.

I'm coming down from having one of the most frustrating conversations I've ever had with another human being. Nevermind that said human being is a 5 year old boy that is too smart for his own good. Suddenly he's figured everything out, all the world's secrets. Every single one of them. And let me tell you, he is PISSED. He's furious that we've all been lying to him since the moment he took his first breath only 5 short years ago. He's been thinking about the whole Santa thing for quite a while now and according to him, none of it makes any sense. No one can actually fit down a chimney, there's no workshop full of elves making toys that we can just buy at Target. It's all fake.

This parenting thing is a real adventure, let me tell ya. One minute you're cruising along, cutting sandwhiches into tiny little christmas trees and for their lunches and feeling like parent of the year because you haven't even forgotten to move the elf once this season. Next thing you know, you're in a full on blizzard of emotions because a 5 year old is yelling at you and accusing you of sitting on a throne of lies.

So I told him the truth. I told him it's all pretend and just for fun and that he better not tell his older sister or his best friends across thr street because they believe so hard and it would destroy them in the same way it would if he unwrapped all their Christmas presents for them. "It's not even about the presents. It's about family, food and animals anyway," he said.

He has the biggest heart and like I said, he's too smart for his own good.

He's right though.

Remember to love your people this season. Spend time with them. Tell them how proud and grateful you are to have them in your life.

The Gift of Murder

There are few things in this life that bring me more joy than finding a perfect gift for someone or getting a really great bargain. If there's one thing that stresses me out (Who am I kidding? There are a million things that stress me out.), it's buying gifts for other children. You never really know what they already have, you question their interests, and because you're a parent you know they will only really like what you buy them for maybe 10 minutes and then it will sit in a toy box for a year before going to Goodwill.

Recently, my son was invited to a party by one of his school friends, a boy we will refer to as Charlie in order to protect his identity and to keep anyone from ever tracing any future crimes he might commit back to my unintentional influence.  Charlie is turning 5 and having this super fun party and he has these great parents who put a lot of effort and time into this incredible party. We go out shopping maybe a day or two before this party for other things and stop by the Dollar Tree. 

As I am sauntering down the aisles filled with all the treasures 4 shiny quarters will buy,  a book on one of the shelves catches my eye. It looks like a hard cover children's picture book, a rare find at the Dollar store. As I reach for it, I notice the name of the author printed down the spine of the book is Bruce Springsteen. Say what?! A children's picture book by Bruce Springsteen for $1?! On the cover was a picture of a cute little baby named "Outlaw Pete." A cute book about a bad little baby reminded me of one of Jack's favorite movies at the moment, Boss Baby. I grabbed two of those babies and tossed them in my cart, one for Jack and one for little Charlie. 

We had a busy week and never had a chance to read our copy of Outlaw Pete. On Monday night, I received an email from little Charlie's mom saying that "Jack was such an awesome kid, so kind, so fun, yada yada yada..." I mean, he is pretty great though. She goes on to thank us for the Lego set and the slime kit but when she gets to the book she suspiciously asks "was the book meant for Charlie or was it your book that was accidentally put in the bag?"

My first thought was, "No freakin way! Did someone write in the book? Is that why it was at the Dollar store? I knew it was too good to be true."

Then I thought... "That's a really weird thing to ask someone." So I sent Ryan up to grab our unread copy of Outlaw Pete. I watched in horror as his face grew more and more red and his chest heaved with awkward silent laughter as he read the book. 

Finally I couldn't take it any longer and I began to panic, "Oh my god. What does it say? What's wrong with it?"

He smirked as he handed it to me and told me to read it for myself. 

The book started off ok. A cute little baby robs a bank, gets arrested and then eventually breaks out of prison and goes on the lamb. Not so bad, right? I thought the baby would eventually wake up from a dream, or his mother would call him inside and shake him out of his daydream.

No such luck. The baby grows into a man while living his life on the run from Johnny Law. He meets a Navajo girl and decides to settle down and start a family. Turn a new leaf, if you will. Not so fast Outlaw Pete! You don't just get to rob banks, leave a body count in your wake and live a life on the run and just decide that one day you're above all that nonsense. Oh no, that is not how life works mister! There's this little thing called Karma that always finds you.

One day, New Leaf Pete is fishing down by the river when Bounty Hunter Dan rides up on him with his gun out and orders to capture Pete. This is when the real gem of the story occurs. Pete pulls his knife out and whips it through the air like it's some kind of ninja star and it lands right in the center of Dan's chest. Direct hit straight to the heart. In case I didn't accurately paint that picture for you, here's the actual illustration for the book:

Just in case you didn't get a good look from that illustration, they give you a close up on the next page:

After Dan lays dying in a pool of his own blood, a sly grin of defeat across his face, Pete mounts his horse and takes off.

Outlaw Pete rides until he realizes there just isn't a way to outrun Karma. Everyone must eventually atone for their sins. As he rests on horseback atop a snowy mountain, he contemplates life and all his dirty deeds. Pete realizes the only way out is to jump, and so he rides his horse over the icy cliff to his death in the valley below.

Murder, suicide, bank robbing babies, a man dying in a pool of his own blood..... What more could you ask for in a children's book?

I emailed little Charlie's mom back.

"Oh.my.god!!!!!!!! I am so sorry, What kind of book did I buy for your child? I take full responsibility if he knifes anyone at school tomorrow or steals anyone's juice box."

There is a moral to this story. Buy kids candy, legos, slime, anything except a book! At the very least, maybe read the book first. I would tell you not to buy books from the Dollar Store but I went back after this incident and found another book that might be even more exciting than Outlaw Pete. I bought one for myself and one to gift to someone special. Who wants to be that special someone?

Christmas Miracles

 “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” - Anne Lamott

Christmas. Jesus. Let me tell you something about Christmas. It comes with bright lights, food smorgasbords, sometimes snow, and packages with big bows wrapped up in pretty paper printed with cute little forest animals. Packages full of hopes and dreams. You know what's really in those beautiful gift wrapped boxes? Disappointment. Shattered dreams pop out of those glossy little gift bags like deranged Jack in the boxes. Those cute little forest animals are a fraud. Forest animals are salty little bitches. They don't wrap packages and throw snowballs. They will eat your face off. Honestly, I don't know what anyone really expects from a holiday that starts off by shoving a tree up an angel's ass and ends with you inviting a fat, bearded stranger to come into your house for fresh hot cookies while you sleep. Christmas. Fucking Christmas.

The first time Christmas shattered my dreams, I was only 4 years old. Seriously, it didn't waste any time. Just decided to jump right in and start ruining my life right from the start. The year was 1988 and I desperately wanted an Easy Bake Oven. Look... I know what you're thinking... you've heard me tell this story a million times already but I don't care. This was a pivotal moment in the course of my life. This is why I'm crazy! Anyway... if you're all done interrupting... I was 4, it was 1988 and the world was really weird. My parents were constantly separating, only to get back together a short time later. That Christmas, the only thing my tiny little heart desired was an Easy Bake Oven. That's it! Not world peace, not a million dollars, just an Easy Bake Oven for baking all the treats and burying my feelings under mountains of baked goods. Christmas morning arrived with all it's pretty packages and I tore into my gifts like one of those salty little badgers on the wrapping paper. Finally, as I sit in a pile of my own destruction, I get to the very last gift. This has to be it!! All my dreams were about to come true. I could actually feel it happening in my soul and my stomach which was already rumbling with hungry anticipation. I ripped the paper off the box and there... in big purple letters were those three magic words... EASY BAKE OVEN. I shouted with joy and jumped up and down. That's when I noticed a sly smirk on my mother's face.

"Open the box," she said.

Um... I don't need to open it, I know what's inside. It's printed right there on the box! Can't you read woman?!?!

 "You should probably open the box," she insisted.

So, I opened the box. The suspiciously light weight box. I peered down inside that dark empty box and found a dress folded up at the bottom. No oven, no brownies. Just a dress and sadness.

As the years passed, I remained hopeful. Surely that incident was a one time thing. I would not allow that traumatic event to overshadow my love for Christmas.  It was all my mother's fault anyway. She's the Grinch in this holiday special. The following year, I asked for a scooter but on Christmas morning I awoke to find a letter saying that Rudolph stepped on the scooter and broke it "so don't waste any time looking under the tree because it ain't there." It was signed "Santa" but the handwriting looked a lot like my mother's handwriting. The next year, I asked for a Barbie Dream House. If my real life home couldn't be a dream, then at least let me live vicariously through Barbie. Christmas morning came but my Dream House never did. Until... nearly 10 years later when it arrived under the tree with my little sister's name on it. This sister didn't even like Barbies, she desecrated the Dream House by piling all her nude dolls inside it like a giant freak orgy. Barbie deserved so much better than that. That same Christmas my sister also got the scooter that I asked for all those years ago. Apparently it takes 10 years to repair a scooter. Maybe Santa needs to hire some new elves and think about how his actions affect other people.

I held on tight through those troubled years and kept my eyes fixed on the future. I couldn't wait to be an adult and make my own decisions. Couldn't wait to take control of my home life and build that dream house for myself instead of waiting around for Santa to deliver it. Despite my optimism, Christmas continued to let me down. I met my future husband when I was 17, we celebrated our first Christmas together a few years later after graduating high school and moving into and apartment. We put up a small Chrismtas tree and hung our stockings on the wall since we didn't have a fireplace.  I put a lot of thought and care into the gifts I chose for him. He bought me a bottle of vodka in hopes that the two of us could share.

The next year he took me home for Christmas to spend a week with his parents. I was both nervous and excited to finally be celebrating Christmas with a family that didn't invite my mother over. As soon as we walked in my dog, who we brought with us, peed right on the marble floors. While my boyfriend's mother cleaned up the urine my dog pooped in front of the fire place, right under the stockings.

That night we all gathered around the beautifully decorated dining table for Christmas dinner. Now, here's the thing that you should know about me... I am from a pretty big family, several big families actually because my parents have both been married 4 times. I'm used to people shoving each other out of the way to get to the front of the line so they don't miss out on the mac and cheese. We typically eat off paper plates or mismatched dishes and sit wherever we can find a spot. Don't even get me started on desserts, I will cut someone for a piece of pie. That's probably why we use plastic utensils. So we sat down to eat this fancy dinner around this fancy table in the actual dream house and there are like 42 different forks and 6 plates and a bowl, even though I'm not eating anything that requires a bowl. I looked down at all the plates tried to use my best deductive reasoning (but I failed math so many times that I don't even know if that's the correct kind of reasoning to use in a situation such as this). There was a large gold plate on the bottom and another white plate on top of the gold plate. I deduced that the gold plate must be a decorative charger, so I grabbed the white plate and started piling on the mashed potatoes.

That's when his mother chuckled and said "You're using the wrong plate! The gold plate is for your meal, the white plate is for salad."

"Oh," I laughed nervously, "I thought the massive gold plate was the dessert plate." I always try to lighten the mood with a joke when I feel uncomfortable. It's this really great talent that I have.

While everyone laughed at my funny joke (it happens to me a lot), I looked down at my silverware with dread as I tried to determine which fork to use. I recalled that scene from Pretty Woman where the concierge tries to teach the sex worker, also known as Julia Roberts, how to use different silverware before she goes to a fancy dinner. I wondered silently if she started from the outside and worked her way in, just like she did with the high society life, or did she start on the inside and work her way out? My memory is amazing, it likes to recall the most horrific and embarrassing moments from my entire life as I am trying to sleep at night but decided to take the holiday off apparently because I could not remember which fork she started with. I took a chance, grabbed a fork and dug in.

Another laugh echoed from across the table, "You're using the wrong fork too!"

I cried the entire 18 hour drive home the next day. I do not give up easily though so I went ahead and married the boyfriend and had two kids with him. Finally I got to be the mother in this Christmas story and I was determined to have a fresh start with the holiday. No more letters from "Santa" about crushed scooters and shattered dreams. I came downstairs with my baby bright and early that first Christmas morning, dressed in her cute Christmas pajamas. I gave her a bottle so she would be full and happy while we opened gifts. Just as we were unwrapping the first gift of Christmas, the baby vomited sour smelling, white formula all over me and her cute Christmas jammies.

For about 5 years now, maybe even longer, Christmas seemed to be backing off a bit. I loved watching how excited my kids were every Christmas morning as they unwrapped packages filled with love and joy and toys they would never play with again but would also never let me throw away. I shouldn't have let my guard down. I should have known better. As soon as I saw that bright blue leather jacket, I should have run the other way.

This year my husband bought himself a bright blue leather jacket, probably handsewn out of old Ikea bags from child slaves in a scorching hot factory in China. The jacket smelled like down river trash mixed with hot raw dog vomit and had to be hung outside to air out for weeks. We've been together for 17 years now so I've mastered my eye roll and gotten really good at ignoring his kind of crazy so that's how I handled this obvious midlife crisis. The night after the 25th is when the true gift of Christmas arrived. While I tried to find places in my house to stuff all the new toys, my husband came in from the garage where I assumed he had been visiting his new jacket. Instead of smelling garbage, I caught a whiff of smoke when he leaned in to kiss me on the cheek.

"Why do you smell like smoke?" I asked.

He walked into the kitchen and started putting away dishes like he's suddenly no longer having a mid life crisis. "Cuz I was smoking," he said with a grin that matched the smell of his sewer jacket.

"Smoking what?" I interrogated further.

"You know...." he said. This time, I swear I saw an actual turd in his teeth when he flashed that grin at me.

"No, I do not know Mr. Identity Crisis. Why don't you tell me...." I was not going to do any favors for him, even if he did just learn how to put away dishes for the first time.

"You know... the smoke."

"Oh, you mean pot? You're smoking pot?" Ok fine, I helped a little but I am short and it's nice to not have to get a chair to reach the top shelf to put away dishes.

Here's the thing... I was raised by a whole slew of parents. I've literally seen all the shit that life has to throw at a person. Addiction runs rampant in my family. Getting a DUI is literally a family tradition. I was raised to believe that if you work hard then you have the right to party just as hard as you worked. Drinking and smoking pot is totally acceptable if it's done responsibly and in moderation. This guy though, this guy that I married nearly ten years ago and have spent more than half my life with.... he doesn't do anything responsibly or in moderation. He has already had two DUI charges and two marijuana posession charges. He got each one right before I got pregnant with each of my kids so we like to joke that they are my DUI babies. Like he rewarded me with children each time he screwed up.

After the last arrest, I told him I was done with the partying. No more DUIs, no drinking and driving at all. I also tried to be reasonable (because I am an actual angel) and compromise with him that if he didn't buy weed or have it in the house or in our cars then I wouldn't give him a hard time if he went camping with friends and decided to smoke out in the middle of the woods somewhere.

This year Santa delivered a late Christmas gift. It was packaged in a bow that smelled like marijuana smoke and filled with 17 years worth of lies that just came spilling out like clowns in a car or one of those freakin magician's scarves. I found out that this husband of mine is "addicted to lying and marijuana" his words, not mine, and that he is also a world class asshole (my words). So, I kicked him out and I have no idea what happens next or if I should let him come home or divorce him, so I'm just going to sit here and wait 350+ days for the next miracle that Christmas brings my way or until my therapist calls me back, whichever comes first.

Happy Hanukkah or something.


p.s. Anyone need a leather jacket? I have a really ugly one for sale. Made out of 100% recycled Ikea bags and garbage.

Until We Meet Again

 "You and I will meet again, When we're least expecting it, One day in some far off place, I will recognize your face, I won't say goodbye my friend, For you and I will meet again." — Tom Petty

I must have been about 9 years old the first time I heard that intro, the harmonica. It changed me. I don't mean to sound cheesy but it really did. I had grown up listening to country music. I was convinced I would one day marry Garth Brooks, ignore the massive age difference and the fact that he was already married, because I certainly did. I was a 9 year old girl with a crush and a plan. As usual my life was chaotic and full of dysfunction. I like to track my age in divorce years, my mom was on husband number 2 at this point. We were living in California but had to make these excruciatingly long trips across the country to Arkansas for visitation with my father's family. This time my biological father came to pick us up with one of his friends. I just remember being in the back of a car, maybe it was a van, I can't remember. What I can remember with perfect clarity is listening to the radio, frowning because of life and also because I was being forced to listen to rock instead of country music. Then that song came on and that haunting harmonica joined in and I just remember sitting their in amazement.

The following Christmas I got a walk-man and Tom Petty's Greatest Hits on cassette. I listened to it obsessively. I got lost in it during the day and fell asleep to it at night. I stopped listening to country music. I took down my expired Garth Brooks calendar from my wall and started putting up posters of Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain. Tom Petty was like my gateway drug into classic rock. These days I rarely listen to music, especially the radio. I only listen to classic rock and occasionally country gold. I've heard all the songs so many times though that, even though I love them and know them all by heart, I have to be in the mood to hear them. Maybe because I associate so many of the albums and songs with moments in my life that I've tried to move past. I spent so much time hiding behind my headphones, listening to Tom Petty, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana and CCR. I think it probably helped me survive childhood and maintain most of my sanity through all of the dysfunction.

In middle and high school, husband #2 and #3 years, I would rush home from school and turn on the tv, switching back and forth between VH1 and MTV trying to catch Nirvana and Tom Petty music videos. Remember when they still played those? It may have even contributed to by strangeness, watching the Last Dance with Mary Jane video over and over. I just wanted to grow up and find someone who loved me enough to steal my corpse and take it for one last rendezvous. Just kidding. Also, I wasn't allowed to watch VH1 or MTV so I'm going to go ahead and apologize for being such an unruly child. Blame Tom Petty, he started it all.

In my 20s (still #3 but not for much longer *spoiler*), Ryan and I started going to concerts a lot. We got to a point where we would buy tickets to concerts on eBay and travel to nearby states to see the bands we wanted to see. We saw The (New) Doors, The Rolling Stones (pretty sure they're all vampires and immortal), The Black Crowes several times, Dwight Yoakam (childhood dream fulfilled but I'm still waiting to see Dolly Parton, universe if you take her before I get to see her..... so help me....) and Tom Petty. Tom Petty was incredible, hands down the best concert that I have ever and will ever see. He was such a natural on the stage, so calm, kind, polite and grateful. He was one of a kind.

Thank you Tom Petty.

Compassion

"You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late." 
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

 I am a nurturer and a people pleaser. I suffer from anxiety and I have an impressive collection of phobias. I  often take on more than I can handle for someone with no qualifications. I once considered becoming a nurse until my fear of bodily fluids, needles and illness stopped me. Last February, my Grandmother's cancer returned for the third time, the same Cancer that had already stolen part of her jaw and most of her tongue. I love my Grandmother and knew I wanted to be by her side during the recovery process. I hoped my fears would not cause me to run away from this great-hearted gesture.
Granny is the glue that holds our family together. It shocked me to see my grandmother in such a vulnerable state post-surgery. The first night in the hospital, I pulled the recliner close to her bed and fell asleep. She awoke at 2 am coughing and choking. I attempted to suction mucous from her mouth while she gasped for air like she was suffocating. My eyes pleaded with her to tell me what I should do but she couldn't, so I ran. I ran down the cold hall in my bare feet toward the nurse's station, shouting for help. The nurse ran into Granny's room and removed the inner cannula from her tracheotomy which allowed her to suction massive clots of mucous out of Granny's throat. Noticing that Granny was still struggling to breathe, the nurse pulled the entire trach tube out of her trachea and continued to suction. Finally able to catch her breath, everything her body had been through that day flooded into her and Granny began to sob.
The days were easier, she had trouble with mucous clogging her tracheotomy; however, I quickly learned how to clear it. The day shift nurses were kind and affectionate. With night came the coughing fits; followed by panic attacks and nurses who seemed agitated and annoyed with us.  I am passive but that week I found my voice. I berated nurses who were rough with Granny and I hugged nurses who made her laugh. I walked the halls looking for baby shampoo so I could wash the blood out of her wig. I helped her use the restroom and I sucked mucous out of her airway. The doctor came in on our last day, before discharge,  to swap Granny's trach tube and asked me to help. "No thanks," I replied. The doctor insisted by placing the tube into my hand and guiding it over to Granny's throat. She instructed me to push the tube until I felt a pull and then gently twist the device until it falls into place. "No, I can't do that," I said. "It's very easy," she replied. I considered running away until I saw confidence and reassurance in Granny's eyes. I slid the tube into her trachea until I felt the pull, gently twisted until the tube fell into place, allowing my Grandmother to breathe.
This experience taught me that I am capable of doing hard things and overcoming my fears. Nobility, to me, is putting aside your own needs and fears for someone else and there are no qualifications needed to show kindness or compassion.

A Letter to my Friends

 "Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see." –Mark Twain

Dear Friend,

I know this election has done something strange to the emotional atmosphere of our country and the world. I feel it too. I feel like we're more divided than we've been in a very long time. Longer than you or I have even been alive to see. People are jumping on one side of the fence or the other, we're even pushing people to one side or another if they refuse to choose. It's not fair and it's certainly not doing anything to help settle this tension that we all feel.

Maybe we voted for the same person, maybe we didn't. Maybe you've been celebrating or maybe you're in mourning. When it comes down to it though, I don't care which side of the fence you are on as long as you are there with a passion to make the world better. I hear you when you say that you voted for someone who promised to bring jobs back to our country because the factory that laid you off moved to Mexico. I hear you when you say that you are afraid that you will no longer have health care. I know you're afraid that your guns will be taken from you, leaving you vulnerable and unable to protect your home and family the best way you know how. Not everyone who owns a gun plans to use it to intentionally harm or control another human being. I know you're afraid that your rights over your own body will be taken from you, I know that doesn't make you a baby killer, it makes you a human, a human who wants to control the one thing we are able to control and that's our bodies. I am right there with you, I tell my kids that they are the only person who is in charge of their own body, that they have the right to say yes or no to anything that has to do with their own body. Stop already with the "baby killer" labels. I know women who have chosen to have abortions but I don't know anyone who has wanted to murder a baby. The only body that you can control is your own. Stop trying to control everyone else. You'll be much happier and less stressed when you let go of that. I know it's easier said than done, I'm practicing this too. You don't have to agree with every one's choices but everyone should have a right to choose how they live their life.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have all the answers. I don't even have some of the answers. I'm just as confused and afraid as you. I don't like change. I don't like not being in control or knowing what is going to happen next. I hate feeling helpless. What I do know is that hate isn't the answer. Holding other people back from living happy and healthy lives is not the answer. Trying to control other people is not the answer. Kindness is the answer. Compassion, understanding, love, peacefully protests to feel seen and heard, debating issues that you are passionate about as long as you're open to listening to the other side and learning as much as you teach. I am a parent, I've had to learn that no matter what you think, you are never in control of another human being. I know that leading by example can work. No one is perfect, no one. I don't expect perfection and I hope you love me even though I am so freaking flawed. I'm trying though. Trying to be the best me that I can be. Trying to keep an open mind and heart.

I need your help, and because we're friends I know that you will want to help me. Let's stop throwing the people we know into categories. Help me remember that people are complicated and diverse and no one person will ever fit into one single category. Help me remember that we live in a free country where everyone is entitled to their own opinions and beliefs and how beautiful that is. Remind me that just because your cousin's wife's friend is a basket weaving, X voting, nature loving, bug hating, occasional religious interpretive dancer who worships koala bears, that they are just like me, a flawed human who's trying their best to make it through this crazy life. If I start to judge a book by its cover remind me to either put it back on the shelf and forget about it or pull it out and read it because we live in a free world and I can choose which books I want to read and which ones I don't. Please tell me I'm being judgmental and insensitive if I start to criticize some one's choices and beliefs. Tell me I am wrong to worry about what everyone else is doing and that I need to focus more on what I am doing. Put me in my place if I start trying to push my own beliefs on someone else. And for the love of the USA please do not let me bully someone for looking different, dressing different, speaking different, believing something I don't and eating more or less cake than me. But if you have cake, you better share because I will be mad at you if you don't.

Just like you, I've reached a place in my life where I'm tired of conflict that doesn't bring a positive change. I'm exhausted by all the cruel words and accusations people are throwing around. I've also reached a place where I can't tolerate people who can't try to see the positive side of things, people who bully and hurt other people because they are hurting. I'm tired of hate and judgment. One of my heroes, Anne Lamott, has said "Sometimes this human stuff is slimy and pathetic.... but better to feel it and talk about it and walk through it than to spend a lifetime being silently poisoned." Talk to me about it, I love a good story. Let's walk through this together instead of on opposite sides of the street. Let's talk more about the books we are reading and the tv shows we are binge watching and less about religion and politics.

I was 20 years old

"When we deny the story, it defines us. When we own the story, we can write a brave new ending." -Brene Brown

 

I was 20 years old, going through some shit and making a lot of bad choices in order to learn a few hard lessons. We all do that at some point in our lives, some people have to make more bad choices than the rest of us, some people never stop making bad choices. I'm a firm believer in learning from your mistakes. I need to share a story with you about the biggest mistake I have ever made and the aftermath that followed. I've avoided sharing this story for so long. It's not easy for me to talk about with my therapist let alone share it with the world. I feel like it's necessary and relevant to the world today. Sometimes it takes getting personal or reading a story that hits home for you to look at something in a different way, to change your opinion. This is a story that I may need to share with my daughter someday in hopes that she too will learn from her mother's mistakes, just as I have had to do. Learn from my own mistakes and the mistakes of my mother, that is. Can you tell I'm stalling? If reading this is something you really want to do then you should probably find a quiet place and sit down so that you can really absorb what I'm about to share with you and to give yourself time to come to your own conclusions afterwards. Please think about your reaction before you openly react and above all.... please be kind....that's all I ask in return.

Twelve years ago I was a 20 year old girl, a recent college drop out, working full time for a popular home improvement retailer. I was trying on alcoholism for size, seeing how it fit since it runs in my family. Thank god it didn't fit then and it's still too big for me now. I didn't know who I was or what direction I wanted to go in. The one thing I was sure of was my boyfriend at the time who has since become my husband. We had already been together for 4 years and broken up and gotten back together a handful of times. We were messy, we didn't always treat each other with kindness or respect and we often pulled other people into our mess. Something I both regret and feel thankful for. We learned a lot during those messy years and in a way I am glad we went through all of that before marriage and before kids, so that when we did follow that path, we were as ready as we could be. I'm still stalling. You'll just have to bear with me.

It was during one of my messy phases with my boyfriend that I allowed a co-worker into my life. He was 14 years older, twice divorced and a father of 4. You see those red flags, right? Yeah... I didn't. I befriended him. He was so nice to me, he once brought me Gatorade when I was working while fighting off a nasty cold. He gave me the attention I wasn't getting from my boyfriend at the time, or my parents. He took me to lunch when our lunch breaks lined up. It took a few months of friendship before he really seemed to start openly pursuing me. I resisted at first because I knew I loved my boyfriend and deep down I knew we were going to work things out and one day we would stop being so messy. Then one night after a rather large disagreement.... ok.... it was a massive fight.... after a massive fight with my boyfriend, I had a few drinks and went over to the guy's house.

I made a terrible mistake. A horrible mistake. I tried so hard to shake him after that, to end that relationship but I didn't have the life experience under my belt to do it. He was so much more mature than me and he had a lot more experience than me. He pressured me, he begged me, he did everything he could to talk me into ending it with my boyfriend but I always said no. I didn't want to hurt this man's feelings and I hadn't yet figured out how to build solid boundaries, which I still don't know how to do half the time (my therapist disagrees with that but I think we're still working on it), so I tried to "do the right thing". I tried to be nice and polite and maintain a friendship with him, thinking he would eventually grow tired of my immaturity and move on. He didn't.

My boyfriend was out of town that weekend and my car was acting crazy, blowing white smoke out from under the hood and being a real pain in the ass. When I complained about it at work, he offered to take a look at it. "Come over to my house after work, my tools are there and I can take a look at it and at least tell you what's wrong if I can't fix it. You can eat dinner with me to thank me." Seemed like a friendly thing to do, the kind of thing a good friend would do. No harm in that and I did need to figure this car thing out.

Later that night, I sat in his kitchen eating red beans and rice and drinking a rum and diet coke while I watched him through the window as he paced back and forth on either side of my car. He looked agitated. Like an animal with rabies pacing at the edge of the woods, staring at you through the window, just waiting for you to make contact so it can attack you and fill you with it's poison. When he finally came inside he rubbed his head until his hair stood straight up and then, without looking at me, he said "I don't know what's wrong, I can't fix it." I hadn't actually seen him do anything except lean over the engine a few times and look deeply at it like he was expecting the car to grow a voice and talk to him, telling him what's wrong with it and how to fix it. "Well, I guess I should probably go. I have to work tomorrow," I said, already feeling like I needed to get out of there. Something was off. He begged me to stay a little while longer, suggesting that we watch a movie and that I have another drink. He went to the refrigerator and poured another rum and diet coke for me, more rum than coke. I put it down on the coffee table and turned to grab my things. That's when he grabbed my keys and ran off to hide them. I laughed and asked for them back, trying to make light of the situation because joking and laughing is a defense mechanism for me. He wasn't joking though. He started questioning me about my boyfriend, about the intimate details of our complicated relationship. It was more than just questioning though, it felt like he was interrogating me, demanding answers. When I gave him answers that he didn't like he, he would call me a liar. With every question and each accusation, his voice grew angrier and more like a growl than a voice at all. At one point I threatened to call someone, anyone, if he didn't give me my keys back. He took my cell phone and hid it as well. While he ran to hide my phone, I ran to his home phone to call.... I don't remember who I planned on calling or if I even had a plan, I just knew I needed help. As I reached the phone, I heard his heavy feet racing down the hallway towards me. He reached around me and grabbed the phone out of my hand and smashed it. I turned and ran down the hallway from where he just came from. I knew there was a back door at the end of that hallway and if I could make it to the door then I could run and run and run as long and hard as I could until I was safe. He grabbed me right as I reached the door and pushed me towards his bedroom. I tried fighting back and shaking him off me. I kicked and screamed and then he smashed me up against his bedroom door and screamed as close to my face as he could get, so that with each word his spit hit my face. I hit him and punched him in the face as many times as I could before he pinned my arms down. That's when I gave up. I realized I wasn't getting out of that house unless he allowed me to leave.

This is where the timeline gets really fuzzy for me. The next thing I remember clearly is that he had taken my clothes from me and had pushed me down on his bed, a mattress on the floor, and told me not to move. He left the room and I heard him slam the front door as he left the house. I considered running out the backdoor again but now I didn't even have any clothes or shoes, it was the middle of winter here in the South and he lived in a single wide trailer in the middle of nowhere. I knew there were 2-4 houses nearby but I didn't know if anyone would be home or if they would even help me. Maybe they were friends of his and would gladly hand this naked girl back over to him. I wasn't fast enough. He came storming back down the hallway, rustling some plastic sheeting in his hands. You know the kind you put over your windows during the winter to keep the cold out? He threw the plastic down on the ground and told me to get down on the floor and lay on it because he didn't want my blood to get all over his house when he blew my brains out. The next thing I remember is laying there while he held a gun to my head and screamed at me. I don't even remember what he said. All I could feel was that gun. I thought about my great grandfather who passed away when I was 4 years old and I prayed. I begged and prayed for someone to save me, I silently shouted that "If angels are real then please, God, please let my grandpa be that angel and let him save me. Please let someone save me." I reached up for the gun and put my hand on his and I remember him asking me in a taunting voice if I was going to kill myself. Daring me to kill myself. I considered it. I thought if this is my only way out of here and it comes down to me or him pulling that trigger then I wanted it to be me. Then I imagined him getting away with all of this because I killed myself. Then I thought about my children. The children that I didn't yet have but that I knew I wanted so desperately to have in the future. It's incredible how black your mind goes when you stare into the refrigerator sometimes but when you're in a life or death situation, your brain seems to work on hyper speed. Somehow I managed to actually pull the gun away from my head just as it went off, shooting a bullet through his bedroom wall and into his dryer. The shell casing created a nasty gash in my hand and when he looked down and saw my blood creating a little puddle in the palm of my hand he suddenly changed. It was like a switch flipped and he held my hand in his and said nice things to me. He ran to the bathroom and grabbed a first aid kit to clean my wound. As he bandaged my hand, he laughed and shook his head and called me a "crazy girl." Then he told me to sleep and he held me. I didn't move but swore to myself I would stay awake until he fell asleep and then I would run. The next thing I know, it's morning and the sun is coming through the window above my head. He gets up and puts a VHS tape in his VCR and a porno movie starts playing. He comes and lays down on top of me and tells me how much he loves me and pets my head while he rocks back and forth on top of me. Staring straight into my face while tears roll down my cheeks and I lay there, not moving. As soon as he gets up another switch flips and he gives me my belongings back and tells me he'll see me at work. I ran to my car, noticing a lot of missed calls from my boyfriend.

By now you're probably thinking of all the things that you would have done if you had been me in this situation. You would have called 911. You would have driven straight to the police station or maybe a hospital. You would have called your mom.......... I called my best friend who lives on the other side of the country and I told her what happened while I sat in the drive thru at Dunkin Donuts, ordering a maple glazed donut, it was delicious. "Call the cops!!!!" she shouted at me through the phone. "Don't think about it, just do it!" I went to work instead. I told another friend about it at work, he demanded that I go file a police report. He said he was driving me to the police station after work and told me it wasn't a choice. At the police station, I stumbled on my words and tried to tell the female officer why I was there. Finally my male friend said, in a very matter of fact, no bullshit tone of voice, "He raped her." When she realized the severity of the situation she said I had to go home and call 911 and have a police officer come out to my house and file a police report. "I can't do that!!" I told both the officer and my friend, "my stepdad will kill me, I can't tell him about this." My friend took me to his own house, his wife sat with me while he called 911 and asked for an officer to come out and take my report. A young male officer arrived a little while later and sat on an uncomfortable chair across from me, his pen ready, unaware of the story he was about to hear. I again stumbled on my words so much that I don't know how he followed anything I said. When I got the point where I told him what had happened to me the night before and that morning, before the guy allowed me to leave, he put his pen down, leaned forward and asked me "Did he rape you?"

"NO!!!" I said. "He couldn't have. I've had sex with him before, willingly. So it can't be rape."

"But did you want him to this time? Did you tell him it was ok?"

"I didn't say anything. I just didn't move and I cried."

"Then he raped you."

He asked me if he could file a rape report and told me they would arrest him as soon as they could. I cried and told him I didn't know what to do. He put his head down and said "I can't do this unless you tell me it's ok. You have to say yes."

I told him I needed time to think about it.

A few weeks later I told some of my male friends who just happened to work with my stepdad. They work for the county that we live in and I asked them if they knew the guy. He had once told me a story about how he volunteered for the county doing the job that these guys are now paid to do. They said they heard a rumor about him once, that it was a really long time ago and that they didn't know him personally. They had heard that the county banned the guy from volunteering after he groped a girl's breasts while she was in the back of an ambulance alone with him, after he pulled her out of a wrecked car.

I told them what happened to me. I told them this story that was now my story, somehow my story. They told me to call the cops. I pulled my normal defense mechanism trick out of my bag and laughed it off. They called my stepdad. He demanded that I file the report and told me not to come home until I had a retraining order. My work told me I couldn't come back to work until I had a restraining order. Meanwhile, this guy.. the guy... went on with his life and was allowed to go to work everyday like nothing happened. I went to the court house and I remember it being a long process, a lot of paper work and going from one building to another until I found myself sitting at a desk across from a very overworked man who would be the one to approve or deny my request for a restraining order. "You realize this isn't a joke right? This is someone's life we're talking about here and this will affect everything he does.... We don't just give restraining orders out like candy." He said this after reading my paperwork. After reading my story. In a soft voice I said "I understand but I can't go back to work until I have this. I can't go home." He slapped the stamp down on my paperwork and handed it back to me. "Someone will call you when it's served."

 APPROVED.

Before we even get into the aftermath, I want to stop and talk about my stepdad for a second. I don't want anyone to get the wrong impression about him or how he handled the situation. I think he was probably scared too. He was going through his own shit at the time. My mom wasn't in the picture much at this point so he had to handle this on his own. I can't imagine how difficult that probably was. Not to sound sexist but something like this really does need a mom's involvement. My stepdad is a wonderful man and has been there for me at times in my life when no one else was. So whatever you're thinking, if it's bad, then stop.

I took the restraining order to work, where I was told that it would take a few days to straighten everything out with HR before I could come back to work. A few weeks later, after not hearing anything from my managers and after making several phone calls to them, a letter came in the mail telling me that I was being let go from my position. The reason.... gossiping.

I found a new job. He found out where I worked and started calling me at work. I recorded the phone calls. He left giant poster boards taped to stakes in the ground outside my work that said he loved me. When we went to court to transfer the restraining order from a temporary restraining order to a permanent restraining order, we were left alone in the hallway while the court was on a recess. He approached me in the hallway and begged me not to go through with this, he said he wouldn't be able to get a job and his kids would starve because he wouldn't be able to pay his child support. He pleaded with me to run away with him, to marry him. Before returning to the courtroom, he shoved a diamond ring in my hand and then went to take his seat on the other side of the courtroom. Our hearing was pushed back because the judge ran out of time that day and wasn't able to hear our case. I went by his house and left the ring in his mailbox. I was on my way home one night and stopped by a gas station to get a drink. I was on the phone with my best friend on the West Coast at the time so I sat there for a few minutes while I talked to her. A car pulled up next to me and I turned to see HIM getting out of his car and going into the gas station. I called him after that. I called his house and told him he had to stop. The next morning 2 detectives from another county came by my work and asked to speak to me outside. the female detective told me that she knew I had been stalking him and asked for my phone number and cell phone provider. She told me she was going to pull my phone records and see if I had contacted him. I admitted to her that I had called him the night before and asked him to stop following me and stop calling me. She told me that she could have ME arrested for violating the restraining order. She said if he really was the one who was doing the stalking then I should have reported it and had him arrested. I started crying, sobbing really. The male detective never spoke to me and when I started crying, he stopped looking at me and stared at the ground. I could tell he was uncomfortable and did not want to be there. "I was just trying to do the right thing. For his kids. I didn't want him to lose his job," I said as they left.

My mother took me to dinner one night and out of desperation I played the tapes for her, the ones I had recorded every time he called me at work. In a rare motherly moment, probably one of the only times in my life where she acted like a real mom, she said "Oh honey..... you can't be nice to men like this. You have to be firm with them." Then she had her 3rd husband take me to the police station where the female detective worked. He sat next to me and helped me tell the female detective's boss what she had said to me. Her boss had no record of her visiting me and had no idea why she would have even gotten involved since the restraining order wasn't even through their county. We think she must have been a friend of the guy.

My new court date arrived and my stepdad, angry over the way the last court date had played out, especially the fact that they left me alone with the guy, called the victim assistance office and had a victim's advocate meet me at court. She was a very kind, grandmotherly lady who held my hand and explained every thing to me throughout the court case. The permanent restraining order was approved.

That didn't stop him though. He mailed a package to my stepdad at work. He kept calling me and one day actually left a 4 page letter on my car, 4 pages of rambling bullshit written on the front and back of each sheet of paper. I took the letter to the police station along with the tape recordings and gave them to a male detective. He issued a warrant for the guy's arrest.

About 5 months later, just as I was starting to get on with my life and not think about the situation every single day, a police officer who was a friend of mine called me at work and said, "You'll get another call, an official call from someone else, but I wanted to be the first one to tell you that we arrested the guy today. We got him." He explained that they would book him and most likely release him on bail and that he would have to go back to court in a few months.

The victim's advocate called me a few days later and explained what would be expected of me in regards to this trial. She said I wouldn't have to attend the hearing and depending on how the hearing went it may go to a trial and then I would have to attend and actually testify in court. I remember standing in the shower after this phone call and feeling so helpless, like my life was out of my control and I was terrified. Terrified of everything. I felt like I was having a mental breakdown. My anxiety and hypochondria were at an all time high. I couldn't stop running. I changed jobs twice, changed cars twice, and moved to a new house in a new city and a new county. I ended all friendships that had any connection to my old job and the guy. I hid.

The day of his hearing, my advocate called me to explain what was happening in court. She said the guy had been diagnosed with skin cancer and his health was deteriorating. She made it seem like he was on his death bed. She told me his attorney wanted to cut a deal, if we agreed to drop the charges then he promised to never contact me again. I agreed because I needed out. I needed my life back. I needed to breath again. I needed to feel like this mistake I made was no longer a burden on the people I loved. I needed to forget.

Here we are 12 years later, and he's still alive. I know that much. I still worry sometimes that I'll run into him while I'm out shopping, especially now that I am living back in the same county that all of this happened in. I'm terrified my kids will be with me and he will lay his eyes on them. I don't want him to look at them. I have nightmares about him, that he finds me and kidnaps me.

The reason I'm sharing this now is because I want you all to know that this stuff does happen in real life, to people you know, to people you care about. That those people, those victims if you want to call them that, often stay quiet. They don't tell the world about it because they're scared. Scared no one will believe them or take them seriously. Scared that they will be exposed or called a whore because they trusted a person with their bodies once. Scared of people looking at them differently, pitying them or feeling shame for them, when they feel enough shame already. The majority of you are hearing this for the very first time, you never knew this happened to me. Some of you are very close to me and had no idea that this is my story. One of my stories. This stuff happens every single day. Sometimes men who participate in what you think is innocent locker room talk actually mean what they say. Sometimes when they say they could walk right up and grab a woman's pussy, they mean it. It's not just a funny joke between the 2 of you and when you laugh sometimes they think that gives them permission, like you support their behavior. The man in the court house who had the power to either approve or deny my request for a restraining order, the one who told me they don't hand out restraining orders like candy, guys like that are real. Those words are real and those words are the reason why you are only now hearing about the women who were raped by Bill Cosby. It's not because their stories are untrue, it's because they were afraid and no one told them that it wasn't their fault. Victim shaming is real. Nothing really happened to the guy in my story. No jail, no record. I doubt he even remembers the incident much less thinks about it or feels any sort of guilt or shame over it. Much like Brock Turner, this guy's life went back to normal. I've looked the guy up on facebook, I needed to know if he was still alive, if I still needed to be aware of his presence in this world. He is and I think he works with mentally handicapped children now. Does that remind you of Jerry Sandusky?

The reason I'm sharing this is because I don't want my children to grow up in that world. The world where my daughter has to fight to get someone to listen to her if she's violated. A world that would rather shame her than help her. A world where we handle rapists with more care than they handled their victims. A world where it's ok for a man of power to "joke" about grabbing a woman's pussy because he's a celebrity, a world that would turn around and make that man president. I hear you when you say that it's only locker room talk. No. That's rape culture. That's sexual abuse. That's entitlement. He didn't say he wanted to take her on a date, that she's a gorgeous woman and leave it at that he said HE COULD GRAB HER BY THE PUSSY BECAUSE HE IS A STAR. I hear you when you say that this incident occurred 11 years ago. I'm sure he's changed. I mean... Jerry Sandusky has changed right? You would let him babysit wouldn't you? The incident I just told you about happened 12 years ago. I'm sure it's totally safe for the guy to be volunteering his time to help mentally disabled people, I'm sure he's doing that to atone for his sins against me and the girl he sexually assaulted in the back of an ambulance. He's not at all the kind of guy who would take advantage of his power and authority over people. Maybe he should run for president too.

I understand how twisted the political system is and I know some of you are having an internal struggle with this now because your values and hopes for the future of the country align with the beliefs of the Republican party. I know this entire presidential race is a disaster and I am just as disgusted as you are that these two turds are the best our country could come up with. Just put your political views aside and think about my story and the rest of the stories you've seen in the headlines about Brock Turner, Jerry Sandusky and Bill Cosby and just ask yourself if you can really trust people like that. If those people deserve more power. I can't tell you who to vote for and I won't be mad at you if you still vote for Trump.

Mostly, what I hope you take from all of this is that if you want to change the world, if you want things like this to stop happening then you have to start teaching your children that this behavior is unacceptable. You can't laugh at your friend in the locker room when he says he can walk up and grab that girl's pussy right now without asking or being invited. If you start changing your behavior and stop tolerating this kind of behavior then maybe we can all make a change and make the world just a little safer for our daughter and granddaughters.

Thanks for listening. Take what you can from this and do something good with it.