Posted on by AshGenX

Liar, Liar….

Lying…. Nothing gets under my skin worse than that. It’s an awful feeling – especially when it comes from someone you care about.   I’m divorced because of lying. I was forced into bankruptcy in 2012 because of someone else’s lying. I’m single (yet again) due to lying. It hurts. It is betrayal in its most evil form.

All of us lie. If one of you dare say to me you have never lied – guess what? You’re a liar. It’s as simple as that. Above, I have described and experienced some extremely hurtful lies – lies that took me to my knees and drove me to what I can only consider the brink of my own sanity. Those lies and their repercussions had a lot to do with the increase in my alcohol intake, the control it had over me, and subsequently, my desire to kick that habit and embrace sobriety. That’s another story for another day though.

Anyone who knows me well – which I am discovering are fewer in numbers than previously thought, knows that if you want to light my bitch wick – lying is a sure-fire (pun intended) way to set it off. Just ask my ex-husband or my kids.

But what about “little lies”… “withholding information”…. “untruths”? Y’all know of what I speak – let’s take Santa Claus as a prime example. I don’t know about any of you, but I was literally CRUSHED when I was told Santa wasn’t real. Cried my head off – how could the jolly man in the red suit NOT be real? How could my parents LIE to me like that? Well, in case I haven’t introduced myself yet – my name is Ashley, aka Santa Claus. I too, did what countless of others have done to provide joy and hope for my own children. No, they weren’t as crushed as I was – but they also didn’t have a shitbag childhood like mine either – so maybe the stability they know so well made that transition a bit easier on them.

What about that friend of yours? You know… the one that is cheating or being cheated on. Man, that is the epitome of a sack of suck, isn’t it? Talk about a rock and a hard place. The majority of us has ZERO desire to get involved in someone else’s shit-show. Maybe it’s because we don’t want to be the one to hurt the other person. Maybe, because we know that the perpetrator will make US out to be the evil one who is trying to destroy a marriage, resulting in a loss of friendship. Or, maybe the perpetrator is the one who is our friend – but we play devil’s advocate and try desperately to be there as best we can.

Not all lies are made to destroy people. In fact, as outlined above –many are told/displayed as a way of protecting the ones we love from being hurt by either the truth itself – or by their perception of the truth. Now… they may not always SEE it that way – which is my current situation with someone that I love very much.   Did I lie? Yes, I did. Am I proud of that? Of course not. Was it out of pure love for said friend and the emotional state they are in, in order to protect them? Absolutely.

Here’s the deal – I knew it was wrong – it slayed me to do it. I looked her in the eye and told her I wasn’t lying. As fate might have it, she inadvertently found out in a pretty ugly way… within an hour of me doing it. I even discussed it with my therapist that very day before it all went down. I told him it was not in my character – he’s known me for over 2 years now – so that wasn’t anything he didn’t already know, but I had to tell him all the details of what had recently happened and how I feared even out of the goodness of my heart, that my friend would perceive as otherwise. He agreed on all of it. That he knows I’m not a liar, that he knows it would be a struggle, that he also knew I was doing it to protect her – and lastly, as I had mentioned to him, that the truth WOULD come out because I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. We both agreed that the truth needed to come out at some point, but not right away in order to avoid chaos and confusion.

They say karma is a bitch…. Indeed she is. To me, anyway. Funny how the rottenest of people don’t ever seem to reap it, but people like me – one wrong move and the shit hits the fan.   I’ve always said “if you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember your story”.   It’s a phrase I live by.

After having been “found out” – I came clean IMMEDIATELY. I was so sad that my friend was questioning my loyalty to her…. I explained everything as it went down over and over. I swore to her that the truth was out and she could ask me a hundred times over, ten years from now and my story would be the exact same. It was the truth. As much as it hurt us both – I was relieved that it had come out, although sooner than I had anticipated.

Very few of you are personally aware of when I lost my mother many years ago. It is a pain that never, ever leaves you. My love for my mother continues to grow some 33 years after her passing – she is still with me as a guardian angel – I know this without a doubt. In those 33 years, I have never, EVER sworn on her soul for anything. As a matter of fact, it has never even popped into my head as an option until the night my friend found out I had lied. I looked her square in the eye and swore on the soul of my dead mother (on Mother’s Day weekend, no less” that I had told her absolutely everything. This is a dear friend of mine. Someone I love deeply and infinitely – it was raw, honest, and a true testament to how much I wanted her to believe me.

As of today, I have repeatedly been called a betrayer and a liar by a person I thought knew me so well. I can’t describe the hurt I feel as a result….. having sworn on the soul of my beloved mother. I feel almost dirty inside for having wasted such a personal plea to someone who cannot step outside of their own perceptions and accept that I truly love them and never meant them harm. As a person in recovery, I find it quite easy to own my shit. I have done all that I can, to the best of my ability to clean up my side of the street. Unfortunately, it falls on deaf ears – and for that, I have absolutely no control.

So, call it what you want – depending on my audience, I’m nothing more than a human, a friend, a liar. I’m sorry, Mama – so sorry for dragging you into this place. That being said – I know I told the truth, so it was not in vain.

Hug the ones you love – you never know when it will be the last time.

Signed ~

Pants on Fire

I never thought I’d be like my grandmother.  I used to get SO pissed back in the 80’s when she couldn’t figure out how to operate “call waiting”.  I had important shit to do, places to be, parties to go to.  She was stifling me.  I was never going to NOT be able to flow with technology.  I mean, how simple is/was that?  It beeps, you switch lines and answer, and then make a swift determination on who is the most important person of the two. That being said, I now have to call my 14 year old downstairs (and out of his cave) on a semi-regular basis to figure out what’s going on with my phone.  There you have it. I can’t imagine how she’d have possibly existed in this day and age – cell phones, automated answering systems, no humans to talk to…. ETERNAL HOLD.

As I type, I have been on hold with American Home Shield, waiting for some dingus to actually answer the phone and address my questions. About 3 of those minutes were talking to the pleasant sounding automated lady asking me what my problem was so she could direct me to the right place.  Here’s the issue with that “right place” – it’s never the right place!  It’s some bozo reading a script that typically has no knowledge of what the hell you are talking about.  They probably can’t even solve your problem – and in most cases, they can rarely speak English these days.

indian phone

There’s something to be said about how nice I am that I don’t yell at these people.  They hate their jobs worse than I hate them having their jobs.  It’s not their fault they had to resort to this level of self loathing just for rent and beer money.  Who am I to tell them that by simply being an innocent bystander (or loathsome employee) has ruined my day, my life, my schedule, etc.  This is an immense level of self-restraint on my end, friends.  I am indeed softening in my old age.

You know what my grandmother would’ve done?  I’ll tell you what – she would’ve yelled “GO TO HELL” and then slammed the phone down.  We can’t even get that kind of physical satisfaction now.  How hard can you mash the “end call” key to be satisfied?  Not nearly hard enough…

So here’s my advice:  put in headphones/on speaker, stick you phone in your pocket, purse, etc. and keep moving.  Find some shit to do.  Multi-task.  Be productive.  LIVE DAMNIT, LIVE!  This is the ONLY way to sanity in this particular realm – trust me.  Because you will hold… possibly forever… or at least until it’s time to color your roots again.  And when they DO answer, they can’t help you – not fully anyway.  But you can still feel good about yourself after having wasted those precious minutes/hours, because you… YOU did something (else) in the interim & the day is not wasted.

….. and remember, you can always give yourself the simple, old-fashioned satisfaction of just telling them to GO TO HELL.

Ciao ~

AshGenX

 

Posted on by AshGenX

Everyone for First Class, Raise Your Hands!

american airlines

 

Normally, I would use this as a platform to bitch incessantly about the weather, American Airlines, strange & annoying people, etc.  Today however – after a two and half hour delay due to the bottom falling out of the sky – I find myself sitting in the Admiral’s Club at DFW Airport.  My traveling buddy for this trip is a Platinum flier and not only got us put in First Class, but also let me tag along up here where the “fancy” folks hang out whilst awaiting their giant flying germ-tube.

The beauty in all this is that I am not sitting “down there” with all of the commoners in a matching seat, watching people scurrying by.  I’m sitting in a nice red, leather chair with my feet propped up on a granite table, drinking a cup of pretty damn good coffee and enjoying a free continental breakfast.  The bathrooms are clean, there is no one around me other than Stacey, and it is almost quietly peaceful.

The ugly part is…. that I am going to have to go back “down there” the next time I travel (because I am not one of the elite, but more like one of those birds that rides on cows), and I don’t want to.  Ever.  Crikey – we haven’t even gotten on the plane yet.  I can’t even imagine what that will be like – well, yeah I can.  I will enjoy a big, fat, leather seat, a blanket, and a flight attendant that actually has to pretend (whether they like it or not) that they enjoy their job.

Y’all know I can equate almost every day of my life to a Seinfeld episode, right?  This brings to mind when there were only two seats left on the plane – one in first class and one in coach.  Jerry immediately took 1st and Elaine was mad.  He asked her “have you ever sat in first class?”, to which her reply was “no!”.  He then followed up with “well I have, and I’m not sittin’ back there!”….  This isn’t good, y’all.

I’ve always prided myself on being one of those girls who wasn’t specifically looking for a “rich man”.  Perhaps, I will change my M.O. now that I know what’s on the other side of the curtain.

Signed ~

Suffering @ DFW

 

Posted on by AshGenX

She’s got crabs! Or does she?

Gulf Shores Threesome

Sometimes a story comes to mind that deserves retelling – well, oftentimes in my case.  This one brought the house down last night – by house, I mean Shelly, Leighton and me.  Hey – as long as I have more than just me laughing at it, there is some validity to it, okay?

In 2013, the boys and I took a trip to Gulf Shores, AL – their first trip to a “real” beach.  We drove from Dallas, spent the night in NOLA, went to a pre-season Saints game, then made it to our condo the next day.  Let’s start with this…. driving 10+ hours (whether split up or not) with two boys who spend the majority of the time arguing or beating the crap out of each other, is no cake walk.  Takes a couple of days for the shoulders to come down from around ones earlobes and begin to absorb any of the serenity that the beach has to offer.

I had a pretty sweet spot with a pair of beach loungers and an umbrella rented for the week, right in front of our condos.  Kristin was more or less stuck at the pool b/c her littlest was not having the beach.  Personally, I didn’t give my kids an option – heck, I can swim at a pool any day… the beach was my place-to-be, and instead of me keeping an eye on them – they were tasked with knowing where I was and reporting in.  You might call it irresponsible – I, on the other hand, call it 70’s parenting.  I’m am living proof that it works.  They’re like little birds….

Low and behold – not only was Pier 51 (beach-y convenience store) walking distance – they had 18 packs of Bud Light in cans (not a fan, but a beach requirement) with the New Orleans Saints logo on them.  A match made in heaven.  I parked myself in my beach chair with my cooler of Bud and drank the day away – just one of those “all day steady buzz” kind of days.  It was a good day.

That night after dinner – Leighton and I went down to chase sand crabs.  This was a favorite past-time from my own childhood I remember well and I was excited to introduce it to my over zealous 7 year old.  Steady buzz still in tact – we trotted up and down the coastline flash lighting and catching baby sand crabs left and right when – low and behold, the MOTHER of all the beach crabs I had ever seen went flying across our light and was gone!  I found him again!  Leighton chased him down and lifted the bucket cautiously when I got there.  The little (or big, rather) bastard took off like a light!  It was scary AND exciting and we were NOT going to let him get away!  I gave Leighton the light and I grabbed the bucket – we saw him again and he was moving FAST!  Finally, another 15 yards or so – with a move that could only be rivaled by the NFL’s finest – I tackled that crab with the bucket and I was not letting go.   Right then, some teenager appeared out of nowhere and when I began to lift my bucket – he tried to move in and take the crab!  Seriously?  Not on my watch, junior!  In the best, buzzed, classy mom voice I recall saying “get your hands of my kids’ G.D. crab or I’ll beat your ass!”  (very classy, indeed)

There was lots of commotion at this point – Leighton was screaming, I was yelling, the kid was saying something but I couldn’t hear him over the sound of my own voice. All I knew at this point was that m*$%@# f&$*@#% crab was mine (not Leighton’s mind you… mine)!  Somewhere in there I heard a voice say “it’s not real!”.  I guess it was the teen.  I was buzzed, confused, pissed, adrenalized… you name it…. I’m thinking “this little turd is trying to get an angle on me and steal my crab!”.   No the case, my friends.  Not the case.  This kid didn’t want MY crab.  He wanted HIS crab.  The plastic crab that was tied to some monofilament line and strategically placed via fishing rod – on the beach by Beavis and his Butthead Battalion.  Apparently, they had been fishing – or crabbing, for idiots all night.  They caught one alright.  A 43 year old mom, covered in sand, pulling ninja moves all for the sake of the win – or loss in this case.

Moral of the story:  It’s still not a good idea to go catching crabs, whether intentional or not.  Oh – and don’t threaten to beat up a teenager on the beach b/c your kids will NEVER let you forget it.  I blame Anheuser-Busch.

 

DoggieDoor

Somewhere, out there on the internet, is a blog I started once upon a time.  I’m not sure where it is, how to sign in, etc., but I am sure that it’s still there drifting around in cyberspace.  Do I care?  Not really.  See, many times I’ve thought about writing – a few of those I started and many more than that happened in a conversation (probably at a bar) that never even made it to the stroke of a key.  I’m not that person anymore anyway – at least a large part of me is not – and for that, I am thankful. That being said, reading my drunken musings of yesteryear are not really on the top of my to-do list these days…unfortunately, someone invented TimeHop for that and on a daily basis, I get to look back and see some of the stupid shit that not only I did/wrote about – but see the evidence in photos as well!  It’s all good….. that brings me to where and who I am today.

I cannot express just how GLAD I am that the internet didn’t exist back in the 80’s.  And in the 90’s…. when Al Gore invented it – well, it was nowhere near what it is now.  Hell, I simply couldn’t wrap my head around what “IT” was – when, where, why, etc.  I remember the first thing I typed into a web address bar was http://www.delmonte.com   Why, you ask?  Because that was the first web address I had ever seen and it was on the back of a can of green beans.  “Low hanging fruit”, if you will…. and it worked!  It pulled up the prettiest, sharpest picture of the Del Monte logo I had ever seen.  I don’t think I went any further than that tho… but I certainly marveled at what “IT” did.  Kinda like the first time I saw a blinking green cursor on a computer back in grade school…. PRETTTTTYYYYY!  Look, when you’re young & single and your day consists of 8 hours of work, 3 hours at the gym, followed by your hobby of de-stemming/seeding weed in a frisbee on your couch after you eat your “healthy” single-person dinner of rice and green beans – these are the epiphanies of a 20-something in the 90’s (hey! that was 10 years ago, right?).

I’m not the first of Generation X to gladly proclaim the absence of the internet back in the day… and I won’t be the last.  Good God – look how far we’ve come!  From a cancer causing brain brick in a car at a million dollars a minute, all the way to a phone/computer that you can carry in your pocket and have an “unlimited everything” plan.  My kid thought Ferris Bueller was talking on a toy phone and just today, I had a friend post that her daughter asked her what long distance was!  Remember the “caller ID box”?  Coolest.  Thing.  Ever.

Some pretty crazy stuff occurred during those two decades…. and I was right up there – front and center, loving every minute of it!  The funny thing is – my glory stories from the days of yore almost sound more grandiose and crazy than Alice falling into the rabbit hole…. it’s rare these days, that I tell one – and Lord knows they’d be lost on the youth of today, as there is no electronic evidence of such whimsical debauchery to back me up – and for THAT – I am beyond glad LOL

To the youth/millennials/gen Yers:  revel in any anonymity that y’all possibly can… it’s really up to YOU.  All I can say is this – the rules and regulations that used to prevent a person from becoming President are clearly going to have to change for any of you to ever get to that spot!  I’m willing to bet there is already WAY too much dirt out there on each of you already to make it based on previous generations standards.  What am I thinking??? Hell, we’re already in the worst political mess I’ve yet to witness and the players are a bunch of old people just like me, that are merely assholes and/or idiots.  It ain’t gonna get any better, folks!

So yes, maybe one of these days – my kids or their friends may find some historic, cave-like scrawling or *gasp* paper photograph of me before I was the ancient relic I have become.  And yes, I DO know that once this publishes, they will know about the frisbee… and trust me, that’s the LEAST of my past worries.  Because what happens on the internet, stays on the internet…..

Until later ~

AshGenX