This Is How We Do It...

Home since March 11th.
Came home to no one.
Went into my bedroom and found other woman's clothes in my bed with rumpled covers and her hairbrush on my sink, and other signs of her being here. I knew she was here, knew they had been together here. My things were in boxes pushed against the wall in the bedroom, and all my bathroom stuff boxed too.
Was privileged to sit and contemplate all of this reality for two hours with some xanax and approximately half of a large bottle of Jagermeister, and my cat. He had no helpful comments.
I let myself feel it. All the anger and resentment. All the disappointment. All the self-pity. All the hurt. All the bitterness, sour in my mouth. And it started. The crazy reactions to each emotion. But rage was the one I focused on. Rage demands action. Rage does not feel sorry for itself. Rage temporarily defuses utter despair. Rage maintained is intoxicating, like speed and alcohol. Rage gives you the energy to do SOMETHING! dammit, even if it's wrong. Empowering rage followed by the need to spit the vile at someone, to scratch them, to make them bleed. Bleeding, blood, yes, yes, that's what I needed. Someone must bleed for this. It could be him. It could have been me. I didn't care much who made the sacrifice I felt that 20 years of history called a marriage required.

He came home after I had sat in that room and confronted the reality of my one life ending and unable to see the next one beginning except in a detached, intellectual way. But I believe that I should FEEL the next life being born. Or maybe these were the birth pains of my new life, with it's sped-up time of gravid contemplation. I kept thinking - why couldn't I see this coming? Why had I been so blind? Is this real? Am I dreaming? This can't be right- I gave him all of me in perfect love and perfect trust. Ok, not-so-perfect, I always knew he was holding back. Why was that? Why did he waste SO MUCH TIME lying to me and the kids about who he was and how he really felt about us? I could have saved us so much trouble, so much betrayal if I had been braver in 1994 before we came to Texas. Why did he put THAT stuff in a box? I would not be taking that with me. Where am I going? Where will I live? I don't want to be here, but I'm having trouble letting go. I must become detached. I must close myself to myself. To conceal is to reveal. Am I just another divorce statistic? Why can't I make him happy? Why would he never share? Why did he say he doesn't trust me with himself? He used to. My honor has been besmirched. Any woman would be rightfully angry. Any woman might burn the motherfucking house down. Or shoot him. Or break a few things. I am not just any woman. Am I? Why isn't he trying to be with me? Does she fuck him that well? Better than me? I will do anything! Nothing was ever out-of-bounds. Is that it? She sounds like me. We have a lot in common. Why is that? Why doesn't he get someone totally different? I want someone totally different. I understand that better. She's not better than me. She couldn't be. I am noble, sexy, strong, unique, a warrior queen maintaining the peace. I am a leader of people, people want to be with me, all the time. Total strangers are attracted to me and I can see it in their eyes, that longing to be warmed by my strength and compassion and intimate understanding of their own inner minds. It happens all the time. I can't begin to respect or accept all of them but I try to find some redeeming quality in all of them. I am not a megalomaniac. I do know myself and to know a thing completely is to control it. Is to harness its powers for myself, even the deepest parts of myself that can be used for great good and terrible destruction. Why do I want to destroy things? Why do I keep thinking that if I destroy myself it would be the best course of action, the grand gesture....

and on and on... originally written in march 2008 and now it's safe to look at because of the distance of time...it's March 18 2018 now. and on the ten year anniversary of this humiliating moment... I still feel...humiliated. Even though i shot the gun over his head and then drove off ostensibly to cry my drunkeness and anger off, they all thought i was gonna kill myself and showed up to escort me back home. to my not-home. ten years later and I still feel like i would have been better off in some ways to off myself in some way. But then again, maybe not. I'm following the fateline as it comes. For now, I'll remain passive, but not for much longer, no not much longer now. I am gonna take charge of my life back. I hope.

And so it goes...Ode to Carmen

i never published this.. then.. in 2009. funny how you come back and go OH MY! at what you were thinking at the time.


Where to begin...
My sister Carmen passed away this morning...
Before I had another chance to see her since Christmas 08.
Before I completely understood everything that was wrong with her physically/pathologically...
Before I ever got to reconcile every last sibling rivalry/jealousy/misunderstanding with her...but I think she knew most of them even if not in elegant words.
Which is NOT to say Carmen didn't say elegant words.
If you heard her talk, you would swear she'd been brought up white trash American-Style.
It wasn't true.
My sister was as educated and erudite as a civil disobedient speechmaker in a Thoreau poem. But you had to get it in writing.
Her handwriting always startled me in it's elegance. Her speech would make you think she was an uneducated country bumpkin. And maybe in some ways, she added to that myth on purpose.

Pink and crew dance for 1 Billion Rising for Justice

Justice Watch: Right-wing crankiness on full display

Justice Watch: Right-wing crankiness on full display: In his new book, The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court , Jeffrey Toobin writes that the dissent Justice Antonin Scalia wrot...

Hmm - I think I was Angry then...- a 'spare' poem from Aug 2009

Found this poem of mine from a very very bad period of grief, morass and depression. I'd just lost my sister, was losing my lover and had lost the use of my left hand - all in the same month. Was obviously tired of watching the TV in pain...Enjoy or shiver and feel cold and abandoned, whichever it leaves you:

Spare me…

your wasted judgments, and petty low-thinks,
haterisms, check me against the magazine,
the TV, the cable fixer-upper show, the internet a-list,
the talking heads of newsdom, where all the told news is old news - washed-rinsed-repeated into new news that
I can’t find any relevance in or make logic fit and sucks like slow sinks.

Spare me.

The lies of love and loving and my guilt stinks,
placaterisms, holds us in this old scene,
the bed empty even of politeness, and Oh, so full of loneliness,
our talking heads bobbing in cold silence, no news is good news, breaking up and making up is same news and
I can’t find myself between us or in you –as foreign to me as ice rinks.

Spare me…

of any responsibility…

And Herman Cain says racism is in the past...

Disenfranchisement of the Formerly Incarcerated Remains Serious Problem in Alabama

November 14, 2011

The State of Alabama continues to deny the right to vote to citizens who have served and completed sentences for felony convictions. Alabama's disenfranchisement rate of one in 14 residents is triple the national average.
Mass incarceration has a disproportionate effect on the voting power of poor and minority communities. According to a 2006 report, Alabama denies the right to vote to more than 250,000 citizens who have been convicted of felonies.
The majority of disenfranchised Alabamians are African American. Though comprising only 26% of the state’s total population at the time of the 2008 presidential election, African Americans made up 70% of all disenfranchised persons in Alabama.
Currently, 180,000 African Americans in Alabama are excluded from the franchise. EJI estimates that without significant reform the percentage of all black men in Alabama facing disenfranchisement could increase from about 30% today to 40% by 2020.

• New York Times: Who Gets to Vote? [1]

---

Source URL: http://eji.org/eji/node/579

Links:
[1] http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/who-gets-to-vote/

ON the Left! No, No - on the right! Herman has attackers everywhere

Didn't Herman Cain just say the other day this is all an orchestrat

­ed attack from the REPUBLICAN camp of Rick Perry and yet today in his press conference­, he claimed it was the "Democrati­c Machine" now against him? Which is it Herman? "Trouble to left of me, trouble to the right... here I am, stuck in the middle with you".

Herman Cain is through...or at least he should be

Wow - I called it over two months ago that Herman Cain would not last. I think I got it right. 9-9-9 is a mathematical impossibility and a joke. His lack of statesmanship and knowledge of foreign anything - should be a deal-killer. But where there's smoke, there is usually fire. 4 women and probably more. I think you can stick a fork in Mr. Cain - he's done. And if he isn't done now, because the Repugnicans want to keep pretending they aren't racists - well, he should be.  My bet is that he was a token candidate anyway, to pull attention away from all the racist crapola they've launched in Obama's direction since early 2008.
 We need real election reform that prevents the PACs, SuperPACs etc from giving money to these jokers. That would end the circus and maybe restore some respect for the electoral process. I won't vote Republican, but if you are, then Buddy Roemer is the only one who is running an honest race the way it should be.

So true...

By elevating the children of farmers and janitors as well as lawyers and stockbrokers, we’ve created what seems like the most capable, hardworking, high-I.Q. elite in all of human history.

And for the last 10 years, we’ve watched this same elite lead us off a cliff — mostly by being too smart for its own good. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/opinion/sunday/douthat-our-reckless-meritocracy.html?src=me&ref=general

Bloodthirsty - What's wrong with the "Tea Party" Republicans?

HuffPost Discusses "let him die" audience remarks -

Ok - we've had two Repugnican debates - to help us Dems and independents decide which Repugnican we should duck/take cover from/fight against next fall, and so far - their audiences are scarier than they are. In the Iowa debates - Brian Williams looked like I felt when the crowd at the Reagan Library Debate cheered the many executions Gov Rick Perry has managed in Texas. I thought to myself - why is it always a bunch of pro-lifers who are always happy about executing people? In fact, it seems in this weird right-wing bunch, to be a Christian Tea Partier, you gotta want to kill some people and punish others a lot with policy and not a lot of facts or proofs. The Jesus Christ I learned about was about not killing and not judging and letting God take care of vengeance at Judgment Day. These bloodthirsty a$$holes don't agree with  Christ!

I never misunder-estimate the DUH in Floriduh...so not too surprised when, at the debate for the CNN Tea Party in Tampa, they shout "Yeah! Let him die! " when Ron Paul is asked about the hypothetical 30 yr old young man with no insurance who has catastrophic illness (coma).  Who ARE these people?

Wake Up and smell the Coffee

Hey, Check out the Coffee Party.  They have nothing to do with that other beverage party and everything to do about fixing our democracy.   http://coffeepartyusa.com/dashboard Thanks!