My mom has had to work almost every single one of Zack's Halloweens except this one. So this is the first year in 11 that I get to hand out candy. Except I can't open the door because the kitten is going INSANE! So I have the lights on and my front screen door open so I can talk to people and a giant basket full of candy. It's so fun. I got to see Jack and Matilda dressed up. I don't know why she came this way. She turned at our house. I wouldn't have said anything. She could have walked past or even taken candy. I wouldn't say anything more or less than I would say to anyone else. "Happy Halloween! Take as much as you want... Have a good night." Over and over. Zack trick or treated at our old house where Sara lived a couple months after we moved out with Janet's kids, like he was used to then, it's hard to even remember now how much he missed our old life even though he loves his new one so much now and 3 years went super fast. My cousin didn't even say hello to him. Someone who had helped me raise him since he was born and I was always working and always a screw up so Errrbody helped.
I can't pretend people don't exist. It just feels cruel. I'm not angry with them. I never was. It isn't easy knowing I am doing the right thing by never talking to them again. I feel better every day all the time. So they must as well.
I knew I was going to write a blog post today. I have all these other experiences to get out. To get down. I feel like I am in limbo but I don't know what I am waiting for. I guess I am waiting for them to leave. There's so much more that probably hasn't spilled out. Someone asked me if I knew Joshua Fink and I said yes, I have his poetry book. I didn't read it yet. I started to but I related more to Skylar's at the time and read that chapbook multiple times. I got The Bones of Madness at Jon's Addam's memorial show at The Saint. I was supposed to go to the diner but instead I went to see some more really loud music somewhere else with myself. I could barely talk to people in June. I had to go to court in June. I was so afraid all the time. I threw up all the time from the winter to the spring even when I quit drinking. Constant fear and anxiety until I owned my own story. On some level though in my mind I am still protecting them. I haven't read my own 4 full journals from those years since we moved back here. I had forgotten about them even while they are always at the back of my mind. Until someone asked me about Fink. His poetry book is in the sparkling sequined Star Wars backpack with Zack's Pop Figures Joker and Harley Quinn key chains on the zipper pulls that has the journals in it behind my living room recliners. Nothing for me is a coincidence. Everything is part of this larger puzzle I will die trying to figure out. But really today. I skipped smoking my bowl and fell into a deep moment of zen under a giant soft pink sweater and my "cat Tea" as Zack and Kyle call it [a microwavable heating pad that smells like tea] with the cool wind from after the storm whipping through the house.
I saw him sitting on the wood that I spent hours walking back and forth on today waiting for someone to get there, facing the other direction. Always pretending I do not exist. Which is how I would prefer it. Just pretend I don't exist in somebody else's neighborhood. I hear Alaska is really nice this time of year. 26 degrees and the runway that should be frozen is thawing. Nibbler (the kitten) finally passed the fuck out. She was RUNNING non stop from the time the trick or treating started until just now when she passed out in the chair next to me. It's dark and pretty damn cold out now so I doubt I will see too many more kids. Even the older kids don't stay out late in this world. It's a crazy thing. We wouldn't even want to go out until it was dark out when I was a kid. Only one trip right after school maybe. I always went on the Island in Lavallette at Gram's and in Toms River as a kid. Never in Lakewood when I moved there. In Island Heights weirdly in 7th and 8th grade. That's when I saw my first hairy pimply male ass. At night trick or treating in I.H. at like 13 years old. I'm sure it was a big deal at the time. Looking back I'm glad they just mooned me and I wasn't one of the girls who had to either A. See or B. Suck their little child dick's.
I went to a Halloween costume required party. I was too afraid to wear my aggressively feminist costume. I dressed like Wednesday Addam's in honor of Jon (in my mind cause I'm weird like that) and said, "this is my costume, I'm a homicidal maniac. They look just like everyone else." Let's help Rachel Bloodgood (way to be the first person I am calling out by name in my blog for a good reason) get her hands on Jon Addam's Art and have a show for him with it. Cause when you're an artist you're never really gone, you live on in the hearts and minds of all of the people you connected with and intertwined roots with. Also being a good friend is neat.
Shout out to the friend who had to walk me to the outside, Almost to my car even though I didn't actually let him, I just hauled ass walking the well lit block to my car by myself because I INSISTED I not be afraid even though I was terrified after being leered at and then after finally deciding the inside was full of mostly drunk men looking for the last lonely drunk women to escape with FINALLY going outside to have someone yell, "it's cold out here, sweetheart!" or something equally meaningless and insane to yell at a human being from a distance and then stop and turn back and watch them from the direction they were supposed to be going. Thanks secret super strong man friend, hahaha, who I CREEPILY lurk around when I feel unsafe in social situations at shows because I feel like you Are safe. He's not the only one. I met a pretty decent spread of "good men" on my merry travels about the art scene this year when I needed to be busy because I lived alone for a year. Sleeping with Christmas bells on my door.
If Jon hadn't died I don't know if Kyle and I would get along as well as we do. If we would have had the talks we needed to have as soon that brought us back together right away. At that point, seeing someone we knew of and their partner split prematurely was enough to make us feel the foolishness of a year apart with stark remorse of lost time.
Right as I was starting to give up on my sociopolitical life. On my quest for the end of rape culture. The #metoo hashtag exploded onto the social scene. Blazing through even the mainstream news coverage. Making old women in my salon recall the many times at jobs and in organizations they were made to feel sexualized by men in authority over them who they could only get in subtle jabs in at, if say anything at all. In a world where that pussy grabbing behavior was legal and the socially acceptable norm. Nobody ever adds that into their hipster nostalgia for the 50's. That women couldn't speak at all let alone speak up. I almost gave up and then the cult of the feminine lifted me on it's wings. Almost everyone in capitalism should be metoo-ing. We are conditioned to sell ourselves lest we be left behind. I never really understood fame seekers. I always had a hard time keeping my circle small enough that I had enough energy to go around and focus on the important people and things. I recently figured out where I fit into this world better than I knew before and it feels very good. I know I believe no ones deserves to be forgotten. I don't believe in a traditional afterlife being an atheist. But I believe that everyone we encounter leaves a little bit or a lot of themselves with us. That is very important. There is no collective consciousness without the collective.
Interestingly I don't even know if Jon would remember who I am. It's not important. He was important to someone I met at a crucial time of my life and who I really needed to meet and a lot of other people in my community who are important to me. I regret all the time I allowed someone to make me afraid. I regret all the years I wasted being depressed and allowing other people to judge who I am as a mother and as an artist.
I've been doing amazing work lately. Humans make the best canvas. They are so beautiful and unique. I never ask people what color hair they want. I always ask what is their favorite color. What colors don't you like for some reason. The internet allows for much greater communication and creativity among the masses. Without nearly enough people having read and shared my blog and my ideas. The hair and the chalk and the things that I dreamed and put out there into the universe have come to be. I have found, or built or called to into being the community I once dreamed of. It's strange to be around people who are kind after all this time. It was strange at first to be around people who care. People who love me. People who listen. I still miss my old life every day even though I know that this new life is right. Even if I hope that feeling doesn't linger but fades quickly once I can't see them anymore in my view.
Worse than the bodily autonomy and confidence I used to have that you stole from me is the relationships I had with others. The fact that I can never again be trusted the way I once was, even though I seemed trustworthy before I told the truth, truly empathic people always knew I wasn't. If I lost my mind to the control of a psycho once everyone thinks it can happen again.
My cousin who used to bring her breast milk to you while your wife was at work during the day called me Borderline. Implying there is a Type of woman who deserves rape and asks for it. I'm sorry for her life and her marriage that she believes in that version of modern psychology. Her and 2 other women I know who have children similar to our children's ages have suddenly become clearly influenced by him over these past years. It makes sense because he and his wife said terrible things about these women and now I recognize them as earlier members of the cycle of abuse we all got swept up into with them. It feels good to know that the only people in life who don't like me aren't going on what I have actually been like to them in person and are instead basing their views of me on my abusers opinion. It basically feels like there is nothing not to like except for his existence in my life, and now he's fucking Long gone.
More and more people believe me or are leaving me and that feels good. I have had people say they are sorry they didn't know, I have cried to people who seemed to genuinely care. I have had people buy me a drink who weren't trying to fuck me. I have friends that have nothing to do with any of the worst things that happened to me, who came into my life and saved me carrying around a heavy burden I do not want them to bear. I am making it my point to only bring people up from now on instead of dragging them down with my old lie.
Until Next Time...
Love,
- Jackie Lane
