Hate mail makes me popular, right?

"You are a fake ass cunt."

Definitely counts as hate mail, 

I'm sure you'll agree.  

Doubly so when it's left by "Anonymous" - 

because, 

you know, 

if Kim left it, 

it'd be another thing entirely.  

Eh.  

That's all I've got to say about that. 

I just wanted to make sure you all saw it.  :)  

Here's a picture I took with my new phone:

Happy Thursday!

Holy crap the sun's not even up yet!

It's twenty till six on Friday morning.  WTF?  In case you were wondering, if you need to start your period, GUARANTEED, tell the internet you're feeling yourself up because you can't tell if your boobs are sore or not.  Or take a pregnancy test.  Works.  Every fucking time.

So I'm going to go to work early.  Or I'm going to sit here and write some bullshit till it's time to go to work, and then I'll kick my own ass for not taking advantage of the fact that I was up at five till five this morning.  Well, if we're being honest, I was up at 4 - I just didn't get out of bed till almost five, when I'd finally gave up on getting back to that dream about ...  I can't remember anymore what that dream was about.  It was weird, though, and I wanted to see what happened.

I remember what I dreamed about before I woke yesterday morning, though.  Heather Donovan.  She was this geeky (before geeky was cool) chick who went to middle school with me - The Girls and I were tortuously mean to her.  We were in the sixth grade - as I remember it, sixth grade was pretty fucking awful.  (Except that I learned the word "fuck" in the sixth grade, so that's kinda cool.)  Sixth grade was full of awkwardness and not fitting it - a bunch of hormone-laden kids bouncing off one another and trying to figure out where they fit.  We all fell into our individual roles quickly enough - my role was outcast-wannabecoolkid.  Heather was like three rungs below me on the social hierarchy scale.  She wore blue eye shadow smeared up to her eyebrows.  Her hair was thin and she pouffed her bangs into this see-through bird's-nest thing and lacquered it with hairspray so it moved in one giant piece in the wind.  (Okay, we all did that, but hers was really bad.)  She wore button-up flower-printed blouses, buttoned all the way to the top, that wreaked of her mother's particular sense of  (old-lady) style.  (Let's not discuss the fact that I discovered jeans for the first time in this same year.  For the first half of the school year,  my favorite pants were a pair of stirrup pants in some pattern that involved big yellow flowers and purple something- I don't remember what was purple in the pants, but something was, because I always wore them with a long purple shirt that I thought made me look awesome, and I never would've worn a purple shirt with those pants unless there was purple in them somewhere.)

Anyhow, back to Heather.  She showed up in my dream yesterday morning.  We were maybe at a party or something?  There was a big open room, people mingling, and then she walked through the door.  I was startled by her presence - she looked, in her face, exactly the same as the last time I saw her, but without the crunchy bangs and coke-bottle glasses.  Her hair was sleek and smooth, and her skin was clear.  Her eyes were free of the magnification of the glasses that always made her look a little googly-eyed...and they weren't held down by a gram of blue powder, either.  She was pretty.

We didn't talk beyond a "hey, good to see you" because my alarm sounded.  But in the shower, I thought of things I'd say to her if I saw her now:

"I'm sorry we were so mean to you."

"I'm sorry we put Ex-lax in that caramel cookie bar and then let you eat it."

"I'm sorry we made fun of you."

"I'm sorry we thought we were better than you."  I mean, there was a reason she was sitting at our lunch table, people; it's not like there were assigned seats.

"I hope we didn't cause any lasting damage."

Kids are mean.  We were mean.  Brutal.  I hope she's doing alright.

"Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever forgive myself for the sins I committed as a child."  I said that to Stacy not too long ago; I told her if I ever write a book, it'll be the first line.  Today, right now, I feel like I'm a pretty good person.  I try to leave a good impact wherever I go, even if it's just a smile or a few coins.  I've been a bitch, though; I've been a mean asshole, I've been cruel and vindictive.  For fuck's sake, I once convinced my 2-year old brother that he was adopted and mom and dad were going to take him back because they decided they didn't like him anymore.  When I say convinced, I mean, I only retracted my story when he started crying.

God, that brought tears to my eyes.  See what I mean?  I hate myself for that memory.  I hope Brother doesn't remember it.  Of course, is that better or worse?  That it could be seared into his psyche that he's unloved because his sister was an evil 11 year old?  Maybe it's all my fault he was all fucked up.

Stacy, too.  She and I are only 18 months apart; I treated her as if she were my minion, there for my personal enjoyment and entertainment.  About 10 years ago, she told me she'd always admired me and looked up to me; I've never been so ashamed or felt so low in my life.  I don't deserve her kindness, and sometimes, even now, I'm surprised that she wants to hang out with me or listens to my advice.

But people change.  We grow up and we figure out that our actions have consequences and we learn what empathy is and we start to not be assholes all the time.  I think Stacy and Brother have forgiven me; I imagine Heather Donovan thinks nothing of me at all.

I am my own worst critic, because I remember.

Margo the Super Neighbor

Margo Tatum lives over one street and down, on the part of the parkway that the regular traffic doesn't travel - the part that's used by pedestrians walking their dogs or their children, the runners running, the walkers walking, the not-serious-enough-to-dare-to-ride-in-the-real-road-bikers biking.  Tonight, Margo was standing on the edge of this not-for-travelling-traffic road with her shiny red chair-walker and her wire-haired dachshund, wearing a black and red patterned tunic over silver capri pants with black old-lady shoes - you know what shoes I mean; the ones all little old ladies wear because their feet aren't what they used to be and at some point you have to choose comfort over style, even if that point is after 70.

I've not met Margo before tonight; our conversation was brief:

"Is your pup a boy or girl?" I inquired - I didn't know to say he or she.

"Yes, wire-haired," Margo replied.

"Ah." I nodded approvingly and smiled.

"I really wish I could get that cone off the roof of my porch."  She pointed across the street, where, sure enough, an orange MSD traffic cone lay on its side on the roof of her covered porch.  It looked to be right on the edge, easily reachable if one had a ladder tall enough to boost you up to the roofline.

"Do you have a ladder?  I'll get it down for you."  Sure.  Why not?  It's nearly dark, I don't know you, and I'm wearing a white skirt and no panties.  And walking my dog.  Sure, I'll climb up on a ladder positioned precariously in your flower beds.  Sure.

"Yes, I have a ladder.  It's about five foot tall.  I'd do it myself, but I'm so old, you see..."

"No sweat, I'll take care of it for you.  Where's that ladder?"

I did, too.  Her five foot ladder was more like 3.5 foot, but whatever - with that and the rake, it took next to no time to fish the cone off the roof.  I didn't even expose myself to anyone.  When I returned the tools and was able to wedge shut her swollen wooden gate, she declared me an angel sent from Heaven.

See?  This is why I do nice things for people.  It's not to do the right thing or to help out my fellow man; it's because they say really nice things about me that make me feel awesome about myself.

Fucking housework.

I drove home thinking "I have it all; I have everything in the world that everyone dreams of having and I should remember that always and be thankful for it."

Then I got home and the kitchen was still a wreck.  There was no meat thawing in the fridge to feed our guests who are on their way.  I yelled out "Hello?" and was greeted with silence.

Up the stairs, around the corner, down the hall - he's asleep.  "Hi!" I say, hoping he can't hear the tone of pissed off that tints my greeting.  He's startled - "Huh?!  What time is it?"  "6:30," I tell him as I leave the room.  I go back down to the kitchen and start unloading the dishwasher.  He joins me and says to go find something else to do, he'll take care of this.

"You said you'd take care of this while I was gone!" I want to yell.  "You said you'd do this. And you didn't; you slept instead and now I can do it myself because it needs to get done and at least if I do it myself it'll get done!"

I don't say any of that, of course, because I love him and don't want to hurl hateful mean angry words in his face.  Oh, but I do want to.  I want to remind him of how he said three days ago he'd take care of the kitchen and still it sits, because I've refused because he said he would.  But he hasn't, and I'm so mad I could spit nails over it.

Now he's doing that and I'm doing this; reminding myself that I have it all; everything everyone wants.  Okay, so I had to leave the room and smoke a bowl and calm the fuck down, but still.

Relationships are hard.  With anyone; your neighbor, your friends, your partner.  And I don't mean to imply that I'm somehow perfect or that I always do everything he asks of me without complaint or without being asked a second time, because that absolutely is not the case.

Gah.

Even in the Promised Land, there are still fights over who has to do the dishes.

Namaste

(I'm assuming a lot of you are familiar with this story, as Katie is HUGE in the blogging world, but if not, the links are there.)

Katie Granju filed a lawsuit yesterday against two people who gave her drug-addicted son a large amount of methadone, which caused him to overdose.  Then they refused to call for medical help, which resulted in Henry's death just over a year ago, at the age of 18.

Today is my brother's birthday.  He's 22.  He could be Henry.  Their stories, they are so much the same.  My brother, too, is an addict.  My brother has done horrible things to support his habit.  My brother had been a very bad person at times.  My brother has been really hard to like for a long time.  But he is my brother, and I love him, and if someone did something that hurt him or caused his death, I'd fight like hell, too, to see justice served. Because he is my brother, and I love him, and he's a good person when he's not high or chasing a high.

On Facebook, Katie said something about how she'd made the mistake of reading the comments responding to the news story about the lawsuit...and because I could never not go look after reading something like that, I made my way to the comment section, too.

I wish I hadn't.  Why are people so mean?

I'm not copying and pasting that bullshit because it shouldn't have been posted in the first place.  I just cannot believe the callousness and heartlessness and downright cruelty people are showing toward this woman, this mother.  And Henry?  To so many, Henry was a nobody.  Henry was scum, he was unimportant, he was worthless - not because they talked with him and determined his views and opinions to be unimportant or worthless, no; Henry was an addict, he was weak, he did bad things, so Henry was a nobody.

Now, I'm not generally one to quote from the Good Book, but there's a first time for everything:

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least among you, you did not do for me.'" Matthew 25:41-45 
 
Even if you're not a Christian, you're a shithead if you don't abide by that passage there.  Henry was someone's (Katie's) child, grandchild, brother, nephew, cousin.  But for the grace of God, he could've been YOUR child, grandchild, brother, nephew, cousin.  He was a person, with thoughts and feelings, who loved and was loved.  These people who are being sued, they let Henry choke on his own vomit and convulse for hours in the middle of the floor of their house trailer, refusing to call an ambulance for him.  And people are attacking Katie for wanting those shitheads to be held accountable?

It's easy to want to blame the victim, to say Henry was nothing.  If he just fades into the woodwork with all the other druggies, everyone can pretend that Henry wasn't JUST LIKE their son, daughter, brother, sister, cousin, niece, nephew.  If Henry was just some messed up junkie, there's no correlation between him and Todd, who's the Captain of the football team, or Jessica who's Head Cheerleader.  If Katie was a bad mom, if she just turned a blind eye and let her kid become and addict, then there's no way that'll ever happen to the child of the Patty the PTA President, because Patty really pays attention to her children.

Wake up!  The drug problem is in your back yard!  Hell, it's probably in your bathroom medicine cabinet.  But no...better to pretend this problem belongs to the margins of society and brush it away from our sight; shame the "good" victims into keeping quiet to protect themselves - there is so much guilt by association.

I've lived with this fear in the back of my mind and heart for the last few years - a fear that one day I'm going to get a tearful, hysterical phone call from my Momma or Daddy saying my brother's dead; that he's overdosed, or he was robbed and beaten horribly, or someone's thrown him from a car, or he was shanked in jail.  Drugs are really bad - they make people do really awful things - and when you've got a loved one living in that world, your imagination runs wild.  Brother's currently on an upswing of sobriety, and he's making good steps toward the future.  We're all cautiously hopeful...while we're telling ourselves we're fools for being so optimistic.  This is the hilly tightrope we walk, those of us who love an addict.

Those commenters said those horrible things about Katie and Henry for one of a few reasons:  maybe they've never known unconditional love; maybe they or someone they love have/has an addition problem about which they're in denial; or maybe they're just assholes - you've got to be a special kind of low to direct a bunch of hate and vitriol toward a grieving mother who's only trying to help get a couple drug dealers off the streets before someone else's kid dies.  Mostly I think they just can't possibly understand - they can't relate to Katie's grief, they can't relate to Henry's addiction - and what they can't understand scares them, and so they attack.
I hope Katie comes to realize this before any more of those word daggers find their mark.

Try to leave the world a better place than you found it, would you please, friends?  Show some love to your fellow humans and remember that we're all fighting our own private battles.

If you want to help Katie in her quest for Justice for Henry, go here to sign the Petition, or visit Justice for Henry for more information.