A wart

I often write on this blog of my breakthroughs, my realizations, my enlightening moments. In fact, that is sort of why this blog is here. This is not one of those posts about enlightenment. In fact, this is about those small incidents, the little seemingly meaningless ones, or the flippant comment that becomes, to quote Miller's Crossing, a wart on one’s fanny. It doesn't obsess the everyday, but every so often, I adjust in my seat and feel it there, and it just makes everything uncomfortable.

This really is so stupid. I mean, it really isn’t that insulting or anything. So, I am just going to write about it hypothetically. Let’s just say there was a get together that I avoided because humans confound me. I am a Martian who was raised by gnomes and bunnies, which has made me confused and soft. Anyhow, my avoidance started talk about my whereabouts, and someone speculating might have mentioned something like “Angie doesn't return my calls because she is jealous of my children.”

I wasn’t there, so I am just making this up as I go along. Really.

It is true on the Red Planet where my people come from, we speculate about others we haven't heard from in a while. Some people even deflect any negative connotations that lack of communication might have on themselves by questioning the sanity of the estranged one. But, in general, we give some effing latitude to a grieving mother. I can’t even tell you why, but it really hurt to hear that, even as I imagine it wasn't said maliciously. In my clearest moments, I imagine the situation reversed--I could have been one of those hurt egos theorizing over a glass of wine about where I have been. It isn't even particularly a cruel statement. It just is not true. I mean, yes, it is true that I often do not call people back who are not on the A-Team, or Martian brethren. I just can't make the chitchat of loss with people who don’t have that je ne sais quoi. But I am pretty much an equal opportunity jackass. I just simply avoid most people. As charming and handsome as your children might be, it has nothing to do with it.

What angers me about this stupid, silly little comment is the way it has sort of embedded itself into my sense of self, as though it is somehow reflective of who I am and what was known about me over the last fifteen years. Of all the things to think about, why this? People have actually said stupid mean shit to my face this past year. This incident and others like it are so small in relation to the rest of the year. It happens, as it did this weekend, that sometimes, when in the passenger seat driving home from a lovely dinner with my beautiful family, it creeps into my head and absolutely ruins my moment. And I get angry and sad, and miss all the things I have lost in this last year, including my good name.

Why do I care?

Maybe the truth is much more shallow than I want to admit. I have just lost my filter, and it's fucking liberating. Daughter death wiped out my effectiveness of faking it, lying, obfuscating and hiding my emotions. These kinds of incidents, while better left untouched (I wasn't there after all), are simply out of my control. What people tell themselves about me is not me. But truth be told, I want to defend myself. I want to defend my reputation. I wanted to write a venting email telling everyone at that party how NOT jealous I am of their lives. I wanted to explain with effective use of bullet points, time lines, graphs and pie charts why exactly I haven't reached out to certain people. I craved just writing in huge scare quotes and capital letters "THE DEATH OF MY BABY ISN'T ABOUT YOU." Somehow I manage to reign in my angry Martian self in these circumstances, because I realize that I don't just fantasize about doing this to the one woman who said this, I fantasize about doing it to everyone with whom I have ever been in contact. Just a huge mass email of venting about everything. Not telling anyone off isn't nearly as satisfying as laying into a random gossiper would be.

Misplaced anger, good evening, nice to see you again.

This is the spiritual practice that I crave right now--learning to let go of petty grievances and silly obsessive thoughts. If I can meditate on letting go of the guilt of my daughter’s death, then certainly I can let go on my need to control my reputation. I know this incident is so small that it would be behoove me to forget it. I know this incident is petty that it would behoove me to remind myself that it is someone else's issue not mine. I just don't know how to do it. Part of the reason I write this blog is to talk about my grief, my shame, my guilt, my pain…I expose it to the air, because shame feeds on the damp, dark corners of your consciousness and grows into a kind of cancer. It is like crap in your lawn stinking up the place. You need to expose that shit to the air, dry it up, let it float away, or maybe, just maybe, if you can't let it go, that dried manure can feed your lawn, make it more beautiful, nourish spiritual growth. Well, that is what I am hoping since the letting it blow away into the air thing isn't exactly working out.