Trauma Ward

So I'd like to wean myself off fluoxetine but maybe not yet. My doctorless Blond Companion suggests making an appointment with the doctor I'm lucky to have, but I don't like to take up his time needed by others with more pressing medical issues. I know he's feeling enormous stress himself, given the shitkicking Ford Nation is giving our healthcare system while it sells off our prime agricultural land to its mobster bosses, one of whom has already flipped their take to China.😷

Not to worry, though. Ford Nation is mad, folks, and gonna buy it back with our money, albeit not for us. At least our mobbed up OPP had the decency to hand off the investigation to our RCMP.💩

Prediction? Ford Nation will get away with it.👮

Unrelated prediction? Donald Trump won't. We don't bring mobsters to justice. The US does.👮

I unfriended a Facebook friend yesterday and will likely unfriend more as time goes on. I don't want condescending men in my life anymore and he had too much of a Richard Dawkins thing going on for my liberal feminist taste.👸

I grow old.👵

The other evening CBC had an item about unhoused citizens coping with trauma by self-medicating in the Byward Market because they have nowhere private to be (my phrasing, not CBC's). And if that isn't bad enough for Byward Market tourism, Xi Jingping is punishing us for calling out his interference in our elections/bullying of our citizens, by ordering his citizens to boycott travel to Canada.👮

Yeah well maybe it's time we did a cost/benefit analysis of the tourism industry, anyway, because it seems to me billions of middle-class bucket lists getting ticked off before billions more of us shuffle off this burning mortal coil, taking entire species and sherpa guides with us, isn't as sustainable as we want to pretend it is.🙅

By the way, there's no such thing as an eco-tourist. Just leave the Galapagos to the turtles, ffs.💔

But that's not what this post is about because this post is about letting go past resentments to make room for new ones.😀

Obviously, I'm kidding (sort of). What I mean is, no more blaming mom. Or you. Or your mom. And especially no more blaming myself. I don't know how to transform a culture of competition and entitlement to one of cooperation and caring but I can work on my own behaviour to be "more good/less bad" as My Blond Companion once put what we all want out of life. And I can ally myself with others already hard at it because Gord knows it takes knowhow I don't have to get there. Cripes, I only just made the connection between eating because hungry and feeling better because full. That's how traumatized it turns out I am and I've had a very privileged middle-class life.👸

I suppose I should thank the Freedom Convoy for amping my emotional dysregulation to 11, resulting in the debilitating panic attacks that led me to medication, therapy and hours spent reading about trauma and its effects on the body. We live in a world created and run by traumatized people who would rather die than show vulnerability. I grew up surrounded by adults numbing themselves in one way or another and labelling kids critical of the unfairness we witnessed day after day after day as overly sensitive pains in the ass.👶

Interesting choice of words, eh? Think about it. Do you know any old people who had therapy? I don't. My mother preferred death to vulnerability, ffs. There was nothing more terrifying to her than being vulnerable. Why? I can only imagine. Grew up poor during the Depression, went through a world war, was widowed with 4 children in the early 60s. I grew up surrounded by The Greatest Generation priding itself on sucking it up and swallowing it down, stiffening upper lips and straightening spines, no pain a good stiff drink couldn't cure and if it couldn't, well, life's tough but guess who cares about your problems more than you? That's right, nobody.💀

And if not these traumatized products of The Greatest Generation calling all our shots it was buggered and buggering bullies mad at mommy, grown up private schoolboys, Boomers and GenXers pretending to have fun burning hundred dollar bills in front of unhoused citizens coping with trauma by self-medicating in public because they have nowhere private to be. Cripes, name a family more fucked up than the Fords. Meanwhile, one brother was mayor of Toronto and the other's Premier of Ontario. Why? The Fords all need therapy, not power.❤

Like the therapists say, it's not our fault, but it is our responsibility, so that's where I'm going to put my energy going forward, which is the only direction we can go, anyway.💁

A Middle-Class Life

I've become pretty good at muting CBC ads targeting gullible seniors, new car/truck suckers and sports gambling addicts but every once in a while I forget, and the other news hour there was one for the lottery, the jackpot at $55 million.👀

For some reason, after decades of not even considering buying a ticket, I suddenly found myself thinking maybe I should. But before doing so I decided to consult with My Blond Companion about it, there being no point in buying a lottery ticket without the expectation of winning, and $55 million is a lot of money.💃

Relationship + money = discussion.💁

Well, no sooner did we start discussing the possibilities, his positive, mine negative, when I realized I didn't want to win $55 million after all, and we resumed watching the news.👵

Imagine living so privileged a life the possibility of winning $55 million isn't worth the price of a ticket. Well, a walk to the convenience store, too, in front of which sits a very unstable resident of our 'hood who can neither be ignored nor greeted without incurring her wrath/my guilt at the wild disparity in our living conditions.💩

I still shop for groceries paying whatever it ends up costing, but I'm shopping for two adults eating a black bean based diet, and cook my own beans.💪

No fair judging me for avoiding the convenience store altogether, either. Just the other day I made the mistake of smiling at a woman I sat beside on a crowded unmasked bus and she immediately began to unload her made-up life story, a wealthy heiress cut off by her family, and so having to travel the country house sitting for strangers.👸

I'm as bad as anybody these days with the ages of others but she mentioned being in her 50s, so who knows how long she's been living this fantasy. It was my own fault. She looked normal.👵

Again, no fair judging me for judging a person by their looks, although you can judge me for smiling on the bus, which is totally asking for it.😇

No fair judging me for anything if you still own a car. Our country's on fire, ffs, and all I see while waiting for a bus is single occupancy fossil fuel burners driving by. Our landscape is littered with cars. The new mayor of Ottawa, a CFRA haircut named Mark Sutcliffe, is currently demanding a roadway given over to cyclists and pedestrians be returned to cars. We could've elected a really good mayor, too. Instead Catherine McKenney is trying to improve Ottawa from outside politics: Fix Your City

Pretty much every day for four months of the year I ride my bike through a prosperous middle-class neighbourhood to get to the pond for a swim. It's the life I wanted when I was 12 so how lucky am I to be living it at 64, eh? The neighbourhood brings to mind the childhood we all wanted, for ourselves and then for our kids, the one we lived in books and television shows and movies.👪

I think it should be a field trip for kids from all over. There's even an elementary school where during the school year I get to see kids playing outside same as they ever did. If I'm riding by at the right time I see parents and caregivers doing a drop off. Tire swings hanging from mature trees, basketball nets, adirondack chairs.🙈🙉🙊

One day I noticed a woman from my 'hood, a Qanon cultist, parked outside one of the houses, getting stuff out of her trunk. I know her to be well down the rabbit hole, and have seen her on tv clips disrupting local school board meetings, the Freedom Convoy she supports having moved on from harassing healthcare workers to harassing educators. It was jarring. But she appeared to be familiar with the house she was visiting so I figured she must be providing a service of some kind. Cleaning, most likely.💭

My mother was widowed with four children under the age of ten in the early 60s and still I grew up with Mrs. S. and when she retired Mrs. B. coming once a week to clean our house (and visit with Gram), that's how middle-class my childhood was, or how determined my mother was to live a middle-class life anyway.💁

Maybe it's all the compassionate inquiry videos I've been watching but, as harmful as the cult this woman is in has been and continues to be, because Christo-fascism is the entire why of it, seeing her in this context, non-threatening, widened that crack to let yet a little more light into my life.😇

Several weeks later I rode my bike down a different street than usual, but in the same 'hood, to avoid tree trimmers taking down some of those beautiful mature trees, necessary in the wake of derechos and ice storms, and I saw a very angry looking man stomping down the street, headed to the elementary school where there was a day camp in operation for the summer. At the same time a young boy exited a house with an upside down Canadian flag hanging from it. The man yelled, "Hurry up!" And the boy ran down the driveway to catch up to the man, I assume his father.👺

Sure enough, the boy was dropped off at the school, while the man stomped back to his house, an upside down Canadian flag defacing his million dollar property in a neighbourhood of my childhood dreams, a neighbourhood it's a privilege just to be able to ride my bike through every day on my way to swim in a fresh body of water he could walk to in a fraction of the time.👶

Well that crack I just mentioned widening to let yet a little more light into my life didn't narrow, but it didn't widen, either. Instead I felt the threat of an angry man, an irrational man, a bully convinced of his victimhood, and peddled away to avoid his street in future.😷

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is our wants seem to be in denial of our needs, such are our middle-class lives, with many of us believing we need more instead of knowing we already have too much (there's a reason the retirement course, i.e. taxes and financial planning around them, is the most popular one in government) while others of us sign up with anti-social cults promoting the violent overthrow of democracy.❤

Recalibrating and Famously Dead

So Tuesday I was all set to take My Blond Companion (MBC) in hand, get on a bus, and see the Barbie movie at a Cineplex.💃

I'd chosen my outfit carefully, complete with pink sweater, knowing it would be cold in the theatre, the usual over doing it with air conditioning, and remembered to put earplugs in my pockets.👸

The sound volume of movies is painful for me, which may be partly why I'm not much of a movie goer. Also where I sit matters. I need perspective on the screen so as not to feel overwhelmed by it.👵

Hey, breakthrough - movies in theatres = sensory overload!😵

I've been watching a lot of videos about anxiety, etc, and Gabor Mate's talk on authenticity made me realize how inauthentic I am. It's due to a fear of abandonment, vulnerability, intimacy. As he also says, it's no one's fault, no one's to blame, but it's our responsibility to ourselves and others to work through it.😷

No more blaming mom.👶

Blame the Patriarchy.💩

Anyway, about an hour or so before we were planning to leave for an early afternoon showing (I don't go out in the evenings these days) MBC mused aloud that I may want to forego the popcorn, due to my temporary (but permanent) denture currently (and forever) disguising my hillbilly smile.👹

I assured him I'd be foregoing all offerings at movie theatres henceforth, thanks but no thanks.👸

People who don't have eating disorders with panic attacks on top really don't appreciate how fraught it all is for people who do, but good grief, I got queasy just hearing the word popcorn. How could I ever have eaten movie theatre food, and in a movie theatre? Well, I'll tell you how, by pretending to be an entirely different person than I am.👻

But speaking of queasy, there I was, one minute looking forward to seeing Barbie (I want to see it more than I've wanted to see any movie ever, save for The French Connection when I was 12) the next minute realizing I'd been slowly but surely starting to feel not so good.😰

I waited a bit, did some breathing exercises, then said to MBC, "We may have to leave, that's all. And we'll have to scout out the washrooms first. Oh and sit by the back near the exit so I can get out in a hurry if need be. Sorry, it may be a waste of time."😰

And he was fine with that, he's witnessed the panic attacks up until the lying on the bathroom floor part, but then I realized I was making myself do a thing I wasn't ready to do after all and called it off entirely.😎

He was fine with that, too, not feeling particularly driven to see the Barbie movie anyway, and I joined him on Bernie's walk, suddenly feeling perfectly fine. Great, actually.💪

MBC suggested I plan to see the Barbie movie every day, then cancel on myself, so I always end up feeling great.😀

Later MBC mentioned having lunch with a friend and his friend pointing out we haven't recovered from the pandemic, we just want to think we have so we can get back to normal, or what Gabor Mate refers to as our "myth of normal".💁

Add in the Freedom Convoy's attack on us here in Ottawa, which for me triggered a fight, flight, freeze response, on top of a problem with emotional dys-regulation, and voila - panic attacks.😷

As I've blogged before, I cried with relief when Angela Hewitt (yes, the concert pianist, the liberal elite, herself) during an interview on CBC Ottawa about the effect the Freedom Convoy was having on her life said, "We're being bullied."😖

I know now it would have triggered too many childhood feels: fear, vulnerability, abandonment, betrayal, not being seen, heard. Injustice was everywhere. It was. We were bullied and we bullied. Parenting wasn't a word, therapy unheard of in spite of the adults around us having lived through a depression, fought in world wars. Corporal punishment was meted out by the same principals and vice-principals - all men - and teachers who may also have been sexually abusing us. That was a fact at the ordinary public elementary school I attended. Public record. And I know for a fact it was worse at the ordinary Catholic elementary school Freddie next door attended because he told me all about it. And every day, dodging its bullies - just other even more terrified children - I thanked our Protestant God I wasn't born Catholic and didn't have to suffer the injustices they did at their school, believing ours paled in comparison.😇

Our grade eight teacher/vice-principal eventually, in the '90s, got sentenced to 12 years for the sexual assault of scores of girls over his 25 year career in the Sault. And 12 only because he refused to show remorse for any of it. This is fact. Also a miracle he was brought to justice at all, thanks only to his victims and no thanks to the many adults who let him get away with it.❤

Imagine, Sinead O'Connor was crucified in much of our media and politics for ripping up a picture at the end of her set on SNL of the CEO of our western world's most famously Patriarchal institution - which it is still - for his deliberate and ongoing complicity in covering up/denying the kidnapping, rape and murder of Irish children by his institution's employees. Why? I mean we know why he covered it up/denied it - $$$ - but what's with our media crucifying her for an entirely non-violent protest?😠

And still it goes on, reality fictionalized to suit Patriarchal ideology, blatant bullying witnessed by millions of us, Russians, with the blessing of their Russian Orthodox Church, spiritual leader of Putin and his Russian Mob, kidnapping, raping and murdering Ukrainian children, while much of our media blames everybody but the perpetrators.😠

It seems like small potatoes now, the Freedom Convoy's violence against us, championed by so much of our media, blatant propagandists for it still employed, churning out their lies, our politicians continuing to fuel the fascist fire it lit in downtown Ottawa a year and a half ago now.👵

But the question should be asked louder than ever - how do we sleep while our beds are burning?💔

Relapse

Before I get into it I want to put down here a comment I made on a Facebook friend's post about thinking young and keeping on dancing as we age:

While I still feel like I'm 12, I'm respectful of being 64.👵

In other words, just because I can doesn't mean I should. Take time. There will be even less of it if I trip on the way. Prioritize sleep. Stay hydrated. Eat when hungry. But keep up with the world and how younger people are faring with it. Look after myself so I can be here for others.😇

We oldsters need to reclaim the commons, stand up for the public good, so get your placards ready.😎

I enjoy reading all the lifestyle change stories of the over 60 crowd, too. My goal is to feel like I've had psychedelic therapy without actually taking psychedelics. Comments welcome.💁

So two weeks ago I was revisited by a panic attack, although I'm not sure panic attack is the right name for what I'm experiencing and have been for over a year now.😱

It's more like a reaction to a buildup of feelings, too many feels, some of them resurrected from  childhood. Gabor Maté would say it's trauma, both bit T and little t. He might also say it's a lack of boundaries.🙅

I over-identified with a little beastie and it tipped me over the edge.😿

TMI alert but putting it down in writing helps me connect dots, and I'm well past privacy after a couple of decades of online dot connecting. It's my public service, an indecency I can perform that decent people would rather not.😇

I said yes instead of the no! no! no! no! no! a thousand times no! I was screaming in my head and the result was having to purge from my stomach every bit of the dinner I enjoyed a few evenings into my people-pleasing yes instead of a people-disappointing no! no! no! no! no! a thousand times no!. On the upside, I didn't have to make myself sick, it came up naturally, and probably only lasted an hour or so, with a shorter lead in as well. I felt less alienated than previously and maintained the awareness throughout the unpleasantness that it would pass, and I would feel better soon. On the downside, I had to make quite the dash to the bathroom.😬

It's no one's fault, but it's my responsibility. So live and learn. "No" is a complete sentence.💪

Also, I am enough, I am enough, I am enough. You, on the other hand, might be too much.👸

It's tricky, feeling like I'm enough - as is - when I no longer work for money (or haven't in a while, anyway) don't drink, smoke pot, eat meat, fish, seafood, poultry - mushrooms. Suffice it to say that going out on the town isn't like it used to be, that's for sure. I'm a day person now, too, and unless it's lunch out, I'd rather be at home, winding it all down. I like going to bed. A lot. My dreams are very revealing, sleep as important to me as fibre.💃

Drinking, inclusion, adulthood are all very intertwined in our culture. It can be an effort to not feel left out the social scene when one doesn't drink (anymore). Seasoned teetotallers would advise finding a new social scene, which is maybe what the pond has become in spring, summer and fall, and something else could be in winter.😎

I'm not sad, or feeling deprived, I'm relieved. Happy, really. But the panic attacks (purging attacks, really) are upsetting my apple cart, an unwelcome, but I guess necessary, reminder all is not well within. Being a Sober Sally is a good re-start (I even enjoy it!) to a process of introspection, that's all.😷

I helped a friend at the pond recently. She's up at night worried about a proposed rent increase. She's been in her home for years, so the landlord is trying to bully her out. But she's feisty and an able researcher so I told her, "don't take it personally, take the personal right out of it, build your case as a civic duty".💁

It's advice I'd have to be a completely different person to follow myself, but she got back to me a few days later, delighted with her new perspective. I couldn't believe the headway she'd made, although I could because, like I said, she's feisty and an able researcher. Also, she doesn't have the internet to distract her from the work of life that needs doing, not opining on to other tweeters.👵

Having left Twitter (and now you have to log in to even read it) I've no longer got the distraction of it and am reading more - whole books! - but still having trouble keeping up with the day-to-day maintenance of life. Decision-making is less fraught but still fraught enough I have trouble sweating even the small stuff. I can decide to leave a marriage (well, after 20 years of having one foot out the door, my ex and I having about as much chemistry as any two people who don't like each other can - love/shmove) but deciding what to make for a non-meat dinner is a challenge every day.😖

Normally Anne Tyler errs on the side of staying married, so read "The Amateur Marriage" for a different take. I devoured it. One of the characters could have been an estranged sibling of mine, a friend's estranged child, maybe even one of my own. We'll see. Reading the book I was struck by how desperately we try to keep our families together, keep everybody in the fold, in spite of some members not wanting to be in it. I left a marriage for good reason but you'd think from the reaction of my family and his I'd run off and joined the circus. Growing up, my older sister and mother were at war with each other, the spoils my dead father, whose tragedy they each wore like a banner. Reading the book I remembered a time when my brother, younger sister and I were at home with Gram, my mother and older sister both away, and how nice it was. And yet later I would try to convince my sister not to cut us off, in spite of her behaviour, which was awful, my mother uncompromising. Why? Why do we want relationships with people who don't want relationships with us? Why does it feel like our failure when a family member chooses to drop us? Why does it feel so personal and yet like collective punishment? Is it ego? Why do we step in, some of us, to take responsibility for the choices of others, while others of us can let that relationship go, move on, oh well, onward and upward.💔

Years ago I decided to try a trick I'd read about and wish an enemy, who was preoccupying my life, well. Sincerely. Wish him success in his endeavours. And it worked. He no longer preoccupied my life. So why haven't I tried that trick with a loved one, never mind just a friend or family member, an actual loved one, wish him well, success in his endeavours?😘

Ah, and there it is, why I blog.😉

Thanks for reading.💗

Life in a Time of Great Stupid🙈🙉🙊

Subtitle: Looking a Gift Horse in the Butt😀

So the other day, home from my daily bike ride and swim in a publicly owned fresh water swimming hole, I realized this is it, I'm living my best life. That thing we're supposed to do? I'm doing it.💃

I basked for a moment. Then, not one to tempt fate, I moved on to worrying about all the bad stuff that could happen, any minute, to snatch my best life living away, like being denied access to said publicly owned fresh water swimming hole.😱

I know, I know. I'm not living my best life if I'm worrying about the future. Also, I'm still regretting the past. Like why did I persist in relationships with men who prefer living alone as evidenced by their decades since of living alone? Women have terrible judgement and are always looking for projects to cram into our bustling lives, making over a man being one of our favourites. If a man wanted a woman he'd have her. One? He could have a dozen.👵

Also, the air quality in Ottawa today is at "try not to breathe" (Quebec's forests on fire, as Western Europe is about to appreciate) so any best life living has to be done indoors.😟

Yesterday, when the air quality in Ottawa was also at "try not to breathe" (we're off the chart used to measure air quality so we can only assume every breath is hazardous now) I organized fabric into "to sew" piles and decided I'm done weeding out clothes. Everything stays. I'm going to start dressing to go out again (once we can safely breathe the air). Live my best life by example in all my best thrift shop scores.💃

Last... week? month? year? I read an article in the NYTs, free for some reason, featuring a middle-class couple, GenXers (not Boomers) with two daughters, 20 and 13, who purchased a vacation property, a "simple cabin" on an island. Alas, the "simple cabin" was sinking, due to lack of a foundation (the cabin, not the island, although that island of garbage the size of Manhattan floating around the Pacific doesn't have a foundation and it's not sinking). And so thousands of dollars later and with the help of friends and rellies, the day was saved, and now this couple owns two properties in which to expand their middle-class living.👪

I'm not envious, nor am I pointing fingers. As I say, I ride my bike to a publicly owned fresh water swimming hole every day, publicly owned bike lanes almost all the way. In terms of keeping it simple, which this couple reportedly wanted to do, it doesn't get much simpler. Although eventually I want access to the much larger privately owned fresh water lake beside the much smaller publicly owned fresh water swimming hole, but I'm good for now, placard at the ready should it be required. Fair warning, City Hall.💪

So yes, I'm not pointing fingers, or picking on anyone in particular, because owning a couple of private properties, especially a waterfront cottage, is middle-class life for a lot of Canadians and has been for decades now. Plus vacations away from those properties, including abroad. Or at least to Disneyland or maybe an island resort. Whatever. We're surrounded by expectations, our own and others.👪

Cripes, if not for our once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, we might never have experienced the relief, ever so briefly, really, of not having to live up to them.😷

I know people who've had to sell their cottage (we call it a camp in Northern Ontario but I've been in southern Ontario and/or Ottawa too long and say cottage now like yooz guys) because they could no longer abide the trespassing by other cottage owners (their property included a tap for the fresh water spring feeding the lake) and their various and sundry contraptions motoring around the lake, a lake that includes a public beach anyway. Also their kids were grown up and maintaining the property became too much work, the expense no longer worth it, and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc.👎

Now cottage owners living on land are even having to contend with cottage owners living in the lake, in shipping containers, of all grotesqueries. And since the lake is actually publicly owned? I guess we're all having to contend with it.👎👎

As Roseanne Roseannadanna would say, "It's always something."👿

Meanwhile, we publicly owned fresh water swimming hole people live with the threat of it being taken away from us if it gets too popular with we the public to whom it belongs. We're made to feel afraid the wealthy neighbourhood it's in can deny us access at any time, its designation as a conservation area (there's a condo development around it and I hear more lawn mowers, leaf blowers and chain saws there some days than I do in my not urban but not suburban either 'hood, and there's weed spraying pretty much everywhere) used to close it off to us, while the private condo owners around it maintain their private access. So we all adhere to the 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. hours like good little interlopers and do what we can while we're there to keep it clean and quiet.😇

And it works. Everybody who goes there to swim loves it. Some people don't even swim, they just sit on one of the three benches and gaze out over the water for a bit. Or chitchat with strangers who are then no longer strangers. There aren't change rooms or washrooms and only a tiny beach once the water goes down (the city stopped pumping water into it, claiming it wasn't doing anything to keep up the water level all summer) so it's not a place to hang out for any real length of time, although people still try, while us regulars encourage a "swim and go" attitude - by example. Also by grumbling amongst each other about beachgoers. And since us regulars go pretty much every day, we see more of each other (literally!) for at least four months of the year than we do anyone else in our lives.💞

It's the best part of life here in our nation's capital.💘

But because it's publicly owned, and we live in a time of great stupid, so many of us believing we need to protect ourselves (from who? each other? the future? the air?) by owning as much property as we can afford (or not), we live with a knife over our heads, i.e. the threat our publicly owned property can be taken away from us at any time, as we have no indeterminate right of access. Why? Because we live in a culture that prioritizes individual wealth over public health, i.e. a stupid culture.😡

And so it was that just as I realized I'm living my best life I also realized how much better it would be if I wasn't holding my breath all the time (I mean metaphorically, although I'm keeping it shallow these days, even indoors) worried we the public will one day be denied access to our own fresh water swimming hole.😬

I'm tired of it. Because it's not just our swimming hole under constant threat of being privatized in one way or another, it's everything publicly owned. And instead of standing together to protect our publicly owned property from being privatized, like healthcare, we're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to own cabins on islands.💪 

Like I said, life in a time of great stupid.😐

You Say You Want an Evolution

Facebook friends have been posting an article about our evolution, taking us back 4 billion years, past apes and reptiles and what look suspiciously like the silverfish I used to spot in the bathroom of my apartment in downtown Ottawa, to self-replicating mRNA molecules.👾

Kidding, self-replicating RNA molecules. No m.😜

Not kidding, I'm a Creationist now.🙏

The thing is, the article concludes with the prediction of a "Great Averaging", to come at some future date. As in no more diversity, just same/same human beings.😕 

This was confusing to me (hence the confused emoticon) because I assumed we were already there, and have been for quite some time, same/same, diversity a word we use to cover made up stuff like culture, race and gender. Our gang colours, as it were.👥

I mean, sure, we're individuals, but so are my grandcats. We're as "same/same" within our species as they are in theirs.😼

Cripes, ants and bees are more diverse than we are, more diverse even than our grandcats, who can at least be Siamese, British Shorthair, Manx, Snowshoe, Singapura, Bengal and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc. Meanwhile, ants and bees have actual Queens. We just call other same/same humans queens - or kings, so they can pad out our news hours and/or murder us with impunity.👸

But even CBC knows, deep down, King Charles III is the same under his bejewelled crown and ermine robes as Joe Sixpack and Sally Housecoat from Tallahassee, who are the same as Malala and Cher and back around to his cast out son, Prince Harry, and Prince Harry's wicked step-mother Camilla.👺

Also, how many Wallises and Dianas and Meghans, how many Camillas, ffs, will it take for CBC to admit Buckingham Palace is just Coronation Street in drag.💂

Speaking of CBC, last evening's Ottawa newscast, already chock-a-block with ads featuring lone cars/jeeps/trucks racing through empty cities/deserts/wilderness, graced viewers with a several minutes long interview featuring a woman who recently purchased one such vehicle. She advised viewers if we, too, want to purchase a new vehicle, we must go to a dealership and beg a sales associate to let us buy whatever's available on the lot, no matter the price - or - fuhgeddaboudit.🙅

I only wish I was kidding but the interview went on to include a check in with a sales associate at a car dealership who confirmed, yup, what she said - or - fuhgeddaboudit.🙅

I also learned the Stanley Cup was finally won by somebody, somebody else bought the Senators (the hockey team) and somebody something the Raptors.💤

But back to the "Great Averaging"/end of diversity (which I still contend was always here). We used to refer to death as the "Great Leveller", but Twitter long since overtook death and now Artificial Intelligence has overtaken Twitter.👽

Just look at how happy Yoko Ono's John Lennon was to be alive again and singing alongside Linda McCartney's Paul at Glastonbury last year, like Wings and Silly Love Songs never happened.👻

When has a rich man not spent his humanity trying to buy divinity? 

But I'm lucky because I have faith, in spite of having been president of our housing association, and on my way to swim at a pond, I pass an elementary school and see children playing with each other, same as it ever was, running around, making noise, puppies at the dog park. Some of those children transcend their entirely made-up gender, as do some of the pond goers, also same as it ever was. Some are neurodiverse, too. Again, same as it ever was. But because we're well into a time of "Great Averaging", and our individuality is still and always will be the essence of our humanness, we all just want more and ever more recognition of it, the freedom to live well as our unique selves within our entirely made-up, diverse or not, various and sundry gated communities world over.💃

A while ago, before I read the article, I was watching TVO's The Agenda. Steve Paikin was interviewing an expert on gender. Eventually he asked the question, with regard to boy vs girl, how much of this gender stuff is nurture and not nature. Her answer? "All of it."💣

His response?👀

It was mine, too, not because I didn't know it already but because it was so succinctly put. Finally. So forget the "Great Averaging", in spite of having been president of a housing association, I'm putting my faith in our "Great Humanizing".😇

Making Do

I've been watching videos on trauma, trying to piece together why I started having panic attacks last spring, and my takeaway so far is to pay more attention to what I'm doing, and thinking, because thinking leads to reacting, and what I think and how I react is within my control to change.💁

I can think myself into quite a state, I've noticed, now I've started paying attention to this hamster wheel brain of mine. Allowing myself to try out prescription medication to address baseline anxiety was a significant step for me, having always been suspicious of pharmaceuticals, instead aggravating my condition with beer and pot.😜

I was and am as guilty as an anti-vaxxer of believing against all medical evidence to the contrary the health measure to mitigate the effects of the illness is the danger and not the illness.😷

Of course, the first behaviour I changed when I started taking the medication (fluoxetine, as in, Prozac) was to cut out beer and pot, and it's quite possible it's all I needed to do. Self-medicating may work for some, but not me. Your just enough is my too much, which I should know by now, but addiction's a helluva drug.😀

My preferred state isn't even mildly tipsy as it turns out (and this is what every addict wants, none of us want to overdose in an alley) but rather to be engaged in sober reflection while working on a crossword puzzle to take the edge off.💤

Contentment with how it is right now is the state of grace I didn't know I was looking for but here it is.🙇

Also, leaving Twitter, which is a big deal, to read novels has been helpful in "thinking it through", "it" being the stuff of life. Reading makes me think of writing and writing helps me reframe the stories of blame and guilt I tell myself into stories of resilience, thanks to being armed with a sense of humour.💃

Also my mind isn't darting around anymore and I'm better able to think the present through to everything not being my problem alone to solve RIGHT NOW!!👮

In fact, nothing has required my flight, fight or freeze response. Nothing. Not a single goddamned thing has happened since I started thinking it through to require my flight, fight or freeze response. Also, I'm having the most illuminating dreams, which I occasionally post on Facebook where it turns out I'm friends with an illuminating dream analyst.😎

Hell is other people, sure, but also comfort, joy and insight.💕

The other evening I was watching CBC Ottawa news and at the end of his weather report Vikta Paolo smiled, and maybe because I was alone at the time and so more engaged with his animated delivery than I would have been had My Blond Companion been watching with me, I smiled back.😊

I felt an immediate release of tension and a radiating warmth around my heart. It was instant, the fluctuation from one state of being to another, just by smiling in response to another person's smile.💥

(Dear men who tell women to smile: You smile. And stay away from women. Children, too. You know what I'm taking about.😠)

Then, still smiling, I hauled myself out of the chair and made a "Fridge Wars" dinner of this and that, praised by My Blond Companion later for its delicious ingenuity.👍

Somewhere back there I skipped my mother to turn into Gram, who claimed her greatest reward in life was making a good meal out of what she had on hand, especially when we ate it all, no leftovers.👵

(Don't worry. I don't need the affirmation to appreciate my creating the sublime out of making do. I've long been my biggest fan. In fact, I'm so good at it, I decided to make it my retirement plan.👵)

Gram was the source of much fascination in my youth. Her needs so basic, her wants in line with her needs. For years I only ever saw her in one dress, although she had two, and I saw her every day because she lived with us. But like a housekeeper, not a grandmother. It was hard to believe she was my mother's mother. Of course it was hard to believe my mother had a mother at all and wasn't just born being ours, coming home from work to check the mail Gram had put on the mantle before changing from her high school librarian clothes into her casual clothes to have a martini and watch Mike Douglas.💤

It wasn't until I was alone in her seniors residence apartment, during her stint in hospital before the nursing home, going through photo albums of her travels, rescued from the laundry garbage by another resident after she dumped them all there, I realized I didn't know my mother at all. You don't know yours, either, but like another person terminating an unwanted pregnancy or transitioning gender (especially if that person is an adolescent or child) that's none of my business.👤

(One more time: Patriarchs want fascism, not freedom.👺)

Even at the time I heard about the album dump I knew it was likely a reaction to not being able to see the photos anymore, her vision too deteriorated. But the lady across the hall rescued them because, well, I suppose she thought my mother would regret it later. I'm glad they were rescued, though, because when I saw the photo of the stranger who was also my mother, I understood both of us better. I don't know where they are now and I don't care. They really only meant something to her, and it makes perfect sense to me now that she would throw them out once she could no longer make out the images.💔

Anyway, it's with Gram in mind I'm determined to continue reframing the stories I've long, too long, been telling myself, banishing blame and guilt from the narrative, keeping it simple, putting a hilarious slant on all those old stories and sending them out into the world in another book. Later. Because thanks to Barbara Gowdy's "The Romantic" (2003), which I recently read, I've been inspired to write another book about my many office temp jobs. I want to do my part for the historical record, lest future generations think the 80s were all about snorting cocaine through $100 bills in the washroom at Bemelmens (Toronto, where I did not snort cocaine through a $100 bill in the washroom).💪

By the way, if anybody knows how to get in touch with Meredith MacNeill to read my previous and only other book so far "That Looks Good on You - You Should Buy It!" please let me know. She'd be perfect as me in the CBC television series adaptation, which would really help with my Making Do retirement plan.💃