Murder and getting unFucked in a not Buddhist way.

I caught a snippet of this book a while back that was talking about the induction into Buddhism.

I don’t know a lot about Buddhism, it seems really interesting though. This book talked about the beginning of a person’s journey into the Buddhist life.

Did you know that Buddhists begin by spending 36 hours completely alone.

No phone. No internet. No interruptions. Just you alone with you.

This weekend my kids were with their dad. The house was quiet. Why not?

Three hours in…I’m on the verge of a nervous blinking breakdown.

I tried to keep going.

I didn’t talk on the phone, I didn’t text. I was avoiding the phone altogether.

I avoided TV because that is just me throwing days away binge watching nonsense.

I sat. I swam. I walked.

I tried really hard to just be cool to myself and enjoy the time but really quick–far sooner than I would have ever guessed possible this fear/hate/bullshit just started coming out of me.

There was this super painful pull for me to get the hell out of there and go anywhere else. There was a constant feeling I’m a shitty person. I caught myself telling myself that everyone hates me and I deserve it. I started envisioning my death and subsequent eating by cats. I wondered if my kids even cared if I lived or died.

Ugly huh?

I had no idea I hated myself like this.

I was scared, but I’m pretty stubborn so giving in completely was not an option. I decided on a compromise. I would not call in every friend I’d ever had to save me but I wasn’t going to be able to not have any distractions.

I painted the bathroom while listening to Unfuck yourself by Gary John Bishop.

I really liked his straightforwardness as well as how he brought ancient philosophers into our now with their relevant and pertinent thoughts.

I think my biggest take away from that book is that action is the only way to actually change. Not soon, or later or I’m going to…right NOW. Do it right now.

The other book that I listened to was ‘Stay sexy and don’t get murdered’. That book was ahhhhhhmazing for so many reasons.

It was entertaining, had awesome life advice, friend advice, silliness, anecdotes about growing up in the exact time I grew up and the biggest takeaway from that book was this:

Let your freak flag fly loud and proud. The authors are two weirdos that weren’t afraid to expose their weirdness and from it came overwhelming success and happiness.
(They are both super into true crime and apparently there are bagillions of people who are too and they call themselves Murderinos)

How cool.

I was still bummed about bailing on the Buddhist experiment. I am not trying to be Buddhist –not that I have any problems with Buddhists. I just am trying to better hear me but geeeeezus that was eye opening.

I have to fill any time alone with immediate information or action or anyone or anything at all or I freak out. This terribly mean inner critic takes over and picks at me, I pick at myself physically too…my face after the ‘facial’ is still blotchy and gross.

How can I not be able to be alone with my own

I never ever focus on the good.

I write. A lot. I love that about me.

Writing is more than a passion, I constantly do it all the time no matter what. I can’t stop it.

As Gary John Bishop says in Unfuck Yourself…(this is not a quote but some sort of forgetful style summation…he says it lots better I promise you) We all seek out certainty, when certainty is an illusion. Nothing is certain. Not ever. The only thing that is certain is uncertainty and yet uncertainty we treat like the plague. We consume billions of dollars of medicine yearly to try to quell gripping fear of uncertainty.

Nothing is certain.

So staying in this job so I can have a certain paycheck and certain life and certainly take care of my kids and never ever finishing a book like I’ve always dreamed of…where do his words have a chance? Where can his inflammatory statement pry up the loose board in the box I’ve built around myself to keep uncertainty…and happiness by the way…out?

They can’t. They stand zero chance.

In my mind, the finished book would do no better than the unread blogs–blogs I don’t even publish most times by the way. It wouldn’t be failure so I’m safer if I don’t even put it out there.
Which brings me to the last thing I’ll say about Gary John Bishop’s Unfuck yourself…he talks a lot about willingness and the need to be honest.

He says not everyone is willing to be rich. Everyone might want to be rich but not everyone is willing to trade their time for the extra zero in your paycheck. As long as you admit to yourself that you’re unwilling, then cool.

So I wonder if my not ever finishing any of the thousands of books I’ve tried writing over the years is really a fear of failure or is it really an unwillingness to let my vulnerability be exposed.

Putting the words out on the page is brutal. It’s like cutting yourself open and then if no one cares you’re bleeding out–that’s painful–and then again the thought of someone examining your oozing wound is terrifying too.

Those two books might not have been the self acceptance weekend that I needed but they brought a few great things to me and kept me from going crazy because before the Buddhist thing I wasn’t really sure that a human being could or should go two days without human contact.

I’ve been feeling in my heart for some time that I needed a reset and now that I know it’s not me being antisocial or weird and that it’s actually something that an entire religion uses as an induction…that’s enough for me to keep trying.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be blessed to find my Murderinos. I don’t know if I’ll ever be anything more than I am right now and I guess I’m willing to accept that uncertainty. For now.

So Juls, this is for you. Be nice to me. I’ve gotten you through so much, I’ve been there when no one else has. I don’t deserve to be called names, I am awesome enough to get you through ten thousand 36 hour Buddhist inductions and then some–just be kinder to me. Just as I am.

xoxo,
J

The first time I tried sushi…and agreed with Trump.

First, that was today.

I tried Sushi for the first time today.

I mean this in the most sincere way…I never want to eat anything else ever again.

I am allergic to shrimp.  I have a severe aversion to anything fishy tasting so this was Vegan sushi but oh…my…God was it the best thing I’ve ever had.

I am not Vegan.

I am the oddest combination of liberal thinker, red meat eater, LGTBQ supporter,  deep South dweller, animal lover, carnivore, ignorant, polarized idiot you’ll ever meet.  I did not vote for Trump.

I love…and I mean LOVE…steak.

I’ve seen cows killed right in front of my face (thank you 4-H).
Shot right between the eyes, skin stripped off, hacked up, processed by people in white suits covered with bright red splotches of blood from head to toe….and I still love steak.

I also love my dogs and kitties.  I know..how weird.

I hated Trump from waaaaay before it decided to take a shit on our government.

I have hated him since he cheated on Ivana.  It was about the time that my own parents had split up and his stupid, cheating, lying face was on every tabloid.  I pinned every ounce of pain I had at my parent’s separation on that guy and his flashy new wife.

I can…not believe that he was voted President to this day.   I live in a sort of quazi-paranoia at the alien assholes that live in the same very rural small town I inhabit.  I don’t trust them.

They’re his base.

Even my own family, my AUNT.  Yes, my own AUNT voted for the pussy grabbing, alleged rapist on his third marriage because he repeatedly cheated on the first two wives.

My aunt is the most Catholic, judgmental person alive. If Trump was just a guy here in our little town, her lips would fall off at spreading gossip in order to ostracize him for his misdeeds.  And yet…she was ADAMANT to the point of almost physically altercating with anyone that didn’t agree Trump should be President.

She hates the lawyer here in town because he ‘drives a Mercedes’, yet he’s married to the same woman for his entire adult life, is an elected official, pays his taxes, run a charity, donates…I could go on. She hates him AND she voted for Trump.

Can you maybe understand my quazi-paranoia at living here better?

Also, do you think I could get Russia to convince the people in this town that there’s a driving by my house tax they have to pay so I can paint antique furniture funky colors and watch TV all day (Twirls hair, looking off into possibility while legit waiting for you to answer)?

I shit you not what I’m about to tell you is true.

When the last presidential primary election day came here in our little town, I was ready.  I had my card, my id, my kids prepared for what I was about to do and what it meant, and in tow and I showed up at the polling center ready to represent.  There was this long line…so I got in it.  I was prepared to show up to make sure the Trump monster was defeated all the pain from my parents separation still trained on him and making him pay for glamorizing the downfall of the American family.

I waited with friends and family in that long line that wrapped around the outside of the building.  It was so hot.  I let the kids sit in my car with the engine and air conditioning running while I stood in line.  I laughed and talked for what seemed like hours.  Long enough for me to get a slight sunburn later, a woman comes to the distant door of the building.  She announces that if anyone was there to vote in the Democratic primary there was no line.

No one moved but me.

I motioned to my kids to get out of the car and I clasped their hands and we walked the long walk to the front of the building.   You could have heard a pin drop as a hushed judgment fell on me as I advanced to the door.

I went right up to the voting booth.  There was not a single other person there voting Democratic.

I try never to get this worked up about anything but seriously the thought of him coordinating with Russia to buy America for another four years…or ten minutes for that matter…makes me feel like I’m going to be put in a concentration camp at any moment.

If they can buy a President…what next?

Suddenly no one seems fit.  No one seems unbuyable.

When I first realized that I agreed with one of Trump’s notions, I was worried.  I’d sworn off Facebook since that election and the infuriating crap that was floating around so I didn’t think I was brainwashed?

I’d watched so very many of my friends turn from sweet incredible people to these hate-filled, polarized jerks circulating reposts of a Hillary image being burned atop a fire for her compromised email server.

Remember the good ol’ days when Hillary’s compromised emails were such a big deal?  Lol.

Facebook was making me hate the people around me for the flaberghasting shit that they circulated during that last election.  I had to get off of it.  I didn’t even know then that the inflammatory crap I was so adverse to that they were reposting was Russian borne–I just knew it was wrong.

Nope it wasn’t Facebook.  I actually agreed with something Trump said and I could no longer deny it.

I know.  I want to vomit reading that last sentence as well.

Let me explain.

I hate the IRS.

When we were separated, my now ex-husband didn’t pay his taxes for 2 years.  He said nothing to me about this.

I’ve never not paid my taxes.  When we were separated, I filed separately.  On time.  Every time.  To this day I’ve never not filed my taxes.  (Cue me pulling out my binder of every tax return, letter, threat, etc ready to prove this happily).

The minute we got divorced the tax letters started coming.  He owed $125,000+ in back taxes and–the best part–since he’d filed for bankruptcy immediately AFTER we divorced, this tax lien was now mine alone.  He was off the hook completely.

My wages were garnished and my bank account emptied.

I hate talking about this because I’m still going through it.

I hate the IRS because they took every penny a single mom had.  They ruined my name in my small town by mailing letters to every bank I worked with as a local insurance agent.  Unless you’ve lived in a small town, you can’t really understand what this kind of injury does to a person…to a business.  It was as if I had the plague.  Policies cancelled, whispers ensued, I was an instant leper.

Trump hates them too.  His incoherent babble has repeatedly mentioned dismantling them in favor of a national sales tax/tariff situation and I’m wholeheartedly a fan of this  plan.

I would more gladly pay a national sales tax than the IRS.  Let the IRS regulate and bully business owners, at least that’s a choice to run a business or not.   I would gladly pay twice what I pay now for the things I need if I didn’t have to deal with the IRS again. 

IRS agents are legitimized monsters.  If you don’t think so, you’re blessed and lucky but delusional.

I can’t even imagine the kind of person, much less woman-which it was in my case-who would come to my dilapidated house and see my children faces and take every penny I had at Christmas while garnishing my wages and ruining my ability to support my kids by sending letters to every area bank I worked with as an insurance agent  KNOWING that the debt was not mine but my exhusband’s because I’d filed my own tax returns those two years as he was living elsewhere and was to live elsewhere with my old yoga instructor evermore.

(Envision me pulling her chick card completely in a snap fashion).

Glo**a  Goddamned.  K*ll*r  (I’ve redacted parts of her name so that the IRS doesn’t find new ways to eff with me.  I have read and been advised that as long as ten percent of the letters of her name are changed, I’m good.  I went ahead and changed more than 20 percent because I’m a good person).

I hoped during the government shut down that she was at least getting a taste of her own medicine (See what a good person I am?  Lol).  I tried to picture her kids hungry and with nothing at Christmas.  I don’t care if you think that makes me a bad person.  What kind of a monster takes this on as a job?  Sells their soul for a paycheck?

I met with another of this very type of person not long ago.  She came into my office for an appointment.  She was wearing an ICE uniform on her way to the legalized torture facilities that apparently we as Americans now condone.

‘But they knew what they were getting into when they came here’ says my Mexican American coworker after I repeatedly open and shut my office door trying to cleanse the room of the evil that permeated through that foul excuse for a human being that had inhabited the chair across from me for fifteen minutes too long.

I hate unnecessary Nazi references–and I do realize this is my second– but I wondered after she uttered these words if that was similar to what the propaganda that was circulated in Germany as the Nazi’s were dehumanizing others sounded like.

The shitty sing song way she said it too…it was like it was subliminally programmed straight from Fox News.  I shivered and bit my tongue hard thankful I was in a different room so she didn’t see my disgust and fury.

Kids had died and were dying still.  A few miles down the effing road from the office we were sitting in at that very moment.  Kids.  Missing their parents.  Screaming and crying and sick.  In shitty conditions.  Shittier than the ones that they were just trying to escape.

No one.  Ever.  Deserves.  That.

No one.

Not even Glo**a fucking K*ll*er deserves her children taken from her, in a constant state of distress without communication with her family or country and no advocation.

No one.

I pray that something happens to wake Karma up to the damage this President and the people who surround him that have sold their souls for a paycheck to remove them from power of inflicting one more ounce of pain on anyone else in my name.

Shouldn’t he have needed our permission to erect these kid prisons? I certainly would have remembered a vote coming up for this. Those of us who are angry about it are just ‘nasty’ and ‘liberal’.

If you think I’m harsh, maybe I am. I don’t think I’m harsh enough.  I don’t think anyone could ever be harsh enough when up against people who have no soul.

I am sick of being rational in an irrational climate.  I’m sick of being calm when faced with insidious, irrational chaos.   If you think that these people are justified in their cruelty, you can blog about that on your blog and maybe, hopefully find a soul as well while you’re at it.

I said I agree with a monster, that doesn’t make me anything other than able to appreciate the beauty in everyone–which is how we all should be no matter how ‘nasty’ we are. No matter how wrong it feels.  That does not detract from my strong desire to form a posse and storm the fucking ICE facility and free those kids each and every day like I pray someone would do for me if I were stuck in some foreign country separated from my children unable to understand my rights or have any help in getting free.

As much as I wished there were someone to help me when Gl*r*a effing K*ll*r took everything I had at a time when my kids were handing me lists for Santa hoping for things like a new mattress to replace the one she had since she was born and had now outgrown (actually on my daughter’s Christmas list that year as well as ‘something nice for Mama to make her smile’) and pants that weren’t too short like my son had asked for.

They got nothing from me for Christmas.  We had cheese crackers and the tiniest tree you’ve ever seen bought with change from the laundry room.

I hold these things on my heart. Each one a hole as if a dagger pierced it marked with the name of each item.

‘Pants’ still hurts a lot.

Tell me what I could have done differently to change this? I once pleaded through streaming tears to Gl*r*a K*ll*r.

‘As far as I can see, you’re a criminal and I’ll do whatever it takes to bring you to justice’.  She says to me with a cold, stern face.

His original tax debt? For both years: $41,200.

The current lien against me?: $128,900.

That’s over 300% more than the debt my exhusband didn’t pay.

Tell me who you think the criminal is?

I am a walking contradiction.

I hate seafood and love Sushi.

I hate the President and love his idea of limiting government.

I live in the rural South and support all kinds of people and believe that everyone deserves freedom, peace, happiness and best of all an opinion at all times–even if that opinion is that I suck.

We’re all walking contradictions.  We’re so blessed that we can eat Sushi and be allergic to shellfish.  That we can believe in basic human kindness and still harbor feelings of hate towards those that don’t.  That we can love our country and hate our president.  We all deserve common decency.  Even him.  Even Gl*ri* effing K*ll*r.  Even me and even you.

Even tangerine tinted idiots sometimes have a good idea.

xoxo,

J