Mumbled Memories After My First Unemployment Check

I remember the drives down to the welfare office. My 10 year old self pretending not to care that my best friend was along for the ride. I remember shopping with foodstamps at the local grocery store where my mother worked the seafood counter. I’d stand in line counting out how many vouchers needed to be ripped from a booklet that always went to quickly and my mother would come home reeking of fish. I remember the meals of instant mashed potatoes or macaroni and cheese made with water instead of milk. I remember peanut butter on everything and toast beneath ground beef with flour and salt.

I would obsessively count the money in my hand whenever I had to pay for anything, paralyzed by the fear of having to put things back. Well aware of all the eyes behind me. Shopping for food, for toilet paper, for whatever was never without stress. My mom would send me into the store while she sat in the car, doing hir best to avoid the scene altogether.

When I was even younger I would gather cans and other recyclables to cash in. I’d do odd jobs, usually for my grandmother, and pocket every piece of loose change I found. Though I can’t say I was aware of the addiction that surrounded me, it was clear to me that my mother and I needed money. At the time it was just hir and I, me 5 years old, hir 22. Every cent I earned I gave to hir, to us. I thought I was helping to pay for our groceries, for my mother’s gas to get to work, for our rent. It never even occurred to me to question it. It never occurred to me to that other kids weren’t doing the same.

Once, after my mom got married, I went to church with my new grandmother. She was catholic and I remember the priest talking about the poor. The poor were people who didn’t have enough to eat or clothes to wear. In the middle of the long service I got up to pee and on my way to the bathroom I saw several small wooden containers that said “Offerings For The Poor”. I opened one and found it stuffed full of money, which I quickly shoved into my pockets, continuing on to the rest of the containers. I felt completely justified but I knew better than to tell anybody what I’d done. I understood that charity was to meant to be kept secret. I was 7 years old.

I’m far from that time but I just pulled my first unemployment check from my mailbox. A government check not so different from the one we’d drive to pick up years ago. I have this money now. I can pay my rent and I’m grateful but it’s all just a little too familiar. I’m trying to remember that I don’t have to put peanut butter on everything, but the instinct is still there.

I Remember Mint and Citrus

“porque tu eres la mejor….la mejor parte de mi…es que tu eres ese amor…que es la razón de mi vivir”

I sing a now familiar song and I get it. I understand the love. The love of possibility. Of pride. Of passion. Of hir.

I remember singing in my kitchen, my hips swaying in Spanish as I prepared a meal that was new for me and nostalgic for hir. I sang and thought perhaps I would end up in Nicaragua, in love and making vegan indio viejo. I would grow accustomed to the heat and my hands would always smell of mint and citrus.

I remember sitting beside hir, hand warmed by hir thigh, the air thick with the smell of hir. We drove beside the ocean and I listened as she dreamed aloud about how beautiful our children could be. And I thought, maybe I want that. A piece of hir inside of me. If it were possible. To grow something that mixed us both, hir complexion and my eyes.

I remember the certainty in hir mouth as she worked. The steadiness in hir shoulders as she held more lives than hir own. Smooth control surpassing obstacle after obstacle. I swelled with pride as passion poured out of hir and into the musty darkness that surrounded hir.

I remember how the roll of hir tongue filled my ears, my mouth, my heart. Corazon, te quiero. I remember thinking maybe that was enough.

I sing a now familiar song and I understand that it wasn’t.

Where Anger and Accountability Meet

Accountability. It is a word that holds so much power for me that I’ve thought about tattooing it to my body. It speaks to my desire to be accountable to the world around me, my desire that those I love be accountable to me and my hope that someday we might all be accountable to each other. Imagine what the world would be like then….

At the moment I’m trying to be accountable to my anger. When it comes to emotion I tend to feel intensely and then try to channel it into something productive. It is emotion that pushes me forward. But I’m stuck here. Stuck with anger. I’ve taken the edges of anger and twisted them into art, activism, growth but I haven’t dealt with the root of it. I don’t know how to. I don’t know how to pull out all those sneaky veins that wrap themselves around memory and instinct. It requires a surrendering that I’m not yet capable of.

My therapist asked me today what I’m angry about and I couldn’t answer hir. I told hir that I felt like I had a whole book of things but didn’t know where to start. Then I took a breath, sat in silence for a second and said the first thing that came to mind. Me. I’m angry at myself. Angry for knowing better and doing anyway. Angry for allowing myself to disappear when I love someone. Angry for staying when everything in me said it’s time to go. Angry for doing that over and over again. Angry for living my life like that. Angry for not being accountable to myself and my needs. Angry for not holding myself to something I so value.

I’ve made a life for myself by weaving scraps together. By taking what I can get and making something more from it. But now I find myself in the midst of plenty. I have plenty of love, friends, adventures, resources but I still search for the scraps. I look for the sting of struggle because it is awash in that sting that I have found a sense of worth. It is being sweet, willing and generous despite that sting that has told me who I am. So, still, when I’m presented with but a piece of what I need I accept it gratefully. I ignore the voice that screams ‘this is bulllllllllllshit’ and push forward….to nothingness…..to never enough.

And in the end I’m left with anger. Anger for settling when I’m capable of more and for not being accountable to my own values. It is where anger and accountability meet that I am lost. Because to be angry means to be vulnerable. And vulnerability is only safe in a land of plenty and I still can’t believe I’m here…

Goals for 2009 (aka two-thousand-mine, aka two-thousand-fiiiine)

- Learn to dance
- Commit myself to being healthy, in my head and in my body, above all else
- Continue to learn Spanish
- Get a job that I appreciate and vice versa
- Do a burlesque solo at Cabaret de Nude
- Explore Al-Anon
- Continue therapy
- Deal with my loans
- Attend the Anne Braden training
- Let my family know they’re loved
- Be a better friend
- Spend some time with a loving partner
- Explore and deepen my faith
- Challenge myself to be present in the world around me
- Learn more about the bible
- Cooke more diverse foods
- Learn to ejaculate
- Sharpen some sexy time skills
- Learn my history
- Walk away from unhealthy situations
- Remain firm in my resolve
- Change only when truly necessary and after great thought
- Write/call people back
- Interact with people on the street

Recovering From My Life?

I stepped into my first Al-Anon meeting last Monday. I expected a nervous comfort. Comfort in familiar slogans and hearing stories that mirrored my own. Nervousness for walking into a room full of strangers and choosing to till up deep seeded hurts. But as the serenity prayer began my chest drew in and anger burned between my shoulders. My body withdrew tightly and the resentment for having to sit in that meeting nearly carried me out the door.

I found myself lacking compassion for my mother and for every other addict that has come in and out of my life. I could not sit quietly and respect that they were working through a disease, an addiction, a way of being that hurt themselves and others. I could not applaud their progress at working the steps or staying alive or being sober. I could not look upon them objectively because I can still see the consequences of their addictions rippling through my life. I still cannot separate them from me.

Sitting it that room felt like punishment for survival. Surviving my childhood, my lovers and not only my mother’s addiction but also hir recovery. Punished for supporting hir and others when that support stripped me of so much. I held their hands through detox, funerals, beatings and relapses. I went to my mothers meetings with hir, had my 12^th birthday at an NA social and read all the literature. I gave them my life and this is my reward? Once again I’m sitting in church basements, reciting the serenity prayer and she’s not there. They aren’t there. And they won’t hold my hand through this.

The anger, resentment and perhaps grief that came up for me in that meeting goes far beyond words. Which just tells me that I’m in the right place. That there is work to be done there. I recognize unhealthy patterns that do not serve me, yet still I feel resistant. I’ve gone to two meetings since the first. I’ve been welcomed and congratulated on beginning my path to recovery; I just wish somebody would tell me what I’m supposed to be recovering from….

Thoughts On Faith From 2006

God is not grand, it is us. It is divine only if we say so. Only if we dream of living in a holy fashion, in communion.

Christ is resistance. Resistance to hopelessness and fear and greed. Resistance to the things that do not nourish us but take away our power to live joyously. Christ is a symbol of power, his murder one of many, his faith revolutionary. We kill our hope. We nail it to a cross so we might always find it, but never use it, for we are afraid of the power within ourselves.

Wrapping It Up

My 2008 in a nutshell:

- Read my letters at Artists Against Rape

- Did Burlesque

- Learned to cook some Nicaraguan food

- Nosed around in the Femme Identity

- Strove to love my body no matter what

- Took Spanish classes

- Started going to bible study

- Attended church regularly (towards the end of the year)

- Explored attending Seminary

- Became a certified Rape Crisis Counselor

- Supported an event hosted by Sister Sarafemme of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

- Got bangs

- Started going to therapy

- Sat with strangers on the street

- Threw myself into the dating scene

- Worked at San Francisco Women Against Rape

- Moved from the garage to Lower Haight

- Grew into a community

- Participated in direct action after the passing of Proposition 8

- Went on adventures with friends

- Embraced my sassiness once again and had fun with my life

- Rallied, protested and generally made noise for causes I believed in

The Heart Of 2008

I started 2008 with a semi-broken heart which only got worse. But a few months later, after some serious soul searching and new friendships, I started casting ye old dating net. Craigslist, friends of friends and co-workers. I was terrified that once I got thrown into the dating pool that my lack of ‘game’ would become painfully apparent and I would be shamed in the land of lesbians. But I pushed forward and did my best to make inherently awkward first dates as enjoyable as possible, which they always were.

There was a time when I dated 3 or 4 people consistently (and I use the term dating extremely loosely here). It varied from weekly dinner dates with no kissing to intense love affairs complete with grand gestures. I reconciled the relationship that had ended earlier in the year and once again found myself in a familiar bed. I dated casually and balanced an impressively full dance card with grace.

I was charmed and wooed and pursued. There were long conversations, peanut butter and jelly lunches brought to me at work, tropical flowers on my table, beautifully handcrafted cards, sweet text messages and expensive dinners I didn’t know what to do with. To say I was lucky would be an understatement of grand proportions.

But there was also ugliness. Pools of doubt that I got stuck in for months at a time. Love that didn’t behave as love should and a shifting of self that I wasn’t proud of. There was rage, confusion and shameful dependency. There were secrets, hateful words and lonely nights with a body right next to me.

By October I was only dating one persin. It was an intense crush that I never considered pursuing, which turned into a 9 month relationship. We were different in almost every way but I was intensely proud to be with hir and that heart tingling crush never subsided. Still we were paralyzed by the day to day and an inability to support each other. She simultaneously opened and closed me in ways I haven’t yet been able to articulate. My relationship with hir recently ended but I feel it reverberating through me everyday. The missing hir, the anger, the shameful parts. I truly believe that we tried our best with one another, but our best was far from good enough.

So I sit again at the mouth of the new year with a semi broken heart, but I am grateful for a year of learning and love. Grateful for having been forced to confront some ugly parts of myself. Grateful for the sense that all of this is leading me to something more. But above all, grateful for those who shared themselves with me this past year. I am forever changed by the care, desire and tenderness they’ve showed me. I start 2009 with an awareness of self that I didn’t posses before.