I Believe I’ll Write My Way Out of This Hole

You know how you almost always have someone who’s got your back?

That person, since I was three years old, was my grandmother, granny; Mama Bear is what I called her. Because I didn’t have a mama  until I was ten, and then unfortunately, due to my own immaturity and selfishness, I didn’t want the woman my father remarried as my mama. I was jealous of her.

And the competition lasted years, another story.

Last summer my granny suffered a stroke then another and then a minor heart attack. She now lives in a convalescent home paralyzed on the left side of her body, half blind, and practically deaf. When I saw her two weeks ago I had to scream in her face for her to hear me. She’s unable to do any of the things she formerly loved: drawing, painting, knitting, reading, cooking, not to mention flower arrangements and crossword puzzles. She can’t really see the TV that’s in her room at the convalescent home although she stares at it because that’s all there is to do. This month she turns ninety-three. More than once she said, “I hate being like this.”

What do you say to someone you love when it’s come to this?

I said, “I love you.” I stroked her hair, held her hand, kissed her forehead. I cried every time she wasn’t looking.

The last thing my granny said to me was, “I didn’t leave you anything.” Meaning an inheritance. Except I’m not going to dwell on that. For one thing, my granny has done more than enough for me financially. More than enough. But for another, the first thing my grandmother said to me two weeks ago was, “I have faith in you.”  

Seven days ago, five days after my son and I returned from visiting my granny in the convalescent home, at which time I was also put in charge of caring for my depressed and decrepit grandfather, my boss laid me off. She called me into her office after my work-sisters had gone home. A man I didn’t know was at the table with us. She explained why he was there, but I forgot. He sat across the table and stared at me while my former boss laid it all out.

I felt as if I’d suddenly fallen through my seat into one of those dunking booths. Surreal sensation. All I did was nod. And try to breathe carefully because I knew if I took even a single deep breath I’d exhale it as a scream, and yesterday I realized I reminded myself at the time of some of the women in xTx’s collection, Normally Special, because they want to scream, should scream, need to scream, but really shouldn’t scream, are trying with everything they’ve got to keep it inside them. 

Because sometimes a scream signals defeat.

But sometimes a scream is cleansing too. Didn’t John Lennon suggest that? Scream therapy? I’ll walk to a place a mile away on the river bank and let it rip not from the bottom of my lungs or even the base of my gut, but from this point in my uterus where my son grew once. Where life began inside me, where I have power. A scream from this point forward like projectile vomiting a plague of locusts, a banshee’s scream, blood scream, cunt. After all, the vagina is the most resilient organ in existence. So it makes no sense when people call each other “pussies” to imply weakness. Cocks are much more fragile. And I reminded myself of that this morning after having spent two days wishing I was a man, wishing I was Robert Downey Jr., all cock-and-ball-surliness in my current precarious state.

Unemployed. 

What stages of emotional fallout do you move through after losing a job? Not sure yet because I’m not done. Shock, hysteria, panic.

In my former position, I used to speak with people everyday who’d lost their jobs. They’d call to explain why they couldn’t pay their bills. Everyday, someone new, same story. Some days, they cried. And I’d tear up at thier frustration and helplessness. Where I live now, a desert hugged by mountains, the unemployment rate is astronomical. Bad. Like not a place you want to lose a job. But it’s terrible all over, and plenty of my friends, teachers mainly, have been down sized, discarded, laid off.

Two years ago, shortly after I began my former job, my boss let one of my colleagues go. Day after that, the remainder of us gathered around a table, and I started crying. My former boss looked at me and said, “Why are you crying? You hardly knew her.”

I knew her a little. Anyway, a person I’d worked with was no longer there: someone had lost her job.

But here’s the other thing. I knew it would be me someday. Matter of time. Not everything is about money. 

What stages do we move through after losing a job?

Acceptance, action, relief, joy?

I’m not there yet, but I hope so. Right now this experience remains fresh as a twelve-by-six wound on my upper thigh after a bike wreck I had when I was thirteen. Hurt, bleeding, raw. Last night my son said something to me, and because I’m still raw, it killed me. But before I tell you what he said, I want you to know my son is a sweet, sensitive kid. He’s scared right now. I know because he did an Internet search yesterday: how long does it take a person to starve? He doesn’t know I know that. He’s fourteen. He’s scared. His mom just lost her job. Who to blame? Well. Me. Of course.

Last night he said, “Hey mom, do you wish right now you’d never made this mistake and made us leave Oregon?”

Okay. So I fell apart. To quote an xTx story, “Standoff,” which is about a mother and son, “My heart has too many knives right now.” Stabbed through-and-through.

I went into the bathroom and shut the door and cried then went in my bedroom and shut the door and cried then posted a cryptic status update on Facebook and cried; then I scrolled through every number in my phone and wondered who to call, and finally landed on my former grad school mentor, David Bradley, my Jedi Master, but yet never called him while all the while wondering why nobody called me.

Emotional people make other people uncomfortable. Who’d want to speak with me while I’m in a state like that? Not me. People in crisis scare the shit out of the rest of us. Because we’re always only two steps and one spit away from the same spot.

So here’s the deal: nothing gets done while you feel sorry for yourself, while you fall apart. Perhaps I’m entitled.  A moment maybe. But how long do you have with a mortgage and a car payment and bills to pay not to mention this beautiful boy to feed, cloth, and cultivate? 

Buck up, time to go! 

So I wiped my eyes, went into my son’s room, and there he was on dailysentinel.com doing a job search for me. He’d also typed this question into Google: what jobs are available for someone with a master’s degree in Creative Writing?

Hahaha. (You understand why that’s funny, right?)

“Did you find anything, honey?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s okay, baby. I don’t want you to worry about it anymore. There’s something out there; I’ll find it.”

“Sorry I made you sad.”

“We’ll get through this.”

The last time something dire happened, my granny bailed us out. She bought me time to spend looking for the right job, and I found it in Portland, and to tell the truth, I would have worked for that woman forever if she hadn’t accepted a promotion and left. 

So here I am. A result of my own decisions, obviously.  And my granny isn’t going to bail me out anymore. 

When it rains, it pours.

Four months ago, my biological mother left me again for like the tenth time, but this time for good, when she killed herself with meth. Soon after, my half brother, Robert, wrote me a note that said, “She was really proud of you.”  And my grandmother has faith in me. She said so.

“I have faith in you.” Said like a person whose mouth is full, whose tongue is partially paralyzed, meeting my eyes with the one good eye she could still see through.

I believe I’ll write my way out of this hole. No, not financially. The wounds healed from that bike wreck a zillion years ago, but the scars still show.