The Tragic Superhero Origin of Frobecca the Great

I quit this blog abruptly a couple years ago. I hadn't made even 40 posts (not counting all the unpublished drafts I'd accumulated, of course). I had previously had an anonymous blog which I posted to sporadically, so this public one was new territory for me.

My first anonymous blog was written during the years I was trying to get divorced. Exhausted, traumatized, and attempting to escape the agoraphobic hell of my own mind wasn't something I could talk about publicly. I could only vaguely talk about it privately. And, of course, the ongoing custody battle, coupled with navigating the practical aspects of keeping myself safe, hidden, and legally protected--while being a responsible, loving parent--well, it used up all the reserves I had.

Eventually, I began this blog, which wasn't anonymous. It wasn't my best writing, didn't have a clear focus, and probably ignored all rules of good blogging. Sometimes I waxed philosophical. Sometimes I whined. Sometimes, dare I say it, I was funny. Often I posted silly doodles made with cheap ball point pen on even cheap paper toweling. Occasionally, I wrote something good.

I didn't expect many people to read it, maybe a few friends, maybe some of my followers. But it was a good thing for me, personally. It was a brave thing.

A couple years ago, a friend's ex-girlfriend--who I didn't know well, but had sort of liked--had a bad response to their breakup. I had only known her on Facebook, but had made plans to meet her on different occasions, which were always canceled, by her, at the last minute, in a dramatic way. After she and my friend broke up, I suggested we still meet for dinner like we'd planned to do. We did, it was a bit odd, but friendly, and I thought I'd made a new friend--though not necessarily one I'd trust with confidences.

She seemed very impressed with me--kept telling me how beautiful I was (my Facebook photos made me look unattractive), commented multiple times on my height (she's much shorter), went on about my red hair, and in general, laid it on really thick. It was uncomfortable, but I suspected she was just trying too hard.

The next day, she dyed her hair red.

You can probably guess where this is going.

After she ambushed him in his apartment, assaulted him at a public event (incoherently screaming about "it all being my fault"--I wasn't even there), and threatened to harm herself and him, I convinced my friend to get his locks changed, to file for a protective order, and to get an attorney.

I can't even begin to understand the devious plot I was supposed to have put in motion. It somehow involved me wanting her boyfriend for myself, setting him up with another woman, and befriending her for some vague, nefarious reason. She sent me hate texts, hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on me (of which there is thankfully, none, bless my little nerd heart), and relentlessly cyberstalked me, including maintaining a running, hate-filled commentary about my blog.

So I went back to anonymous blogging. It was just too much. Having been stalked before, having experienced way too much targeted, online harassment, having only pulled myself out of hiding through sheer stubbornness and determination, it wasn't just terrifying, but exhausting. I was living with a friend--a not very cautious friend--who had a public address--my address was public, for the first time in years. I had a son, a reasonable fear for his and my safety, a typical avoidant response to trauma triggers, and a reasonable sense of how much was too much.

The thing that hit me unexpectedly--though it took some time to process it--was how completely unsatisfying anonymous blogging now was. Sure, I could talk more openly and frankly than I would have otherwise (I didn't even share this blog with anyone I knew), but it felt like backpedaling. I had worked hard to reach a place where I was openly expressing myself. I felt cheated somehow. Eventually, I stopped.

I said this was going to be an origin story, didn't I? But it's really just a little backstory, not even very original, as far as it goes. But, storm's passed over, as storms often do. I've made a lot of progress in the meantime, too. Maybe I'll tell the whole origin story, eventually. It's not quick or easy. It starts with a healthy dose of tragedy, followed by some loneliness and solitude, like all good origin stories. It's twisty, full of knots, and it sometimes took a ridiculous long time to get from point A to point B.

But here's a teaser, anyway, for those who sat through the credits. I occasionally get asked, "Why Frobecca?" Partly, it's just clever wordplay (if I do say so myself) from a conversation with a friend. Mostly, it's because of this:

Yep, I had that hair. Deliciously awkward, isn't it?

Sea Monkeys

Here's one thing I've been working on lately. This chair is for CASA's Festival of Chairs, a charity auction held October 5. Those unfamiliar with CASA can read about the organization here: http://www.arkansascasa.org/. It's a good cause and I'm glad to participate.

 

I had a lot of ideas for chairs, but I ended up using these vintage comic books. There's such a charm in them that's missing in the new, glossy ones. While I may never have believed that "Coin Collecting is Exciting!" I certainly remember the ads for Sea Monkeys and Hostess Twinkies.

 

 

 

Why Blogging is Difficult

I haven't been blogging lately as I've intended to, not because I have nothing to write about, because that's never true. My mind is always going; I observe and think and feel things at an exhausting pace. I constantly compose things in my head, plan paintings, start projects. It's never a case of what is there to do, but what do I do first. I don't understand people who lack ideas, people who get bored, people who find it easy to sit still. I don't really even understand people who watch television.

The reason I don't blog more often is that so many of my thoughts are simply difficult to share. They're too personal, sometimes. Too complex, often. And so much of the time, especially lately, my thoughts involve other people: other people's struggles, or their failings, the things they do to annoy me or to encourage me, the things they say that embarrass me. Private as I tend to be, it's hardest of all for me to write about other people.

The reasons I censor myself are so varied and subtle that I can't even explore them here. Not now. But they come from a lifetime of being molded, rewarded or punished, for the things I say. We all experience that to a certain level, the pressure to express ourselves differently than our wont, but I have always felt it keenly. I realize that my writing is stronger, often, and certainly more interesting when I edit myself less but, barring an occasional slip of the tongue when tired or in an ill temper, I simply don't know how. In fact, I often think through what I'm going to say so many times before speaking that I leave things out, having forgotten what I haven't said.

For the most part, I'm not ashamed or embarrassed by anything I think, yet I'm still private. I try to accept my foibles and flaws as graciously as I do those of others. But I'm choosy about what I share with whom, because even kind and accepting people don't always understand. Writing my thoughts in a blog is counterintuitive. Anyone could read it, anyone could misunderstand, anyone could write hateful comments with bad grammar and repost on Twitter. Most often, I don't care about these things, because people are so often unreasonable. But sometimes I do.

The fact that my brain works the way it does--thinking many thoughts at once, following many paths back and forth--makes it hard to express thoughts in short blog posts. Imagine a spiderweb, where each thought has tendrils of thought leading out from it, and each tendril is connected to other tendrils in a spiral pattern. Imagine being aware of all these thoughts simultaneously, to how they interact and form connections, how they're active and alive, expanding and retracing their pathways, and forming new connections. Imagine experiencing this web in various ways: colors fading into other colors, each string having a different melody, a different tensile strength, a different smell, a different speed of movement. Now, imagine a mind filled with a hundred of these webs, each different, each sharing similarities, and each breathing like a living organism.

Imagine experiencing this every moment of your waking life.

Imagine, too, a memory that causes things from twenty years ago to be as fresh as yesterday. Imagine remembering, word for word, that thing your American history professor said in class on April 1, 1993, when he was talking about the Muckrakers, when your hair was wet and you were wearing that blue sweatshirt inside out. Imagine remembering the exact quality of sun on the morning you heard on the radio that a man had escaped from prison, when you were four, when your mother was planting zinnias in the flowerbed behind the house, and how you made your own raisins by laying them on an old board on top of the roof, and how you ate grapefruit for breakfast loaded with so much sugar it barely tasted like grapefruit, and how your hands were sticky and you wiped them on your yellow terry cloth shorts.

These last few weeks, I've thought a lot about people in my life: friends who've lost their parents, whose marriages and relationships have ended, who've entered new relationships which haven't met their expectations, who have health problems and struggles with old traumas and old demons. I reflect on these things, I think of blogging about them, but I don't. I listen, I help as I can, I offer my support, but ultimately, I don't feel comfortable talking about them.

It's going to take me time, but I'm eventually going to write about the more difficult things. There are things I believe people should hear, though I'm reluctant to be the person to say them, and there are things I believe I should say, if only to say them. All of it is counterintuitive; some of it is downright scary. But it's something I'm going to do.

Generosity (Meditations on Turning 40)

This is the year I turn 40, and I've been spending more time than usual reflecting on what I've learned over the years.

It's strange how you know things, and then later you really know them, and realize you didn't know them at all before.

Lately I've been meditating on how often I must relearn the same lessons. There was a time when this would have bothered me, when it would have felt like failure, or at least a lack of progress. But more recently I've begun to recognize it as a benevolence. I may learn the same lessons, but each time I revisit them with greater depth.

There are days when I realize, with aching clarity, that I'm guilty of the same behavior that I recently condemned someone else for. It doesn't matter that, at the time, I recognized I had tendencies towards the same weakness, or that I really did feel affection for the person I was annoyed with. I judged that person, perhaps not harshly, but with a sense of superiority, an idea that I was aware of this flaw in myself and had overcome it. Maybe my criticisms were entirely justified, but those same criticisms were no less justified when directed at me later. I should have been kinder.

That's when it hits home just how much I still have to learn. It's the same old lessons all over again.

Ouch.

It's humbling, and yet it's a sign of how far I've come in life that, instead of condemning myself for this type of thing, I can accept the lesson with a mingling of regret and gratitude for my ability to recognize my failings. I can accept my weaknesses and my strengths equally, which deepens my ability to accept those things in other people.

So, that's one way I've been maturing over the past decade: learning generous acceptance of who I am, and who others are. The first one is necessary for the second. The thought isn't profound; I've thought that as long as I can remember. But I understand it better today than I ever did.

Brief Respite

I haven't blogged for a couple weeks because life has been unusually complicated and/or annoying. I did take a few days away, but it was an internet-free weekend out in the Missouri countryside, so no blogging was being done.

There was relaxation, though. Sleeping late and watching a bit of television. Taking a stroll through the garden. Venison teriyaki with garden-fresh vegetables. Really good coffee. Old friends and desultory conversation. Time to watch the hummingbirds and the nuthatches.

It rained much of Saturday, so on Sunday morning we set out for the wildlife preserve for a stroll. We walked the boardwalk over the swamp. The water was high and the native fauna were active. We saw a raccoon, a woodpecker couple, frogs, dragonflies, a crow, fish, skinks, a snake, bumblebees, and assorted other creatures.

My friend, who's been a city-dweller longer than I have, was more excited by the wildlife than I, but also of the firm opinion that it should keep at a distance. She talked about how peaceful it was, while I suggested it would be the perfect setting to film a horror movie. We get excited by different things, in different ways. Even in my excitement, I'm prone to be blasé, but she has no such compunctions. We've been friends for a long time.

Midway through our walk, we heard singing from the far side of the swamp, traveling across the water. It was haunting, beautiful but eerie, distorted so that we couldn't make out words. Perhaps my earlier rhapsodizing about the haunting stories that could be told had altered the atmosphere for her, because she began to feel creeped out. Oops.

We'd walked for almost two miles without seeing another human, save for one young man we'd passed at the entrance to the refuge, propped on a bench with a book of some sort. Not a reading book, some kind of journal, I thought it was, but he seemed to be seeking solitude so we had passed quickly. A swamp really isn't the place to get chatty with strangers. Was he the source of the mysterious music?

Of course he was. Not realizing we'd looped around a second time, he must have thought we'd already left. As he became aware he was no longer alone, he stopped singing, moving skittishly and looking up at us with a ducked head. We made a couple friendly comments about how much we'd enjoyed his singing, to put him at ease, and passed on.

A few seconds later, he'd recovered his wits enough to speak, and called after us. "It's National Pirate Day. That's why I'm dressed like a pirate!"

My friend and I exchanged amused glances, neither of us having noted anything remarkable about his skull-and-crossbones-patterned bandana or hoop earring. Perhaps we were both remembering how it was to have felt that young, that self-conscious, to feel the need to blurt out an explanation for our choice of dress to complete strangers.

"Oh, I've heard of that," my friend said, ever the sweet-natured one. Then we turned again and ambled on, noting the elms, sweet gum, and hummingbird vine.

At lunch, her mother asked us about the walk, and listed the wildlife we had seen: "Raccoon, woodpeckers, skinks, frogs, snake.."

"Oh, no, a snake!"

"And a singing pirate."

"A snake?" Apparently a pirate didn't seem remarkable to her. But a snake.

"Oh, he just ignored us. He just kind of flicked his tail and snaked away through the water."

"And the pirate was more afraid of us than we were of him."

I drove home that night, enjoying the novelty of highways marked with letters instead of numbers: DD, WW, T. I drove past the vaguely Anglian sounding waterways of Mingo Creek and Throgmorton Slough. In Arkansas, I barely resisted following the sign pointing to Success (Could it really be that easy?) but gave Scatterville a wide berth.

There were traffic hold-ups--overturned trailers and auto accidents and slow, country drivers. But it was a peaceful drive. I made it home in one, albeit stiff and sore, piece.

It's the closest thing I've had to a vacation in years. It was relaxing, despite the pirate.

More Stuff I Found While Moving

 

 

 

Window Shade

I've been working on this window shade for a few weeks. I needed something to filter the light from the transom window above my bed, and, while I could have easily knitted one, this was faster and cheaper.

The project is made entirely from paint samples and paper clips, and hung with thumbtacks. The only real cost was for the paper punch, which I got for $10.

I love this window shade. I love the way the light shines through it, and how it looks different at different times of the day. It's my little bit of happy.