The Janet Jackson episode.  Air date Friday, April 2, 2010.  I love Janet Jackson.  Poetic Justice was one of my favorite movies for so much of my high school existence.  I loved her beautiful curves and her beautiful face.  I thought her braids were goddess-esque, like something out of a Disney cartoon.  This perfect hair that Hollywood kept in perfect symmetry.  A white girl with frizzy red hair in total braid envy.  Maya Angelou’s poems warmed my insides with the beginning of an understanding that anyone could write anything in any which way they craved, needed, breathed and the reader was the soul it was meant for.  Over the years Janet morphed into this glamorous woman. Long gone were the braids replaced with yet another mane of surreality in it’s beauty.  Her clothes became less cumbersome and her body lithe and she seemed to me a free bird in a gilded cage for some reason.  Her Rolling Stone cover still sticks in my body obsessed mind and to this day I wondered how much work she must have accomplished to feel so comfortable with her changes to pose pseudo-topless on the cover of Rolling Stone.  I think that is one of the most beautiful photographs I’ve ever seen and it’s of Janet Jackson, a woman who for some reason I relate to curvy or less curvy.  Janet was never an untouchable Hollywood personality, just a woman who lived her life as she chose when she had the ability to choose.

Janet is introduced by Oprah and a brief clip of her latest movie is shown where as always I wonder “why doesn’t Janet Jackson act more than she does?”.  Her raw emotion in the 20 seconds of her role in Tyler Perry’s newest film demonstrates yet again why Janet is relatable.  Janet is a woman.  Janet is Justice, she is roar, she is quiet grace.

My thoughts move immediately to her wardrobe of course.  Damn that’s a hot suit.  Janet is wearing an impeccable skirt suit in black with a dramatic white collared shirt.  There is a flounce on the rear of her tailored blazer and she is an artist’s rendering of a perfectly executed homage to 1940 complete with traditionally sexy pumps and elegantly styled hair.  I think Billie Holiday and am in envy of the woman’s body that so gracefully walks to the stage with hands clasped in this quiet gratitude for the audience’s standing ovation.

As usual Oprah has to quiet the screamers.  There is only so much time and it never ceases to amaze me that the audience has such a difficult time understanding that the more they scream the less they will hear from the guest they are screaming for.

Am I the only one who hears Michael Jackson’s voice every time Janet Jackson speaks?  The speech patterns, the pauses, the actual voice is so similar in so many ways.  Unusual for a sister and brother as opposed to sisters and brothers sounding so much like each other.  G-d knows I sound nothing like the booming bullhorn of a voice box that my brother maintains as a professional actor and singer.

We all remember where we were when Michael Jackson’s death was announced to the world.  Oprah leads with that thought and one of the many iconic Michael Jackson images is flashed on the screen.  I was in South Dartmouth, Mass on a family vacation with my parents, my brother, my fiancée, and the girlfriend my brother was seeing at the time (those relationships are a novel of their own).  I remember wanting to see as much as I could have of MJ’s life, his music, and mostly of his early years before the face started to change.  I wanted to see the handsome, shy young man who changed our world with his music and was as much a part of my youth as Ronald Reagan and Mickey Mouse.  I remember my first Michael Jackson album, Thriller.  It was a picture disc with Michael posing with a tiger on one side and alone on the other.  I was 5 or 6 when that album was released and that my parents had enough appreciation for his music to buy me that album to play on my little pink record player surprises me to this day.  My mother barely knows who the Beatles are and she is a Baby Boomer who was 35 miles away from Kent State when the shootings occurred.  My father was a right wing conservative who thought the Beach Boys were the greatest musicians alive next to Neil Diamond and Simon & Garfunkel.  Yet somehow these 2 realized that Thriller was a record that my brother and I should have.

My father.  As Oprah gently probes Janet for loving memories of MJ we are allowed to hear that the last words between Michael and Janet were “I love you”.  Janet bows her head with the sweetest smile of gratitude that this was the gift that her universe allowed her to find some sliver of peace with.  My last words between my father and I were I love you as well.  I roll back to that last phone call with my father as he laid in his hospital bed in Florida and am swept with goosebumps as my own universe reminds me of the undefinable treasure that I love you truly is.  My eyes begin to water and I realize that yet again, Oprah and the entity that Oprah is has caused me to cry.  I thank all that is moving around me for this brief moment of emotion, this sweet return to grief.  I do not live a life of grief for my father’s sudden death 3 years ago but I am infinitely grateful that I can find the small, permanent edge of pain that his death will forever impress upon my soul.  Sadness is not necessary to mourn but anyone who has ever lost anyone will tell you that a small return to grief will salve the fear that time is forgetting all that they were.

I have lots of rationales mulling about in my fatty brain.  Water weight being the big one.  I’m sure that at least 5 pounds of fear and pain is the water weight that my body has joyfully retained due to the PRK procedure I had 10 days ago. This surgery forced me to confine myself to essentially siting on my ass eating out of boredom and at times to drown the fear that I might be going blind during my healing process.  This led to a strange case of my clinical narcolepsy morphing into severe insomnia thus sucking the life out of me for the past few days and justifying putting whatever I wanted into my mouth.  A literal bag full of Easter candy handed off to me by mother was not helpful either.  Sadly the peanut M&M’s did find their way into my mouth and while the quantity probably didn’t exceed the number 20 the psychic pain of spinning out of control equated to 20,000 terrible thoughts that my brain allowed me to think after the lapse in judgment.  Thing is, despite the M&M’s I didn’t feel that I ate terribly irresponsibly yesterday.  In fact after I signed up for WW for the 6th time last night I added up all the points I had eaten just to get a feel for how horrible of a fatty I really am.  It wasn’t that bad.  Yesterday I truly tried to be a better person.  A better person is one who eats better food. I ate rice cakes and a large portion of grocery store corn bread (to help me sleep of course).  On a WW point scale I was only 5 points over my daily target and using flex points allowed me to be a reasonable person taking in reasonable amounts of food even for weight loss.   The small amount of relief I allowed myself with cold hard numbers like these up in my fatty face gave the evil screaming of my fatty brain a quick muzzle for a brief period of time.

My mind knows that the initial water weight loss is always the easiest.  It comes and goes without warning or good reason.  It shows its ugly head with swollen fingers and immovable rings.  At times the rings may even slide around our fatty fingers lending us to fear the possibility of no water weight to expect losing but this is a lie our fatty brains are screaming in hopes of our hands delivering emotionally numbing food to our mouths.  With a bit of patience (and at times good diuretic pills) it falls off through the normal means of food management and suddenly there are 5 less pounds of hate sticking to our bodies.  Thing is that tends to happen during week one of structure and discipline.  It’s the 59 million weeks after that which give less than profound incentive and less than obvious shrinkage when we allow ourselves to actually look in a mirror.  Right now, today, I am filled by my protein coffee and Citrucel.  Right now I have an entire day of mirrors ahead of me that will incite sadness and sighing but I will not be afraid.  Right now I have 6 months to lose the 40 pounds I am desperate to shed.  Right now I can do anything and be anything because while I may succeed at losing the fat I know the battle with my fatty brain will be one of many lifelong wars where I am my own arch enemy. Right now I know that if I were medically cleared to endure a cardio workout I would be in my sports bra at the gym. That is my victory for right now.  That right now I am doing everything I can to win this minute’s skirmish and worrying about the war tomorrow.

I appreciate that there are millions of women who have a hard time seeing themselves accurately be they fat or thin (there doesn’t seem to be anyone else anymore; fat and thin.  Black and white. No normal and no gray.).  I also appreciate that eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes.  I pretend to know nothing more than my own experience regarding any and all that I reflect upon.  That being said I simply want my face back.  I want my body back.  I am not on a fool’s errand of attempting to perfect anything.  I am a fatty that may one day be close to a chicklet and I have absolutely no problem with my current mission.  I am a woman who knows that her greatest potential lies within her own happiness and happiness for this fatty is nothing more than being a size 6.  A perfect American size 6.  A short American woman wearing a mid range size walking past mirrors and admiring her mid range body.  The mirrors will haunt me forever but today there is control over their future and mine and for any fatty eating to numb, to occupy, or just to taste those mirrors are mine for the taking, inside and out.

I recently watched a very interesting film by the name of Disfigured.  In short it verbalizes the thought processes of anorexics and binge eaters portrayed through the eyes of an obese woman and an active anorexic.  I could say many things about the film itself, poorly acted, poorly written at times, and obviously completely unrealistic as an anorexic wouldn’t befriend an obese binge eater but I won’t.  Instead I’ll say that I was shocked to discover that I have the judgmental view of an anorexic while living in the body of an overweight woman.  I find obese people foul.  I find their fat offensive and their binge eating pathetic.  I cannot bear to pass a mirror without my clothes on as it stimulates the most profound revulsion much like any photograph I see of myself.  I internally deflate everytime I am forced to see my arms without sleeves and haven’t worn a shirt without sleeves in public at any point in my adult life.  I do not understand how my fiancee finds me attractive much less “beautiful” and I find it sickeningly unfair that I’m 45 pounds too thin to qualify for a lapband procedure.  I could go on but why bother, I’m just another overweight woman in America who hates her reflection and has absolutely no accurate idea of what she actually looks like.  We are a dime a dozen in this country.

Today was a special day though.  Today I tried to live like an anorexic.  I only ate once I had done my strength training and even that felt scary.  Fear edging my day as I maintained the underlying truth of every piece of food eaten will force me to gain weight.  Normally I don’t care as it seems like a losing battle but today I channeled all of the eating disorder laying dormant in my mind and felt victorious.  I then decided to make gluten free brownies from scratch.  I have absolutely no idea what the logic was but it happened none the less and as I licked the batter from the spatula after pouring the pure chocolate goodness into it’s baking pan I began to freak out.  Another strange turn of events.  I began to freak out and decided to hit the treadmill and burn off the calories I had eaten between the batter and the square inch of brownie that found my mouth post-baking.

My reflection in all of the hateful mirrors of my small complex fitness center was more than enough to motivate my fatty butt into good cardio calorie burning but it wasn’t that which fanned the flames of my overweight shame, it was the chicklet on the elliptical machine.  The adorable chicklet in her red spandex shorts and cute blue top looking like an advertisement for some athletic drink.  Her long brown hair bouncing in a perfect ponytail and every part of her simply looking lean and tan.  Instant self-hatred.  I removed my glasses and pump my arms to Rusted Root and their soulful drums avoiding the huge navy blue rear in the mirror that sadly still belongs to me.  The chicklet finished her  cardio and moved to lunges, barbells and stretching.  I realized she was gone when the lights went out on the other side of the gym.  I looked at my horrible arms and large flat derriere in the mirror and just kept going thinking that it could be possible that I could look like her someday.  I don’t really believe that of course, I just find the guts to hope for it from time to time.

So one day at a time I will eat gum instead of food when my hands and mouth are bored.  One day at a time I will smoke instead of eat.  One day at a time I will work out at least once if not twice and one day at a time I will find the courage to eke out a little hope if even for a second or two, that I could be a 33 year old chicklet instead of an almost 34 year old fatty.  I could. Today I will smoke after I work out and try to forget about the pan of brownies sitting in the refrigerator and pretend that fish and salad for dinner is a far yummier thing.

We all aren’t really beautiful. Most of us are decent and there are the exceptional few who are perfectly symmetrical in a potato sack. There are also the rest of us. Us that may have flawless skin, seductive wit and hypnotic almond eyes but we are the fat ones. I am one of the fat ones. I am actually one of the “overweight” ones which is less offensive than being fat as it implies I am just a hair over the evil BMI line which now governs us all. I can even pack on a few more pounds and while I’m still not quite enough of a whale to qualify for a glorious lap band procedure, the AMA might pronounce me afflicted with plain old pathetic fattiness. When we were on the road I told my buddy Mike that the Grateful Dead song “Jack Straw” would always remind me of him due to its refrain “…we can share the women we can share the wine…”. Mike responded to my intended lyrical compliment by letting me know that he thought of me when he heard the Phish ditty “I am the sloth”. Story of my life.

Add to the fat that I’m a sober crazy drunk who is afraid to leave her apartment and it really is a glorious existence I live.

Take now for example. The several easily identifiable targets of good old-fashioned envy that surround me in my shrink’s busy waiting room. The stick thin bleach blond playing with her pink iPhone is of course the most intimidating. Add to it that I actually dig her quilted nylon purse and appropriately trendy black suede scrunch boots and its so much worse mostly because she’s wearing a better engagement ring than I am.

To my immediate left are two possibly 16-year old girls who I will now refer to as chicklets. They aren’t women and they aren’t girls but they most assuredly wish someone would take a bite out of their asses. I assume this from the evidence in front of me, the aforementioned asses half displayed out of their spandex tight jeans. Don’t misunderstand, these are very nice asses but I’m almost positive from their chicklet behavior that they are jail bait asses and it actually is criminal to be even writing about them.

Across the room is an actual morbidly obese woman complete with pretty face and fat lady poncho. Ironically she is utterly fascinated with the two chicklets to my left as I would have been had I been placed across the room. Our fatty friend sits with her appropriately trendy metallic bag teetering on her downward sloping redwood size thighs. Thing is that we fatties can’t rock cute and trendy. I learned a long time ago that we must actually wear classically unique pieces that require a good eye and possibly a substantial investment.  I prefer unique Coach bags myself but any mid-level luxury handbag will do.  Our bags must have a defined construction and classic hardware.  Slouchy hipster hobo’s simply add to the bag lady look that any pretty fatty in a poncho is already dangerously close to achieving.  Ironically the most critical law in the fatty fashion universe is tailoring, the most dreaded component of clothing to any woman whose BMI is measured higher than 5.  Elastics and stretchy materials may seem to be the greatest gift to women everywhere but on the overweight it is an Eden we mustn’t venture near as much as we can help it.  Those “comfy” clothes become a freedom of movement tricking us into eating actual food and finding brief moments of peace in our own homes.  This is a terribly common and always dangerous place for any woman who loathes herself when moving about in the public world.  Self content is not an option at home and sweatpants are the certainly the most common means of a fatty finding inner peace.

Tomorrow I might actually dare to review the tailoring requirements appropriate to acceptably dress fatties for all areas of public life including (gasp) our most beloved bathing attire quandaries.

Molly knew she was a she and Molly knew that she wasn’t a he and Molly knew that the she that she was had one of the great envies of the kingdom;  intoxicating to the touch, surreal in it’s flawlessness, barely believable, ethereal from head to toe, glowing peaches and cream skin.  The only other facts which Molly Vernacular could truly claim belief in (somewhat) objectively were her copper curls (orange poofy hair), almond eyes of gold, chocolate and green (they were hazel and her Dad called them ” weird Chinese eyes”), and evenly proportioned figure (the fat was spread around quite evenly).  There were days when Molly enjoyed the spring of the curls in her hair when she would pull on them over and over and over again almost as if she had never seen such a thing, yet it was her own hair.  Then there were the other days when Molly Vernacular would venture near a looking glass and once again find herself lost in a violent black whirlpool of thoughts and words drowning the tiniest of hopeful bubbles Molly had idiotically dared to conjure yet again.

Such was the life for Molly Vernacular for many of all-the-years, happiest in those moments when her mind’s eye could deceive her for just long enough to allow freedom of movement through dance and laughter.  Her joy was palpable and powerful, generously released and infinitely shared.  The woman she could pretend to believe to be was hers to have until the depressing truth of it all was snuffed out like any brave little candle daring to dance in the wind, swiftly and without remorse. Molly’s family told her she was beautiful but as all children with even half decent mother’s know, all Mommies think their children are beautiful.  Hell, Molly had concrete evidence that Fairies who adopt midget Troll babies find those Godawful creatures touchable and they’re covered with slime for Zeer’s sake.

Considering what superficial Hollywood types Fairies are Molly had clear cut proof that even animals who eat their young find them appealing (in a non brunch kind of way) before they devour them.  Family opinions (much thanks again to the evil shallow Fairies) was clearly worthless.

Molly’s friends were no better.  Lads and lasses alike, liars the lot of them.  Molly had wonderful friends, brilliant friends, uproariously funny friends, but she still considered them all addled, possibly bewitched, or simply challenged when conversation would dangerously approach her appearance.  She frequently wondered with great sincerity how these people could be such blithering idiots and at one point had decided that all of her friends must be under spells cast by Irish witches in their never ending quest to huffle and puffle as many bloody rainbows as possible allegedly on behalf of all the creatures in the kingdom.  The blasted rainbows with their endless showers of peace and love instigating unanimous jigging with joy for all of eternity.  Molly had reasoned that despite the fact that the Irish witches were commonly considered the dimmer of the magical bulbs blinking about, the obvious confusion her friends maintained regarding their impressions her countenance allowed this theory to exist as a totally plausible explanation driven by the inane agenda of the forever dense witches.

“Yin and yang people!” Molly had shouted at them during the in-between season of the last jumping year, “Yin and yang you wizarding wenches!  You are going to ruin our joy when you remove our sorrow.  There is no light without a dark sky to press it against! There is no brilliance without the dull which you witches should know better than any creature!”.  The Irish witches enthusiastically agreed with Molly (moved more by her passion than what she considered her precisely communicated logic) until of course the Jumping Year ended and the Galloping Year began and once again all the Irish creatures of the land lost their minds and memories to breathe and laugh anew, again.  Gratefully their agendas during Galloping Years revolve strictly around female tribal leaders and secretly spiking every beverage of every creature in the kingdom with hard raspberry cider at least once.  No one really had a problem with either objective as the cider was damn good and the female tribal leaders were fresh-love-hot and scantily clad.  Add in to the magical mix that the goddess-warrior-priestess-queens only “lived” for three Green Days in a Galloping Year and who could complain?  Molly quite admired the specter of these almost-women.  Without fail they were strong in beauty, will, mind and heart.  They had the great names of zoeZoare and ariaFirze and did not just walk but strode the thirty-three soils with bare supple legs that knew they owned the earth beneath them.  Molly Vernacular was quite possibly one of the smartest women to have been conjured-through-life in the history of the kingdom since before the Striping Days had waned thousands of All-The-Years ago and yet she could not touch that place just beyond her reach where her mind was no longer a murderous occupier but her greatest liberator.

The last Galloping Year had allowed for the greatest of all the warrior women to “live” during all of Molly Vernacular’s All-The-Years. The warrior-ess floated in on the Great Celtic Cloud of gold and green and the customary tributes of peanut brittle and scalloped potatoes were offered as she greeted the kingdom.  Molly typically avoided these ceremonies of adoration as she found the demonstrations of the creatures nauseatingly sycophantic.  But the last Galloping year had been one snapping beat off of all the Galloping Years which had been conjured before.  As one of the many effects of this barely visible wrinkle in the air Molly found herself squarely in the path of the glorious ghost-goddess’s forward float.  Not being one to snub another creature (outwardly at least) Molly galloped three paces and followed with the traditional lunged-curtsey as was the kingdom’s custom.  Upon raising her head Molly perfectly every-colored (hazel) eyes met those of the war-priestess and was quite suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation of her lungs desperately reaching for air it could not find.  This prohibited any words which she might have attempted to create which for Molly Vernacular was the greatest personal tragedy she had ever even begun to endure.  Molly had her perfect skin and her mighty brain.  The mightiest brain to ever live inside a creature’s skull it was said, and now her greatest gift, her strength of strengths was impotent as every cell of her being focused on finding the air that her lungs were failing to provide.  The missed snapping beat had placed her heart above her most magnificent brain and suddenly the screaming fear that had consumed her mind’s ear was transformed into the sweetest song sung with the sincerest of Seyr’s, of freedoms.  Molly pushed her eyes into the warm green of Xianthia’s eyes as the High Priestess sang her name with silent clarity and then began to speak:

“Your skin is the softest of velvet, your mind is the sharpest in All-The-Years in all the lands and yet you Molly Vernacular are the laughingstock of your own mind.  You Molly Vernacular are disabled by the warmth that gives hope to the many.  You Molly are a prisoner of your perfect skin and your mighty mind. If true Seyr was yours would you accept the great freedom?”  Molly began to reacquaint herself with air and realized that she was suddenly able to speak.

“I would embrace the Seyr if I were not so deeply cowered by it your highess.  The great freedom is my largest hope and my fear of it my greatest shame.  I will embrace the Seyr should you tell me with your truest voice that it is for the best of not just me but all the creatures of the kingdom. Should you speak in your truest voice I now state in my truest voice that I choose the Seyr!”

My early childhood was a time when I was my Daddy’s Princess and my parents were the King and Queen of a warm castle.  I had a white canopy bed covered in Kelly green and white gingham centered in a warm yellow room carpeted with the moss-green short shag that I required for my request of sun on the walls and grass on the floor.  At 4 my parents validated my ability to make my own choices about my interests.  Upon retrospect they may have respected my choices with greater ease at that tender age than any other I can recall. Those were the “first years”.  Those years lasted until the age of 7 or 8.

The dark year was the year that a warm safe castle became brown in my mind’s eye.  Brown because so much of the house was brown and my room somehow lost it’s place in my world.  My stuffed animals and precious dolls were no longer living secret lives when I left my room, they were simply arranged in front of my decorator pillow much like everything else that was for appearance rather than purpose.  The dark year was simply dark.  There were times when our castle had no electricity and we were told to wear as many pajamas as possible to keep warm at night in the cold of February.  There are memories of our glorious backyard morphing from a playground of stately trees and fluttering leaves stitched into gentle slopes to a space of exploding septic tanks and the utter despair that was reflected on my mother’s face when she would peer out the kitchen window.  Our home became dark when the pictures were put away and our rooms scoured of identity for the ever-increasing parade of strangers inflating my mother’s hopes of freedom only to have them thrashed into the dirt by homebuyers falling short at the last possible minute.  The year was dark because the Oldsmobile diesel station wagon that joyfully carted me to dance and soccer and girl scout event galore became one disaster of a breakdown after the next and could be seen as nothing more than yet another ticking time bomb that my mother would live in constant fear of.  The dance lessons had stopped, the soccer team was mine no longer and the girl scout troop which had been my perfectly pedestrian experience of catty and loving young girls all learning how to get along became a place of an assumed embarrassment that my mother unwittingly taught me by example.  I didn’t know any other children whose parents were divorced.  I had heard of parents (mostly dads) who were less than esteemed by my mother’s point of view but I knew no children, and certainly no girls my age, whose castles had gone dark such as mine had.  Not on Miller Heights Road that is.

The darkest part of the dark year was a day when I wore pink Ralph Lauren from head to toe.  It was November I believe and for some reason I had missed the bus to school.  We were in the townhouse by then (a tale of my mother’s triumph for another time) and while I don’t remember the circumstances of how I was about to end up in such a terrible place I will never forget the hours that followed when I was there.  I wore a light pink Polo shirt underneath a paler pink wool Polo sweater and had darker pink corduroy pants on.  I can only assume I wore my favorite pink high-top Chuck Taylor sneakers on my feet but for some reason when my memories are clear it is only the clothes that I am wearing and never, never, never the shoes that are a part of my recollections.  I don’t remember the car ride, I don’t remember much of anything outside of the moment we arrived at the law office and I was told to sit on a chair next to a table in a richly wooded lobby.  My mother had on her purple suit with the cream satin or silk blouse that sported a chic ‘80’s scarf collar.  She was so very thin then.  My Aunt Sandy appeared in some beautifully tailored suit that screamed sensibility and power and she was so very thin then as well.  My father was already there.  I didn’t know this when I was placed in the chair.  I watched my mother and my aunt walk through a wide doorway to another set of closed doors just beyond and when they pushed on those gold handles and began to open the right side of those immense dark imposing double doors my father was visible to me as he sat facing forward at the end of what I assume was a conference table.  He had no idea I was there, that I could see him, that I could feel him.  His head never moved and the doors closed with my aunt’s gentle push from the inside.

I had brought books (of course) and probably some other things to occupy my time.  My primary memory is sitting in this chair that had it’s back against the wall, things scattered about on the small table to my left and feet dangling and dancing and bobbing about as my feet have always, and will always, find themselves doing.  I know that I was told by my mother before she entered through those dark doors that I was to sit and wait and she would be done with her meeting in a little while.  I know the word “patient” was used and that was something that I failed at terribly or excelled at pridefully depending on the situation.  On this day I excelled, until the voices could be heard.  There is no telling how long I had sat in that chair before the pain behind those massive doors could be heard from the distance they were to my seat in the lobby.  My memory is from the perspective of a third person rather than my own perspective for some reason.  I know that my mother’s voice was the first I could recognize and it was as if a dart had been shot from the sound to my forehead snapping my entire body to attention utterly forgetting the engrossing activity I had been involved with for however long.  From that moment forward there was no other option for my ears, my heart, my eyes, than to focus every ounce of my being on those horrible walnut doors.  Quickly more voices began to be heard, my father’s, my aunt’s, who I assume was an attorney.  I could hear words like “house” and “car” from both of my parents on more than one exchange.  I could hear my aunt attempting to calm things down speaking in a voice louder than my parents voices so she could be heard.  I could hear my father’s angry voice more clearly than anyone else’s.  My mother’s anger was something I had been quite familiar with my entire life and today was nothing new.  My father was never truly angry around me outside of a few choice occasions.  The example that still brings a wry smile to my lips is of course when I convinced my younger brother to call 911 and hangup right away.  I did not count on the call back by the 911 operator to verify that we were “ok” and I certainly didn’t count on my father being the one to pick up the phone when the 911 operator made that call.  The look on my father’s face was pure thunder as he assured the operator that it was a children’s prank and it would never happen again from this address.  My brother was trembling.  I was too foolish to be afraid.  My mood quickly shifted into appropriate terror as soon as my dad hung up the old rotary receiver and began to speak.  He made sure we knew how angry he was and remembered to correct us when we apologized for “making [him] mad”.

“Kids, dogs are mad, people are angry.  I was angry at your actions not at you as people.  I have never been mad”.  He always said that “
Dogs are mad, people are angry”.   I still find that entire episode wickedly funny to this day.

This was a different day though and to hear his voice sound like that was a terribly sad thing to his Princess.  I knew my father had made mistakes.  I knew my mother was angrier at him than most countries at war were with their opponents.  I knew that he had been acting strangely and taking us to odd places with odd people (Mr. Robinson and his gold medallions) and that he seemed sad and awkward most of the time but I had yet to hear him truly angry and for so long.  Despite all I know, and all that happened, my heart broke for him that day because I could feel his heart breaking even as he fought and yelled and scrapped for anything he possibly could. I knew he had messed up.  At 9 that is the best description a girl could give but somehow I also felt his insides crumbling once and for all and it was an ache that I did not know what to do with much less what it even was attributed to.

At some point those doors gave way to my mother exiting the room for what I assume was a break in the proceedings.  My father’s head was now fixated on the conference table with his hands in his lap.  His eyes were open and once again, his head did not move.  I’m not sure if he knew that I could see him, feel him, feel FOR him but his head did not move.  Aunt Sandy’s slim gray suit shut the door from inside the room and my mother bee-lined her purple hourglass figure straight towards my chair.  Her face showed nothing other than her fears as to what I may or may not have heard.  I lied and told her I couldn’t really hear anything.  I asked her what we were doing here and she told me that this was the settlement day of the divorce.  This was the day when Mommy & Daddy decide where certain things will live and who will keep what and how Daddy will help us when he is living somewhere else.  Settlement Day.  Once she had explained everything my mother’s face shifted from maternal protective fear into fatigued grief.  I remember later that morning when my father finally emerged from that room his face was the same.  I remember how he could barely even look at me as he strode out of that law office with as much power and speed possible short of appearing that he was running for the door.  I remember knowing that my father just hurt too much to hug me and call me Princess and I never even thought to take it personally.  That quite possibly could have been the last time I saw my parents together.  November 1985.

It would be a fair statement that a significant part of my life has been devoted to the fantasy of flash mobbing albeit in the spirit of Gene Kelly in Dancing in the Rain.  So many moments of joy and sorrow are voiced so perfectly by whichever song my soul has chosen at that time in my life and what could express them even more profoundly than the perfect grace of effortless dance?  I of course fancy myself a natural talent when it comes to the boogie.  I can rock the salsa (with the right partner), I was quite excellent in my swing class (until we stopped going), and at the tender age of 5 was the lead ballerina in all of my glorious recitals (I was the only ballerina who could remember the entire routine thus the tiny swans had to follow me even if I were clomping around like an elephant).  I adored practicing my tap (because ALL little girls adore practicing tap, it’s a noise thing) and I would obsess about standing in positions 1-5 wherever I was, no matter what I was doing.

Of course tap and ballet were eliminated from the kid budget when I was 7 or so.  I’ve heard various reasons why my mother didn’t re-enroll me and typically they depend on her feelings about life at whatever moment she is recalling them.  The most recounted explanation would be the simplest; I didn’t want to go anymore.  Makes sense right?  But truly it never has made sense to me.  Much like the 2 1/2 feet of hair that was shorn off my 6-year-old head allegedly due to lice.  That never made sense to me either.  Neither did my discontinuation of soccer with the same reasoning (most of the time) that I didn’t want to go anymore.  Thing is I really did still want to play soccer and twirl around in my tutu while inciting migraines during my ferocious tap practicing in the front hall of our home.  What I didn’t want to do was Jazzercise and you can bet your bottom dollar that Jazzercise was non-negotiable.  Probably yet another conversation I had with my mother that I “ignored” but actually heard.

These events all took place around the age of 4-6 years of age.  It would seem unbelievable that anyone could accurately remember these moments however I’m not just anyone.  I’m a genius.  Literally a genius.  A fact which I would probably have been much better off never knowing but nonetheless accept.  I have an IQ of 168 (verified by several different exams) and a frighteningly sharp memory.  Before anyone is too impressed let me be clear that had I never known what the potential of my mind was, I could have never perpetually felt that I was a failure relative to the world of intellectuals.  More on being a genius later but the last thought for here and now is simply that if you are simply successful based upon what you have achieved then you can never feel like a failure because of all the things you should have achieved and didn’t.

So back to the tiny dancer (that’s me).  Jazzercise yes, everything else no.  Could I have told my mother I didn’t want to go anymore? Sure.  I just really don’t think that I did.  This isn’t my personal treasure hunt for all things my parents did wrong, just a curiosity of yet another example where parents lie to their children thinking it will be a better outcome than the harsh truth of their decisions.  A few times I have heard my mother tell me to my face, looking me in the eye, that my dancing lessons were terminated because my brother needed to “be active” more than I did.  My mother continued to explain to me that while the house grew more and more despondent with my father’s alcoholism rapidly diseasing all of us as it ultimately does,  Michael had become “overly aggressive” (um, duh.  bruising vs. no bruising? she knew the entire time he was hitting me.) and he needed a constructive outlet for that energy.  As my mother was ever increasingly forced to fulfill all the roles of a single parent there were only so many hours in her week to drive us to practices and lessons and she had decided Michael had the greater need.  Mom repeated this statement to me verbatim a year later when I asked if I could reclaim my goalie spot on my soccer team and then again the following year when I inquired about playing softball.  Somehow though, Jazzercise remained, well remained until my mother’s schedule of substitute teaching by day, grad school by night and realtor on the weekends simply couldn’t manage it any longer.

Funny thing there, in the last recital my Jazzercise class performed I was the lead once again.  The routine was performed to Ghostbusters (Who Ya Gonna Call?) and while the entire class had to wear white and dance in unison I was the lone Ghostbuster dressed in black wielding my gigantic Nerf gun.  I was the star.  It’s an iconic picture of my youth actually.  Me on the front steps of the Miller Heights Rd house in black tights and my Ghostbusters T-shirt, one leg on the stair and a look of Bill Murray bravado in my eye. My last leading part and to say that I killed it would be an understatement.  I sleekly killed many a Jazzercizing ghost that morning and my mother could not have been prouder.  My execution was flawless and my orange and green plastic gun was as graceful as any could be under the circumstances.  I remember loving being the best, loving being the star, loving my command of the stage.  I loved it.  I was the child that needed just a single push in the direction of “you rock! get up there and rock it!” to excel however I was also the child that wouldn’t point one little toe near an audition under their own steam.  The logic in my brain was sure that if I were talented I would have been encouraged therefore if I’m not then I shouldn’t.  The legend in my mind is a far better thing than the probable failures of my real reality.

To be clear though, I KNOW if there were some actual magical rewind button, this chick would have been the most bad ass Oscar-winning, tap dance stomping, prima ballerina wonder the world has yet to see.   In the meantime I’ll continue to point my perfect arches all day long and flash mob whenever and wherever I see fit.  Feeling the urge now…

My mother had issues with Mackenzie Phillips.  Well, to be fair my mother had issues with many of the bodies that brought my favorite sitcoms to life.  Mackenzie Phillips was the first that I remember though.  I’ve seen her pop up from time to time over the years as a figure of scandal and sadness.  As I matured, and sobered up, I identified with her as only someone in recovery can, just another lonely, terrified and ashamed human being trying to get it right this one last time.   Thing is, even today knowing all that I know and understanding all that I understand, for some incredible reason I can still hear the 25 year old commentary of my mother in my head.  No matter what show was on at whatever age I was my mother would pass through wherever I or we were watching television and from high above in the back of the room drop atom bombs of judgment.  Mackenzie Phillips was, and always will be to my mother, nothing more than a one word label spoken with as much contempt and disgust which she could muster into 2 syllables; druggie.  I have vague memories regarding comments about her skin and that it was due to drug use.  I have clear memories of my mother telling me on more than one occasion that she was like Valerie Bertenelli, the good girl.  I know she had issues with the mother but I don’t remember why and we won’t even bother with Schneider.

As a child I ignored her, for the most part.  Today I realize that I didn’t ignore as much of her view of the world as I thought I did.  Today that word “druggie” is still a word I associate with my mother’s vocabulary.  There is a small dictionary of words that will be my mother’s personal language for the rest of my life, for better or for worse, and Mackenzie Phillips is the reason that I’m just now realizing how much of her I really didn’t ignore.

Horizontal stripes.  “You must never wear horizontal stripes Molly, they will make you look wider than you are and you do not want to do that.”.  One of my all time favorite impressions upon a 6-year-old girl’s self image.  “I was a fat child and I would never want that for you.  That is why we are going to Weight Watchers.”.  That was at the age of 7.  I lost 8 pounds during my first WW membership.  Who knows how much I weighed before I went but I know that I lost 8 pounds and my mother was so damn happy about it.  I had no idea that taking a small child to a weight loss program was abnormal until I was much older.  At 14 I was shipped to Jenny Craig.  I can date that with my memories of eating canned program food during lunch on the hallway floor of my high school freshman year.  At 15 I was put on dexedrine for ADD.  I didn’t have ADD but my “average” grades weren’t matching up with my sky-high IQ and therefore I must be ADD.  What I was in reality was obese.  In 5 months my appetite diminished to the point where I lived in a drug induced anorexic state. I loved it.  I had control and it came in the form of diet coke and corn cakes, dry lettuce and whatever I had to eat at family dinner.  I’ll never forget showing up to band camp a month before my junior year and realizing that people didn’t recognize me.  Forget that I was suffering from spontaneous nose bleeds and that my body temperature was so low that I was wearing 2 sweatshirts while marching for 8 hours in 95 degree heat.  That didn’t even seem strange to me at the time.  What clear memories I have of high school one of my most profound ones has always been shopping for school clothes that year.  The absolute joy on my mother’s face that I was in the Gap, pulling pants off the rack, pulling anything off the rack for that matter was something I have never forgotten.  It should be mentioned that at the time, and for many years later, that joy may have been something else  I ignored.  Something that just didn’t seem to sit right in my catalogue of “good times with Mom” but I didn’t put thought or energy into that small disconnect.  Or at least I thought I didn’t.

Even writing about it still bothers me in an odd way.  Was it because that somewhere deep down, even then, I knew that for my mother success was something that other people gave you through their perception of you?  Was it because in a less mysterious place was the reality that for the first time in years I didn’t feel that my mother was slightly ashamed of me?  Was it because that for my mother her success as a parent was wholly tied up in what she thought the world saw me as?  Yes, yes, yes.  No child, no matter how angry or detached, truly wants to think about (and I mean really think about) the reality of their parent’s true feelings towards them.  Nature gives us these irrational expectations that our parents are able to separate their own conditions on love when it comes to their kids.  Sure they would walk through fire for us even when they don’t like us, and my mother did just that when her crumbling universe demanded that she did, but day-to-day life betrays their opinions of us with the small things and the poorly veiled embarrassment clouding their vision.
Some of us think we are ignoring much of that irrational judgment.  Some of us are motivated by living our entire lives competing in some fantastical race where the finish line is absolute approval.  Some of us simply detach so completely that our adult relationships, and those with our children, are compromised and never fully realized until too late.  I am a mix of all these things.  Some much more prominently than others. I believed myself to be ignoring so much for so long that when my constant shame of my physical self failed to match the actual physical body it became clear that there were words in my head that had lived so quietly in every aspect of my life I was unable to separate reality from delusion.  On the other side of things is my random (always massively unrealized) and to me irritating, bursts of approval seeking.  Really it’s just a little girl having a moment of foolish hope that maybe once, maybe this time, I’ll be good enough.  The wedding dress fiasco was a perfect example.  I don’t need my mother’s approval however I’ve found that I envy women who have mothers they can talk to, and at this point in my life plan a wedding with.  Those bi-annual encounters of my mother spitting insults at me and my sadness turning into anger can directly be cited at part of my overall detachment to humans in general.

I’m not sure if I can love anyone the way I should, the way I know I don’t, the way that I wish I could for more than a fleeting second throughout my day.  I’m not sure if I am keeping myself safe or if this is a case of a dead limb that will never truly regain life.  I’m not sure if I can love my own children as I should and for that matter if I should take the risk in having them relative to everything else, everything that I am.  I know that I question very little about my life until every 2 or 3 months I receive a scathing email from my mother about all the mistakes I’m making and how I’m living so beneath the life I should live.  Her endless tirades of “tough love” written without effective thought.  Their essence; I’m still a loser and if I believe that my life is successful then my misguided delusions prove my underachieving existence.  I read her emails breathing the sad sighs that only those who unconditionally love a person with mental illness can breathe.  I scan the words as quickly as my eyes will allow attaching nothing of reality to their meaning.  I don’t question my personal success or sanity until she tells me I’m violent, a new and shocking accusation that for some reason I involuntarily allow to hurt.  10 minutes and 5 phone calls later I’m grounded back on this planet again with my friend’s assertions that I’m anything from violent and that yes, my behavior is fine, and the universal question they all pose every time; why the hell are you listening to what that woman says to you again?  In my head the answer is simple, because even though I’m a 33-year-old woman who has been through more life that most people, once in a while I’m a small child and Mom still knows everything and when Mom knows everything somehow I feel loved when I believe her.

In the daylight of reality, 20 minutes away from the latest letter I find a tree touching the clouds and close my eyes to feel the sun.  I breathe in all of the good words my life has given me to smile and exhale all the sick and sad that my mother has hurled at me from the only love she knows to give.  I re-ignore all the horizontal stripes and re-remember all the perfect hugs.  I inhale perfect birthdays and warm lullabies and breathe out her loss and fear.  I am left with myself, a woman who is loved by her mother in the best way her mother has to love anyone and as that is all that there is it is and will always be more than enough.  Enough until I manage to successfully find a way to secretly medicate her with antipsychotics that is…  A girl can always dream.