Aside

In the meantime, though, I want to remember fucking the lean, muscular, blue-eyed man I fuck a few times a week last night–fantastic, engaged, really passionate sex, some of the best we’ve had together–and after, while he was sleeping, I lit a candle and put on a Serge Gainsbourg record and smoked a cigarette, a filthy habit I indulge maybe twice a year. Supine on the mussed sheets, my fingers finding trails through the thick hair on his chest, pulling on the cigarette and then depositing it back in its ashtray, a vivid moment of absolute satiation. Glorious. 

I have been in a very good mood lately. 

I probably won’t be back here, writing, in

I cannot believe he’s gone.

A lot of heavy lifting today. Not as much work as I would have liked. But this is the day I had. Tomorrow will be different.

C laughs at me and says Go out and tie one on, you’re too far inside your head except that’ll put me at a deficit for the whole week and I’ll feel enormously guilty for having gotten drunk before I did the week’s work, so that’s just out. I have lost the will to do any of this anymore. This mental health day is feeling more and more like a strike and less and less like a break. 

This Didion quote has been jangling around in my head for weeks: It is possible to stay too long at the fair. 

HI JEZEBEL!

I’m writing you because I’m hoping to get some national coverage for
some unbelievable atrocities that happened in the state house today.

FIRST, Representative Mary Sue McClurkin (R-Indian Springs) sponsored
a bill charmingly named the “Women’s Health and Safety Act” which
requires abortion providers in the state to have the same fire and
safety codes as ambulatory medical facilities (read: hospitals) and a
physician with admitting privileges at a hospital in-county on staff
at all times. It also has fun little amendments like: requiring the
clinic to report any abortion recipient under the age of 14 to the
department of Human Resources and to report the names of the father
and the abortion recipient to Human Resources AND law enforcement for
women under the age of 16 seeking abortion. It also prevents the
prescription of chemical abortion pills without consultation and
counseling, meaning a doctor’s visit, which many of the impoverished
women of this INCREDIBLY impoverished state cannot afford, especially
not without the option of Planned Parenthood. The language also
changes to refer to abortion as a surgical procedure that “involves
the taking of a human life” — so here come the Roe v. Wade
challenges.

A bill similar to this–called TRAP–passed in Mississippi last year
and resulted in the closure of ALL BUT ONE women’s health clinic.
Doctor’s applied to and were denied admitting privileges at 7
different hospitals so clinics could not stay open.

Alabama currently has FIVE women’s health clinics that provide
abortions (in addition to other services, such as cancer screenings
and dispensation of affordable birth control. FIVE. For a state with
4.8million residents, 51.5% of whom are female. FIVE.

When concern was raised that the possible closure of these clinics
would restrict women’s access to cancer screenings and birth control,
McClurkin said she was “not sure what services the clinics provided
outside of abortions.” Representative Terri Collins (R-Decatur) was
quoted as saying, “I think that it will truly limit abortions that are
done in Alabama, and I’m pleased with that”.

Here is a source to get you started:

(http://blog.al.com/wire/2013/02/alabama_house_of_representativ.html)

For what it’s worth, my own congressman, Chris England (D-Tuscaloosa),
debated fiercely against the bill along with Rep. Patricia Todd
(D-Birmingham), asking McClurkin point-blank if she would feel
comfortable if all access to abortion was restricted in the state. She
sidestepped the question.

THEN I TOOK MY PUPPY TO OBEDIENCE CLASS, AND WHILE I WAS GONE, FOR
*ONE HOUR*, THIS LITTLE AWESOME PIECE OF LEGISLATION PASSED:

http://blog.al.com/wire/2013/02/house_passes_contraception_exe.html#incart_river_default

This prevents certain “religiously-affiliated employers” from having
to provide insurance coverage for birth control under Obama’s
Affordable Health Care Act. The terms of “religiously-affiliated” are
broad enough to encompass basically any employer who doesn’t feel like
covering birth control. But that’s fine, right? Because if your
insurance doesn’t cover birth control you can always just go to your
local–OH WAIT–THEY SHUT ALL THE PLANNED PARENTHOODS DOWN.

These bills now pass to the State Senate house, which ALSO has a
Republican super majority and has similar bills in committee, ready to
go to the floor for a vote.

Basically, the women of Alabama are COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY FUCKED.

This may also be of use to you: a woman in Montgomery (state capitol)
has compiled local news stories of women being harassed and assaulted
on their way into abortion clinics, statewide, and a more thorough and
detailed description of the steps local advocates have taken to try to
slow this HORRORTRAIN down, even a little.

I am just about at my wits end here.

Maybe if this story got some national coverage, we could push back at
the lawmakers? What do you think, Jezebel–is this a story worth
covering?

Please get in touch with me if you have ANY questions. I’m hardly an
expert, but I’m a woman in Alabama who likes to have sex and a rabid
protector of choice. My phone number is [redacted] and this is my
primary email.

Thanks for reading, y’all.

Another two week dalliance, crashed and burned. The thing about going on three dates is that it just isn’t enough time to call me your girlfriend and exact girlfriendly expectations. Especially when the me in question has a full time teaching job, a book to finish writing IN ONE MONTH, an elderly dog and a puppy, a whole bunch of beloveds, a looming graduation/cross-country move and a lingering, ugly virus. It is a lot to ask. I tried to convey it subtly, then I tried to explain it gently, then I just went ahead and said it straight out–and the effect was the total annihilation of dude’s self esteem. He became clingy, needy, difficult, exhausting. Which, interestingly, is how several ex-boyfriends have characterized my own behavior in the waning weeks of our failed relationships. I have been mulling this, but not actively because the circumstances are all so different. And anyway I AM IN THERAPY AND PEOPLE WITH PHDS IN HOW TO ACT RIGHT SAY I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A DUDE’S GIRLFRIEND AFTER TWO WEEKS. So it’s really too bad, but also it’s kind of a tremendous relief, in a way?

So much pressure.

So maybe for the time being–since I only have 3 months left here–I’m just done dating. It’s a tremendous psycho-spiritual expenditure and the returns are crappy. 85% of the time it’s a disaster, 13% of the time it’s just OKAY and really only 2% of the time do you find that SPARK you wait 98% of your time for. Those are not good odds for me right now.

Because the last thing I need is MORE ANXIETY.

Speaking of which. Therapist and I are circling in on that as the root cause of nearly all of my current problems. The genesis is pretty standard: an unstable childhood, unpredictable and neglectful parents–and suddenly I am the girl who is always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Mix in a couple of completely shocking and heart-destroying breakups, a tornado and some underlying biochemical depression and you have…you know, a barely-functioning me! For years and years! So alright, yes, I can talk the talk; I can identify my issues. I know that the anxiety hijacks me and I work myself into such a state that I simply GIVE UP on lots of things before I even start–”NOPE! NOT GONNA DO IT!” B laughed and laughed at his own impression of me at lunch the other week– or worse: someone slights me and I project not only the original hurt, but all possible outcomes and permutations of said hurt onto them, raging at them for things that actually didn’t and probably won’t ever happen (sorry, NOS.)

But now what? Confession does not = absolution, not in contemporary psychology at least. This is where talking new talk comes in. Last week I had a particularly paralyzingly anxious night. I watched my anxiety, which started off as anger at a friend, morph into panic about climate change when I happened to catch an interview with Al Gore (if you know me, you know that I cannot even TALK about climate change because I have insane apocalypse nightmares from which I wake SCREAMING)–to panic about nuclear war when I learned shortly thereafter about North Korea’s recent nuke test. I texted back and forth with D for a little while, who knows a little something about free-floating anxiety, and she said just try to be kind to yourself, above all. I texted back I understand rationally how that is a good strategy, but I cannot make myself believe that it will help.

Just try to turn your mind, she wrote back. a little bit. And then turn it a little more.

At around the same time, BWells told Twitter she was sick and wishing someone would read her a bedtime story. On a whim, I pulled out my book of Just So Stories and recorded myself reading “The Cat Who Walked Alone”. I sent it to her–and then to a few friends with kids–and then to a few friends who asked for it when they heard about it–and suddenly the whole tenor of the evening shifted. I turned to my thesis and wrote into a concept I have been circling but could not figure out how to approach for some weeks now. And then I turned off the lights and fell into a deep sleep and had strange and funny dreams.

And when I told my therapist all of this on Thursday she said YES THAT IS HOW YOU DO IT, THAT IS HOW YOU SHUT THE ANXIETY DOWN YES! But, I wondered, is this–this is CBT of course–is this a CURE? Or is it just a method of dealing? To which she replied, Well of course YOU KNOW that the idea of “better” or “well” or “normal” or “not-anxious” is a concept. There IS no state of absolute health. People who are anxious will always be anxious. But anxiety is productive! You’ve done an enormous amount of work by harnessing the power of sheer anxiety. You don’t want to get rid of the anxiety. You just want to befriend it.

And then she told me that the work I’ve done in the past 3-4 months in terms of taking myself in hand, understanding what is happening inside my brain and rewriting the story in there, is better than she’s seen patients who’ve had YEARS and YEARS of therapy.

And I thought: I could totally do this.

And so then of course there’s that other thing that isn’t the mind: the body. Not much to be done there. I finished my last round of antibiotics and in a fit of boredom, I went to a dance party. Yesterday I was sore and predictably exhausted, but I also felt that post-dance party glow that I haven’t felt since…probably my birthday? Which makes me think now might be the time to start working light exercise into my schedule. I’m back on supplements and redoubling my efforts to drink a gallon of fluids a day, since the recurring problems seem to be happening in my kidneys/bladder/urinary tract. Which also means no sex, OKAY UNIVERSE, I GET IT. Vitamins, eating, light exercise, and rest. Last week my thesis advisor said You need to make friends with sleep. Accept that this portion of your life is going to be lived, mostly, in the dream world. Think of it as a gift, as your current book is set in a dreamscape anyway. I hate to ghost out of Tuscaloosa this way, but I can’t fight it. So I have to.

Just turn my mind a little bit. Then a little more.