Why I Plan for Nothing....
Nothing is permanent.
Rather,
No Thing is permanent.
Let's use our REAL words, eh?
We will all content with Acts of God sort of change in our lives.
Illness,
accidents,
fertility,
infertility,
chains of events that carry us places
we never would have imagined....
into pain or pleasure,
into devastation
or into euphoria
into death and despair
or into a world of repair.
We.
Just.
Never.
Know.
My response to this reality,
I attempt to accept, rather than expect.
Just... in general.
Sailor calls this attitude of mine, 'zen'.
Where this attitude of mine falls apart, however
are the Human Disasters.
Lies, mainly.
I have no sympathy,
no acceptance,
for the nature of lies.
The ways we lie to ourselves.
The ways we lie to others.
The way others lie to us.
These secret passageways someone will dig UNDER reality....
and *burrow* there.
That. Shit. Crushes. Me.
I can prepare for **honest** disaster.
I can mentally imagine terrible accidents,
tragedies and confrontations.
I can consider illness and loss and the pain these can deliver.
But I have no defense for lies.
I am **without** when it comes to lies.
Two weeks ago, I went out with two friends who just moved from Boston
and bought a house 3000 miles away in my city.
We were out eating pizza, having a beer, talking...
and trying to do so around our masks
in this large open-air "indoor" square we have
between a brewery, bakery, sandwich shop, and coffee shop.
A lady stands near our table,
and I don't notice until my friend pointedly turns and asks,
"CAN I HELP YOU?!"
The lady locks eyes with me,
"HIIIIiiiiiiii [The Wench]! It's ME!"
Above her mask I try recognize her...
5 seconds go by... 10 seconds.... she is silent looking at me with anticipation.
It clicks.
"OOooooh! Yes. It's... you!"
She is one of the small handful of people in the world
I might casually say I hate.
I hadn't seen her in more than 15 years.
Counting back, its more like 17.
She was my "best friend" in High School...
because she declared she was.
We *were* close,
but it didn't always feel like my CHOICE.
The "short story" I give people about what a friend she was
is in high school at some Winter formal dance...
she gave my date a hand job,
during my date.
But the truth is... that hardly impacted our friendship.
I just took that as a sign to Not Date That Guy
and to Never Trust That Friend With Anything I Care About.
I was astonished, but not... *hurt*.
What *hurt* was when she started lying about me.
She had done something EGREGIOUSLY hurtful to someone,
and then blamed me for it
to cover up her place in the 'plot' she orchestrated.
She then had to cover *that* up,
by telling OTHER complete lies about me to our mutual friends
to *prove* I was as bad as she said I was.
That is the shit that I've just never been prepared for.
It's LYING that drives me crazy.
It was easy after that to tell her succinctly that she had hurt me,
and that I would never have anything to do with her again.
She took one very good friend with her, who had believed her tales....
and pretty much disappeared to leave me in peace.
And yet, here she was so many years later,
wanting to say "HIIIIIiiiiiiii!"
as if we had just 'lost touch' somehow.
Why I bring this story up...
is because I just don't understand LIES
and I don't trust SECRETS.
They are the one thing I can never IMAGINE.
The enemy I can never see coming for me.
The bomb I will never UNDERSTAND.
The war I can never plan for.
The hurricane I cannot map.
The earthquake I can never prepare for.
My sister is a pathological liar.
She'd lie about anyone TO anyone ABOUT anything.
No holds barred.
I remember the paths of destruction she would blaze
for the pure pleasure of it.
Poverty taught me not to count on ANYTHING.
My sister taught me... something else.
Why I am thinking about this is... partly my run-in with that long-ago person
who sowed lies about me to protect herself.
Last night I hung out with a friend,
who is a close relative of the only person I call "an ex".
Over a decade ago... after 4 years together, 2 years living together
he broke up with me in our kitchen saying in one breath,
"I love you" and then told me to "move out as soon as possible"
because he had a date in a week, and really wanted to bring her back...
and it would be "inconvenient" if I were here,
and "awkward" to push her to invite him to HER place.
My reality exploded in that moment.
I asked him how could he lie to me about his so-called "love"
and WHY would he do it...
He shrugged, and looked me in the eyes.
"Because it works."
I'm thinking about these past hurts
as I consider what some friends have been through this year...
How... the surprise of a sudden illness,
or a cancer diagnosis,
or a terrible accident
is absolutely awful and terrifying.... and rearranges everything.
But how LIES from the mouth of a loved one... do something else to us...
and to our lives
to our sense of REALITY.
What it feels like when trust is shattered in some secret place
and spoon fed to you with loving looks.
It's like they've hid glass dust in your meal
before you know what has been happening
poisoning you with your own belief in an unbroken trust.
This... terrifies me.
These are acts I cannot... *imagine*...
and I cannot accept with zen-like calm.
How I inhabit my willingness to Accept Most Everything
is by imagining the Worst Case Scenario
(where everyone is being honest).
Sailor leaves me.
My friends desert me.
My job crumbles.
My house is blown away.
My arms wither and my legs disappear.
I imagine all these things,
when I am MOST happy
because I want to be prepared
for when they are removed from me.
In these nightmare fantasies about love,
I brew them with honesty and dignity.
That Sailor or my friends leave me, because they've changed
or I've changed and it Must Be Done
because It Is So
and that is All They Know.
I hate it,
but I can accept that...
that is WORKABLE.
That is RELATABLE.
It is stupendously sad,
but it is *honest* and I can accept and respect that
as **natural**, even if I don't agree.
I want to approach the best case and the worst case.... with equanimity;
with tolerance in my heart for how UNFAIR life often feels...
and truly often IS.
But I'm never prepared for lies.
They're so nefarious.
They're so insidious.
They're so sly and truly, wretchedly wicked
and wounding in ways we can never be ready for.
I think of a lovely friend here whose husband had been hiding an active addiction...
...one that nearly killed him.
I think of a longtime friend who cheated on his wife for months...
... but had been telling himself he was cheating to make his marriage/family stronger.
I think of another lovely LJ friend who was just surprised by her longtime husband...
... and is left adrift as he behaves completely out of character...
and she in in the first stages of shock and awe for herself and her family.
It's CRUSHING.
It doesn't have to happen to me,
for me to feel crushed
by these secrets,
and these lived lies.
I'm horrified it happens to anybody.
From my perspective,
its the worst of the worst case scenarios.
It's nuclear war in my heart...
in my head.... in my whole world inside me.
We've all been hurt by lies...
... because they work...
(for awhile at least)
and some people just can't seem to help themselves,
(because they're too busy helping themselves, I suspect).
I practice imagining and accepting The Worst...
but I've never been able to imagine
a lie...
it's just too devastating
to even imagine.
I feel we're lucky any of us survive it
when it happens to us.
Click to viewRather,
No Thing is permanent.
Let's use our REAL words, eh?
We will all content with Acts of God sort of change in our lives.
Illness,
accidents,
fertility,
infertility,
chains of events that carry us places
we never would have imagined....
into pain or pleasure,
into devastation
or into euphoria
into death and despair
or into a world of repair.
We.
Just.
Never.
Know.
My response to this reality,
I attempt to accept, rather than expect.
Just... in general.
Sailor calls this attitude of mine, 'zen'.
Where this attitude of mine falls apart, however
are the Human Disasters.
Lies, mainly.
I have no sympathy,
no acceptance,
for the nature of lies.
The ways we lie to ourselves.
The ways we lie to others.
The way others lie to us.
These secret passageways someone will dig UNDER reality....
and *burrow* there.
That. Shit. Crushes. Me.
I can prepare for **honest** disaster.
I can mentally imagine terrible accidents,
tragedies and confrontations.
I can consider illness and loss and the pain these can deliver.
But I have no defense for lies.
I am **without** when it comes to lies.
Two weeks ago, I went out with two friends who just moved from Boston
and bought a house 3000 miles away in my city.
We were out eating pizza, having a beer, talking...
and trying to do so around our masks
in this large open-air "indoor" square we have
between a brewery, bakery, sandwich shop, and coffee shop.
A lady stands near our table,
and I don't notice until my friend pointedly turns and asks,
"CAN I HELP YOU?!"
The lady locks eyes with me,
"HIIIIiiiiiiii [The Wench]! It's ME!"
Above her mask I try recognize her...
5 seconds go by... 10 seconds.... she is silent looking at me with anticipation.
It clicks.
"OOooooh! Yes. It's... you!"
She is one of the small handful of people in the world
I might casually say I hate.
I hadn't seen her in more than 15 years.
Counting back, its more like 17.
She was my "best friend" in High School...
because she declared she was.
We *were* close,
but it didn't always feel like my CHOICE.
The "short story" I give people about what a friend she was
is in high school at some Winter formal dance...
she gave my date a hand job,
during my date.
But the truth is... that hardly impacted our friendship.
I just took that as a sign to Not Date That Guy
and to Never Trust That Friend With Anything I Care About.
I was astonished, but not... *hurt*.
What *hurt* was when she started lying about me.
She had done something EGREGIOUSLY hurtful to someone,
and then blamed me for it
to cover up her place in the 'plot' she orchestrated.
She then had to cover *that* up,
by telling OTHER complete lies about me to our mutual friends
to *prove* I was as bad as she said I was.
That is the shit that I've just never been prepared for.
It's LYING that drives me crazy.
It was easy after that to tell her succinctly that she had hurt me,
and that I would never have anything to do with her again.
She took one very good friend with her, who had believed her tales....
and pretty much disappeared to leave me in peace.
And yet, here she was so many years later,
wanting to say "HIIIIIiiiiiiii!"
as if we had just 'lost touch' somehow.
Why I bring this story up...
is because I just don't understand LIES
and I don't trust SECRETS.
They are the one thing I can never IMAGINE.
The enemy I can never see coming for me.
The bomb I will never UNDERSTAND.
The war I can never plan for.
The hurricane I cannot map.
The earthquake I can never prepare for.
My sister is a pathological liar.
She'd lie about anyone TO anyone ABOUT anything.
No holds barred.
I remember the paths of destruction she would blaze
for the pure pleasure of it.
Poverty taught me not to count on ANYTHING.
My sister taught me... something else.
Why I am thinking about this is... partly my run-in with that long-ago person
who sowed lies about me to protect herself.
Last night I hung out with a friend,
who is a close relative of the only person I call "an ex".
Over a decade ago... after 4 years together, 2 years living together
he broke up with me in our kitchen saying in one breath,
"I love you" and then told me to "move out as soon as possible"
because he had a date in a week, and really wanted to bring her back...
and it would be "inconvenient" if I were here,
and "awkward" to push her to invite him to HER place.
My reality exploded in that moment.
I asked him how could he lie to me about his so-called "love"
and WHY would he do it...
He shrugged, and looked me in the eyes.
"Because it works."
I'm thinking about these past hurts
as I consider what some friends have been through this year...
How... the surprise of a sudden illness,
or a cancer diagnosis,
or a terrible accident
is absolutely awful and terrifying.... and rearranges everything.
But how LIES from the mouth of a loved one... do something else to us...
and to our lives
to our sense of REALITY.
What it feels like when trust is shattered in some secret place
and spoon fed to you with loving looks.
It's like they've hid glass dust in your meal
before you know what has been happening
poisoning you with your own belief in an unbroken trust.
This... terrifies me.
These are acts I cannot... *imagine*...
and I cannot accept with zen-like calm.
How I inhabit my willingness to Accept Most Everything
is by imagining the Worst Case Scenario
(where everyone is being honest).
Sailor leaves me.
My friends desert me.
My job crumbles.
My house is blown away.
My arms wither and my legs disappear.
I imagine all these things,
when I am MOST happy
because I want to be prepared
for when they are removed from me.
In these nightmare fantasies about love,
I brew them with honesty and dignity.
That Sailor or my friends leave me, because they've changed
or I've changed and it Must Be Done
because It Is So
and that is All They Know.
I hate it,
but I can accept that...
that is WORKABLE.
That is RELATABLE.
It is stupendously sad,
but it is *honest* and I can accept and respect that
as **natural**, even if I don't agree.
I want to approach the best case and the worst case.... with equanimity;
with tolerance in my heart for how UNFAIR life often feels...
and truly often IS.
But I'm never prepared for lies.
They're so nefarious.
They're so insidious.
They're so sly and truly, wretchedly wicked
and wounding in ways we can never be ready for.
I think of a lovely friend here whose husband had been hiding an active addiction...
...one that nearly killed him.
I think of a longtime friend who cheated on his wife for months...
... but had been telling himself he was cheating to make his marriage/family stronger.
I think of another lovely LJ friend who was just surprised by her longtime husband...
... and is left adrift as he behaves completely out of character...
and she in in the first stages of shock and awe for herself and her family.
It's CRUSHING.
It doesn't have to happen to me,
for me to feel crushed
by these secrets,
and these lived lies.
I'm horrified it happens to anybody.
From my perspective,
its the worst of the worst case scenarios.
It's nuclear war in my heart...
in my head.... in my whole world inside me.
We've all been hurt by lies...
... because they work...
(for awhile at least)
and some people just can't seem to help themselves,
(because they're too busy helping themselves, I suspect).
I practice imagining and accepting The Worst...
but I've never been able to imagine
a lie...
it's just too devastating
to even imagine.
I feel we're lucky any of us survive it
when it happens to us.