Thanks for all the kindness, you guys. The wedding was harder on me than I thought it should have been, so I was sort of reeling there for a while. I’m better now.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how so many of the people I know—certainly myself included—are mere fractions of vestiges of good taste away from being guests on Springer. I think, in fact, that most of us would make for better entertainment than many of the typical guests, because our appearances and speech are so deceiving.
R, for example, is a gorgeous blonde who runs a very successful business. She kills in business suits and has mastered the pinned-up hair that says, “I am more than capable of kicking your ass, but DAMN: I’m sexy, too.” She’s all kinds of crafty, and regularly makes elaborate trick-or-treat bags and party stuff. She organized crafts tables at her own wedding, for crying out loud, so all the kids there would have something fun to do.
And yet she’s literally dying. She gets through the day by snacking on various prescription drugs and longing to be able to sleep. She can’t drive anymore, because of the drugs, but when she did drive, she kept a tambourine in the front seat, on which she would beat to keep from screaming profanities at other drivers. And her family is the horrid bunch or loonies I reported on earlier.
R looks like the perfect combination of successful businesswoman, wife and mother, but she’s filled with rage and fear, and would probably make Jerry Springer cry if he pushed her too far.
I’m much R’s polar opposite. I look like an uber-feminist with soft, Mother Nature sorts of edges. I take my boy rafting and can change a tire. I can bring home the bacon and/or tofu, and fry it up in a pan. I’m dealing with a full-time job, six credits a semester toward my MLIS, and single motherhood. I’m capable and caring and everyone seems to think I’m very grounded and trustworthy and reliable. And yet, I married a gay man, thinking I was lucky to be marrying my best friend, and then spent ten years wondering what was wrong with me, and why my husband didn’t want to have sex. I can’t face a confrontation without crying and automatically taking the blame for whatever is the problem. Because no one can convince me that I don’t suck. Issues? Oh, I’ve got spades. I’d be the Springer guest with her face in her hands, sobbing.
There are more, of course, just within my own family. Put us all in a room together, and we look like a respectable bunch of women with various talents, passions, skills, and interests. Put our psyches in a room, however, and we’re little more than piles of cellulite, smoking cigarettes and quivering with rage. Our mascara is running while we cry and bash one another over the head with our wedding albums.
Or is that just me?
12 comments:
you made me laugh AND cry. you are so right. i always say to Dan that he married white trash minus the trailer :)
but god you're on the money. for another example, dan and i - so many people think we have it all figured out, but god, gina, you've been thru it all with me and know all the sordid details and how deceiving the facade can be.
dan's family, too - nice middle-class family who somewhat successfully represses and crams all their issues into a dark closet somewhere.
we are living jerry springer. god help us all.
(there's a terrific joke in the tambourine thing somewhere but i am too tired this morning to find it.)
oh and by the way if i've told you once... view it as an affirmation...you SO DON'T SUCK. you're wonderful even with your neuroses...: )
i'd have lost my mind without you the past years.
Do you think the world would be a better place if we dropped the facades and just existed as the messes we are? Do you think that might enable us to clean up some of the messes? Or do you think letting our messes out of their dark corners would be the end of the world as we know it?
yes, i do think that. but i have come to grips with the mess I am through years of therapy, as you well know. I maintain silence for Dan's sake : )
i think letting the problems see thelight of day would enable people to be helped and help others much more easily. which would be a good thing.
Ditto, and ditto, and ditto, and yes, and ohmygod I think your family is secretly *my* family. Oh, and ditto.
I think at some point in all our lives we have to, not just take inventory, but decide to walk, as awkwardly as our capabilities dictate, towards grace.
We've been given a limited time to do something, in the micro and macro sense, and I cannot imagine anything resembling self-fulfillment without making an effort in that direction.
But it is unspeakably taxing and draining and some days it'd probably be a lot easier to curl up in a ball and turn off the lights. But it is the effort to keep on keeping on that exalts us. So, looking at it logically, you do not suck. And I double-checked my figures.
-J.
beautifully put, joke.
I wish more Catholics were like you, Joke. You make me miss church.
Joke, how beautifully put! May I quote you? Gina, I read your posts on a regular basis and I've met you once and I can concur that you do not suck! I know we are often under the impression that everyone else has it under control and we are the only ones that are a crying blubbering mess. (Anyone want to take some digital photos of my apartment?) One of my favorite YEP (WYEP, independent radio here in the Burgh) songs is by Carrie Newcomer, "Take One Step" and it talks about that very thing, just picking yourself up daily and moving forward. Working full time and single motherhood and a library degree in the works? If we could work our way to sainthood, I think you'd be there. But actually, it's by grace: "Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come. But grace has brought me here thus far and grace will lead me home." Gina, the opposite of sucking is rocking, and you absolutely totally ROCK!
Your post struck a chord. It is funny what we see in ourselves vs what others see in us. Sometimes I feel like if they knew the true inner me...well I won't go there.
SL--I like that the opposite of sucking is rocking. :-) That makes my day, I think.
I'm certainly not in the running for sainthood, but I've learned enough to try and accept people's compliments, rather than to refute them, so . . . thanks.
Carolyn--that's what your blog is for. We don't really know you, so we can know the real you. Or something like that.
While I thank everyone for the kind words, the important thing to keep in mind is that it has now been SCIENTIFCALLY PROVEN that Gina rocketh and Gina sucketh not.
SL: Quote me as often as you bloody well please. The royalty fee is $1 to the Red Cross. Deal?
-Joke
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