaving yarn! I think the Irish have perfected the art.

#storytelling #oralstorytelling #yarnspinning

 

Eau du vie

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I’d hurry up if I had to go in after she did

Try to hold my breath

Didn’t want to smell Gran’s scent

Coudn’t put my finger on it

Something musky, something stale

I didn’t know then what it was

But it made me feel scared

She’s long since gone

But I smelled it today

I know what is is now

The perfume of age

Daily prompt: perfume

# perfume #dailyprompt #aging

 

Danger Will Robinson!

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If you are old enough to get the reference of the title of this blog, you may share my opinion on the word “someday” because you’ve lived enough days to have noticed a few things.

If not, here’s some context. Will Robinson was a character on the series “Lost in Space” that ran in the 1960’s. It was long in reruns by the time I watched it: my high school friends and I would watch it on Saturdays, hungover, laughing at the campy melodrama. It had a robot in it, and in one particular episode, the robot warned Will of impending danger. (I also remember one episode where I think the robot actually said “take a chill pill” too, but we might have been playing a drinking game then so who knows if that really happened.) But I digress.

I believe that there are some words and concepts that are dangerous. “Someday” is one of those words.

An adverb, it is defined as: at some time in the future. As in: I know someday my whole family will be together and happy.

It is a word to hang your hopes on.  Hopes for dreams coming true: “I’ll be a star someday.” Hopes of people’s poor behavior righting itself: “Someday, they will treat me better.” Hopes of exacting revenge: “Someday, they will be sorry.” (These are completely random examples, of course. Totally random samples.)

Seems pretty innocuous, right? What’s wrong with a little hope?

The problem happens when you start living so much for “someday” that you stop living this day.

I know firsthand that it’s possible to live from a deeply buried “someday” mentality and not even realize it. To live floating so much on that hope of the ever-elusive day in the future that life becomes the way you so desperately want it to, that life becomes a stream of yesterdays that weren’t really todays at all because the siren call of “someday” muted the music of the moment. I couldn’t even see what was because I was so fixated on and attached to visions of what I wanted life to be. I landed shipwrecked on the boulders of la-la-land, which before last year used to be a term that described “a fanciful state or dreamworld.” To put it another way, I awakened to the ugly and hard truth that I was way off course.

Once I realized that I was living from this hidden “someday” philosophy, after the shock wore off, and the anger, I had to forgive myself. After all, I was conditioned to live the world of “someday.” I grew up on fairy tales filled with songs like “A Dream is A Wish Your Heart Makes.”

And “Someday my Prince Will Come.”

I literally took these songs to heart, and they shaped my view of the world.

I am not blaming Disney! (But there is something to be said about the powerful affect of replaying songs hundreds of times. Don’t they use that technique to break prisoners? Isn’t that a kind of brainwashing?) I love those songs.

But they promise. And “promise,” like “hope” and “potential, ” are words and concepts that can be used for the better or for the worse. They are potent. They are to be measured for use.

These days, I watch myself. I steer myself away from using words like “someday.” I practice gratitude for today, this present day. For what is, not what I wish will be. Yes, I have wishes and dreams. But I also have goals and action plans. I am not adverse to a little hope in my heart. I love me a Disney movie and sing those songs right along with the best of them.

But I live in today. My yesterdays are well-lived and appreciated. My tomorrows are what my todays become. They are the result of today, not the point of them.

My “someday” is now.

#livefortoday #carpediem

via Daily Prompt: Someday

Unnecessary Loss

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Where oh where did you go

Oh Blankie of mine?

Who would I be now

if it’d been up to me to let you go?

They just saw tatters of a well-worn blanket

An outgrown toy, a nuisance, embarrassing proof of their failed parental skills

You were the key to my security on this spinning planet

My anchor, my buddy

Maybe it would have made all the difference

I wouldn’t still carry this feeling that there’s no thing and no one on this earth to truly rest my heart on

This ever-constant ache for more of something I can never put my finger on yet can never have enough of

One day you were just gone

No one would tell me where you’d gone to

Which was worse — thinking you’d abandoned me

Or that they’d betrayed me?

What book suggested that solution

Was it you, Dr. Spock?

I know, I know

“I am my own Blankie now”

Fuck that.

 

#blanket #childrearing #loss #betrayal

Daily Prompt: Blanket