Whitey, Noise: On #BlackMass and our own bully

Lovey and I ran away from home on Saturday night. The nice neighbor couchsat while our littles slept sweet melatonin-infused dreams. We went to go see "Black Mass," which is the opposite of a sweet melatonin-infused dream, but which might be core curriculum for anyone who's ever lived in Boston. Even if you have no investment in the stories of Boston boys-turned-gangsters from around the way, Johnny Depp's performance is eerily good. I pretty much agree with everything Ty Burr wrote about the film, as I generally think he gets it so right. A major focus of Burr's review which was especially sensitive to the families of Whitey's murder victims is on the villainous portrayal of Whitey Bulger. His character in the film is not intended to be liked. He is to be feared, foiled with his statesman brother, aligned with his boyhood friend who became his FBI liaison.

The villain that is James Whitey Bulger, whether rotting in prison in real life or portrayed on a silver screen, is sometimes easier for me to confront than the enemy that lives with me. It is easier for me to vilify someone whom I will never meet and expect fair punishment for the crimes committed than the enemy I live with everyday. The voice of the enemy that whispers often enough to me, You are so far from the mark, girl. You haven't come close to your potential. No wonder you are unloved and uninvited. I have heard the lies that gangster spits long enough to recognize a bully. But because I've lived with this bully so long, I sometimes assume its permanence. When I skip my medication for a couple of days, the voice becomes louder to the point of deafening. When I stop recognizing the bully for what it is, I slide into some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, as if the lies are a defense for me, an excuse for self-loathing. It's been some years since suicide ideation was a part of my daily life and I'm grateful. But it doesn't mean the villain isn't lurking, stashing its venom behind the corners of my mind that I prefer not to visit.

A few months ago, I started working on some strength-training goals. Nothing too crazy, just a plan that an online trainer works out for me that is easy for me to follow. It's amazing what a difference having something spelled out like a recipe will do for one's fortitude. If I know what to do, what order to do it in, how to lift it and lunge it, and how many times, I can follow along and go hard with it. I still mostly look the same but I'm stronger and I realize that when I'm stronger, I'm less susceptible to listen to the lying liar. I'm sorry, I just lifted my kids' combined bodyweight, so that verse doesn't ring true, anymore. I don't talk much about the enemy that performs on the stage of my mind wearing the costume of generalized anxiety/depression.  When I do, I find that I'm not so alone, though. "You're too fly for that noise," my friend Trish once told me. And she's right. We all are--too fly to believe that the enemy that whispers lies about who we are and how we were made for eternity should be put away for a life sentence.

Let's all ramble around like Banned Books

All the spiders in Tennessee are the size of the Hamburgler and Michelle Obama is still not my best friend but everything else in life is really good right now. I'm really thankful, in fact. Patti Mayonnaise is returning to Nickelodeon and my hubby loves me and my kids aren't yet throwing acid glares at me when I walk into a room. It's a pretty sweet season.

This morning I realized, whilst standing in my underoos, that today was the morning I had signed up to be chaplain in Baby Girl's class. It's amazing how dressed a person can become and how fast a person can drive a scooter when she has 15 minutes to prepare a worship thought for some primary schoolies. I was reminded how completely ape a classroom full of 7 and 8 year-olds can become when they are commissioned to shove their desks back and sit on the floor. Go ahead. Change our seating arrangements? We gon' get totally crunk. It was a good exercise in patience for me, though. Nothing frustrates me more than poor listeners, poor rememberers, poor engagers of people right in front of them. And to God, I am way worse than a second grader at class chapel. I can't sit still to listen to Him, I have to keep learning the same lessons over and over, and I constantly skip off LA LA LA rather than face the music of a well-deserved rebuke.

Thank you, second grade, for chapeling the chaplain.

It's banned book week and it's capturing my heart this year with a vice grip. We're such a nation divided right now, standing with Planned Parenthood or visiting with Kim Davis. Those are your two options, pick a lane. It's terribly easy to curate one's world; to control the narrative so that it doesn't allow for any manner of truth to break through from a disparate viewpoint. Isn't that the spirit that those who ban books want to ignite? That there is no common ground, nothing of worth to learn from radical texts. Rather than invite the germs of truth they may offer, it is easier and perhaps better to pull a book from the shelves, to effectively silence a voice so others in disagreement won't have to suffer it.

I just want to encourage all of us to ramble around like a banned book, focusing less on our disinvintation from the party, believing fervently in the truth of our contents within.

Here are a few of my favorite "banned books:"

Celebrating with a thick layer of Funfetti

I don't know why we celebrate the anniversary of our debuts on earth, except to the end that, Hey.We've come a long way, baby. The love of two people; the labor of two legs, or the toil of two forceps. That raisin-faced creature has emerged from her amniotic cocoon. Now she welcomes giftings and attentions on a date over which she had no choice or control.

I don't know why we celebrate the full lap we've made around the sun, when defying gravity was never an option nor planet-hopping in the realm of maybe-could-bes. Or was it? Maybe we all feel, crouching toward another candle on the Funfetti cupcake-- We've been pushing forward and upward from the magnet threatening always to hold us still. Laws of motion we memorized, thinking as they only applied to roller skates and tennis balls. Today I mark my 35th lap around the topographic track. I hope there is still air in my lungs sufficient to blow out those many tapers.

I am the sum total of all these cavities and misconceptions, tax deductions and torrid dreams. I am 35 years-young, eligible now to vote myself into the Oval Office, at-risk for every health malady, ashamed for having not read so much of Toni Morrison and Thomas Wolfe.  Perhaps I am already middle age, aged, an elder, older than I feel, mature, seasoned, in possession of a skincare regimen that is altogether age-defying.

I love getting older because the arbitrariness of aging--the very thing we don't do on purpose that we are yet hellbent on celebrating with a thick layer Funfetti as if we do--accompanies all the glory of things we do on purpose: sipping and spooning and cry-laughing; reading and writing and punching our tickets at the museum; sleeping in and reading until our eyes go googley late at night; dancing and singing and running our aging guts out.