I don't know where to hide now that the sky is falling

To be completely simplistic, I think all relationships can boil down to two moments, tops:

This is why I love this person
Why the fuck do I love this person

Sometimes, you only get one of those moments. I was thinking about this last night. For hours.

I didn't have any "why the fuck do I love this person" or "this is why I love this person" moments with my daughter's dad. I told him I loved him, but I never did. I just wanted to have someone love me, and Chris did a really good job at pretending he did sometimes. Enough to sway my better judgment into thinking it wasn't weird for a 24 year old to be fucking around with a 17 year old, and for sure, we should be together, and for even more sure, we should have a baby together even though I didn't want to have children. The birth of my daughter, and the year and a half I got to spend with her almost made me love Chris, because I loved her so much. I wanted, for a fleeting moment, to be a family. The pesky thing was, I didn't want Chris. I despised him, and god damn, did he make me fucking miserable. He managed to be everything wrong with my life, and I loathed him. Hearing him breathe made me fucking ANGRY, and I legitimately contemplated strangling him in his sleep on more than one occasion. I wish I could say it was my daughter that kept me from doing it, or some higher calling to behave morally. It wasn't...it was logistics. Chris was a huge dude, and I'm not sure my hands and unnaturally weak arms would have done anything but worn myself out without even waking Chris up. It's hard to have either of those moments in a relationship if you don't love the person. I didn't love Chris. I didn't even really pretend to try. I paid the word lip service, but we both did. And we were both terrible at it.

Allen was different. I loved Allen so much, and it was all consuming. And he loved me back. He made me laugh, he was smart, he engaged me, he wanted me to love him, and I did. Allen was, to be a cliche, an addiction. There was one exceptionally rainy day where Allen and I just played outside in the rain, splashed around in the puddles, and after an hour of running around with each other, we kissed each other in the rain, and it's the most honest display of raw affection I think I'll ever experience. It was young, it was honest, it wasn't the least bit jaded, and I looked into his face and thought to myself, "this is why I love this person". My relationship with Allen is fucking littered with those kinds of moments. One night, we were making dinner, and we listened to Head Automatica's Beating Hearts Baby over and over and over, and we danced around in our underwear and laughed and sweated and had bagels smashed full of cold cuts because we were poor as fuck and in our early twenties and what the fuck did we know about a good meal? I just knew that this feeling was why I loved Allen. When we were on the hard streets of Vegas together, when we didn't know where our next dollar was coming from, or how we were going to eat, Allen's parents offered to bail him out and send him back to Colorado if he left me behind. He said no. We were together, end of story, and we didn't go anywhere without each other. Nobody had ever done anything like that for me. That was why I loved Allen. Allen and I were together for five years. Four and a half years in, I was trying to get Allen to watch a movie with me so I could put my hands on his man parts and do things with them, and he wasn't listening to me, he was playing his xbox. So I went into the room, put on lacey panties and a flimsy, see through shirt, and went back into the living room. I put on some music and started dancing in the living room, and when Allen told me I was getting in his way, I angrily wondered, "why the FUCK do I love this person". Maybe that sounds superficial, and that may be because it was, but it was the beginning of the end. The next six months were at least one episode of wondering why the fuck I loved him a day, and those knitted together furiously. I credit Allen with showing me what it feels like to be loved, though. It wasn't jaded, it wasn't overly optimistic. It was just love, and that was all I wanted it to be.

I didn't have any this is why I love this person moments with Dan. I had two years of "why the fuck do I love this person" moments that made me feel ashamed of myself, because I was suffering all of these abuses (for lack of a better word), and I couldn't vocalize my feelings (of love, or of anger at feeling so fucking trodden over), and I was allowing myself to get walked all over by some guy that didn't have the sack to either tell me he couldn't stomach being with me like a human, or that he loved me. I think about my relationship with Dan, and it plays like a Bukowski poem in my head. It looks dingy and used, and large and small at the same time. I see Dan the way I think Dan saw Dan...bigger than me, better than me, the powerhouse of our imbalanced relationship, and I'm exceptionally mousy, and chasing the crumbs Dan threw down to me when he could be bothered. Dan was going on a trip about three months into our relationship, and I remember sitting on his lap in his living room, and looking down at his face when he said, "Are you going to miss me?" And it felt like such a delicious trap. I could answer yes and look foolish and alone, I could answer no and be a guarded cunt, or I could say what I said, which was, "are you going to miss me?" Smooth. He said he didn't know, with a very wry smile and an obnoxiously smug twinkle in his eyes, and I remember having two thoughts, both of them equally mortifying. I'm not sure which came first, because they kind of collided into my ears simultaneously:

Fuck. I love him
Why the fuck do I love him.

Two months later, when I sent a very veiled email to Dan about being in love with him and getting no response back, I stared at my computer and wondered why the fuck I loved him, and then lied to myself and told myself he'd say it when he got back from California.

When Dan had a wedding and I didn't get to go with him but I helped him buy his outfit for it, I remember telling him how handsome he looked and wondering inside why the fuck did I love someone who hurt me in new and inventive ways every single fucking day.

When Dan told his mom on Christmas Eve that he was alone because everybody was out of town, despite the fact that we had been together for over a year AND I was sitting right there, I stood outside in a blizzard, calling my girlfriend Anali and bawling, "why the fuck do I love him? I'm going home." And if Anali hadn't talked sense into me to stay until the blizzard was over, I would have been. I had had it that night, because Dan managed to make me feel alone in the universe, and I'd never felt so abandoned and pathetic and unloved in my life. And I couldn't do it anymore. But Anali was right, it was white out conditions and freezing and I was crying so hard I was damn near blind and I probably would have died on the way home. So I stayed, and gave Dan the "I don't understand why I  love you" speech without actually using the words I love you because it's embarrassing to say that to someone who'll never ever ever in their life verbalize that nebulous idea to you. And the next morning, on Christmas, I had morning tea with Dan, we fucked, and I cried in the bathroom because I didn't understand why I loved him and why I stayed.

I could go on that way for hours. I loved Dan so much, and it was so different from Allen and Chris, because it was love, but it wasn't as real or as honest as Allen's, it was a cover up. I loved Dan privately because that's all he'd let me do, and I wanted it to work because that's how dumb some people are when they love someone.

I have simultaneous moments like this with Derek. I love my husband more than I ever loved Allen, but in a reserved way, because Dan is the reason I can't have nice things. I love Derek as much as I am fucking capable of, and I love him hard and I'm not ashamed of it. I love my husband so much it makes me angry. He makes me angry. I wake up almost every day and I know why I love him, but at some point during every day, I will have a moment where I growl inside and yell into my own brain about why the fuck do I love him. It's different, though. It's not the same as before. When I wondered why I loved Allen, I was digging myself out of the hole we'd buried ourselves in. I wondered because I was trying to remind myself, and the reminders never came, and I was sad and miserable and I hated and resented my situation. With Dan, I wondered because, while he gave me everything I vocalized wanting, and he spoiled me in ways I didn't deserve, I knew every day that he was fucking heartless and cruel enough to string along a person who was obviously too fucking weak and scared to let go of the robot that didn't love her back. I wondered why to try and make myself understand so maybe I could leave.

But with Derek, I don't wonder for any of those reasons. I wonder because he says he loves me so much, but when I'm not looking, he does a complete 180. Derek and I just had our two year anniversary, and the first year of our marriage was pretty good, but the second year has been awful. Derek has had issue after issue with flirting with other women, and breaking promises to me regarding other women. Derek swears he's not flirting, and these women mean nothing. And he'll eventually get to a place where he wants to soothe his crying wife and tell her that he never thought of it from my point of view, and I am so beautiful and he loves me more than anything, and he's searched for me for 40 years, why would he fuck it up? And he gets to this place only after he continues talking to women he promised me he wouldn't talk to. Or confided in other women after he promised me he'd stop, because it felt to me like a betrayal of our marriage. Or waxes rhapsodic about how things could have been SO different to a woman he didn't really get the opportunity to date after finding one of her letters in his closet. Or chatting up women on a seemingly harmless app like Words with Friends and telling them they're beautiful, and then inviting them to snapchat and saving their beautiful and adorable snaps to his phone. Or saving beautiful snaps of your beautiful best friend that you've ALWAYS felt like second fiddle to in his phone, with the added bonus of wondering how the fuck someone with such inside information about your insecurities and marital problems can send your husband selfies of her looking beautiful. An extra twist of the knife there. Or after telling someone that they are so nice and so beautiful, and he would love to get to know them better. Or after all of this, promising to give up all social media platforms and then taking two days to actually go through with deleting only one. After posting on facebook that it's time to delete facebook because there are too many distractions for his impulsive mind, and then twelve hours later, posting a complete and total lie so he could get away with posting a tasteful nude photo he took of himself to his Korean adoptee page. His post reads:

I've always had a low self esteem and self image issue due to being teased as a kid for not looking caucasian. My photographer wife finally talked me into a photoshoot even though I don't have an "ideal" body. It is taking a great amount of courage for me to post this, but in the name of positive body image and self-esteem, here it is.

Let me explain why this post is bullshit. It's very probably my husband was teased for being Korean when he was younger. In fact, he's DEFINITELY mentioned to me that he was teased a fuckload. So that part is verifiable in as much as he's told me this story before. Now, his photographer wife said this, as we just had a huge weekend of doing boudoir/maternity/milk bath shoots: should we take photos of ourselves to put up on the website, as well? To which he replied, well, yeah! And he was SO fucking into it. He bought props to prepare for this shoot. He bought cigars to prepare for his shoot. He made a few comments about his tummy not being as cut as it used to be, but other than that, he was really raring to do this shoot, knowing full well that there would be nudes involved. When it came time to do my shoot, I had an absolute breakdown about my body and threw a fit about  having more photos done, and I shut down. I woke up to Derek taking his own gallery of artistic nudes, having a fucking BLAST doing it, and I commented on his comfort and bravery a day or two later, and he responded with, "well, I  know I look fucking good." One of two things is going on here. Either he's lying to me about his struggles with self image, which...why, when I can relate so wholly and maybe we can help each other? Or he's lying to a page full of Korean adoptees just like him because he just fucking craves validation and doesn't get enough of it at home. He's been really nagging me about throwing that photo up on his instagram and on his facebook page. He REALLY wanted to share it. I kept asking him why, because in my head, he wanted to post it for specific people to see. I never told him he couldn't, I'd just ask him why and when he responded with "because" and nothing more, I'd tell him to do what he wanted to do. It looks like he did. He even went so far as letting me get all of the credit for taking the photo, which I did not, because I'm pretty fucking sure he knows it would look like a fresh pile of shit to tell everyone he took the photos himself while stringing along his low self esteem story. I don't know how to reconcile the fact that I am not enough for my husband, and my attention is not enough for my husband, and that he cannot be fucking honest about how and why I'm not enough so maybe I can fix it, or maybe we can part ways so he doesn't keep breaking my heart all the fucking time. And if all of this shit isn't enough, knowing that, when one of the females I've had a problem with in the past asks my husband why he's deleting his facebook, his response is, "Oh, Drea thinks I flirt too much, apparently." A 40 year old man cannot even take a tablespoon of responsibility for his actions. If we pretend for just a moment that saying, "mmmm, imaging you going HAM on something is tempting" to another woman isn't flirting, and it's completely harmless, my finding a problem with it and asking for that kind of behavior to stop should be enough. Even if it's me being wildly jealous and crazy, promising to stop something and then not doing it is a conscious choice that devastates people for far less than issues of fidelity. Hell, I get fucking twisted when a commercial promises me lustrous, luscious locks and all I get are hay bales for hair. It's been a year of all of this behavior, and of all the gaslighting by Derek to make every issue I have with him my fault instead of having anything to do with him, and I'm so fucking exhausted of waking up every day and going, "why the fuck do I love him?"

The other, new, problem I run into with Derek is not  understanding why he "loves" me. And it makes me sad and miserable and unhappy and I ask myself every day why he loves me, and I look at myself and I think about how he could nail someone prettier, and I remember Dan telling me, in another "why the fuck do I love this person" moment, that I was holding him back from everything, but chasing skirts in particular, and I wonder if I'm doing that to Derek. If I'm just a placeholder. I feel that way all the time; like an ugly placeholder that he really suckered into believing he was different, and he thought I was special. That he feels smug about making someone who looks like me believe that they were beautiful and amazing and unique and just so....so NEEDED in his life. And I fell for it. I fell for it, despite having reservations and telling Allen that I didn't believe him, and I thought this was just his MO. That I was just the next girl in line. Allen told me that I would be a fucking fool for dropping Derek, because he was obviously so different than everybody else thus far, and he was obviously so available to me and so wrapped in adoration, and maybe I needed to try something different. So I listened to my best friend. And I ended up with someone just like everybody else. Just like Dan, who I was so anxious to escape a repeat performance of. I wonder constantly about what I have going for me, and the list is small. I'm creative, and I'm smart, and I'm brash in a way that can be kinda fun, some of the time. But none of those things will ever trump being thin and pretty, and I'm not those things, and I won't ever BE those things, because they aren't in my wheelhouse. And with every knife dig of a new woman that I have to deal with and try and find the internal strength to forgive my husband for, I see more and more of the small bit of self-assuredness I have chip away. And it's left me how I am now. I am terrified to be naked around my own husband, because I  know there are women with better bodies that he's shown keen interest in putting above his wife, and I feel embarrassed to be in my own skin now. When I have sex with my husband, four times out of ten I get blasted out of the moment because I'll feel my hips jiggle, or I'll feel my stomach move, or I'l notice how my breasts aren't perfect and I'll have a panic attack about how he's got to be judging me and resenting me for not being any other woman that's prettier and thinner. I don't greet him at the door anymore when he gets home, because I don't see the point. when he tells me he loves me, I don't reciprocate, I just stare at him for awhile and then respond with, "why?" because I don't like saying I love you to someone who doesn't act like they love me when it matters. It's easy to be a fair weather friend when all eyes are on you, and Derek excels at that. He fails at being a good husband when I'm not looking, and his slip  ups recently have brought me to the conclusion that he just doesn't care.

And the hardest thing to admit is, I can't blame him. And I don't know if it's because he has completely eroded away my self worth, or if I can just logically see it from his point of view, but I really fucking understand. And I think that's why I'm so exhausted. Because asking myself, "why do I love him" has a lot of answers. He's so fucking handsome it's practically a crime, he's smart, he's clever, he has this laugh that sticks to my ribs like comfort food, and I think about it when I'm by myself and need a pick me up. He's engaging, and knowledgeable, and friendly, and can always chat with people and make them feel completely at ease. He's smooth and self aware and confident. All the marks of someone that is an irresistible, sought after presence. He's electric. I'm not those things. When I ask myself why he loves me, I come up empty. Especially now. Whether it's all  his fault or not, I am quite the shell of who I used to be when we first met. I'm not confident, I'm not interesting, I'm not beautiful, I'm not friendly and boisterous and vivacious. I'm barely present, and I'm sad, and I'm unsure and I'm heartbroken. And none of those things are desirable. Nobody wants to be with a sad sack. People like Derek need other people like them. It's so painful that I understand why he looks for things outside of me, and it's changed the way I yell at him and approach him when I find some new and hurtful thing to be upset about. I barely cry anymore, and I just go through the anger motions because I feel like I have to. But in my head, I am so caught up in "I AM SO SORRY. I am so sorry that I'm who you tethered yourself too, and that I am not enough because I don't know how to be. And I am so fucking sorry that you can't be honest with me about it, because this all hurts me, too. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. I know it's all my fault. I'm so sorry. I don't know how to tell you I'm sorry without it sounding like I'm having a pity party. I understand you. I know you need this and I'm sorry that I cannot move the fuck on and let you find what you need, and I'm so sorry that I keep asking you to stay with someone you obviously do  not fucking love or want." I apologize profusely to him in my head, because I know. I get it. And I can't anymore. I'm so tired of apologizing for who I am to the imaginary husband in my head. I know why he doesn't love me. I don't need to ask myself. 

If these walls could talk, they wouldn't shut the fuck up.

I use the term grandfather pretty fluidly, so a conversation about my family can be a little confusing. Generally, when I say grandfather, I'm talking about my biological grandfather. My dad's dad. I barely knew him. I recall one time where I wasn't a toddler that my grandfather visited me. I was ten, he took me and my cousins to a flea market, bought us a bunch of stuff, and that was it. I don't remember a conversation, just the things. And perhaps that's my ten year old brain only remembering what was important at the time: a bunch of gifts from a dude I barely knew.

If I use the term Bumpa, I'm talking about my grandfather. My grandmother's second husband, no biological relationship to me, but he's who I grew up around, he's my family. My Bumpa was from China, and I always thought it was so funny when I'd tell people about things my Bumpa told me, having to explain he was from China, and then having people go, "Yeah, I can see Chinese in you!" Ha ha, you cannot. But it thrilled me, anyway, because for the longest time, I didn't know that I WASN'T Asian. That my Bumpa was not my blood family. I had literally zero idea that our relationship wasn't as real as the one I had with my mom's dad, my grandpa George. I assumed Bumpa was my blood. But none of that matters, he was my family, he was my Bumpa, and I love him forever. When people tell me they can see the Chinese in my features, I definitely chuckle when I tell them that Bumpa and I weren't blood related, but inside, I feel a surge of pride at even that small, awkwardly incorrect statement making our relationship as biologically tight as I ever thought it was.

My mom's dad, my Grandpa George, is my hero. He's why I wanted to be a cop, he's why I wanted to be seen as tough and strong, because he was tough and strong, and he's why I care about everything so fucking much, but I care about it quietly, and with a lot of snide remarks. My grandpa was the kind of man that, when I had a cold, and I was up with a barking cough all night, would sneak off in his Mustang that he drove until the day he died, buy my cough syrup, and then have his wife (my grandma Dottie, his second wife. My mom's mom died before I was born) administer the meds to me, so I'd never catch on that his gruff exterior secreted away the softest, most wonderful underbelly.

I knew these men. They were Bumpa and Grandpa George. Grandfather seems so standoffish, which is why I never refer to my dad's dad, if I can help it, as anything other than "My dad's dad" or "my biological grandfather". There's a huge distinction in terms for me, though I admittedly slip every once and awhile and call Bumpa or Grandpa George "my grandfather", and I always feel guilty when I do, because they were so much more than that to me.

When my dad was a little boy, his dad, my grandfather, ran off with the babysitter. Everybody's worst nightmare, the joke of all separated families in that era. "Did dad run off with the babysitter, or go out for cigarettes?" That really set my dad's family down a shit course. My dad and his three siblings (Paul, the youngest, Renee, the second youngest, Mary, the second oldest, and my dad, the oldest) spent a portion of their lives in foster care. And not the beautiful family love story, instagram, viral post kind of foster care. The bad kind. The ugly kind that people pretend doesn't exist. My dad was a rough, street-wise kid growing up, and statistically, it's not an asshole thing to do to attribute that to a broken home and a hard as fuck childhood. Meanwhile, my dad's dad had an entirely new family, and I have three more aunts and an uncle because of it.

One of my aunts is a painter, and she's just so talented. She's been taking a master class for painters this last week, posting her work, and getting bathed in praise that she 100% deserves. I've been paying close attention to her work, and yesterday, she posted one that looked like an old painting you'd find tucked away in the corner of a Goodwill. It's an oval shaped painting, brown monochrome, showcasing a waterfall nestled gently in a dense forest, with a babbling stream leading directly into the edge of the painting. I saw she had a lot of comments, and I thought about commenting, so I read them. One of them was from her sister, my half aunt, saying that for some reason, the painting reminded her of dad. My aunt the painter responds with similar excitement and affirmation. It does, indeed, remind her of dad. Their sister, my half aunt, chimes in with her wholehearted agreement. It just reminds them all of dad! A touching sentiment, for sure.

But as I stared and stared and fucking STARED at that painting, I couldn't understand what they saw that reminded them of my grandfather. I didn't get it. And I found myself bawling at my desk, angrily wiping away tears that, fuck, man, I just didn't expect.

I've been doing my family tree. My dad and I bought the Ancestry DNA kits, and we've sent our DNA samples back to their processing place so we can be fed whatever info they can glean from a tube of our spit. I've branched out my mom's mom's mom's mom's line all the way back to England in the 1560s. I've found the church that my 13x great grandfather was baptized in in England, and sent my mom a picture of the church and the log book. I found my Native American ancestry, and looked up the history of my forgotten, swallowed by the Iroquois Nation, tribe. I found, on my dad's side, the French Canadian roots are MUCH closer than I thought, and I knew my French Canadian great-grandfather that immigrated here. I'm on my way to tracking the Irish roots on my dad's mom's side down. It's been so fucking thrilling, I've been digging and digging and digging and finding so much cool stuff. But I can't find anything on my dad's dad's side.

I have my dad, his dad, and his dad's dad, but after that, the line peters out. I suspect that my family name is not ACTUALLY Tucci, but that we were Americanized when we arrived here in the 1900s. To the best of my researching, that's when my great grandfather came to America. In 1900. But I can't find our name in any port records, not through Ellis Island, nothing has turned up, and I've been searching so hard. And there's fucking NOBODY that knows this answer that's alive now. These are questions that my half relatives never asked, because I asked my aunt if she knew, and she didn't. She has poorly drawn assumptions about our family and they are incorrect. I've done the leg work and the research, and what she thinks is our lineage is not. There's a family rumor that we're related to a pope. We are not, it's horseshit. I can track all kinds of people that we are NOT related to, but I can't find the ones we ARE related to, and I have fucking nobody to ask.

I never considered not knowing my biological grandfather a loss. I had other grandpas that loved me, I never felt a void. And honestly, I don't think I felt a void today. I don't wish I could have known a man that didn't particularly care to get to know me, but I feel guilty about that. I think, anyway.

I'm hungry for all of this information so I can fluff out my family tree. I want to know my grandfather's vital statistics...where he was born, when he died, when his parents were born and died (specifically. I have vague years), where in Italy we hail from, what the big lie on the 1920s census was about (I found this, and I am fascinated by it, and I just wish I knew the story), I want to be able to tell my children things about their heritage that I don't know. These are the things I've been desperately digging to find out about my grandfather. And then, this fucking painting.

This fucking painting points out that his family knows why a painting is so like him. How it could remind all of his children of him, somehow. And I don't see it, I don't get it, and I never once would have asked that question. Not in a million years would I have asked questions that could have imbued the essence of a painting onto his soul in my memory. I don't really give a fuck, I want to know about our lineage. And it's fucking me up.

Perhaps it's so upsetting because I never really needed a reminder that I wasn't his family. I knew it. Biology doesn't mean anything if you're not going to make it mean anything. He has been a branch on a tree for me, nothing more, and that's all he ever had to be.

Today, he became a painting, and I fucking hate him for it.

How to be a ghost

Anxiety is a pretty shitty thing to deal with.

It brings you out of whatever moment you're in and shoves weird ideas into your head like, "HEY NOBODY LIKES YOU AND YOU FAIL AT EVERYTHING" and "Pssssst....if you REALLY want to engage people, why not try shutting the fuck up?"

My favorite is when anxiety gets in my head when I'm in public, or when I'm trying to go to sleep. "DREA, NUCLEAR BOMBS EXIST!" Yeah, so? "SOMEONE IS GOING TO NUCLEAR BOMB JUST YOU WHEN YOU'RE OUT IN THE CITY!"
"DREA. DREA, ARE YOU TRYING TO SLEEP?" Yes. "YOU'RE GOING TO DIE." ....When? "I DON'T KNOW, SOMETIME. MAYBE TONIGHT. DON'T GO TO SLEEP. STAY UP UNTIL YOU DIE." I'm tired. "YOU'RE GOING TO BE DEAD SOON." Fuck. Maybe this sounds like run of the mill paranoia, but it's not. I promise. I've done the legwork, and I've had the therapy and diagnoses. I know what I'm talking about.

Anxiety is almost all the fucking time. It's really bizarre to try and have a logical conversation with an illogical part of you. But once my heart starts racing and my thoughts start rushing in, I'm done. I lose to anxiety. I'm used to it now. It's been decades, and it's just this weird monkey on my back that feels like a desperately unwanted roommate. It's kind of the same with having Borderline Personality Disorder, which I have WAY more under control than my anxiety. Having BPD is like living with a roommate that you never, ever, EVER see, but comes out and does the worst shit EVER without warning, and then is just wildly belligerent about the mess they make. Having ADHD is rough, as well, but only because it fucks with my school. I hate that I put things off until the very last moment, and then have to rush through fifteen page papers, twenty page papers, in a day, sources and all. Don't get me wrong, I still have stellar grades, but I'm not sure I can make it through an entire Master's program like this. I'm going to get overwhelmed, and I'll fidget my entire way there. To my great pride, I've made it this far (hooray, BS!) with GREAT grades, save the "whoops, I got raped and stopped going to school" semester and the "whoops, I left the country and didn't have as much internet as America and couldn't do my work" (straight Cs and four Fs and one C, respectively) semester, and my other semesters are all As and Bs. I suppose the main story in this paragraph is, I manage my mental illnesses really well.

Except for my anxiety.

Nothing can ruin a good day like anxiety.

My anxiety is illness and death specific, so I spend a lot of time thinking about dying. I think about it VERY begrudgingly, because I don't really WANT to be thinking about it. It's just there. I wonder about what happens after we die, like the rest of us do (even though I think the thought of death is kind of like the non-baby version of object permanence, and instead of being frightened and confused when something isn't present, we're just like, WHELP, thank god that's not real! And then we go about our lives, forgetting that death is waiting for all of us at the end), but I think I wonder about it with far more frequency than other people. The thing is, while I love being alive, and I am in no hurry to shuffle off this mortal coil, part of me hopes constantly that the afterlife is a peaceful kind of nothing.

I've been a ghost for the last nine years. For three years before that, I was a pretty persistent poltergeist. It sounds so melodramatic to define myself like that, but bear with me.

I left my daughter with her dad right before she turned two. The situation was rough, he was mentally abusive and domineering and controlling and AWFUL to me, though he loved our daughter, which, you know, cool. I was really young. 20. I had to bounce my way out of that life, because I knew I was drowning, and that made my ex happy, because he has his own host of problems, and at the end of the day, we were different people that had zero business being together. I couldn't bring my daughter with me, though. I had no money, and none of the people who would have opened up their homes to me would let me bring my daughter with me. For the record, this includes BOTH of my parents. Not my mother, or my father, would let me bring my daughter with me, despite making room for me. To my mom's credit, she wouldn't even let me stay with her, sans daughter or otherwise. Really, just my dad offered me a place to stay, but his wife wouldn't let me bring my daughter. Family is really cool. I had no idea what else to do, so I left, with the sole purpose of finding a job, finding an apartment, and bringing my daughter out to me, so I could do the whole young, single mom thing and not have to be without my daughter. To bring you up to speed, it didn't work out that way.

I think my daughter knows I exist, but I can't be sure. The last thing my daughter ever said to me was, "I hate you; goodbye means goodbye." She was five, and after she said that, I gave up fighting to share custody and visitation with her dad. She told me I wasn't her mom all the time, and in fairness to her, she wasn't raised to think I was. It dawned on me that as much as I wanted my daughter around and in my life and to be my family, she didn't. I've spoken about this at great length, with lots of moms and dads I know, and I almost always get the same reaction: "if it were MY kid....I would have kept fighting. Five is too young to know what's best." I get it. Parents think I'm a bad parent. It's cool. I think they're all ugly people with zero empathy, and probably weird genitals.

I have another biological kid now. He's turning ten this year. I tell him about his sister whenever he asks, but to him, she's a myth. This beautiful somebody that surely must exist out there, somewhere, but that he's pretty sure he's never going to be positive of her existence because he'll never get to meet her.

To her, her brother and I, her entire family, are a pack of ghosts. We exist. We are everywhere. Whether she wants us to exist or not, whether she knows about us or not, we're here. We check in on her. We do what we can to make sure she's happy and thriving, and it seems like she is. We follow her in the small ways we can, making sure nobody knows, making sure she doesn't know, because nobody likes ghosts. They're afraid of them, because it's scary to face something that you don't know anything about. None of us want her to be afraid of us. I don't want her to be afraid of me, but I lost that battle years ago (have you ever had to read about the horror stories other people tell your children about you, and how your children react? Nothing is quite as fun as finding out your child's step-parent and step-sibling told them that you, their biological parent, was going to steal them from their family. Nothing matches the joy of discovering that your kid is terrified to take her school bus because she thinks she's going to get kidnapped by you, or that she wets the bed when she has to talk to you. Not for anything you've done or said, either, but because the real monsters are sometimes the ones you're already living with, not the ones they warn you about).

We're here, lurking in the hard to find places, latching on to one person and silently watching her grow up, in leaps that span years. I've considered the fact that her dad and step-mom are my ghost. Perhaps even my daughter herself. I've noticed that in the years where we out ourselves as finding photos, finding tidbits, Facebook pages go private and dark, because we're not allowed to even silently access Rhyann's life. One, or all, of them, don't want us to (truly, we have been told this. During the custody proceedings, my daughter's father's step-dad let us know that when my daughter's dad and his wife...girlfriend...whatever...found out that he was sending my mother and myself photos of my daughter, he was no longer allowed in their home, so he couldn't share photo updates with us anymore) know what she looks like, or how she's doing. Part of me respects that. The other part of me knows that ghosts don't have to play by the rules. Ghosts have nothing but time, and are in no hurry. We can wait in the darkness forever.

I KNOW this is what being a ghost is like, because the last thirteen years have killed me. The weirdest part about being a ghost is, my daughter is the one haunting me. And I'm not quite sure how to reconcile that.

The lesbian sandwich museum

Every teenager has at least one brutally passionate love. The kind that's all consuming, blinding, and unyielding to distance, logic, and pesky obstacles like reality. For me, it was Richard Robinette. Name unchanged, as I'm not entirely sure my memory is giving it reliably. He was everything I wanted him to be...he was a little older, he seemed so cool, he was funny, and he was fucking tall. And he had freckles. A lot of them. I'm a sucker for freckles. And he was racist.

In my defense, I didn't know this until later on in our "relationship". Indefensibly, it didn't stick in my craw like it would now. We were talking on the phone one day while I was over at Amber's house, and of course, it was on speaker, because I was a teenage girl and it seemed appropriate to have zero privacy in such a situation. I cannot be clear what the conversation was about, but he dropped a line that rang to the tune of "I hate niggers". Amber and I, suitably shocked, looked at each other and Amber said, "uh, dude, my dad is fucking black." And Richard apologized profusely, walking back his statement to say he doesn't think that of ALL black people. Amber's dad isn't black, and I told him as much, and said he shouldn't say things like that. And that was that. No more, no less. We changed topics, and it was forgotten.

Recently, I've been changing the way I walk through the world. I've been examining my privilege in a very real way, and taking stock of how it's affected my day to day. My privileges are numerous. I am a white woman, college educated, straight, married to a man in the military (this is a position that, for some reason, affords a respect I will never understand), well read, middle class. I've always thought of myself as a person that believes in equality. And I do. But my actions barely reflected that ideal, and it remained a thing clutched close to my breast: a token symbol of my goodwill to all, and why I'm not a bad person. How can you be a bad person when you're not a racist? That's a rabbit hole. Don't fall in. Aside from that, I always felt proud of myself for being in the All Lives Matter camp, and seeing people equally. Believing that seeing color was a failing on everybody's part, and viewing the world through a gray lens that weighted judgment on action rather than skin tone, made me feel good.

It isn't enough now. It hasn't been enough for awhile.

My husband is Korean. The foxiest mother fucker on the planet. I've never been one for dating white men. They're not my type. Dan was a rare misstep for me, as I'm white enough for dozens of people, so I like to spice up my world with cultural diversity. When my husband moved to Texas and I begrudgingly dragged myself out here to be with him, we moved into a neighborhood far below our socioeconomic rung. Thankfully, he diversity in our neighborhood is great. It's mostly black and Hispanic, and I love that. My son moved out with us in June of last year, and his best friend is a kid named Sidney. Sidney has become our second son. He spends more time in our home than he does in his own, and from the second the boys are out of school on Friday, he's here until sundown Sunday. Sometimes later, if we have a late dinner. He has his own bed, his own stuff here, he calls me mom. And I love him like he's my own.

The day after Trump secured the electoral college votes, Sidney came home and said, "mom, am I going to have to go back to Africa?" Horrified, I looked at him and told him no. I wouldn't let that happen. He told me that a lot of people said that to him. In school that day. SCHOOL. He's an eleven year old little boy. Race was always an issue in the back of my mind until that moment. I was hit by something that never would have occurred to me otherwise: my whiteness shielded me from the truly nefarious parts of the reality of a Trump presidency. My privilege made it so I was upset that an incompetent, arrogant buffoon won instead of the most qualified candidate for the presidency, possibly to date. It kept me from really understanding what Trump's insidious language was inciting in others, and emboldening them to say and do to people who look like my other son. I had to hear it second hand, and even then, I was pulled down by the knowledge that I would still never, ever, EVER understand what that really felt like for him, and even the sadness and terror in his face falls short of what a curse it must feel like to be dealt a card you have no control over, and people hate you for it.

It's February, which means it's black history month. I've asked my boys every day who they learned about for black history, and every day, they tell me "nobody". And this breaks my heart. I've gone 24 days asking this question (minus weekends and holidays). I was going to wait until the end of the month, but I couldn't wait anymore. I emailed the head of my district for the state board of education. I asked him why there isn't a state approved curriculum for black history month, showing all of our children that people of color have contributed to America, and their contributions matter, and their voices count. It was a long email. I have yet to receive a response (I emailed him three days ago, to be fair. But that's three days in a full week). Today, I cornered the school principal in the parking lot and asked her why my boys were learning zilch about prominent black figures. What ensued was ten minutes of her blustering her way through placating me, a sad attempt at correctly recalling what the underground railroad was called, and ending with her frustrated "Go set an appointment in the office to talk to his teacher about why your boys are so confused". Which I will do tomorrow. This can't stand.

Something broke in me when Sidney asked me if he was going to go back to Africa. When the boys' other friend asked me if Trump was really going to bring back slavery, I promised them that absolutely not, the people I know are good people, and they don't want that, and we will never let such an ugly thing happen to anybody again.

I become less and less certain of that promise as each day goes by. Travel bans, border walls, bullshit propaganda tactics designed to divide and dismay. I tell myself we're supposed to be better than this, but the truth is, we're not. People cling to the comfortable issues that have the biggest impact on their life, and their struggle. Causes outside of that go largely unnoticed. I'm in no way trying to make myself a champion of human rights, or sound like some model citizen that knows better than everybody else, but it gets so god damn tiresome to see Facebook posts I make about something dealing with feminism get lots of love and comments and attention, and the comments I make about black lives matter rallies, or organizations designed to help people of color get through x, y, and z are ignored. Even by my husband, who answered my outrage today over black history being swept under the rug with a casual "nah, you're angry enough for both of us" when I asked him if he was upset over the afternoon's events.

It pisses me the fuck off.

I have a newly developed sense of resentment toward the robust group of feminists I made friends with on Facebook after Hillary Clinton lost (despite her note being my initial candidate, I voted for her because any vote not for her was a vote for Trump, and that shit wasn't going to happen if I could help it. Fat lot of good, but here we are), because the torches they carry are so fucking self serving. It seems impossible for them to carry more than one torch at a time, dropping the white feminism torch to pick up the flavor of the month when it comes along, and then ditching it as soon as the spotlight dims. There's room for all of the things, everybody. It's exhausting, but so is inequality.

I have two rallies coming up: one for black lives matter in Austin, and one protesting Corrections Corporation of America. I'll be asking for the women I find myself united with that also live here in Texas to join me. To join us. I feel like they're going to let me down.

Richard was a racist, and apologetically so. I feel like people test the waters of racism to see what they can get away with. I let him get away with it, and it is to my great shame that I couldn't just say, "hey, what the fuck, asshole, go fuck yourself with that bullshit talk", and I had to chastise him by way of a lie. To make him feel shame, and then walk it back myself with a gentle nudge in the right direction, and a fervent belief that was enough.

I've been a complicit racist my entire life. I can't fucking do it anymore. I have repulsed myself, and I am ashamed of people that haven't caught up yet. Ashamed, but hopeful. I am doing my best to break those walls down constantly, but it can be a struggle. Steffie and I will be doing our podcast on this very topic this week, and I don't want to get carried away here. But if you're reading this, and any of this sounds like a struggle you're familiar with, talk to me. Talk to everybody. It's important to talk about. The Jim Crow era is more alive and well than any of us would care to admit, it's just gotten really good at hiding itself under complacency and obliviousness and comfort zones.

Alone with the dream of a life

It's no secret to anybody that knows me that I'm a daddy's girl. I always have been. I'm 32, and I still call my dad "daddy". I haven't called my mom mommy since I was a teenager. In fact, I call her "mother" more often than anything else. I have pictures of me and my daddy when I was a little bitty girl on my desk.

There we are, totes adorbs!

A little known piece of trivia about me: had I been born a boy, my name would have been Phillip Gabriel Tucci. My dad is an intense Genesis fan, so the Phillip was for Phil Collins, and the Gabriel was for Peter Gabriel, and my mom was so glad I had a vagina.

Being the Genesis fan he was, my dad used to play Genesis for me when I was growing up. He played a lot of great music for me when I was younger...Oingo Boingo (Dead Man's Party is still one of my favorite songs), Duran Duran, Kate Bush, Suzanne Vega, Crowded House, all manner of great music that I still listen to and love. But Genesis was the most common.

No Genesis album got more play than Trick of the Tail. My dad played two songs for me more than anything of the other ones: Ripples, and Trick of the Tail. Even better, my daddy used to sing them to me. I would ask him to sing Trick of the Tail to me, because I loved to hear him sing, and sometimes, we didn't have access to a radio to play his tape. So I'd ask him to sing, and he'd sing, and I'd love him for it.

This went on for years. I remember telling my cousins Russell and Jeremy about the song, and that I loved it so much, and that I'd get my dad to play it for them.

As was common in my family, it wasn't long before Russell and Jeremy were spending a day with me and my dad, and when we all hopped into the car, I was quick to pull the trigger on asking my daddy to play Trick of the Tail for us all. My dad said he didn't have it with him, so I asked him to sing it instead. And he agreed, and started to sing.

Russell started laughing at my dad, and I remember my dad stopping his singing, shaking his head, and putting the car in reverse, leaving wherever it was we were. And my dad didn't sing the song anymore.

My dad doesn't have a classically good voice. I wouldn't even say my dad's voice is note worthy to anybody other than his daughter. I love listening to my dad sing, and it always makes me chuckle, but it's love that keeps me listening. I've poked fun at him from time to time, like hearing my dad sing Bob Dylan's "Isis" (it's a fucking hilarious treat, and it sends me into hysterics every time), but for the most part, I'll be sad when my dad stops singing for good. We all do, eventually.

I regret not telling Russell to shut up. I felt so much shame in that moment. Not for my dad, but for me. Because someone was laughing at something I'd previously found to be the most wonderful thing in the world. I wasn't embarrassed by my dad for his singing, but I was definitely confused. It was an eye opening moment for me...that my tastes were not universal.

I don't think my daddy remembers that car ride, but I do. We drive back to his house in silence, and when we got there, my dad put on a movie for us and went to his bedroom to read. I don't think he thought anything else of it, but maybe he did.

My dad didn't stop singing around me, but he didn't sing that song again. He moved on to Apollo Smile, a change I was thankful for. Genesis always makes me think of that day in the car where I didn't defend my daddy, who has almost always had my back. I'll have to ask him if he remembers.

Insubordinate...and churlish.

I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, when my dog started barking like an asshole. Three loud knocks on the door, and she's acting like someone is trying to cut my throat out, so I figure it must be the UPS guy.

And it was.

AND HE HAD A MRS. PRINDABLES DELIVERY FOR ME. MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

My very bestest friend in the world bought me the thing I had been coveting the longest: She bought me a Mrs. Prindables apple.

Check it:

Look at that sexy mother fucker. The photo is dark, but the apple is gorgeous, and oh my god, eating a piece was like tossing the salad of the lord hisownself. Because holy shit. It was fucking DELICIOUS.

Sidenote: I am fully aware that this is far from vegan. I know. I KNOW. But two things are important to note here:

Number one, it's a Mrs. Prindables apple, and even the most staunch of people can forget their morality and dietary restrictions to indulge in something they've been coveting for over 25 years;

Number two, go fuck yourself.

I must describe to you what was as close to a near death, religious, out of body experience as I will probably ever have.

I unwrapped the apple and marveled at its heft, because it's a very solid thing. There is no banana for scale here, but that apple is easily half the size of my head. According to the box, it weighs three pounds. That's ALL apple. I giggled to myself in disbelief, because I was unwrapping a fuckin' Mrs. Prindables. I never thought I would. As the last bit of cellophane peeled off, I laughed again, and made some kind of squealing noise. There's no approximation for it.

I brought it to the table, picked my most beautiful knife, and, after about ten minutes of debating if I even wanted to ruin the beauty, I did. I sliced into it, and it was magical. The chocolate flaked off into little miracle sized pieces, and the apple smell hit me immediately, and how do things like this happen?

I sliced the half into four gorgeous slices, and I really did just stare at them for a couple of minutes. They were gorgeous. The bright green of the apple, the inviting warmth of the golden caramel, the chocolate layer, and the fat stripes of white and milk chocolate hugging my treat seemed unreal. At least, unreal in my kitchen.

I almost didn't want to eat it. I went through a thousand arguments in my head. What if it's gross? This isn't vegan, Drea, and what if it's gross? What if  it's good, but not that good? What if it's just an apple covered in stuff and it tastes a little bit like you need to go to the dentist tomorrow?

I took a bite.

I ate the rest of the slice. With my eyes closed.

Savoring.

When I got married, there was a small moment when the world stopped, and it hung in place for a microsecond, and all of it belonged to me. And I don't mean my big showy wedding, I mean my legal marriage. At the DMV, in a plain dress, with all of the hubub of dozens of impatient people buzzing behind me. I remember signing the paper, and in the moment between signing and squeezing my husband's hand, physics weren't real, and it was just us, and that was all that mattered.

I love my husband a lot, but that moment was magnified by at least ten fold when I ate that apple slice. Just me, my apple slice, and my mouth orgasm, alone in a universe without rules or limits.

WHAT THE FUCK.

The secret to time travel is somewhere in the molecular structure of these apples, I fuckin' swear it is. Because nothing in the world is that pure and amazing.

I lovingly put the remainder of my apple in a ziploc bag, put it in the fridge, and had to immediately sit down and catch my breath.

This is not hyperbole, this is how the moments played out in my head. Like an edible melodrama.

Perhaps this seems silly to anybody reading it. It didn't feel silly to me. It was a wonderful gift, from my very best friend in the entire wide world.

 See? That's love, right there.

Wait until she sees what I bought her.

The rhythm really IS going to get me. Just kidding, it won't. I'm white!

The drive from my apartment in Texas to my house in Colorado takes 12.5 hours if you drive the suggested speeds, and about 11 hours if you do it my way, which is illegal, but recommended if expediency is your thing. Even with the three or four stops I have to make (I made six on my last go to....because I REALLY had to fucking pee. A lot), I make excellent time. Eleven hours is still quite the trek of time to be alone with nothing but my repetitive Spotify playlist and my thoughts. After hearing the same five Maroon 5 songs in the span of an hour....seriously, Spotify, what the FUCK is your algorithm like if thirteen hours of music means playing the same twenty five songs for thirteen hours instead of changing it up...it becomes more interesting to talk to yourself.

I thought a lot about my childhood this go around. Not out of some burst of nostalgia, but because I was curious to know where I had exceeded young me's expectations, and where I had failed young me, and where I had diverted off of the expected trajectories into bizarre and unfamiliar territory.

Young me had a lot of ambitions. First and foremost, I wanted to be Madonna. I think I succeeded at that, because I am also old, irrelevant, and pretty fucking desperate to be considered cool. Score one for me.

I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was younger, too. I feel a little bit slighted by Barbie, because Barbie's coolest profession when I was a kid was Ice Princess, and while my frosty bitchiness certainly earns me an Ice Queen title more often than not, Barbie never stood for the kinds of jobs I wanted like she does know. Barbie DID go on to leave her Ice Dancing behind to pursue the sciences, and I commend her for that. Perhaps I would be a veterinarian now if Barbie had been a bit more progressive and not so into the liberal arts when I was a kid. Then again, I was ATROCIOUS to poor Barbie when I was younger. Barbie always got the real bad shakedown from her husband, Ken. Ken was working out some deep anger issues about his Ken parts, and he beat the piss out of Barbie instead of talking to therapist Barbie (who still doesn't exist. If Mattel would read ANY of my letters of suggestion...) and working it out like a normal person. Maybe Barbie and I are even.

The first REAL desire I remember having concerning what I'd be when I was a beautiful grown up (I always assumed I'd be beautiful. Don't let little me know how hard I fucked that shit up, please. She'd be devastated) was wanting to be a Rockette. I watched them every Christmas, and I bitched and whined about dance lessons until I got them, because that's what I wanted to be. I tell people I wanted to be a ballerina, but it's not true. I wanted to do high kicks in a line in Rockefeller Center.

That wasn't just a childhood dream, either. That extended into my young adulthood, and sharing it was embarrassing. But then, in the late nineties, dancing became THE thing to do in the music scene. Fucking music. Who would have thought that music and dancing would be so radical together? Fucking everybody, but shut up. When boy bands and pop princesses made dancing fresh and awesome (sorry, Michael Jackson), I thought to myself, "holy fuck, this is it! YOU CAN BE A BACK UP DANCER!" Because I set the bar high enough to be in the spotlight, but low enough that my cripplingly low self esteem didn't have to answer to the media and the public at large. I danced all the time. It's all I wanted to do. There are HOURS of video of me dancing and singing, and I really fucking hope they've been taped over, or lost in a fire, or thrown down a garbage disposal (somehow) and torn to shreds, because...here's the thing...

I am wildly uncoordinated, and also chubby, and neither of those things is conducive to looking smooth and awesome when dancing.

I lack grace, both physically and socially, and my love of music and dancing does not transcend my inability to move like I have rhythm. Really, I look like a blob of gelatin that someone rolled around on the floor and then poked a lot to get it to wiggle. If you put that shit to music, that's what I look like on any dance floor.

There are pictures of me dancing at my wedding, and holy fuck, do I regret them. Thank god they're not moving pictures, because I would ask for my money back from my photographers.

An inability to dance is sadly inherent, and I see this in my son all the time. He and his best friend like to dance, and my son looks like a sloth choking on a hot dog when he boogies. It's this weird, jerking, depressing movement that he transfers into...I don't know...some kind of shimmy. Of course, I would never in a million years tell him this. He loves to dance, just like I did. Just like I do. I bought pointe shoes a couple of months ago, and late at night, when nobody is awake to embarrass me over it, I put them on, and I dance in them. Poorly, painfully, and with all the suave grace of a decayed pineapple, but still, I dance.

Gloria Estefan promised me that the rhythm was going to get me. Tonight. So many tonights have come and gone, and I have not been gotten by the rhythm. Gloria and Barbie have some explaining to do.