walking on spiderwebs, or cage / page / stage / rage

I live caged gently in charts. Little black grids on white pieces of paper. Or black marker on a white board. I write in tally marks, numbers, skill descriptors. I write in red pen. These grids contain my feelings because my feelings are too big and threaten to overwhelm me, shut me down, reduce all forward action to zero, leave me in a valley of couch and comforter and unending ache. I am somewhat afraid of my feelings. So I give them numbers. Anxious, zero to five. Sad, zero to five. Happy, zero to five. Suicidal ideation, zero to five. Zero to two is for passive death wishes; three is when I start searching for my safety plan. Where did I put that again? Self-harm urges, zero to five. I have been in recovery for self-injury for seventeen years. I know this because i have a cat who is seventeen years and I got him as a kitten the year I went into recovery. Cats have finite lives though, and this one is doing less well than I would like, but he's okay. He's around right now. 

Sometimes i have to live in the right-now because the bigger landscape of my life towers over me, distorted gothic thing that it is. The sky looms big and heavy like it will come down to suffocate me with cloud. Buildings are *so* tall, they sway in my vision like they want to fall down on me. 

I like it in my apartment. It's safe here. I can hear my neighbors' muffled conversations. The woman down the hall has a dog, a big one by the sound of the bark. I'm glad my cats haven't taken umbrage in such a way that would involve fluids.

I have to push to go outside most days. The gaze of strangers is unsurprisingly yet somehow unexpectedly searing. I walk with my eyes cast down, looking up in little flicks, half-second increments. It is illogical how I reduce the field of my vision even further than it naturally is (natural about 5% of "normal" seeing). This is how disabilities collide. I blind myself further. 

My father always told me to keep good eye contact with people; that's how they know you are trustworthy. But if good eye contact is a learned skill, then how can you tell people are not lying to your face? 

I can't see faces very well. I have to stare and stare. My eyes point in different directions. My pointed stare makes people who don't know me uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable too, so much raw visibility on everyone's part, so I don't do it that often.

This is not "some days" for me. This is my every day. 

I find a deep joy in writing, in running my journal, in being with my friends and my husband and reading books and petting my cats. But I am alone a lot. It takes self-discipline to do work, because I don't have the structure of an office, the white noise of other workers working. I go to coffee shops a lot to simulate this environment, but they are not without peril. The screaming toddler(s). The man who wants to talk to me despite the fact that I am clearly working. Internet that suddenly goes down. 

Discipline and responsibility. I hear the voice of my father when I say those words in my head. 

Yesterday I went outside to do work, but today I think I will stay in. It's not good in my head right now. I mean, even relatively speaking. I have a whirlpool of fear and self-doubt sucking at my heels. I have an enormous work task that seems possible or impossible depending on what moment I'm inhabiting when I look at it. I am pretty much motivated by fear right now. I can't reach joy today. 

I'm scared of being a disappointment, always, eternally, not good enough, frantically working to keep up, keep my secrets, keep going.

I pretend I'm good. I pretend I'm well. I'm really good at pretending I'm well. Therapists even have a fancy phrase for what I do, something about performing better than I actually am...I call it "masking." It happens unwittingly. Haha. I was just having a moment there. No, I'm not that sad. No, I'm not that scared. Let me say something funny to make us comfortable. 

[Apparently people-pleasing is a maladaptive coping mechanism. But my superiors in the workplace really like it when I am consistently pleasant and do what they want. People in positions of power do not express concern for my needs, my differences, or my emotions. Those things get in the way. 

I would like to say that I believe I am smart and capable as others tell me. That I am up to the challenge. That I will continue to be up to the challenge. (Am I being unclear? The challenge of living in the world.) There is a steel thread in me that I was born with. It's thin but strong. It grew with me in early childhood, when I learned the pattern of being absolutely terrified, all the time, and having to act anyway. Act: do, move my limbs, move in the world, think, react, be capable, don't let them see how weak and afraid I really am, achieve, achieve, achieve. As I grew into a young adult, I built a core around the thread--a core of self, not just survival. Creative acts saved my life. Art and writing saved my life. As I grew into a woman, teaching helped me locate myself deeply as a giver and a guide.

I thought my childhood and teenage years would be the worst thing that would ever happen to me. By far. No close seconds. But then my mom suicided (three years ago Sept 21) and that perspective changed. I can't know what's ahead. I can't worry enough do enough rituals enough compulsions pile on enough covers to protect me from the future. << It's been three years and I'm still like this.

I heard somewhere it's National Suicide Prevention Month. 

The reason I'm putting this on my blog instead of deleting it is to say fuck you to mental illness. To stigma and judgement and appearances and people-pleasing and the bottom line. I am alive. Sometimes completely; today barely. But I am alive. 

I wish it genuinely felt like enough to celebrate being alive.

When someone with mental illness or a disability says fuck you stigma, there is a rallying cry from allies. Oh yes. Fuck you stigma. We should be more open about these things as a society. But only in the most abstract ways. When it comes to the practical details. Well. That's tricky. No one wants to really deal with that.

*

I don't know if I'm re-starting this blog or not, for real, or if this entry is just a one-time deal. But I do know that I began the blog with this theory of RADICAL OPENNESS (fuck you stigma). I began this blog not even imagining what was in the future for me. And somehow I'm still here. Straining my neck. Chin bobbing just above the surface.

Here's a video. I'm teaching a class pretty soon and I want to do a section on sublimating trauma through poetry. I found this amazing talk and poem by Rachel McKibbens. It allowed me raw access my emotions, for once. It gave me permission to write this. I churned out work like a demon yesterday. I don't know if I am capable of doing any work today, but...I listened to her talk and it gave me permission to write this, at least.

Donne said that no man is an island

Recently a friend wrote this sentence in an email to me: "I used to be a HUGE oversharer before social media was a thing." I thought about social media. Lots of people just put up pictures of their vacations / parties / marriages / children at their finest moments and call it a day. I actually know of numerous people who have deactivated their Facebook accounts b/c the competition got to be too much. They feel like everyone else is saying, I have the best vacation, the best husband/wife, the best baby. With the implication of, and you don't. I got the feeling that this friend who emailed me feels like sharing their life, in all of its dimensions, is frowned upon.

I have a problem with the term "oversharing." Also, the word "needy." "Oversharing" assumes that no one wants to hear your personal stuff, that it's impolite or socially wrong to share your personal stuff, that we should all walk around projecting only positivity and the more shallower dimensions of our lives.

Everything looks shiny; no one allegedly has to feel anything except YAY YAY YAY.

When really, I think it's a continuum. At my old job, I sure as hell would not share personal things with certain people. Especially administration. Most jobs are like that. But I think it's okay to share things with people who are your friends or close colleagues. Because what the heck are friends for if you can't be there for each other during the positive *and* negative times?

My friends are some of the best people ever because they have listened empathetically to me and really been there for me, especially over the past year-and-some-months, when things happened with my mom. Or they have distracted me with wonderful things like coffee and Indian food and visits and children and simply the beauty of their presence. I never feel judged by them. And I in turn feel special and honored when they come to me with important emotional things. Like: wow, they trusted me enough to ask me to listen. I feel capable and strong when I can support them.

The word "needy"gets kicked around a lot, just like "over-sharing." "Needy" pathologizes the idea of interdependence. As a culture, we live under this delusion of self-sufficiency, like that's the ultimate thing to strive for. It's very American. Or United-States-ian, I should say. But when you dissect it, the idea of INdependence is fundamentally impossible unless you decide to become a hermit on top of a mountain. And then what happens if you break your leg or need to go into town for food?

Each in their various ways, my mom and dad raised me to believe that self-sufficiency was the ideal. In  reality, they were not self-sufficient, but I was raised to believe that I should strive to be. I think they thought they were doing me a service. This created a schism in my thinking which still continues. On one hand, I feel the old emotional pull: do it yourself at all costs. Appear strong at all costs. If you can't, that's bad. Other people will take advantage of you OR You're weak. Incapable. Less-than-adequate. 

On the other hand, I know my reality, and I try really hard not to judge myself for it. Ahem, I'm not saying I succeed in being nonjudgmental, but I try. Yeah, sometimes I need. Everybody needs. And sometimes I NEED. And everyone in their life goes through a period of that NEED too, whether they admit it or not.

I think about need, and sharing, and interdependence also as it applies to teaching. I think about it a LOT. When I went through teacher training in grad school (ages ago… yikes!) I was taught that students are people, that learning is collaborative (students learn from the teacher, students learn from each other, the teacher learns from the students), that each student will have a different learning style, that it's okay to be honest with your students when you don't know the answer, that it's okay to be vulnerable and to expect (and accept) your students' vulnerabilities.

Then… I taught at a certain place for awhile and it really made an impression on me. The culture was rather the opposite of the way I'd learned to teach. Not necessarily through word but through example, the ideal classroom was presented as: the teacher makes the rules, the students follow the rules, the students get punished if they don't follow the rules, each student is an information bucket into which you deposit key skills, and then they somehow translate those skills into a well- or poorly- written paper and then you grade them. Nobody needs to be feeling their feelings all over the place b/c there's no room for that in the syllabus.

I really tried to be that latter teacher and I did not do well being that teacher, and it burned me out. I had colleagues who taught at that place, and still do, who somehow managed to be a combination of the former teacher and the latter teacher. Or colleagues who were so untouchable (some concept called tenure of which I know not) that they could be the former teacher and the administration could go… fly a kite.

If anywhere I thought I could succeed as the former type of teacher, it would be in the teaching of writing. Whether you are writing poetry or a thesis-based argument, the idea of empathy is important. The ability to accept  and not vilify emotions is important.

Now that I'm feeling a lot better, I'm going to start revising / submitting my own work again in January. I'm also thinking about teaching (as a concept), because I really miss it. But, especially given my geographic limitations, I don't know where the right place is for me, if any.

And

[click to enlarge]

Interjection

I'm halfway sad today but there was a reason for it. This morning I finally canceled Ravi's pet insurance. I left the microchip registration open. The end.

Well it's finally Monday evening

Yay <-- insert sarcasm, "the ineffective form of communication," here, big opposite action day for me. I did the thing I said I was going to do and went to Té Cafe to do HW. I didn't do as much as I would have liked. The article was disjointed and harder to get through than I thought it would be. I did run into Jenn there though so it was all good. I did not read any poems yet. Dammit.

But things that hurt this morning are still hurting. My thoughts are.... [....][[....]][[[....]]]

The urge to burrow until at least tomorrow. Is unavoidable.

Nautilus

Punch to the gut

So I was juuuuust getting ready to head out the door when I realized I had to open my email to print out  the actual assignment I'm doing the homework for. And I received a rejection for a press prize that I was really really hoping to at least be a semi-finalist for. Everyone who knew my work was like "did you try ____ Press?" And the judge was the editor of the press. And I sent it out way before the deadline. So I felt like my work would get a good read.

It's not like this is the first time. Maybe that's the problem.

I think the worst part about these rejections is I never know how far I got or what was missing in the MS. In retrospect I think that maybe my work was too risky for this particular press. That's the absolute best interpretation of the situation. But how can I know for sure? Maybe the MS is horrible. I've gotten enough feedback on it to know that's not true though. But maybe it's.... subtly *wrong*.

I write intense, high-stakes poetry. And I don't know where to put it. Or there's something intrinsically bad.... ugh, I have to stop the negative self-talk, because I've had enough success to know that I can succeed, if that makes sense.

I should maybe delete this post because it's rambly. But I'm not going to. This is difficult work.

I used to have a lot of confidence. The confidence got sucked away since August. But I'm trying to keep on anyway.

I just see... the career that I pictured myself having falling out of reach. And I wasn't deluding myself. At one point, it was within my reach. I received credible encouragement. No one ever said, hey, you're not good enough; find a different niche.

Four out of the six poets in my MFA graduating class have now published full-length collections. I graduated in 2005. It sucks being on the bottom.

My alma mater doesn't even count chaps as legit publications on the "graduates who have published" page. I looked.

Poets whose work I admire, poets who I wanted to emulate, have, by this point in their career, by the age that I am, published loads more.

It's not like I've dedicated my life to something else, like law school or marketing or psychology or technical writing or raising babies or organic farming in Montana and the poetry thing is an "also."

I wanted. I  w a n t e d. I wanted a different life.

I want.

Oh, and btw, I'm not even sure I can work full-time with all the different disability shit, and this morning I am not proud, I feel like it is shit, going on. I feel like the scraps of my life are just falling through my open hands.

Thought: I have so much to give. I just don't know who will receive.

Other thought: when poets whose opinion I respected, poets who I wanted to emulate, told that I was really good, it just meant I had further to fall / fail.

I'm not giving up; that's not in my nature. It's just... I had a vision of who I was going to be, and
I've not become that person, and it makes me weep. I'm going to have to be someone else, and I don't know who the fuck she is.

DBT says I need to go out there and do the homework anyway, like I had planned. But the anxiety. And the sadness. They hurt so fucking badly. My head is spinning, spinning, spinning.

20things : long sigh

1. Today I feel like it's nearly impossible to go on.
2. I may have bottomed out a bit after the group transition.
3. I'm trying to access my creativity and having some probs.
4. I made two collages and re-dyed my hair. Same dark red as before.
5. I'm unhappy with the one collage but like the other and the hair.
6. Totally punted working on website for new journal.
7. Concentration levels minimal.
8. Every piece of news I pick up is sad.
9. Or I find the grain of sadness in it.
10. Lay down but couldn't sleep.
11. Tried various self-soothing things but didn't feel soothed.
12. Want to rip out my brain and stomp on it.
13. Sometimes I want to physically be alone-alone-alone to match my aloneness feeling on the inside but it's not feasible.
14. I punted on the website because I would have to cancel Ravi's pet insurance to recoup money for the hosting fee.
15. Even though he is no longer with us the thought of doing it is just...................
16. I wish something delightful would happen.
17. One minute I'm like {{{{RAGE}}}} and the next I'm like :sad:
18. Why won't you write me back motherfucker?
19. See what I mean?
20. I hope this is just a stage.

[collage]

[click to enlarge]

Boxes

the grief grind

Last night Mike informed me of an email that he got four days ago wherein my uncle said that my aunt --his sister --was going down to GA for some furniture and possibly boxes of mom's stuff. She's flying down and renting a truck and driving back.

Mike and I can't drive like that.

I told him (Mike) that I wanted to go through those boxes and that we should tell my uncle to send the boxes up from GA and that I'll plan a flight to eastern PA to go through them. Soon, because my aunt can't store all those boxes and I get the feeling my uncle does not want to have them.

A lot of contradictory things bother me about this whole situation. 

1. The four-day lag from Mike receiving the email, to me knowing about it, informs me that I need to take over email communications and... I'm not quite ready to do so. Four months of intensive outpatient therapy has gotten me to a place where I can process my emotions while being safe in the world. It has put me back together. It has not made me all better. I'm scared of getting PTSDmail.

2. I'm ticked that they're dealing with the household items without me when the will named me as the person who "inherited" it.... and I understand the many reasons why they are doing so. Which include geography, power of attorney, and possibly the fact that they think I am crazy to deal with it, since I can't even answer a fucking email yet... and I don't necessarily want to be the person on the front lines with this one.

*

Mike says he reads my uncle's tone as being rather taciturn about his own emotions while at the same time taking care of all these horrible things that would be rightfully triggering to anyone. To me, my uncle's coping strategy makes it difficult for people who want to express their emotions --oh like me for example --because it sort of comes off as harsh. 

Not that his coping strategy surprises me. My grandfather was entirely like this. Even my mother was, to some extent. And I did it for all the years that I was at The University Previously Known As My Place of Employment because "getting it done" was way more important than feeling my feelings about whatever "it" was. 

In all the offices I worked in I was described as "sweet," "cheerful," "perky," and "bubbly." My teaching evals always said I had great rapport.

*

I'm really really not looking forward to making the Philly trip to look through these boxes, but I want the control of being able to look through the boxes and pick out the few items that I want. She left all her stuff to me. In a way, it feels like all I have of her.

I'm even dreading the phone call to my aunt to arrange things.

No one in my family has contacted me since the funeral to say, hey, your mom died. The circumstances were really weird and complex and horrible. How are you doing with that?

And, my uncle has put out vague feelers, but I'm still using Mike as my proxy --I just need a few more weeks to hammer it out in my head, get some strategies in place... 

I just... I would like to be asked, you know? Even if I'm not ready to talk.

*

I'll be more up front: the past four months of intensive outpatient therapy have gotten me to a place where 1) I don't want to self-injure every time I have emotions, 2) I'm not pushing those emotions away, and 3) I'm able to leave the house and start going to readings again, for example, because I have some cognitive strategies to reduce my anxiety. 

I'm trying to be as clear and open as I can about this. Remember, this blog is accessible to the world. I'm being open because I believe it is so wrong that our culture presses into us this idea of emotions as weakness and/or as counter-productive. THIS CONCEPT BROKE ME. I am angry about it. So I'm blogging my recovery from it.

The intensive outpatient therapy, called DBT, is a big-picture therapy. It's a subset of cognitive-behavior therapy. It focuses on examining broader emotional patterns, on replacing inaction and stagnation with action, and calming down self-destructive urges and behaviors. It has saved my life twice now. 

But this therapy, which I am being discharged from tomorrow, is in a group setting, and I have had SO MUCH SHIT to work through. I've focused on fairly broad treatment goals to maximize my time there. I am sort of looking forward to getting back to my former individual talk therapy, so I can hammer out details of how to go about picking up the phone to call my aunt.

*

Frankly I'm scared. I've got on the docket today:

Sadness and dread about planning the trip to visit my aunt and the boxes. Anger at being put in this position when I'm not quite ready for it, yet I do need to deal with it. Fear that my relatives are judging me as batshit crazy thusly ignoring me and the somewhat paradoxical fear that they think I'm going to be "all better" now after four months, when my journey with processing the grief is largely still ahead of me. 

Thinking about the new year...

Lots of people take stock in their new-year posts; I'm thinking about what's coming up. Soon I will be leaving group. It's inevitable. They said they want to discharge me in January. It's mondo-bizarro how these complete strangers have come to mean so much to me. Well, some more than others... and most of the "some" have already been discharged. So I can say I'm on the tail-end of what I consider my cadre: peers in age and stage. Which means I gotta get my ass out the door soon. But what next?

I was talking to A about a week or so ago and she suggested I "work with the energy of the solstice" (so yeah, it was around Dec 21) and consider, in a playful way, the concept of starting over new. She said it was important to consider it as mental play, not a serious undertaking. I didn't know what to make of her comment at first so I put it on the back burner.

During some idle time when I got home I turned it over in my mind. I could see why she said to not consider it seriously. I take everything seriously, perhaps too much so. When I thought seriously about it, I started to cry. So many things have just gouged the hell out of me in the last four months that the idea of starting over new is like... hello? I'm barely scarred over! Give me some time! But as a "pretend" question, it made me feel a bit liberated from my sadness.  I thought about last January, when I was starting my "year of quitting." I never imagined the ending it would have, or should I say, the last third of the year. Act 3. What if I started over on my year of quitting? [Note: I think my blog was on tumblr at this point so you might not know that I had sarcastically referred to taking a year to solely concentrate on writing, publishing, attending and giving readings as my year of quitting. Like quitting the job that sucked the life out of me for something that doesn't pay but is super-fulfilling.]

I remember now with great nostalgia the anxiety that, then, had made me cry. I was taking a huge leap of faith and I was doing it in the shittiest part of the year for taking leaps: winter. I had to fill a blank slate (woo, mixed metaphors) not knowing if my endeavor would be successful. One of my fb status updates at the time was "looking at design blogs and crying." Well, in my world, art begets art. I started myself on a disciplined schedule. I submitted every workday in the beginning --I would say the first 3-4 months. I kept up the momentum on faith, until the acceptances started coming in, validating my decision. I would say the best part was April through July. I was ON FIRE. I was so happy. I was so not prepared for what August would bring.

Now, despite my recent (and for the second time!) publication in MiPOesias, and upcoming pubs in RHINO, Hayden's, and Bone Bouquet, my submission pipeline is low. I feel like I don't have a lot of work to submit.

That feeling of having nothing may be false. It is false. I haven't been writing at the speed I was --I was generating 1-2 drafts A WEEK. For eight months. But I haven't published all of it. And I wrote a chapbook-sized sheaf of grieving poems, some of which have to be good enough to revise.

[Note: can you tell I've become worse at writing blog entries? It's my ability to concentrate. It's gone way down. I can't put together ideas as fluidly as before. Nor can I read a book all the way through. Or watch a whole movie without great restlessness. I don't watch them in the theatre any more-- at least for now. Therapist J says that this restlessness and lack of concentration is normal when experiencing grief. She also says it could go on for awhile.]

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is even though I have great anxiety about "my year of starting over," I began "my year of quitting" also with great anxiety. And that time it was fruitful. I showed up and did the work and I was successful.

There's this little (actually it's not so little) voice, the anxiety voice, that says, you never knoooooowwwwww about the future. You might not be any good any more. Maybe you broke yourself. 

But I leapt before and it was good. Maybe I can do it again. I'm lucky to be in a financial position to try it. I don't have to go back to some thankless job. I can do YWI part-time and maybe everything will be okay. Not grand, but okay. I'm shooting for okay.

Insomnia

My mother passed away two weeks ago today. I can still hardly believe it. I've been trying so hard to escape my brain, to let the feelings out slowly. Truly, I am a bit scared of my feelings. Amidst my frantic attempts at escape, N says sometimes I will just have to "sit up with it." It meaning, I suppose, the feelings.

Monday Morning Update

I haven't blogged in awhile and I suppose I should, just to keep up the habit. I don't want to fall out of it. For me right now, any positive action, an action that defies gravity, is also pushing against this great sadness. How long does she have left? Did I tell you? I searched the internet for data on how long it takes a person to starve to death. The answer, it seemed, is around 60 days if you have adequate hydration. 

I also found a blip about a book --not quite a review -- called How I Helped My Mother Starve to Death by a woman who in fact, did what she said. I guess she had promised her mother she would do this for her, and then did. It took two weeks. 

I could never do this for someone. Starve them. Even if they begged. Not starving. Not withholding life / water / food. It's too cruel. I couldn't do what my aunt is doing right now. But the situation is different, maybe. To not-starve my mother would take colossal positive action, defiance of her immense gravity, her intense sadness that no one acknowledges but surrounds her like an aura. 

[[[Because this blog is open to the internet, I must now restate: 

PLEASE NOTE THAT I WILL DELETE ANY COMMENTS RE: THE BROADER SOCIETAL PROS - CONS ABOUT "ASSISTED SUICIDE" IF THEY APPEAR ON MY BLOG OR FACEBOOK. THIS IS MY PERSONAL LIFE RIGHT NOW, A SITUATION THAT IS TROUBLING AND BEYOND MY CONTROL, AND I'M NOT LOOKING TO START A DEBATE. THANK YOU.]]]

For years now, her voice has sounded like she is about to cry, or has just finished crying.

I don't know how the docs decided they should approve hospice for her. 

I swore, and I must continue to swear to myself, that my job is not to fix her anymore. To finally let her have her way. I must continue to swear this to myself until she finally passes. N told me two years ago that I need to let go of her or "it would destroy me." N is not a very directive person usually, so I tried to listen. Still, the instinct is strong to not let go.

I wonder how far into the 60 days we are. How far were we when I visited her? 

I want to call her, but don't want to call her. I don't want to know how bad it is right now, or how good. I have a therp session with N at one-ish this afternoon, so I'm calling this morning. 

[UPDATE: My strategy to call her before my therapy appt has been foiled. I called and she was still in bed -- this is a change in routine from when I was visiting her. At that point she was getting up around 8:30-9am. I asked if I should call her later... hoping she'd say 11 or so... and she suggested this afternoon. Frak. But her voice sounded.... like it always does. Still.]

I'm trying to concentrate on my own positive action in my own life. A new acquaintance has solicited some poems from me for an amazing site of hybrid art and writing. What a boon. It raises me up, helps me feel connected.


* * * 

Last Thursday was the first MW workshop of the semester. I had to leave briefly to cry. One of my meds makes me foggy, so that when I try to, for example, carry on a scholarly conversation, and I'm pressed to clarify my ideas, I just get verbally derailed. Like the thought I was *just having* evaporates, dissolves back into my brain. 

N has since changed the med. We know though, that this replacement med, can make me hypomanic. Which is not the same as full-blown mania and in fact, can be really really enjoyable. But either I'm not there yet or it's not enjoyable this time. I'm a bit less foggy but I still have these moments of .... haze. This med is supposed to be "short term." How long is that? Until my mom passes, plus __ days to mourn her? N is a good therapist. If I wanted off the med, I could come off. For now it's helping tamp down the extra OCD that has come out under stress. It's helping, but I don't have complete coverage. 

Mike says:

You need to be okay with not being 100% right now.

Most people if they were dealing with what you're dealing with would be in bed crying.

This situation is just fucked up and there's not really anything you can do about it [with the implication that what I can do about it is take care of myself].

* * *

I don't cry a lot. I'm not in bed more than usual. The idea of talking to people about anything is just extremely taxing though. Even the smallest small talk. And when I'm out, I feel that paranoid feeling like everyone's looking at me and judging. I mean, I feel it more than usual. I feel it to the extent where I recognize it's irrational. It's like a panic attack in slow motion. And when I'm outside, it takes so long to get home. Being at bus stops is excruciating for this feeling of being probed by eyes. Of "I don't have my face on right please stop noticing it."

If you're reading this, I don't need inspirational comments about how no one is truly normal, I can choose to sink or swim etc. This is me venting feelings. I just need you to listen.

Of course I choose fight. I finally realized I'm not like my mom in this way. Sometimes my fight looks to others like flight. It is called my own self-preservation. 

Maybe that's ungracious to say about my mom. She is the most stubborn person I know. She has always, if not fought, which to me implies pro-activeness, then hung on, which still has tenacity to it. 

* * *

I'm maybe starting an intensive group therapy thinger for people with OCD in a few weeks. This is somewhat exciting to me because in my whole life I've known maybe three people who have actual OCD (not like, when I don't line up the silverware on the place settings exactly, I get a bit antsy). I'm trying to think if that's more or fewer than blind people I know. Calculating... I think it's the same. Three blind people. Three people with OCD. 

It is my form of positive action. Well, one of them. The second thing is to continue with poems, poetry, dis-studies.... and I gotta go now b/c the door is knocking.

There's a splinter in your eye and it reads react (R-E-A-C-T)

Haaaaay internet bitchez what up?

Okay, I tried being casual just there (which I mistyped causal) but I like you. And I'm not casual with people I really like; I'm serious. 

I've got this serious dilemma. 

You may have already been caught up with my life to date, or at least the one I share in blogland, but if you're not, maybe you should read back a few entries until you are caught up... if you want to help me make this choice. If not, fuck it. Keep reading voyeur. I know you're there.

This house here that I'm sitting in right now is a safe place because Pam says it is. I think stepmom Pam may have been created from part-goddess parts.

Then there is my dad who, when I said, pre-morning-coffee: Gee I'm sorry I slept so late; I was up all night worried about my kitty cat.... responded with YOU KNOW I FEEL A CERTAIN WAY ABOUT PETS SOME PEOPLE MAY THINK IT'S HEARTLESS OR CRUEL BUT YOU REALLY HAVE TO LOVE THEM IN THE MOMENT AND THEN WHEN THEY DIE OR RUN AWAY YOU NEED TO JUST REPLACE THEM AND LIVE IN THE MOMENT YOU CAN FORM THE SAME LOVING BOND WITH ANOTHER PET SOME PEOPLE MAY SAY THIS IS CRUEL BUT FOR EXAMPLE [..... minutes pass ......] YOUR MOM AND THAT DOG OF HERS WERE REALLY CODEPENDENT TO THE POINT WHERE IT JUST WASN'T A NORMAL SCENARIO dad you know mom herself isn't a normal scenario BUT WHAT I'M SAYING IS IT WAS UNHEALTHY NOW INSTEAD YOU SHOULD..... 

My dad actually talks like that. His default unit of communication is The Lecture. It lasts from 5-10 minutes. I have gotten good over the past few days at not giving a crap. Or rather at fake giving a crap. This is different from when I was growing up. Then I really gave a crap about everything that came out of his mouth because he was my dad. And I was raised to do so. Ditto mom. She really isn't a normal scenario. I don't mind faking it. I love him. He's my dad. I love mom too. They did some pretty stupid things back in the day, but I love them. Pam has semi-reformed my dad. My dad is driving me to Pittsburgh for a thing. He's good. We just don't see the same on a lot of stuff. Mom is still doing stupid things. But I love her anyway. Yes, I'm being vague here. The stupid things they did aren't really relevant to this post. 

Anyway dad in this particular cat lecture kept rolling on like a 18-wheeler that's lost it's brakes and is on a slight slope downward. When I was younger I would have freaked the fuck out that he was talking about my cat that way, because I depended on my dad to understand me. Now I'm 37, I have a load of friends that I pretty much consider my extended family, and also did I mention, right now I'm on lots of medication. So I was like in my head: hm dad, fuck fuckityfucknuts where is the coffee.... 

But it takes little pieces of me away, whenever I have to fake it. My dad says ridiculous things all the time. I mean reeeeeee DICK ulous. His views on gun control and immigration are... ahem, they do not match mine. And without Pam there, he feels free to expound even if I ask him not to. Because he speaks in the all-caps voice, and I speak in the regular typeface with lots of dashes and interruptions-of-myself / or / slashes / like this / voice. 

If dad were the only thing getting under my skin (HA I made a joke there b/c my skin was all scabby before my dad got under it), this trip would not be making me so crazy. But there's one more leeeeettle straw that is breaking my back.

Back, back, back in the day I used to live here. In this town. And when I wasn't living here, I was living about 15 minutes south.

Some crimes were perpetrated against me by a certain man. Not a relative.

And this town holds all these memories that I didn't even realize would come up when I was by myself, under a fair amount of stress.

I thought this afternoon hm this could be a clue as to why I don't visit here that often.

I feel like to go outside I should dress up in a floofy head scarf and big sunglasses (sunglasses, check). Like Jackie Kennedy.

I don't believe this person, this man, is living here anymore.

But when you have, for example.... say you have a really ugly dresser. 

I have a really ugly dresser.

Say it was bought for you by your dad who has very masculine taste in furniture when you moved into his bachelor apartment when you were 17 because mom was not a normal scenario.

It was bought for me by my dad..... 

and I was looking at it when... this man... not a relative... was perpetrating crimes against me. Not crime, crimes. Repeatedly for several years.

This dresser is still in the room where I'm staying now. This dresser has followed me through 1, 2, 3 yes I believe it's three homes in the Allentown-Bethlehem area. 

And it's not the only scenery that surprise-haunts me.

My dad and I were doing some errands today in the car. Vroom, drivey-drive. You don't walk anywhere around here because you drive. Dad likes to drive. He likes to drive scenic routes sometimes. Todays scenic route, featuring some of the best scenery of Allentown-- it is seriously nice scenery --took me past several places where I remember the details of certain crimes. 

Last night, before this all even happened, I dreamt about him. The man. I dream about him in Pittsburgh sometimes too. But not very often. And when I dream about him in my own house, I wake to my life, my independence, my I-can-leave-if-I-want.

So I'm thinking about coming home. My dad already agreed to drive me back to Pittsburgh and back in a few weeks to do an important poetry thing. Nobody besides my dad and Pam (and Jenn?) know about this because it's been all Ravi Ravi Ravi where the fuck is Ravi. But I could just not go back with him. I would stay a week at home and then come back with Mike for the shore trip at the end of that week. 

But I am worried about incurring the, I won't say wrath, because my dad doesn't do wrath anymore... incurring the pissed-off of my dad.

*     *     *

I can't take this shit anymore. I'm going to list the shit now, just to recap.

1) We got fleas.
2) My OCD, the fleas, and the extreme heat of August interacted very badly, creating lots of scabby wounds all over me which I imagine are all flea bites, but which, in fact, are most likely not all flea bites.
3) I retreated to my parents' villa in sunny A-town which is well-appointed, cold as a fridge, and has stepgoddess Pam.
4) Back in Pittsburgh one of our cats vanished.
5) My husband starts freaking out and we are apart. I mean he is being really productive and amazing, but he is still hurting too.
6) I start freaking out here but in a slower, more protracted manner, including varied and sundry elements of PTSD badness, remembering crimes, etc.
7) if I go home, I will have to face the reality of my gone-cat-gone, and the imaginary but sort-of-real fleas.
8) if I stay here I will have to deal with the PTSD and to a much lesser extent my dad.
9) Either way I have at least another week of here. Which has goods and bads that even out. If you look at it as T = 7 days.

Am I still making sense bloggerinos? Help me make this choice? Deliver me some insight? 

A fist fight is brewin at my house, my house

So apparently the fact that I was not a hysterical wreck upon hearing of Ravi's disappearance was my mind's way of protecting me from emotional fallout. I recognize the signs now. The false I'm fine now. But that, truly, is a load of crap. I've been trying to be equanimitous. Is that a word? Anyway, trying to keep an even keel, stiff upper lip, and all that shit. Because that's what my heavy doses of DBT (it's a type of cognitive therapy for people that have had problems with severe emotional dysregulation) have taught me. But there's some cracks in the armor or something. Gee I can't imagine why.

Now I'm cycling through some emotions. They just needed awhile to get to the surface. I'll share them in alphabetical order, because hey, it's orderly.

Anger: Goddamn it I would have locked up the cats for the moving. This would not have happened on my watch because my special unique brand of cynicism and mistrust will keep everybody safe. Except I hate everybody and don't want to keep them safe right now.

Fear: He's somewhere and needs help and can't get to safety. He's hung himself on his collar somewhere in our house and is slowly suffocating. His body out back below the bamboo strata, disemboweled by a badger. 

Guilt: If I hadn't abandoned my cats to serve my own pathetic needs then... [see the rest under Anger]

Positivity: I love my husband and my two cats and Ravi could still come home and he might even been hiding within the many holes and weird unsearchable alcoves in our large old home and ANY MINUTE he will shimmer into existence and we will be sooooo happy and in the meantime we have all these friends who our offering their goodwill or advice or practical help and yay friends yay enduring love. Unfortunately this emotion does not manifest as often as the others.

Remoteness: My heart is craggy mountainous snowcovered waste and the only thing that grows there are those trees that look all scrubby and can survive in unforgiving climates. And I want the universe to obliterate it with a comet.

Sadness: I just love him so much all the way from his hoppers to his branches to his little schmutzface and I want him back soooo bad.....

Annnnnnd shuffle.

I guess I still have some poems left in me, though this isn't one of them.

So every time I leave a session with A I dread crossing the street. The immediate surroundings outside the yoga studio are noisy, crowded, and frankly a bit gross. The dive bar on the corner (past which I have to walk to get to the intersection) spawns bees, a smell of decay, extra sidewalk debris, and afternoon drunks milling about. 

If I don't leave the house with payment for A, sometimes I go to the drive-through bank across the street to use the ATM. Lately they have stationed a security guard outside the drivethrough, which has one or two lanes staffed by people, and then a lane for the ATM. The security guard leans against the wall staring down the long narrow parking lot to the street. It makes me feel awkward, much as I feel awkward caning down the sidewalk to my bus stop. There's a whole gauntlet of people slumped along the wall, and they're pretty much watching me. I mean I can literally see their heads turned in my direction, gazing at my progress. Not all of them of course. Some are on the phone or busy attending to children or talking to each other. Incidentally, I felt this way (about the bus stop) before I used the cane. But the security guard is the one I'm thinking about right now. 

So I'm coming out of a rough sesh, and picking my way across this annoying intersection where beer trucks are making deliveries, traffic is backed up, and people like to gridlock. I approach the entrance to the bank parking lot, and I see him. I don't know if it's the same guy all the time. My eyes don't render the face very well. Just a guy, white, stocky build, uniform, mirrored sunglasses. I enter the parking lot. I'm caning down its empty narrow length  toward the ATM. 

I feel like I'm on the runway. Like I'm doing my little turn on the catwalk or something. But (if it's not bloody obvious by now) not in a good way. I'm channeling the fire, the solidity of A as a defense, because she dropped some A-bombs on me at the end of the sesh (I dislike when she does this, but it doesn't happen often) so ironically I'm channeling her spirit because my own aura feels frangible. My brain is a roiling stew of anxiety and racing thoughts. I get closer and closer to the ATM, idly wondering if it's illegal to be a pedestrian using the drive-through. I didn't used to wonder about it, but now there's been this uniformed guy for the past two weeks.

So I've decided to just not look at him, to look at the ground halfway between him and me. And the distance grows less and less, and finally I'm veering toward the ATM. And today he speaks to me. 

"I don't mean to startle you..."

"You didn't." Because he didn't. I knew he would be there and I was watching him watch me. But he doesn't know that. However, it was kind of him to say so, because most people don't think about the fact that 99% of the time, their voices DO startle me because I don't sense them coming. 

"I don't mean to startle you... but ... you're good."

I sort of tilt my head at him, sizing up his comment, and how I'm going to respond. 

On the way to my appointment with A, I already took out my visually-impaired ire on a guy who was loading his car and decided to put all his crap in the middle of the narrow sidewalk and not move it out of the way even though, if he were paying attention, he could see and hear me coming down the block. 

For as much ire as gets channeled into some of these blog entries, I don't actually express it to the appropriate party most of the time. Today though...

When I was finally RIGHT UP ON the car loading guy and his pile o' crap he was like, "Oh shit, sorry," and I muttered something non-amicable. I didn't swear at him or anything, but still felt a little guilty for not accepting his apology. My parents raised me to be polite. Painfully polite. Self-effacing, even. I do accept the apologies of people most of the time, and I felt this guy was being particularly stupid. And he got my push-back. 

Because I think sometimes it *should* be okay to not accept someone's apology if you don't know them, if it's not an accident, if he was being particularly unaware or inconsiderate. And he was. 

I know that I hold most people to a far-higher standard of interpersonal consideration than average, because *I* am *always* hypervigilant of my body, my stuff, where it is and where I am and if it's blocking or inconveniencing anyone. And most people just aren't aware aaat aaaallll. They put themselves where-ever and expect you to just go around them. 

For example, people who hold conversations in the middle of busy sidewalks. I can't get riled about them because there's just too many. Apparently it's human nature and I'm the one overly conscious of my own taking-up-of-space. 

Back to the guard and my already-roiling stew of anxiety. 

I've heard his comment from other people too, the "you're good" thing. From repeated analysis, I believe he means that "although you are using a white cane, you move with the grace of a person who has more vision than I assume you have." I'm not okay with his judgment because it's normative. It's privileging the way "regular" people move. When I am seen as coming closer to the standard, I'm called "good." 

But his expression was friendly. And my brain was already full of too many problems. Personal angst and obsessing about family stuff. Leftover outrage from an essay I read this morning in the Kenyon Review detailing a / the latest egregious human rights violation.

I made a rare decision to let it go. The expression on his face was friendly. He was (like they nearly all are) well-intentioned. He really had no idea what his comment actually said to me. He thought he was paying me a compliment. So I just smiled and said thanks. I used the ATM. And then I bid him to have a good day as I walked away and I knew he was watching me still.

20things : nightmare

1. You know when you have a nightmare, but it's not your baseline gee that was disturbing nightmare?

2. But rather it's a truly helpless burning into your neural pathways with you forever nightmare?

3. Yeah, I had one of those last night, or rather this morning. 

4. I was in a lot of pain at the time and of course you know how it is with morning dreams. They're weirder.

5. It was one of those lucid nightmares in which you try and fumble your way out, and you think you do, except you've just woken into another layer of nightmare.

6. The worst lucid nightmare I've ever had was four layers deep.

7. This one was only two.

8. Except I hadn't had one in awhile.

9. Better living through chemistry?

10. Anyway, when I woke I was just so profoundly grateful for my own stupid life.

11. For 6:30am, for envelopes, for emptying the dishwasher.

12. My first thought was I want cookies for breakfast.

13. My second thought was I can have cookies for breakfast.

14. And I kind of misted over there for a second about cookies for breakfast, because I know where the cookies are, and it was about time for breakfast.

15. They're in the freezer. It's so hot, even at night. The idea of deliciously cold cookies... 

16. But I didn't really want them. I would get sick if I ate that. I wanted, and had, the idea. The delicious idea.

17. Now I have to make a lesson plan because I felt too crappy to do it last night. But right after I woke up, the idea for what I wanted to do just fell into place. 

18. I could see myself doing it, writing on the board. I could hear the kids writing, reading their stuff out loud.

19. Funny because I knew last night I was teaching Neruda's "Ode to My Socks" today. Although I cringe at that line about the decrepit fireman. 

20. I want them to start with simplicity: envelopes, emptying the dishwasher at 6:30am.

Taking stock halfway through the year

It's about quarter after four in the morning. I can't sleep because the cat has parked his large self in front of the window a/c and is taking up all the good cold air. Why, you may ask, do I not just toss him? Because he is older, and his kidneys are iffy, and he sort of has this grudge against the world, and I am his favorite person, and he only lets two people pet him besides me. He is a huge cat, with large intimidating fangs that he has used in the past. I can wrap my arms around him, play with his paws, look in his ears, feed him unpleasant things. He will snuggle with me in the bed. Not at my feet like many cats, or in the crook of my knees, but he wants his back against my chest. His head under my chin. And then he purrs.

It is rather flattering, in an odd way, to be the preferred, nearly exclusive  company of such a... I don't want to say unpleasant, because he's not unpleasant to me... such an idiosyncratic animal. I know that he wishes he were the only cat in the world, and that I were the only human. He's really neurotic. The vet says he should maybe be on prozac. But I've held off. I worry about him in the heat. He's spent most of the last two days wrapped around the water bowl. I'm scared that somehow the heat is going to make his kidneys go south. I will dip my hand in the water and spread it over his ears, his head, down his back to cool him off. I am probably the only person he would let do this. So he has discovered the window a/c we've turned on for sleeping, and he's, like, RIGHT up in there. And he is a huge cat. Long, tall, broad, muscular. Some people think he's overweight but I don't think he technically is any more. Still, he takes up all the damn room. So I can't sleep. I came down to get an ice pack for my neck, which has been in pain since this afternoon. Oh bones. Oh muscles. Oh delicious cold.

What does one do with insomnia? I don't have it too-too much anymore since the med switch. Years ago, I used to do dishes in the middle of the night. Ha! not anymore. So of course I just sit in the dark and think and think and think and think and think.... and apparently tonight I blog.

June just ended. It's halfway through my year of not-working. It's easy to go down the vortex of rumination tonight.

A surprising envelope arrived in the mail yesterday. Shocking, really. After I politely declined to teach this past spring (which was really really really really hard to turn down), *and* they took my picture off the adjunct faculty page (you can see a little blank space in the web page where I used to be), lo, do I get a contract for the fall. Mind you, I've never spoken with anyone about my schedule or whether I was teaching in the fall. The contract just mysteriously showed up.

It's still sitting on my desk.

The familiarity of it, the structure, the certainty of what I would be doing, is appealing. Without teaching, somehow I don't feel legitimate --although I am starting a temporary CW teaching gig on Monday that makes me super-excited (not comp! not comp! not comp!). But, my neurotic brain says, it's not at (cue choir of angels) the Almighty University. I don't know when I'm going to have another university job. I don't know when I'm going to want said job. Adjuncting was absolutely draining for me.

And, I'm going to say this next part out loud (well, type it out loud) even though it scares the crap out of me: I don't know, with the combined forces (forces? sigh. it's 4:30 am) of my multiple disabilities, if I will ever be able to handle the rigors of a full-time university job. But I probably won't ever get to teach anything but comp without one. Thinking about this for too long takes me to a very bad, lonely, anxious place. I cannot predict the future. So I just need to not go there.

[I push off with my feet so that my desk chair rolls to the low spot in the floor --this house is 100 years old; nothing is plumb. Away from the monitor, I can't see anything in the absolute darkness of the living room except the amber globs (globs?! it's 4:55 am) of the streetlights, or maybe those lights are from the cemetery...]

I think about turning off the monitor and lying on my back on the floor in the very-dark. Sometimes my back likes the unyielding wood surface. But the other two cats will think this is a game. They will come and climb on me. After 5 now. It's their hunting time. They amuse each other but I am the ultimate amusement.

I am trying to keep the following things in mind. Since January (the start of my year off)

Sent to 45 journals. 34 rejections, 9 pending, 6 acceptances, with 13 poems taken.
4 MSS sent. 2 rejections, 2 pending.
Readings given: 4, with another one tomorrow night. And I have another tentative thing lined up for September.

I always want more than I have. I always know I could be doing more. Those journal subs fall short of my goals. I should have sent way more than 45 by now! And the MSS total... sad. The damn thing will never get published. I rarely pause and think, how great this is. I've accomplished more in six months than I did in six years of adjuncting.

I will turn off the monitor now after I press the "publish" button. I will lie on the floor in the dark to ease my back and neck. And the fucking cats will think it's awesome, and I will not think they are awesome. And I will stay there for as long as I can stand it. And then I'll get an ice pack, de-hair my shirt, and try for more sleep.

It wasn't a lifestyle choice; I was born bi-visual (pt. 2)

In the second installment, I talk about getting my cane.

So, to pick up where I left off, I was feeling anxious and angsty about not going outside, and I googled and found my blog and it just made a meta-mess in my head. So I texted Mike asking if my new cane had come yet. I don't get packages sent to our house because of this ridiculous UPS injunction that was put there in response to a previous tenant, where they ALWAYS required a signature upon delivery. And we can't lift it. Even though we own the damn house. Anyway... Mike texted back Probably? A package for you from the blind something or other came and I was like !!!!!!!!!! NEW CANE.

When he got home he gave me the package and suddenly I had my doubts. It weighed nothing. Like when you are expecting your new laptop and Apple sends you this laptop-sized box but all it contains is the paperwork for your extended AppleCare warranty. I was like ... this is paperwork for my cane? A slip to say it's out of stock? It didn't help that the outside of the box said FREE MATTER FOR THE BLIND OR HANDICAPPED. In retrospect, maybe they get a discount postal rate or something if they put that on the outside. When I opened it up, I found MY NEW CANE. And a very brief instructional sheet labeled Shipping Type: Free Matter.

So, first of all, the new cane comes in a velvet case. Like something you might to cradle a small musical instrument... like a piccolo maybe? And it really does weigh nothing. Though the new cane is six inches longer, it weighs a little over 3 oz. The old cane weighed 9 oz.  Here are some pictures of the new cane. It's quite sophisticated looking. 

In the first one, you can see how long it is but also the clean design scheme. It looks like the tuxedo of canes. In the second, I'm trying to get a close-up of the words on the first section. It says Designed by Chris Park, Carbon Fiber, and gives the NFB address. 

And lastly, I like this detail: The little icon depicts the action of the blind person using the cane as one of elegance and grace. I appreciate this gesture, as I don't often feel elegant.

When I tried to use the cane, however, I felt quite less elegant and wanted to request an immediate in-service with Mr. or Ms. Park. This cane is gorgeous, ultra-light, and elegant-looking, but the telescoping aspect is going to be difficult to master. Also, I worry that the supremely broken sidewalks of my neighborhood are gonna reduce this baby to a bent length of awkwardness in about two minutes. 

See how cute the new cane is? With the elegant tip on the end? Much nicer looking than my old canes' "pencil tip." The picture below shows what a pencil tip looks like (except my tips were narrower, more like the diameter of the cane itself). Thanks to The Carroll Center for the Blind for "letting" me borrow their image. The cane below more-or-less looks like my old cane(s) except mine were made from aluminum and I'd decoupaged the handles so they weren't so ugly.

Anyway, that pencil tip was rugged. And see how thick the overall cane body is? My cane(s) took a beating. I'm really concerned that this new one is a bit of a hothouse flower. Now, on to the concept of telescoping. The instruction sheet reads:

YOUR NEW TELESCOPING CANE

We hope that your new telescoping cane will serve you well. Here are some tips for extending the longevity of the this cane.

Correctly Extending and Collapsing a Telescoping Cane

To extend the cane, pull out each section fully; then twist it with the section above it to tighten the connection.  To collapse the cane, untwist each section to loosen the connection.

NOTE: Do NOT attempt to collapse the cane by banging the cane straight down on the ground, [I admit I thought about this within the first five seconds of deploying the cane before reading the instructions] as the pressure may damage the cap! Always untwist the sections to loosen them! 

At this time we do not have replacement caps available for most types of telescoping canes. However, replacement tips are available. 

I had to read the last sentence several times because at first I thought it was directly contradicting itself. I still haven't figured out the difference between a cap and a tip. And after practicing with the cane so that I wouldn't look like a megadork in the field, so to speak, I'm still either tightening those sections too tightly, so that when I need to put it away, I'm standing there trying to un-tighten the sections for whole minutes OR I don't tighten them enough and the little lowest section collapses as I try to use it. I seem to have more of a problem with the former (over-tighten) than the latter (under-tighten), but internet searches reveal that some people have a chronic problem with this type of cane collapsing as they are using it.

I may wait on Part 3 of this entry (where I finally talk about Cathy Kudlick and her epiphanic DSQ article) because my eyes are really tired after doing these two. I may just go upstairs and watch some tv while practicing the tightening / untightening thing again. I searched for videos on precisely how to do this, but nay. 

Do they mean give it a little twist or really screw it in there? 

Are the insides of the sections in fact threaded or do they achieve tension by some other means? 

Have I, in fact, completely lost my ability to perform so simple a task as righty-tighty-lefty-loosey? 

Let's just hope the box doesn't end up being the best part.

(That's Ruskin, my oldest. Don't disturb him in his new bed.)