The complexity of zoning permits

I am not able to trust. I know I am supposed to be careful with my words and never say that I can’t do something I want to do so that the possibility remains open in my mind, but on this one I need to be honest with myself. I am not able to trust. I have been burned in the past, and my brain learned the lesson to always watch out, always suspect and then, because of the way our brains work, I seek reasons to reinforce it. I learned again recently not to trust. I have hope there is someone who will teach me a different lesson.

It’s a difficult time to be alive for a person who likes to be certain of things. I am one of those people. I like to know what’s in a bill before it’s been signed. I like to know that vaccines are safe. I like to know which side of the conflict my country is on. I like to know my neighbor won’t turn me into my boss for saying something off-putting about a celebrity, but I can’t truly trust any of these things in this moment. I can’t know for certain. I try to distract myself from the discomfort. I focus on the good. I look inward for truths about who know myself to be. I am a mother doing her best for her children in a difficult situation. I am an artist throwing everything I have into my art. I am a citizen of a country in duress, and for the first time I am considering transferring my social responsibility elsewhere to escape complicity. These reminders keep me in the moment I can control which ironically brings me a sense of freedom. What could I do to affect change? I could decide to do something to affect my day’s outcome. I could take a walk, for example.

I watched an oversight committee hearing with the head of the Department of Justice. I wish I could tell you I have a scathing account of the scholarly back and forth between her and the Senators. She obfuscated every question so entirely that I can’t even pin down her stupidity to one concept. I can say that her boot licking was so loud I wanted to yell at her to knock it off like I do with my dog. She ran to the defense of her boss even when no one was attacking him. The man’s ego must be made of crepe paper, all his underlings are so desperate to keep him from tearing. Her personal offense to the Senators questions about the job she is doing was first of all, poorly performed, and second of all, manufactured. How is she offended by people whose literal job it is to oversee how her job is being done? Ma’am, this hearing is not a courtesy that you are extending, but a job requirement. If you don’t fulfill it, you’re doing a poor job in the eyes of the American people. That’s who you’re working for, btw.

I think that’s the trouble with narcissists, they force everyone into a different game. Here we are trying to get answers about the Department of Justice and she’s bolstering her boss’ self-esteem, and treating the nation’s “intelligence” like she owns it personally. We’re not even working on the same project. She’s thinking short term. She’s thinking how the next 6 seconds from her lips will play on the socials. That’s what people pay attention to. I hope our society returns to thinking about things for longer than it takes us to tweet them. Minutes after the hearing, I watched a video of her not answering a question about our president’s connection to pedophilia with “The Sound of Silence” in the background. I don’t know what this means, but it means something, right? I think it means our priorities are f*cked. The hearing was remarkable but not because of her silence after tough questions, because of her combative nature with anyone who asked them—at an oversight hearing—for the department she oversees.

I like to weigh in on political debates. I think I have smart and interesting things to add, but I also stand in a position of knowing that politics doesn’t matter. It’s a game just like everything else and at any point another player can stand up and say I don’t want to play by these rules anymore, or rather I don’t want to play this game at all.

This is what has happened in America. The man at the helm said you’re going to play my game now or I start hurting your friends. He’s disregarded the law entirely. The law of the land. I watched his appointee slip out of every yes or no question using emotional outrage as her escape hatch. How dare they ask such a sensible, well-thought questions with evidence to back up their claims! The evidence provided is often statements that she and her subordinates have declared online themselves. You know, generally speaking, to be considered a great man you need to do great things, not blackmail a bunch of sycophants into blind loyalty. I bet it f*cking kills him he’s not great. I bet he tosses and turns at night over how not great he feels as he conjures in his mind a neck he’ll step on tomorrow to cope. That’s bullsh*t actually, I don’t think he thinks about his greatness at all. He’s sure of himself. I think he thinks about what else he can take. He’s the kid in the swollen swim diaper who hoards all the toys on the beach but never builds anything. What the f*ck do you stand for, man? Money. Coins.

What are all these people with money thinking? Why do they want so much? Scrooge McDuck really lived it up with his wealth. He enjoyed the literal currency by diving headfirst into his vault of gold coins and swimming around in the money. But Mr. McDuck stars in a cartoon, albeit a critically acclaimed one. What happens in cartoons is not real life. What happens in real life when you dive headfirst into a collection of gold coins—you break your neck and then you’re dead on top of what could have funded a quality lunch in the public school system.

I volunteered at my son’s school last week. There was a request for parents to come in and help out in the lunchroom. I had a light week work-wise so I signed up for Monday. Immediately I understood why they had requested help. Tiny hands raised at each table to request spoons, or a napkin, or help opening their chocolate milk bottle. It’s chaotic with the children on their own in such close quarters to one another. And food. I am not necessary a clean freak, but I do like my table space to be orderly. Some of these kids had yogurt cups balancing on bags of chips. And the crumbs, my god. It was sweet, too. I liked seeing how excited they were to talk to each other. Finally, a chance to catch up after the long morning sitting next to each other quietly on the carpet. Most of them were very polite if they made a request, and none of them were rude. I did get pranked by a rowdy group, a hazing for the new kid. I walked over the wanton straw wrappers and crushed goldfish to their section of the table. What do you need? I asked. 6-7! They returned so timidly I almost didn’t hear it, then they burst into giggles. I don’t mind being a fall guy, but after the third time I set my boundary. I noticed that kids trying to do something sneaky, like pour milk into the garbage can, will look you directly in the face before they do it and then act as if you caught them before they did it. I watched a child squeeze a mustard packet onto a tortilla chip and eat it. I found a second-grader I ran into the week before when I was adding their name to the birthday board. Today was the day! I got to wish them happy birthday. That was a fun moment. And the whole thing was only two hours. It was a nice way to spend a morning.

During that time, I got to witness the well-oiled machine that is the elementary school cafeteria staff. The grades are staggered so the whole lunchroom isn’t full at any given time. As one class exits the lunch ladies in this case, clean and disinfect the tables the children evacuated so their ready for the next class. They are also doing the same job I am, but they have deep apron pockets that hold individually packaged cutlery and napkins, so they didn’t have to run back to the table each time. A couple of them even had scissors stashed in there for those stubborn yogurt tubes. They seemed to enjoy the work. They knew the children by name. One staff member is the mother of a daughter the same age as mine, they went to preschool together. I thought her name was Melissa, but she told me that was not her name, and then she told me what her name was, but my brain did accept that new input and now her name is Not Melissa. She thanked me for my help and filled me in on some of the grade gossip. They knew that second grade would be wild this year because first grade gave them trouble last year. Fifth grade is the most well-behaved, but they can get loud. We talked about our girls’ adjustments to high school. She reminded me of an epic tale from my past. One winter she invited us to her daughter’s fourth birthday at the Chuck E. Cheese’s far north of us. I took my daughter and during the party a storm descended quickly covering the roads. We left as quickly as we could, but the damage was done, the 20-minute drive became a nearly 5-hour adventure home. But that’s a story for another day—the time my daughter and I got caught in the snow. We were talking about narcissists.

I often think that people are going to double cross me. I feel the need to stay on guard. I’ve got betrayal trauma according to the mental health influencers. When I was about 20 years old it was revealed to me that my father was unfaithful to my mother and had been unfaithful for their entire marriage. My whole life suddenly made sense.

I bet that’s not what you were expecting me to say. I bet you thought that information would have been upsetting (and the infidelity and the second life did f*ck me up, make no mistake), but mostly it made sense; the friends they kept, the business trips, how it felt like we were hiding all the time. Once everything was discovered I thought “Oh, he’s the one who’s hiding!” In a blissful epiphany I realized, I don’t need to hide with him.

The discovery and the infidelity were small parts of this trauma, what left a more lasting impression was the fallout. There was none. The very next day we went to a baseball game as a family for my mom’s birthday and not one of us uttered a word about what had happened the night before. A discovery of 20 years of adultery— we never mentioned it. We watched baseball and ate hot dogs. What was I supposed to think? I don’t remember thinking. I don’t remember anything from that day. Maybe I consciously tried to forget it because there was nothing I could do. If I spoke a word of it, I was sure to hurt at least one of them. A few days later, I asked my dad to go to counseling. I sat with him, in the parking lot of an ice cream shop, inside the car, on the outskirts of town, and my twenty-year-old self asked my father to figure out his life. For me. We didn’t talk about it again for over a decade.

Now, I’m no expert but I’d think that from a mental health perspective that level of gaslighting will do a number on you, psychologically speaking. Not that I wanted a rundown of my father’s sexcapades, but my mother must have been pretty upset when she was sobbing by the open freezer downing shots of chilled vodka. Will that be addressed? Have you already done so privately? You could just tell me that you’ve come to a resolution, I don’t need to know the specifics, but I do have questions about the way she grips that knife handle anytime you enter the kitchen.

Luckily, I was in college when everything came out, so I could avoid it. That’s how I was able to survive with any mental capacity left. I left my brother there on his own. We were at best distant roommates by then, I’m not sure I could’ve helped him. That’s what I tell myself. Ten years passed and I was well into my own parenting story, having trouble reconciling how I was treated as a child with the treatment I believed children deserve. The lies started to bug me. He’d reframe the truth to be what he needed it to be so as not to get caught in the reality the two of us shared. He didn’t care if I knew up from down, he would not feel shame. Once he took me to a show at the Kennedy Center and asked that the two of us head out onto the balcony at intermission. I get cold easily and did not want to go, but he was insistent that we go together and so I did. Ten years later I wondered if I was the equivalent of a red carnation in his lapel pocket that evening. Did he tell someone he’d be there with a young brunette so they could get a glimpse of my dad before they met up in the bathroom during the second act? Do I remember him leaving for the bathroom? I don’t even remember what show we saw. I can’t ask him if I was a carnation, because if I did, he’d tell me we never saw a show at the Kennedy Center, and that will become the discussion along with a by-product convenient for him—my fallible memory. We’d never get back around to the accusation. He’d never admit it anyway. He lies even if you have evidence. That’s what I found out in my most recent round with him. Fast forward another 12 years and you’ve caught up to now. My family has never discussed it outside of the few times I’ve brought it up, and even then, I am treated like an insane asylum escapee who has this one weird delusion we can’t quite get rid of. When I started doing therapeutic work, I discovered that a family that will hide that kind of secret has the potential to hide a lot more.

I don’t blame my father. I suspect his father behaved similarly, and I am sure my father was treated worse than me. I’m aware I might make assumptions about him that are inaccurate. It’s impossible to know because he won’t talk about any of it. I’m sure that’s because he can’t admit it to himself, and for that I have great empathy. But because he can’t admit what he did, he is unable to apologize for it. And not in the way that he does apologize, where he exasperatedly reminds me that he’s “apologized a thousand times” and doesn’t actually say he’s sorry for one thousand and one. He can’t apologize because he can’t imagine what he’d be sorry for. He doesn’t care that he obliterated my trust in anyone. He always knew he was lying to us, so the revelation didn’t make an impression on him. He isn’t sorry because he doesn’t believe me when I tell him he’s hurt me, he doesn’t think I have feelings. Instead, he tells me I’m poisoning our relationship. His words make me believe I am poison.

That’s how I see a part of myself- as a stain. If you are in a relationship with me, I will mar you in some way. Part of me will appear to darken your world. I think this about the kindest part of myself. It’s the same part that moves through the world with the energy of a church mouse trying to tidy things up. The solid state of harm I believe I inflict on others becomes gaseous at closer inspection, then I’m in a fog of who’s really hurting who. My father and I have never had that discussion. The mere mention that things may not have been ideal is itself a threat to his projected image of perfection. We are a normal family, two kids, house in the suburbs, don’t look here. Only we weren’t that normal. My brother and I both suffer from learning disabilities that were not addressed in childhood, my mother was not well, and I spent large quantities of time unattended when I was very young. A fact that slides around if you ask my parents, suddenly no one can remember exactly what year that was or maybe I actually spent some time in afterschool care? I’ll tell you what, I’m sure if they spent any money on me for afterschool care I would have heard about it. I also remember watching Jerry Springer and Oprah every day and I hope that would not be allowed to happen in an afterschool care facility. Here’s where the argument changes to why I was watching so much TV at that young age. They never could keep me off that damn TV. What else was I supposed to do for the three hours afterschool alone at nine-years-old? Me and TV have some great memories together. Remember dinner every night? Now, I’m defending my character, insisting that I keep my stain to myself. Then, what did I expect? That they would care for me every second of the day?  

I don’t know how to move forward from two realities. In the reality they live in, I was a rotten, ungrateful child who never stopped needing, unless I’m playing their game of make believe where all of us are perfect, I get to be perfect then. In my reality perfection is unattainable, and I am able to rely on my eyes and ears. My mother uses the same tactics as my father to deny reality, she has a few unique to her as well. I suspect she always knew about the affairs and it was only when he fraternized with people they knew mutually, that she got upset. The bubble burst and she poured out onto her children. But maybe not. Maybe she didn’t know anything. I have to let go of the mystery. I played therapist for my mother, attempting to repair a relationship that was largely one-sided at the expense of living my own life and reporting back, as children are meant to do. I was the one who told her I noticed him hiding his computer screen when I entered the room. I gave her the clue that unraveled the whole ball of yarn. What would my life be like if I never said anything?

I stopped speaking to my parents a few years ago. I couldn’t exist around the level of repressed anger they have for each other. It seethed out of them, and my desire to plug the leaks was too strong. I read a quote a few years ago, I’m not sure who to attribute it to: Let go or be dragged. Pretending we were a happy, supportive, problem-free family felt like being pulled face first through the dirt. I chose to let go of their reins and roll over to see the sky. I’m hurting, but I’m safer alone in the mud looking up then I was hitched to their wagon.  

I’ve been watching interviews with Arundhati Roy lately. I don’t know if anyone else does this, but if I discover someone who I think has something interesting to say, I watch every video the algorithm pushes me until I can summarize their philosophy pretty clearly on my own. My last obsession was Dan Dennett. I wound up disagreeing with him on a few things, mainly his assumptions about termites.

I admire Roy, both for her fortitude under the persuasion of her own mother and how she is unafraid to express dissenting opinions about her government. I wish I had more of both qualities. I saw my mother for who she is much later in life than I should have. If I had left her at sixteen, as Roy did, I might have had less to undo. I’m fond of those who speak truth to power, even when there’s little chance power’s listening. I aspire to play the part of the wrench in the political production. Occasionally the seeming fruitlessness of the effort combined with my lack of imagination for a better system wears me down, but I persist. As my mother used to say whenever I complained: Better to light a candle, then curse the darkness. Of course, she cursed the darkness frequently and lit very few candles, it’s possible she didn’t know what the f*ck she was talking about. Maybe b*tching about politicians will be helpful in its own way. I hope it is.