What a fucker of a day. Still feeling the shock of Robin Williams’ death.

Everyone keeps saying “apparent suicide” and I think this is because it has yet to be officially confirmed that it was a suicide rather than foul play or sexual shenanigans gone wrong. Because my mind is always hanging out on bad street corners it keeps wondering how people would react if it turned out he was murdered. It keeps imagining how conversations would go through sudden shifts and we’d drop all the talk about mental illness from the pseudo-helpful perspective and see it turn to blaming crazy people for all crime in the world.

It’s a fucked up world.

But my step mother commenting on my blog upset me way more and threw me off-kilter all day. She accuses of me of being an ignorant American because I dare to question Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. They live there, my biological father and she are spending time in bomb shelters lately and I imagine they are pretty scared. I don’t want anything bad to happen to them or my half brother either. But having Israelis as family members doesn’t mean I have to agree with Israel’s actions or the fact that my own government spends billions of dollars funding not only its own attacks against Iraq but Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

She missed the whole fucking point of the post.

But that’s politics and world view stuff. She accused me of picking on my biological father (her husband) and suggests I need to take responsibility for myself as an adult. This made me angry. I have had to “take responsibility” for myself at an unconscionably young age because my three parents were so busy abandoning me, neglecting me, or hurting me that I have always had to be my own parent and be responsible for my choices whether good or bad without much benefit of parental guidance. So fuck that shit. My father has had plenty of opportunity to show me who he is as a person and he HAS. Oh yes, he has. I have this to say to both him and my step mother:

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

I let the distant past go a long time ago. But my family has the habit of throwing fresh bullshit onto the carpet the minute I have the last pile deep cleaned and purified so that I must constantly be scrubbing it out on my hands and knees.

She said other things too. Let it go. She tries to – let it go. She hates – LET IT GO. She –

LET. IT. THE. FUCK. GO.

No one’s bombs are justified. No one’s hate is justified. I do not accept.

Some people are calling Robin Williams a coward for killing himself. More bullshit in the carpet of life and all the things and people I care about. My friend Kele wrote a great post addressing suicide shaming:

On Suicide Shaming by Katherine Lampe

Pay special attention to the part about how battling depression is EXHAUSTING. I’ve been doing it for well over 30 years and most of us who’ve been battling it for a long time experience a bone-deep exhaustion at some point.

It’s been an awful day.

Tomorrow is Max’s orientation for high school. My mom has a hernia. Water restrictions are mandatory now. The IRS has sent me registered mail. We are pretty broke and so I need to put things in my Etsy shop again and try to make some extra money. The world is full of hatred and violence and finger pointing and shaming and I just want to crawl into a pile of kittens and sleep.

Which I would do if I could locate a pile of kittens and IF I DIDN’T HAVE CHRONIC INSOMNIA AND POOR SLEEP.

I made soup and I named it “fuck off assholes of the world” It’s a spicy soup made from my garden tomatoes and zucchini, corn, potatoes and pickled jalapenos. It’s amazing and throat punches assholes but nourishes everyone else.

I introduced Max to Louis CK today because he was having a shit time too. His nose was hurting pretty bad because of the scab from the cauterization. We laughed so hard it made everything feel better for a few minutes. The curative powers of making fun of dicks and jiz-smothered  cinnabons cannot be overestimated.

Also, I wore a pair of stolen socks today.*

*I didn’t steal them and that’s all I’m gonna say about it.