Punished.
I got pulled over by the cops today while making a voice note on my phone titled “reasons I’m being punished.”
Things on the list at the time of the pullings over:
Cancer during the peak of the pandemic = can’t see anyone
Cancer during the peak of smoke season = can’t go outside
Getting cancer as a “you’re the healthiest person I know” person
Cancer 4 months before the new cancer center opens so all the facilities I go to have a “fuck it” vibe
Cancer while the world feels like it’s crumbling = no energy to put my fist in the air for women’s rights + refugees + the climate + misinformation culture + anti-diet culture
Everyone is so over the world that my bald cancery head reminds them of just another thing that sucks
So sick I can’t travel (barely move) = no escaping the house
My tastebuddies no longer love foods that bring me joy
I got pulled over ten minutes into my first time outside in five days, five of that alone in the hospital getting treatment. For the two days before this moment, I’ve been so sick that the simple act of lifting my limp body off the couch required full love/hate verbal affirmations. Bitch, you got this…that burning through your body is your warrior goddess ancestors battling back the cancer beast cells and WINning, rise up! Rise up like a phoenix from the ashes! Desperate, I took to constructing full-on Marvel plotlines to muster the strength to make it to the toilet (sometimes I didn’t) where I would collapse in tears of relief, hang my head limp at my chest, and rest for a while before it was time to do it again. You have robot legs. Robot legs don’t have muscles, they are made of iron, steel, and other super hard stuff. Command your robot leg to lift, lift I say!* Back at the couch, more tears, more relief, more noodly muscles, more trying to not be swallowed by the urgency of pain.
Back at the scene of the crime, I was approached by a portly, young, mild-mannered officer who asked me the questions and I told him the truth. Yes, I was holding my phone up to my face to make a voice note. Yes, I understand that isn’t cool in Oregon. Yes, I’ll need to pull up my insurance card online because the one I have in here expired last year. Because I never get pulled over. Because I never break the law. Because anytime in my life I break the law I get busted. Well, maybe not EVERY time but…enough.
Reasons that I have actually been punished:
The first/only time I shoplifted I was 14 and put a shirt on under my own at Von Maur then, being the criminal mastermind I was, threw the empty hanger under the stall next to me. Trouble was that it was at closing time so all the stalls were empty and I came out with no clothes to put back and a guilty naked hanger in the stall. The manager on duty that busted me happened to be my mom’s arch-nemesis which became a whole thing in their ‘friend’ group. Since my parents were working, my friend Shawna’s very conservative Catholic mother Karen had to pick us up. I was never allowed to hang out with Shawna again (we are still friends 25+ years later to Karen’s chagrin).**
I stole my brother’s car when I was 15 to go on a joy ride and the clutch went out when I was 30ish miles away from home. I thought I was golden after an angel stranger stopped on the road and paid to AAA the car and me home, but through some fast-food bag sleuthing by my brother (I’d gotten Taco Bell which he knew he’d had not eaten and I loved). I was busted. My parents called the cops on me, a story my mom tells around large groups on holidays.
A few years ago I was out of punches at the gym and really needed the sauna so (just this once…fateful last words) used my friend’s punch card with the full intention of paying in cash later. For some reason, the employees were auditing the faces on cards v. faces in the gym and I got literally escorted out. I have not returned.
Some drug and alcohol stuff. I am sober now. Let’s leave it at that. I’ll also leave you a photo of me from that time for you to craft your own “angsty emo kid” story.
I’m on the far right, the one with the fishnet and crimped black hair hiding her many chokers.
There are dozens of these examples. If I talk smack about people it gets back to them every time, so I just don’t anymore.*** Little white lies? Nope, the truth will out. I share everything out loud. I never lie, not even a casual “we can’t make it because the cats are sick.” If I say that, rest assured that my cat is sick. From the earliest of embarrassing childhood stories/traumas, I have immediately been held accountable, no creeping karma here. WHACK! You’ve been karma’d.
Let me be clear - I don’t really think I’m being punished, but damn, I don’t know what to make of all of this at once. The hits just keep on coming and my how-does-this-serve-me-for-the-better muscles are worn thin.**** Yeah yeah, I don’t have to be the poster child for the bright side but you know what sucks WAY worse than either of these lists? Actually believing that the bad stuff that happens to me isn’t also for my benefit. Ooph, THAT is scary. THAT is isolating, terrifying. THAT is the slippery slope towards losing hope, to be suspicious, cynical, to be a hammer, and everywhere I look are nails. I want to live but a life like that is worse than death. My beloved Viktor Frankl taught me “between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” What the heck am I trying to multi-task making notes and driving for anyhow? If the worst of the worst-case happens and the world, my small one or the larger world, ceases to exist as we know it, then I don’t have any kinda time to rush.
I got a ticket for $265 for distracted driving. I will not dispute it. I wished the officer a safe and joyful day and I meant it. I will not be picking up my phone while driving ever again, lesson learned. I consider this a $265 investment in being more present and safe when I drive going forward. I also sat in my car and cried, I called Evan who raged for me, I called my mom who let me cry in silence, I messaged my friend Emily who will laugh with me later. And I moved on. Free of it. Unpunished and into the smoke.
Arbitrary Footnotes:
*I agree, I would be terrible at writing Marvel plotlines
**My mom doubly got the shaft in this choice as she was the one who had to accompany me to juvenile “scared straight” classes for 3 Saturdays in a row when she was already working 50+ hours a week at a factory making circuit breakers to pay for my Taco Bell joy rides.
***I do have 5 people in my all-knowing venting about people/places/things fortress with me, 5 people who know all my ugly. The universe and I have an understanding and this fortress has remained karma whack free. It includes Evan, my mom, my therapist, and 2 close girlfriends. Get yourself a fortress - keep that shit tight.
****These perspectives and actual muscles need a gym but, per the earlier story, that bridge has been burned. Speaking of burning bridges, the one and only time I took Ambien as a sleep aid was in the military when I took a pill, put on pajamas, and promptly went on a throwing-up spree across the greater El Paso, Texas area that began with a tanning bed and ended with a popcorn bucket at a movie theater. That ‘incident’ cost me $100 in prepaid and unused tans and a viewing of the movie Saw - a sentence that also answers the question “tell me you were 20 in the 2000s without telling me you were in your 20’s in the 2000s”.
No bones and 10 pounds of steroid water weight working up some hype like a weird, depressed Peloton instructor with alopecia.