Fuck you, Debbie.

It started with Eddie calling me his “girlfriend.” I thought it was creepy but the adults around me seemed to think it was cute. He began calling my home to ask if I would accompany him to pick up, my best friend, Mari – his daughter, from school. I don’t remember how many trips we made before he began showing me Playboy magazines while we waited in the school parking lot. He asked me if I preferred the models with shaved or unshaven vaginas as if I had any opinion as an 11-year-old child.

Just a few weeks later, I was running out of their home, barefoot and trembling at 3am. I crawled through the dog door in my backyard to get inside my house. I stood outside of my father’s bedroom door silently sobbing into my hands for what seemed like hours. My face stung but I can’t remember what any of the rest of my body felt like. What do I do? Do I wake them up? I grabbed my dog and crawled into my bed. Chelsea was not allowed in my bed but at that moment, I was not concerned about that. I don’t remember much about the next few days.

I tried to keep things as normal as possible while I mentally sorted out what to do next, continuing going to Mari’s home to spend time with her and her family, my abuser included. Eventually, it became too much. After weeks of Mari inviting me to spend the night at her home again and me rejecting her invitations, I ended up shouting in her face, “Your dad touched me…you know, there! I can’t stay there! I’m sorry! It’s not your fault!” before running off into my house. I cried in my room until the inevitable phone call came.

Debbie had a quick discussion with my father and whisked him out the front door. I knew where they were going. I spent hours going over how I was going to explain what happened, how I was going to tell them the despicable, disgusting things he did to me, to what extent I was going to describe it all. When they walked in the door, they walked past me like I wasn’t even there. Eventually, my stepmother returned to my makeshift bedroom in the family living room to tell me that I better start working on my apology to Eddie. I was not totally sure that I understood what she was saying so I asked her to repeat it. Her expectation was that I would apologize to my abuser because I had embarrassed him, spreading my “lies.” I refused. Later that evening, Debbie phoned her mother in Florida and opened the conversation with the question, “Guess what Hilary is lying about now?”

Debbie and I were never close and I certainly did not trust her. However, I did expect my father to stand up for me. Instead, I was forced to apologize to the man that violated me. I was forced to repeat, “I lied, nothing happened” multiple times over the next few years. I was taken to therapy to discuss my behavioral issues. Depression had taken over me entirely. I didn’t skip school but I might as well have. I refused to do homework and lied about it to my mother. I hid report cards and forged signatures. On a trip to visit my father, Debbie tried to have me committed to a mental institution because I “didn’t know the difference between fantasy and reality.”

My mother got the worst of it. The mother that had always protected me, showed me that women are powerful and not as helpless as the world sometimes makes them appear. I couldn’t believe that she wasn’t furious for me. As small as she is in stature, she has the heart of a lion and even now, at 37, I am still her baby girl. I expected that she would have kicked in his front door and strangled Eddie with her bare hands. But she didn’t. I was devastated. I thought she had decided that she just didn’t care about what had happened to me and I was left to deal with it on my own. So, I did. Eventually, my best friend forgave me for my “mistake” and things went back to normal. Well, as normal as they could be.

Four years went by before my whole life fell apart right in front of my eyes. I had made the mistake of confiding in a friend of mine about the assault. I will never know if she made friends with Mari in an effort to destroy the little peace that I had at that time or if it was just life happening how life happens. That “friend” sent Mari a message on AIM (remember AIM, guys?) inquiring how she was able to forgive me after what I had accused her father of doing. By strange circumstance, I was standing behind Mari when she received that message. I bolted out of her front door and ran to my house next door to get on AIM and ask my friend just what the fuck she thought she was doing. I remember my father was on his computer when I ran into his office and shouted at him to get out of my way. He was so confused, he actually got up and left the room.

I couldn’t remember that conversation if my life depended on it, but at some point, I decided that I was tired of hiding. Exhausted. I had been fighting for so long to move on, pretending that none of it had ever happened. There was no way that I could go through that again. I had to tell them. I had to tell everyone exactly what happened. I remember I was hiding my face when I told my dad that all of the things that I had accused Eddie of doing were real and true. I have no idea what he said. Or what came after that. I was taken to the same therapist that my dad had taken me to previously. She was shocked to find out that there had been an accusation made and even more shocked that I was forced to recant and apologize to this monster. I will never forget the therapist’s face when my father admitted that he had never told my mother about the incident. No wonder she didn’t kick Eddie’s door in. She didn’t know.

Never in my life, up to that point or since then, I have never felt smaller or shittier. I had been taking my anger out on my mom for four years at this point and she didn’t deserve any of it. Rushes of awful things that I had said to her flashed in my brain. All of the stress I had put her through and at times, I had been straight up nasty to her. What a horrible daughter I had been and she truly didn’t know why. I remember a day that she was driving us to school and I came so close to exploding and asking her why she didn’t care that I’d been assaulted, but I just cried the entire drive. I’m pretty sure she thought I was legitimately insane.

The therapist instructed my dad to call my mother from the next room. He didn’t understand why I wasn’t the one to make that phone call. I have never seen someone ordered out of a room so quickly. About 20 minutes later, he returned and told me that my mother wanted to speak to me. I have no idea what was said in that room while I was speaking to my mom but whatever it was shook my dad pretty good. When I picked up the phone to talk to my mom, she was crying harder than I have ever heard her cry until then and since.

All she could say was, “Why didn’t you tell me?!” She told me that she was getting on the next flight to Los Angeles and she would see me soon. I couldn’t stop thinking about all of the screaming fights we had had. All of the names I called her. And how awful was I to think that she wouldn’t care? We spoke for probably 30 minutes and she just kept asking why I didn’t tell her. I (wrongly) assumed that my father had, which I now understand was completely ridiculous of me.

My mom did, in fact, get on the next flight to Los Angeles and she was at my dad’s door before nightfall.

Debbie never allowed my dad to acknowledge my assault, so my relationship with him suffered. I needed to feel like he supported me while I worked through the trauma. I spoke to CPS, went to therapy and was even put on medication. I developed panic attacks and sunk into a deep depression, much worse than before. I thought telling my story would help me, not make my life worse. It crushed me that my father would not tell his wife to leave me alone because what I had been through already was awful enough.

I have written several messages to Mari over the years. I’ve only ever sent one. I wished her a happy birthday and told her that I didn’t expect a response but I wanted her to know that even after all these years, I was still thinking about her. I didn’t get a reply.

I love you.

I’ve always loved you. Deeply. And it scares me. The last time I loved someone, I almost didn’t survive.

But you are perfect. You are loving. You are kind. You are everything they weren’t.

And I have never felt as beautiful as I do when you look at me.

Every insecurity, every fear…you steal them from me and show me it will all be okay.

Your touch doesn’t make me retreat, your hands are strong and sure, your voice calm and soothing.

You showed me the light.

And I am happy.

I don’t have to be afraid anymore. Part 2.

I was not allowed to speak to my mother, as the two had a long, very negative history of hating each other since we were teenagers. I eventually emailed my stepfather, who ended up being my savior. He wired me $200 which was taken from me immediately. To make a long story much shorter, we moved in with my stepfather, who paid me to organize and purge his house of things he did not need, as he would be selling it in the year to come. He even paid my boyfriend to fix things around the house, as my stepfather joked that he no longer had the flexibility or the will to do it himself.

During that time, my boyfriend implemented “rules” I had never even imagined.

• I was not allowed to bend down for any reason. I have lived with pain in my knees since I was in my late teens and tend to bend at the waist instead of squatting/bending my knees. He interpreted this as “showing off [my] ass.”
• I was not allowed to speak to another man for any reason. Even talking to my stepfather “too long” was a regular complaint of his.
• I was not allowed to touch another person, but most ESPECIALLY a man, for ANY reason, including taking anything that was handed to me.
• He was to handle any and all conversation unless he gave me permission to speak to a specific person.
• I could not ask any questions of him in front of anyone else, including my stepfather, as I was never to second-guess him.
• When he was ready to go to sleep, I was to go to sleep as well. This was particularly difficult for me, as I have been a chronic insomniac my entire life. I was not allowed to go into another room to read or watch TV. If he woke up and I was not asleep yet, he would shout at me and call me names. On a few occasions, he threatened to “knock [me] out” so I would go to sleep.
•  While driving, I was not to look at any other cars or the people driving them. I also could not look at him, change the radio station, change my sitting position “too often” (this one was particularly hard for me as I have chronic back problems) or look anywhere except forward unless he was speaking to me.

Every single day, he would wake me up and demand that I come outside to sit on the front porch and watch him smoke cigarettes in the driveway. As he chain-smoked, he would alternate between threatening me and berating me over every mistake I made the day before. And the day before that. And the day before that. I am sure you see a pattern here.

It was never over anything I could control. He hated his life. He was broke. He needed cigarettes. His mom was rude to him on the phone. His welfare benefits weren’t on his EBT card yet. Or things that I had done days before and obviously could not correct in present time. I had not given him enough sex the day before. I was paying too much attention to my dog. I was not wearing enough clothing to cover the bruises when my stepfather came home.

He was always trying to force me to do something to make me uncomfortable. One of our biggest, basic differences was that he was a pretty extreme racist. He often used pejoratives and horrible terms that bothered me to my core. No matter how many times I asked him to stop using those words, at the very least – “just not in my presence, please,” he refused and taunted me when I would get upset. One rainy night in November, after we’d had a pretty awful fight and I had left him at a gas station a few miles from my stepfather’s house, he found me parked in front of my stepfather’s home, trying to get all my crying out before I went inside.

Before I knew it, he had walked from the gas station to the house, and kicked my passenger side door, hard enough to leave a large dent. He then flung the door open and pushed it in the opposite direction, toward the hood of the car, bending the springs so it would no longer close properly.  He got in the car and started to tell me a story about someone he had spoken to at the gas station. The word he used to describe them was one I have never used in my entire life. He saw my reaction and decided to use that to make me uncomfortable. He asked me to say the n-word. I refused. He asked me again. I refused. Each time, his demand escalated.

Eventually, he grabbed me around my neck and pinched as hard as he could. He screamed in my face over and over. “Say it, you fucking bitch!” I refused. He squeezed harder and pushed my head toward the ground. “Say it! N—er! SAY IT! N—er, n—er, n—er! Fucking SAY IT!”

He reached his fist back as though he was going to hit me again so I shouted, “Okay! Okay!” I begged him to just stop screaming. He had zero fear of being arrested so he often would yell at me in front of strangers if he was worked up enough.

The back of my neck was bruised for three weeks.

I don’t have to be afraid anymore.

He has been sentenced to two years in prison for hurting another woman.

Unfortunately, all I feel right now is guilt.

Every day for the past two years, my heart has raced a bit when walking out of my front door. “By the time you see me, it will be too late.” That was the threat. He intended to shoot me. I don’t know the woman he hurt but I feel like I owe her the biggest apology in the world. I should have been strong enough to put him behind bars before he hurt anyone else.

I was not.

In high school, we were the oddest pair. He was the new guy; quiet, with a criminal past. He was so tall, olive-skinned Native and a naturally scowl-faced person. I was the girl that dyed her hair ridiculous colors and wore Disney character backpacks. He quickly became our continuation school’s newest pot connect; his was better than the shake everybody was getting from god-knows-where. I was something of a teacher’s pet and not just because I was a teacher’s daughter. My mother was horrified, our school counselor was “concerned” and my friends were confused.

No one knew that he rollerbladed across town every night at midnight to throw rocks at my window so I could sneak out and we would sit at the park by my house and talk for hours. He stared at me like I was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. I was mesmerized by him as well. He had the strongest arms and the most beautiful hair, shaved all around his head except for the very top where he grew it long and pulled it back in a ponytail to honor his heritage.

He left me shortly before I graduated from high school. It wasn’t a break-up. He was just…gone. He was ripped out of my life and all I had left was an empty boyfriend-sized hole and no answers. The apartment he shared with his mother and sister was now empty, the phone numbers I had no longer worked, and he stopped showing up for school. No one knew where he went. I was devastated.

Seven or eight years later, a friend called to tell me she had run into him on the street just one town over from ours. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Honestly, I had never thought about that day. The day I found out he was still in this solar system. I had packed up my time with him in a tiny little box and stored it away in my heart, maybe to be brought out again when I told stories to my grandchildren about true love and heartbreak. We kept in touch, lusted after each other and probably flirted a little too much for other people’s comfort but we were never single at the same time, so we never had the opportunity to rekindle what we had lost in our teenage years.

Fast forward to two years ago, I was leaving my fiancé and moving in with a friend. He suggested that I come to spend a few days with him before I transition to my friend’s house and the idea was exciting. We had such an incredible amount of unfinished business from our teenage years so I said yes immediately. I had a few moments of “What in the hell are you thinking?!” but I did it anyway.

The first few days were great. We had perma-smiles and our limbs were entangled like clove hitch knots. Slowly, the walls started closing in. First, I was shouted at because of how long it took me to get out of the car and into the house. The reasoning I was given? The older gentleman across the path was “shady” and would leer at any woman passing by so I was giving him the opportunity to look at me by taking my time removing my belongings from the car and coming inside. Then he began ripping up my clothes he deemed unacceptable to be worn outside of the home for one reason or another. Too tight, too low-cut, did not have sleeves, bright colored or had writing on it, therefore, “attracted too much attention.”

He demanded that I cover my tattoos, which meant I had to wear tennis shoes, long pants and wear my hair down at all times. By this point, I had bruises on my arms from where he’d yanked me in and out of rooms, up off or on to the bed and just plain pushed me many times. I had to wear long sleeves and sweatshirts to cover the marks. I do not have the ability to regulate my body temperature so I was constantly sick from heatstroke, as it was 105 degrees outside that summer.

It was just a few days later that he hit me for the first time. I’d never been struck by a man before. In your mind, everyone thinks that when someone hits you, your immediate reaction would be to hit back. Or at the very least walk away and get help. Instead, I froze. I’ve never been so disappointed in myself.

After that, the abuse escalated on what seemed like a daily basis. I continued to be surprised by it every time. He would get angry with me for things I didn’t understand. Not standing close enough to him. Standing too close to him. Looking at other cars while we were driving on the highway. Not paying attention to other cars while he was driving. My pharmacist was too familiar with me. (I actually agree with this one. I don’t even have to give them my name anymore. This is just the life of a chronic pain patient.) Allowing a cashier to put change in my hand, therefore touching me, instead of putting it on the counter. She also complimented me on my custom made Sharks sweatshirt and asked where she could get one. He slammed my head into the car door when we left the store.

After forcing me to live in my car for three weeks as some kind of display of dedication to him and our “relationship,” he extorted enough money from his mother to buy himself a 30-year-old RV. The roof leaked in a dozen places and we had to have tarps tied to the top of it. It wasn’t registered or legal in any way and nothing inside worked. He insisted on parking it in a tiny truck stop by the shittiest airport in the valley because that was the only place the police wouldn’t bother us. We would sneak into the showers at the truck stop after someone had already used them.

Over the course of the next month or so, he destroyed my car that I’d had for almost 11 years. It sure wasn’t perfect but it was mine. Any time he got upset, he would take it out on my car. He pulled down the rear view mirror, kicked in the glove compartment and all of the A/C vents. He broke the center console and tore off the turn signal bars entirely.

I wasn’t allowed to leave the RV. “Someone might see [me]”; one of the truckers or someone in the restaurants across the street. He had already stomped on my cell phone, bent my laptop in half and shattered the screen entirely so I couldn’t contact anyone even if I had managed to get just one second away from him.

I was a hostage.

He continued to hit me every day. I knew it was coming but I never knew when or what for. Some days were worse than others. Usually when he did not have enough weed or cigarettes to keep him distracted. He barked orders at me like I was a dog. “Sit down.” “Stop moving.”  He even demanded affection this way but I was terrified not to obey.

When his welfare benefits were cut off, he was furious. He had already taken and spent all of the money that I had saved to keep me afloat while I was at my friend’s house, so I had nothing. It was suddenly my fault that we had no money. He started stealing things from the Wal-Mart nearby and even made me hide things under my sweatshirt so that if we were caught, I would be arrested as well. The first time, I refused to take what he handed me. When we returned to the RV, he twisted my arm so far behind my back it went numb and slammed me against the wall. When I fought back, he picked me up and threw me on the bed in the back and raped me while I screamed for help.

One day, he told me to spend the weekend at a friend’s house. My car was still driveable at this point so I did as he asked. While I was there, my friend offered to take us for manicures and pedicures. I thought it was a nice treat and I appreciated it very much. When I returned to the RV, he was visibly high on methamphetamine. He noticed that my nails were painted and asked where I had gotten the money to have such a thing done. I explained that my friend had paid for the service. He started bending my fingers backward to try to break the nails off but they were not fake. He shouted at me to clip my fingernails as close to the skin as possible and then squeezed my hands as tight as he could while roughly scraping the polish off my nails with his pocketknife. It took over an hour. He swore at me and berated me the entire time. My hands were bloody and sore for days.

Eventually, he told me that I needed to contact someone, friend or family, to ask for money.

Someone tried to high-five me yesterday.

His mom’s piece of shit she called a boyfriend was on his way. She had been screaming down the phone at him for 20 minutes about the methamphetamine he stole from her pocket the night before. I stayed in “our” bedroom because I had only moved in a week or two before and was trying to stay out of the way. I wasn’t getting involved with this just yet.

Christopher came in and told me to get in the car. I jumped into my Uggs and into the Acura. There weren’t many options on the Island so we drove to one of the bars two blocks down and parked behind it. I felt the knuckles on the back of his hand hit my left temple. I don’t have any word it other than ‘stunned.’

I know everyone says this but it took me a few seconds for my brain to process what had happened. I had never had anyone just blatantly smack me in the head. I had no idea what I had done to deserve this. But…who was this monster that just hit me? I don’t understand.

He continued to scream at me for not listening to him. I didn’t know what he was talking about. When? What did he say that I missed? He switched to hitting me with the heel of his hand against my forehead. I apologized over and over. I begged him over and over to please repeat what he said so that I could hear it.

I still have no idea what he said.

Ouch.

There is something about breakups that forces you to look back on prior failed relationships. Packing boxes and consolidating your belongings in order to move and move on is necessary but painful. Unfortunately, my relationship track record has a lot of selfish, narcissistic assholes. This article really struck a chord with me.

https://herway.net/relationship/every-girl-ever-lost-narcissistic-man/

I didn’t lose him. I broke free.

Sam Waterston as Prof. Walter Zarrow in Anesthesia

“But then, what do all these thinkers we’ve examined this semester have in common? If we truly explore to find a common thread? At the outset of a century that would constitute the bloodiest in human history. Along with scientific and technological advancements that would literally make us like Gods. Even as we began to dismantle the very meaning of God. They ask, what is a life? Does to live any longer have a how? Does it any longer have a why? Against a backdrop of industrialization, people will contend with alienation, dislocation, population on a mass scale, and murder on a mass scale. They’ll consider the constraints of truth. Whether metaphor or paradigm, with many concluding actual truth has never existed. A nexus in the great human saga, when we dared to trade the organizing bliss, of good and evil, right and wrong, as determined by a creator for other opiates: communism, socialism, capitalism, psychology, technology, any learnable system to replace what had begun to evaporate: the 20th century. My own. But also the one into which each of you was born. For many, an era of hope liberation, possibility. For others of abandonment and despair. A most human century in which we begin really to understand that Nietzsche was right: we are beautifully, finally, achingly, alone. In this void, philosophy at its worst becomes self-reflective, linguistic, semantic, relativism having rendered any discussion of right and wrong, good and evil, to be the quaint concerns of another age. At its most provocative, it asks other questions. Those concerned with locating our stranded selves, when meaning seems to have died, nothing less, in short, then ‘why do we live at all?’ and ‘what makes us who we are?’ They ask, ‘what now?’ And we’re still asking it. What will fortify us as another century, your century, commences? Do we abandon finally the search for truths that seem ever more elusive, even silly to some? The ethical? The moral? The good? Principles that by definition can never be prove when so much now can be proved? Or is all this finally and forever pointless? Are we done? We can destroy cities, alter the planet irreversibly, speak instantaneously face-to-face from across the globe, create life where there was to be none, even while intoxicating ourselves with it all. And yet, how do we still seek purpose? And where do we hope to find it if we’re so busy convincing ourselves there needn’t be any? And so we wander, eyes closed to the dark, while technology, science, medicine and godlessness blaze illusions around us, with less to guide us now than ever, seemingly omnipotent, but more human and just as afraid. These quandaries do not end with this course in a week from today. They begin. And I certainly haven’t taught these writers for 30 years just so you can drop references to existential thinkers and their antecedents at dinner parties. The crowd is untruth. In an era darkened by the false shade of imperviousness, you and those who pause to question, carry the light. It’s been a wonderful 34 years. Let’s not be strangers, either to one another, or more importantly, to everything we’ve learned from one another. May your best years be yet to come. And so for us all.”

The Reluctant Squeaky Wheel

When ObamaCare first went into effect, I was working for an insurance firm. We often walked clients through the application process over the phone. About a year later, I was laid off from that firm. As someone with an auto-immune disease, my healthcare is very important to me. It’s mostly out of necessity.

After not having any luck with my job search in my new area, and my medical conditions not being addressed or looked after properly, I found myself in severe pain, having gained 20 pounds and completely miserable. When I realized that my health was declining quickly, I applied for Disability. I filled out every form imaginable, sometimes in triplicate. After submitting my application, I had a phone interview where the representative said, “Do I have this right?  You’re 30 years old?”  I assured him that his records were correct and that I do have an impressive plethora of health problems for someone who has only been on the planet for a few decades.

I had a physical and mental exam. Being that I’m not a nut-job, both doctors told me they would be recommending that my application be accepted. It was not. When I got the letter of denial, I sank into a depression – not understanding where things went wrong. I knew that I had to do something in order to obtain healthcare somehow, any way necessary. After doing some research, I decided to apply for Medi-Cal. Would I prefer to have employer-sponsored health insurance? Of course. At this point, that’s not an option. Physically, I am a mess and I’m not sure that I have the ability to maintain full-time employment where I can earn that privilege.

Navigating the Medi-Cal system has been one of the most frustrating things I have ever experienced. Everything is always someone else’s job but no one knows who that person is or how to get in touch with them. When one is accepted by Medi-Cal, they receive a packet of forms and information. I signed my name a dozen times, did extensive research on all of the doctors that were presented as options and finally chose one. I mailed the forms the very next day. Two weeks later, I received a letter stating that because I had not filled out the packet of jumbled letters, check-boxes and next to no actual information, they were providing me another. How kind.

After filling out the second packet, I mailed that in as well. This is where things get complicated.

I scheduled an appointment to see the doctor I was assigned. Upon walking in, it was clearly a revolving door operation. I signed in with my name and arrival time and sat down to wait. I watched other patients leave and the people I had been sharing the waiting room with be called back one by one.

My name was shouted not long after the last person in the lobby had disappeared. Waiting alone in that stark room made me nervous. I was glad to hear that double-knock on the door as it opened. The doctor introduced himself but I was so distracted by his handsome features and strong handshake that I completely missed his name. I broke down my medical history with the assistance of my over-stuffed expanding file of paperwork from doctors going back to my early 20s.  I explained that I truly was not out of my mind, just desperate to get some sleep and stop feeling so anxious every second of the day. Some help with the near constant sharp pain in my knees would be great too.

A much younger me wasted time being disappointed that I didn’t seem to be able to manage “normal” life without SSRI’s and NSAID’s. I don’t believe that anyone wants to feel dependent on medication of any kind. I think it makes most of us feel like we are chasing some standard of happiness or satisfaction that we are unable to obtain on our own. No matter how much someone doesn’t want to be “normal,” being chronically and severely ill is not a lifestyle anyone would choose.

Nine months later, I’ve switched doctors and developed a positive rapport with the new one. He’s far less handsome but has accepted that I am not a pill-chaser or an addict of any kind and that I have enough experience to know what I’m talking about when it comes to what works for me and what doesn’t. Yesterday, I got the results from the MRI’s that I had done on both of my knees last week. The pain I’ve been suffering from for the last ten years is caused by “significant degenerative tears” in both of my menisci.

My mom always taught me that being nice to people is the easiest way to get what you want, no matter how frustrated or angry you are. I’ve had to be the squeaky, obnoxious wheel that calls every day and annoying the office staff to get to this point, but I’m here.  The receptionist knows my voice, the pharmacist knew my name just a few weeks after I started seeing this doctor and while I hate it, I carry a pouch of prescriptions around with me. Some people take pills to get high or escape from the world. I take them to have the ability to participate in life.

I cannot help but think how hard it must be for the other patients that don’t speak English or communicate well with medical staff. Any time I go in, there is always a frustrated person walking away from the front desk as if someone had just popped their birthday balloon. I am so lucky to have such supportive family and friends that are always there for me when I feel like giving up.

“Your mom is on the phone.”

I was in Los Angeles at my father’s house for Christmas. Ever since I was old enough to fly as an unaccompanied minor, my holidays rotated between my mother’s home in Northern California and my father’s house further south. My dad opened my bedroom door after I had been in bed and asleep for a few hours, letting in the bright light from the hallway. He shook my shoulder and told me – looking very nervous and somber – that I needed to wake up. I sat up and brushed my hair out of my face. My dad was holding the portable phone from the kitchen.

“Your mom is on the phone, honey. Wake up just a little bit to talk to her, okay?”

Everybody is a Genius Until They Open Their Mouths

It has been seven weeks since our initial meeting. We were in training to be appointed mandatory court reporters. I made no judgments or assumptions about my fellow attendees. Well, minus the older gentleman that arrived for the first class and left halfway through the evening. I judged him just a little bit.

One of the requirements for being sworn in was 10 hours of court observation. My first day observing court, I cried. I cried happy tears along with siblings that hadn’t seen each other in months and I cried sad tears when the judge needed to extend the time a small child would be living in the foster home they’d been in for the last year because the child’s mother was making zero progress in her reunification and drug rehabilitation programs.

We’d been sworn in as a class already, but this was the final night of instruction. We were presented with the opportunity to speak directly with the judge. Most questions were situational and procedural. The judge is sharp, insightful, and is probably a reincarnation of Mother Teresa. You asked a question that was easily answered in the last chapter of the handbook.

After each person had been given the opportunity to ask a question or comment on something they had seen in court, you piped up. “Is your husband just the most patient man on the planet?”  The judge looked puzzled. She looked at our instructor, who was also confused. “Well, you know. He has to deal with his woman making all of these tough choices at work and I’m sure you can’t leave it all at the office so is he just used to you talking about work all the time?”

…”His woman”?
Excuse me?

I had visions of knocking your fucking misogynistic block off that sack of bones you call a body. Do you know where you are? Also, I don’t think you could have said anything more disrespectful at that moment.

This is 2015. Women are amazing and powerful. This is not 1952. Pull your head out of your ass and get with the times. Barefoot, pregnant and brainless may be more your speed but this woman is an influential  and impressive beauty with a very serious burden that, while I am sure she struggles with some of the difficult decisions on a daily basis, she is much more qualified to handle that your ignorant ass.

Grow up.