Wonderful life (?)

Warning: the contents of this message will contain no answers, only difficult questions...

On Friday night, Cassandra Williams ended her life. I don't think this was an accident. She was at Rock and Ride, where both Ryley and Lincoln were, and she took 6 ecstasy pills. Each pill was triple the normal dosage. She collapsed in a crowd of people on a sticky concrete floor - the music blaring as she went down. I wonder how many people didn't even notice. By the time they got her to the hospital, she was in full cardiac arrest. Twenty hours later her mother made the decision to remove her life support when it was clear that there was no way that Cassie was coming back. There are no words for this kind of agony so I will stop here.

I want to clarify my meaning when I say that this was no accident. That is not to say that I believe that Cassie deliberately ended her life - far from it - I imagine that what she was going for was more life, not less. What I think is no accident, is how she got into the situation in the first place. This is far more complicated because it forces us as women to ask ourselves some difficult questions and raises some accountability issues. When it comes to smoking, drinking and drug use, girls are far outstripping the boys. Their abuse of prescription drugs is also on the rise. The reasons for this, of course, are familiar: to be cool, to be emo, to be daring, to be skinny, to be popular, peer pressure, and on and on and on. One blog I was reading had a comment from a 12 year old girl who said that the thrill of hiding something, of doing something she knew was 'bad', thrilled her. She liked the idea of 'getting away with it.'

That is when it clicked with me that this is about control, or more specifically, the lack thereof. In a world where young women have so very little control, the one thing that they can control is their bodies and what they do with them. It's primal. It says "I have dominion over this body, how it feels, how it looks, how it is perceived, how it moves, its pleasure, its pain, because dammit, it is mine and somehow, somewhere, something is going to begin and end with me. I can even place my body in situations where it loses control, because that is how in control I am." So, my question, the first of many, is: how do we give our girls more control? And, perhaps more importantly, what are doing or not doing that is taking this control away?

When I was a teenager I read The Great Gatsby for the first time. There was something so beautiful and tragic about Daisy. I loved the part where she said to Nick that if she was to ever have a daughter, she hoped that she would be a beautiful fool. Something about that line really resonated with me at age 14. Although I could not have articulated it at the time, I intimately understood the truth of that logic. Beauty was to be wished for because obviously it is currency, and foolishness so that you never had to understand that beauty was the only currency available to you as a woman. Something in me glimpsed at our lack of control and made foolishness seem so much more preferable than the Herculian task of changing it. I look at the young women of today and feel a similar deep despair. The media that indoctrinates them, their continued inequality of representation in government, religion, and commerce, the legal fights that continue to surround their bodies (abortion, rape), the 76 cents they will earn to every male dollar, the marketing departments targeting them, the entertainment industry targeting them, the drug dealers targeting them - they are, quite literally, being hunted. Today, being a beautiful fool will get you killed...

I apologize for the emotional rant. I just can't imagine what was going through the mind of a 14 year old girl who thought it would be a good idea to take 6 of anything - much less a drug with a rising death toll. There is something achingly familiar about her; it's as if at one time I was her.

One thing is clear to me: I know who I am fighting for. What is less clear, is what needs to be done...

Lateral Drift...

Deconstruction is a bitch. Just ask anyone that has gone through the process. To take something apart - be it your home, your career, or even your own assumptions and beliefs takes a tremendous amount of mental effort, and no small amount of courage either.

I have friends that are working through this process right now. Some are leaving careers either by choice or by cutbacks, others are leaving marriages that have ceased to function, others are leaving home, some are finishing school. All of them are looking for their path. I have taken apart my life brick by brick once before so I know there are a lot of misnomers out there about the process of deconstruction. The biggest one would be the amount of time it takes. If only life could be a series of well researched decisions, perfectly executed, with appropriate feelings and reactions in check - but it is never like that. It takes way longer than you imagine.

For me, deconstruction began with a profound feeling of 'stuckness' - a kind of paralysis. A feeling like I had to move, but had no idea where, or how, or why - just that what I was doing wasn't fitting any more. I felt like I was wearing a coat that was too small for me, pinching my shoulders, restricting my movement. And the feeling didn't go away. In fact, it just got worse. I remember saying to a friend of mine that I felt like my mind and my body were in a wheel chair, paralyzed totally, but I knew that my house was on fire. Profound feelings of need, or perhaps more accurately lack, combined with complete and total inability to imagine how or what to do. Being a type A personality, I naturally addressed this with a mamoth 'TO DO' list. No sir, I wasn't going down without a fight. I agressively renovated my house. I learned to cook exotic foreign meals. I monitored homework completion with military precision. I had a strict 'no television' policy. I had done the courageous thing, hadn't I? I had left a good job, comfortable wage, and years of service to rediscover what I wanted from life. At the time, I fancied myself as somewhat of a maverick, allowing myself to be open to where the universe was going to direct me next. Proactively having my midlife crisis at thirty. And do you know what? The universe was totally silent. It gave no clues as to what to "be" next. Who was I without my job title? It was astonishing to discover how much that title had constructed my belief system.

In face of the inevitable dinner party question "what do you do?" I blanched. I talked around it, projects I was planning, books I was reading, traveling, and so on. "Being" a wife and mother didn't seem like an occupation to me because I always had other ways of identifying myself. It is funny to always be on the wrong side of things. When I worked, I felt like I was being torn in two directions where the boys were concerned and what I wanted to accomplish for myself. 'Could I?' was rapidly becoming 'should I?' When I left work, I felt like I didn't have any ambition. I saw staying at home as losing myself. I think many women feel like that though. The innumerable amount of hats we're supposed to wear comfortably, without question.

At any rate, my answers to the "what do you do?" question got cheekier and more defiant. I was sick to death of answering, and asking, that question. "What do you do?" "Whatever I want, whenever I want" was my imagined response. Said coyly, betraying no insecurity. Eventually, my answer was a simple "nothing." My sisters hated this. They didn't like that I would say that I was nothing. They would put on a fashion show of all of my hats, pushing me to choose one. I tried to explain that I really wanted to try being nothing for a change. That I wanted to see who I was without the definition. Without the box to check off in efficient red pen. On the way back from being something, sometimes you have to be nothing. Otherwise, it's not deconstruction.

You would think that being nothing would leave me wide open for self discovery. Like a tabula rasa, just waiting for the universe to make its mark. Hey universe, I'm open now. Undistracted. Ready for guidance... but still nothing. So, I started to panic. I voraciously read self-help books. I consulted the oracle. Several oracles, actually. I did Meyers Briggs tests that told me I was well suited to the field I just left. I worried and fraught. I examined the problem of 'being' from every logical perspective; I thought of little else. Slowly, I sank into despair. This question of what to be and what to do became larger than life. God forbid I didn't reach my potential (hi mom). Did I just totally fuck up my career? Did I, (gasp) fail?

I wish I could give my friends a map of how to find their answers. Or at least how to be nothing comfortably, patiently. One thing that I will say is that when conventional linear logic fails, allow your mind to drift laterally. Do something else unrelated. Think of other things. Give 'nothing' time to gel. And yes, being nothing and doing nothing is a viable option. Sometimes, when you have worried a problem to death, it's the only thing left to do.

Below is an excerpt from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Prisig. It was in deceased friend's book collection; Dave sending us his wisdom from beyond the grave. I have always said that the right book always finds me at the right time - at the moment when I most need it.

"Yes and no...this or that...one or zero. On the basis of this elementary two term discrimination, all human knowledge is built up. The demonstration of this is the computer memory which stores all of its knowledge in the form of binary information. It contains ones and zeros and that’s all.
Because we are unaccustomed to it we don’t usually see that there’s a third possible logical term equal to yes and no which is capable of expanding our understanding in an unrecognized direction. We don’t even have a term for it, so I use the Japanese mu. Mu means “no thing”. It points outside the process of dualistic discrimination. Mu simply says “No class; not one, not zero, not yes, not no.” It states that the context of the question is such that a yes or no answer is in error and should not be given. “Un-ask the question” is what it says. Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer” (288).

I love that last part: "Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the answer." It is one thing to wrap your head around it theoretically, it is quite another to actually apply it to your life. All of this meditation on 'destiny' and 'paths' and 'being' was getting me nowhere. It wasn't until I 'un-asked' the question, that I started to drift. It wasn't until I started to drift, that I found what I was looking for. Not total illumination, more just a glimmer. Slowly, things started to take shape. That isn't to say that I didn't hit roadblocks. I had to start later than I wanted. There were hoops to jump through. Questions of deservedness that needed to be answered on my part and theirs. But because I wasn't asking the question and wasn't paying attention for the 'signs,' I didn't get weighed down by them.

And whaddya know? Here I am, standing on a path. No list of pros and cons, no Failure Modes and Effects analysis, no Ishikawa diagram, no stakeholder analysis gave me the answer. I just wandered into it. Mu, totally.

Oh no honey, I'm just fixin' to smoke and drink...

This was once said to me by a brash blousey southern woman when asked if there was anything that we could get her to eat...no no honey, I'm just fixin' to smoke and drink. Although 'drink' sounded more like 'drank.' She was powdering her cleavage with a kit from Chanel, specifically designed for the purpose, while inhaling a Whiskey sour. I love the south for this...so unapologetic for their vices. It's a glorious place. And the women there are so major - all hair, tits and nails. Every recipe they make starts with a cup of mayonaise and 2 sticks of butter...brunch dates are sure to take place with a fully stocked bloody mary bar. There were a few moments when I wondered if my Irish heritage would be sufficient to pull me through.

"Good thing I don't live here" is what I think. Then there is the other woman who declines a martini because she 'switched to pills exclusively sometime back.' "Care for a oxycontin?" she asks. I demure. I have always had a suspicion of OTC's and have been known to rail against the drug industry for targeting women with their euphemetically named little pink pills: saraphim (seriously? God's highest angel...and the republicans let them get away with that?), ativan, valium, and the like. 'Benzos' as they are more commonly known. And what is wild is that there doesn't seem to be any regulatory body in the States in regards to pills. Perhaps there isn't in Canada either and I just don't know, but down there they order whatever they want off the internet. Pills to make you happy. Pills to make you happier if the original pills start to crap out. Pills so you don't ingest carbs. Pills so you can have sex. Green tea now comes in pill format, for christ sake. The war on drugs has really just became the war on pain - emotional or otherwise. But it is the designer jewelled pill cases that really blew me away. Dolce and Gabanna, Tiffany's, Louis Vuitton, Swarovski crystals - you name it, they are putting their logo all over pill cases. They want to brand your drug addiction.

Anyway, I have been thinking about pills lately mostly because I have managed in 35 years to keep my life relatively pill free. I don't take the birth control pill - I don't like the idea of ingesting hormones. I rarely take aspirin. I had my second child completely drug free (Disclaimer: the labour was only 2 hours long and for my first child, I could have made out with the anaesthesiologist out of sheer gratitude when he arrived for my epidural). I am not trying to make myself out like some saint. I drink wine. I eat fatty foods. I smoked for years. But pills were always something that I stayed away from. And always planned to, until lately. However, I have killer insomnia that rears its ugly head every now and then. I know some things can make it worse: stress, alcohol, lack of exercise, anxiety... check, check, check and check. Yes to all four - so natch, my insomnia is off the rails. Have you ever been made crazy from lack of sleep? It is quite an interesting high. And by interesting, I mean please make it stop. I want to get off this ride now.

I guess there are some perks. I write better in this state (talk about suffering for art). I roam the house, randomly cleaning. I write long letters to people and then don't mail them. My oven is pristinely clean. But mostly, I just worry and stare at the ceiling. Sometimes I think there is a humming bird that lives in my heart. I feel his tiny wings fluttering just below the surface. Somehow, after all those years at GE, I have internalized 'better, faster, cheaper' - words that are the hallmark of a ruminating mind. So I am considering sleeping pills...

I have taken one once before - although I think it was an ativan. I remember saying to my sister that they ought to be called 'calm the fuck down' because that is what it accomplished. I felt no stress. I wasn't high though, just calm. And I slept like a baby - flat on my back, arms splayed above my head. I also remember thinking that I couldn't believe I hadn't taken one years ago, all of the suffering I could have spared myself. Yet - strangely, I never followed up on it and asked my doctor for a prescription.

So here I am again. Day 5 of no sleep. I want to cry, but have no reason. I worry, but have nothing real to worry about. I could work, but have no work to do. My legs feel like I have been on a 16 hour flight, they can scarcely support my weight. My head is swimming. I am exhausting those around me because of the sheer energy that is radiating out of my pores. I am a jack russel terrier on coke.



White flag. I surrender. I am taking the damn pill.