June 2018 – Chaotically Controlled

I hate stripes, and orange ain’t my color…

But if y’all keep messing with my kids I will gladly sport both.

In the middle of a busy airport – arguably the busiest airport – the Mistress of Chaos courted trouble. I had a dayum good reason though. Let’s start at sort of the beginning.

After 3 weeks away my Tweenager was coming home. She was flying by herself for the first time. To arguably THE BUSIEST AIRPORT IN THE WORLD. Because traffic in this beautiful city is trash 24/7, I did not make it to the airport in time to meet her at the gate. But I sent her a text that says “I am on my way, give me a minute.” After getting my gate pass, going through security, and just about to the gate, my beautifully scatter brained daughter sends me a text that she is on her way to baggage claim.

SAY WHAT?!

Scramble back to domestic terminal, position myself somewhere between baggage claim and the escalator to heaven and start crowd scanning. At the same time I am calling her repeatedly – to no avail. When I finally get her to answer she is in FULL FREAK OUT mode. Like tears and hysterics. Apparently she managed to get herself to INTERNATIONAL baggage claim. The person in the info booth speaks English as a 50^th language and Tweenager can’t understand a dayum thing she is saying. She is so lost, and she doesn’t want to answer the phone because her father (the ex) is calling her and she HATES talking to her father.

Side note: The Ex does not have a proper throttle. It is all the way pissed, or monotonous. He does not realise that yelling at her for not staying put is not helping, it is only freaking her out more.

Friends – I don’t do stress well. This entire scenario is flashing horror stories before my eyes. My Tweenager is 12, but she is cute. I am not just saying this because she is my baby girl and I am biased. I saying this because she is genuinely gorgeous. She is freaking out and I am freaking out, and I can’t protect her in this moment. But I am trying to be calm and collected and someone that she can draw strength from. Me – the bi-polar mess.

I asked her to find a place to sit and stay there, I am coming for her. I approach an airport employee, and say “I am trying not to freak out. My 12 yr old daughter is at international baggage claim and can’t figure out how to get back. How do I go get her?”

“You can’t go over there.”

(what the fvck did you just say?!?!?!?!?!?!?!)

“You can tell her how to get here though. Just tell her to get back on the train and stay on it until she sees ‘Domestic Baggage Claim’.”

Excuse me while I go ghetto for just a moment:

Dis muddafukka did not just tell me I cannot go get my child! How da hi holy fvck am I supposed to tell her how to get back here when she’s in panic mode?!

I call Tween back and ask her if she can follow those directions, she says she can. As I am talking to her the ex is calling – again. I am so done now. I need him to shut up and let her think. While I give her some time to figure it out, I told him to get off the phone and let her figure this out because she can’t think when he is talking to her. Then she calls me back. She is even more hysterical, she has gone back to where she thought the tram is, but she can’t get there, and the signs are all confusing. I told her that I am going to find someone who can either get me there, or go get her. I tell her to find a seat and wait. Don’t move, just wait.

I find a person in a security uniform this time. She tells me that Yes I can go there, and to either take the int’l terminal shuttle, or just drive over. Ok, much better. I have walked away from the ex to get this information, so I call him and tell him I am driving over there to get her and I am currently at the baggage claim to get Tween’s bag. As I am standing in baggage claim I see her bag come down the shoot. There is an airline representative that has been staring down my throat while I am alternately talking to the ex, the Tween, and airport personnel. He absolutely has to know the entire story by now, and instead of being compassionate he becomes a potential victim. I grabbed her bag from the carousel and start to walk toward my car.

“Excuse me.”

I growled “Is there a problem?”

“Yes, you are taking that bag to ticketing, you can’t do that.”

“I am not going to ticketing, I am going to my CAR, to get my 12 yr old DAUGHTER, who is stuck at the international terminal.”

“You can’t take the bag”

“Why the fvck can I not take my DAUGHTER’S bag?”

“I need to compare the sticker from the ticket.”

“I just told you that she is STUCK in the WRONG FVCKING TERMINAL!!! Of course I don’t have the stickers!”

“But you can’t-“

“LOOK ASSHAT. She is 12, she is freaking the fvck out, and no one in this airport seems to give a dayum that a 12 yr old GIRL is LOST in this AIRPORT!”

Now we have an audience. More airline/airport personnel are now interested in what is going on.

“Well, do you know what is in the bag?”

“HER CLOTHES?!” (my entire face completed the sentence with ‘wtf do you think is in there?!’)

He drops his shoulders like “of course she has clothes, broad, be specific”.

“… a costume, maybe her clarinet?” (My voice is cracking at this point, as I mentally evaluate what my other half can liquidate quickly to bail me out of jail after I get arrested for punching this self-important windbag.)

This waste of space takes the bag from me opens a corner of the bag, peeks in (I mean lifts the corner a tiny bit, glances in a corner of the bag, then closes that corner). He then gives me the bag back. I almost backhanded him. He wasted 5 minutes of my life for WHAT?! I was going to jail for certain at this point. And then the Ex walks up.

For those of you who haven’t realized – I am melanin blessed. I’m the first generation daughter of an immigrant. My hair is naturally kinky and I wear it that way with pride. This is significant because all the players in the above scenario are melanin blessed. Except for my blond haired, blue eyed ex. They see him walking up behind me and now I can walk away? I wanted gut this MF just for fun.

In the end I got the girl. She is fine. I don’t think I will be fine for a while. I may have to avoid the airport until I feel less like burning the place to the ground.

Things Fall Apart

June 2018 has been a rough month. Not just for me, but for the public at large. Like there is a planetary imbalance that has caused the world to go to its darkest place. There were the suicides of 2 famous people; everyone heard of that. But apparently there were some private battles being waged as evidenced by the explosion of memes encouraging everyone to check on their friends.

Let me start by saying this: There is absolutely NOTHING you can do to prevent a person from committing suicide. You can delay it, but if that person is set on removing themselves from this plane of existence they will become more practiced at it. They will eventually elude all efforts at intervention and succeed at their goal.

I suffer more than most affected by this phenomenon. This blog is based on my life as a DSM-IV diagnosed wife and mother of 3. So let’s talk about how it affected me.

*DEEP BREATH*

*EXHALE*

I am a misanthrope. I really do not like people in general. I love individuals. But the gen pop scares the shxt out of me. And I belong to a few subsets of people that have traditionally been primary targets for the public at large. By way of defense I am a very sarcastic person; I am snarky, and rude, and irreverent. I think it is all in fun, and those who have stuck around long enough to know me get a kick out of it. Mostly. But then there is the cruel, evil, “fxck you and the horse you rode in on” side that people – even my closest friends – are afraid of.

That is the beginning of the spiral.

In spite of my intense dislike for humans at large, I am a people pleaser. I don’t invite conflict. Don’t get me wrong, I will END conflict. But I am so reluctant to start it. Even if every fiber of my being is screaming “THIS IS BULLSHXT” I will capitulate just so that I can avoid conflict.

Continue the downward spiral.

I have a mate that is gamer with a capital “G”. Morning, noon, night he is at that console grinding away at some fictional goal. You’ve heard of football widows? The wives who can’t get their husbands’ attention during football season? I am a video game widow, and there is no season. The drastic measures I have taken to get his attention are legendary (we’ll talk about that in another blog) and sometimes even those fail. Don’t get me wrong, this is not always the case, and he is mostly attentive when it counts. But he doesn’t always notice when I am starting to lose it.

Pedal to the metal and out of control.

The job that accounts for my income is not a cake walk. I am a female in a male dominated field. A large portion of the men I work with have huge egos, and no communication skills, with the expectation that I will be a mind reader. So when things are not done to their uncommunicated specifications, I get heat. I give more than was expected, I get heat. I finish projects assigned to other people and I get little to no recognition. Mind you, this is not all of my coworkers, just the loud ones. After having busted my tail to finish a project that the original owner was too busy to complete I got the tiniest bit of acknowledgement. But something spontaneously breaks while I am using it and everyone plus GOD must be informed.

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

I crashed. Hard. A semi with a full payload and a freight train colliding at full speed sending bits of my sanity floating around me like carnage from a pillow fight. All my coping skills were sandbags facing an angry Katrina. As I sat there – a quivering mass useless humanity – I contemplated the absolute necessity of my existence.

You can’t stop someone from committing suicide: IF THAT IS WHAT THEY REALLY WANT. Think of how sneaky teenagers are when they want to be. As a full grown adult, with no one checking on them, it’s a cake walk. I am not saying do not check on your friends. By all means, spend every moment you can with them. Do something odd and unexpected for them. Cut the grass. Walk the dog. Bring their favorite pint of ice cream and a movie. Talk, or don’t talk. Just be. And this is why:

While sitting there, wondering why I actually exist, I remembered my friends. The person who took such good care of me when my body was being invaded by a fetal parasite. The one who baked me an alcoholic cake for when I finally weaned my last child. The one who brought chicken soup from the other side of the city when I was sick. Who took me to the hospital for prenatal care even though they had just left the hospital themselves. Who organized a birthday dinner at my favorite restaurant. The ones who are ready with an alibi if I have to end a conflict.

So I put out my hand, and someone grabbed it. Pulled me to my feet. Brushed the dust off my shoulders and told me I was good as new. THAT is what saved my sanity. Maybe even my life. I remembered what I felt like when they did these things for me. I remembered what it felt like to do the same for them. And the times I did a stupid and they laughed with me and not AT me. And so many other things that are beautiful side effects of being surrounded by love.

Love on your friends, so they know who to reach out to when they want help. But it is NOT YOUR FAULT if they don’t.

I hate my brain chemistry

I really do. It creates voices in my head that cause me to make mistakes. And those same voices beat me up about those mistakes forevermore. I learned to call it the “Itty Bitty Shitty Committee”.

For example:

I have this group of friends that are WONDERFUL. This is a real down for whatever, “let’s get in trouble together”, “wait who has the alibi?” type group. We will tease each other but will beat down anyone who tries to hurt any of us. REAL friends. The kind that will pull you back if they see you stepping off the cliff.

I am somewhere with a couple of these friends. I’ll call them Taylor and Reagan. These 2 are masters at straight faced insults. From a distance you would think they are having a conversation about the weather, sports, shopping. But when you hear what they are saying you want to HOWL with laughter at their exchange. And I am standing between these 2 as they are talking about the hygiene (or lack there of) of someone who has just walked in the door. I am cracking up, not so much at what they are saying, but the delivery! I told you, they are masters.

Later that evening I get home and change clothes. It is a HOT summer day. Like, even my sweat was sweating. Like a lot of us, I carry extra weight in areas I really wish I didn’t. And that extra weight creates extra places for this extra sweat to hang out. So I have to be extra diligent about hygiene. Which means more baths/showers/wash ups during the summer cause, you know, hygiene. And that evening I felt like I needed to put those clothes in the shower right along with me.

Fast forward a day. It’s one of those nights that I can’t sleep to save my life. (And my partner is practicing Tai-Bo in his sleep, so it’s kind of dangerous to be in the bed. I mean, his fist is the size of my HEAD!) And my Itty Bitty Shitty Committee decided to keep me company.

“You do realize they were talking about you, right?” No they weren’t

“Of course they were, don’t you remember how awful your clothes smelled that evening?” Well…

“They just didn’t want you to know, so they pretended to be talking about someone else.” You might be right, I’m gonna ask them

“NO! Don’t do that. Do you really want them to laugh in your face? Or worse, lie to you?” No…

“You should vaguebook about it instead.”

So of course I listened to the Committee and post this:

“I would like for my friends to tell me if I’m off. Just pull me to the side and tell me what I need to correct. It sucks for me to know that people who I consider my friends can’t muster the courage to tell me. Or worse, would rather just make fun of me.”

You read my description of these friends, right? Does that even remotely sound like the same group? Of course not. Stupid committee.

Another friend in the group, I’ll call her Alma, reached out to me. When she heard my explanation, I could literally hear the “AW HAYELL NAW” through the text message. Which started my ascent from the abyss, and turned the volume down on the Committee.

A workday passes, and that evening, Alma messages me back. The whole conversation made me feel embarrassed and guilty, but mostly it made me feel LOVED.

So here I am, writing this blog. A public apology, since I made a public ass of myself.

Taylor and Reagan: I am truly sorry for betraying our friendship by not coming to you and telling you how I felt.

I am not using my brain chemistry as an excuse, just an explanation. I will do better in the future, I will mute the committee, and talk to you about it instead.

In the meantime, everyone please be patient with me.