Thank You Madame Secretary

/ Lesley Rebecca / Leave a comment

Dear Secretary Clinton, 

I am sorry. I’m sorry we weren’t enough to stand up for you and what you’ve shown us we can do. I’m sorry we failed you. I’m even sorrier we’ve failed ourselves. However, this morning I am also hopeful for the embers I see burning in these women that you’ve empowered with your career and campaign. It’s 2:30pm and I still haven’t slept. What began as despondency last night has begun to burn in my belly like a rage. 

I will no longer keep quiet about my opinion to keep the peace. I will no longer placate people who act like the 50s were the Golden Age of American living and try to take us back there. It was also a time of obscene oppression against women, African Americans, and LGBTQ communities. We cannot allow this setback to send us backward or give us pause to falter in our convictions. We have to get up and continue the fight as I think women are uniquely capable of doing. Probably because we’ve been doing it for so long. 

I also hope with my deepest convictions that women everywhere remember their empathy as we fight for our rights and remember that ALL of us who feel left behind by this election are STRONGER TOGETHER and this was never just about women’s rights. Your legacy was to be one of a President for all people. I want to to encourage everyone to lend their voice freely when they see something they know is wrong. Nothing is going to get better by waiting for the politicians. We have to stand up and care for each other. 

We have already begun to galvanize. Even in our “secret, private Facebook” group women are reaching out, supporting each other, and asking what can be done. We are connecting with each other. Promising to continue our support of each other in the coming years. We know this is not the time to lie down and it would be a disgrace to the memory of your hard fought campaign. We are here and ready to put in the hours.

Today I vow that I won’t spend the next four years waiting. I will find causes, I will find candidates, I will find action waiting to be taken, and I will find those without a voice and help them to be heard. I will do this all, because your campaign and the women that have come together have inspired me, Madame Secretary.

Thank you, Hillary Rodham Clinton. It has been my honor. I will always and forever be #withher.

Yours in gratitude,

Lesley Smith

Proud Member of Pansuit Nation

Thank You

/ Lesley Rebecca / Leave a comment

When you’re deep in an abusive relationship, it’s easy to feel isolated. Especially when your partner is a guy that not a single one of your friends likes. Isolation means when you finally get out, you look up and think you’re alone. You think everybody left you while you were trying to dig your way out of the hole.

In the last two weeks so many of you have been checking on me. Texts, phone calls (sometimes from Australia), emails, Skype calls, reading my rambling blog posts…from close friends, old friends, and often from people to whom I thought I was insignificant. Sometimes they were quick notes and sometimes they were surprisingly deep conversations, but they have all helped more than many of you will ever realize. It has helped me remember I’m not the person he so desperately wanted me to believe I was.

In addition to people checking on me, I’ve heard from so many women in private conversations letting me know that they’d been where I was and some that still are. So many women that have told me how proud they are of what I’m doing. These women, and their stories, have done so much to bolster my resolve, and remind me that what I’m doing is the right thing. Nobody should ever be made to feel the way I did. Nobody should live with the threat of physical violence. Nobody should live in fear in their own home. Nobody should ever wonder if it’s possible they will ever be on the receiving end of the love they feel for others instead of the contempt they feel from their partner.

With all of this being said, I just wanted to say thank you. In the last couple of weeks everything came to a head and I was the most terrified I’d ever been of him. I will be eternally grateful to each and every one of you who reached out to let me know I wasn’t alone. Your kindness, love, and willingness to share did not go unappreciated.

xoxo,

Lesley

Letting Go

/ Lesley Rebecca / Leave a comment

I went to court yesterday to finalize a restraining order against my ex. Due to his outright lies on the stand, it wasn’t ordered for as long as I wanted, but I got it. I’ll be scratching my head trying to figure out who the mysterious Derek Stuckey is and when we dated for the rest of my life (that’s another story). The judge only seemed to give a crap enough to give it to me for the length of time that he did because I had a recording of my ex trying to run me off the road the second time he did it. Yay, American legal system!

I’m not really surprised. Years ago I had to call the cops on another ex who shoved me from behind, face first into a brick wall. The cops arrested me for public intoxication. “Public” meant standing in the parking lot by my car waiting for them to get there and “intoxication” meant that I blew a .01 (Yes, .08 is the legal limit in case you’re scratching your head.). When in booking, the booking agent asked about the cuts and scrapes on the side of my face. The cop looked right at them and said, “I don’t see anything.”

So here I sit today, my anger over the court compounding my anger over the entire situation. I’ve been threatened by his brother, threatened with knives and firearms by my ex, nearly run off the road, threatened with death…and the judge gave me three months. By my account that’s just enough time to find a new place to live and effectively be run out of my home by these two assholes. None of that even encompasses him refusing to move out of my house or pay rent (he was claiming squatters’ rights), or just generally tormenting me on a daily basis with manipulation and constant verbal abuse. I actually feel worse for their dad than I do myself, since they now both live at home, don’t pay rent, and are well into their 30s.

Back to my unrelenting anger. I’m not an angry person. I’m actually a pretty forgiving, live and let live kind of person. That’s why it’s so uncomfortable to be me right now. I am a pent up ball of misdirected rage. I can’t let anything go.

I got into an argument with a friend about two weeks ago. It was something that I probably would have let go a few months ago, but in my current state, I literally can’t. All I can do is go back and forth between wanting to call them and talk to them about all of this crap and then reminding myself that I don’t ever want to speak to them again. And I know I want to talk to them again. Until I don’t. I don’t like it. It’s exhausting to hold on to this.

I can’t even explain the thoughts I have at work when guests get on my nerves. If my anger is misdirected towards friends and loved ones, it’s a nuclear explosion in my mind when it comes to strangers.

Next Thursday I go home for my brother’s wedding. My goal for the next week is just to meditate, yoga, write, sing, whatever it takes, and as often as I have to, but I want to be in a very different mindset when I get home. I want to be happy for, what I consider a miraculous occasion.

2001.09.11

/ Lesley Rebecca / Leave a comment

I got up around 8:00 that morning. My boyfriend, Masie, had already gotten up and out of bed. I stumbled into the living room to find him sitting and watching the news. It wasn’t out of the ordinary, but a lot of mornings he’d be listening to Glenn Beck on the radio and goofing off on the computer. I was standing next to the TV when he told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

“What?” was all I could manage.

“It hit one of the towers, the one with the antenna.” In my mind I pictured a Cesna clipping the antenna. A sightseeing flight that got too close or a pilot in trouble.

“A plane hit the antenna?”

“No. A plane crashed into the tower.” Even then, I was imagining a small aircraft.

I couldn’t wrap my head around what he was telling me. He had taken me on my first trips to New York, a city that I had been in love with since before I’d ever set foot there. I walked around to look at the TV and within seconds I watched United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower as I sat down on the couch.

I don’t remember talking, really. We just stared at the television, horrified into silence as we watched the buildings burn. People were hanging out of windows, desperate for air and escape. I imagined them watching the skies, waiting for rescue from above. We only spoke to confirm what we were seeing was real. We both needed somebody to tell us our eyes weren’t imagining those people, having given up, falling from the upper floors where the fire and smoke had consumed every available space. Floors where people knew their situation was beyond dire.

A little more than a half an hour later came the news that the Pentagon had been hit and that’s when horror became terror. How many more planes were out there? How many more targets were they going to take out? I remember realizing I was crying, but didn’t know when I’d started. I was selfishly relieved Masie was home with me. I didn’t ever want him to leave my side again. In some ways he hasn’t. We haven’t been together in years, but every year on September 11, I’m there with him again in some ways.

We kept watching. I couldn’t look away. It wasn’t like looking at a car crash on the side of the road. I wasn’t a voyeur that day. It was happening to all of us, wherever we were. I wasn’t in New York, but I was with the victims and the survivors. I watched with them as South Tower collapsed. I prayed for the people trapped on the upper floors of the North Tower that had watched as the South Tower went down, the people who now fully understood their fate and were now faced with the decision to end their lives on their terms. I prayed for the people in the buildings as they went down. I prayed for the people on the street, that they’d be able to live with the atrocities they’d witnessed. I prayed for the people on the planes, that they knew peace in their final moments. I may not ever understand what it was like to be there, but I tried. I tried as I prayed for a city that I’d always dreamed of calling home, a city that had such a special place in my heart. My heart hurt in a way that it hadn’t ever before or since.

Vanishing Act

/ Lesley Rebecca / Leave a comment

I woke up in the middle of the night and called out his name. I guess my brain thought it heard him and I was still half asleep. It’s odd having somebody just disappear after living with them for three years. I still haven’t moved the note or the key from the kitchen table. I still haven’t slept in my bed. He just left without talking to me. Most of the time when you end something of this magnitude, you get to say goodbye. I would have liked to have had a grown-up goodbye. If one of us died today, the last thing he would ever hear from me is “I hope you fall into quicksand”, because nothing says “thanks for the good times” like telling someone you wish the earth would swallow them whole.

You’d think I’d hate him, but you’d be wrong. I don’t really hate anybody. I wish he could have been different, less of a misogynist. I wish he could have overcome the way he was raised. I wish we could have been friends when the dust settled. I’ve only had two relationships end this acrimoniously. I had to get a restraining order against the last one. I sincerely hope this is the last time in my life I have contemplate restraining orders and personal safety with regard to somebody who claims to love me. I’m sure we can all understand how that screws with your head and, frankly, mine is a bit of a mess anyway.

Last night I realized that for the first time in my life, I am totally free of any obligation to another human. I could go anywhere or do anything and my only responsibility is to myself now. For a moment I imagined myself flying. I have never felt less attached to anything. The promise of an unbridled future came to a screeching halt when I realized that with this absolute freedom comes the lack of a net. Even master trapeze artists have a net and my life skills are nowhere near master level.

One of my co-workers is making me try dating apps. Not because I particularly want to, but I’ve been off for two days and the only meaningful interactions I’ve had with other human beings are my next door neighbor and the guy collecting shopping carts in the parking lot at Wal-Mart. I miss having somebody to love. I think that’s the hardest part for me. Even when he was still here, I had somebody to cook for, do things for, make comfortable. Now I have nowhere to focus my attention, except myself. Maybe I’ll just get a dog.

The next few weeks are going to require some muddling and I’ve got enough to muddle through to keep me busy for a while. I’m at my best when I have things to do and I want to be selective about what I choose to fill this hole with.

I Have No Idea What I’m Doing

/ Lesley Rebecca / Leave a comment

I am overwhelmed with options right now and I feel like I need a second to breathe. For the first time in my life, I have no obligation to anybody. I want everything and nothing. Those of you that know me well know I’m mildly bi-polar. While the depression had gotten bad in recent months, the absence of my main stressor has been a big relief and I can feel the pendulum swinging the other way. I’m consciously unmedicated and it feels like a bit of a tight rope I’m walking.

Just enough mania is great. I’m get by on five hours of sleep, I’m doing more writing than I have in three years, cooking healthy food, cleaning, organizing. Last night my mood at work was better than it’s been in a long time…this is when I’m at my best. Too much mania and I pick up and move to Key West on a whim and you guys call it brave. My insistence that I join every dating site known to God and man was what told me to reign it in. I hate dating. Absolutely, systematically hate it, and honestly I’m not even sure I’m interested in getting to know anybody because the inside of my head feels like a splatter painting. It gets hard to focus…like the room is on fire and all I can do is try to match socks. There’s nothing to ground me right now.

And if you’re one of those people who doesn’t understand how I can talk about all of this, let me remind you I was raised around it. Medication made me a zombie and I made the decision to stop taking it, but made a pact with myself that I had to be cognizant of my behavior (including my drinking there for a while) and be honest with myself when it was getting out of hand. Right now it’s not too bad. It just feels like I sip on 5 Hour Energy shots all day.

It’s looking more and more like I’ll be moving back to Tennessee by Christmas. There are a myriad of reasons, most of which aren’t mine to share. I do know it will be nice to be around people that love me for a while, but I remember how much I regretted moving away from St. Pete the first time and I’m petrified history is going to repeat itself. There are other things swimming around in my head, but in my elevated state, I’m having a hard time discerning what is a real concern and what I’m fabricating in my head. I know the future I’d like to see, but I worry I’m worrying about futures that don’t exist for me. Did you read that? I’m worried about my worrying. That is the most anxious statement I’ve ever written. Really, I just need a fucking second to breathe and gather my thoughts. I don’t trust myself right now. I wish somebody would sit me down and tell me what to do or give me a crystal ball. I need a Lesley Whisperer and most of you just love me too much to really be honest and I can’t have people telling me to do what I feel in my heart or some shit like that. My heart is consistently a moron.

I can’t coherently finish this. My mind is a bit racy today and it’s time to get ready for work. For tonight, I’ll leave you with this.

Friday

/ Lesley Rebecca / Leave a comment

After last night, I know I’m hypomanic right now. I’ve lost 11lbs in the last two weeks without trying. I’m just not eating much, so after four shots of Jameson on an empty stomach I woke up to 48 likes on a political Facebook post I barely remember writing. Also, my phone probably shouldn’t allow me to text after maybe 1:00 a.m. It’s not fun to look back at your texts from the night before and actually feel your cheeks turn red in embarrassment.

Hypomania is when my crazy really shines. It’s great for the creative process, but really bad for impulse control and I’m impulsive by nature anyway. So instead of going out and finding the inevitable trouble that exists when you live in a beach town where everybody around you is in vacation mode, I’m going to hunker down and start writing a book. I enjoy writing fiction so much more than I enjoy talking about myself, even if writing about all of this helps me work through it.

Last night I was watching Not Safe with Nikki Glasser, cracking up and then Crash Into Me came on and suddenly I was sobbing. The only thing I hate more than crying is crying in front of people, so I hadn’t really cried since we broke up. My ex and I met September 3, 2003. That’s 13 years of dating, being friends, fighting, making up, concerts, dinners, mutual friends, road trips, football games…I don’t want to hate him. It’s too hard and I’m no good at it. I just want to remember a relationship that was good until it wasn’t anymore. I’d rather remember the guy I met years ago than the angry one that moved out of my house last week.

I’m out for a few days. You can spend too much time alone in your head and I think I’ve about reached my limit. Instead, I’m going to spend a few days getting into somebody else’s.

Pavlov’s Dog

/ Lesley Rebecca / Leave a comment

I promise one day I’ll be funny and writing things that make you pee your pants, but I’m still trying to work my way through the remnants of a storm in my head. So we’re just going to have to deal with my rambling for another day or two. I know we’d technically been broken up for a couple of months, but when you’re living with an ex who refuses to leave and is basically claiming squatters’ rights, you end up feeling like you’re coming out of a hostage situation.

When I went into survival mode I kept telling myself that I could make it. I could handle whatever he threw at me (figuratively) and I wouldn’t take it personally. I didn’t talk about what I was feeling, because it didn’t matter. Sometimes I’d just shut down in arguments in an effort to keep him from getting so angry he’d try to hurt me. Mostly, I just wanted the screaming to stop. It’s an impossible burden to place on anybody and I wouldn’t recommend that inaction to anybody in my situation. I thought I was fine, but I’m realizing that I’m showing some Pavlonian responses. Not quite Pavlov’s dog, but I wasn’t dealing with a person who was benevolent enough to feed me and pat me on the head after a good mindfuck.

Recently, I went out with somebody a few times. It’s casual, but it’s helped me get back on the proverbial horse. I had the best time with him, yet there’s still a voice in my head telling me I’m getting on his nerves, or that he doesn’t want me to touch him, or that he’s just waiting for the evening to be over so he can get rid of me. See, when somebody has spent years making you feel like the only thing they like you for is sex, it’s easy to second guess your value as a person anybody actually wants to spend time with. If this new person isn’t actively trying to sleep with me constantly, why do they want me around? It’s fucked up, right? Tack all that onto a girl who was sexually assaulted and you get a self-doubting pile of flesh with a bottomless pit where her self-esteem used to be.

My ex would get pissed at me for waking him up at night. He’d tell me it freaked him out to have somebody touch him or that I was too fat to sleep next to him and my elbows were always in the way. I can’t sing, I’m a shitty writer, I’m selfish, I didn’t touch him enough (this was after 18 months of “why do you always have to touch me”), nobody will ever put up with me, I deserved to be raped…Yeah, you read that last one right. I was even accused of “emotional violence” when I lost any desire to even pretend like I wanted to sleep with him. Yes, kids, apparently not putting out is the same as telling someone that the next time you put their hands on them it will be to kill them.

All of this is a very long-winded way of saying that a guy whom I love being around more than I expected is respectful enough not to demand I put out at the drop of a hat, tells me I’m smart, funny, and talented, goes out of his way to do things for no other discernable reason I can see other than to make me happy and all I can do is lay in bed, wide awake, making sure I don’t accidentally touch him in the night. I am on eggshells constantly and it is exhausting. And for the record, when I say touch him in his sleep, I mean a hand. Not me laying on his arm until it was dead, since that was emphatically discouraged, but I sleep better when I’m touching whomever. Maybe a hand on the chest or the back of my hand against his leg. It’s going to take me just a little bit to be comfortable in my own skin now that he’s not under it anymore. Everything I did was wrong. Things that were second nature to me before cause me anxiety now. It’s almost I’m waiting for permission to be myself. 

Just be patient with me while I get back there.

Episode IV

/ Lesley Rebecca / 1 Comment

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

There was me.

There’s so much in the beginning and I have no idea what the future holds, so for now I’m just going to write from where I am. I don’t know what this is going to end up being, but for now it will serve as a repository for whatever I write, and in some cases, what I’ve already written, good, bad, fictional, or painfully honest. The honest is the hardest part for me, at least for the deep cuts. It’s always been easy for me to be superficially honest with people.

If you know me well enough, you know I’ve spent the last three and a half years in a toxic and at times abusive relationship. I came home from a trip this week to find him gone, having left a note. After knowing him for more than a decade, there is some sadness, but most of what I feel is actually a lack of feeling. It’s more like a 50lb weight has been lifted from my chest and I can breathe again. I can read, write, listen to music, and visit with people that inspire me. As I’m writing this, I realize that what I feel is hope. For the first time in a long time, I feel hopeful that things could turn out well for me.

The last year has been especially exhausting and isolating. To the few people who have been unlucky enough to be considered confidants by myself, I am sorry and thank you. You have let me ramble on your bar stools, over coffee, and in your homes, answered many a late night text message, given me safe harbor, and even holed up in a hotel with me for a week when I needed to hide from the world. Thank you for giving me an outlet to tell somebody the worst of what was going on, without passing judgment. Thank you for calling me on my bullshit excuses for not leaving, not writing, and wasting my time. Thank you for reminding me that I am just as deserving of the love that I try to give to the people around me. Julia, Jack, Dave, and Kathy, you all kept me sane and gave me hope when all I wanted to do was lay down and die. I will forever be indebted to you.

I know the next few weeks present an incredible opportunity for me to lay a great foundation for what I want to accomplish. It’s amazing how much motivation I have when my entire world doesn’t revolve around somebody who detests me and everything I am. Hopefully you’ll see me around here more frequently.

I heard this song the for the first time a few days ago and fell in love with it. It’s been in my head today.