ownership
all material possessions aside, here’s what i own… i own my thoughts, some sane, others not-so-much. i own my words. i own my actions. i stand by my words and my actions. i stand by my thoughts, some of which (very rarely) go unsaid.
i own my outspoken nature, the stubborn bull that is my taurus… unrelenting, and willing to fight to the death for a cause. fight for a friend. fight to be unsilenced, to continue possessing my voice. a brash voice. an emotionally-driven voice. a typically strong voice that occasionally becomes a whisper.
even when quiet, when hushed, i find myself pausing to reflect on what i will next speak of. the voice in my head. the constant writer. the unrelenting creator whose mind is never quite turned OFF.
and i love that. i own that.
this last week has been one that began with venomous hatred, pointed fingers, and judgments mostly under the name “anonymous.” true or false, those were your possessions… that is what you own. you own your hatred of me. you own your mistrust. you own your confusion. disgust. rage. apathy. whatever it may be that you have experienced and felt as a result of my words and my actions.
here’s the thing though… this is not about you. my experience is mine and mine alone. yes, my story is one that was shared with you all; however, it’s not about you. none of this has anything to do with you personally. none of you were with me in the atlanta airport, though you may think you were because you got a 9-angle glimpse from a video immediately released on the TSA’s blog.
the blog that said i had been contacted multiple times by the TSA (which i’m still waiting for). the blog that said i had gone into hiding during the 6 hours i was in the air, traveling to the west coast. had that blog spent the slightest of minutes taking time to actually read a few of my posts, look back a bit to where i mention a much-anticipated trip to the west coast, perhaps then they would own the fact that they were incorrect in saying i “went into hiding.” this is the same blog that led other blogs, like eyeonannapolis.net to refer to my story as a “kidnapping” and my husband as a “fighter pilot” (hahaha, i’m sorry. both paul and i laugh at that one, because even he was unaware that he was a fighter pilot).
the 8 hours that i was traveling last week kept me from giving so many people the instant gratification we all find on blogs, on twitter, on facebook and other means of social media. so you made it up. some of you concocted stories of your own about me “going into hiding” and about my son being “kidnapped” in the hopes of convincing people that my story was concocted and therefore false, and here are the 9 camera angles to “prove” it.
regardless of the “she said” vs “the video,” regardless of the implications, accusations, hateful words, loss of sponsorships (which again, if you went into my archives, if you even read my “about” page, you would know that i don’t do this for the money and that the money i make is peons… enough to buy this cup of coffee i drink as i write this post right now)… all of that aside, ownership is the lesson in all of this. and not just mine. but your’s as well. own your hateful words that continue to collect in my inbox, anonymous.
it’s so easy for us to hide on the internet, behind our keyboards and computer screens, isn’t it? what does that say about us as a society?
a lot has been lost over the last week or so… friendships, trust, dependence, and reliance on people… on me. and yes, it hurts. i own that hurt. some of you own it as well. many of you have made it abundantly clear already either in direct emails to me or in your own blog posts that you have zero intention of keeping in contact with me, continuing to read my blog, etc. and yeah, that hurts, but that’s your choice. you have taken it upon yourself to make that decision, own that decision, and there’s nothing i can do to change that.
i have no further insight to give you in terms of what took place in the airport. i’ve shared my experience. i own that. for some of you, i simply do not have answers to the questions you currently possess.
my truth was told, shared, tweeted out in the hopes of changing something for the better. i own that. it’s up to you whether or not you choose to believe it.
in terms of the tweets that have been photo-scanned (or whatever it’s called) and shared, the ones where i say “PAY ME FOR MY INSANITY… MWAHAHAHAHAHA….” c’mon. it’s twitter for christ’s sake. those of you who “know” me via blogging, via twitter, i believe and trust that you know those were in jest. and those of you who have written your own blog posts regarding those tweets alone obviously do not know me and have taken pieces of my story in order to create your own drama.
feel free to own that. just know that this is not about you. it never was.
this is about me owning my thoughts, words, and actions. owning my experiences. writing about my experiences and sharing those with whomever chooses to read this blog of mine.
and if you don’t like what you read. don’t come back.
one last thing… to those of you who have reached out and contacted me to let me know you’re thinking of me and that you care, thank you. to those women i have spoken on the phone with over the last 2 days, since i’ve turned my phone back on, thank you. to my VERY few but VERY stong male supporters, thank you for reminding me what is good and true in men.
as far as social media is concerned, they call it social media for a reason. it’s social. it’s not news. it’s sometimes fact and sometimes fiction and sometimes a variance in between.
close the laptop, even if only for 30 minutes. take a break from twitter, even if only for 10 minutes. step outside. remember your own truths. your own stories. own your good and your bad, your strengths and weaknesses because each one of us has them all.
this week has ended with sweet words and sweet friends, and yes, i have moved on from this experience. i have stepped away from my website, been able to focus my energies elsewhere, and it has been good. and yes, i have taken a xanax here and there because i have severe anxiety.
therabitch
i was a psychology major once. for 2 weeks. i declared it to my advisor. it was in my record, written up as freshman, psych major. then i realized how much biology was in the curriculum. i quickly retracted my psych-major-ness and declared myself an english major, which is what i ended up getting my degree in.
i’ve seen my fair share of shrinks. psychologists and psychiatrists alike. there are many couches and cushioned chairs i have sat on, usually indian-style, and spilled my guts. and i find myself spilling my guts here at this moment because this is the month when i would typically be in a shrink’s office… cuz, it’s ya know, the month. but i’m not. i’m not seeing anyone right now.
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i once had a therapist (hereby referred to as therabitch) call me “tragic.” yeah, she said the actual word “tragic.” and as i sat there, in her over-stuffed chair, freezing my ass off because her air conditioner was turned down so goddamn low thanks to her menopausal state, i was stunned. for a moment, the wind had been knocked out of me.
sure, i’ve encountered some tragic circumstances, witnessed tragedies, survived trauma and lived to tell the tale… but to label me “tragic,” identify me using that term, it took my breath away.
she continued talking, (which, um, excuse me, wait a minute. isn’t that why i am here?) but all i heard were the sounds of the teacher from the charlie brown cartoons… “WAAAHHH WAH WAH WAAAAHH.”
eventually, therabitch caught on to the fact that i was saying NOTHING and she then stopped talking. for a moment, we just looked at each other. who knows what the hell was going through therabitch’s head, but what was going through mine contained multiple sharp objects and target practice.
i opened my mouth.
“i am not tragic,” i said while looking her dead in the eye.
therabitch recoiled instantly, faked coughing, and started with “oh, i didn’t mean…” but i cut her off.
“I AM NOT TRAGIC,” i repeated to her, slightly louder this time, and with a crazed glare in my eye that would make it safe to assume i was ready to cut the bitch.
therabitch then gave me a list of “what i meant was…” and i tuned her out, but stared her ass down, imagining ways that i could pluck out her nose hairs one by one while simultaneously scraping my nails across a chalk board (because that noise doesn’t bother me but it does 90% of the population) and then hanging her from the ceiling of her meat locker of an office by her pinkie toes to die a frozen death.
needless to say, our session and professional relationship ended then and there with me walking out in silence, and therabitch most likely assuming i would slash her tires once in the parking lot.
**********
my point is this… i’m not seeing a therapist right now. maybe i should be. maybe it’s good that i’m not. i don’t know. at this point in time, writing is my therapy, readers are my shrinks, and comments are my support.
so thanks to all of you who have been there for me so far, this month… you know who you are. thanks for having my back, for telling me to turn off the tv and go to bed, for giving me your cell phone numbers in the comments section of my blog that i then have to delete for your own protection (shit, don’t you know there are crazed lunatics out there!) and for staying up late with me on twitter while hub has been away because you know i’m not sleeping, but instead allowing my mind to get the best of me.
and to therabitch… thanks for reading my blog.
sober drunks
yup… “sober drunks”… as much of an oxymoron as “woman-hating-feminist.” this will be our lesson for today.
feel free to close this window and open your browser to another site if you’re already finding yourself disturbed. no offense taken here, trust me.
***disclaimer*** i’m not one who typically uses my website as a place to preach or step up on a soap box and address a reasonably large issue. this is my place where i share things about me, my life, my family, and our experiences… oh yeah, and wine (i’ll get more into that in a moment.) i am most definitely not one you will find writing about how one “should or shouldn’t” raise their child, because christ almighty, if there’s one thing i’ve learned since becoming a mother it is this… what works for one family may not necessarily work for another. whatever you (as a mother, in this case) need to do to get through your day to care for and protect your children and yourself is your business and your’s alone.
that being said, there are plenty of websites and blogs out there with different agendas, some with hidden agendas (google them yourselves, i’m too lazy to link you too them all.)
one particular site, more specifically one particular post from this site has had me reeling for days now. and since this is my place, i’ve chosen to address it here.
i’m not a big name blogger. i’m not anticipating being deluged with the hate mail that some of my friends receive. but i am a voice. and i can’t not say something.
i’m disheartened at the moment with regards to blogging… and it’s really getting under my skin. this weekend, i found myself knocking on the door of complete pissed-offed-ness with regards to the hate that spews out of some people’s fingers as they type. what bothers me the most is that these people are women… women judging other women, women blaming other women, and women accusing other women…
diane schueler aside (i’m not touching that one with a 10 foot pole), women such as stefanie wilder-taylor (with whom i happen to correspond regarding our children and their feeding issues) has become a household name; but not because of her remarkable writing and successfully published books, not because of her own personal endeavors and life circumstances she lived through and has overcome, not because of her being a pioneer as a mother of three while juggling everything i just mentioned… but because she has made a personal choice to lay off the sauce.
whether the stars aligned when both stories hit the newspapers or not, both have been scrutinized in a way that saddens me as a woman and a mother. i applaud wilder-taylor, she knows i adore her, respect and admire her. and i cannot imagine what her day-to-day must be like… in the same way that she cannot imagine mine, nor can becky sharper who wrote (what i consider to be) this piece of garbage, equating alcoholism with anti-feminism.
sharper writes, “This kind of ignorant glorification of heavy drinking as a quasi-feminist, liberated act crops up in the mommy blogosphere too, including blogs like mommywantsvodka.”
that sentence in itself is ignorance at its best, and took me to my currently heated state of pissed-offed-ness, not only because i consider becky, author of mommywantsvodka, a friend, but because it just doesn’t make sense… “ignorant glorification of heavy drinking as a quasi-feminist???” quite honestly, as a woman… as a proud feminist myself, i’m offended by the grotesque judgment in this statement.
i have been publicly blogging for a short amount of time (less than 1 year even) yet within that amount of time, the community that i am a part of, have witnessed, befriended and embraced in the blogosphere is one that i’m proud of.
i think it’s fair to say that most bloggers, male and female alike, have found some sense of community as a result of their blogging. c’mon, people who share commonalities will most likely hang out, whether it be in real life, on twitter, or through commenting on writer’s blogs.
and yes, the masthead of my own website with a cartooned version of me holding a baby bottle in one hand and a glass of wine in the other has linked me to other moms i now consider to be dear friends… (some of them drink, some of them don’t but shh, don’t tell.) the fact that i have a “wine of the week” posted at the top of my link bar has connected me with people (who drink and who don’t but want to bring a bottle of wine to a friend as a house-warming gift… *gasp*).
you, sharper, have sadly succumbed to what the media wants right now… creating something out of nothing. only you have done so under the guise of being a feminist, which sickens me.
women and drinking… men and drinking… DUIs… alcohol and anti-feminism are two entirely separate entities, yet you argue that “because of the injustices and expectations of our patriarchial society, women are more likely than men to be stressed, depressed, in pain, etc. Society just wants us to pretend it’s not happening, the way they want us to ignore so many of the ugly realities forced upon women. If there’s any outrage here, it’s the outrage women should feel about the chauvinist image of mothers as household saints who couldn’t possibly be tempted by demon liquor, or the even more chauvinist (and sadistic) idea that a woman’s lot is inevitably going to be hard, so she should suck it up and suffer instead of seeking comfort in the bottle.”
once i finished laughing at the above quote, my husband and i began to candidly discuss this and he brought up a good point with regards to freedom of speech… he referred to the following analogy, “you can walk around and swing your arms all you want, but then you hit somebody… and it’s a different story.” but people like this (sharper)… see people swinging their arms, walk up, get hit… and then say “YOU JUST HIT ME!”
i couldn’t agree more with my husband. not only did sharper run into people swinging their arms, but did two things that disgust me… 1) created something out of nothing and 2) expressed ugliness towards women though referring to yourself as a feminist.
so before writing my own response to all of this, i went back to my own feminist roots… to betty. i honestly thought to myself “what would betty do?” (to answer, she would NOT have made a WWBD bracelet.)
in betty friedan’s The Feminine Mystique she writes (in reference to women’s magazine stories profiling the conventional), “And this New Woman, less fluffily feminine, so independent and determined to find a new life of her own, was the heroine of a different kind of love story. She was less aggressive in pursuit of a man. Her passionate involvement with the world, her own sense of herself as an individual, her self-reliance, gave a different flavor to her relationship with the man.”
“different” sharper… not better or worse… not him vs her… “different.”
a commenter by the name of ashley (you can find her blog here) posted the following, “Why not support other women in a positive fashion, by offering sincere commentary and offering to help when you see there is a problem? There are so many other ways human beings (and I’m not even going to dip into the feminism pool) can support and encourage one another. Instead, you chose – in this post, anyhow – to be vicious and negative.”
so with that… to ashley… to becky (mommywantsvodka NOT sharper)… to stef… i raise a glass to each of you, for finding what works for you as mothers, as women.
Have a Sip
