on stalking: a worst, for today.

You know what I think is the worst thing? aside from not being able to find words anymore to get to the bottom of what might be the worst thing today, as opposed to yesterday's worst, or what might be tomorrow's...

I'm grateful for pinpricks of grief in mercifully small doses, as time passes and resolute denial softens little by little.

But I think the worst thing (today, and most days) is this:

We're wired for connection. While strolling through the grocery store amid a sea of unfamiliar faces, our most instant and natural reaction to a familiar face is to consider it familiar in the unpredictable, nondaily lights, sounds, paths - our instinct is to connect. We don't even realize we're doing it, really, or what it means to us, but we anchor ourselves to the process and the faces, and in some small way, the light shines from us, even if only long enough for a passing hello, perhaps moving our carts to the side and chatting about weather, or parents, or reports due, or clients, or car troubles. Each familiar face we see is, in some small way, a mirror in which we see ourselves constantly scanning for connectedness, and that drive -  to join, to relate to, to belong with - is practically inherent, even (perhaps more) in the most introverted souls.

The worst thing is the way this drive dies.

It dies constantly. Daily.

I can't put into words for you what it does to you, while you're walking through the grocery store and you realize if you see this person's face, it is solely because this person has shown up to to kill you. No other reason.

No words for knowing that, if you see That Person's Face, you'll have to kill first (not strike, but kill; how does a normal person even wrap a mind around this?), because if you don't, that person will. And if they don't kill you then, they'll try again. They'll never stop. There are no words for the feeling of a nonviolent person forcing him/herself to imagine That Person's Face around every grocery-store corner, in every parking lot, lest they ever be caught off-guard; there are no words for the times when you make yourself roll over in bed and look at the dim corner of your bedroom, imagine them standing there, walk yourself through the quickfire motions of physical defense.

It may seem like fixation, but it's not: there's no other way for the nonviolent person to ever be ready for a violent person's attack, other than to force him/herself to operate in the mindset of a violent person. There's no way to deal with a stalker, other than to seemingly fixate, to try to stay one step ahead of a crazy person in a dance that makes no sense whatsoever.

No words for the way the human drive to extend oneself and belong becomes the human drive to connect in order to dominate and survive anything necessary. No words for the way our drive to connect morphs into something dark and snarling. No map back to the way things were before.

There are no words to express how this set of realities upends everything you know about the world, and everyone therein; no words for how this particular brand of evil makes you realize that, though you'd previously brushed against it, you've never before been in the thick of its menace, never once shriveled in agony, until now. I don't know what to do with this evil in which I was forced to participate. I can't shake it; can't get clean.

And I know I got "lucky," according to some standards; I'm lucky to be alive, and I know I'm lucky that, as far as I know, my stalker has moved on. And I know that, hey, it's not like you spent time in a war zone or something, or it's not like they ever tied you to a chair for days.

I know.

But I still feel ruined. Absolutely ruined. Dead to myself before all this. Helpless to explain it in any way that makes sense to anyone outside myself. Helpless before words, at all.

sexism-itis, and "What We All Do When Nobody's Home."

[this is written with no one in particular in mind; it's a response to a composite of events that have happened in general. so relax.]

____________

Things are a little messy right now. To the point where we can all kinda laugh at it (I hope). 

Lately, I'm not prone to discussion or graceful acceptance. If you know me well, you know (hopefully) that this is not my norm; I hate feeling so volatile, and so guilty for it. I'm told it'll pass, and good god, it'd better, because more often than not, lately, I really can't stand myself, and I hardly blame you if you can't, either. I miss my objectivity; I miss the parts of me that invested in making sure everyone felt heard, not as much for the sake of kum-ba-ya as for the fact that safety, openness, and vulnerability are the foundation of real, honest communication, and within that framework is where real dialogue, real connection, real bonds occur, when people really challenge each other, and really learn from each other, all within a context that values safety and respect. All coffee-table talk of world-changing ideas aside: this place is where the world changes. 

Admittedly, I'm dealing with the after-effects of a lot of trauma right now, and it informs the way I interact with most things. I am apparently a poster child for post-traumatic stress; when, on the advice of a therapist, I read the following description, I actually laughed out loud in half delight/half relief/half horror (it's math, you see): 

they should edit this to add "extremely scattered writing"

So, yeah, when we're discussing a topic that can be as touchy as sexism, I'm coming at it from a disadvantage right now, because lately, if I am nothing else, I am touchy, if by touchy, I actually mean irrationally, explosively murderous. Something to work on. 

________

I know there will always be people who consider a feminist resistance to sexism overreacting; there's always going to be someone who will call me a dyke for offering my name and saying you can call me Lisa, not 'sweetheart.' Always be guys who, upon first meeting a well-spoken woman with a strong personality, will immediately think I bet she's a great lay and will value her solely at that level. Always be that guy who decides to ratchet up his rage because you dared loudly call him out for being grabby. Always be rapists.  Yeah, the lines between all these behaviors are thinner, and more blurred, than you'd think. And maybe it's defeatist, but I honestly don't see these things changing.

And I really don't get bent out of shape over it often (and, just so we're all on the same page: calling it out when it happens is not the same thing as getting bent out of shape). I'm a freakin chef working in the freakin food industry; if every person needling me with sexist humor truly got under my skin, I'd have track marks from here to you. 

When it comes to sexism, I find that I've somehow shifted from think what you like, and please feel free to tell me about it, so we can dialogue and learn from each other to think what you like, and keep it to your damn self. 

Because a lot has happened to me. Some recent, some not; some of it is your business, and some of it isn't. I don't bring it up, because I'm not fit to discuss it right now. So that's on me. 

But my instantly-angry reaction when someone attempts to shame me (that's what you get) for being angry with jokes at a system of treatment that makes things like dyke and groping and rape and denied opportunities okay, a system that necessitates I demand to be called by my own name and not whatever sexy nickname someone else dreams up for me: 

What I would say to The Universal You is: Think what you want, but keep it to yourself, for the foreseeable future. 

Because whether you want to believe it or not: Depending on your background (everyone's is different), there's a lot of complication in being born a girl, and there's a lot of conflict in being raised in a tradition that constantly tells you you're inferior.

Can you imagine it? Being born to a father who penalizes you for how you operate as a person - he sees it as in spite of your gender, while you see it as the skin you live in. To this day, you're penalized for complicating his life, his sense of order, his hard-held ideas; you're penalized for being the face of his fascinated hatred for women; although there are no "good" women in his world, you, in particular, just won't behave.

Can you imagine it? Being born to a mother with narrow ideas of femininity, who rejects. 

Can you imagine it? Growing up in a culture that prizes your compliance, while despising and/or sexualizing your power. Your niceness, while despising the way your point of view complicates the big picture. Your virginity while despising your sexuality. Your beauty, while vilifying or penalizing you for it.

Joke at me about it. Go ahead. I'll wait right here. Every time, Universal You, you resent me and want me to bear the burden for your discomfort when I don't laugh. Every time it's just emotionally, physically easier to force a chuckle and don't make a thing, just let it pass. 

Would you ask a Black person to laugh at a "nigger" joke?

Would you chide him or her to "lighten up" at references about separate drinking fountains or monkey jokes?

Would you expect him or her to laugh at your joking about a Latino person's unsuitability for a particular job, by virtue of ethnicity?

Would you expect them to grant you a courtesy chuckle, for your own sake, so you can absolve yourself of knowing that you're behaving like a person who makes light of generations of oppression and torment?

Would you dismiss their disdain with geez, so touchy; that's just how They are?

This has nothing to do with anything; it just makes me laugh.

You're not making a joke, Universal You. You're making light of some of the most painful, and most formative, themes of my life; you're making light of the work it takes to shed those themes and become who I really am. Those themes don't mean the same to you, and that's fine. But The crux of it is: It doesn't matter if I know you don't mean it. It's not about you. It's about what you're saying, and what it means to me. And you don't get to decide what things mean to me; you don't get to bank on your reputation as a "nice person" mitigating the horror what you're joking about. Most important advice, for anything, anywhere: Consider your audience. 

And, like so many things that have happened in my recent life, this is all I ask: If you can't understand, then believe me when I tell you. 

My days of welcoming dialogue on this subject are done, or, at least, suspended. Because while part of me knows that there's still so much talking to be done, and really, that's where my heart is - most of me is just plain damn NOT TALKING ABOUT THIS ANYMORE IN TWO THOUSAND FREAKING THIRTEEN. 

That is all. 

And if you've read this, and are now shaking your head at my overreactions to things that are harmless: don't ever tell me so. 

chef coats, corn, catalina, and cheese: the bright lights of the publix.

Sometimes, you have to go to the grocery store, and, if you're anything like my mother, it's a huge chore that you bear because you'd rather not listen to husbands complain about things like stomach growling or eggs for supper? or I want a coffee cake or I ate all the cashews or did Lisa take that fresh mozzarella with her? (yup.)

But, if you're like me, you don't always mind wandering through the store, although, lately, since I'm not in a kitchen of my own, I don't have much time or space to plan projects like I once did - I can't drench the air with ghee-toasted garam masala, ginger, garlic, and I can't really take up half the kitchen with a complete feast of Indian food because why only make chicken tikka masala (which I know, yes, it's British) when you could also make naan and raita and palak paneer and mango chutney and gulab jamun because don't be a pansy, if you're gonna do it, then doooo iiiiiiiiiit, and I can't really monopolize the entire counter with a series of sourdough projects, carefully monitoring their yeasty progress, imagining they offer up little yeep yeep yeeps every time I peek under the plastic and press their supple little fat rolls, but it's okay, because someday, hopefully soon. I've spent the past few years couch-surfing; I'm not sure what I'll do, when I stand in a quiet, empty kitchen which looks back at me expectantly.

But anyway. Even if I can't lose myself in a million inane little projects, I can wander around the grocery store and imagine.

And bump into those people who stop in the middle of the aisle with their carts, to mentally weigh each brand of catalina dressing against the other, because, you know, there might be one Holy Grail kind of bright orange goo, superior to all others. Maybe.

And see that guy stride past the end of the aisle, stout and gruff-looking, probably my age, carrying a bouquet of soft yellow flowers and a card, and he stops his quick-step stride before an endcap of cookies, considers for a bit, picks up a bag, and smiles a little as he resumes.

And listen to the chatty little toddler in the cart pushed by his dark, petite mom - she places a wedge of some cream-colored aged cheese beside him, and his little lips come together in a silent ooooh of delight, dark eyes light up, he chirps mama, is this cheese? and she chirps back, yes, it is, baby, and then, instantly, her voice drops twelve decibels: don't you bite it. 

And ask the sweet-looking employee do you happen to know, off the top of your head, if you guys carry freeze-dried corn? and his soft face, so young-looking that the stark black stubble on his chin has nowhere to hide, draws inward a little, his brow furrows over round brown eyes, and then the clouds lift as he replies oh, yeah, we do! we totally do! I think it's - pretty sure it's in the freezer section. That would be aisle twelve, and he's so pleased with his having helped me, and I almost start to explain no, freeze-dried, it would be in the dry goods, it's not a froz - but shut up, Alton Brown, so I smile and thank him.

And the teenage girl in the throes of The Awkward, dressed in schoolgirl uniform skirt, polo, cardigan, trudging along, shooting daggers at the floor, behind a mother briskly pushing a cart, a mother who reminds me of my own. I swear, if I could just choose life activities by the day, I would like to make a day of cradling the faces of awkward teenage girls in my hands and invoking the immovable way I have, sometimes, when I'm almost impossible to disbelieve, because I simply will not hear otherwise: You are incredible, in all the ways you think you aren't. It's obvious how intelligent you are. I bet you're great at math. People would kill for your hair. Your hands are beautiful. Stop apologizing for yourself. Own your space. It's all yours, rightfully so.

And the guy in the chef coat. Who knows if he's a chef. But he had dark hair, and dark eyes, and wore really nice jeans, and he wore that coat, and I don't even care why, because yes, Chef. We kept walking past each other in the aisles, and it was almost a little awkward - probably from me, because chef coat!! and have I mentioned that I'm a sucker for anything that accentuates a man's shoulders? A suit jacket; a nice button-down; a fitted chef coat, and I forfeit social graces. Occasionally, I notice that I avoid eye contact with attractive men; I'll reject you before you reject or hurt me. It's a stupid habit.

And then, I'm repeatedly almost mowed down by the guy in the produce department, wearing fleshy elastic shorts and a torn Riverbend T-shirt, smelling of body odor, with greasy hair, who kept asking me where the bell peppers were. And then I think sometimes stupid habits come in real handy as I stare at the floor and stride toward the bakery to make pointed conversation with the lady behind the counter about unsliced Italian bread until he goes away.

And the really attractive older woman - maybe late 50s? - dressed impeccably, simply, classily, in perfect-fitting jeans, a black V-neck T-shirt, small black flats, blond hair (too perfect to be natural) in a perfect, smooth bob, with simple, classy silver earrings and bracelet. And I can't help but think if you pay so much attention to successfully looking so beautiful, how can you be so oblivious to the fact that I have almost mowed you down, like, five times because you keep stopping in the middle of the aisle to compare catalinas? Maybe she thought I was looking for the bell peppers.

People-watching: the only acceptable stalking.

pen/sword

It's common:

When you walk away from the casket - after
steeling yourself against the unnatural waxen stillness
of a face you knew in emotion, after noting, from
some morbid need to confirm, the lack of twitching
behind the eyes, after searching for the lipsticked lip-stitches muting the departed eternity
of an empty shell - we imagine the cold-wash terror, morbid
that we are, were were to catch a single flutter; we, ourselves, evoke
the feeling of frigid fluid in our bones, and we breathe it away as we
turn back to the faces of the living, make our solemn processional
through the fragrance of a thousand slain gardens, dead thorns clutched in hand.

It's common: We don't cry for those who have left. We cry
for the survivors. We cry for the supple momentum
of those who collapse a little into the void
left by someone whose existence was, in some way,
pressed side-to-side with our own,
until they weren't.

_________

It is a numbing thing, to give up
when you have to defend everything you say,
or when everyone's words
serve as fodder, as springboards for rebuttal,
for responses or open letters or rebukes.

As a writer, I feel like I'm dying. And it's so much easier
to die a slow death, continue determined dogged
one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, and not offer
a word along the way, as funeral-stitched lips lie still
while I shrink, while I hide myself
in smaller and smaller clothes
and offer nothing
where words
serve as fodder for, or springboards for, or rebuttal against,
or "responses" or "open letters" or rebukes.
It's tiring to read; it's tiring to abstain. The board is tired
against your toes
when what I have
is what broke my heart.

and anymore, it hardly seems worth 

the trouble

when we don't listen much anymore, 

when every word is a weapon, 

when someone out there is, right now, evaluating

these words 

as simplistic stupid whiny ugly childish mumbo jumbo hissy fit

and I'm breathless.

when I say "I feel as though
everything I was before
is dead; I am barely in this body anymore," and
the dreaded emo is thrown out, and
isn't that just the bitch of Pinterest, that
what was, at one time, soul-deep expressions
of genuine devastation
have been turned commonplace, into filtered pictures
of pretty girls lying in groups
in large fields, or roads.

when I say I really don't know
what to call God anymore, and it scares me and
my own instincts clamor with large, leather-bound books
open to pages interpreted to accuse:

postmodern,

individualism,

spiritual-not-religious, 
unchurched. 
not real. not good. not enough. 

I've always had an intact core, always, and
any attack or defense was peripheral in nature. But my core, thirty-odd
years in the making, is beginning to die
of the embryonic words suckling at me, demanding me, refusing to take form, refusing
to emerge and infuse my action with purpose; dying of the rage
that inflames me to boiling, collecting me
like steam on a window, stitched lips
bulging against the strain of everything unintelligible. I have no defense.

Any of it is hardly worth writing anymore, bad poetry aside.