Live Raw

Crystal Clear

“Mama, I can’t wait that long.” My plaintive voice convinced the nurse to schedule an appointment for me. I was bumped from April to yesterday. Urogynecology is a sub-specialty dedicated to improving the quality of life for women. The number of  practicing physicians in this field is limited to a small double-digit number. Yesterday I explained my circumstances again to the third surgeon trying to help me. She expertly and tenderly explained that I have no internal strength, and set out to explain my ensuing course of treatment.

Internal Strength

No internal strength! I have spent years eradicating my demons. All of the “hims” that deflated my strength are gone, leaving only the memory of the experiences which built my character.

In Bloom

My girls and I are welded to each other, and I am happy. I have clawed my way to this. No internal strength would not be an accurate description of me.

It's Now

No internal pelvic strength is the literal diagnosis. I am fifty-five. From the back, much younger. I am athletic and healthy. And despite the recent attention of a lovely man in his early 40’s wanting to “know me better” I am the sum total of the perfect storm of heredity, three vaginal births and more than ten surgeries, all of which have weakened my anatomy.

After Raw

Last night I read Raw. Writing is a quiet singular pursuit. The site stats on my Raw Candor statistics page indicate how many people are reading what I’m writing, but I can’t see them, and I can’t hear them.

From behind the lectern last night l heard people I didn’t know laughing, really really laughing. As the piece unfolded and became dark I could feel their empathy, even their love.

I have not ever been the person that has been shown love openly. I have always seemed like the popular girl/woman, but really I have spent almost all my time alone. Upon winning the oscar for her performance in Norma Rae, Sally Field said “you like me, you really like me.” Well just call me Sally, but it’s not that “you” like me, I like me now.

So I am going to embark on six weeks of therapy to try to avoid another surgery in an effort to increase my internal strength. But I am already there.

Below is the live version of Just in Case. For any of you reading this that were in the audience, thank you, thank you.

Live notes

Just In Case

There are things in my apartment I don’t need or want, but I keep. Useless things take up space in my kitchen, bathroom, closet, and in every room. Things that serve no purpose, and things that don’t work. Faded things, ill-fitting things, multiples of the things.

Like the variety of hair care products that litter my bathroom. My hair is cut at the crown to stand up on its own, and while the style requires some product to give it that just got out of bed, but I want it to look this way appearance, I’m a total unabashed hair product whore.

Wax, paste, styling serum, pomade, gel, mousse, molding cream, spray, fixatif, root boosting formulas…and many more.

If I never bought another jar, can, or tube of hair crack, I would die with a bucket full of stuff that someone would have to throw out. But I buy it anyway. And I will. And I know I will. So I just keep making room for it.

Some work. Some are sticky or paste like, but I won’t throw them away. Sometimes I toss them into the trash, but almost immediately take them out. Like someone trying to stop smoking, who tosses their cigarettes in the garbage, but immediately takes them out again.

Instead of smoking in the house, they go outside. That’s me. I’m on the back porch with my Newport’s.

I have things I wish I could get rid of, but instead I wrap them in newsprint and drag them from house to house, apartment to apartment, and coast to coast.

Eight white soup bowls have been wrapped and placed in cardboard boxes six or seven times. Recipes for curried lentil, split pea and hearty vegetable are part of my repertoire, but I don’t cook much, so my sturdy knives stay in their block, and I eat salad from the bowls.

There’s no dining table in my apartment to even put eight soup bowls on, and my kitchen is too small for any sort of table. Most of the time I sit on my bed eating something that has very little chance of spilling.

The flatware I love has service for eight, but I never invite anyone over for dinner. There’s a rolling-pin in my cabinet, next to the casserole dish, and baking pans that haven’t been baked in for years, and my stock pot has been stockless for more than a decade.

A busy schedule leaves me with little time, or interest for anything domestic. But I am at heart what we call in Yiddish, a “balabusta”, which means I’m hardwired to clean crevices with a toothbrush.

It means I cook well, and that my bed is always made. It literally means a good housewife.

In my marriage I had the opportunity to have success with my house, not so much as a wife.

My ordinary possessions have been my constant. Serving spoons and forks that don’t serve, books that haven’t been read in a long time, shoes not worn since the early nineties…I keep all those things.

I keep the single replacement button the manufacturer provides for the time when one button will go missing.

I anticipate the loss just so I can smugly go into my stash and get that one perfect match. But it’s always the button I didn’t keep that falls off unnoticed.

There will come a day when the button I need will be the button I actually have.

All this stuff. My three girls will keep what they want and, when the time comes, they’ll toss the rest, give it away…it won’t matter.

Something spills in the refrigerator at just the wrong moment, but I have to leave. I tell myself I’ll come back and wipe off the jars and containers caught in the sticky crossfire. Instead – I come home late, and forget it happened.

The spill has dried and become colorless. Maybe a slow syrupy trickle, or an avalanche of goop, it’s as if it’s always been there, always.

And that’s how certain people have taken hold of my heart. A slow sticky drip.

Emotions I haven’t found storage for. There’s no cabinet, no drawer, no under the bed container to house memories of people I’ve cared for.

No place for them. No place for what hasn’t worked. No place for a heart that’s been broken. No place for wishing what might have been different.

Names can be deleted from contact lists, and email addresses can be blocked, but feelings don’t  get neatly filed, or categorized.

They’re messy, not containable, and not delectable.

They’re are under the bed, they are in drawers, They’re everywhere.

The friends I don’t see anymore. The lovers I don’t kiss. The men that haunt me. They’re still here. They’re mine.

When my daughters were eight, ten, and twelve they went to live with their father – permanently.

After seven years of joint custody my former husband and his second wife sued for, and won sole custody of J.Lucy, M.Dixie and Zazu.

“Your children will not be coming home with you Miss Slaughter” said the judge. I could have written a sentence to tell you what it felt like to hear those words.

But those of you who are parents can imagine, and those of you who aren’t, can also imagine.

I drove home on the freeway at about twenty miles an hour, blinded by tears, and sat at the dining room table in our Venice house for days, and never turned the lights on.

Losing my children became my badge of shame. Despite the never-ending gossip, and the collapse of my life, I promised myself that I would hold the space open for my daughters and I to love each other again, even when I didn’t believe it myself.

My daughters are now seventeen, nineteen and twenty-two. We are, and have been –  reunited for sometime.

I launched Raw Candor to tell this story. But could not tell it straight away. I needed to introduce my Always candid, Always truthful, and Sometimes funny self first.

On June 23 of 2011 I sent 50 emails to announce that Raw Candor was up. Today more than 15,000 people read Raw. The details are mine, but the story can be anyones.

By revealing my imperfections, I collectively invited people to examine their own stories of reinvention and rebuilding.

I am so grateful, and humbled by the experience writing raw has given me.

Out with a friend recently I glanced over the rim of my drink and noticed a button had fallen off my jacket. It was on the table.

I laughed in my heart. The day has come when the button I need is the button I actually have.

Karma baby!

I then read my youngest daughter Zazu’s one line response to the email I sent to my kids when I launched raw…

On June 23 I wrote:

Hey guys, I’m just getting going, please take a look and tell me what you think.

On June 25 Zazu wrote:

THIS IS AWESOME! sososo proud! xoxoxox love you

When I came to the sentence” When my daughters were eight, ten and twelve”… I stopped. It was the moment when I came face to face with how raw I would be publicly. I cried. My children had been taken away from me, and I have chosen to reveal our experience. I could not keep from crying. My girls and I have no secrets. We are healing. I was supposed to cry. I am supposed to write raw. Thank you for reading.

With my deepest gratitude and love,

Jill

To read original Just in Case: http://rawcandor.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/just-in-case/

Giselle Delgado-Buraye – http://giselledelgado.com/Giselle_Delgado/Welcome.html

Ena Marrero – http://www.corridor40.com/2009/10/blog/artist-profile-ena-marrero-and-her-studio