The One About My Head

Apparently, I have something wrong with mine. I’ve been out of work for about a month now just getting more and more behind. I’ve been to the ER and to see a doctor twice. Now it’s time for the specialists. I was referred to a neurologist.

I don’t want it to be something serious. But honestly, if I’m seeing a neurologist what percentage of their patients have something small wrong with the old brain?

I always expected I’d go out in a car crash or, in helping someone else, make a miscalculation and fall to my death.

Fucking cheery thoughts, yeah? Not in a cheery place, so beat it, ya looky-loo.

The One About Civil Disobedience

I am having a problem with anger lately and I’m pretty sure it’s going to get me in trouble. But why so angry? Well, let’s see

AT THE BORDER

• 11,000 children separated from their parents
• 1,400 children “lost”
• sexual abuse of children
• 6 dead children

IN DC

• Refusal to pass election security bills
• Connections to actual child trafficking and sex rings
• Open racism
• Open hostility towards American cities
• Federal death penalty reinstated
• Being anti fascist = terrorist
• President lying about 9/11

IN CALIFORNIA

• 6 people dead
• another white guy shooter
• WHAT THE FUCK, people?

This is by no means the end of my list of why I’m angry, it’s just what’s on the top of my head at the moment.

TLDR: You should be mad if you’re paying attention. Share my rage. Anything less is just a rook mistake.

The 72nd One About the VA

I am done. SO fucking GODDAMN DONE

The One About home defense

Fuck all if it isn’t just the most complicated concept. Are you protecting yourself from armed robbers intent on stealing everything you have and murdering you in your sleep? Or are you playing Jigsaw with cameras and multi-phased detainment and elimination setups?

Or are you just afraid of the other. The other that doesn’t look like you – that doesn’t speak your language – that doesn’t worship as you do.

People will tell you to stop being a racist piece of shit, right? Does that suggestion ever work? Does it actually make a person rethink their ideas and do the work to see why what they’ve said/think is racist?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that if you speak to people, they become human to you and not an object to navigate around. Maybe you work with someone who isn’t like you and you’ve never really given them a thought. Try it. Talk. But think about what you say before it comes out of your mouth. Let’s not focus on color or race or religion in that conversation. Let’s just say hello and move on from there.

Try it. And maybe you’ll feel as though you have one less person to defend against. Maybe you’ll realize that no one is trying to steal your way of life.

TLDR: Know what you’re up against in yourself and find the solutions. Anything less would be a rook mistake.

The One About Sarcasm

Y’all June is almost here and you know what that means, right? An end to another School Shooter Season! Watch as the number of school shootings decline rapidly, tapering off to zero. Watch as those months become part of the statistical formula. Watch as SOMEONE tweets about how his administration has all but STOPPED that problem. Just wait for it. You know it’s coming.

How can we protest any louder? How long before they shoot someone you know, love, or care about? And I did notice that everyone in this pic is white. What does that say about our country and who’s “acceptable” to protest anything?

 

TL;DR: Sorry shooters, school’s out!

The One About April

Historically April is a bad month for me. All the reasons are sitting on my shoulders, leaning down and whispering in my ears. I do not need anything, I do not need help, I am absolutely physically fine.  I just want say some pretty stupid things. I want to do some pretty stupid things.

I have a deadline for an anthology on the 30th and I don’t know if the pressure of this month will let me finish anything. I don’t know if I can make myself move, let alone be cognizant enough to write.

And still I think, what the hell do I have to be sad about?

I’m still alive.

Right?

According to Wikipedia April is for:

• ALS Awareness Month (United States)^[23]
• Asian Pacific American Heritage Month^[11][24]
• Celiac Awareness Month
• Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Awareness Month
• Haitian Heritage Month
• Jewish American Heritage Month^[12]
• Lupus Awareness Month
• Mental Health Awareness Month^[25]
• Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month (Canada)
• National Bike Month
• National Foster Care Month^[26]
• National Guide Dog Month (2008, 2009)
• National Mobility Awareness Month
• National Stroke Awareness Month
• Neurofibromatosis Awareness month

The One About Exit Strategies

Have one.

Not just from the room you’re standing in right now, but from your current situation. Know how to extract yourself from a busybody, a toxic relationship, an insensitive friend, and that one guy you were mistakenly nice to that won’t go away.

Know how to change a tire. Know the basic functions of engine parts. Do not rely on the kindness of strangers, friends or family.

Know how to leave a job that no longer fits you. Know how to leave any relationship that no longer fits you.

Shake yourself awake and look around. Do not let rote activity lull you.

Stop and think. If there was an active shooter in my location, where would I go? What would I do?

Paranoid? Maybe.

But have you thought about it?

Then maybe we’re just paying attention.

TL;DR: Know your escape routes in life and use them as needed. Don’t become too complacent, that would be a Rook mistake.

The Other Other One About the VA

You have got to be fucking kidding me. Help me understand how anyone can come into the hospital with an infection and NOT have their bandages changed regularly. Help me understand how a hospital staff could allow that infection to not only go septic, but then to grow MAGGOTS in it.

“During the 21 days I was there, … I pled with the medical staff, the senior medical staff, to      increase his meds so his bandages could be changed,” Parker told Tulsa World. “I was met with a stonewall for much of that time.”

And yet, as far as Parker is concerned, the nurses were excellent. He placed the blame instead on senior medical staff and the bureaucracy.

There are several articles about this incident.

The Washington Standard

Tulsa World

Stars and Stripes

TL;DR: If the VA doesn’t terrify you, you’re not paying attention. Again, don’t assume the VA is the best place for treatment. Do your research. Anything less is a rook mistake.

 

The One About Belonging

Some of this will sound like I’m bragging. Forgive me.

See what I did there? Please don’t reject me over being proud of my accomplishments. Let me erase some of who I am for another’s approval.

Fuck that.

When I was a kid, we lived in rural Texas. My brother drowned while on my big sister (at 4 years old) duty, making me an outsider in my own family. Dad’s 24 hour/48 off rotations at the fire station left me at home with a mother who couldn’t look at me.

I learned to read at three and spent my childhood as a tomboy/athlete/bookworm trying to fit in one of those categories of kids while still belonging to the other. I was the only girl on a all boys’ soccer team. I cut my hair short and was proud when people mistook me for a boy, so my mom put me in dresses. My fifth grade math teacher told me in front of the class, “If you can’t do honor’s level math, then you probably shouldn’t be in honor’s reading either. We moved back and forth between this little country town and Dallas suburbs – perpetually the outsider new kid.

I joined the Army. Work harder, do more, or be labeled a cock-holster, barracks bunny, or some other pervasion of slut. Got passed over for a promotion because I was female. Because the men won’t respect a female leader. All of this in the time of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  I was an outsider.

Got married. Spent ten years in an abusive relationship. Other soldiers avoided me or asked, “Why are you with him?” But they didn’t help. Physical abuse. Verbal abuse. All of it easy to hide when my training and PDS took me 1200 miles from home and I moved 13 times in 4 years. And then when I finally did leave, that family doesn’t understand, doesn’t think it could have been that bad.

In 2001, I suffered a traumatic brain injury. For as much as the aforementioned sucked, I lost some of who I was. I now forget things, can shake uncontrollably when I’m tired, and can get easily confused. I am an outsider in my own head.

Had a relationship with a woman. It was beautiful and amazing and so was she. Except it was a secret. She didn’t want anyone to know. Again, the person I loved made me an outsider.

My friends at home are published authors. Named, for real, honest to god, multiple books with actual NY presses, AUTHORS. One of them asked me when I was going to get serious and get published so I could sit at the big kids table with them. Subtext: I don’t belong.

There’s more. There’s the job that I work with a bunch of females who have never seen the outside of their own backyard, They clutch at their rigid ideals like so many imaginary pearls around their necks. They fear me. They cannot or will not understand me. I am the weird one. They wonder why can’t I just teach Where the Red Fern Grows and be satisfied?

My point?

I’m getting there.

Sirens. I see myself in these people. I walk out of discussions heady, drunk on the ideas and words being shared without shame – without judgement. The Ft. Collins/Springs/Aurora crew with their warrior hearts and thoughtful talents, the PacNorWest thespians and play writes and poets bring out a joy (a motherfucking JOY, do you hear me?) I thought I’d lost. These are the people I’ve been looking for all my life. These are my people.

A thoughtless phrase almost killed it for me.

Up on the 5th floor, the club floor, the elitist floor, you have to card in with your key in the elevator. It’s where my friend and I shared a room for this conference. Through the Club Lounge windows, I saw  a few folks as we headed to our rooms after the dance. I smiled at the person I’d had a very pleasant encounter with earlier in the day and we, my friend and I, used the key card to open the door. Happy to be in this woman’s presence again, I was going to ask if we could hang out with them. I wasn’t ready to give up the feeling of Sirens just yet.

Didn’t get the chance. I was met with this instead, “Do you even belong on this floor?”

Do I?

I don’t know.

.

What I do know is that I belong at Sirens. And so does she. We both have a lot left to learn.

TL;DR: Don’t be a classist asshole, mmkay? And don’t let one bad encounter sour an otherwise great experience. That’d be a Rook mistake.

The One About Self Defense

Everyone should know what it feels like to ball up a fist and hit. I’m not saying anyone should like it, but you need to know how to do it without earning a boxer’s fracture. Even if you are a dyed in the wool pacifist, you may feel the need to save your neighbor, your child, your pet, spouse, bff – whatever.

To me, it’s like learning how to swim. You may hate swimming. You may choose to never get into a body of water your entire life. But I still think you should know how to swim. What happens if your plane goes down over the ocean?  How stupid would it be to survive the wreck only to drown because you’re ignorant?

I took self defense classes for years and became an instructor. We practiced what to do in a home invasion, if you’re robbed at gun point or knife point, and what to do in a bar fight. It always starts with a choice:

1. Throw your wallet away from you and run.
2. Do what they say and hope it’s over.
3. Fight.

Being able to defend yourself doesn’t mean being openly aggressive. It doesn’t mean being an antagonist asshole. And it doesn’t mean killing the other person.

There’s a choice. There’s always a choice that has to be made in a split second. Go learn how to hit something.

TL;DR: Worry less and prepare more.

Also, don’t take Krav lessons at a Tae Kwan Do school. It’s not the same thing. That’d just be a Rook mistake.