emotions

How many of you are blamers? Or married to a blame? Or were raised by a major blamer?
Show of hands, please. Uh-huh, I thought so.

I had a boss for almost twenty years who was a blamer and it drove. me. nuts. He was a shamer too. I’m convinced blame and shame are siamese twins, but that’s just me. Let’s see what the expert, Brene Brown has to say about blame in this short, funny and insightful video.

As for me? I’m not a blamer, I’m an “I told you so-er”.
I have to bite my tongue not to say in some way, shape or form, “I told you so” to my husband like, forty-five thousand times a day.
Seriously.
Like today. He saved all of his outdoor tasks for this morning. The morning we were ALL warned that El Nino was going to hit us like well, like a big, fat, super soggy storm full of really wet rain.

And like the shining example of good wifery that I am, I reminded said husband of his shitty decision making,choices, —timing, before I left for the gym and it was only drizzling.

But alas, he waited until the REAL rain hit to empty the dog poop can into the main garbage bin, get the dead Christmas tree out to the curb for pick-up, and fiddle (fix in man-speak), with the sump-pump (all of which we talked about just yesterday), and then sent me a text and left evidence (wet pants in the shower), of how soaked he got. (Who is surprised here? What woman is the least bit surprised by this?)

See how I did that? Never once did you hear me say I told you so. I wanted to. So very, very, badly.
My tongue has permanent grooves.

Listen, I don’t want to tell Brene how to run her social media, but I think that needs to be her next video.

The seemingly repressed but clearly expressed I told you so.

What do you guys think? (That’s for you, Jim)

Love, soggy in Studio City
Carry on,
xox

Here it is, my first Huffington Post of 2016!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-bertolus/its-a-new-yearbe-audaciou_b_8905344.html

This is a re-worked essay from back when Moses was a kid (some of you old farts may remember it because you lived it with me), that talks about that moment when I finally realized, with every fiber of my being, that I couldn’t stand to be “left” by a man one-more-time.

So, I searched and searched for what I wanted to feel.

Loved? They all said they loved me but love wears a different hat with each guy so…I was thinkin’ no, not loved, apparently love wasn’t enough for them to stay.

How about respected? Oh sure, I wanted to feel respected by a man and I’m not saying I wasn’t. It’s just that respect doesn’t give you ooglies (that indescribably warm feeling that starts in your kishkes and eventually makes its way to your lady parts). I know it should—but it doesn’t and if it does for you—then you’re a better woman than I.

There was something else. Some key ingredient that was missing.

Finally, after an exhaustive search of my emotional inventory I found the word for how I wanted to feel but that word embarrassed me. It had alluded me because it felt like too much.
It felt audacious and a little dangerous to ask for it—but at that point what did I have to lose?

I wanted to be adored by a man. I wanted him to look at me the way I look at the waiter when he sets down a warm, gooey dessert in front of me with only ONE spoon.

With pure, unadulterated adoration.

And it worked!

It’s a New Year you guys! I say Go for it. Make this your most audacious year EVER!
xox

*This is a favorite from several years ago. I’m actually proud of this one. It has depth and each word has hidden meaning. I love it.
Understanding mastery. An Oxymoron I suppose.
This one’s for all the new people here at the blog.
xox

A Master is the one who walks through the chaos and knows the answer.
A Master is the only one awake in the dream.

He is the silent sentinel.
He is solid as stone,
and flexible as willow.
He carries the key to every door.

A Master holds the secret, like the ace in a winning hand of cards,
but shows no expression.

A Master yells his message into the raging winds.
A Master stays cool in the heat of battle,
and warm under the iciest gaze.

A Master is the one who shall forevermore be called friend by his enemies.

A Master cries like a child at the death of innocence.
A Master is the one who walks thru fire to show the way.
A Master only sighs at night when the earth is still and it feels like rain.

I don’t know about you guys but I neeeeeeed this right now and what better way to be reminded than by a hedgehog driving a car.
I can relate…because I probably look like a hedgehog honking at everything that moves these days.
AND I’ve decided I want all of my reminders animated and delivered by hedgehogs.
Okay? Are we clear?

Carry on
xox

Nobody likes a bragger.
Or a holier-than-thou-cow.
Or a mime, or a scary clown. Nobody.
Am I Right?

How do we feel about magic?
We LOVE magic!

And surprises? Well…we tolerate surprises. Especially the ones we really don’t know about which are few and far between because of our control issues, but that’s another story.

Tuesday I was visited by some real life surprise tuxedo magic!
I know! Tuxedo magic.
Not to be confused with a magician in a tuxedo.
You guys—freaking tuxedo MAGIC.

Hubby and I were invited to a New Years Eve party which is as rare as a unicorn sighting but add to that the fact that it is BLACK TIE.
Ohhhhhh F.A.N.C.Y.
And completely out of our wheelhouse until they start making plaid flannel formal wear. Then we’re down for it.

Anyhow, we really like the people who invited us and we have met and actually approve of their friends (which is even rarer than a freaking unicorn—it is struck by lightning while wearing the Hope Diamond, rare), so we RSVP’d and then promptly forgot about the fact that we had to rustle up formal wear until…Tuesday.

It’s called denial. Deal with it.

Raphael’s tux was easy peasy. We rented it lock, stock, and shiny shoes in twenty minutes flat.
It was a no-brainer and he’s going to look stunning.

My outfit was going to be another story.
I fantasized about wearing the gown I was married in which isn’t a typical wedding dress, it’s a gorgeous gown that is begging for a second go-around, but that was fifteen years and ten, fifteen, twenty-ish pounds ago when my boobs resided in another zip code much farther north than they do now so I couldn’t even bring myself to try it on.

I like to avoid masochistic situations and when your Spanx tell you there’s no hope—well, you should listen.

In my imagination, (that vivid, lying scoundrel that lives inside my head), I toyed with the idea of wearing a tuxedo myself.
Not the Victor/Victoria woman in a boys tux sort of thing, no, I wanted the YSL straight from the runway, sexy-ass tuxedo Kourtney Kardashian rocked at her mother’s 60th birthday bash.
At a 90% discount. So something exactly like it but completely different.

I talked about it. I asked some people. I made some calls. There was snort-laughing and I wasn’t the one laughing so it wasn’t funny.  I decided to drop it.

As my dad used to say: “People want ice water in hell”.
Picture me standing naked and thirsty in hell begging for water, some ice, and a designer tuxedo.
Got it?
That was me the past couple of weeks—sadly misguided by an active asshole of an imagination.
We ALL know this is never going to happen.

In the midst of all this malarkey, I happened to glance across the street one day at a second-hand store. Something shiny was in the window. Something that would be perfect to wear New Years if I had the arms, legs, and body of a pipe cleaner.

Still, it stuck in my mind that a second-hand store could be my fancy wardrobe salvation.

So I waited until the last-minute, you know like you do.

Tuesday my trusty stylist and brutally honest friend Kim and I met at Wasteland.

The place smelled like hope and teen spirit and after ten minutes of pawing through dreck, Kim found the designer rack.
Little known fact: Heaven provides special, luminous spotlighting for designer racks at second-hand stores. I can’t explain it. It just does.
That spotlight led Kim directly to a black designer jacket. A tuxedo jacket. Then the matching pants. In my size you guys, I kid you NOT!

Listen. Can you hear the angels singing? (Sometimes a miracle comes with its own soundtrack.)

My heart was pounding as I raced to the dressing room fully aware of the truly miraculous nature of this find, and hoping that it wasn’t a two glass of wine and too much cheese-induced dream.

My boobs perked up. Even my Spanx were hopeful.

And it fit.
Like it was made for me. AND it was 90% cheaper than the original price. (So cheap it was FREE!) Surprise!
Even Kim, my wry, side-eye-wise-guy stylist/friend called it. Tuxedo perfection.

It was my end of the year, surprise, magical tuxedo miracle! In Studio City California for the love of God.

Note to self: If I can manifest a designer tuxedo for no money in Wasteland. Then I can manifest the “hard stuff”. I can make my own magic!

So I say dream big. Wish for a freaking designer tux to show up. Go ahead, do it! Then keep your eyes open because it’s likely to show up in the most unlikely place possible.

Happy Magical New Year and Carry on,
xox

Goddamn, I love rituals. Beginnings and endings. Marking time. Rites of passage.

I figure that love seeped into my DNA after sitting in a smokey Catholic church inhaling Frankincense for pretty much my entire youth (it may also explain a ton of other crazy attributes I’d rather not go into).
What it DOES explain is my obsession with incense, focused prayer, incantations, and human sacrifice. Well, that and the fact that I’m certain I had a past life as some kind of mystical druid sorceress taken right out of the pages of Mists Of Avalon.
Or better yet, Merlin.
But more likely the medieval court jester who wore a silly hat, sported pointy shoes with bells and lived under a bridge with the trolls.

Anyhow, I decided to take everything that had to do with my failed business and burn it.
A perfectly legal Ritual Sacrifice. Of paperwork. Paperwork that held power over me.

2015 was the year of dealing with paperwork. I would have rather had a root canal without Novocaine.
I finally found it in me to throw what merchandise remained into an auction and dissolve the corporation which had been insolvent for several years but had retained a kind of sick sentimental place in my heart—like a shitty high-school boyfriend or a threadbare flannel nightgown.

I basically broke up with ATIK. It was time. Actually, it was way past time.

The relationship had become unbalanced. In a nutshell, it had become completely, horribly and totally dysfunctionally one-sided. I was doing all the emotional heavy lifting, holding the history of our love together while Atik went on an extended five-year vacation with a stripper named Trixie, forgetting my name and the fact that we once meant the world to each other.
Oh well, shit happens.

Once the litigation shitastrophy dust had settled I was left with a HUGE satchel that I’d been toting around for years filled with tons and tons of legal fuckery.
It was heavy in all the ways you can imagine and others you cannot. It lived in a shed in the backyard as physically far away from me as sadistic legal paperwork feels comfortable and even though it’s my office— I seldom went back there. I hated that thing.

So I decided to burn the contents as a ritual releasing of the old dragged-behind-a-car energy of 2009-2012 in order to move on.

2016—The Year of Unbearable Lightness. Burn that shit and get on with it!

So I did.

I had to let it go. Stop life-support. Kill it. Put us both out of our misery.

Time of death of Atik Inc. 12 p.m. December 26, 2015.

After quickly going through the toxic waste of debauchery to make sure I wasn’t, in my haste to dance naked in the flames, torching something important, I started the gas in my fireplace, set my intention “DO NOT EVER Darken My doorstep with your toxic bullshit AGAIN!” (I cleaned that up. It was much worse than that).

And then I said thank you to the worst thing that has EVER happened to me for all of the valuable insights and gifts it has delivered. I really did you guys but it’s taken me six years to get there.

Then I squealed with unabashed joy as I watched it go up in smoke. All of it.

My husband came in from outside and said the smoke smelled really bad. Oh, I bet it did.

That paperwork held so much sadness and failure and hopes dashed. It was filled with terse language and mean words. Horrible words. Words that cut me to the core. Words that human beings should never say to each other. Mad words. Words filled with rage wrapped in legalese.

I’m surprised the smoke didn’t get all Voldemort and come back inside the house and strangle me. I’m telling you, that was a satchel full of failure and it wanted to finish me.

But, I have already risen from the ashes—I am FREE.

I may have a had a little help with my pyro-ritual. There may have been a fellow recovering broken-hearted soul who was throwing his/her “annus horribilis” into the fire right beside me.

So now WE are free.

I cannot recommend this ritual highly enough.
Please, please consider doing this with anything toxic from your past. You don’t need a fireplace! I did it many years ago to free myself from a relationship whose grip I could not escape. I just put a large metal pot in the kitchen sink and lit a match burning all the old photos and letters. Many years later I did it again in my backyard on a rainy night (you may remember that post).
http://www.theobserversvoice.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1877&action=edit

Fire is healing.
Smoke is healing.
Endings are healing.
Rituals are healing.
Starting a new year feeling lighter is healing AND freeing.

And I’ve come to realize I’m a bit of a pyromaniac.

Love you all & Carry on,
xox

Ruby supervises the process about half-way through.

*This is a…wait for it…a reprise from a thousand years ago. And in this moment, it feels apropos.

I’m reticent (translate to too chicken) to put REPRISE in the title anymore. I’ve been informed that most of you (at least the vocal majority), hate reprises. “I don’t want to re-read things I’ve already read” my brother snarked at me this week. “I mean I get that you might need a break every now and then, but breaks are for lightweights”.
Shit. That’s harsh. Tough crowd.
He doesn’t like it when I ask questions at the end either. “Okay, now you guys weigh in—what do YOU think” he sneers in a sarcastic tone that has me snort laughing my coffee and flipping him off at the same time. “It’s YOUR blog, YOU’RE giving the advice. YOU tell us what we should think!”
So, please excuse me while I chase him around the kitchen flicking him with a wet dish towel and then give him an atomic wedgie.
I’m giving the rest of  y’all a hug right now with a warm blanket made of bacon.
Mmmmmmmmmm…
carry on,
xox

On those days when you’re finding fault with EVERYTHING— the sky isn’t the right Tiffany Box shade of blue and the air conditioning is blowing too cold—how do you get yourself out of it? (hee hee, he’s seething right now).
Do you, at some point realize your ridiculousness and slap yourself across the face to snap out of it?
Or do you marinate in the fact that you’re so contrary that if George Clooney sat down beside you you’d tell him he needed a haircut and an Altoid?

I know you know when you’re being an ass – because I know it when I am.

We wake up every day and there are two sides of the bed on which to get up.
The sunny side or the dark side; the right side or the wrong side.

The question I’m asking is this: if, by some cruel twist of circumstances and hormones you put your feet on the floor when you wake up in the land of EVERYTHING’S WRONG, do you indulge and make those around you miserable, or do you do your damnedest to climb out? ( I really wanna know!)

I’ve done both. I DO both. Guilty as charged in the court of Nit & Pick.

These dark days do not come naturally to me, but when I’m under their spell – watch out – and know that I DO know what an asshat I’m being, I just can’t help myself right. this. minute.
So sorry.

Not really.

The kitchen looks the same as it did two days ago when I was feeling so grateful but today the bright summer sunshine is lighting up a couple of places that have chipped white paint. Instead of making it look charming and cozy it looks like a family of badgers had a drunken pinata party, then had trouble with the bat, (as badgers do), and turned the place into a badger-shithole.

Along those lines, the wine stains on the wood countertops that were just faded purple reminders of a really fun party last summer, have today, (wrong side of the bed day) become my reason for seriously entertaining throwing a grenade behind me and shutting the door, giving us the opportunity for a fresh start.

You’re welcome Honey, what can I say, I’m a giver.

Don’t tell me I’m acting like an idiot when I am—because that’s like taking a high-pressure hose of lighter fluid and spraying it on a fire.

I KNOW I AM. IM WORKING IT OUT.

But I will deny it….with my dying breath I will tell you I’m “fine.”
I’m sorry if your feelings and our kitchen have become collateral damage. If you want to survive this:
Don’t make eye contact and DON’T try to hug me. I have a fork in my hand.

The best strategy in the past has been to isolate myself for a while. Take a lovely walk outside in nature (I can’t today, with the heat index and the humidity, it feels like The Tropic of Cancer.)

Meditation is a good way to snap back into a loving place along with exercise. Neither of those has worked, so I’m still marinating.

Hormones, I’m blaming hormones.
I remember feeling this out of sorts during puberty, but the Good Lord had the common sense to deal me that hand when I wasn’t old enough to marry, operate heavy machinery or carry a firearm.
Whatever shall I do now? (Calm down Jim, that was rhetorical).

The trick for me is listening to my own words as they spill uncensored from my lips.
If they make even me cringe, I need to make a correction.
I need to shut up and realize I’m acting like an ass.
Is that what you do? (*snort)

Try it.
Just listen to yourself. Step up and out of your body as you berate the waiter or the lady at Ralph’s or your husband.

If every other word is a critique or fuck, chances are you’re having THAT kind of day. Or you’re channeling me.

Sometimes, what I hear myself say is so vile it makes me laugh, which then breaks the spell. Or it makes the recipient so mad they chase me around with a taser and I have to make a break for it AND get some cardio in at the same time which is just a win/win. Two birds—one stone.

If that doesn’t work puh-leeze do everyone, including yourself a favor.
Do what I do. Don’t speak TO ANYONE, go to bed early, and before you go to sleep say a little prayer for a better disposition, less facial hair and a better tomorrow.

Love you anyway,
Xox

I told myself I wasn’t going to “work”. I could lay off the writing for a week. Just seven short days, right? Take notice of my exotic surroundings without my head buried in a computer?

Note to self: No head burying. Be present. Take it ALL in.

Wrongo. Add this to the looming list of other lies I’ve told myself. And promises I’ve broken. To me.

But I can’t help it! (said in the voice of a whining five-year-old).

Here’s the thing you guys and I’m betting, with all my chips on the table, that YOU are a lot like me.

I came to this glorious place to unwind—to free my spirit. But it’s making me sad. My spirit is unbounded—but sad. I’m going to bed sad. Okay, maybe a little buzzed too, but most definitely sad.
And I’m waking up…sad.

In fucking paradise!
How is that possible?
What in the hell is my problem? This should at the very least be a misdemeanor, right?

I don’t like it when my emotions are mismatched inappropriately to a situation. Like that time I laughed hysterically all the way home after being fired or acted chirpy, grateful and giddy when our dog died suddenly.

It makes me profoundly curious—and deeply suspicious. What’s the back-story here? Wtf is going on?
Wait. Am I alone here? Does that happen to you?

For three days I’ve “observed” the feelings. I’ve “observed” the shit out of them.
Huh. I said over and over. Huh. Sad in paradise. That’s just not right. Someone should take away my humanity card.

Then my head started to hurt.
Huh. Look at that. Headaches in paradise. Clearly I’m a hopeless case.
You guys, I’m an ungrateful, whining, hopeless case of a sad-sack.

Finally, after many hours of contemplation and tons of Advil, I figured it out. Duh. (not the sharpest tool in the shed either).

I was sad and my head ached from all of the unexpressed ideas I was having!
My brain was overflowing with inspiration, but I had made a pact with myself to simply enjoy my vacation unencumbered by my compulsion to write.

The thing is, I usually write the ideas down in the moment they occur. Which was waaaay more often than even I realized.
I grab any random scrap of paper, candy wrapper, gum wrapper, fast food wrapper (you get the idea). Or, I dictate these flashes of brilliance, these nuggets of wonderfulness into my phone.
“The color orange is my new religion” or “I am just the toaster.”

I know. I KNOW! Don’t revolt now. At least wait until the end.

You see, that’s how posts like this one get started, and if I don’t get the ideas out of my head they pile up. My brain becomes constipated and I get a whopper of a headache. And I get sad. And bitchy.
It’s a blessing and a curse. What can I say?

I Can’t Always Just Write. I Want to Live My Life Too!

“Aren’t you supposed to be basking in the Mexican sun?” my dear friend Steph asked me after receiving my third snarky email in a row. And a video. I sent her a hilarious YouTube video. From Mexico. The poor thing had become my only outlet for all things creative—and funny.

This morning over coffee. Coffee in paradise. I informed my sweet and patient husband that I would be finding a cabana by the pool, someplace in the shade so I don’t melt, and I would be writing.

All damn day.

Someplace where I can look up and admire my surroundings, take a moment to express my immense gratitude to the Universe, and then write my face off.

Just the thought of that made me giddy.

Here I am, ratting myself out to all of you—again, and I don’t even care. Not a flinch. I actually have a gigantic smile on my face.

Personal epiphany: Writing is not work to me. It is an integral part of my life.
A part I cannot ignore or push aside (who knew?). It fuels my soul. It makes me deliriously, ridiculously happy.
Happier than paradise.
Well played but…Sorry paradise.

What makes you sad if you don’t allow yourself to just fucking “do it?”

Carry on,
xox

I was rushing. Running to meet friends for lunch. I’m you. I’m attempting to fit 700 hours of mindless, holiday bullshit (and some fun), into 24.

I was rushing. Running late ( y’all know how I feel about punctuality). I missed one parking spot. The prime one. The meter right in front of the restaurant. Inside my car, there could be heard a string of obscenities mixed with Christmas carols. That’s wrong isn’t it? Sacrilegious somehow. Nevertheless…I circled around in my brand new car, cursing and FaLaLa-ing my way around the block.

Ah Ha!
Success!
A spot down the street with minutes to spare. I stopped, getting into position to parallel park.
As I watched the cars zipping by me, waiting for the opportunity to back into the spot, I could feel my patience leaving me like a leaky balloon.

“Come on, come ooooooooon!”

There was a pedestrian running along the sidewalk eyeballing the street for a break in the traffic and his opportunity to jay-walk.

Meanwhile, for some unknown reason, the traffic in the lane next to me suddenly screeched to a halt. Rushing. We were all rushing somewhere.

That’s when the motorcycle sideswiped my car. My brand new car. The car filled with foul-mouthed impatience. And Michael Buble.

I felt the jostle at the back of the car at the same time I heard the deafening sound of my side-view-mirror exploding right next to my face. Violently. Loudly. A million pieces flying in every direction.

The motorcycle, in order to miss becoming a splat on the back of the car next to me, veered in between us. Except there wasn’t enough room. As her bike got squirrelly—because she was rushing—the left side of my car took the brunt.

The pedestrian hit the deck as a piece of mirror whizzed past his head.

Stunned and in shock, I slowly turned down the radio. In a situation like this Celine Dion singing “This is The Special Time” is definitely NOT the soundtrack you want playing in the background. After checking to make sure the man with the quick reflexes was uninjured,(which we accomplished with a combination of mime and wild, wide-eyed facial expressions), I zipped around the corner to find the motorcyclist.

I had seen her hobble the injured bike onto an adjacent side street where she was now walking in circles, helmet off, obviously shaken up.

I ride motorcycles. I know that fear, that rush of adrenaline that accompanies a close-call.

We hugged. We checked the damage. Mine was moderate. Purely cosmetic.
Hers was minor except for the loss of her handbrakes. That sucked. That left her with unrideable transportation. A bike dead in the water.

We called our husbands. That call sucks ass.
“Hi Babe, Yeah, I had an accident thingy with the car..”
“Are you ok? Is everyone okay?” You can feel the concern.

We exchanged all of the appropriate info. I was late, REALLY late for lunch. She was going to miss work altogether.

Rushing.
We‘re all rushing, rushing, rushing around like headless chickens right now. You can feel it in the energy.
It’s chaotic and buzzy, frantic and fuzzy. We’re distracted. Nobody is looking where they’re going.
I got it. AFTER I received my Universal slap across the face. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but you can bet now we’re BOTH paying attention.

Let’s all Slooooooooow Dooooooown.

The lives we save may be our own.

Carry on,
But not too fast, I want you all around for at least another year!
xox

I’m going to rat myself out. Tell on my bad self. Tattle, like that snotty little kid back in grade school who thought he was the boss of everybody.

Well, I AM the boss of me and I’m here to tell you—I struggled with Shame on Saturday. Big Time.

I have to fess up because we talk about shame so much on this blog—how on earth could I look at myself in the mirror if I acted like it never touched MYlife.
Of course, it does! It’s not on the menu everyday—but more often than I’d like to admit.

What kind of whatever I am (blogger, advice giver, sister, friend, wife, nosey posey) would I be if I kept this to myself?

Now, there are numerous types of shame, many which I’ve experienced and some, by the grace of God, I have not.

This was not registered sex-offender shame, nor was it young divorcee or I wore a penguin costume to work on the wrong day shame.

This was familiar to me. Similar to bathing suit dressing room shame, only different.
Oh yeah, I knew this Shame.

We became intimately acquainted ( it slept with me most nights) during the year or so my store struggled financially—and every year since then it comes around less and less, but there are exceptions.
Trigger situations.
Believe me, I can still recognize Shame even with a different face and better shoes because it continues to wear that same cheap cologne and shit-eating grin.

Let me explain.
I have a ten-year-old car with almost 95,000 miles on it. It is not some piece-of-shit clunker with a bumper held on with masking tape. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had one of those. But this is different. It’s been meticulously maintained by yours truly and it’s one of those German Imports, a classy tank.

I’ve mentioned several, well maybe not several, is several more than three? Okay, then three. I’ve mentioned maybe three times that I wish it had Bluetooth, you know, for my phone. There, I admit to a tinge of Bluetooth envy. But never in a million years did I ever say:
“God, I hate my car, what a colossal piece of shit, I wish it was better, I need a new car!”

So, are we clear?

My current car is perfectly lovely. I could even go out on a limb and say it would be a lot of people’s dream car.

Shame. Oof. I can smell its strong cologne already.

Being that my car was getting close to having one hundred thousand miles on it, my husband, the car guy, gear head numero uno, began to ask me what car I thought I’d like next. My answer most times was: the Same car just newer I guess. The other times I told him I was perfectly happy with my existing car.

“What color would you get IF you were to get a new car?” he baited me.
“Blue, dark blue with tan interior.”
I chose that combination mostly because it is almost impossible to find. It would take him months and months to come up with a car in that combination.

I kept the New Car Shame at bay—or so I thought.

Thursday he emailed me a car at a local dealership fitting that exact description.
Shit.
“Let’s go check it out on Saturday” he suggested.

That is my husband’s ideal day. Vehicle shopping. Add a steak dinner and a nice bottle of wine to that and he could die a happy man.
I loath shopping for a car, besides, I really thought the one I was driving was just fine, Thank you very much.
But my mouth overrode my brain—it does that a lot. “Okay,” I agreed.

Now you’re all thinking oh, boo-hoo, he wants to buy you a nice new car. Where’s the problem? Quit your whining!
Well, that’s what I told myself all the way down to the dealership. But as we all know, logic and reason are no match for Shame.
Shame kicks their asses every damn time.

After we looked at it and I sat in it and even gave it a test spin, my husband eyeballed me with that “Let’s take it” look I know so well.

I froze. I stammered and stuttered, staring off into space, my eyes spinning in their sockets and I’m sure it appeared to the gregarious salesman as if I’d suddenly suffered a stroke.
“Can you give us a few minutes,” my husband asked after he observed my bizarre behavior, sending the salesman back into the showroom to stew in suspense.

I could feel the hot river of shame burn in my veins as it replaced all the blood in my body.
I observed it. I named it. I even cursed it. Well, duh!

I wanted to shout I’m feeling Ashamed! at the top of my lungs so it would crawl out of the shadows and dissipate.
That’s what happens when you acknowledge Shame. It leaves. I can only exist if it’s kept a secret.
But it had inhabited me so completely at that point I could barely gather my thoughts. A sinister voice had taken over the Pollyanna Land that normally resides inside my brain, spoon-feeding me well-disguised bullshit.

It was a sickening, sad, and sorry case of New Car Shame.

Now, I could get lost in the minutia of this moment and how horrible it all felt. I could do that. It’s kinda what I do. How my right eyelid was twitching compulsively and it suddenly felt like all the saliva had left my mouth. How everything went into slow-motion, like walking through deep water on stilts.

What? I think he’s talking to me. What’s he saying?

“What’s wrong with you? Isn’t this what you want?” he asked, not used to seeing me frozen and silent.

This man is a good man.
He is incredibly generous with me. Probably too generous. (See there it is).

Here’s what I SAID—out loud—remember? No more secrets.

“I don’t currently have a job that brings in any money. I don’t pull my own weight. At the moment, our relationship is financially lopsided and unbalanced. You are literally supporting me—for now. ( I always have to add that). Who am I to have a new car? Such a nice new car? (the rabbit hole was in sight). This is all making me extremely uncomfortable. Why are we doing this? Why are YOU doing this?”

Now, here’s what I was THINKING—thanks to that piece of shit, Shame:
You shouldn’t reward me for not working. You don’t gift an unemployed writer a snazzy new car. That comes later. Let me PROVE my worth. Let me drive my existing car into the ground. Let me wait until the bumper is held on by masking tape. I don’t deserve a new car. Not one so nice. Not This car. Especially not this car.

That is a veritable Molotov cocktail of Shame. And I was throwing it back like a barfly.

So there. I’m ratting myself out. I went there, to that dark place of unworthiness. I was So freaking ashamed of myself.

“You are the hardest working unemployed person I know”, he said looking me straight in the eye which was made difficult by the fact that mine were spinning and I had started to wander, walking in circles to clear my head.

“You have manufactured a writing career out of thin air, which you work tirelessly on EVERYDAY. That has not gone unnoticed by me.”

He was right goddammit! I have so many irons in the fire these days that my fire is full. You couldn’t squeeze another iron in that fire if you tried.

“And explain to me what in God’s name any of this has to do with a car. You need a new car for MY peace of mind.”

Shame triggers. They make no sense.
They are ridiculous and if you try to sidestep them like I did, YOU look ridiculous.

So there you have it—my story of New Car Shame, and how it ALMOST won. I have named it so many times and now I’ve written about it so it must skulk away, back into the shadows, preferably back to hell— because it is my wish to be free.

Do you have a Shame story to share?

Carry on,

xox