Food for thought

Eat This!

/ StaceyRose / Leave a comment

As I sit here near the point of copious salivation in a manor reminiscent of Pavlov’s dog, infatuated with my friend Mekkah’s ketchup laden fries,  my thoughts drift back to my younger years.  When my relationship with food was cast in the annals of my psyche.  Food was and at times still is my constant companion, my lover, my friend, my enemy.

In processing my relationship with food with my therapist, my friends, and anyone else who’ll listen (thanks for reading in advance), I’ve stumbled upon some long forgotten stories that have helped me make sense of my strange love of food. I’ll share a few here.

Food as a the spoils of war.

To say my brother Curtis and I fought as children would be severely minimizing  the fact that he saw my birth as an official act war, an affront to his very existence.  Curtis’s disdain for me probably lay in the fact that he’d been the “baby” for five years before I brought my unexpected ass along.  Our battles varied in intensity, but there was no other area where the battle got quite as hot as when the source of conflict was The Cap’n.

exhibit A: The Cap’n

In our desperate need to get “crunchatized”(which I don’t think was even a term back then), we would outwit, steal, hide and any other unsavory act we had to commit.  Alas, I was often at the losing end of this battle, but there was one triumphant morning that me and Alteric (our brother from another mother) got the jump on Curtis the sleeping dragon.  We beat him to the freshly purchased box of Cap’n Crunch with Crunch Berries and proceeded to remove every crunch berry in the box.
Saturday morning  cartoons were funnier, the sun was shinier, and our bellies were stuffed  full of crunchaliscious crunch berries.  This state of rapture lasted for maybe thirty/forty minutes. When Curtis awoke to find a severely misshapen  box of Cap’n Crunch sans any sign of crunch berries save for tell-tale red dust, There was hell to pay.  Quite honestly, I forgot what happened. I think I blacked out. Hell,  I probably repressed it. If I had to guess, I’d say I got the natural hell beat out of me, then he probably turned his rage on Al, sitting on him and punching him in the chest until he ran home.  I still had the day though, and as you can tell I relish the victory to this day.

The Lesson:  Food obtained through violence, aggression, or Machiavellian scheming is the best kind.

Food as an analgesic.

It’s funny how other people remember your childhood.  When the facebook revolution began and I reconnected with some of the folks I went to school with, I kept hearing stories of how funny and well liked I was.   This was odd to me as I mostly remember feeling isolated, fat, unattractive, and picked on.

Exhibit B: Rosie c. 1990

One particular year of school, my 6th grade year, I had a falling out with a group of girls that had been my “friends”.  I was tormented for the entire year. I was called fat.  They talked about my hair and my clothes. They took “children can be so cruel” to new heights.  I spent most of that year feigning illness not to go to school, on the guidance counselor or nurse’s couch, and of course eating.

I would bolt home drop everything and head straight for the kitchen. Twinkies, Krimpets, Devil Dogs, Cereal (Cap’n or otherwise), pizza … essentially anything that wasn’t tied down, locked up.  After eating I always “felt” better.  None of the things I had endured that day mattered. My addict gene mutated that year, and became something that in my adulthood would nearly kill me.

As can be seen in the photo (taken only a year or two later), I’m wasn’t nearly as hideously fat and ugly as they made me feel or than I came to believe. I can’t say I lay any blame at the feet of the children who picked on me.  It could have very easily have been me on the giving end had the circumstances played out differently. I don’t hate them, but I do hate what the situation did to my relationship with food and essentially anything else that was pleasurable that allowed me to escape.

The Lesson:  You’d better not stop until you’ve eaten all your feelings young lady!

Food as the enemy.

I have the good fortune of having a great many food snobs in my life.  They challenge me (sometimes successfully) to experiment with new tastes and textures.  You see, my brother and I were and to some degree still are very bland eaters.* We barely did veggies, and while I would indulge in fruit fairly regularly that was about as far as it went.

Exhibit C: The Food Saboteurs!

Case in point:  My mother was a single working mom of four. She worked long hours during the week which left us on a lot of evenings popping tater tots or fish sticks in the oven and Steak Umm’s or other ‘easy’ foods, on the stove.  There were some occasions that Ma would get a wild hair and decide to fix us something “special”.  Curtis and I  had an “exit strategy” prepared for  these times: a strategically cut hole in the kitchen screen.  The undesirable food stuffs were simply shoveled out onto the grassy knoll outside our window.  No harm, no foul … that is until we were finally caught.

Ma, for some ungodly reason, decided that it would  be a great idea to prepare a tuna casserole.  The foreign smells had our guards up already.  We already knew what needed to be done.  Time came to sup, and before us sat generous portions of  Ma’s experimental meal.  We waited. Sifted forks around.  I even became brave enough to take a bite (either that or I’d been threatened. Can’t remember which.) Eventually the coast became clear and we proceeded to the window with our plates.  One after the other we scraped the ill fated casserole out of the covert slit.  Things would have went fine, except most of the casserole ended up on the window sill.

The next morning my mother was greeted by a swarm of pigeons devouring the meal we had so generously donated to them the night before.  Our cover was blown. Needless to say we never dared dispose of another meal in this manner.  We just found other ways. >:)

The Lesson: New food bad. Old food good.

Thirty-six years of practicing this and other kind of “bad” food behaviors can’t be undone overnight, but I’m working on it.  The hardest part I’d have to say is adding new food. My brain goes into resistance mode, and even when I manage my way through the meal, it tells me I’m not full :/.  Odd indeed, but I have managed to introduce some new items that I’ve found quite delightful like: Hummus and Sushi … the cooked kind. I’ll keep eating,  you keep reading (hopefully), and maybe one day I’ll be a certified food snob … MAYBE.

Rosie.

Exhibit D: In Gorton’s we trust!

 

 

 
*I’m gonna go ahead and say that my brother was probably the source of 85% of my hang ups with food. (Sorry Curtis, pero es verdad). 

i want me to want me.

/ StaceyRose / Leave a comment

Phrases like:

“The only way for someone to love you, is for you to love yourself first.”

or

“To thine own self be true!”

OR

“You’re special just the way you are! God don’t make no junk!”

Make me want to strangle the well meaning sages that deliver them unto me with a recently ripped off chain of kitten tails, and  I would two except for two things:

1.  I love kittens.  Oh how I love kittens.

and

2.  I know, as hokey as they may sound, all that bullshit is true.

Where does one start though? Regular mani-pedi’s?  Dinner for one? Movie dates with yourself? Meh … while that stuff helps, my experience has led me to believe that it’s best to start here:

Sarah Baartman a.k.a. The Venus Hottentot.  (It is strongly advised that you click her name to gain a broader … pardon the pun … perspective on the history of black female sexuality and the western world.)  Sarah, which is ironically my grandmother’s name, could be my butt naked body double (or I should say, I hers).

Sarah (B), is definitely where I’m at.

The hardest part of  accepting myself has been getting past my body image.  I have lost tremendous amounts of weight.  Gained part of it back. I have cut, pasted, prayed, and starved in an effort to deny my Sarah Baartman body.  She will not be denied.  I have to accept what most diet/exercise programs don’t tell you … your body type is your body type.  I will never diet away my thunder thighs or the delectable craters found within my ass cheeks.

Now maybe your issues have nothing to do with good ole Sarah, maybe it’s your nose, or your relentless uni-brow. No matter, it’s not about what the thing you dislike about yourself is (at least not for me).  It’s the fact that it exists.  It’s the fact that my feelings about my weight , are a parasite that has drilled itself into my psyche and taken up residence.  It is with me of every moment of everyday whispering gems like:

“He couldn’t possibly want someone that looks like you, don’t even embarrass yourself by saying hello or even looking at him.”

or

“You look terrible in anything you put on,  so what’s the point.”

…and some that are just too unbearable to write here.

The only way that I’ve found to battle back the parasite that works (as alcohol, mani-pedi’s, and self-dates proved to be dismal failures) is facing that sonofabitch head on. There ain’t a quick fix on the market that trumps honest, loving self appraisal.  It’s a journey that I’ve been on for most of my life, but the honesty part just crept in about two years ago. Needless to say, it’s been a rough, albeit rewarding, two years.

More recently, as recent as this past Wednesday, I had another … break through? break down?  Hell, I broke … and had to come to accept that a man that I’d endeared myself to, for far longer than I should have, would likely never be able to give me what I needed or wanted from him.  I had been holding out hope that somehow if I proved how awesome I was to him that he would have some type of miraculous epiphany, look past my misshapen body, and “pick me” giving me a chance at the relationship I’d so desperately wanted.*

*Yes, on an intellectual level I know this is bullshit, I cringe as I write it, but it’s what my inner dialogue had been.

If I’m honest, and again I try to be these days, I’ll have to say that it wasn’t necessarily him, but ALL of the “hims“.  All of the men and the shitty situations that came with them, that I settled for because on a gut level I assumed that no one else would want me. It’s the parasite, the disease, my thinking (call it what you will), that had me believing that one sided situations with emotionally or otherwise unavailable men were all I could hope for. Now?  I’m just too exhausted to give a fuck.

The prospect of being sans a partner for the rest of my life is no longer terrifying.  The prospect of wasting my life lying in wait of what might be, is.  So if being single is what it is for me right now (or longer) I need to continue to do the work of being okay with the person I wake up to everyday.  I have to take care of me which for me includes:

-Taking care of my emotional and spiritual self by continuing do the work of recovery.

-Taking care of the one and only body I will ever be given by eating right and exercising, not toward any magical goal weight, but because it feels good.

-Getting enough rest.

-Setting healthy boundaries in my relationships, which include running in the opposite direction when I see the red flags.

-Taking care of my responsibilities (having bad credit is no longer “cute”).

-And most important, CONTINUING TO WRITE!

Despite all my emotional ups and downs I do feel a shift happening.  With continued hard work and perseverance,  I might just fall in love with myself, Hottentot table top ass and all, at some point before I’m dead ;).

Rosie.

Oh the irony.

Rosie’s hierarchy of deeds

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Level I:  The Bottom Line – (breathe, eat, sleep, crap, pay rent … repeat.)

I like my job.  My day job … respiratory therapy … yeah, like it. I like the hospital where I work, and the folks (day and night shift) that I work with. I do not  love my job. I don’t love it for reasons that have nothing to do with the job itself, more so than I do not enjoy being under the employ of others. I do not like other people having the ability to decide (at their on discretion, by the way, in this great state of North Carolina) whether or not I will receive a pay check that I will use to support myself and my family.  What I have come to learn though is that it’s not necessarily the employment, but the attitude that I carry in with me that determines whether or not I am happy.  We gotta work, there’s no denying that, sooo …

I work.  And  on my way to work this past Thursday, as is often customary, I was listening to NPR.  Then this warming humanitarian piece came pouring through the car stereo:

(the entire piece can be read here.)

All manner of bells, whistles, and alerts went off. Negro spirituals ebbed and flowed, pickaninnies danced spirited jigs, visions of Haile Selassie with a shine kit ready to buff well worn loafers into golden sandals appeared and disappeared.  Then Rush … Rush Limbaugh in all his boundless wisdom entered and said, “Goddam liberal media.” –– and I agreed with him (terrifying, I know).

Maybe in an America in an alternate universe where the African Slave Trade never happened, where blacks many years post slavery were not largely prevented performing anything but menial work due to roadblocks in education, financial, and sociological advancement, this story could be a soul stirring human interest story.  This ain’t that America.  And I could not conceive of how this story got green lighted.  I mean JEEZ:

“At Concourse D, there’s one shoeshiner with a thick African accent, a soul patch, and an interesting story to tell.”

 Like what in the entire fuck  is and “African accent” or a soul patch for that matter.  Ok … digressing.

During my post listen nausea I began to think of the very sordid and stereotype riddled relationship with blacks and labor in this country, and realized that this was probably another source for my disdain for work. Then some of my humanist buddhisty thought kicked in (which is great, because being frustrated with racism in this “post racial” world is  exhausting.)  This allowed my view to broaden enough for me to arrive at the next level.

Level II: Be SOMEBODY! – (I want you to want me, I need you to need me.)

I dare say that everybody wants to be important/significant/necessary.  In our society, and in many for that matter, a person’s livelihood or role in that society is the means by which people arrive at their “somebodyhood”.  Which works, except when it doesn’t.  I will refer to my healthcare career again here.

During my career I have met the most brilliant CNAs (nurse aids as they were once called) and the most brilliantly idiotic doctors (some dangerously so).  In the healthcare hierarchy of deeds it is the MD that receives all the respect and accolades in the general public, followed closely by nursing.  What the general public does not often see, unless they have the misfortune of becoming ill, is the entire healthcare team.

Respiratory therapists, pharmacy techs, secretaries, lab, x-ray, PT, OT, Speech therapists, the social work team, environmental services, clinical engineering … we make up an intricate web of people who take care of those who have limited or no ability to take care of themselves. We are where the rubber meets the road, the folks that carryout the orders of the good (and not so good) doctors. I’m not saying that I haven’t worked with some amazing doctors in my time as a therapist because I have and without nursing there would be a gaping hole in healthcare that would be impossible to fill, but it sucks that as important/significant/necessary/ as our jobs are people often don’t know or care that we’re doing them … unless we’re not.

So why do we still do the work? Mainly because of the bottom line, but when you find folks that have hung in there for years and are still generally happy there’s usually a bigger reason (either that or they’re masochists 😉 ).   At our core, or at least at mine, I enjoy people.  My patients, my co-workers, err body.  They make the work I do bearable. Over the years we have loved each other through unspeakable tragedy and limitless joy.  I have laughed harder than I have ever laughed at work and cried harder than I have ever cried.  It was this that I was thinking of when I made my final decent into the parking lot of “The U” last Thursday.  I was glowing with the light of universal love and brotherhood. I had arrived at …

Level III:  I AM somebody.

My mother is the foundation of my beliefs about work.  She worked hard from age 16 to age 42 at a job on which she was one of the first blacks.  She had to take a test to even get the job, an effort by a then lily white company (New Jersey Bell) to keep blacks out. My mother went on to become a union delegate.  She fought (sometimes literally) for the rights of the worker that while they might not be recognized individually that they be respected and treated fairly.  This I believe this to be the real bottom line, decent work for decent compensation and fair treatment. My mother was never one to see one person’s job as important and another person’s as insignificant. Work was work.  I couldn’t appreciate her example then,  but I do now.

As much as it pains me to admit it, even the shoe shiner’s job is important/significant/necessary.  It provides a moment of respite for the weary business traveler, a means of financial support for “Shine”, his family, and the league of Ethiopian shoe shiners in training he has back at home (I’m sorry … I’m trying to let it go, but can’t he find something else to do?) Just as the healthcare team is a bridge of support for the sick, we are a bridge of support for one another in life. Each section of the bridge from the bolts (shoe shines) to the the planks (doctors) perform a function that we might not necessarily understand, but without which we would be lacking.

Rosie.

Pushing the car.

/ StaceyRose / 1 Comment

Best Advice
I used to have horrible cars, because I never had money, so I’d always end up broken down on the highway. When I stood there trying to flag someone down, nobody stopped. But when I pushed my own car, other drivers would get out and push with me. If you want help, help yourself—people like to see that. –  Chris Rock

 

I read the above article around the time I suspected my Singaporean goose was cooked.  What got me at the core was the bit about the car.  Was I doing enough on my own behalf?  I can honestly say, I wasn’t.  That’s even hard to write, but it’s true.  I could have worked more hours, I could have dedicated more time to fleshing out more feasible better planned fundraisers.

Would these things have made the financial difference that landed me in school this year vs. next year? Probably not, and since I’m drinking from the fountain of self honesty, on my gut level I knew this.  My credit rating, an F.  My current student loans, while not in default, are a reflection of my youthful (and not so youthful) wastefulness. Add what I owe in taxes, and my day to day bills, and making it over without a wealthy sugar daddy or a co-signer (which would have been an incredibly irrational direction) was going to be highly unlikely.  Even with all this reality lying in wait I prayed that somehow my effort (albeit half-hearted) would part the heavens and allow for some Dickenesque Christmas Carol resolution that would allow for my passage into all that I’d wished and hoped for.  But, a wise man did once suggest that I wish in one hand, shit in the other and see which one fills first.

I could see this experience as one of the most humiliating in my life (and it probably is), go hide, and give up on the idea of grad school in general, let alone on the other side of the world, but that would make me a quitter. Quitters suck (unless it’s self defeating behavior then by all means quit dammit!). No, I shan’t quit, and while I appreciate all the support I’ve been given, the reality is that I have to push my own car.   I have to take this year to get my shit together financially, physically, and emotionally … basically shit I need to do anyway. I have to go back to working night shift (bleh), pick up extra hours (bleh!), and many other things savory and unsavory … all legal I assure you. In short,  I gotta know on my inside space that I gave this shit everything I got before I’m willing to give up.

So here we go world. With the help of a HP with a fairly wicked sense of humor,  I’ve got 365 days to make this thing happen. Help is still appreciated, but it’s time for me to get out and P.U.S.H.

Watch me work.

Rosie.

 

Uncle 2.0 (A kinder gentler surrender.)

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When I began the graduate school application process I tried to maintain the belief that no matter the outcome, “good” or “bad”, that it had nothing to do with my ability to write or my value as a writer. I probably should have taken it to the next level and said that it had nothing to do with my value as a human being, because ultimately it doesn’t.

Grad school was to me was about what I valued.  I value education.  I enjoy becoming educated. Academia is my home girl.  However, I do realize that there are non-conventional ways of receiving the education I desire, and if it ends up that those are the avenues I have to stroll down that it is okay.  The sting of my experience comes from valuing the means of getting my education more than I do the education itself.

There is a balance I seek to find between my desire to achieve and the realization that my achievements do no supersede my humanity. There is absolutely nothing wrong with me wanting to succeed, but that success should not come at the expense of what really matters, my life and happiness. Looking back over the last few months I can see that I have been highly driven, but not exactly enjoying my life, even during times that were intended to be enjoyable.

I’m entering an easier phase of surrender as I continue to raise my white flag and wave it at Tisch Asia (the game is not entirely over, but it appears to be a blow out). At this point, I’m not too clear on “what’s next”.  I’m still feeling some residual yuckiness, but I know it is dangerous for me to live here.  I want to hide because I am embarrassed and ashamed, but I won’t.  Instead I’ll volunteer to be the fool that is brave enough to fail fantastically and be willing to tell the tale.

Rosie.

Uncle: (an angry rageful prayer of surrender not intended for the faint of heart.)

/ StaceyRose / 1 Comment

I am utterly defeated. I have nothing else to give to the cause of me attending Tisch Asia.  I have hustled, planned, acted as if (I quit my fucking job! Great!), prayed, meditated, and burned incense. I am tired. I have a $20,000 per semester gap in funding.  I do not qualify for the Grad Plus loan.  This morning one of my final doors/windows of opportunity closed. My white flag is waving.  I don’t have anymore to give this cause emotionally, spiritually, or mentally. Right now, I don’t give a shit what the lesson is.  It hurts too fuckin’ much for me to care. I know it won’t always, but today it does.

Being hopeful about this situation has only intensified the shitiness of my feelings and fueled my desperate actions to force this thing to happen.  These are the times I don’t want to be in recovery.  I want a license to be completely reckless and unconcerned about the damage I leave behind, but fucking recovery. Fucking spiritual principles won’t even allow me to indulge. Because underneath this raging heap of fuck the world I have going on I know that the shiny happy recovery Stacey would suffer in the long run along with those she loves.

If you have donated to my noble cause, know that your funding will now be re-purposed to cover my ass as I eat crow and I slither back into my life as a Respiratory Therapist. Universe … I turn it over to you, because I have not shit else.

Rosie.

This Old House.

/ StaceyRose / Leave a comment

Recovering from co-dependency is being ripped away from everything you once knew to be true and being shoved out into the cold to figure out a new truth on your own (seeking outside support is highly recommended from my experience). Each step I take toward my new truth leaves a trail of uncertainty, fear and regret on my heels, just waiting for me to slip and fall back into my old ways of operating. The misconception I’ve had is that I can’t make mistakes. If I did –– I believed –– it would mean I was completely wrong and should never have left the comfort of my mother’s strangling skirt strings.

Thankfully, my beliefs are growing. They are the tiny multicolor buds in a flowering garden of possibility grown out of determination to do something different, and the desire to find out who I was really put here to be. In my heart I know I was not meant to be ordinary. Not that there is anything wrong with ordinary, it’d probably be easier on my tiny co-dependent soul if I were. I know I’m not though, in the same way a dog knows it’s not a cat, and a transgendered person knows that there is something not quite right with the body they were born into. So the work I’m doing now, is necessary.

The most difficult part? Not having the full support of the people I love, my family. While some members have supported my transition into being a full time artist from day one, others have been a harder sell. Now with me doing something as “impractical” as moving to Singapore to pursue a degree that I can get in the States, it feels like the bottom is falling out. Those that were supporting me are wavering and I’m in a revolving non-verbal stand off with those that don’t. It hurts. It hurts like fucking hell, but if I look back now I don’t know if I’ll ever get the courage to move forward again.

Building on a shifting foundation is rough. It feels like I’m flipping an old and rusty house. With every repair I make I find a new issue, like termites or a leaky roof. Termites and roofs be damned, I’ll build over, under, and through if I have to because I’m sick and tired of the rickety old abode of my life. There is a garden out there, that’s waiting to wrap itself around a regal brick home on a solid foundation to compliment it’s beauty.

Rosie.

Miss Direction: Which way is home?

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When I laid eyes on this photo, I felt an immediate identification via a deep sense of uncertainty I wrestle with daily. There are some things I know:  My name, place of birth, general location on the planet earth at this moment. There are  things that I do not know:  Whether I’m going to raise enough money to attend this program I want to so badly.  What am going to do if I fall short of my financial goals and don’t end up going? What I’m having for breakfast? Lunch? Dinner?  As usual, its the what I don’t know that’s eating my lunch right now.

Like the photographic subject I am a soldier in the middle of a war.  Unlike the subject, my war is unfolding between my ears. I battle myself for my attention constantly. I battle to stay focused  on the task at hand.  “Eyes. On. The. Prize.” has been my mantra lately. But with atomic bombs of distraction going on, it makes it pretty hard to stay in the fight.  If I played the sound track  to the feature film Inside Stacey’s Fugged Up  Mind, you’d hear the sickest mash up of shit that makes absolutely no sense together. Broadway tunes, story ideas, to do lists, disaster scenarios, positive affirmations, negative affirmations, and *clears throat* unnatural/unhealthy desires are all doing the shimmy shake around my psyche.  It’s a wonder I can walk, think, and breathe at the same time.  Some how I manage to.

I first try to remember that I have tools that point me in a Good Orderly Direction.  Prayer, meditation, a network of people that love me. It’s just making myself use them! It’s riding out the feelings of not  falling back into my old familiar boobie traps like my ex-husband or the Cheddar Chicken Melt at Cook Out. When I do use my tools and I don’t do things that are going to make me feel like shit about myself later, it gets better.  It doesn’t always free great, but I avoid self made disaster scenarios that often lead to me hitting the self-destruct button and checkin’ out all together.

Mostly, I just want to be at peace.  I want to feel “at home”, which I’ve not felt in a long while.  If I had to guess I’d say it was before this whole grad school process began.  Hell, maybe even before that. Riding out emotions straight no chaser is definitely not for the faint of heart, but bit I’m doing it. I’m glad I know that nothing impermanent is certain. I am practicing the art of war against self. Against the false belief that my happiness can be born from anywhere else but right inside of me. Understanding all this on a gut level? Well, that will come with time I hope. According to Mick Jagger, it’s on my side 😉

Rosie.

Mom too much?

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When I gazed upon the recent cover of  Time Magazine, my initial urge was to vomit.  The churning of my guts was not however due to the overgrown child latched firmly to his mother’s teet.  That was unsightly enough. No, my disgust was brought on by the title of the cover story “Are You Mom Enough?”

Hell, on most days I wonder I’m human being enough, now I have to worry about if I’m mom enough?! Geez!  Okay Let’s see:

  • I don’t cook for him nightly.
  • I DO provide unhealthy fast food substitutes. (*wonder if I should just breast feed :/ )
  • I use foul language around him.
  • BUT I use that language in complete sentences.
  • I’m short tempered with him.
  • That temper usually flares up when he’s not doing what he should in school.
  • I’m ALWAYS busy.
  • I’m ALWAYS willing to drop everything when he needs me.

Well mom judges,  How am I looking? Did I mention I’m a single parent?! That’s gotta get me a bye!

Dammit! Motherhood has been turned into a high stakes game with no clear winner. Do I win if my kid goes to college? If he doesn’t go to jail? If he does both? If he goes to jail, but comes out and is a productive citizen there after? If he goes to college, but his entire life is meaningless? There are just too many damn variables.  I love my son dearly, but I’m not sure if I’m cut out for this Motherhood Hunger Games shit.

So here’s what, I hereby advocate for self honest guilt free parenting (okay… maybe guilt lite).  I don’t need detailed instructions from a some highfalutin MD either.  I’m going to raise my son to the best of my abilities. I will make mistakes, but try my best to avoid the biggies (e.g. neglecting to feed, clothe, or nurture him). Even if I fall on my ass I will vow to get back up and continue giving him all the love and support that a selfish self centered letch like me can :).

Rosie.