Bullies

I am waiting to donate blood this morning, when a long-time co-volunteer says that a mutual acquaintance would like some feedback on an experience I recently had and inquired about. “Of course,” I say, “happy to. How about after I finish donating?”

An hour later I am escorted to an office and proceed to be condescended to and slapped down in such a way that I begin to reel. Nothing has been easy for months now. I am tired and running on fumes, and now someone who has asked to meet with me is mansplaining in such a dismissive way that I have to cast back nearly 25 years to locate another moment in which I felt so utterly disrespected.

Then, I felt, as so many women do all too often, screamed and demeaned into fearful near-erasure. That was a boss, an alcoholic tyrant of epic ego, with whom the power differential made things even worse. He threw chairs at us, in pathetic fits of rage. I was 23 or 24, needed the job. All of us did. And so we tucked our heads down and did our best and left when each of us could.

Today, I am 46. I had just donated blood on behalf of this person’s organization, a member of which I’ve been for an exceptionally long time, a good 15x longer than they have. Determined not to tuck my head, spill a single tear, or lose my cool in front of this bully who clearly had zero interest in my concerns, questions, or feedback, I feigned post-donation light-headedness and excused myself. I can’t begin to tell you how long I was in there. 20 minutes? a bit more?

There is no chance this individual would have spoken to me like this if I were male. I was, and remain, furious beyond anything I have yet been able to articulate. I have cried more today than I have in a long while, not because I care what any pompous bully thinks of me —no, I refuse to be pushed to erasure anymore— but because the vehement unkindness was so disheartening and, really, just so unnecessary. It was shocking. I remain shocked.

I don’t understand pumping this kind of ugly energy into the world. Everything is hard enough. Most people I know are not, shall we say, thriving, and for the life of me I just don’t understand the end-game of awful behavior. Is it power? Is it hubris? A desperate desire to be right? A high experienced from punching down?

I’m tired of even trying to figure it out.

Brittle

I feel brittle these days, a discomfiting awareness of angles and haste and chill. Each time I sit down to write, I freeze, erase, and leave. This is never a good sign, this drying up. Some of it is busyness, surely. Between holidays, teacher days, and illness, neither J nor O has had much in the way of full weeks of school since September. I need space and can’t seem to get it.

Parenting is a motherfucking bear. It is hard and relentless and it’s really easy to fuck up, and sometimes I just want to wash my hands of the enterprise. Yes, yes, yes, it’s wonderful and all that jazz, but the daily slog of thanklessness and question marks and laundry and limits is and feels mammoth.

I daydream often and in a deeply soulful way, of land and horizons that are away and vast. To space and slowness and kindness and quiet. To muddy Wellies and reinforced overalls and great gusts of wind.

Daily, I feel half here, half elsewhere.

I want to get off this hamster wheel and away from arrogant billionaires and lying terrors who are never held accountable and too much least-common-denominator behavior. I saw a headline recently about how worrisome it is that people are spending so much time alone, and I get the concern, yet I want to yell, “are you fucking kidding? Have you looked around and/or been in public lately?” There is only so much ugliness people can witness and take, both personally and societally, and shit, I understand the desire to hermit.

I want to have the time to feel bored. To make things, to finish a book, a lengthy thought.

I have a deeply-rooted sneaking suspicion that the world is on some epic, crucial fulcrum. You can keep Jonesing, struggle, or opt out. I prefer C.

When I was little, I wore dresses that twirled and I did not like to be dirty. I also did not like to be wet unless I chose to be wet, via shower, pool, or opted-into slip-n-slide. I woke up early to shower and style my hair, you would not have found me gardening.

And then, as life goes, and then just like Nanny always said, “you can bury your troubles in the garden.” And I’m in the dirt as often as possible, working quietly and trying to make space to hear the quiet inside voice that gets ignored on the regular.

I don’t think that I expected, when I was young, to change so much during life. But I have changed, in many ways. Maybe that’s what middle age is about: coming to terms with and choosing how to honor who you were, are, and may still become.

Anyway, this blog doesn’t seem particularly “good,” but at least it’s something, I suppose. Buon weekend, all.

Little good to say, so back to Ireland

Jack still doesn’t have a physics teacher so we’ve hired one (if that is not antithetical to the mission of public education…), I just watched a professional dog walker let four pups pee and crap all over my front garden (non-yard green space is EVERYWHERE around), a guy laid on his horn this morning when I stopped for a school bus letting elementary schoolers board, and I was nearly hit by another driver who seemed to feel it her right to turn left because she wanted to. Italy has elected a hard-core right-winger who cozies up to people like Steve Bannon, Berlusconi, and the other right-wing Italian political parties, trump is still not in jail, and high schoolers in VA are walking out en masse today because Gov Youngkin is trying to enact anti-transgender legislation. You go, students! I am totally with you!

I am really pretty sick of all this crap, and I am also sick of mosquitoes and still heartbroken over Federer’s retirement.

So, back to Ireland. We paused as I was about to share Day 6 of my Ring of Kerry tour. We began by driving through Cahersiveen, home of Monsignor O’Flaherty, a significant member of the Catholic resistance to Nazism during WWII. He was responsible for saving ~6,500 Allied soldiers and Jews! Thank you, Sir!

Then to Killorglin where, every August, the Puck Fair is held. As I learned, most Irish towns have annual festivals of which they are enormously proud. Killorglin’s is one of Ireland’s oldest festivals and involves men heading into the local mountains to capture (kindly) a wild goat and bring it back to town. There, a chosen girl anoints the goat king (King Puck), it is tied in the center of the festivities, and everyone drinks and celebrates (and cares for the goat) for three days. The goat is then returned to the spot it was found and released.

Signs were everywhere, for the Fair was quickly approaching. I was quite sorry to miss it, frankly, but maybe another time. As you can see in this article and the following photo from said article, it was extremely hot at this year’s festival and King Puck received hourly vet visits and plenty of cold water and shade. Delightful!

I do regularly wonder if the chosen goat is enormously confused during its three days away from its flock, if it is then happy to return, and if the others know and/or miss it during its absence. Hmm.