POST-ATHEIST

 https://pinchofyum.com/instant-pot-mashed-potatoes

Jamiebear rocked the shit out of this one!

I’m a little emotionally fragile right now; that’s usual after a big dentist day. (One that included a NYC rite of passage: somehow landing oneself on the one 6 train car without a/c.) It’s been a day, and it’s only noon.

The funeral for Elise Finch, my favorite meteorologist, plays on the television, the church music and preaching timbre of the eulogy already bringing up a well of feelings related to my past.

And then I read one of Bethany’s posts about little girls and toys and more critical rites of passage.

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I didn’t expect the conversation about the Barbie movie to trigger so much memory and emotion.

I’m a little surprised to discover that Barbie played such a large role in my coming-of-age story. Fair warning: this is a tough one.

 

When my parents split up, the bank took our dream home, the two-story log house nestled on a wooded two-acre lot in the country that my uncle designed and built for us. My dad had taken my brother, and we didn’t know where they were. The day that we moved out was apocalyptic and marked by immense loss and fear. I was fourteen years old when my maternal family came over on a hot June day to help my mom, my sister, and me move out.

The day before, my mom had forced me to accept a last-minute invite go to to Six Flags with my ex-boyfriend, a primitive Baptist who was actively trying to woo me back. When I got home, exhausted and pissed off, my dog was gone. Mom had used this “opportunity” to take Tippy to the pound, hoping to avoid any theatrics on my part (and boy did that backfire; I had been under the impression that Tippy was going to live at my grandparents’ farm). Hey, I was a sensitive kid. It’s taken me a lifetime to work out my resentment for that choice she made during a really, really fucking difficult time.

During the process of moving, something went wrong when they disconnected the washing machine, and brown, iron-rich water flooded the first floor, ruining the carpet and creating dangerous conditions. It was a hazardous mess, and they had to flip the breakers to turn off the electricity. Junebugs got in through the open doors -- buzzing around, divebombing our beverages, and generally working to tip up our tempers as the heat indoors soared while we trudged furniture and boxes out.

 My family burned bag after bag of trash on the open fire pit out back, the air peppered with the terrifying sounds of aerosol cans exploding at random. It felt like a war zone, and by the time the day was done I was relieved to leave it all behind.

I was going to start high school in the Fall. Life was going to get better after this. It had to.

 

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We were abandoning our home, had abandoned my childhood pet, and it didn’t feel like much of a stretch to abandon something, myself. So, I wrote a poem in ink pen on my bedroom wallpaper wishing future occupants a happier life than I had in that space, and I left a box full of Barbies behind in my closet.

Now the poem itself made a lot of people furious (why does Shanna have to complicate an already difficult day with inappropriate behavior?), but it was the Barbies that really caused a ruckus and a torrent of confused feelings that stay with me today, seriously 30 years later.

For me, the milestone of starting high school meant growing up, leaving childish things behind. (In all honesty, I think I quit playing with my Barbies around age 11? So they’d been chilling in “box jail” for a while.) It was a decision I made with intent on the scariest day of my life and at the time, it felt like one of the few paltry things I had agency over. I was growing up, and good things were going to be ahead despite all the fear and trauma. If everyone else could walk away from something that used to be important, why couldn’t I?

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But then Granny found the box and y’all, she literally lost her shit. And then it hit me: she had sewed me lots of outfits for my Barbies, utilizing thin strips of Velcro so I could dress them easily with my tiny hands when I was a little girl. Her heart was broken because I had turned my back on this thing she had done for me with joy, creativity, and love. She snatched that box up and stuffed it into the cabin of their truck, saying, “These are mine now.” And she kept them somewhere in storage for 29 years, until the day she died of Covid last year.

The guilt was unbearable, and no one wanted to hear why, or seemed to understand that we all made some shit decisions in that survival mode.

I was shamed for being selfish, even cruel, and a little weird by the family at large.

And I still feel guilty. Careless. Somehow inadvertently mean when I was trying to do something that meant something to me, something symbolic just like the words I wrote on the wall.

 

I don’t remember most of my childhood, but I do know that I loved those dolls. I do have some hazy memories of playing with them alone – they were always getting ready for “the party.” Once they got to the party, I wasn’t really sure what they were supposed to do… so fourteen-or-so Barbies (all blonde-haired-blue-eyed with the exception of one brunette Barbie and three Kens – and sadly, obvs all white) were perpetually enjoying getting ready together for something that never arrived. I’m not sure what the takeaway is there, but I DO still love getting ready with others (my college friends and I certainly perfected the art of pre-partying while glamming up).

But, you know, I did grow up. I went to high school, and I did learn how to act at parties. It’s a lot like getting ready together.

 

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My solo play prepared me for the next stage of life; it was a refuge in a household rift by abuse, lies, worry, and desperation despite our longing for connection, safety, and unconditional love.

And so yes, I loved my Barbies. I wish Granny knew how much, and that the gifts she gave meant so much more than she could have imagined or intended. My impulsive decision to try and leave the past behind and start growing into who I would choose to be was predicated on her gifts -- she helped create the conditions for my survival and growth. 

And that's huge.

i discovered recently while reflecting during transit (as i am wont to do these days, whether walking or being whisked and jolted here and there via the tube) that somehow my grief, the quality of my missing papa has transitioned in the past year.

it is not so acute. after nearly five years (can that be?) it has become a slow burn. there is now a chunk of life lived without his presence, his influence. in some ways this hurts even harder. i'm losing the sound, the timbre of his 'hello' when he answered the phone, the memory of his shuffle when he walked out back to feed the goats and dogs and g-d-knows-what-else, emus i guess, more distant, even the first grief a grief of the past, those instances of remembering now something to be remembered, things mediated by the march of minutes as time presses ever forward, even as the past several months have been such a sound vacuum, this bubble of time somehow impervious to reality, or is it vice versa?

in many ways i am keeping my thoughts about the past year to myself as they take shape. i am in process.

not that i am suggesting there is a destination, some place where i may dust off my hands and declare the work finished, to have somehow come to understand what has taken place (that would be to ascribe it Meaning, i think)... but the analysis is too vulnerable, too young, perhaps too ugly...

as i live out the consequences of having checked out from the world for a while to *not die* and recover, the gravity of what has taken place sinks in, shaking me. everyone else already went through this, from the worried space of the proverbial (and actual) bedside.

i feel jarred, violently ripped from the life that i knew, battered about and left to recover. the hard work of regaining physical health has led me to sustainable habits. the people i love helped me with that. it is time to figure out what to do with these pieces, to fold this experience into my identity as i make a life again for myself.

Ingredients

1 C low-fat plain yogurt
1 clove garlic
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp white wine vinegar
1 carrot
s&p to taste

Instructions

Grate the garlic and carrot into a bowl, combine with the remaining ingredients.

Update

London
I leave on the 22nd for London, where I'll be pursuing a MA in Philosophy and Contemporary Critical Theory at Middlesex University. I am still waiting to enroll, but I'll be taking four modules and writing a dissertation. The program takes one full year. I will be studying the German and French schools of thought in a broad sense, and will do in-depth study of Kant, Hegel, Deleuze, Negri, Agamben, Nietzsche, Heidegger....

I will also be studying French and hope to get a part-time job doing something fun.

Life, The Universe, and Everything
I'm still clocking in some hours with the family for whom I'm an assistant. It is difficult to leave my two beautiful, talented children, but I am excited for what the coming year holds for them.

My liver is behaving itself, and the latest numbers from my bloodwork are in a healthy range! I am feeling back to "normal" -- I do yoga or run 5x/week, my sleep patterns have normalized, and overall I feel great (this weekend is an exception, due to lack of sleep and a small bug Ann passed my way).

I am selling my car, and am trying to simplify as I pack for the UK. I am really going to miss my sewing machine, my guitar, and all of my cooking gear. That stuff is going into storage, along with the books that I can't afford to take. The rest I am giving away. That's right: the largest and most diverse collection of bath products (I could more than fill a large suitcase!)this side of the Red River is going to be scattered among a lucky few.

I have about twenty boxes that I have managed to get from various shops in Preston Hollow: the goal is to pack only what will fit in said boxes (or less).



I'm sure that there is more to update, but the boy is writing a screenplay for his film studies class and he has some questions about dialogue....

***
in response to james' question yesterday: i don't know that i need to provide a belief-statement in regard to knowledge of a thing-in-itself (or the thingness of a thing for that matter). that said, i do find kant's argument for a synthetic unity of intuitive occurrences compelling.
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The bunny passed away last week :(