hopeless

If I could wish anything for you guys, I would wish you a couple of siblings like mine. 

My younger sister is enough like me to hold my interest (what?) but shows me all the potential available to me if I suddenly get a bug up my ass and decide I want to be a better person. 

It seems our DNA, after seeing what it created the first time, with me, rearranged itself…to try again…to do better…in both my brother and sister. 

She is a much kinder and more generous being than I could ever pretend, even on my best day of pretending—to be.
So much so, that she had the two kids, a boy and a girl, that I could never be bothered to have—and then raised them better than I ever could have, all the while teaching them to love their “auntie”.  For over two decades she has freely shared them with me and my love for them is limitless. So much so that now, on my best pretending days—I pretend they’re mine.

My brother has a heart the size of an Amazon warehouse and we share the same twisted sense of humor. He’s actually made me snort-laugh coffee out both nostrils. If I had the presence of mind to record everything he says, which I don’t—because

1. My last name isn’t Parnas.
2. I’m usually choking with laughter (and swallowing my gum). But if I did I could fill stadiums full of hysterically laughing fans, hire an assistant to steal all of his material, AND chew my gum for me.

He’s also a teller of truths and “asker of the hard questions”.  

The other day, in between yucking it up, when I was complaining about my husband doing some shit that seemed to me to be detrimental to his health and well being, my brother, a card-carrying member of #teamhusband, drilled down on me with one simple sentence, “Well, don’t you have a vice?”

Gulp.

I stuttered and stammered for an uncomfortable amount of time, “Sure, I mean, no, I mean, I don’t know.”

Vice—A vice is a moral failing or a bad habit.  (Because I looked it up) 

What I think he was really saying was: Jesus, Janet, cut the guy some slack.

But I took the question to heart. A moral failing? I don’t think that’s what he meant. I think he meant more like a guilty pleasure, only on steroids. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m as deeply flawed and hot messy as any of you, it’s just that at the ripe old age fifty-eleven, I’ve had enough therapy, woo woo voodoo, and spiritual interventions to leave most of that vicey behavior in the rear-view mirror— along with my delightful disposition and perky tits.

Let me also state right here, that I’m in no way trivializing addictions or vices for that matter. I’ve seen both up close and personal and I cannot express how INCREDIBLY grateful I’ve felt my entire life for being blessed with a non-addictive personality.

I don’t know who to thank for that, I only know that if the opposite were true—I’d weigh five thousand tons and be in jail. 

Anyway, he’d made his point, loud and clear, so after we hung up I crawled off my poor husband’s back and decided to go deep diving into my seemingly vice-free life and what I found there was a (wait for it) a vice. (Are you surprised?)

To make the term vice more relatable I kinda re-framed it as “a behavior that we do even though it makes us feel bad or is bad for us.”

Cut to: Last Friday night after Trump’s Impeachment acquittal.  I poured myself the rare glass of whiskey and proceeded to get shit faced. Then, I drunk texted my Bff, barfed up a really nice dinner, and ruined most of my Saturday with a wicked hangover. 

WTF?

Remember me? I’m not a big drinker, ask anyone. I am not who you call to tie one on. I’m the one who drives everybody home and cleans the bathroom.

So, back into my deep “Vice” dive, I dove, looking at exhibit A — Friday Night Drunkenness. What had prompted me to go past my limit? 

Sadness? Yes. 

Hopelessness? Yes. 

Anxiety? Yes. Yes. Yes.

And why was I feeling that way? 

Cable TV and FUCKING TWITTER!

Oh, sweet Jesus Christ on a cracker.

Cable TV—The 24/7, home-delivered, IV drip of fear and outrage. And outraged fear. 

Twitter—240 characters of pure, unadulterated, who gives a fuck what you think? 

Those two things had become my heroin and I mainlined them every day—all day. And like most addicts, I hid it well. I was high functioning. I wrote, and grocery shopped and ordered stuff I didn’t need online. But I also had news and twitter alerts going to my watch and my phone literally (Because, Trump) minute by minute. And like any good dealer they didn’t think twice about interrupting my writing, my peace of mind, or my life.

Especially, that rat fuck Twitter! I don’t say this lightly, but I think Twitter needs to shut down. I mean what is it good for besides sowing division, fear, and outrage and giving certain bullies a way to exercise their “power”? Tell me, I’d love to know how we’re better off with Twitter in our social discourse.

I can’t believe it happened to me! (I know, beyond cliche) I’m sooooo late to the Twitter party! I don’t post and I don’t really read anything but politics (NEVER the comments, the comments are the third rail of social media) that being said—that shit is TOXIC.

Twitter says we’re in a Constitutional crisis. Twitter says it’s 1933 Germany all over again. Twitter says it’s just like the fall of the Roman Empire.

It’s poison. All of it. And I’m addicted. I’m addicted to poison. (Sounds like a vice to me.)

It all started a year and a half ago (a simpler time) with the political screenplay I was writing. I needed to keep myself well abreast of current events and Trump creates those like sixty times a… Blah, blah, blah! There I am, making excuses about why my vice isn’t really a vice.

So I deleted it. I deleted Twitter on Sunday. That’s when the twitching and reaching for my phone every six seconds began. At least that’s when I noticed it.

Don’t be fooled the detox is real. But don’t worry about me. I’m taking it slow. I only look at half of my news alerts.

But then…Shit went down at the DOJ yesterday and I wasn’t sure what level of outrage to feel. Because we’re always at DefCon 5. What did Twitter have to say?

I unconsciously reached for my phone. Put it down. Did it again. And again. And again. Like those rats who push the button for a fix. After a minute, it passed. The twitching, the wondering, all of it. And I have to say, so far, day three, I feel better. Calmer. Like the world won’t end if I don’t “like” a tweet.

Hi, My name is Janet, and I’m a news junkie and a recovering Twitter addict. And I’m better when I’m not marinating in fear and outrage. I’m smarter, more strategic and able to make clearer decisions about what happens next. 

Carry on,
xox

cheers!

It was 4 am.
My alarm caught me bleary eyed and mildly confused. I’d barely slept and I had an early plane to catch. The vicissitudes of the previous day were still scrambling my brain. Like many of you, I’d sat riveted in front of cable news for nine hours straight. Something I only do if there’s a catastrophe, like an earthquake or a tsunami.

I’d witnessed heroic courage and unadulterated, visceral rage. And it surprised me. I mean, I don’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t what I’d seen play out in front of me all day in Washington.
Again.

It WAS an earthquake. AND a tsunami. Wrapped in a tornado, inside of a hurricane.

Emotional wreckage. Norms shattered. Boundaries breached.
It made me sick. literally. At one point I thought I’d puke. I was seething.
I don’t think I took a breath the entire time Dr. Ford testified. I’m not kidding.

The first thing I did Friday morning, right after brushing my teeth, was to flip on CNN. The east coast is three hours ahead of me and I was anxious to see what carnage had transpired while I slept. The Judiciary committee vote was looming a couple of hours in the future and it looked pretty bleak.

Once at the airport I checked my emails. There were at least half a dozen of you wanting me to write something. To weigh in. What was I feeling? Could I see a path toward hope? Did I see any humor in it or was it really the dumpster fire it appeared to be?

Oh, dumpster fire. For sure…

While I sat there formulating ideas, feeling everybody’s fear, anxiety, and rage jump out of my emails and grab me by the neck, the news broke on the shitty TV at the bar across the way. Jeff Flake, a man of flimsy conscious and the unworthy recipient of the last glimmers of our hope, had decided to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Gut punch. My abs should be used to being pummeled, but they aren’t. It catches me by surprise and steals my breath every time it happens.

I wanted to write something. I really did. I wanted to vent and rage, but my words would have only fueled the already enormous fire. The one I’m certain they could see from space. And what good is that?

That’s why god invented Twitter.

Besides, it was time to board, and I had three-and a half hours of captivity ahead of me in a metal tube that’s hurtling through the air in an aerodynamic way that no matter how many times it’s explained to me – is still a mystery. Anyway, I had nothing but time to listen to podcasts and watch the news. Except there was no live TV coverage on this particular flight, the WiFi sucked ass, and my podcasts had neglected to download.

What.. the … fuckity, fuck?
When that happens it means I need to press pause.

So I sat and stewed. In some very toxic juices.

You need to say a little prayer of thanks to my husband for bearing the brunt of all the collective feminine rage that was up beside us at thirty-thousand feet, caught in the stratosphere, circling the planet.

In the meantime, I poked around social media, seeking the advice of some of the thought leaders I turn to in case of emergency.
Glendon Doyle was livid.
Anne Lamott was devastated.
Of course they were! Then I happened upon this Facebook post by Marianne Williamson. She’s someone who is thoughtful and measured. Someone who I used to go see speak every Thursday night in the 80’s during the AIDS crisis. As I read it, tears ran down my cheeks and great pools of snot gathered at my feet. “Oh, they have done it now,” she said in an uncharacteristically defiant way. “Now they have triggered the memories of every woman who has ever had her opinions ignored or her feelings scorned.”

Bammo! Bingo! Bullseye! She put into words exactly how I was feeling and isn’t that why we turn to these women? To each other? To give voice to our deepest feelings?

“They have harnessed the power of a thousand hurricanes,” she wrote.

Indeed. And tornadoes, tsunamis, and earthquakes.

When we landed in Chicago I learned that Flake had had found his backbone- for now.

Ever since Trump took office I’ve felt my equilibrium tested. But the one thing I know for sure is that he and his cronies in Congress have poked the beast. They’ve awakened the giant – and she is us.

“Congratulations, Senators Grassley, Hatch, Graham, Cruz et al. You’ve done it now. I think you might have just elected the first woman president.”

Yep. And it will be soon. Sooner than they think. #justyouwait
Carry on,
Xox

“Oh, they have done it now.
They have done what thousands of feminists, hundreds of feminist organizations, and millions of women working as social and political activists over the years have not been able to do: they have harnessed the power of a thousand hurricanes. It is not just that they have triggered the memories of every woman who has ever been sexually harassed or abused. Now they have triggered the memories of every woman who has ever had her opinions ignored or her feelings scorned.
Ted Cruz pointed out in his testimony that Dr. Ford was treated with respect. I suppose he means that because they didn’t throw eggs at her. What those men don’t understand is that being silent after hearing her speak, as though actually she had not spoken, does not show respect. Basically ignoring what she said does not show respect. Making it all about “Brett, poor baby, he is one of us and he is hurting” does not show respect. In fact, their entire strategy now rests on ignoring what she said… not even grappling with her credibility, much less allowing a further investigation or more witnesses to testify. And every woman who has ever felt that her words meant nothing, that they somehow disappeared into the air after she spoke them and simply bounced off the ears of a man or men in the room, whether she was ever touched inappropriately or not, she is triggered now.
Congratulations, Senators Grassley, Hatch, Graham, Cruz et al. You’ve done it now. I think you might have just elected the first woman president. A fierce, giant force just been awakened among us. And unlike Quan Yin sitting silently next to my television, we will not be silent. In the coming days and weeks and years, we will speak our truth. We will hear each other and we will believe each other. And this time, by men, and by women alike, we will be heard. #justyouwait

-Marianne Williamson