Confession: I’ve been out of my head for the last few weeks. My minutes, thoughts, and hours have been in an entirely different space, in which the nonbinarity of my running-rapidly-in-all-directions existence is but a peripheral issue.
Those grounded in life’s mundanity refer to said emptiness as “making a living” or “running a business.” Gads! What an intrusion!
“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money,” Samuel Johnson claimed. “No one dies with an empty inbox,” Luise Healey insisted. Well, I say “None but a fool’s last words are ‘I wish I’d made more money.’”
In the grand universal scheme, coinage is so utterly non-necessary. Wherefore its unduly essentiality in the small crap-of-life arena? Doesn’t matter; that’s where I’ve been. And why my Turtles have been sparse and erratic. One simply cannot serve two masters, even if’n said one is, themselves, a dual-spirited creature.
A quick rundown of my inner enclosed-marine reptility: absolving my mother (and by extension my complicit father) did, indeed, absolve me of my guilt, thereby granting me an internal peace I knew not afore.
It was fucking glorious. Revel-y remarkable. I ‘gol darn done did enjoy it. I still do, although its form has changed with the advancing days, because energy art not inert. It changeth constantly with the to and fro of life’s waves.
Bitch that it is. It mighta coulda been nice to wallow there for more than a measure or two. But no.
On the other hand, said inner amity did come in handy when called upon to suspend one of my core disbeliefs, which led me to remember an author from whom I learned many more things than I wanted, all in the name of “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
Ergo, it’s he from whom this piece speaks as I dissect lessons I chose to believe had nothing whatsoever to do with me. I was arrogantly wrong.
See, for close to a hundred-thousand years, I’ve consoled myself with the mantra, “Hey, I may be slow, but I’m diligent.” So when I ghosted said author’s corporate launch, growth, and eventual ousting, resonating with the former and middle phases like nobody’s business, I never gave a whit’s thought to the latter, i.e., final stage.
♪ “After you’re gone and left me crying,” the great Ella sang, “after you’re gone, there’s no denying. ♫ You’ll be blue. You’ll be sad. You’ll miss the dearest pal you ever had.”♪
He, the author, spent a cash-wad of vivacity demonstrating the width and breadth of his success, so’s I’d get that he was of consequence, he was deserving of deference, he was the man, the leader, He Who Knows All. Granted, he admitted he knew less than squat about writing a book, but since I was the best—as evidenced by being front-page featured in the same distinguished journal in which he’d later appear first-right-hand-page—I was the one he personally chose to immortalize his story. He’d researched me. I knew my stuff. He’d follow my lead.
And I believed him. But neither of us could get out of the way of our own arrogance, a trait we shared, a trait that doomed our relationship.
The ubiquitous “they” claim we learn more from our mistakes than from books and lectures. Rather than recount the whole of his and my interlude, lemme jump right to the lessons I now teach from it.
A contract is only as good as the people who sign it. I knew that, of course, but knowledge and lived experience ain’t nowhere near the same.
Bullshit is bullshit, lies are lies, and non-misunderstandings are packaged superiority no matter what commonality crapola they’re wrapped in or how pretty the disposable ribbon.
Pride of association/expectation of deference works both ways. He had it. I had it. The book paid the price of it.
Men automatically assume the one-up position even when it’s to their extreme, i.e., expensive, disadvantage.
That last bit, which I now teach as Political Positioning under Level 2 Authority: Career Acumen, is for women only. Not men, who have their own built-in supremacy-jockeying mechanisms. But without PP, the average, well-above-average, and even gifted female expert will remain an at-will less-than in male eyes, be it consciously or non.
Oh, one other lesson that came out of said association: no one will ever see or treat me as anything other than a woman unless I change the appearance of my body to align with my inner nature. If I don’t, I’ll just continue lying, hiding, and denying. Like a dumbasfuck Turtle. An invariably angry one.
Wait... did I just make a decision??