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As I was becoming more accustomed to the idea of writing in this blog again and finding more time in which to pursue the venture, someone in my family died. My grandmother passed away.

At the age of 77, she had battled breast and ovarian cancer for 15 years. Then, what seems like a short while ago but was most definitely longer, she developed Alzheimer’s Disease. She managed to live on for a very long time despite the fact that her husband had died; despite the fact that she was plagued by frequent pains and discomfort caused by these various ailments (including the pain of treatment); despite the fact that certain members of her family had disowned her for what I can only ascertain are the stupidest, most puzzling reasons; despite the fact that she no longer recognized anyone or even realized how sick she was much of the time, causing her to do things like jump out of bed, pull out her IVs, and break her hip. And she continued to be a nice person through most of the process; someone people wanted to have around. She rarely complained about any of this and didn’t feel sorry for herself.

I went to see her not this previous weekend but the one before it in the hospital. The Tuesday before that, she had collapsed in a supermarket and had to be rushed to the ER. For 24 hours, my mother and my sister stayed with her in the ER, where her condition worsened over time. By the time I came to see her, when she had been admitted to the hospital, she was in a sleep-like state. Her mouth was agape and she was breathing deeply but laboriously, every outward breath marked by a gurgling sound which was due to the fluid accumulating in her lungs. Her mouth was sore and dry from the lack of moisture. Every once in a while, one of my relatives or my mother would wet it with a sponge as they were instructed to do by the nurses. Her body would shake and convulse periodically; the medical staff weren’t sure if it was voluntary or involuntary movement. Sometimes tears would fall down her face. People were unsure of whether she was crying or whether this was another ungoverned reaction.

I loved and respected my grandmother a lot, even though our relationship was strained and I never thought we were extremely close. She was incredibly strong-willed and resilient. She was kind and gave away many of her things if she thought it would make other people happy. She loved animals. She was patient and encouraged people to learn by doing. Alternately she was stubborn and disconcerting in some ways. As a kid, she admonished me for being too much of a baby about physical pain but as I got older she would say kind things about me to other people which surprised me.

My mother has lost both her parents. She loved them both, even though she’s convinced that both her parents liked her less than their other children. My mother moved close to my grandmother to help take care of her as she became sicker. My mother was alone with my grandmother in the hospital room when my grandmother died. My aunt and uncle didn’t make it in time. I know this will upset her more down the road and I’m sorry she had to deal with it alone.

I’m not certain why I’m choosing to share so much here. Some of it, yes, I know, and there are other things I remember. It saddens me that there is no one else to hear it, I guess.

I’ve been feeling under the weather for the last couple of days, but I’m sure I’ll be up and fascinated/appalled by things shortly. Until then, kidsters.

In my own experience, I find it very difficult for people who have never lived in an abusive environment to understand the workings of an abusive environment. This is not to say that people aren’t capable of it, or that they’re willfully ignorant, just that many people do not seem to understand the complexities of what goes into living with a psychopath.

It took me a while to accept this; to accept that a lot of people thought I was exaggerating or lying when I would talk about things my father had done or what life was like for my family, but now I can see how difficult it is for someone who has never had experience with someone so manipulative, devious, self-serving, hurtful, and abusive to believe that people like that exist.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people espouse their lack of sympathy for “abused women” because, from their perspective, the woman’s situation was one of her own making. Why can’t she stand up for herself? Why’d she marry him if he was already hitting her? Why didn’t she ever try to leave him? There are several reasons that people adopt these opinions, and almost all of them amount to a gross misunderstanding of what living in an abusive environment is like, or about the mentality of a victim of perpetual abuse.

It’s not that easy to leave when the person you’re trying to get away from has a legal right to your children, has isolated you from your family and friends, has a stranglehold on your family finances, knows how to find you wherever you are (a problem my family encountered for various reasons), is a pathological liar who can manipulate his way around most problems and obstacles, and has vowed to hunt you down and kill you if/when you try to leave. The police don’t matter to them. Whatever consequences they might face don’t matter to them. There is no deterrent, just a constant, futile effort to try and pacify their anger while weathering the abuse.

Even when there is a physical way to safely leave, abuse victims are often mentally incapable of it. Many of them have extremely low self-esteem from years of being verbally and physically battered and convince themselves they deserve the abuse for one reason or another. They still believe that the abuser can change. They tell themselves that, despite all evidence to the contrary, an abuser would never consciously hurt them. They blame abusive behavior on whatever outside factors they can - alcoholism, drug use, children misbehaving, work related stress, everything. They believe that the abuser loves them and they cling to the idea that, someday, that love will make the abuser stop.

To blame an abuse victim for this mentality and withdraw all sympathy for them and their children is cruel, illogical, and shortsighted. It’s a mental illness; a coping mechanism that can’t instantaneously be shut off when they are finally able to live in a normal, stable environment. I was very frustrated with and angry at my mother for many years for never leaving my father. Towards the end, before we did finally leave, I started hearing statements similar to the ones above come out of her mouth less and less. She actually started to get up when he would knock her down, push back when he would shove her. That made him angrier, but it demonstrated the beginnings of a distinctive mental change for my mother.

I was prompted to think about all this when I came across one of the articles about Mary Winkler and what she’s currently going through trying to keep her children. I have been surprised throughout the course of the proceedings by how little sympathy people have for her. I was distressed by some of the quotes included in the article since they reminded me of things my mother would say from time to time while I was growing up.

From this CNN.com article:
“That’s where I will always grieve the fact that I failed Matthew in not bringing it to his attention how bad it was,” she said.

Yeah. She really failed Matthew. Matthew, the man who suffocated their child so he didn’t have to hear her cry. Matthew, the man who abused Mary, sexually assaulted her, and threatened her with death at his hands. Matthew failed his family. Matthew was an irrational, violent psycho who should never have been allowed to get to the point he was at, and whose fault was that? It was Matthew’s.

The behavior of Matthew Winkler’s parents is appalling. They’ve demanded an apology from Mary Winkler - have they made a public apology to the Winkler children for what they had to endure at their father’s hands, or to Mary? If the object here is to point fingers at unfit parents, maybe it’s not in the children’s best interests to place them in the home their father grew up in. He was obviously a real gem.

EDIT: Video footage from Mary Winkler’s interview with Oprah is available through CNN. In the video, she is constantly making excuses for his behavior. It’s sad and interesting to watch. The CNN headlines for the story - “Wife who shot preacher calls sentence too short” - are deliberately inflammatory and tragically misleading.

NOTE: The title of this post is a reference to the Pearl Jam song, “Can’t Find A Better Man”.

A boy I knew growing up murdered his x-girlfriend the other day. While I was reading an article about the incident, I remembered wondering what became of him once I had moved away. I didn’t know him very well until I was forced to sit across from him in class. He didn’t know me before that either, but he immediately keyed into the fact that I was an upstanding goody-two-shoes and that, without a lot of effort, he could get a reaction out of me.

Most of the time he wasn’t mean to me. He wanted my attention and he would say or do whatever he thought would work to get it. His way of engaging me was through harassment - the time-tested technique many adolescent boys use to get girls to pay attention to them. Sometimes he could hold a civil conversation; sometimes he couldn’t; but I used to talk to him and periodically he would open up and tell me things about himself.

He grew up in a rich/upper-middle-class white neighborhood. He was fascinated with violence and gangster movies. Once he told me that his dream was to run off to New York City and join the mob. He had a very short attention span and would become antsy and distracted very easily. When he was in a good mood, he was hilarious and charming. When he was in a bad mood, he was cruel and abusive. He wasn’t stupid but his grades were poor. He got thrown out of class at least once a week. He would alternate between having violent outbursts and lethargic moments where he could hardly stay awake. Maybe our teacher sat him with me because she thought I would be a tempering influence on him or something. My good-girl status was often getting me punished like that.

Last week, this same kid - the kid who once jumped up on our table in the middle of class and shouted, “Praise Jesus!” - beat, strangled, and stabbed the woman he once dated. He left her body in the bathtub of their apartment, his fingerprints smeared in the blood along the wall. This is what allowed the police to immediately connect him to the murder and arrest him shortly after.

Even when he was a kid, everyone knew he needed help. That was back when he was merely dreaming of becoming a violent criminal; back when someone could have attempted to stop the destructive, tragic path his life was on. I wonder if it would have even made a difference.

I think about the person he was when he was doing well, when he was happy, and how much potential that person had. I think about how he was constantly getting in trouble and it resulted in nothing. No one ever wanted to deal with him. He always seemed to be punished in the same way, in a useless, cyclical fashion, even when his inappropriate behavior escalated. I remember thinking many of these things at the time, too, but hoping he would ‘grow out of it’ despite the fact that there was no reason to believe that he would. Now a well-meaning girl who probably saw a lot of the same things I saw in him is dead.

What a complete waste.

I read an article that really irritated me regarding the concept of the ‘emotional affair’, i.e. cheating on your spouse in the form of emotional support from another. The whole idea of the emotional affair is exploited to make women feel guilty about having profound personal relationships outside of their marriage.

I’m not saying that forming emotional connections to someone else can’t be hurtful to your spouse or evolve into something that becomes a full fledged physical affair, but I loathe this idea that a married woman has to cut herself off from the world; that every moment of satisfaction and fulfillment she receives should be through her husband and her husband alone; that having a valuable friend outside of her husband is something she should feel guilty about.

Oh society, with your mixed messages and lose-lose ultimatums - you really have it out for girls, don’t you?

I don’t believe the sun rises and sets by these tests, but sometimes the results fascinate me.

iNFj: counselor idealist

The Counselor Idealists are abstract in thought and speech, cooperative in reaching their goals, and enterprising and attentive in their interpersonal roles. Counselors focus on human potentials, think in terms of ethical values, and come easily to decisions. The small number of this type (little more than 2 percent) is regrettable, since Counselors have an unusually strong desire to contribute to the welfare of others and genuinely enjoy helping their companions. Although Counsleors tend to be private, sensitive people, and are not generally visible leaders, they nevertheless work quite intensely with those close to them, quietly exerting their influence behind the scenes with their families, friends, and colleagues. This type has great depth of personality; they are themselves complicated, and can understand and deal with complex issues and people.

It sounds a bit like me I suppose.

Sometimes I feel like I want to get married just so I can have one of those freaking awesome cakes. That’s a valid reason to marry, right? Just kidding, of course… but I may develop and celebrate some other momentous ceremony that revolves around a giant cake.

Not a lot going on over here today. I also like to write when I’m bored, but I can see I’ll have to do that later unless I want to write a whole entry on wedding cakes and the humidity index. Later kids.

Here. To make this post slightly more substantial, this is a link to a blog which is entirely about cake decorating. That, my friends, is thrilling news to hear.

Cake Journal

After browsing, I’m sure I’ll be adding this to my sidebar links. Enjoy.

I had a professor in college who was very fascinated by the cycles of the moon. He was very memorable for saying odd, unexplained things out of nowhere. One day in class, while talking about something completely unrelated, he focused directly on the class (which only consisted of about 4 or 5 people) and said, “I’m a lunatic, you know.” We all felt a bit unsettled, of course, but after a long pause he went on to elaborate that he believed he was very affected by the cycles of the moon, by a full moon in particular, and told us stories about the strange things his cat would do whenever the moon was full.

I thought of him when I saw this article:
Full moon not a howling good time for pets

There have always been theories that the moon affected both animal and human behavior. The term “lunatic” really does refer to that, although today it’s more commonly used to describe anyone who is possibly insane.

It’s a romantic concept, but I believe there could be some weight to it. If the cycles of the moon can affect the tides, why not something so seemingly small as the way certain people feel? There’s something very intriguing about the idea.

“Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy.”

- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Always Apologize, Always Explain

That is the link to an excellent article on CNN.com today about the art of apologizing. The author, Martha Beck, has said everything I’ve been trying to express to my boyfriend for the last 5 years.

In my own, personal experience, it seems men have more difficulty apologizing than women. I’m not saying that women are great at apologizing, or that men who do genuinely apologize for their mistakes on a regular basis are fictional, just that it seems more difficult for them on a personal level. I’m not exactly sure why this is, but I would guess it has something to do with pride, with feeling like admitting to their mistakes makes them seem like a weaker, more fallible person, or just that it’s about maintaining their status and power in a relationship.

Regardless of the reason, this is one of the best articles I’ve read that outlines the situation (in a gender-neutral way) and gives a practical, straight-forward explanation as to why a genuine apology, however seemingly insignificant, is very important.

The introduction to the piece evaluates that stupid fucking line from Love Story - “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” - although Beck’s point was already made by Lisa Simpson several years ago.

I don’t care how much you love someone else. Somewhere down the line, you’re going to make a mistake, and you’re going to need to apologize for that mistake to maintain a healthy, functioning relationship. Beck makes an important point by saying that you shouldn’t be constantly apologizing; apologies should always reflect the idea that you (and you alone) are truly sorry for what you did or said.

Empty, useless apologies can often be more hurtful than not apologizing at all because it’s just showing the other person that you have no intention of listening to what they have to say and just want them to be quiet. I certainly find them much more frustrating, especially since it’s pretty easy to identify when someone is just jerking you around and isn’t actually repenting.

I have my own set of problems, but apologizing when I feel that I have done something wrong is not one of them. If you feel this is something you have difficulty with, or know someone who does, I encourage you to take a look.

You… won’t… be… come on, you know what’s coming….

SORRY!

Ha. I’m sure me and 9 million other people have made that original, hilarious joke.

P.S. - The wording in the article is not gender-neutral; the author writes the article with the goal of speaking to women who are apologizing to men. What I mean when I say this is that I feel the advice works well for both men and women.

The fabulously talented onemoreoption has tagged me to reveal eight little known facts about my life. She was tagged by suburbanlife. So listen closely, kids, because I probably won’t be doing this often.

1. I am the eldest child of my family.

2. When I was 11 years old, I underwent an emergency appendectomy.

3. I started using a vibrator in my early teens.

4. Both of my parents were in the military.

5. I’ve never smoked a cigarette or smoked marijuana. Not because I’m against it, but because I was never really in a position where I intended to do it.

6. I spent the first fifteen years of my life living with a physically and emotionally abusive alcoholic father. I was never able to talk about it for fear that I would be taken away from my mother or that my father would hurt me in retaliation.

7. My favorite sandwich consists of pepperoni, dill pickles, and black olives on a roll. That’s it. I’ve eaten this concoction since elementary school and still enjoy it today.

8. I started learning French in second grade.

I’m going to tag iced mocha for this activity, since she has tagged me in the past (and I never responded) and because she seems to enjoy participating in things like this.

I’ll seal this post with a kiss, from one of my favorite films:

Max Fischer: How the hell did you get so rich? You’re a quitter, man!
Herman Blume: I spent eight million dollars on this.
Max Fischer: And is that all you’re willing to spend?