A Resilient Partnership: Seeking Equality and Respect

My dad had a habit of buying a book for everyone at Christmas. My new boyfriend was not a reader, but my dad bought him a book anyway. Money – it’s all he seems to be interested in, my dad said, while that’s exactly what I would have said about my dad, yet from him, it was clearly an insult.

It’s also an insult to be given a book when you don’t read. “What am I supposed to do with that?” my boyfriend asked, and he couldn’t return or exchange it because my dad had written a dedication in it. Not a deep one, just a to and from and the year. What a waste of precious money.

My dad thinks that life is all about investing. He watches the business channel constantly, talks about nothing but stocks, and boasts about how smart he is with his picks and strategy, but that’s about it.

During the pandemic, he asked if I needed money, and I needed everything but. I needed love, support, and interest. Sure, money would have let me shed the layers and turn up the thermostat past 15, but you get what you get in life.

I needed support. I was networking with people who couldn’t stop talking about their kids and what they were up to, and mine had no idea. Infected with jealousy and lack, I was ineffective at networking. I just wanted to go home and shut out everyone.

I’d tried to tell him about my writing and goals, but he thought writing was a stupid waste of time, no matter his dedication to buying books – the only ones that mattered were the nonfiction ones, and at least I’d stuck to that genre.

Still, he didn’t read a word I wrote.

The Deep Suffering

Neither did my boyfriend. But I didn’t expect him to – he’s not a reader.

I don’t think anyone has ever read anything I’ve written. Perhaps I am insufferable, as I declare to have answers for trying times instead of making room for the reader and their questions. Maybe I am socially disconnected and will always be. Perhaps I only write for myself. How selfish is that?

I am not a writer, I am a thinker; I just write to keep track. I think I write to share, but no one reads, so what does it matter what I write? Or think? It absolutely doesn’t.

Today, I am inquiring as to why I am awake at midnight. I am wondering why I haven’t gotten my hair cut in over a year, and when I did, it made me want to cry. I still want to cry because I can’t tape the ends back on that I spent five years growing.

People don’t realize that when you have curly hair, it only grows long half the time—the other half, it grows up, not down, as the curl comes around. It takes dedication and serious time to ensure it doesn’t fall forward into your face every time you lean forward. I am so upset about my haircut. I have to get it fixed, and then I don’t think I’ll ever get it cut again.

My mom used to cut my hair off as punishment. Not my punishment, but my dad’s. He liked his daughter’s hair to be long, so when my mom got angry with him, she’d treat all the girls to a homegrown haircut.  When he got home, all his girls looked ready to enroll in the army.

The Old Punishment

As I got older, my dad said, “I think you look better with short hair,” and I kept my hair short for decades.

Now, I get to do what I want. I always did, but didn’t. I want my hair long, and I had it that way. It was almost to the bottom of my back. Now, the part that should be the longest doesn’t reach my shoulders.

I fucking hate that bitch that cut it off in one fell swoop. Normally, they show you before they snap the scissors shut. This one did not. She also didn’t show me the end result in the mirror like they always do. She knew she fucked it up severely. Now I’ll tell the world.

I was raised to feel like a pawn in everyone else’s world.  A whipping post for my mother’s, a pair of extra hands for my dad’s chores, someone to order around for my older sister, and as I met people outside of my family, it got worse. It was like I met people, serving myself up for their agendas, while wondering how I was going to be abused and how much of it I would take.

Because, no man is an island. Everyone needs people. This is what I was told, but I wondered, why? Why do we need these sources of suck?

When every relationship leaves you ravaged and wishing for the life of a hermit, you do wonder where this glowing social review originates. Who have you met, I’m always dying to know, because my experience is otherwise. I think that if I get in there, I’ll meet those people and know, but then I do, and I see, ah, your people suck too, you just refuse to see it.

The Chronic Combatant

I ruthlessly chuck people out of my life who seek to use me. Unfortunately, this seems to be on everyone’s agenda. I told someone once that I don’t think that anyone leaves home without an idea of how they are going to step on, take from, or swindle another. Be careful of the long con, where they pretend NOT to be doing that, just so they can get closer and get you harder.

I’m in a long con. I thought that my boyfriend was my partner. I called him such. Now I realize that the partnership was in my mind only. I put out, making myself a cook, a housekeeper, and more, but what did I get back? I didn’t even get paid, while ensuring that I’d never let him call me his employee. No, I made myself a slave.

My slave days are over, my tarot lady said. My back is sore, my nails are worn. When someone at the hunting camp commented on the raggedness, I spent the afternoon filing my nails in my ground blind, letting one deer go after another, because clearly, I’d mistaken my priorities. I bet he wished he had kept his judgmental mouth shut, but I’ll never be talking to him again, nor will I be fodder for his physical appraisal. I’m not here for your visual enjoyment.

My slave days are over. I don’t watch the tarot lady because she’s my oracle for the future. I watch because she says empowered things about how to approach relationships and the messy, convoluted things that they are.

Whether it’s here and now or later, and I’ll take note, it doesn’t matter. It’s the strategies for living that I wished some mother had given me—not financial but social. But everyone’s worried about money, not people.

I had three mothers, and not one of them gave me any advice that helped me with my goals. Perhaps they thought one of the others did, and in the end, I really needed a mother. I’ve got MJ. I hope I never meet her because I don’t want to lose this assumption of love.

I couldn’t get love from my father. Instead, I tried to get love from a man who was exactly like my father. Just like my father, he had a younger brother who overshadowed him in the things that mattered. For my father, it was the love of his mother, and when his brother died young, there was nothing he could do to win – perfect people are dead people. For my boyfriend, his younger brother was a competitive snowmobiler, and my boyfriend, who never competed, calls him a sellout – the label the loser gives to the winner, if it’s only financial.

Money isn’t everything; it’s the only thing. When you have it, you have open eyes and a clear conscious to see reality. Without it, you only see who might fill in the gaps of your desperation.

In my desperation, I worried about how I’d get a glass of water when I couldn’t navigate the stairs. My vertigo laid me flat, for it’s like I lost my vertical hold on the world. It’s a constant feeling of falling backwards, only to slam my face into the ground that never moved.

Without that water, I sink into dehydration and can’t move my hands. They clench, with fingers rigidly straight, and my thumb is contracted. They look more like pincers than hands. It hurts, but who cares?

Once, this scenario landed me in the hospital, but they merely sent me home again. Canada’s healthcare system is free; you get what you pay for.

Where Love is Lost

In my desperation, I thought I’d better not live alone anymore. But then, when I needed that water, it was still up to me.

What was the point in all this? To fight for the right to plant and tend the gardens, which required a blow-up with his mom to get her to fuck off and go work on her own land. To fight for the right to go hunting on his land without uninvited guests getting in the way. Don’t forget the fight for hot water in the bathroom only to hear for years, “It’s already there, it just needs to be plumbed.”

Yes.

Love has been lost.

I don’t know where it went. Perhaps it never was here.

I’ve always been not a gardener, but an interior designer. But I can’t touch the interiors here. I’ve always been not a cook, but a nutritionist. But I can’t make you eat properly to save your life. I’ve always been not a housekeeper, but a homemaker. But I can’t make a home in this house.

I used to think it was simply a matter of time. But twenty years and serious effort have shown me otherwise. When he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care.

He was making fun of the local drunk driver who crashed for the third time in a year. “Why can’t he just drink at home like everyone else? Why does he need a waitress to bring him his next round?”

“Ask yourself, because you do,” I said. “Don’t make fun of people who are the same as you.”

Right after that was the first time that he got himself a glass of juice instead of ordering me to do it for him. He’s fat because he’s lazy. I’m fit because I’m the one who does all the work.

Who can love their slave driver?

Slaving for Why?

Not me, I quit. All of it. All the slaving and the loving. Was there ever any? Probably it was only ever just fear, and I’d confused that emotion for its opposite – love.

What was there to fear? Dying alone, of thirst. More people pity when they say, “Poor girl.” Worse, people’s judgment, when they say, stupid girl.

Either way, I’m not poor or stupid, but fine if I die alone because I can’t get up to get a glass of water. At least I won’t be in a home and be able to be angry at the person whose job it was to do it. I can’t pick up hair off the floor and put it back on my head, and I can’t haunt the incompetent, overburdened nurse.

But I can choose how I will live my remaining days.

I want to be surrounded by functionality. Shit that works. Comfort, cleanliness, softness. Smells of lilac and lavender, sage and mint. Not dead mice rotting behind walls that you can’t get rid of. I’d go now, but I’ve committed to a job as a chauffeur for the next six months. May the 4^th be with me in 2026 when I need it, and I am finally ready to receive it.

Put me out to pasture. I’m done. Take my million and save mothers from procreating, save kids from their mothers and families with safe havens, and help them finish developing their minds to be the best they can achieve, because humans aren’t done until they are dead.

I am so tired trying to matter to anyone, to myself. So tired, I wake at night wondering why I am still alive. Can I MAID myself out of here? What if Carney as PM is enough to have destroyed all my hope for the future, and I just want to close my eyes and never open them again? Shouldn’t that suffice for criteria?

In Old Age

I read about a woman twice as old as me who bought a Toyota Yaris for her 100^th birthday. I’m not allowed to buy a Toyota, and I wonder if a Yaris might restore my vitality for life.

Who tells me what I can and cannot buy? The mechanic who never touches my vehicle. If it will rot where she lies, then what difference does it make what I buy? Eventually, they all rot.

One day, I am going to do it myself.

I will go on my tour of Canada, speaking to anyone who wants to show up and listen to me about the importance of resilience and where to find it. As I fund myself, I will raise money to support the mental health of children and youth. Between the pandemic and all else that they’ve endured, they could use some help.

Today, I don’t know what the current scene looks like for a child or youth in mental distress who is smart enough to look pulled together enough on the outside and is achieving decent grades. While I set out to do my research to inform myself and others about why they should donate to a cause or vote a certain way, I can also plan how I will reach those people face-to-face across the country.

My own book tour, on my own agenda, pace, and budget.

Whatever I say, it must be worth getting shot. RIP, Charlie Kirk. You stuck your neck out, and now we all know your name, if many people aren’t accurately or precisely informed of your actual words, but only the twists, the spin, and the labels you never deserved. I wonder what they will call me. Sticks and stones, yes, they hurt, but so do labels.

I do not like getting my hair cut. It’s been a phobia of mine since possibly four.

In one school photo, I have long curls, but in the next, they’re shorn off like a boy’s and stay that way until junior high school, where they become shoulder length until high school graduation. A career in engineering requiring long hair to be secured made short hair make sense again. Or maybe it was Meg Ryan, because that’s whose photo I took to the salon.

I’d also experienced the stupidity of a dress on a young girl and might have been attempting to avoid further such events. All I can tell you is that when a young girl is wearing a dress, she can be sitting on the lap of a vile person who can do things under that dress in plain sight that will fuck up the girl forever.

If there’s one thing you can’t bounce back from, it’s losing your virginity. There’s no going back. It’s gone forever. But you must live on, and there are two choices – stuck in hurt, fear, pain, shame, or find the strength, the fierce power, the proven wisdom you gained as you rise from those ashes.

Fool me once. But only once.

The second time is on me, and I’m not having that. Instead, I’ll take trousers, shoes I can run in, short hair for the gender confusion it creates, and never again expect that people can clearly see when I need saving. Instead, I’ll remember that I did it myself, and I knew exactly what to do and found the muscles to make it happen.

I didn’t freeze.

Being Your Own Savior

Another thing happened that year – I cut my palm wide open. By accident.

In response, I headed to a stranger for help. Stranger, danger, don’t you know. I was scolded for not heading for my sister instead. Yet, the sight of blood freaked her out, so I think I made the wise choice. Pretty good character assessment and strategy from a three-year-old. Today, I pat that kid on the back. They should have thrown you a parade, not a tirade.

No, we don’t always get the reception that we deserve. You will be gaslit, people will seek to destroy your truth, and rob you of your power. But they can’t do it without your permission.

Just like I gave my permission, I’m now taking it back, as I prepare for my next chapter. I’ve saved myself before, and I can do it again. I’m too old to settle for less than what I’ve always wanted. If not now, when?