On my drive back from the Cape today I was shuffling around podcasts trying to find a new one. I wound up listening to a couple on sex and relationships. Mainly, sexual issues and complications which can occur in long term relationships and the various ways couples try to deal with them. I know, I am not remotely near any kind of relationship myself but I still find the topic interesting since I am still part of the single dating pool. It helps me to know what the grass looks like on the other side….to know it’s often AstroTurf I wouldn’t actually want in my yard anyway.

Topics I heard about today were around how more people are experimenting with various forms of open relationships. This is a topic I have a lot of thoughts on because I run across it more and more on dating websites, especially in the last year or so. I have also been to Amsterdam and think prostitution should be legal everywhere, a thing he can do on his lunch break and return home at the end of the day without incident. Let it just be a normal, healthy, regulated part of life.

I have been single for awhile and being the object of a married man’s desire is not new to me. But I am used to it being his secret and something I tend to stay away from. I feel that if he is in a relationship which has unsatisfying parts, he should be seeking therapy with his partner or leaving her instead of looking for someone to cheat with. The choice between honesty and deceit feels very black and white to me.

It’s not that I have never been involved with a married man. It’s not my choice or wish but it has happened. Only once did I know about it ahead of time. That was a complicated time in my life when I was making very selfish decisions because of immense pain I was in due to other things happening in my life. I had never done the “wrong” thing and life wasn’t turning out well for me. I was horrified that it happened but I also didn’t stop it because I was tired of always doing the right thing and still having a painful life. As much as I did care about him, I was equally resentful of the fact he got to have 2 people in his life so that all his needs were satisfied while being spread out. I thought it was disgusting what he was doing to his wife and horribly selfish for him not to leave her if this was the behavior he was pursuing. It was less about me wanting him to leave her for me, it was just that I thought he should leave her regardless because it wasn’t fair for her hopes and dreams to be tied to a man who didn’t respect them. He said he loved me but how could he love me and be so disrespectful to a woman in general? The wife had a right to be living a much more satisfactory life if given the facts. Instead, he got to satisfy his life at her expense. I still think that’s disgusting. No matter how many times throughout the years he has wanted to meet back up, I just can’t get past that level of masculine greed on any level. That is certainly not a man I want to end up with. It is a level of misogyny and I just can’t get with it.

Dating websites used to be loaded with married men who didn’t disclose their marriages. They’d just try to get dates and hookups. It would only be after the fact I would discover a wife or girlfriend. Now, I see lots more profiles of men admitting they are married, but unhappy. They are openly asking you to sleep with them and letting you know they are married with no intention of leaving that relationship. I find that just as selfish. Why on earth would I agree to going on a date with an unavailable man? Does he actually believe sex with him is so good, so sustainable that any single woman would accept the offer while knowing she gets nothing else out of it? Yes, men do believe that about themselves. And, yes, some women are good with only that depending upon what dating phase she may be in. Sometimes we are just looking for casual fun and sometimes we are looking for a relationship. It can change on and off. I have waited between the 2 many times.

Add to the “married but looking” are now the non-monogamous and polyamory profiles. He wants to hook up with you and a bunch of other people while being in a relationship with the main girl and she knows about it and is ok with it. This is where the podcast topic started filling in today. Many marriages may be working in 9 out of 10 categories with category 10 being an unfulfilling sex life. The reasons are vast. Different levels of desire, outmatched frequencies, having kids, specific fantasies the other party isn’t into, the ebb and flow of long term relationships, the “high” of falling in love evolves and changes the dynamic of sex. A lot of relationships end becAuse of it. Some relationships continue and learn to live without it. Others cheat. Some now turn to open relationships. It’s becoming more acceptable.

One can argue that monogamy isn’t natural. It probably isn’t when you look at animal nature. It was not an institution born of undying, desperate love. It was born of financial need and power over women. Centuries of practice have gaslit all of us into believing it’s about love and finding our person. That if we are single, we are broken, undesirable. There is no person for us heathens.

Having never been married myself, I can tell you I have met “my person” in more than one individual. Whether it be romantic with past exes or platonic with friends. I promise you, we all have more than one person for us. I have one ex I need to always be a friend in my life. It is non-negotiable with any new man I date. Mark isn’t going anywhere. He is my friend and part of my “quilt” of persons. In fact, it would actually be nice if someday, we could meet up for dinner once a year with our spouses. I just need to get one first.

Hitching ourselves to only one person can be very limiting depending on how you look at it. It can also be very freeing to know you have married “the one” and you don’t have to be “out there” anymore. You can kind of give up on the search and settle into what you have chosen, making compromises along the way to ensure both of you are getting something beneficial. But it’s never perfect. You do sometimes look at your uncoupled friends and wish you could have some of our freedom. I joke with my married friends about which country will I choose to visit next year while they are Great Wolf Lodge with the kids again…they understand my humor. They can just as easily shoot back how nice it is to have 2 incomes to merge for that one vacation while I wonder if I am going to end up in a dangerous part of a city because it’s all I can afford.

If I were married, I would like to think I would be open to doing whatever it took to have a 10 for 10 life. If everything else were great except my sex life, I would like to think I have choices outside my marriage. That’s not ideal. My personality is more likely to put greater weight on the sex part and learn to live with the other 9 things being ho-hum. I can always hire an accountant, housekeeper and food delivery service, right? That’s just me and how my love language works. But I get it. I don’t totally want to begrudge these couples their choices. That said, the judgy part of me always judges them for “settling” in the first place. I mean, in most cases, they had to know the sex was off and got hitched anyway. I kind of do think you have to get stuck with your choices when there are very strong women out here like me who never settled at all. If I ever get married, you will know for sure I have heavily considered my 10 for 10 and which one I prioritized. Also, studies show that couples with amazing sex lives and everything else wrong can outlast the 9 for 10 relationships. Interesting fact I learned today which leaves me optimistic.

Anyhow, here’s the rub (no pun intended.) What’s in it for me? Why should I get involved with a married man or open relationship man from the start? There is no relationship to hope for when that is ultimately what I want. It’s long term or single for me, nothing in between is worth it. That means I am just the “3rd wheel” to your fractured relationship. Pulling me into your life helps you and your wife, perhaps, but what does it do for me? Yes, I enjoy sex. But I also want someone to go to funerals with when I need support. Someone who can run home and take my dog out occasionally when I am stuck at work. Someone who can travel with me. Someone who can have dinner with my family. Not all the time, but sometimes. Being a 3rd wheel girlfriend only yields me an occasional dinner followed by servicing your needs with only a remote chance of having 1 of my needs met.

I think “opens” need to stick with other “opens.” Meaning, if you are doing non-monogamy, your extras should be in the same type of relationships themselves. If you are open, your 3rd should also be a married open person. This way, need equals need on both sides. Otherwise, it’s the most quintessential kind of selfishness that can exist. You get to share a home, finances, cars, vacations, responsibilities with her while having sex with me. I still have a single income, a crappy house I can never upgrade and a dented Toyota Corolla. How do you improve any quality aspect of my life? And if you have an answer to that, you are a conceited asshat. No wonder your wife can’t stand your touch. So I just don’t get it.

Being single nowadays no longer means being optimistic I could find a person who works for me where we can happily merge. I have to consider being nothing more than a concubine or human marital aid to help you through an ill made or hasty decision you once made for fear of loneliness. If you are in my age group and looking for me to be part of your sex therapy, you are asking a whole hell of a lot from a woman who has a fulfilling life without ever compromising anything out of fear. If I want a casual hookup, I can still find an uncomplicated, single guy for that. They tend to suck but at least we are in equal footing with what we can bring or take away from the arrangement. If I’m only doing the hookup thing, I suck just as much as he does.

It will be interesting to see how relationships continue to evolve. Most of my friends are married and don’t think about this topic at all. I am forced to think about it as I continue dating because my prospects come to me with all different circumstances. I don’t wish divorce on any of my coupled friends. Being single is WAY different than it was when you found him or her. You met at school, at work, through friends or even a dating website early on when people were more serious about finding you and following up after a great first date.

At least once a month, I have to consider going out with someone in one of the relationship scenarios I have discussed here. Hence, I don’t think I have actually gone on one date this year. It just wasn’t a priority to begin with. The Trump era has also made my skin crawl at men so much that I have a very hard time talking to one let alone developing an attraction. This political landscape has been an epic disappointment for me – a vaginal Sahara of epic proportions. Not just because of Republican voting men but also the Democrats who claim to be open minded but sit idly by without doing or saying anything in the defense of women and other subjugated parties. Plus, the liberal ones are the more likely to ask for “open” relationships. The conservative ones just cheat and lead fake lives. Neither is appealing to me. This 3rd wheel is perfectly happy reinventing herself into a unicycle, thank you.

I was just listening to a Chelsea Handler podcast while doing errands and her guest was a psychic medium. I’ve always loved Chelsea Handler but in the past year have really come to admire and identify with her as she has kind of been going through this journey of “auditing” and owning up to her demons, her flaws and taking ownership of who she is…who she thinks she should turn out to be. So her podcast is of that flavor and totally resonates.

Her guest today was talking about how sometimes people are born a certain way for a reason. That perhaps they are born into a family in which that person is vastly different than the family because the family needs transformation. She talked about how “purple” people are those people. I am a purple person in that I have had my aura read a couple times and that’s my aura color. I also have some blue.

Purple is the color of highly intuitive and creative people, often of psychic capability and vibrating at a higher energy than those around them. Purple people are incredibly spiritual ( not necessarily in religious terms) and are very tuned in to the feelings and thoughts of people around them. Purple people absorb all the energy and information around them and every action they take is for the intent of doing good even if that’s not how it plays out. Purple people are so open that others gravitate to them and know there is a safe space to express themselves which can occasionally make a purple person struggle with self protection barriers. We are explorers, empaths, find energy in nature.

Purple people often struggle in relationships. They come on strong and we are super attractive at first but can then become intimidating when we seem to understand everything about the other person, basically see through them and they know they can never truly know us back. People who have shame or guilt are particularly troubled around us because they sense we know what they are hiding. That explains so many of the personal and professional relationships I have struggled with through the years. I have always been positioned as maligned and when I think of the common denominator in all those dynamics, there was something a little bit unlovely and devious about them. I could always feel it. I never felt the need to call it out but when it was only the two of us in a room, there was nothing for them to hide behind. They knew I could see the parts of themselves they didn’t want seen. What’s sad about that is that I never would have exposed them or treated them badly. It was just something I knew and kept filed away for myself. It didn’t mean I couldn’t accept them in my life but they couldn’t accept me in theirs so it has often subjected me to being slandered, gossiped about and even labeled as crazy in relationships. My “crazy” was just about wanting “him” to acknowledge or admit what I already knew. I guess that’s why gaslighting enrages me. I have no ill intention. I just want my knowledge to be acknowledged and for it to deepen the connection so I can actually help that person. My intention is never to leave, chide or abandon.

I have spent my entire life wanting to fit in and to understand my purpose. Society tells me purpose is about being a wife and mother, neither of which I am. So what am I doing here other than idling and occupying space? When I heard the concept this morning about how purple people might be born into families who need a major narrative shift, things started to make a lot of sense. My family dynamic as a child is nearly unrecognizable to what it is now. My parents have never changed their ethics or integrity but the way in which they view the world and respond to people is nothing like what I grew up with.

I was never accepted for who I was growing up. I have written about that many times. I was emotional, challenging, passionate and outspoken. All of those are traits that not only my parents looked down upon but generations before them did as well. In their minds, the best thing they could do for me to prepare me for a successful outcome was to the try to change me and get all that “wrong” stuff out of my system. In fact, as a young child I had psychic abilities and knew deaths were coming before they happened. Deaths of family members as well as strangers and neighbors I barely knew. I always kept those thoughts and dreams to myself as I knew how incendiary it would be to share with my parents. It was bad enough they had me seeing a therapist by the age of six because all this passion, emotion and adult knowledge was not considered normal by them. They wanted to give me every tool they could find to help me find a way to “convert” myself into the quiet, obeying, cooperating sports playing child because that’s how all the normal kids were. They knew life was going to be so much harder on me and they have absolutely never been wrong about that. They were just wrong to fear it so badly that they handicapped my self-esteem which would be the one piece of armor I would have needed to get through it a little less unscathed.

The upside to all of it was that I fought “conversion” every step of the way. I used my therapist sessions to further embrace who I was and to get her to help my parents learn how to better work with it and make me feel accepted. Yeah, I was that smart as a kid. I didn’t fall for their game. I didn’t become more of who they wanted me to be. I became even further validated in just being myself. I had a therapist I saw every week where I got to be myself for an hour on Saturday mornings. And, I had my best friend Sally and her family who also accepted me for me. Those were my only 2 safe places but it was enough because I made it. I never changed. I never shoved my personality, desires, ideas into a closet.

The irony is that I always thought my sister playing hockey and eventually coming out as gay is what changed them and softened them. They were absolutely wonderful and accepting of her from the day she was born. She could make no bad choices. Everything she did interested them. She chose hockey and they loved that sport. She became really good at it and better than the boys she played with. They really enjoyed those years. While I cannot imagine the pain she endured her whole life of feeling different and not being able to share those feelings with anyone, I can say she did have a vastly different childhood from me despite there being only a six year difference. Whoever she knew she was, she definitely kept a good chunk of it hidden while I was balls out being myself and refusing to be snuffed out. She had my parents. I had Sally and my therapist.

I still had a rough road with my parents into my early 30s but they did become more accepting of my choices and they were able to acknowledge occasional pride at things I demonstrated I could be responsible about. Like, I think they never believed I would make rent or car payments by myself or on time or that I have any work ethic. I have never missed a bill payment. I learned my lesson in my early 20s when I didn’t pay off my Express credit card balance of $300 in a timely manner. When people talk about debt problems, they are talking tens of thousands of dollars. For me, usually under a thousand. Stressful for me but still pretty responsible. Also, I have yet to meet anyone with the intense work ethic I have outside my parents and siblings.

Today, I wondered if I actually made my sister’s road easier than it would have been had I been the complacent child. She would have had to be the first to challenge them and break them while doing it with the most sensitive of topics. Would they have had the easiest response to that if I hadn’t worn them down and prepared them for the fact not everyone fits into their little box? Based on who they had been to me, I honestly can’t say they would have responded to her in the way that she needed. I truly don’t believe they would have. I think they would have come around at some point because they are very good people. I just think they would have a lot of the wrong things first. They definitely would have pointed out to her that her life was going to be harder because of it. Instead, they spared her that statement understanding it wasn’t a choice she made. They did not spare me that. They always believed I chose to be “difficult” and chose to make my life hard. But thank God it was me they said it to and not her. I am sure she woke up every day knowing how hard her life would be and wishing something different. She didn’t need to be told. That would have been devastating and cruel for her.

It’s funny to know myself now as purple now since, technically, my favorite color is red. Looking back on my childhood, I insisted my bedroom walls be lavender and my bed set to have purple in it. It wasn’t easy to do lavender paint in the 80s. I even had a purple rug at one point. Serendipity I guess. There was also a pivotal moment once sitting in that bedroom floor in high school with a dear friend. She and her brother were being raised by a single mom. She never spoke much of her father other than that he lived in San Francisco and she didn’t see him often. One night she broke down and told me he was gay and HIV positive. Huge, adult topic we didn’t run into in our private Catholic school or suburban, perfect lawn neighborhoods. We cried together for hours. I cried and it had nothing to do with me. Like massive, snotty, wipe my nose on my sleeve all night cry. I just felt such immense pain for her and such empathy for the double life she had to live. Afterwards, I remember feeling really weird about my reaction. I also felt exhausted for days and really heavy. My parents told me and everyone else I was selfish so I wondered if I was somehow trying to make this my own drama. Today, I recalled that night and now know that was empathy. It was a sign that I was an empath. I just didn’t know that then. But it’s not unlike any reaction I have now to difficult things people share with me. It’s not hard for me to cry with them and carry their pain with me. I am not a crier in my own life. But for other people’s pain, it comes rather easily.

Anyway, some people don’t believe in this stuff and just chalk it up to one more thing which makes me crazy and that’s fine. I don’t need those people in my life. They are ordinary and stunted…the kind of person my parents originally thought it would be best for me to grow into. All the people who are in my life are deep and fascinating and multi-dimensional like me. I love my deep, rich, purple life and it makes a ton of sense to me that I served a purpose. Our family history in terms of how we behave and believe is forever altered and the new, better, more emotionally evolved dynamic is already infused into the next generation with my sister’s children who actually have a real shot at living a life of acceptance and getting to develop into who ever they are going to be with out fear or judgement or someone telling them how hard they are goi g to make life turn out for themselves. It’s not about being able to choose a life that’s easy or hard. It’s about being loved, supported and equipped to get through whatever challenges you face without being your own hater in a world full of people who will do it to you themselves. You need to be solid with yourself and that comes with the foundation of a healthy childhood and open parenting. That pain of my childhood, my parents’ childhood and whatever was wrought on their parents and generations before is done. It’s not passing on anymore. That is simply magnificent. That is “purple.”

I was reading something recently about kids nowadays seem to all have anxiety which is sad. There’s plenty of time to have anxiety as an adult. Childhood should be a little more fun when it can be. We worry so much about what “could” happen in the rain on Halloween, that we forget nothing has actually ever happened by experiencing rainy weather while trick or treating. Having grown up with an anxious parent myself, that anxiety absolutely transfers itself to kids and you go from just being excited about having a good time and making the best of less than ideal situations to suddenly thinking up all the catastrophes that could happen but likely won’t. It’s such misdirected energy. I know, I have anxiety as an adult and I did experience the kind of trauma people can only imagine but it never happens. I went to the Marathon on a perfect, sunny spring day and I came home smelling like burnt hair and bomb residue. So I know of what I speak.

My mom’s anxiety taught us to worry about paralysis when jumping in a pool, getting molested or kidnapped if we ever went to a playground without an adult, that everyone who rides a motorcycle will die (kind of agree with her on this one,) that people would always be peeping in our windows….and the list goes on. I even worried about Russian tanks rolling up on my front lawn during the Cold War and that every thunderstorm would result in a tornado so I should wait out storms in the basement.

But on Halloween, I just woke up that day super excited feeling the spirit and spooky ….wanting to look out the window and see what happened the night before on cabbage night. The neighborhood felt electric as so many neighbors had cool decorations and displays…even made their own haunted houses. School was the longest day ever just waiting to get home and waiting for my parents to get home from work a little early and help us get dressed. We had our pillow cases ready and we were annoyed by any delay to hitting the sidewalks, including the obligatory photo with siblings and photo with friends. We’d get together with our friends and their dads would take us out in a group while our moms stayed behind to hand out candy. I never once thought about the weather. I never once thought there could ever be a possibility the day would be canceled or moved. It was pretty much the most exciting day of my year and one of very few where I only worried about my costume staying together and how many peanut butter cups I might score. Pure, childhood bliss.

For some reason I am so bothered by Halloween getting moved because of rain. Massachusetts has never given in to parental anxiety and this year, many of our towns are. I’m just super annoyed by that. It feels like the spirit of the day has been erased and is disposable….something which is just a task which must be gotten through for adults. Any discomfort of bad weather replaced by the “what ifs” we used to not think about.

There were plenty of legit things for parents to worry about but Halloween wasn’t one of them. The burden of an anxious parent didn’t roll down on Halloween. We got that one day to just explode with joy and excitement all the way up until the point of exhaustion when we would finally cave and tell dad we had enough candy and were ready to call it a night. Yep, the dads never put a limit on it. They trusted us to call it a day. They gave us that decision despite how bored they were, how cold they were, how wet they were. They even gave us the impression they too were having a good time. We had that one day to just be a kid.

I have it’s spent the past 2 and a half months studying for a licensing exam I wasn’t passionate about to try and get a job I was half hearted about. Neither worked out the first time and I am ok with it.

I saw a psychic in August. She asked me to ask a random question I wanted to go deeper on so I broadly asked about what is going on with my career. She told me to then come up with 3 scenarios in my head about what to do with my job and then see what the cards came up with. When she revealed the cards, without knowing my 3 scenarios, she said number one is a good spot to be in, it’s something I excel at and is low effort to continue excelling and staying comfortable. The number two choice sounded terrible to her. She said that one didn’t feel like it was me and that I was trying to squeeze myself into a hole of expectation which doesn’t fit. Totally not the right move, she said. Number three interested her. She said it would be hard but that it could work, that she sees happiness and eventual, long term possibility of comfort.

These were my scenarios. #1 Stay put for the moment in my current role. Don’t try to do any major changes. #2 Was to get 4 licenses and apply for a job requiring all 4 of them. It would get me a promotion and help me save money for a longer term plan I have. #3 is the long term plan….start my own business. She also said the answers to these questions would start flushing themselves out in the month of September.

Am I annoyed I failed that stupid test by 2 points? Of course. I couldn’t have worked harder and sacrificed any more of my personal time and emotional blockage of everything happening around me. I basically worked for 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for the past two months, allowing myself occasional beach breaks in-between studying and practice exams. I would literally leave work at 5 on Friday nights, spend 2.5 hours driving to the Cape and hooking the computer up on the breakfast bar at my parents house and start studying again at 9 pm when I got there. No more Friday night beer after the commute. It was all about warming up dinner they left for me and studying until 11-12. I would get up early Saturday morning and study for another couple hours just so I wouldn’t feel guilty about planting myself on the beach for 6 hours. And no after beach beer. I would go back to the house by 5, take a shower and start studying again. I’d eat dinner by myself while my parents ate in the other room. With the exception of my trip to Denver in August, my entire summer vacation followed the same daily routine. No wonder I lit up in Denver and started seeing glimpses of myself again.

In Denver, I was the happiest I have ever been. I felt so grounded and in touch with who I am and was always meant to be. I promised myself I would stay just like that after I got home. Granted, I haven’t straightened my hair since I got back. I shower every day and let it air dry without brushing it in true hippie fashion. I go to work like that and proudly wear my gold birkenstocks most days, without changing my shoes when I get into the office. But I went right back to studying relentlessly and became quickly miserable and self loathing in record time.

Now that I have failed, I can re-test in a month if I want to. Have yet to decide but knowing me, might try and then give it a rest. I have a hard time quitting things even when devoutly wrong. My parents have always called it stubbornness. My colleagues call it intense determination which is a label I am proud of. I spent my whole childhood defending myself against my parents’ lazy label. I am not at all lazy. Just very good at pursuing things I have passion for and blowing off most things I don’t…except for job stuff. I don’t know where the intensity and internal competitiveness come from….perhaps all the years of being labeled stupid in math and science classes until I got a Masters in Science from a prestigious school.

I have spent the past 2 days decompressing. I did some lunch and strolling through Portsmouth on Friday after failing the exam in the very building I once worked when I lived there 20 years ago. The irony not lost on me. I also realized I parked in the same space I parked in my last day on that job…the very spot where I said goodbye to my ex and saw him for what I thought would be the last time. Fortunately, it wasn’t. I saw him last summer. Despite the fact we dance around being deeply politically divided…that’s me changing, not him….we were on the same pages in our youth…he is a critical friend in my life now and someone I would never want to do without. Just one example of serendipity which does tend to bless me throughout my life.

I slept for 12 hours and the sat in my living room wondering what to do with my unplanned time. I had dinner outside in Cambridge with my sister’s family and deeply enjoyed the summer weather. I food shopped. I watched some episodes of Yellowstone. I attempted to read in bed but was still so tired, I fell asleep 2 pages in and slept another 13 hours. Got up, cooked pancakes for the week and took my dog for a hike for the first time in years. I’m unplugging from one life and plugging back into my real one…the one where I have been wearing birks for so long now, my ankles are torn up today from wearing sneakers the first time in several months. And, I am wearing my favorite new hat which says “be hippie” as well as the cute tank I picked up from Rebecca’s Apothecary in Boulder. That place is awesome. I got a bunch of bath salts, roll on “courage” oil, piñon, goddess cards, “balance” mist….kind of bought the whole store.

With this transition also comes the stuff I don’t talk about. I am acutely aware of it on my periphery but haven’t had the emotional battery to start processing and that’s the stuff which is kicking in now. I am very careful to avoid talking about my family online. It’s my choice to air “me” to the world with brief mentions of them but it is not their choice to have their stuff aired. They are incredibly proud, stoic people who freak out when anyone knows their business unexpectedly.

That said, my dad is having a hell of time with massive back pain to the point he can barely walk most days. He has had to take very strong medications which barely solve the issue. He is not a man to be “down” or complain. But the pain is so bad that even to do something he really wants to do like take me out to dinner for my birthday is a challenge…something we had to time effectively and worry about the wait time for a table because there was only so long he could probably handle being out or the restaurant chair. He works at the golf course which makes him really happy and there have been days he has had to come home one hour into his shift and go to bed the rest of the day. He is discouraged and depressed. The medical community has been failing this man in epic proportions. He is not an “old” guy who is good with giving in. He is an incredibly active, social 73 year old man who wants to golf, go out with his friends, drive cancer patients to their doctor appointments and be able to keep up with his grandsons when they visit. He wants to know he can get through a birthday dinner with his oldest daughter without having to cut it short.

In the midst of all this, he got another kidney stone which happens to him every few years. The ones he gets are severe enough, they require surgery to remove. He frequently experiences problems with surgeries. A coup,e years ago when he had back surgery, he had to have several blood transfusions after. It was scary. When he got pneumonia a couple years ago, he also got sepsis. He almost died. I didn’t talk about that when it was happening. I went to work every day like a good girl and hoped he’d be alive when I could visit on the weekend. He also has a-fib which causes a lot of problems and fainted in a mall once last year…something our mother didn’t mention for awhile after it happened. And when he had his kidney stone removed last month he had complications and infections after that which required ER trips. In fact, we joke about this, but it’s quite normal for me to be at the Cape with my mother coming into my bedroom at 2 am to tell me they have to go to the ER and could I walk and feed their dog when I get up?

He has also had cancer 4ish times. It started several years ago with melanoma. Then prostate, then thyroid and melanoma again. Last year, he had a huge bandage on from his most recent melanoma removal and didn’t want my mother to tell us about it when we had a family weekend at the Cape. Seriously, I think my sister noticed it and couldn’t understand how we were supposed to pretend we didn’t see it and to not talk about it. I mean, she and my sister in law are Ivy League grads. Not that my brother and I are intellectual schlepps but really, he thinks none of us were going to notice that? We are Irish Catholic and definitely expert on denial but not in this case.

The amount of time my father has had to spend this year advocating for himself with doctors, fighting to get an MRI and some kind of diagnosis is staggering. When we argue about how I tell him it’s better to live in other countries he likes to tell me about how you have to get on waiting lists for surgery in other countries…that you can’t always be seen right away. I asked when his next appointment was. 3 months away. Can’t see how that’s much different. I think he overdoes it on America the great. Granted, he’s not a MAGA guy and only thought Trump might be good for bridges and roads. He understands the criticality of DOMA to his family structure and voted for “her.” But I don’t think he’s totally immune to Fox News. It’s hard for him to see he isn’t getting the rights and treatment he thinks he is.

Last week, he finally caught a break. His urologist said he saw something from one of his kidney scans. He prefaced it by saying this wasn’t his specialty but he could see what appeared to be a build up of fluid pushing against the sciatic nerve. My dad and I went to dinner last Saturday night and he was optimistic again. He was talking about how this should be simple to fix and counting the short months until he could be back on the golf course. My father measures every cancer and illness by what he has to get through to get back on the course. Radiation…4 months. Back surgery…by Fall. Kidney stone…a few weeks. Fluid removal….by Spring if not the few winter days when the course isn’t frozen and it’s unseasonable warm.

Not that simple. He actually has to have another hip replacement surgery. The fluid build up is coming from his first fake hip he got at age 48. That’s shocking to me that he wasn’t much older than I am now when he had an actual hip replaced. They did warn us then it may have to replaced when he got older. By the time he got his second hip replaced they had been completely revamped so that he would be able to depend on the 2nd one forever. False sense of security, I guess. Time to re-visit the first one. Hip replacements aren’t necessarily life and death, nor terminal illness. But it’s a lot rougher at his age and the recovery is far worse than his previous ones. And, that’s if he survives surgery which is just never a given with him. This is downright scary. He is going have to re-calculate when he will get back on the course which means he is goi g to be depressed again. The depression alone is worrisome considering he has severe PTSD.

On top of what he is going through personally, he recently found out his baby brother has prostate cancer too. The second time. And the prognosis is poor because our fabulous, world class health care system missed the boat on taking his PSA seriously. For the love of God. Prostate cancer is in our family….his brother, my dad had it. And yet, the doctors didn’t monitor my uncle enough. It has traveled to his bones. His kids are in their early 20s. He hasn’t even retired yet. And when his wife retired about 2 years ago, she was diagnosed with great cancer. No sooner had she gone into remission then he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. And now it’s back aggressively. My father is very upset about this.

So this is all the stuff in my periphery I have been pushing back against allowing in. I couldn’t get distracted. My parents seemed pleased I was working on licensing and potentially getting promoted so I could worry less financially. That failed. What they aren’t up for is me starting my own business and someday walking away from my “golden handcuffs.” How can I not consider it? Ever since they retired, it’s been nothing but illness. They enjoy their retirement in spurts but never to the full extent of matching their enjoyment to the toil it took to get there. That’s wrong. Other countries are not like this. They actually “live” their lives the whole time. They get by with less from a materialistic standpoint but they don’t do to themselves what we do. They don’t live in this perverse world where it’s all about saving enough money for our retirement to the point we work so hard we aren’t living the entire time along the way. We are getting through only so our bodies can break down the moment we stop having to get up for work.

I can see this all around me. I got too educated to be able to ignore it. It’s so wrong to me. And yet, I am doing the same thing myself. We all are. We are killing ourselves to have a nicer house, a better lawn than the guy next door, a nicer car than the family down the street, the biggest tv, the top shelf tequila, the best shoes….more, more, more, better, better, better….I am as guilty of it as my paycheck will allow. I don’t have the nicest house but you know I would if I could. I don’t drive a Mercedes but I would if I could. I like my trendy clothes. I like my highlights, my shoes, my leather jackets (plural.). But I want to stop. I want to stop all of it. I want to be healthy. I want to be mindful. I want to slow down my nervous system. I want to feel like I am not wasting time just by sitting on the couch petting my dog or having spent an hour writing when I could have been cleaning something or working or anything else. I am SO unhappy in my Monday through Friday week. The know it’s killing my soul and that I have so much better to offer than to just continue the rat race. But how the hell do I get out of it? How do get myself Into a space where I can run my own business, be the boss I wish I could be without all the bureaucracy, someone who unites people in healthful pursuit and can also be more available for parents who could use my help?

By studying every day, I was able to numb my brain and focus solely on really unimportant stuff like why rich people trading in the market need to have “options”and “margins” just to “bet” on trying to get richer. HonesTly,my inability to grasp options as well as I needed to isn’t about being stupid, it’s that I am truly hung up on why anyone needs to do it so much so I couldn’t absorb it. I think it’s bullshit and I just don’t penetrate bullshit. It’s way out of line from who I am and who I want to be.

Those of my friends who are Kate Bush fans will understand the irony of this blog title against its topic.

This week I have been “asked” to believe myself less than. That I need to accept I am washed up and not as skilled or talented as I have allowed myself to believe. I am to quietly put my head back down, get back in my lane and pretend I haven’t really seen what I am capable of….that it’s not real.

It’s actually age discrimination which I must pretend not to know. Trust me, I don’t want to know it any more than anyone else wants it illuminated. It has put me into a place of deep humiliation. A part of my brain, heart and gut all know to the core there is nothing wrong with me, that it truly is my age. But that little girl that is always tethered to me is whispering to listen to them. “Accept your limitations. Accept you have peaked. Accept that you don’t have as much to offer as you get people. Accept you are not special. You have overestimated your talent and you are short. You are limited.” They know something about me I just can’t admit to myself. That’s my fear.

I can’t explain what this juxtaposition does to my mind. The educated feminist in me knows I might even be better than my estimates while the mild mannered feminine knows not to speak that. It’s impolite to point out your own goodness. I know I am not wrong. I so completely, rationally know it. And yet, I am still questioning it.

The idea that I must keep my head down and shame myself to fit in going forward is not what I would advise my own daughter to do, if I even had one. The real Christine is not made to keep her head down, to allow the constraints of society to tell her who she is supposed to be. She is vigilant. She is an activist. She is emotionally fearless. She is a fighter. She literally just decided a couple weeks ago to go back to her roots and just freaking be who she has always wanted to be.

She also has a mortgage which is not the kind of anchor she normally respects. She views anchors as a tie to what matters in life, family, friends and being grounded. An anchor is to keep something precious safe. It is not to one’s detriment. It is a temporary placeholder. It is not to become a permanence, a lock, a death. You don’t anchor boats just to gaze at them and never use them. You anchor them so you always have the freedom to set sail, experience unseen horizons and come back when your soul is satiated for the day.

I can’t be asked to believe gaslighting. I am too smart and too self righteous. I have spent the past 20 years trying to build self confidence and self esteem in the absence of resources other than myself. When I was diagnosed in my 20s with depression, for a little while I succumbed to disabled thinking in that I must accept this disability would hold me back and I had to be ok with that. I can remember standing in my parents’ kitchen in our Marlborough house pleading with my parents to to stop having expectations of me….that I couldn’t meet them. My brain was damaged and it had to be enough that I remain employed and alive. Ask for nothing more.

What I don’t remember was the moment I changed my mind. I just know I went on to get 2 degrees, buy a house, lose 80 pounds, not give a shit about men’s position in my life and travel. All things I had never believed could be possible for someone like me. Even surviving the Marathon bombing and developing PTSD didn’t stop my resolve. It changed my coping skills. It changed my brain chemistry. It actively sought self medication for awhile. It caused reckless, thoughtless choices at times. But it never stopped me believing in myself. Not once.

I know that to be a woman in the working world requires a level of grit and strategy men simply don’t have to consider. It doesn’t make all of them bad or misogynistic. They simply can’t imagine something they have and never will experience. For years, I played it polite and just expected I would be rewarded for being outstanding because I didn’t think it needed to be pointed it out. I was far differentiated from my peer group just walking into the building each day. It was without question. But every year would pass with nothing while I watched men and millennials go “look at me, look at me” and they would get recognition, money, promotion.

This year, I have adopted some mentoring. Both male and strong female….the strong females being the ones who learned demure didn’t pay the bills. I followed their strategy of making clear what I was expecting and then asking what I needed to do for it to happen. I was given a list and I accomplished everything on it and more. Every conversation I have had this year to advocate for myself is directly out of the male playbook. Every male who has used the same strategy has gotten what they asked for. It was more than one man who suggested I take their approach because they knew it was foolproof.

It’s foolproof if you have a ballsack, not a vagina. And, the added dilemma is the age thing. All the money is now to be filtered at the “potential” of unproven millennials. Please don’t misinterpret this as a frustrated Gen X rage against millennials. I hate the way they drive and don’t look up from their phones when they walk. But I do actually respect them and see their value proposition quite a bit. I admire their confidence and unshaken belief in themselves. They don’t even wait to prove their talent to believe they have it. They just buy into themselves and go for what they want without fear. That’s incredible power and pretty amazing parenting. If they don’t like something, they walk away from it. They don’t worry too much about where the next paycheck will come from. They just firmly believe another paycheck will come. And they are right. Granted,they have a little more cushioning and can quit a job they don’t like because their roots are still planted at their parents’ house. Or, they live with boyfriends or roommates but some part of their expense structure is supported by their parents. Its that their parents want them to be happy. They will support this to great lengths. Is that actually wrong? I’m not so sure.

I respect the work ethic of my parents’ generation. The “tough love” that forced us all to figure out how to take care of everything ourselves…the knowledge if we got lost in the woods, we’d have to eat weird shit, find water, make shelter and make our own way out. It’s good to have survival skills so well embedded…especially if you also had to come out of the woods uncoupled with no “forever love” support system and second income to be able to fall back on in hard times…like when your wife is being discriminated against because of her age and wishes she could raise her middle finger while walking away from her job.

I think this is going to become more of a “thing.” I am not being asked to just do enough to get by and will be left alone to collect my paycheck and continue my standard of living without raise or promotion. I am being asked to do more and put my foot on the gas everyday. There is no comfort zone I can fade into like the baby boomers once could do until it came time to collect their pension regardless of work performance. I have to give more, be greater, be more innovative than yesterday….which I actually can do all of. But I also must do it while believing myself of lower performance and capability than a 25 year old.

It’s got me thinking about why so many women have begun going into entrepreneurship and that there are business groups out there sponsoring them to do it. I used to think female side hustle probably had more to do with the constraints of blending family with career and running something on the side of school pickups was their way of making it work. Their challenges are different from mine and yet almost exactly the same. They are asked to take a step back from who they once believed they might be because their value as wife and mother became bigger than career. Businesses allow this too…except for the ones who exploit some of them by promoting them during the childbearing years to make a great advertising sound bite for their company’s advertising of modernity in the workplace. ” Come work for us. We didn’t have to change our maternity policy but we did it because we value you. We know your kid schedule is inconvenient to our daily workflow but we will promote you so we can say we respect the family and being a mom doesn’t mean holding you back at work.” Not if you are under 40. It’s a trick, though. When you hit 40…child filled or not…you have no value. You will wash up to the same shore they gave me a beach chair to sit on. You will get your beach chair too.

I think more and more, women going into business for themselves is about retaining their value….fighting the belief they have come become less than….that aging causes freshness to rot. They are so resolute in what they have to offer, they take tremendous personal and financial to risk to start their own businesses over the “safety” of staying in a job which requires them to become stale even when they aren’t. I think that level of risk is a dreadfully unfair way to make women reclaim their talents and self worth. But the climate is bad enough, they are doing it anyway. I truly believe we are going to see more of it. Ageism is no longer about the 60 year old pre-retiree. It’s about the brutal combination of not being a millennial and not being a man. Heavy on the millennial because no one wants to admit there is any entanglement of sexism which goes with it. But there totally is. Men my age are the ones in the positions asking me to be quiet and not make a fuss about what I bring to the table.

They seem unaware how this impacts their daughters. They believe their daughters are just better enough that it won’t happen to them. They don’t “wash up.” They have been educated and skilled to not have that happen. Guess what? My parents thought the same thing about me too. They never saw me being impacted by ageism or sexism. They believed they gave me to tools and intelligence to be the exception. Most parents of daughters think their daughter will be the exception…that you have somehow prepped them differently and more expertly than your peers whose daughters are hitting the wall. Not so. The exceptions are lucky. Nothing else. Ageism and sexism don’t tend to pick and choose unless you are related to, sleeping with the right people or have figured out how to play the patriarchal “cool girl” whose role is to reinforce male power and privilege. The “cool girl” often does get rewards but make no mistake…it’s not because those men believe you merit it entirely on your own. It’s because you mirror back to them the power they so desperately want to maintain. You are a Patriarchy pawn. You are not a partner. Even with the nicest, most well intentioned men. They are still discriminating and will scream they are not. It’s embedded in them just like unconscious bias has grown in so many of us based on which environment we grew up in.

My plight is not new or unique. Women of color, men of color have been dealing with it a lot longer. It’s their fight which has brought us far enough for an often privileged white girl like me to be able to soapbox my own discovery of lack of equality, lack of equity. It’s new for us because we actually believed this stuff had stopped happening in the 70s. It just found trickier ways to be hidden. Sort of like being told I am more than welcome to interview for the job I am already doing which is a process never done before. Sure…like I would actually get the promotion if I have to interview for it. That’s a just a cute “innovative” way of making me believe I have no value and that I “lost” the job on my own….not because I am 45 and you have earmarked it for your favorite peacock millennial.

Smart me wants to say “bullshit.” But, I have no savings to quit and fall back on because I am not getting paid to do the job I am doing. Can’t we meet in the middle here? Pay me what I’m worth so I can actually find a way out of your hair at some point? Right now, we are just perpetuating the abuse for everyone involved….going around in circles trying never to say the thing which just needs to be said. It’s about age. Plain and simple. It’s not going to go away either. Enjoy all your advancement now, girls. 40 happens to everyone at some point.

It is the most beautiful day for a birthday and with that comes reflection. 5 years ago I had a birthday weekend with my wonderful, amazing, inspiring girlfriends from high school. Kim hosted it at her home and we weren’t close in high school but in the past 5 years she has become a beacon and touchstone alongside all the others. So grateful.

It was also a time period when I was suffering immensely from survivor’s guilt and actively putting myself in deadly situations because I didn’t really care to be alive and was playing Russian roulette. I paid for it dearly in shame, finances and freedom for 8 months afterwards. It was the most embarrassing, shameful mistake. Yet my family and a few close friends rallied around me and got me through it.

One friend from that time took on a huge responsibility to get me back and forth to work while keeping my secret so I would at least not lose my job and become part of the system many people cannot get out of once they are in. I sat in courtrooms with those people knowing just how not different I had become from people I had always thought far beneath me. I became a much more compassionate person then… realizing pain is a leveling feature when you all choose similar coping vices because your brains are similarly broken. The only difference was I had the means to remain on the periphery and start over.

It has been a hard road and not without facing demons… anxiety and depression. But the friendships I had only became stronger with the exception of one. She eventually did tell people at work because she was mad I had started sticking up for myself. She used my secret and her support as a price tag that bought her the ability to pick on me and gossip about me at will.. impacting my job. She could just as easily have made the same mistake as me. I just got caught and she didn’t. I have always felt guilty about standing my ground against her because of the sacrifices she made for me. But I was learning friendships didn’t come with conditions and had the tables been turned I would have done the same for her but without being nasty behind her back expecting a pass.

Part of coming back from my mistake and the feelings which caused it was learning I have value. That it’s ok to not only be Alive but to forgive myself. I didn’t deserve a lifetime of punishment and I didn’t deserve to surround myself with people who used it against me. I made a mistake. No one can punish me more than myself. And even then, I began to awaken to the fact I didn’t deserve the ridicule… that somewhere along the line all our sins add up and even out. Not only that, my mental demons caused that mistake and you don’t take advantage of the mentally ill or use their shame for sport. You feel sorry for it. You help it. You pray for it and you lay yourself bare in whatever tools you have to lift that person up wherever you can expecting nothing I return …except that maybe your contribution becomes a piece of what helps them stay alive.

So in the past 5 years you have witnessed all of it. The absolute darkness and edge of canyon moments. The little joys starting to accumulate and break through the clouds occasionally. You have watched me build self esteem and confidence from a pile of nothing. You have watched me find my reasons to live, to want to experience the world and all it’s people. You have watched a social conscience step out from the sidelines and become a voice for more than just myself. And inside all of that the deepest of empathy for others who don’t have my resources, my grit, the love and examples set by family and friends.

Out of shame and mistakes has come the need to reconstruct myself into a far better person than I was before sitting next to convicts in a courtroom who had done more than one night in jail.

So I don’t hide my age, my scars, my mistakes and discoveries along the wAy. And I allow myself to speak openly of the repeated disappointment of one friend because you are supposed to pick up the best from who you are around and better yourself because of it. She is an anomaly and someone who is missing out remarkably on who she could be but chooses not to try for.

I am grateful 5 years later. I have depressive episodes that can be scary but so far, I have all of my people and the pieces they drop in which help me reconnect myself to at least be able to float or tread water until I can embark on another joyful swim where I do spend the majority of my mental time.

I have lost 3 people in the past 4 years. In the past 5 years, I could so easily have been one of them. The gift of another birthday… another day on the beach complaining about tourists or that my parents want to be in a restaurant with me today before I even want to get off the beach is a gift. Know that beyond all my bitching and moaning and social activism is a very present person fully aware of all my blessings assuming you know that and don’t have to remind me.

It’s a beautiful day and I am here to enjoy it. I deserve to enjoy it. I am still a good person if I admit that I deserve good in life. We all do. I am no exception just because of my mistakes. It’s just a faulty brain I have, not a faulty heart, not a faulty soul.

That was the song lyric which immediately popped into my head Wednesday night after I had spent hours on the phone with security on a missing persons report when I got the text “she was killed in a car accident.” I had just started heading up the stairs with my phone and my kashi cookie in my mouth. The cookie, the phone and I all fell to the stairs.

I just lost my third associate in 4 years. I can’t believe it happened again. I don’t want to be good at this and yet I am. I immediately shifted to leader to set expectation with my team leads on how we needed to prepare for work the next day. I started planning schedule updates for meetings first thing in the morning to inform our associates. I called HR. I got the grief counseling documents ready. I knew what to do because I have done it before which shocked the security and HR teams because it’s unprecedented.

I pulled into work when “Bad” by U2 came on; a song my Spotify playlist seems to know to play whenever I am experiencing tragedy. If my body had a sound for grief I think it sounds a lot like that song. I had a hard time getting out of the car knowing the day ahead. I once posted about not being able to get out of the car when John posted back, “Christine, it starts with taking off your seatbelt.” John had the kind of dryness about him that when he made a joke, it was very unexpected and funnier for that reason.

John was the first to die. 31 years old. Drug overdose after a stint with rehab and sobriety. A devout Catholic who treated everyone with kindness, probably to the point he dealt others people who annoyed everyone. Everyone else would walk away but never him. John quit our job when he realized it no longer aligned with his values. His only mistake was not knowing how to find the thing that would.

The 2nd was Adem. 38 years old. Had a really bad headache but didn’t want to take time away from work to see a doctor and he didn’t really trust doctors. Wellness check discovered him dead alone at home in bed. Devout Muslim who believed faithfully in his God.

This week. Courtney. 31 years old. Married 3 years. 2 year old daughter. Excited to go home early and surprise her husband. Died in a tragic car accident minutes later. Driving home at night now I see the tree she hit. Every night for the rest of this job, I will see that. Courtney loved Jesus. Courtney brought life into every room she entered.

These weren’t net neutral people. These people were all proactively amazing and adding bright to the world more than those around them. They were faithful servants of God. And God has taken all of them so early. I don’t understand that God. In the dark world we are presently in, we need more of them, not the subtraction of them. They believe in that God. I hope it’s just because they all knew something we don’t. I just don’t know.

This isn’t about me or my grief at all. But my grief starts a reckoning. I was alone in a conference room hiding so I could study for a license because I want a promotion I have deserved 4 times and this might be the inky way to get it. So I don’t even remember if I said “hi” to Courtney on Wednesday. I wasn’t there when she left. I didn’t know if she had had a bad day which was happening to her a lot lately. She was good about talking to me about that stuff. We were both empaths and believed in a lot of the same things. Because I knew she was an empath, I understood she may have bright and bubbly all the time but there was also an exhaustion tied to it so. Being present for her was important to me. But I haven’t been present for anyone this past month because I have spent every extra minute of my days studying and going late into the night so sleeping less. Everything I am doing doesn’t align with my values either, John.

I got pretty well dissected by a grief counselor yesterday. I still had a call left to review for Courtney and I just couldn’t bear the thought of putting myself into “execution, feel nothing” mode by hearing her voice so I could cross that off my list. I lost it. I admitted to the counselor what I was doing when she left and why. She asked me about my childhood. Really? You think this has something to do with that?

I explained how I was different from my siblings and not in a way which pleased my parents. Be easier, be quieter, be less sensitive, be less passionate, be a soccer player, be thinner, fall in line, don’t upset your father, be less lazy….fall in line like your brother and sister do. It’s just easier. The problem with that is I was born with intense determination and perseverance so instead of doing what was easy, I fought back to prove to them I could actually be me and it was ok, that I was just as valuable as even if I wasn’t simple. There didn’t have to be just one way and my parents didn’t have to be right about everything. I very strongly believed that who I was shouldn’t change but when you are a child, it’s about survival. Not being valued was life and death for me. This set me up for a life of chasing value I would never get.

But it’s what I do. I have to provide value. When I don’t, people die. I don’t get what I have earned. Other people might have been right that I should have just been like everyone else. I get mixed messages all the time…that people like me are who make companies grow, who make the best leaders and yet, lesser leaders get my due because my best is expected of everyone. They know I am dying to be validated and will do anything for it so they don’t have to give me anything to keep getting that. Others do one good things and get an immediate reward, I think, because “they” fear that person won’t do it again without the motivation of reward. It’s not naturally in them so it must be induced.

I certainly don’t believe any of this comes from a place of malice. It’s out of their awareness and is human nature. Everyone has done it to me my entire life. Work, relationships…all of it. I give more than I get because I don’t go into it looking to get anything but everyone goes into it with me looking to get everything, I go into it wanting to give and just be validated. But no one has ever validated me so I am still running up that mountain. That’s what the counselor told me. And she is right. It’s embarrassing. I’m like a puppy dog doing any tricks I can for a treat but nobody is watching. They are all staring at the sleeping dog poised with a treat in hopes it just does something. How fucked up is that about human nature?

I want a promotion more because I am embarrassed and humiliated that I don’t have it when I look at others who do. I have a regular therapist who points out I pay a lot of attention to equity in order to “grade” myself at how I am doing keeping up with everyone else. When they surpass me, I look for their differentiators. When I don’t see them, I get very confused. And then I get embarrassed because if there are no differentiators, it must mean I have detractions…that something is wrong with me and everyone sees it and is reminded of it frequently the same way I am.

That’s what this is stirring up in me. There is no actual joy in what I am persevering at right now. I am just someone who gets at it and gives it everything. Point me wherever you need. It doesn’t matter if it’s what I want. It’s all about what’s expected of me and what I don’t want…shame, humiliation….feelings I cannot handle. And because of that, I wasn’t where I should have been when someone else died. And even then, I don’t believe that’s where I want to truly be either.

I have trapped myself in this prison of validation. I know what to do about it but I can’t. I travel alone. I go where I want to go. I do concerts alone. I eat in restaurants and drink in bars alone. I read amazing books. I like to read my horoscope. I love podcasts, especially ones about psychic, meditation, witchy shit. I like all these things about myself. I’m convinced that I do my life far better than anyone else would do my life. And yet, I am not valid, anywhere.

3 very valid people I have had the blessing and joy to work with have died. They have left gaping holes in the lives of all their people. I hope they knew they were valid. It’s a richer life knowing that than to be capable of doing everything you set your mind to and never get stamped.

So that’s where my reckoning is going right now. My heart is broken. The world is infinitely not remotely better without Courtney and leaving a motherless child in it. There is no sense in that. And I will think about that every night after 5 when I get through the tolls at exit 10 and look to my right less than a mile down and see a tree with pieces of bark shorn off it and now spray painted as a scene of investigation.

Ok, first time I’ve done my own tarot in at least 20 years and the results are freaky accurate as shit!

The question I asked was about career – am I on the right path and, if not, how do I get there?

One thing I was thinking earlier today on my drive home from the Cape is about masculine vs. feminine energy. I believe I am over indexed on masculinity when it comes to how I take action and move through life….especially on the job as a leader. Lately, I have felt more of a pull to the feminine. I also wonder if that’s because of a medication I am currently on which is changing my hormonal balance physically. It’s either mental or physical but the mystic arts have been grabbing at me a ton recently and they are of the feminine nature.

In several cards, there is talk of both masculine and feminine energy achieving balance as I work towards future endeavors. Found that interesting in how present it came through.

My first card was phenomenal and represents who I am in this moment: Strength. Not only that, it’s a picture of a woman riding a lion, I am a Leo. This card essentially represents the equilibrium of the physical and spiritual worlds. How fitting, since an hour ago I proclaimed I would be intentionally providing more space for my spiritual world. Plus, that’s where I see long term career. This card also talks about animal instincts tempered with sacrifice. I interpret that as understanding I will need to make sacrifices along the way and maybe temper down the “animal” state I am always in towards goals….not necessarily the ones I want but the ones I think I am supposed to have. I basically got chills with this card as it answered my question pretty much right off the bat and let me know I am in the right bed space for what I want.

Ace of Wands represents immediate influence that lies just ahead. Aces represent beginnings. They are ruled by the sun (Leo) and bring enlightenment or can explode under their own energy. Sounds a lot like me too…my own worst enemy at times. This card represents the moment of “glorious creation.” Leadership potential comes with self sacrifice….interesting. Creative ventures and physical action. Sacrifice is required to produce creativity. I definitely know what this is referring to. This is my struggle with $ and independence vs. ability to chase dreams/happiness.

3rd card is about goal/destiny and I pulled Two of Wands (more wands) = Dominion. Man and woman defiantly facing each other standing on top of the world, both seeking power and dominion. This could be internal or external for me. There is a battle here….power over others is being sought. Is this men vs. women like in politics right now and how that influences my mental state? Does this mean I could be prevented from my goals if men win and oppress us? That’s a legit fear. Or, is it the battle inside of me….the male war machine vs. who I want to be…a little gentler and spiritual.

Card 4= The Emperor – sitting on a throne with a backdrop of fire (Leo again). Intellect, majesty, freedom and strength. This is my distant past foundation. Hunter, male energy. Crown has seven rays of chakras indicating spiritual development via intelligence. Totally me. Purple robe = power. There is also nature. And physical power. Needs feminine intuition. Heavy boots = aloofness and to protect oneself from unwanted forces. Sounds like me. The thrones has six sides – air, water, fire, earth, time and space = complete creativity. The negative side of this card is about lack of self discipline, self control. I see both sides of this card in my past. I see where I have had great mastery of my strength as well as my self destructive side which is just as powerful. I had about a 3-4 year issue not too far back which I am picking up in this card which equates to stagnation on my part.

Card 5: Ten of Swords = recent past events. This is my first of 3 sword cards ( in addition to 3 wand cards). Tens deal with male/female – sun and moon. The union of opposites. Ruin. Card of mental death. Cycle of dissection and analysis is over. Maybe because I know what I really want to doing figured it out within the past 2 weeks. There is fear, paranoia and sorrow here as the death of a situation has occurred. I can see that. There has been something kicking around in my head about belief and how much higher up the mountain to take it. Admitting to it would mean letting go of something important, significant for me. That’s something I need to grapple with in order to move forward or not.

Card 6: Four of Wands = future influence- fours are building blocks, foundations. Jupiter. Perfected Work. This card is foundation of creativity showing children playing happily. It’s a card of joy and prosperity. Real estate/new home. Very interesting!

Card 7: this card represents me and my present attitude in these circumstances. It’s about perspective. Temperance = sun and moon again. Moon suggests fluidity and cycles of time. Sun is physical and indicates change through time. One can be temperate in mind and action and eventually things will manifest themselves ( a word I referenced earlier today.). Wait for the right moment. Unafraid of contact with earth and cosmos. Sacrifice comes up again, some fear of uncontrolled emotions. Justice, victory, intelligence. A persons own thoughts can interfere with or prevent event from occurring (self destructive me.) woman in this card is compared to Strength card in some distance from tree of life meaning a metaphysical emergence above and beyond ones self. This is a very accurate description of my current state of mind. On the verge of something but could also be the reason it doesn’t happen.

Card 8 is about environmental factors – my influence on other people. Could also be how others affect me. This is the Knight of Swords and is a little scary. Knights = action. Forces behind present and future actions. I have 2 knights in this reading so action is heavy in here. Elements of air. Sword in left hand. Strong, dominating, brave person. Clever, persuasive, charismatic (like the men I get easily fooled by or myself in how I can be towards others.). Do not cross this person. That’s a little ominous. That could be good in that no one can get in my when I am determined or it could mean there is a major obstacle in my way I can’t surmount. Opposition and battle imminent. Mental alertness present. There is nothing in the cards indicating any forces stronger than me so I am not sure what this could be. Probably my dad telling me I can’t afford to be myself which I have been hearing for 30 years and landed me in this conundrum.

Card 9 represents inner emotions and I pulled Knight of Pentacles – more action so you can tell I’m feeling antsy and want to make a move. Earth, nature. Signifies mature, responsible person who is worldly and experienced. Yes! Exactly what I am aiming for. Dependable, methodical, capable. This what I’m trying to do, chase a dream while being fiscally smart. The situation requires slow, methodical handling. Yep. Truthfulness to self and others. Yep…worried about that too.

Card 10 is the final result and summation of all the cards. I pulled the 2 of swords. This means Peace Restored. This makes me feel optimistic, the twos are ruled by the moon which is emotion and intuition. Meaning I have identified where I belong and who I am…at least in this reading. Blindfolded man and woman facing each other as if ready for duel but are calling an emotional and mental truce. So this could mean we get rid of Trump and the GOP or I’m finding inner balance with my masculine and fem energy. Either one is a win. Need for change is present. Differences are reconciled. The waters of emotion can still rise.

I know it’s been 20 years since I have done these but I don’t recall ever getting a clearer reading on who I am and who I am fighting to be. Plus, I have a lot of reason to believe I will win as long as I am careful in next steps and make rational decisions along the way. I am going to document every time I do a reading as I believe there is a story here. I want it all recorded to see what comes of it both just to notice my personal evolution but also in the event I can make a meaningful witting about it in the future.

Every time I travel I learn new things about myself or something I was wishy washy about cements itself.

I am not a city girl. I always think I am because I live in the burbs and am not around anything cool I can walk or bike to. No cute little downtown coffee shops or small businesses to support….basically, no Sunday morning destinations. It frustrates me. I just need a town closer to a city which has those things. Like my sister has living in Arlington or like we had growing up in Natick. City living itself would certainly give me walkable things to do every day but I don’t believe I find my inspiration in the city. I find my inspiration in variety and in being able to stimulate my mind at a moment’s notice.

Where I am rooted is in the sea and land. I always knew it with the ocean but felt like it was an either/or situation. And, because I have never been terribly environmentally responsible, I felt like that couldn’t mean I resonate with the “earth” so to speak. But I was wrong. I get energy from both. This explains why I get drawn to ocean and desert, I think. I find spirituality and peace with both. Something in me is ignited when I am in the right areas. I experienced both in Australia which is how I understand it now. I also know I will be pulled to go back and visit other areas and different landscapes. I wish I could give a great description of what it is I experience on my insides but I can’t. I only recognize it in the moment it’s happening and I usually realize I have a goofy smile going by myself which others might find strange. It just means I am experiencing awe and happiness….a very genuine moment.

Going into this trip, I was also thinking about how to better commit to my spirituality and the healing arts. I have realized that no matter what “job” I do, I am always going to drink the cool-aid and chase the next big thing, thing after thing after thing. I am self competitive which means even if I am on the wrong path, I am incapable of not running full force for whatever the “prize” is. Whether I am ever in the right or wrong jobs, I am always going to pursue the money, the promotions, the accolades for myself because something in me needs to always be busy moving ahead and never stagnant with myself. This makes it incredibly hard to extricate myself from situations my body knows are wrong for me, but my bank account desperately needs. It’s the same pull I have had my whole life ….to be me vs. what is expected of me. I somehow try to live both things at the same time and in so doing, hate 80% of every day. I very much don’t want to make it to the life finish line never having changed this for the better but I do not know where to begin.

That said, I knew exactly where to find my Tarot cards today despite not using them in 20 years. I moved into my current home 10 years ago. I brought my suitcase in today and then went straight to the basement where I suspected they might be. It’s time to dust them off and get back into it.

I believe in astrology, tarot, psychics. I think these things help us clarify what we already know but are having trouble sorting through. I do believe I have psychic ability. Not just because when I visit one, I am told my aura is incredibly strong or that I am vibrating at a higher level than those around me. It doesn’t make me better or worse than anyone else. It’s just my level of awareness. Call me crazy because I’ve been seeing shrinks since I was 6 years old, or call me blessed for spending my life analyzing my thoughts, feelings and actions at a depth which allows me to see myself more wholly than other people see themselves. This actually allows me to be at a greater peace with mental challenges. I accept them. I don’t fight them. There are tempests I must battle through with depression in order to stay alive from time to time but I know with every shore, there are just storms. You have to learn to ride them out rather than try to deny their existence. Pretending they don’t exist doesn’t make them any less real or potent. Better to have a plan.

Enneagrams, crystals, ASMR, yoga, meditation….all things I connect to as well. I am actually going to study some of these things in greater depth. I already know I’m an empath. I’d like to have better control of it….better vision into what others carry into my life.

You think I’m nuts. I don’t care. Do you know why I fear flying as much as I do? Because I have recurring nightmares that I am going to die in a plane crash. You say that’s just a dream and you should be right. That’s what I hope too when I still get on planes in order to travel. But I also know about the dreams I have had of people dying before they do. Not sick people who would die regardless…people I don’t even know. Neighbors, relatives of other people….people you can’t add up. This has been happening since I was a kid. It’s rather frequent I dream about things before they happen. My deja Vu is different from yours. So, when I’m dreaming about my death in a plane crash, it’s more than just anxiety to me. I feel like I am tempting fate every time I do it. Dying that way is also, in my mind, the worst way to die….fully aware there is no hope until my last breath. For all the times I am called a pessimist….couldn’t be further from the truth. Even in the face of death, I expect to have hope in the process.

Manifestation is something I am hearing more about which I am going to look into. I think I have actually been able to do it in the past without realizing it. You know those moments when you just keep thinking about a person and you randomly bump into them or they message you out of the blue? I’ve done that more than once. And yes, street lights often do go out in my presence. Not kidding.

I don’t know how I feel about the business of past lives or that the dead can communicate with us….actually, I do believe the dead send signals so maybe I buy into that more than I realize. When I saw someone for this last fall, it was quite convincing who was speaking to me. The message then was that I needed to make space for my psychic capabilities because signs and symbols are everywhere around me except I let interference block my ability to see what’s right in front of me. That couldn’t be more true. I constantly fight my intuitions, dreams and foresight because society tells me those things can’t be true. Why not, though? Is religion true? Or is it just something drummed up in order for people to make order out of chaos because they don’t know how to live with the unknown? When it comes to death, the unknown scares me less than what the Catholics believe about heaven and hell. I am surely slated for hell and death frightens me daily because of that.

Maybe these things I want to pursue are silly. But they are no sillier than being Catholic. Don’t take offense. Just read the Bible. Some of it is absolutely ridiculous and fantastic in ways beyond reason. But it brings comfort to the masses. For me, the world I buy into brings comfort and insight to me. It’s where I feel more comfortable.

Ideally, I’d love to make a career out of a combination of these practices…a place of wellness and alternative healing which can still be combined with traditional medicine. After all, I firmly believe in my anti-depressants and the fact I should probably never go off of them. Yet all these mystics and metaphysics and psychic work cannot hurt in any way. They can only help and create additional coping mechanisms. I have always firmly believed we should try anything which cannot hurt us. If we are willing to take medications (which can hurt us even in their effort to help) we can be open to meditation, acupuncture, yoga, tarot, seers and the like.

My goal right now is to incorporate some part of these practices into my every day. I already count 3 things a day I am grateful for. I’ve been doing that for a long time (still have depression so it’s not a cure according to people who don’t have depression…you can’t “will” your way out of it. You can make it more palatable.) I think it would be so cool, if at some point, I cleared the way enough where I can read someone else or receive messages much more easily than I do now. It’s all in me…always has been. I think it’s what old boyfriends picked up as “crazy” but really isn’t. It’s just a different way of seeing the world. They just didn’t like that I knew the bad things they were doing without any proof. Freaked them out. Shamed me into stifling myself. No one likes it when you know them better than they know themselves. I’m guessing because No one has been able to know me better than I know myself. But I’ve got 40 years of therapy on most people so there’s that.

Anyhow, still pulling out what I have learned on this most recent trip and think it will come out in drips over the next week or so. Right now, I’m pretty excited to know where I fit into the earth and how I plug in. That was a neat discovery this year.

A question famously asked and written about by Hillary Clinton after losing the election.

The short answer? A guy got rejected by a hot woman once. Another man wound up divorced when the wife learned she could provide for herself and any life was better than cooking and cleaning for him all day while he worked and probably cheated on her a lot. Some other men were forced to give up their slaves. And another group of men got told it might be wrong to force a woman to have sex. Also, present day general sentiment is that it was kind of wrong to inhabit the US by stealing and killing Native Americans.

And here we are with the current Republican Party. It isn’t just Trump. It’s easy to say it has everything to do with him but out of the other side of their mouths, they say he has no power and isn’t actually going to enact anything he threatens he will. It’s actually more complicated than that. He’s a figurehead and imposes no boundaries on the Republicans. His sole job was to be mentally unreasonable and appoint radically poor judges to the Supreme Court in order to get Roe V Wade overturned, prevent the constitution from being amended to include women beyond just ERA, to never close the wage gap and to repeal DOMA among many other things I am forgetting.

Hillary didn’t get elected because she was a woman. Not because she was unlikeable or previous political actions might have been disagreeable. It truly is because she was a woman and she would have put liberal, reasonable people on the Supreme Court who would have had the best interests of all humans in mind. It’s just easy to excuse her by saying she is unlikeable. Look around. All women are unliked unless we are just quiet receptacles for ejaculation.

Just this morning I was thinking about the men I grew up attracted to and who I dated for a good chunk of my adult years. Who I thought I was supposed to aim at for marriage. They were all smart and strong. Mostly conservative and had a good handle on finances. And yet I never found one to settle down with. They would have you believe I am crazy or maybe not wife material or their mother wouldn’t like me or any number of false reasons.

I think the truth of it is that I still always had a mind of my own and I had an idea that a relationship should be on equal footing. I talked back. I asked questions when suspicious. I told them when their behavior was unacceptable. I behaved inappropriately at times too. I liked sex…..things good girls don’t do. Wives don’t do. That’s why I am here and they are there. They found what they were looking for. I was raised by society to look for them but my own mind was just too strong to look the other way, to believe that compromise was about compromising who I am….not whose turn it is to do the dishes.

As the anti abortion war on women is heating up, the podcast I listened to on the way home from work was about women wanting their tubes tied so as not to have children. They were talking about how every doctor talks them out of it because they are young, they might change their minds or they might meet a nice man. I have always felt I didn’t want children. However, I still thought maybe that would change if I met the right guy, like really fell in love….that my brain chemistry and hormones would physically change in response to love and turn on a biological urge. Good thing I never thought about pursuing a tubal ligation because I would have been told “what if you meet a nice guy?”

Well, I never did. So when they shovel that crap to younger women, don’t listen to that. It actually may never happen and the second best plan you end up with is an unwanted pregnancy with a guy who isn’t going to be around in 10 years. You will then be a single parent trying to get by on your wage gap earnings and your second job as a waitress where you must be subjected to sexual harassment on the daily to earn your tips. In fact, by trying to get rid of Roe V Wade, the men are trying to ensure that same economic bleakness so that you always stay down below them. Either way, you are screwed…voluntarily or by rape….neither of which will allow you to choose your outcome if you get pregnant.

FYI, you can have your Fallopian tubes removed and still get pregnant. You just have to do it via IVF which means you would really want it and be making the choice you truly desire; not an outcome forced upon you by a large group of rejected white men who have the money and influence to put a buffoon in office so that no one would regulate their behavior. Like if your parents forgot to hire the babysitter and went out anyway.

I’ve lost my sex drive. I know, we aren’t supposed to talk about these things out loud. Even more reason to bring it up because I firmly believe it’s not just me. What happened? My relationship last summer ended because of a feminist issue and double standard. It actually made me feel really dirty and ashamed. I felt compromised and a little taken advantage of. I couldn’t talk about it. In fact, every time I look back on it now, I get kind of a shiver….that gross kind of shiver when something just turns you off or repulses you. I can’t explain it. It just kind of stops the sex hormones and returns my focus to word searches and reality tv. I don’t do anything to pursue sex. Anytime I have been around a potential romantic interest, I feel physically repulsed even if we are an intellectual, humor match. It’s just kind of all dead in there.

The Kavanaugh hearings reminded me of my rape almost 25 years ago. I equated it with the overall rape of women and the intent of taking our rights away from us. Men, in general, just started to become revolting to me because the ones who voted Republican enabled these political outcomes which are literally about attacking women. Don’t get me wrong, I have some very good male friends I love and respect. My friendship feelings don’t change. I just have lost my appetite for what the meat I am being served.

I am horrified about what is happening in Georgia, Alabama, Missouri and Ohio. I hold Republican voters responsible for this….for not listening to people like me during the elections warning them this would happen. And it literally is oozing out through my body in that I don’t want anyone to touch me. I don’t want to give another man the privilege of getting to have sex with me. Unless you are a liberal feminist who can convince me otherwise….my body and mind just can’t be won.

Every relationship I thought I screwed up years ago, the wistfulness and what ifs ….dead. The sexual fantasies where they sometimes show up….dead. It also feels really freeing to have none of those thoughts. There is no man on my mind. Society taught us girls to always like a guy or be waiting for a guy to make up his mind about us. That even when in between relationships we should either be pining for the one we lost or planning ahead to get the next one. Do you know how peaceful it is to just let that go after 30 years of dating? It’s amazing. It’s just so quiet and calm inside me.

I do feel angst about the future of our country and losing my attraction of men just creates more space in me to dissect civil unrest. Every fear my friends ridiculed me for has actually come true. I know people think I am dramatic and dumb and a bit crazy. But at some point, you really have to take a step back and give me a little benefit of the doubt. I have Master’s in Science. A majorly competitive and respected University graduated me. That wasn’t an accident. I am not stupid. Dramatic….sure, I’m a writer. It’s part of the artistic DNA. I bet all your favorite actors, singers and writers Are dramatic but you don’t criticize them. And, as for the crazy….not one of you has the medical qualifications my psychologist & PCP do. I have been extensively tested for crazy and passed as not at all crazy. Depressed, yes. That’s not crazy. In fact, I dare some of you to get the mental workups I have had and come out as balanced and self aware as I am.

Frankly, to have voted Republican and tried to excuse Trump as simply a blowhard we don’t need to worry about….I think you might have a lack of intelligence and some mental issues that have gone a lifetime unchecked. If you aren’t scared for your daughters, sisters, wives and mothers there is something very, very, very wrong with you. When you are at the doctor asking for your insurance covered Viagra and Vasectomies, you should have a mental wellness check at the same time. I’m not the problem. I’m the woman who will probably secretly hide your daughter, transport her across state lines for an abortion and hide her in my house to let her recover. You are going to want me around when it comes to that because you know you don’t want your teenage daughter having a baby. You may vote one way and talk one way but you are not ready to help your 14 year old raise a kid. That’s not what you want. You just want to be sure your wife can never be economically sound enough alone to leave you.