Truth or Bullshit? or, Acceptance versus Denial

I have two very good friends, whom I both love.

Moira thinks people are generally liars. She thinks people are constantly in a state of trying to deceive people.

Jocelyn thinks that people tell the truth, but we often don't believe them. She once quoted Maya Angelou to me: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. They know more about themselves than you do. That's why it is important to stop expecting them to be something other than what they are."

Lately I've been having a hard time figuring people out, especially when their actions and their words don't align, or worse, their actions and their actions don't align. With the Boy in boarding school for anxiety and depression, my life has been more upside down than usual. Maybe I am having a harder time reading people than I usually do. Likewise, I am not as straightforward, direct or as communicative as I should be. I've been super confused, which I can see could cause other people to be confused about me.

I've been thinking about how much people have told me things about themselves that I discounted or didn't believe. Later I have found out that what they told me was true or consistent, but I didn't believe it. What does it mean when someone tells me the truth, but then I fail to believe it?

I made some charts to help me figure this out.

When people tell the truth and they are believed, that is happy state. When they tell the truth and aren't believed, that is hard. Likewise, it isn't cool to tell a lie and let others believe it. 

Life is more complicated than straightforward lies and truths. Sometimes people don't know or understand the truth about their own lives at times. I can relate.

Sometimes, we don't know the truth. For the past year, I had one clear direction: getting my kid help. Everything else was second. Interestingly, I've told several people this, and several of them didn't believe me, including Jack and my therapist. I am just figuring this out now. My therapist didn't believe me when I told him the Boy was my biggest worry. Sure, I talked about a lot of other crap--like drama with Jack, drama with work--for several reasons:

1. The Boy was too painful for me talk about. It was like looking at the sun.
2. It was emotionally easier to talk/complain/vent about stuff other than the Boy. Talking about the reality of the Boy would break my heart and I wasn't ready for that last year. 
3. The Boy was actually doing much better once he got into treatment. Of course it was hard, but at least he was safe and getting help.

Why? Why didn't my therapist and Jack believe me? Why did they think I was hiding some other truth when I told them the truth? Maybe they didn't want to believe the truth about me. Maybe they didn't believe my focus was primarily on my kid and everything else was a confusing mess.

What about other people? Are they liars because they are inconsistent? Or, are they showing me who they are and I just need to figure that out? Maybe they are showing me who they are, but I can't figure it out. Maybe I can't figure it out because they can't figure it out. Maybe I don't want to believe what they are telling me.

There is another part -- all of the stuff that isn't said. Some of it may be withheld, things we know but don't want to tell other people. Or, maybe these are the things we haven't figured out ourselves, like my worries about the Boy. Some of it I can't talk about because I haven't figured it out myself. Or, maybe it is feelings we have suppressed and not yet addressed.

Sometimes having these truth-or-bullshit conversations are hardest within our own heads. We have to figure out our own truth before we can share it with others. Sometimes we need to talk it out and let others partake in our confusion. I remember my first visit to the Boy in boarding school. He said four things:

• I hate Seattle. I never want to go back there again.
• I hate Montana. This place sucks.
• I love Montana. I really need to be here.
• I love Seattle. I want to go home.

Which one is true? Each of the four probably holds some truth. Here the truth is complicated and messy, and the hardest part of being human.

Alexis Rose

I am a super fan of the Canadian tv show, Schitt's Creek. I'm watching it on Netflix. My favorite character is the sunny Alexis Rose. She is one of my top favorite television characters second to Laura Holt of Remington Steele. I didn't realize Alexis was my favorite character until just a week or two ago.

Why? She and I have nothing in common.

Laura Holt was a strong, smart, uber-feminist, the owner of the Remington Steele detective agency that was fronted by Pierce Brosnan, the future James Bond. Alexis is a recovering socialite who is living in a small town and whose globe-trotting life was cut short when her family lost its fortune.

I like Alexis because she is so fucking happy all of the time. She has zero self-pity and when she feels sorry for herself, it lasts five minutes. She is so cheerful and chipper. I know she is a fictional creation, but it is so nice to see someone in a constant good mood no matter what rain falls into her life. She's not stupid, instead she rolls with the punches, as my dad likes to say. Alexis is truly carefree.

And she has amazing clothes.

I digress.

For the first half of my life, I was trying to channel my inner-Laura Holt. I was serious and smart and hard-working, which isn't bad. Now I am going to spend more time trying to channel my inner-Alexis.

Lost in the Seasons

Now that both the Boy and Claire-Adele are gone, I've lost my time keepers. I was running errands and as I was driving I saw the sliver of the moon hanging low in the western sky and then I thought, what season is this?

When the kids were around, their calendars kept me anchored. I knew what time of year it was, the season, based on what they were doing.

• The year really starts in September with school, which is also the beginning of cross-country and club soccer. 
• Halloween is a holiday, with parties and a band concert.
• The kids are off school and at home for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• December through March is ski season.
• February was plan and pay for summer camps.
• Once the snow melted, the Boy would start mountain biking and track season started for Claire-Adele, along with heavy school work. 
• The Boy had soccer tryouts in the late spring.
• Summer is summer. 

Now without the Boy around, I don't know where I am in the year.

The Very Good Day and Homeward Bound

Yesterday was a red letter, blue bird day. As I am mixing my cliches, does that mean my day was purple? Maybe. Who cares? It was a very good day.

It started out with going to Olympia to testify in a working session on improving opportunities for non-tech people getting jobs in tech. Claire-Adele was proud of me.

Give me a microphone and an audience and I am in heaven. It is stressful, but a good happy kind of stress for me.

I had to give a two minute speech on my experience in Apprenti. Last Thursday, I spoke with Apprenti's legislative rep and he gave me the background. Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. sharp three people from Apprenti were going to testify together for fifteen minutes.

"Make it short--let the legislators ask you questions," Marc told me.

I looked up the members of the committee online and realized I had met two of them when I was running for school board. Yesterday morning right before we went in to the meeting room, the Apprenti leader, Greg, gave me slightly different twist on what to say: tell them what you did before Apprenti, tell them about the program, and then say how it changed your life.

Got it.

When we got in the working room, there was a new agenda and we were last of three groups to present. I had the good fortune to listen to two other groups who were trying to increase the pipeline to tech jobs. As I was listening, I heard the emotional stories of women from Ada, a programming bootcamp for women named after Ada Lovelace, which is totally ironic that a woman was one of the pioneers in computer science. And Alan Turning was a gay guy. And now we have to fight to let

!= (straight white twenty-something year old men) 

into tech. Hello?

Another thing--I know there are a lot of bright and brilliant people in tech, but you know what? Here is a little secret: tech isn't impossibly hard. Of course, people need skills to do these job but the skills are learnable. So often, tech is made out to be esoteric and elusive when this is really a gate to keep the in in and the out out.

I digress.

I jotted down a few notes to revise my speech based on what Greg told me. As I was listening to these new programs, I realized these legislators might know of the program, but they might not know about the program. When I got the mic, I said hello to committee, and specifically the two reps I had worked with before. Then I talked about the basics:

1. I was a stay-at-home mom and volunteer.
2. I have a great education (I studied math and have a masters degree) and had great work experience before motherhood
3. I couldn't get a job after I was a stay-at-home mom
4. I found Apprenti.
5. I took a math test and I passed the first stage of screening.
6. I was interviewed and then accepted to the Apprentice pool.
7. I was hired for a job.
8. I was given training specifically for the job I was hired to do.
9. I had a year of on-the-job-training.
10. I was hired permanently into my current job.

"Ooooh," said one the reps I met on the campaign trail. I could see the lightbulb above her head. "You were trained specifically for the job you were hired for? We give lots of people training and then hope they find a job. Tell me more about this." 

I had reached one of the members of the committee and connected her with the program. Mission accomplished. Yay! Go me!

When I got back to Seattle, I had a meeting then went to lunch with my manager where I asked him the deeply indelicate question of what he thought of Modi, the prime minister of India. The western press has been bashing the shit out of him, and I was curious what my manager thought. 

It was fascinating. I had read a few New York Times articles and a half of a New Yorker article about Modi and I think I know something. What I couldn't know is the context of what it means to lead the second most populous country in the world in a global economy when a vast majority of its people live in poverty and it has a complicated history. It would be like reading about the opioid epidemic in the rural south without knowing about the Civil War. Someone could understand the opioid epidemic, but the history gives it a lot of context.

Then at work, I was working with a developer on some code we were testing and we found an edge case! It is great to find these while testing. It is not fun to find then after the code has been rolled out. Yay! Go us!

Then I called my friend Ellen and told her about my great day. She has heard so many of my bad ones that I thought she deserved some good news for a change. 

After dinner, I went to an Al-Anon meeting. Normally, when I go to an Al-Anon meeting, I am kind of a mess. Two weeks ago, I had cried for an hour and a half the day before the meeting because my life was such a disaster. Yesterday, I felt great. When we sign in on the yellow sheet, we write down how we are feeling and I wrote "Joyous. And tired." I've never written joyous.

I know feelings aren't permanent, that I'll ride this wave of happiness while it is here.

And the Boy is scheduled to come home next week for a few days. I am happy now about it, but I know it will have its rough patches. Some parts will probably be full on shit show. 

But some parts will be good. The Boy wants me to teach him how to make cranberry muffins, my personal favorite kind of muffin that I used to get from the coffee shop around the corner from my first apartment in Chicago. He never old me how much he loved my cranberry muffins until he was gone. 

I am looking forward to it.

One more thought -- At Al-Anon, there are always people there who are in a bad place. That is the point, to find community when life is hard. It was hard to me to tell the group I was happy because for so long I did not allow myself to feel happy especially when other things in my life were so hard. yet I discovered that when I was happy, it gave me the space to hold other people's pain. When I am in pain, I can't be there or connect with others. When I find my own peace and serenity, I can.

Downhill and Force Majeur, Part 2

I used to like Julia Louis-Dreyfus. 

Now I love her. 

She was brilliant in Downhill. Her face was a canvas. If course she is a genius comedienne, but here is had a nice dramatic/comedic turn.

I haven’t seen all of Force Majeur yet, but Downhill was great by itself. This is a story of a woman who is grossly misunderstood by her husband. While on a ski trip in the Alps, the family is hit by a minor avalanche while eating lunch at the ski lodge. The dad grabs his phone from and runs while the mom is boxed in at the table with her kids. Billie is shaken not only that her husband left, but is more disappointed (crushed, heartbroken, furious) when he can’t admit what he did. He argues that his reality is different from her reality while not acknowledging that he ran away, which he did. Those of us watching the movie saw it happen. Whether or not it was so wrong that he ran away becomes irrelevant as he digs himself into a deeper hole by denying anything happened at all. 

Been there, done that.

It was so nice to see a movie about middle-aged marriage from a woman’s point of view. I am guessing there are going to be a decent number of men who watch this and think Billie is a strung out bitch. But this is JLD, a well educated, smart, beautiful woman who is a caring mom and a cancer survivor. I remember watching her cheer on her son who played basketball at NU. So sweet. Okay - I know actors aren’t their characters ala Brian Cranston isn’t Walter White. But still. Billie is struggling to communicate with her tone deaf husband and it is both painful and relatable to watch.

I haven’t read that many reviews but I am guessing there is a correlation between age, martial status and gender relative to how much it is liked. In other words, I could see where some privileged and sexist white men wouldn’t like it.

Half American, Half Indian and My Code-Switching Fail

I have a friend who is mixed race -- half white and half African American. Her son's father is African American. When Tyler spends time with his dad's family, he speaks in one style. When he comes back to NE Seattle, he speaks in another style. When Tyler was in middle school with the Boy, he came back to his mom's after a weekend with his dad. At school, Tyler casually dropped the n-word in band, which got him a quick trip to the principal's office.

"He failed at code-switching," said his mom. "That language is fine at his dad's house, but it does not fly in NE Seattle."

While not nearly as dramatic, I had my own code-switching fail this week.

This week at work was super rough. The team I'm on has been working on a proposal for months and a lot that work came into play this week. We are working with people on different teams, some of whom are very supportive of our work whereas others are not. One of the team members within our office has been blowing us off, and then asked for a meeting within a two hour time window first thing Monday morning. When Roger emailed me, my boss and his boss this request, I was in between meetings so I blindly replied, "Sure we can move it" before I checked our schedule.

My manager, who is from India, texted me: "Hold on."

"What's up?" I asked.

"Do we really need this meeting?" he asked.

"Um," I said. "If he wants to meet, shouldn't we meet?"

"We have a meeting scheduled at the end of next week. Let's just meet then," he said.

"Sounds fine," I said. "I'll email him."

"Why?" he asked. "You don't need to reply." Three other people on my team agreed that I didn't need to reply, that he'd get the idea when he didn't see an invitation for a Monday meeting.

"But I should let him know," I said.

"Why?" they all retorted.

"Remember how you wanted to cancel the lunch reservation for eight people at the Steelhead Diner when we all decided to go to Petra's instead?" Anjali said. "It is fine to just not show up."

"I am an American and this is what we do," I said. "We communicate."

"This is tech," Anjali continued. "People don't communicate."

"Ah-ah," said my manager smiling at me. "You need to be half Indian, half American. Just because they asked doesn't mean you need to do anything about it."

I could see his point. And yet...

"If you want to send an email explaining we can't meet, that's fine," my manager said. "But you don't have to." I sent the email, but I was vexed about it.

Later that night, I went to dinner with my friend Cassandra. I asked her whether or not I should have sent the email to the person on the other team. She looked at me like I was nuts.

"Of course you should send an email," she said. So I wasn't crazy--I was just in a different cultural context. Good to know.

Cassandra is in the middle of a hostile divorce. She wants to file for divorce and her husband wants a legal separation, which is almost the same thing except they can share health benefits. And they would still technically be married.

"Just get the legal separation," I said while slurping my pho. "Let him come to a nice agreement with you and in six months, you can file and convert it into a divorce." Problem solved.

Cassandra looked at me aghast, like what the hell, Lauren? Whose side are you on? "I just want to get a divorce and be over it. I am so done. I don't want a legal separation."

Oops.

I had slipped in Indian mode, not American where I would listen, empathize and offer no solutions or judgement. If I did offer a suggestion, it would be gently couched with "Maybe you could consider..."

Here I failed at my limited code-switching. For the Indians, I acted like an American, and for my American friend, I went Indian.

Pre-Crying

The Boy is going in for an MRI today to see if he tore his ACL. As you may know from my many blog posts, I tore my ACL in 2015 while I was skiing. I wouldn't wish a torn ACL on my worst enemy let alone on the Boy.

A torn ACL means he can't ski for a year. Last year, skiing was what kept him alive. It was the only thing that got him out of bed. It will take months to relearn to walk and run. He can't play soccer, either.

Last night I cried. I think it was pre-crying, crying before the bad news so when the bad news comes we've already processed it. I remember when the Boy was in 8th grade, he applied to Aviation High School. Admissions were by lottery, and there was a low acceptance rate. The night before the lottery, he cried for forty-five minutes. Jack and I couldn't figure out why he was crying at the time, and then when I saw he didn't get in, I understood.

Hildur, Kwak and Oscar

Tonight, Hildur Guonadottir from Iceland won an Oscar for Best Score for Joker. Kwak Sin Ae was the producer for Parasite which won the Best Picture.

This was really, really remarkable because they are both women.

How did they sneak in when the Academy is 77% white men and 94% white?

Here is my thought: The voters didn't know they were women. Their names are foreign and so they couldn't tell they were female.

I should have named Claire-Adele Yong or Jin or Kwan or Soley or Pordis. She could put her name on her resume or CV or award title and Americans couldn't guess what gender she was. It would be a surprise. I wonder if women with gender ambiguous names make it farther in the world?

It seemed to work for winning Oscars tonight.

Change and Uncertainty

I've been thinking a lot about change lately, both personally and professionally. At home, I am trying to figure out what is next in my life. At work, the team I am on is proposing a new project. Both involve determining if the status quo is reasonable. If not, what is next? What are the costs and benefits of making a change? We will be better or worse off as a result of the change?

1. The Status Quo -- Is everything fine? Do we need to change?

2. Cost of Change -- Usually with any change, there is an initial, upfront cost, whether it is financial, emotional or both. We hope that with the change, the cost will even out and be better than the status quo.

3. Benefits of Change -- When we make a change, we hope that things will be better. Mostly like, the benefits of the change won't be reaped until later, as the change itself causes disruption thereby reducing the benefits.

4. Hell -- This is where the costs exceed the status quo and the benefits are less. We hope this doesn't happen. This can be tragedy, though, where something bad happened that we didn't like and now things are worst. Think of kids initially sent to Wilderness or Therapeutic Boarding school. Some of those kids might have been happy getting high or drunk every day, or enjoyed watching Vines instead of going to school. Any change for those kids might be seen as bad. At first. There is an expression: When you are going through Hell, just keep going. If this is your life, then perhaps another change is in order.

5. Unicorn Land -- This might be how we imagine change might be -- all good, no downside.

The hard part of all of this is that we don't know how it is going to end up. We can plan and decide and figure. We can make our best estimates, look at past experiences, make a well informed decision, and then hope for the best.

Virgin Mary and Bobby Peterson

As mentioned in my previous post, I went out Bollywood dancing with some of my co-workers last weekend. It was a blast. We were out late and some of us drank too much.

Monday at work, one of my Bollywood dancing co-workers had to leave early because she had to go home and make an underwater sea creature costume for her daughter's school concert that night. It was four o'clock. The concert was at 6:30.

Welcome to American public schools, where parents are expected to make costumes and crafts, bake cookies, make potluck dishes, volunteer in the classroom and donate money.

I digress.

"Maybe if you weren't out partying all weekend you would have made your daughter's costume," my manager said.

"That's exactly what my husband said," she replied.

"Can't he make a costume?" I asked. "Why should it fall on you?"

They laughed, but I know this "moms do all of the work" crosses cultures. If it takes two people to make a child, why does one person end up doing a majority of the work?

I should have told my friend that in western culture, we have the Virgin Mary, mother of God, who made a baby all by herself. And she is worshipped. Are all mothers some form of the Virgin Mary, where in some capital sense they are expected to parent alone? What happens when a kid doesn't have a mother?

When I was a kid, moms would make fantastic and elaborate Halloween costumes. One year, I was Holly Hobbie and my mom spent days sewing a bonnet, an apron and bloomers. I loved Holly Hobbie and it was a really cool costume.

I remember Bobby Peterson, a kid in my elementary school. The same year I went as Holly Hobbie, he went as Dracula. He wore a white undershirt, plastic fang teeth and a scrappy black cape. It was a sad little costume, especially compared to Holly Hobbie. 

I later learned that Bobby didn't have a mom. She left her husband and three kids. Bobby was the youngest and he made his own Halloween costume.

My co-worker later sent our team pictures of her daughter dressed in a mermaid colored dress with a jellyfish hat. Her daughter looked delighted.

My friend's daughter was an adorable jellyfish, which is good. Was Bobby just as happy to be Dracula as I was Holly Hobbie? Did he care? What kind of costume would I have come up with when I was in third grade if I had to make it on my own? Where are the dads in all of this? Why does it matter that moms make costumes for kids? It is supposed to externally represent how well we parent?

Le Weekend

This will be short because I have to get to work.

I had a very busy and fun weekend, but it was also stressful. I have been really busy with family therapy for the Boy. As a result, I haven't had time to write in my blog, which always makes me psychologically little bit itchy. I need this blog. I feel like it completes the circle of my thoughts and gets me out of my head. It allows me to process and move on.

Saturday, I cleaned my condo, like took the knobs off the oven and cleaned the grease and grim that was underneath. I vacuumed and mopped and changed all of the sheets on the beds. I wanted the place clean for when my friends came over Saturday night.

Saturday night, I went out Bollywood dancing with two of my co-workers at a night club in Fremont. The Indian DJ was dressed like an L.A. rapper even though he formerly was an engineer at Intel. I suppose hosting dance parties brings joy to people, which makes it a good job. Even though I knew none of the words to the songs, the music was great to dance to. My friends stayed at my condo Saturday night and then we went out for brunch Sunday morning. It was a blast.

The best part was I spent zero minutes thinking about Jack, the Boy or drama at work. I was so nice to get a vacation from all of the therapy work.