Pancakes Taste Like Poverty: And Other Post-Divorce Revelations (21 page)

There's nothing for me to trust you
with
.
I don't have secrets.

Seriously.

I tell
you
exactly what I would tell my
best friends
, a
nd the
checkout girl at Winn-Dixie if she had time to listen. I don't keep
any parts of my life tucked away.

I didn't realize this was abnormal until a friend
and I recently had a long, hash-out-feelings, work-though-shit
conversation and she said repeatedly that "most people don't
know this about me" and I thought:

Oh, is that a thing? Keeping parts of
yourself from people?

She and another close friend have both stated
that they've been burned before.

This, oddly, is something I've never really
experienced outside of my marriage. He is the only one who ever
burned me
, a
lthough, really,
I think it's clear he only burned himself.

But I've never been hurt by a friend, really, or
taken advantage of. Or perhaps I have been taken advantage of but
didn't really care.

Not because I don't put myself out there but I
think I'm detached from the outcome. I don't require much. You don't
have to prove anything to me. If you make me feel good, you stay. If
you don't, I just don't bother. No melodramatic banishments and
tear-filled fights. Just apathy. Hopefully, this is making sense.

I was so relieved when talking to Jenn last night
and she said:

"I don't really need you to trust me. I
don't require that of you. My needing you to trust me would be more
about
me
than you. You're fine. Do your thing."

Bless.

I guess this is unnerving to the general
populace, though. It isn't the first time I've done human-ing
"incorrectly."

But if you need me to entrust you with my darkest
secrets and lean on you to feel like we're close
,
then I foresee a lot of disappointment in your future. There
are
no darkest secrets. Come over and sit on my couch –
any of you – and you will get the full enchilada, if that's
what you want. I've done those trus
t-b
uilding
teamwork exercises without hesitation. I'll open it up and lay it
out.

But here's the kicker...

...now I'm revealing a real nugget...

This openness, this quick warmth and close
comfort is actually an extremely effective manipulation. My fellow
Masters of Emotional Proximity are going to be angry that I am
revealing our most potent strategy.

When we are so warm and so open and share so much
and are so exposed
,
we have
lulled you into a false sense of closeness, haven't we?

Please know that this isn't conscious. It's just
what happens. It's my natural state. I can satisfy
both
our
needs.
You
need intimate details to feel safe, to feel like
we're bonded, to feel close.
I
need to give you whatever will
satisfy you enough not to need more.

I keep my feels and my heart locked away because
even
I
don't know what's going on in there. It's a mystery
to even me. My heart is not really a "secret." Secrets, in
my opinion, are
known
and then hidden and kept away from
others. I
don't
know. I don't know what's going on in my
heart or how to turn it on or what I'm supposed to do. I know it's
possibl
e,
but I don't think
it's necessary. I'm not in a stage where I can
handle
deeper.

I know all the open, bleeding hearts see this as
a tragedy
,
but it's not
everyone's life goal to feel all the feelings. At least not in this
life cycle.

I treasure my friendships. I treasure their
depth. I don't need to cry it out or have an after school special
with my friends for them to prove their value
,
and I don't want them to require that of me. I just take what
they have to give and am satisfied
,
and I'll give-a-plenty back.

And you can trust me, if you
want
to
,
but I don't care if you do or not, because it won't change my
behavior. I'll still deliver the love to your door neatly wrapped and
with a bow. But I will not leave behind a lock of my frickin' hair.
You won't get
an
extra
special piece of me.

If you're like the perceptive few who have risen
to the top of the heap, just give me the space to be myself, drop all
your Ya-Ya Sisterhood expectations and I will likely leave a few
extra boxes of love on your doorstep while I'm making rounds as a
"thank you".
What
the What?
A
woman I went to high school with, who I was not close with, and not
friends with, just offered to pay for my kids to go to summer
camp.
I...
What?
I'm not going to question it. My
heart and feels are exploding with gratitude. I have no
words...
Hashtag Blessed.
Hashtag SO Blessed.

“Friends”

Before
you get your feelings hurt, allow me to explain why I’m about
to unfriend you on Facebook.

I am in a fragile place. I feel as alien as ever.
I do not understand humans, even though humans have been really great
to me. Right now, with going back to school and trying to develop a
non-profit and raising three kids and also homeschooling them
,
I really need the world to be safe, warm, welcoming, and aligned with
my goals as a person. I don’t have room for anything negative
,
or even amicably neutral.

I can’t control the world, as it turns out
,
but I
can
control
my
world.

I’ve been preaching this whole “detachment”
bullroar and I just realized I haven’t completely been
practicing it.
“I’ll keep her as a friend just in
case I need her one day”
is people-hoarding.

I have to thin my friends list down based on
nutritional value. Stick with me here, I promise it’ll make
sense.

Sometime a while back, I decided that casual sex
had the “nutritional value” for
me
of, like,
Taco Bell. There was a time when I could eat Taco Bell every day! It
was so good
,
and the effects
of it didn’t really show because I was young and buoyant and
didn’t really know any better.

But now, I’d rather not
eat
than
eat Taco Bell. It's just not satisfying for me
,
anymore. Even if I know it's tasty.

I think this goes for any and all relationships
right now.

I’m in a place where I need all my
relationships to be nutritionally dense. I am in transition. I need
nutrients to grow. I need meat n’ taters.

I discussed this with a friend and she put it
well.
She reminded me of when Michelangelo sculpted “
David
.”
When asked how he was able to carve a perfect man out of a slab of
stone he said he could see David inside and just chipped off the
parts that weren’t him. That’s me right now. I am the
sculptor and the stone.

In this part of my journey, I have to hunker down
and chip away the parts that aren’t completely aligned with me.
The litmus in this process is this:
Does this person help me
grow
?
How does this person make me feel? The only
acceptable answer is “good.”

“Bad” and “neutral” are
not acceptable answers right now.

Social networking has created a new bizarre and
irrational set of rules for socializing. There is this weird ickiness
associated with “unfriending” but maybe the word “friend”
should have never been involved in the first place.

My
friends
call me on the phone. They
stop by. They email me and I them.

The people who need me to be their comedian or
their mini-Oprah are not necessarily my
friends
. They are
cool and interesting peop
le w
ho
I may run into or may not run into. They are people I like and
respect. But that doesn’t make them my friend.

And here’s the crazy part. That’s
okay
.

There don’t have to be hurt feelings and
drama. There can just be a calm acknowledgment and maintained mutual
respect. Any time I have looked up and found myself “unfriended”
,
I have
thought, “Yeah, he’s
right…we’re not really friends.” I mean, it’s
totally cool to use Facebook as a netw
orking tool or to keep
in touch with your zany Aunt Linda. That’s just not what
I
need it for.

I have very little adult socializatio
n,
so when I turn on my laptop to visit with my peeps,
I need to
it feel enriching and filling and hearty. I don’t have “room”
for the polite social niceties right now.

Yes
, i
t’s
interesting that we went to the same school, or worked at the same
place, or were best friends twenty years ago, or used to go bar
hopping together, or I had a crush on you when we were in show choir
together. But if we are not engaged in one another's live
s,
we are not friends. We are
spectators
. That’s not
the same thing.

Many months ago
,
my cell phone broke. I replaced it, b
ut never told anyone my
phone number.
You know why?

Instant gratification creates entitlement. We
feel entitled to portions of our friends’ lives and time now.
When someone texts me and I don’t answer back in the
mysteriously predetermined “correct” amount of time, that
person starts going down a spiral.
“Where is she?”

“Is she mad at me?”

“Did I say something wrong?”

“GAWD TEXT ME BACK”

Um, who ever told
you you
had access to my time?
Maybe I’m driving. Or
I'm taking a poo. Or I just don’t want to. I don’t
owe
you anything.

I thought that because I didn’t have a
phone I was free from this circu
s,
but I realized it just carried over to Facebook instead.

When you share the majority of your pie and want
to keep some to yourself, you’re still going to have those
people coming at you with a fork after they’ve gobbled their
share.

That entitlement is such a part of the “language”
of social networking that people don’t see it as entitlement at
all. If I go one day without updating my status
,
I
get concerned messages and wall posts about my “quiet”
or how I’ve gone “missing.”

“Wel
l,
it’s just that you usually…”

No. It’s that you’ve gotten used to
getting your “fix” every day and I had the audacity not
to supply. It is much more about you than me. But you’re right.
I do spend a lot of time on Facebook.

So you know what I’m not doing?

Writing my book, reviewing paperwork, finding
funding, reading my assignments.

Life. I’m not doing life.

So I’m thinning as a means of discipline,
firstly. And because I just want people to water, feed
,
and sunshine me, secondly.

I will only be keeping the cheerleaders on
Facebook. The ladies and men I have divorce-bonded with. The friends
whose social and political views are different than mine, but who can
discuss it respectfully, forcing me to evaluate my beliefs. The
pushers, the helpers, the lovers, the believe-in-you-ers. And one or
two people whose egos are so delicate that I still don’t think
they’d be able to handle my unfriending, even with this attempt
at diplomacy.

Jaya and Changing the
Future - June 2013

No amount of hovering and
helicoptering can protect my children from emotional pain
,
b
ut I'm starting to see that my parenting can protect them
from suffering

This whole parenting biz...
sigh...
Okay,
here's the thing.

One of my biggest fears when my oldest daughter
was born was that she would follow in my footsteps.

I was sexualized early. I wasn't prepared for it.
And it changed the next fifteen years of my life very negatively.

I was always a pretty child. I remember being
four and five years old and people stopping my mom to tell her what a
cute kid I was. But by the time I was ten years old
,
I was 5'5", wearing a bra
,
had
my period for a
year
,
and looked 14. But I
was 10. I was a
child
.

But I didn't have a child's
body
. The
world reacted differently. My first recollection of this was in fifth
grade. The school I attended went from 1st to 12th grade. It was
a
common tradition for underclassmen to be assigned a
senior
who was sort of like a big brother or big sister. They would come to
your class at assigned times and do crafts with you
,
or hang out on the playground.
Typically, younger girls got
big sisters and boys got big brother
s,
but due to an uneven ratio
,
I
was assigned two big brothers, one who we'll call BJ.

BJ was an excellent big brother. Even though
there were assigned times for him to visit, he visited on his off
time too. He came to hear me recite my report on black widows. He
clapped the loudest. He gave me a big box of candy for Valentine's
Day. He remembered my birthday. None of the other big brothers or
sisters did that. He ate with me at lunch. He pushed me on the swings
at recess.

Only now do I realize he must have missed a lot
of class to be so omnipresent. But he changed my view of myself
forever. He was the first of many men to do so.

One day
, I
was on the playground with him and another older female student who
was a mutual friend of ours. I can remember exactly where we were
standing. It's a parking lot now.