Sundays Souvenirs of Terrible Years

I Want My Fucks Back

I don't know what to do with the little souvenirs that seem to find me.

Souvenirs of terrible years. Terrible people. People who went out of their way to hurt and harass me.

Sometimes something small brings it back. A name. A place. A photograph. A song. Some stupid little artifact from a year I would rather have left buried.

And there it is again.

I can't do anything about it.

I can't go backward. I can't make anyone accountable. And, truthfully, even while it was happening, I knew accountability wasn't coming.

“I'll handle it,” I was told.

Liar.

Big fat liar.

It got worse.

And I know now that the liar was one of the perpetrators. A whisperer. A gossiper. A stone-cold manipulator.

Death on Two Legs — Queen.

Look it up and take a listen.

People cannot call themselves stewards of a community and then stand by while someone is harassed and bullied because she's different, because she disagrees, or because somebody has decided she represents something they don't like.

Yet they do.

They put the ash on their foreheads and give up chocolate they never really ate.

Performers.

What happened shouldn't have happened.

The notes left.

The watching.

The stalking.

The rumors.

The gossip.

The lies.

The narratives.

Imagine having so little to do with your own life that another human being becomes a group project.

And somehow the answer was that I should leave.

No.

All they had to do was act like civilized people.

Instead, those people behaved like a mob.

And afraid of what?

What?

Seriously.

What?

For a long time, I couldn't see it.

Bunch of clowns.

I see it now.

You harassed a woman with no particular power. A mother. A wife. Someone who had already buried both of her parents young. Someone who had already survived a divorce and then spent seventeen years with a man who ultimately announced that he didn't want children.

Seventeen years invested.

A roadmap. Plans. A future.

Gone.

I don't want to have kids.

Well, I'd like all my fucks back then.

Seventeen years of them.

While we're at it, I'd like some of the fucks I spent earning college degrees back too.

I dutifully did what you're supposed to do: work, study, qualify, pay for the education, build the résumé—only to discover how often somebody else gets the position because they made the better marketing decision.

And the jobs?

Honestly, they've been crap.

I've worked for years making things for businesses that just delete them and go in another direction. Businesses that change their minds. That have me research and propose and deliberate, only to eventually go do what was obvious from the beginning.

I'm so sick of it.

I never wanted power and influence.

I wanted to be bored at work.

I wanted to do my job, collect my paycheck, have benefits, go home, raise my children, make things, grow tomatoes, go to the beach, listen to records and live my life.

I didn't want to manage or absorb everybody else's drama.

Circus.

Clowns.

How dare you bring me your drama as though it should matter this much to my life?

You don't matter.

You are a generation away from being replaced.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Nothing stays.

And yet, like a car wreck or a house fire, the damage was real even when the cause was stupid.

The theft was real.

That's the part that still makes me furious.

What did I do?

Exist?

Disagree?

I didn't make policy. I didn't control anybody else's life. Most of the time I didn't even bring my opinions into the room.

Bathrooms?

Seriously?

We're going to fight about bathrooms?

A post on social media?

Really?

Oooooo. So scary.

Someone has a different point of view and doesn't like yours.

Oooooo. Scary.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

And by we, I mean you and your own kind, because I don't care. I never did.

Use a boy bathroom.

Use a girl bathroom.

Use a bathroom.

Live your life.

Leave people alone.

Stop being stupid.

You know bathrooms at home are unisex, right?

And bathrooms at plenty of businesses?

No girl.

No boy.

Just a bathroom.

With a door.

No drama.

Honestly, this isn't even going to be your lowest point. I know there are more layers to hell than that.

It could be over so easily.

Just stop being mean to people who don't give a fuck about controlling you.

That is freedom.

Don't tread on me.

I won't tread on you.

Live and let live.

Instead: troublemakers.

And that's where I've finally arrived.

I'm tired of it all.

I want my fucks back.

Twenty years of fucks.

Maybe a lifetime of them.

All the fucks I spent worrying about people who didn't deserve them.

All the fucks spent wondering why someone didn't like me.

All the fucks spent defending myself against somebody else's narrative.

All the fucks spent trying to explain.

All the fucks spent believing that if I could just explain myself clearly enough, somebody committed to misunderstanding me would finally understand.

Give them back.

Because I have better places to spend them now.

My children.

My family.

My work.

My art.

My garden.

My body, even when I'm fighting with it.

My music.

My ridiculous beautiful clothes.

My beaches.

My remaining years.

My life.

Those are worthy of my fucks.

The rest?

Just little souvenirs of terrible years.

And so those stories end.

But my story reigns.