Slouching Towards Idiocracy

Disclaimer: I’m in a mood so I’m just going to rant here and not worry about trying to provide examples or citations to support any of my opinions. Just know that I am a middle-aged female who has been paying way too close attention to the news since around 2016, and I am heartsick and tired. Here goes:

People these days think that conceiving of outlandish, grandiose, horrible, unthinkable things isn’t enough, but they must make these things happen, must bring them about, to prove that they can enact their horrific visions, have total agency over their lives, the rest of humanity be damned. Being told that you can do anything you want, be anyone you want, is the greatest fallacy of western civilization; it has raised up some petulant, spoiled ass children. They forgot to teach the other side of the coin, that if you can do anything, so can everyone, so one must consider that you live in a world with other people who might have competing viewpoints/interests/needs/wants.

Case in point, Elon Musk. He wants to be the world’s first trillionaire, and it’s not enough to merely think of it, he must now bring it about, no matter that it means he is indirectly causing incontrovertible environmental, planetary, and human damage. One person hoarding most of the world’s wealth, that is not how it should be; just because it can be told in a fairy tale, does not mean that one should work to bring it about ‘just to see’ what it’s like. And yet, here we are. And there are so many other examples. The ‘inevitability’ of an AI take over, allowing everyone to access guns everywhere, building huge resource-sucking data centers, expunging immigrants from the country like rats. All of this ugliness, we’ve been here before as a species, but we don’t remember, so it must not have been that bad. Right?

That brings me to the point: we don’t remember things. Information and learning are generational; every 20-40 years there is a turnover of cultural memory, and it’s no surprise that, ultimately, no one cares about the lessons of the past. I remember learning history, and not giving a fig about it, because I didn’t ‘feel’ the reality of what the struggle was for the people at the time; I naively thought ‘whew, thank goodness we solved all of those problems back then.’ And now I’m living through ‘unprecedented times’ myself, unable to really give voice to the experience as I’m living it. Those of us alive and under 80 today, we didn’t live through the world wars, we weren’t there when Jim Crow was real, when women were only allowed to be wives and couldn’t vote, when children died from diseases…other, braver, more patient people were there, and they made changes that took YEARS to bear fruit, and yet they did it anyway.

We learned those things in school because at some point as a civilization we must have decided that we had to teach future generations about the gains of the past so that we didn’t waste time recreating the wheel, or reinventing refrigeration; we were supposed to be building on the knowledge of our forefathers and foremothers to make an even greater human society for all. But we lost our way somewhere in there (maybe in the 1970s), and now it’s almost like we naively want to go back to those before times just to “see what it was like” for ourselves, like some kind of living diorama Disney ride.

Someone is making money on all of this, I guarantee you, they are burning Rome for profit, but we are the ones suffering; they’re building bunkers for themselves and their progeny, knowing that ultimately it will come down to the last rich person alive atop an ash heap of bones, and they just want it to be them, the the Amazing Race for billionaires. They don’t give the rest of us or the earth another thought; they are products of this brave new society as well, with little education and zero empathy, but all of the money behind them. And because their money insulates them now, they assume it will continue to insulate them into a dystopian future, and fail to see how their actions are bringing about the end times. Never mind of course that there might not be much use for their money if there’s no clean water, trees, vegetation, animals, or other people to tend to those things.

Only now it’s worse because a few people in power are choosing this new backward/bizarro reality for the rest of us, all for greed and control, not because they’re holy crusaders (don’t be fooled, although I guess one could argue it has always been a ‘few’ people in power making these sorts of decisions for the ‘rest of us’). The people in power now know that most people, like themselves, are easily fooled, don’t have a chewy moral center, don’t have a sense of history, don’t have empathy for their neighbors. I worry that, not only will we be forced to relive those harsh realities again, but also that we will get stuck there this time. We, like Marty McFly, won’t make it back to the future, because they will have ripped up the picture showing that it existed.

Listen, we won’t get a do-over because people won’t see a need to escape this brave new luxe world, they won’t have the patience and endurance to change it again by degrees for all of human history. In the 21^st century we are an impatient people, raised on immediate gratification, television and the internet; we don’t know what it means to stand up for something, and we don’t have a soul anymore. Those of us who don’t like this new upside-down medieval reality, the ‘woke’ leftists, will either be imprisoned or put to death (if these people have their way), leaving behind these crooked and morally bankrupt demons to run things and rewrite human history. Spoiler: this time the corporations will really win.

And here’s the thing: I’m also impatient for the future I was promised that is being summarily demolished before my eyes, daily, and on fast-forward for the last one and a half years. All I can do is grieve what I will never have, because now that I’m 50, I’m running out of time to ‘get mine’, to ever know what retirement could have been. The Boomers were the first and last generation to have and be able to take proper retirement. From now on, it’s the haves and have-nots in extremis; people who have money will be fine; the rest of us are so screwed because they are destroying what little hard-won social safety net there was. They’d better legalize physician-assisted suicide again because that will be the only human way to opt out of this insipid reality when you’re no longer able to be a contributor to it. We won’t be allowed to go gentle into that good night.

To recap, we can conceive of impossible-seeming things without giving a thought to the consequences of those things (like ginormous data centers and detention centers), and bring these awful, unimaginable things about, consequences be damned, just because we thought of it and because it makes someone money. That coupled with the fact that modern society also lacks a moral center and has cultural amnesia, I’d say we are primed for the tangible end of humanity. After all the hard-won victories over injustice throughout human history, it’s not enough that we have made amazing progress beyond dirt-floor dwellings and can have fruit out of season; no, we must start repealing hard-fought laws that people died for, because we don’t remember why we had those laws in the first place.

“Rule of law? Who needs that when we can have chaos and rape and pillage whenever we want! Only the powerful/those with the most guns rule! Surely women and minorities were exaggerating about how bad it was back then; after all, didn’t people like chattel slavery and women liked wifely servanthood and dying in childbirth? Sure it was rampant with disease and death, but but did you SEE those plantations? People knew their place. That was true luxury.” –Some MAGAt somewhere

Lack of social/cultural memory, overactive imaginations without consequences—it’s like we’re being run by giant toddlers who never developed a super ego to teach them to do unto others, etc.

I especially grieve for the future generations, our children, whom we are raising to be active participants in democracy, not to passively believe that politicians and governments would protect us. The US exists in a world where other, more civilized countries can and do provide health care to their citizens, but the US persists in thinking it is the wealthiest, most enviable nation because it war-mongers and makes money for its capitalists. Corporations are individuals now, and their needs must be considered before the needs of the people, because jobs, jobs being quickly overtaken by AI and ever-escalating greed.

Life should be about more than what labor can be extracted from you; life is meant to be lived and enjoyed; if we were careful custodians of it, the Earth would provide for us all. But the people of the US have long been brainwashed into thinking this is the best of all possible countries, while every lesson we didn’t learn in history class screams the opposite. The good guys don’t win in the end, heaven help us all.

Hey! We survived 2025

I make a family calendar every December for the coming year, using pictures from the year that’s ending. It’s a fun way to look back over the previous year and remember ‘where we were’ each month of the year. I just finished our 2026 calendar, and boy what a year it has been! On the personal front, we moved into our new-construction home this year, which felt like arrival for us after living in an apartment since our move back from Louisiana to Upstate NY in June 2023. We also attended three protests, something I hadn’t done since college in the mid-90s.

The New York Times had a 2025 retrospective this week that had a pic/event for each day of each month of this year so far, and it was a reminder of just how much cascading and crashing news there has been, one thing after another, and how emotionally exhausting it has all been. Since January this year has gotten darker and darker in this country, but we survived. We persisted. We pushed back, we protested, we took up space, we said NO. Things finally feel like they’re at a turning point out there, but I can’t help but think that it will still get darker before it’s all over. How will we view 2025 when we look back on it 5-10 years from now? Will it be the year we began to sign our democracy away to the highest bidder? Will 2026 be the year the Talibangelical fascists took over? Or will we all finally come to our senses as prices climb higher and higher, wages stagnate, and people die from lack of health insurance? Where will we draw the line and say ‘enough’ with the cosplay, the emperor has no clothes, off with their heads, etc?

How it will end is as-yet unclear, and I think we probably need a revolution in terms of freedom–I mean corporations have more freedom and protections than individual humans as of right now, and to me, that is the key issue underlying all issues. We may never get back to the type of reality we had pre-2016; I hope we all emerge stronger and empowered on the other side of all of this. Frankly, I don’t have a lot of hope left for humanity. All I can do is focus on my own nuclear family as we try our best to get through it all together.

I have no way of knowing, but I’m pretty sure my MAGA-mother down in South Louisiana has doubled and tripled down on things, and likely remains loyal to Daddy Solipsist-Narcissist-Psychopath (I refuse to type the creature’s name here). My mother was never one to admit wrongdoing or misjudgement, so I’m sure she’s still towing the line. It’s likely she’s alienated even more family than just me by this point. Before I deleted my Facebook account back in August, there was a picture of her in full propaganda gear, hat and all. We all know these die-hards would rather burn it all down than admit wrongdoing. It won’t end well.

Midwinter Meditations of an Estranged Daughter

It’s finally the end of the year, that dark time (literally dark in upstate NY) of year when everyone reflects on the past year and where the future might take them. There has been much buzz on social media lately about whether or not people going ‘no-contact’ with their families is a generational trend, with apparently Oprah and Mel Robbins weighing in, telling people who have done this to ‘make up’ with their families before it’s ‘too late.’ This is no different than those well-meaning family members that all who have gone no-contact have who told us “well that’s your mother” or “you’ll regret this one day,” once again putting the blame and responsibility for reconciliation squarely on the child’s shoulders, thereby expiating the parents’ responsibility in causing the desire to go no-contact in the first place.

Here’s the thing: people have been estranged from their families since humans have existed. Siblings have gone off to make their way in the world, women have run off and gotten married to escape home; people have left enmeshed families to strike out on their own. Maybe not everyone in these situations has become completely estranged, maybe they’ve maintained an illusion of contact with their families, sending letters or making occasional calls, but still never bodily returning to visit once they’ve left. This is not a ‘trend’ or a ‘Gen-X’ thing, it’s part of life for many. We are just hearing about it more now because of social media and widespread therapy.

Personally, I don’t think adhering to the nuclear or extended family well into adulthood is healthy or natural. Animals don’t do this, and what are we but animals? Your parents are supposed to nuture you into adulthood, to give you that unconditional love and security you need to become a resposible adult and member of society. If you’re like my husband, and you were lucky enough to have good parents who did this more or less successfully, you grow up and move out and build your own family. It’s the circle of life. There are no perfect parents; there is instead a job to be done, and ‘doing right’ by your kids really is nothing more than nuturing, putting the kids first by making them feel loved and cared for, so that they can develop identities of their own and eventually seek their own way in the world. Healthy parents have a sense of their own identify and individuality, and want the same for their kids.

It is when parents abdicate this responsibility–whether because of their own developmental issues or a personality disorder–parents who jealously hold onto their kids and try to dominate and control every aspect of their lives, and in extreme cases, abuse them–that, if they’re lucky, the children eventually grow tired of this and break away from the parents in order to live. There are those of us who had a ‘failure to launch’ situation where our needs weren’t properly met as kids, so we keep trying to please our parents well past the expiration date.

I went no-contact in May 2023 when I moved out of Louisiana and back to New York with my husband and daughter, without saying a formal goodbye to my birth family. They knew we were leaving, they didn’t know when exactly, but they knew. I’d informed my mother and sister that we were leaving the previous June. The for-sale sign went up in our yard in April, the POD was outside of our home for 30 days, then we closed on May 23rd and started driving to New York immediately afterwards. I was 47 years old when I left ‘home’ again for the second and final time. I haven’t spoken to anyone in my family since. It was finally an end to what I now see was a lifelong effort to gain my mother’s love and acceptance. Time and reflection have shown me that she likely never loved me, and that is not an easy thing to admit to yourself, that you weren’t loved by your parent. I had plenty of other family (now dead) who did love me, but for my mother, I think that I was something that happened to her (pregnant at 18), not someone she loved.

Why did I move back to Louisiana after 15 years away? I still beat myself up over this life-altering and nearly marriage-ending decision. All I can say is, such is the power that a withholding parent’s approval can wield over a child who has always been seeking that approval, I guess. The even bigger mystery is how quickly my mother’s desire for me to move home evaporated once I got there. Her best friend told me once off-handedly that, before we moved back, my mother used to wax on about how us moving back would make her ‘so happy.’ A couple of months of me and my 4-year old living with her (the situation was supposed to be temporary until my husband came down to join us after selling the house), that quickly turned into selfish rage and cruelty, directed at me.

My sweet four-year old daughter, who would gleefully run out to greet her grandmother as she arrived home from work every day, and me, contributing to the household groceries and cleaning, we were suddenly a burden to my mother, something to complain about. She absolutely would not help me with my daughter, would never even give her a bath, and had no sympathy for the fact that I was missing my husband and partner, while also working a new job and taking my daughter to and from daycare daily. I rarely went out, and I remember her watching my daughter exactly once when I had a company Christmas party to attend. (It became such an ordeal to get her to watch her own granddaughter that I just stopped asking.) I gave my mother a pass for a long time about her changed attitude towards us being there, ascribing it to her being stressed about having too many people in her house. Other than the two of us there was my grandmother with Alzheimer’s, plus my younger sister going through a separation that often landed her on my mom’s couch during that time. It wasn’t until a few years later, after my mother breezily said to me, TWICE, to make sure I didn’t miss it, “Well I guess I’m not close to your daughter because I didn’t really know her as a baby,” deftly blaming me for her lack of relationship with my daughter because we lived in New York, I finally saw more clearly than ever that my mother was never going to change. Not only was she not going to change, she was in fact going to perpetrate her disdain for me into the next generation with my daughter, that’s when the scales fell off my eyes and I knew I had made the wrong decision to move back to Louisiana. That decision will haunt me for the rest of my life.

These things are on my mind again this time of year. I have made a clean break at this point, and I no longer have any feelings of guilt about it. Taking my sister’s lead, I no longer send Christmas presents to my nieces; why do I need to keep up the pretense if she’s not? So for someone like Oprah (who apparently was estranged from her own family) to tell people they need to suck it up and make amends with their families, it’s really a slap in the face. The cycle was never going to break for me, and at some point, you have to choose yourself and your own family, if for no other reason than simple self-preservation. I see now that I internalized a lot of things growing up as being ‘my fault’ when I shouldn’t have. My mom wasn’t all bad, I wasn’t physically abused (except for those few years when she let her boyfriend beat the shit out of me with a belt as a kid–a story for another time), but that doesn’t mean I owe her a relationship after all of the hurt she has caused me, intentional or not. She will never change, will never accept responsibility for her actions. She doesn’t think she has done anything wrong, ever. I am 100% sure she has made all of this my fault in how she explains it to my extended family back home. The nasty words she spoke to me back in September 2022 still sometimes haunt me: “No one cares what you think.” Ok then, I’m out. And this time, I mean it.

They know where to find you.

A meme crossed my path this week that said something to this effect. It was about healing from toxic relationships; the ‘they’ is of course the people who hurt you, and whom you have cut off. I realize now that taken out of context it sounds a tad threatening, but the sense behind it was something like, Don’t feel bad for continuing to be in No Contact, because they know where to find you if they were interested. But they’re not.

I officially went no-contact with my mother (and subsequently my entire family) back in May 2023 when we left Louisiana for a second and final time. I blocked her number as we were driving out of state, and haven’t looked back. These last couple of years I still bought gifts for my three nieces, and I texted my sister happy 40th birthday this year. But we don’t ‘talk.’

I have zero idea of what has befallen my mother or family since, have no idea what she says about me, or how she rationalizes my leaving to anyone who will listen. I can only imagine based on her past behavior. I realized about a year ago that I had forgotten to block her number on my daughter’s phone–and she left a message on her phone out of the blue, emphatically demanding that my then 12-year old daughter call her. Blocked. She will still send the occasional guilt-induced birthday or Christmas card my daughter’s way. Last year she sent her a check for Christmas, which I promptly tore up and threw away. We don’t need your guilty conscience money, lady, and we don’t need your stupid cards either.

The degree to which I am DONE with this woman shocks even me sometimes. But what this meme made me realize was, this isn’t all my fault, it was NEVER my fault, I made a choice going on three years ago now, and I haven’t looked back. Is it hard to explain to people who don’t know my past (and even to some who do)? Yes, of course it can be hard. Do I feel guilt, even a little bit, for shutting her out so completely? Actually, no, no I really don’t. It was a long time coming, and I am still healing and reeling from realizing that this shit was going on my entire life. Does that make me heartless? Maybe? But only when it comes to her.

Implicit in the meme was the following wisdom: If they wanted to, they would. Full stop. Stop waiting on people to make amends, to show interest, to reach out, because if they wanted to, they would. Thing is, I haven’t been waiting for anything, I have zero expectations when it comes to her, but the meme made me realize, she has my email address, my sister isn’t blocked by me. There are ways to reach out and apologize for her behavior. If she wanted to, she would.

Reasons to Leave Louisiana (for good)

Disclaimer: this is my own personal point of view based on my experiences being raised here, and opinions formed from my own powers of deduction and observation. Born in Baton Rouge, my family moved me to NOLA in 1992 when I was 15. I lived in New Orleans until I left for grad school in NY at 25 back in 2001, and then returned to BR in 2016, the year I turned 40, and hadn’t lived in BR since I was 15. These are in no particular order.

The economy is not diverse.

This was the reason initially my husband (then-boyfriend) left back in 2001. We were living in NOLA and everything was tourism and service industry. My understanding is that has not gotten better, but instead NOLA has double down restaurants and hospitality services. We felt then that if we wanted to pursue “other things” we needed to leave. We were right.

Tech industry is also next to nonexistent. Husband sought a job as a mechanical drafter, using Revit instead of AutoCAD; almost no one uses that here, and when they do, they want to pay someone $30-40K to do it. I work in tech as a project manager. Opportunities with software companies exist, but they are all with very small companies, with shall we say, an unenlightened work life balance.

Since moving back to BR in 2016, I realize that the other industry in South Louisiana is the petrochemical industry. I knew that before but it wasn’t as present when we lived in NOLA. Everyone still believes that the best jobs are with “the plants” and that everyone’s goal should be to become a plant operator. While I understand that many people in south Louisiana depend on The Plants for their livelihood, this is severely limiting for anyone who wants to do literally anything else. Having trouble finding a job in your industry? Just get a job with The Plants like everyone else. Don’t you want to make big money?

The people here have given up too much of themselves to the petrochemical industry, and though it continues to fool them into thinking that Louisiana has all these great high-paying jobs, the reality is, our communities are being raped. They are stripping away our sportsman’s paradise with pollution, and not building back in return. These plants may make a shit-ton of money, but they pay very little or nothing in taxes, which means our communities don’t get funded the way that they should given the wealth we’re generating for these companies. This video explains how, compared with cities in Texas that also have comparable refineries, Louisiana has one of the most profitable refineries, yet gets a pittance in return, while the same Texas town demands and gets much more.

Car insurance is too damn high (and the roads are third-world).

Coming from NY, where car insurance is more reasonably priced and there are laws about insurance, Louisiana has got a serious problem when it comes to insurance. We went from paying around $650/6 months on two cars to $513 a MONTH for 2 cars. It is not completely apples to apples, since one car we had in NY did not carry comprehensive, but this is a staggering cost discrepancy that no one talks about. Also I had to pay $900 sales tax to register my vehicle in LA, even though said vehicle was already paid for in another state. And while I’m on the subject of cars, the roads are intolerable and cause all kinds of damage to your car that you end up footing the bill for–windshield cracks, nails in tires, cracked foglamps, scuffs, scrapes. Take a drive down any interstate here, especially the I-10 and I-110 and you will be transported back to the 1960s. Next time you’re stuck in traffic, notice how many cars you see with dings, dents, cracked bumpers, cracked windshields. There’s the overt financial burden and then there’s the invisible burden of having to pay for damages to your vehicle caused by potholes, road debris, and dumbassery.

And then there’s the personal injury lawyers: Morris Bart, Gordon McKernan, Dudley DeBosier, Spencer Callahan, etc. Just hearing their names brings up their commercial jingles in my brain. Everyone is sue happy here and looking to make a quick buck. God forbid you get into an accident!

Dying Public School System.

Louisiana ranks 49th for education nationwide. 49th. Or 48th depending on which list you look at. Literally moving to any other state other than Arizona, Alaska, and New Mexico improves your child’s chances of getting a good education; even Mississippi is not as bad as we are when it comes to education.

I was raised on public schools here, going to some of the best high schools in the area. Imagine my surprise to find that most public school educators start at 40K/year, and don’t progress much beyond that. While some of the high schools do pay more for teachers with master’s degrees, overall the average pay in Louisiana is very low compared to other states. When you don’t pay people a living wage, they will burn out and the quality of the education suffers. In general, there seems to be a right-wing backlash against public schools nationwide, so it’s not just a Louisiana problem, but most affluent people send their kids to private schools that are literally next door to public counterparts. School voucher programs will ruin public schools. Without the support of the people living in these communities, public schools will eventually fail. There are a handful of holdouts that do well and continue to receive the funding based on test scores, etc, but those are few and far between.

Good old fashioned Racism.

People here will always say they are not racist, but let me tell you, they are in fact racists. There is a lot of double talking that goes on here. Things are said in private that would not be repeated in a public scenario, about restaurants being “too dark” or parts of town “getting darker.” I am always taken aback when I hear white people around me speak in this way. Why does this happen? Well my guess is that people who grew up here and never left inherited certain opinions from their parents and their grandparents, and it comes down to this: blacks and whites don’t mix. While I cannot say for sure, but it feels like black familes inherited a similar unspoken rule from their predecessors. There is some kind of unspoken fear of mixing with the other race, on both sides. When someone thinks a school is ‘bad’ or a part of town is ‘bad’ it is usually schools or parts of town where blacks are predominant. Where the crime happens most, is usually a poor black part of town. When white people talk of crime spreading, or schools becoming bad, it is coded language. There are affluent black people in this area, and they want nice things for themselves and their kids too; but when a black family moves into a neighborhood, white people feel the need to comment on it, if not leave outright. I had a friend growing up whose parents were lawyers, and they lived in a very nice neighborhood; I recall distinctly my mom pejoratively calling it a ‘black neighborhood’ which confused me as a kid, because I didn’t see how it was limited in any way only to black residents. But what she meant but did not explicitly say was that white public opinion felt there were too many blacks there, and so had written it off as a possible space for whites to move into. We definitely have black families in my current neighborhood, much to the chagrin of the older white neighbors, but everyone mostly keeps to themselves. It’s very isolating if you ask me.

Everything floods. And there’s not enough roads.

I grew up in Baton Rouge in the 80s and 90s, and Baton Rouge was considered high ground. Sure it rained, but I don’t remember being afraid during rainstorms unless they were accompanied by hurricanes. Since the flood of 2016, everyone is on edge when we get too much sustained, torrential rain. When it rains hard (as it has now at least twice already in this young year), the water creeps up my back patio and up to my back door, and the back yard itself becomes a swamp ecosystem, frogs and all, and the soil takes days to dry out completely. They keep building more subdivisions in this area and yet the roads, the drainage, the ditches, stay the same. You cannot increase an area’s population density and not expect drainage issues! And the roads…Jefferson Highway is still a two-lane country road, and it’s the main road I have to turn onto when I leave my subdivision, and certain times of the day, it is IMPOSSIBLE to take a left turn. There are only a couple of roads to take to get out here, and everyone must take one of them, and there are ditches on either side, and commercial businesses, and tons of densely populated subdivisions. I don’t know where all these people came from, but they’re here now, and these roads are TIRED, and there are no plans that I’m aware of to widen Jefferson Highway, or to create new access roads between Airline and Jefferson, so we all just put up with it. And yet people keep buying these houses up and they just keep building them. And don’t even get me started on the I-10 and I-110. Those roads are in dire need of change, but the most recent proposal to upgrade the I-10 corridor just got postponed.

The BRLA (Brrr-La) version of the American Dream is a Throwback to the 1950s

What does every female born and raised here in BRLA seem to want out of life? To meet a man in college who will give them a fairy tale wedding, buy them a house, impregnate them four times, and “take care” of them financially. At least until they divorce and the woman gets the house.

I have NEVER aspired to these things, but it was an expectation I felt from my mother, and I see it playing out for others here. The typical BR woman is attractive, takes care of herself, gets her nails done, has a little plastic surgery (Weiler’s ‘the new refreshed me’ commercial comes to mind), likes tailgaiting at LSU games, that is until she has a baby. Then she becomes super mom who is all about her kids, and aspires to live in a cookie cutter modern farmouse or fake plantation home. Ideally the husband would make enough money (over $150k) so she doesn’t have to work full-time and can focus on the kids. Oh and somehow afford giant trucks for everyone to drive. Or, if she MUST work, she is a nurse or some kind of medical professional, working part-time if she can, because health care is second only to the Plants for acceptable job opportunities here.

What do the men want? Well if anyone cares, they want to have LSU season tickets, tailgate with guy friends well past when it’s cool to do so, and go hunting to escape the women and children.

I know this is a bit exaggerated, but I feel like this is the overarching sterotype of what people’s aspirations are here. And of course there are many, many exceptions to this rule. For a woman to expect not to work, have a packet of kids, and drive expensive vehicles, the husband better be a doctor or lawyer to afford that lifestyle.

Too Much Cliquish Conformity

People don’t like to explore outside of their comfort zones, don’t like to test the waters or tolerate anything outside of what is deemed ‘normal’ or ‘usual’ ethnically, religiously, or personally, so it is no surprise that conservatism abounds here. I realize that churchiness is a feature of the South, not just this area, but literally there are churches every few miles here, but none as big and conspicuous as Healing Place and Bethany. Perhaps living downstream from Healing Place colors my view, but those evangelical churches definitely are cultish. I knew of some people who professed to go there only to meet ‘who’s who’ in BRLA, and not really to be religious. I mean, Healing Place even has a Starbucks inside!

In my youth, I was forced to attend Christian Life Academy on Sundays for two hours, and boy was that a misery. That was my first exposure to raising of hands and speaking in tongues–and I solemly vowed then that once I got out, I was never going back. Now I cynically see all churches as a siphon for money, period. I know some can do good works, but I have to question it when the churches and the crosses become larger than life (and visible from the I-10).

Even if they don’t attend a cultish evangelical church, most BRLAnians attend church, and they LOVE to talk about it. And if you don’t also profess to attend a church, they definitely judge you. This is high school all over again. Grown ass people exist who do not choose any of these religions, but opting out of religion or choosing a different one entirely is not a choice for most people raised here. Everyone is so afraid of doing something out of step with what is Expected, with what they were taught, that instead conformity is a way of life here, and it is a shock to their system when anyone questions or outright rejects any of the tenets of BRLA conformity.

TL;DR

I have felt like an outsider my whole life here, less so in New Orleans of course, which is more cosmopolitan, but no sensible person can live in NOLA and not go slightly insane. To have your property threatened by flood year after year, and to keep replacing it–well that’s the definition of insanity. And for me, to keep living in a place that I don’t agree with ideologically, spiritually, politically, and where I don’t fit in interpersonally, well, I’m tired of trying. I’m going back to the Northeast, where I lived for 15 years, where I had an entire life, career, and set of like-minded friends and family, away from BRLA family pressure and judgement and not-belonging, away from the corruption and lies and never-changing economy and landscape. There is nothing new under the sun in Louisiana and, though there’s always a promise of a better tomorrow, that tomorrow keeps getting pushed back. At some point you get older and you realize you don’t have time to wait for things to change anymore. Best of luck to the people who stay and fight the good fight, but as of this summer, count me out.

Saturday Night, Sunday Morning

There was a ‘last straw’ incident with my NMom back on her birthday, in September. Here is the email I wrote to my MIL about it:

‘Yes Saturday night/Sunday morning was not a great time. I keep kicking myself for not leaving sooner than I did–we all drank a lot, and after dinner at the restaurant, we sat on mom’s patio and drank more. I kept my head, so I recall a lot of what was said…it’s possible that my sister does not (she has never been able to hold liquor well). I should have had an exit plan going in, to skip the patio drinks, or to leave after an hour–there were multiple times I could have left, but I didn’t.

We had fun for a couple hours, listening to music and talking, but then they started asking questions, challenging me again about moving back to NY. It was like a continuation of the previous weekend’s “discussion.” I finally mentioned something about wanting to move to a state that protect’s women’s rights, and so then we got onto abortion, and I think my mom said something like, ‘well I didn’t have an abortion’ like she deserves some kind of award for having me, and then it escalated from there. I said something about most abortions being done to save the life of the mother, or when the baby dies in utero, and that politicians are not doctors and have no business inserting themselves into that decision, blah blah blah, and then it ended with my mom looking me DEAD in the eyes, with the most vile look of hatred, “No one cares what you think.” No effort to understand or even hear my point of view, period, discussion over.

I never get really, out of control mad, but the few times I have, it is always at my mother–and this was one of those times, I think it’s been 4 times total since moving back here. I told her she was in a cult, and in my haste to get out of there, the wineglass fell and broke on the iron table, I threw it away, got my stuff, wished her a ‘happy fucking birthday’ and walked out.

That’s it. I’m not proud of it, but there it is. I got home and started sobbing uncontrollably. As I said we’ve had other fights in the last 6 years, but this time was different. It reminded me way too much of fights we’d had when I was a teenager still living at home. There has been no progression, we basically have the same relationship we did when I was 17/18 years old. It confirmed to me that there is no hope, I was/am better off AWAY from her, away from her nasty comments and judgments about me and my life choices, her cruel lack of empathy, her complete disinterest in understanding me at all.‘

That incident was two months ago now, and since that time, I have seen my mother twice, once on Halloween, and most recently on Thanksgiving day. She does not call me, I do not call her, I am cordial to her at these social events, but there is zero relationship between us now. My husband has flat-out stopped greeting her, he cannot stand the sight of her at this point. He knows better than anyone the emotional mindgames that woman has put me through over the years, and he’s had enough.

Something inside me died that day, and I cannot go back to pretending it didn’t happen. The day after the incident I texted my sister that I would not be going to mom’s again for a long time. She has a habit of dropping in to visit my mom with her two kids and staying the weekend, and texts me to come down and visit, so I wanted to be clear that I would not be doing that any longer. So then my mom texted me ‘what did I do? I don’t remember, I’d like to know what I did’ all innocent like. I replied that we would have to talk about it sometime, that I wasn’t going to text about it. Then later, since my sister didn’t recall any of it, my mom joined in, saying she also ‘didn’t remember what happened,’ to which I replied, ‘that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.’ She has always tried to gaslight my injured feelings, saying I’m too sensitive, or that I remember things that didn’t happen, so I felt like she was doing it again BECAUSE SHE FUCKING REMEMBERS WHAT SHE SAID. When I left in a rage that night, I heard her shouting on the patio, ‘Are we just going to let your sister leave like that??’ all frantic; she remembers. And she has not once reached out to discuss it with me, so here we are.

Living with the choice to go low-contact is hard, but it does get easier over time. Moving out of state again will definitely help the situation for me. Living six doors down from her was certainly a mistake; perhaps things would not have gotten so dire so quickly if we’d lived further out. But the fact remains that the woman is a large child, and has never treated me well, has always resented me, has never been a mother to me, will never be the type of mother I wish I’d had all these years. It’s time for me to give up on her and live my life surrounded by people who love me and don’t treat me like garbage. I’m too old for this crap, and I have my own daughter to focus on.

Inevitably I’m the scapegoat for it all, I’m sure now she has compartmentalized her lack of relationship with me as my fault, because I’m choosing to be stubborn, besides she doesn’t even remember what she said, so I’m just too sensitive, blah blah blah. She has to come out the winner in every circumstance. That’s fine, she can spin whatever lies she needs to, but ultimately I will win when I leave this god-awful state in 6 months, never to return.

Operation Escape Louisiana has begun

Today I started a new job. This job is completely, 100% remote. There is no home office, and best of all, no one else is located here in Louisiana. (Well except for one other employee, but that’s irrelevant.) This is the first step towards leaving Louisiana, again, this time for good!

I no longer have to fight stupid, demoralizing BR traffic twice a day, saving me nearly two hours of commute time and untold stress every time I realize that it just took me 45 minutes to drive 15 miles. No more!

From here on out I can just pretend I don’t live here, since I won’t need to travel the horrible I-10 and 110 back in time to the BR of the 1970s, marveling at the abandoned vehicles and trash on either side of the interstate, gazing in awe at the overpasses that somehow stay aloft despite the gaping holes in them made by cars.

None of the people I work with have been to Louisiana, nor do they seem too interested in it, so I’m not bombarded with comments about how “unique” New Orleans is by people who went to Bourbon street once. I work with people from Elsewhere again, and these, I tell you, are my true people. Educated, well-spoken, smart people. Not fancy, not snobby, just smart.

We still have some time to do here before we can afford to leave, but this is a bright spot all the same.

Going Low-Contact

I have decided this week that I am officially going low-contact with my N-Mom. The last time I saw her was Monday July 5th. We were off work and on our way home from the park with our daughter, so we stopped by to say hello. My daughter asked to stop by, and I only agreed because I’d missed several calls from N-Mom over the weekend, and thought it would be less painful to do the quick in-person visit. Also did I mention that I live 6 doors down from N-Mom? We’ll get to that later.

July 5th is also my half-sister’s birthday. One of the first things out of N-Mom’s mouth was, ‘well did you call your sister for her birthday?’ Which of course I did not. Because she doesn’t call me for my birthday, or recognize it in any way other than the obligatory Facebook post. And so I do the same with her. This has been the case for at least 2 years now.

Let me back up a bit to a year ago, when my N-Mom was apparently so mad that I don’t “call them” (as if she and my sister are a unit? I didn’t really understand this at the time and still don’t), and was sitting on the news that my sister was pregnant, that one day in a fit of rage, my mom broke that news to me–news that wasn’t hers to share–apparently to punish me for not calling “them.” Meanwhile, my sister and I had been texting, she was going to drop off a piece of heirloom furniture to me that had been in her storage facility–so she knew she was going to see me that very weekend, to break the news to me in person about her pregnancy. Mind you, this is her SECOND, not her first, but still, this was her news to share, not my mom’s.

After that incident, my sister was furious with my mom, and of course my mom refused to apologize for her actions. Eventually, we all just “got over it” like always. My sister spent New Year’s eve here with us because her husband was out of town hunting, and we talked about N-Mom a bit. We cleared the air, I told my sister I am not a phone talker, so I’m not just going to call people out of the blue to chat. That is what N-Mom does. My sister was fine with it, agreeing that the only person she talks to with regularity is N-Mom because she calls all the time. So my mom trying to say that “they” were mad at “me” for not calling “them” was complete insanity and manipulation. When called out on it, N-Mom didn’t back down, insisting I was to blame for the entire mess.

N-Mom seems to have this delusion that I need to do whatever she says I need to do. She calls my sister all the time, therefore so should I. Nevermind that my sister and I are 10 years apart and have not really ever been ‘close’, and that’s ok. Last month, in the presence of my sister, N-Mom also tried to guilt me into visiting my grandmother in the nursing home weekly, you know since I live so close (she is 10 minutes from both mine and N-Mom’s houses). My sister was literally sitting right there and got no such guilt trip. My sister did speak up for me and point out that it was completely unfair, but N-Mom does not care. I honestly think it’s some messed up way of offloading her responsibilities to me. I love my grandmother, but her mind is completely gone; also she’s my grandmother, not my mother. Going forward I will visit my grandmother as frequently as I see fit, without N-Mom’s input.

Back to the current time. My daughter went to sleepaway camp for the first time at the end of June. Since we never get free babysitting from N-Mom (because N-Mom cannot be bothered and is always too busy), we made a few plans that week do go out to dinner, drinks, to a movie, and I scheduled a couple of happy hours at work that same week because I knew I would be more available. Well, N-Mom must have been unhappy that I didn’t dedicate my free time to HER, because she called me out of the blue on on Wednesday June 30th, to tell me that she wasn’t going to be at home because she decided to go visit my sister (“I just can’t help it”), and was sorry she wouldn’t be there “for your entertainment.” I was dumbfounded. “I didn’t ask you to be available for my entertainment, thanks?” was my reply. I’m pretty certain she only called to tell me all of that to make me feel bad that she was choosing to spend HER time with my sister and her kids, boo-hoo for me, didn’t that make me feel like shit? It was simultaneously insulting, because she was implying that I would be lost without her, and guilt-inducing, because I chose to plan events that did not center around her, therefore she chose my sister over me, yet again.

Back to the in-person visit on July 5th. She went on to tell my daughter that ‘your mom had all kinds of fun while you were away’–something which I did NOT tell my daughter, and I hardly call overdue night out with my husband, and a couple of work happy hours ‘all kinds of fun’. You’re not supposed to tell them that you’re going to have fun while they’re away; you’re supposed to not really say anything, that you’ll miss them, etc, to make it easier on them when they’re away. My daughter was like, ‘who did?’ and N-Mom goes, ‘your MOM did.’ Thanks, bitch.

N-Mom also said she was going to cook something this weekend for my sister to celebrate her birthday…and that was the last straw. When I didn’t take the bait, she said, ‘well don’t you want to come over and eat?’ and I said ‘No, I don’t really need to celebrate her birthday, we don’t really do that, furthermore no one celebrates my birthday, we’re all adults now.’ Also, it’s our anniversary this weekend (today in fact), so there was no way I was getting cornered into attending some bogus birthday dinner that was really just an elaborate way to spite me. I’m sorry, but we are all adults now with our own families, birthdays are no longer our parents’ responsibility! We celebrate with our husbands and children, and that’s it. Your mother might give you a gift, or join you for dinner (my mom tagged along on my birthday dinner), but they by no means need to cook you some dinner and make a big production nearly a week after the fact.

In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t said the thing about not celebrating my sister’s birthday, because it gives N-Mom power to say shit to my sister about my selfishness or whatever, but it was amazing how much shit that woman can unload in a 5 minute visit. If not talking to N-Mom means that I miss out on so-called ‘family’ hang-outs, well then so be it. If my sister cared to include us, she would. N-Mom is making a big deal out of nothing in order to make me feel bad, as usual.

Low-contact has got to happen. That woman causes me so much grief in such a short span of time, I have to limit my exposure to her or I will go insane. This week already I feel freer than I’ve felt in a while. When I start feeling guilty, I am getting better at compartmentalizing it and ignoring it. I have nothing to feel guilty for! I’m just over here, living my life, hurting no one; if they wanted to spend time with us, they could invite us. I’m not going to spin my wheels wondering if I’m being left out; I truly do not care anymore. My sister had her baby back in March, I’ve seen the baby 3 times since then, I think that’s enough. Because N-Mom has been spending all of her free time at my sister’s helping with the baby, she for some reason thinks I need to be doing that, too. I’m guessing she’s guilting me selfishly to relieve her of “having to do it all the time,” so purely selfish reasons. She’s the grandmother, she SHOULD be spending time. She sure as hell didn’t spend that kind of time with my daughter, so she can suck it as far as I’m concerned.

Gray Rocking It

A huge part of my disgust with being back home has to do with my troubled relationship with my mother. I am angry that I was somehow duped by her into returning home after living away for 15 years. We have a history, which I will go into in future posts, but somehow I thought we had gotten past that time. I’m realizing that actually what happened was, I forgave her for what she did to me, but she did not change, and will never apologize. And so here I am, living in South Louisiana again and hating it.

I need a place where I can vent my experiences and frustrations WITHOUT resorting to Facebook or Reddit threads. I do not want my NMom to find these posts or to see that I’ve liked some post, this education is for me only, to help me heal, and hopefully to share my experiences in the hopes that I can help others avoid the same fate.

Since I returned to this godforsaken place that is South Louisiana, I have been learning the fine art of ‘gray rocking,’ or not reacting to my narcissistic mother (N-Mom)’s cutting remarks. She will say something in the course of a conversation that I will miss in the moment, but it will come back to haunt me later and incite full rage. It looks like passivity, yes, but it is a tactic I have learned in order to avoid blow ups. In the past when I have blown up at her or taken her to task for something she says, I lose every time because I’m the one being ‘unreasonable.’ The best way I have found for dealing with her, is not to deal with her. That’s gray rock.

I’m working on going low-contact. My husband and I want to move out of this state, but cannot for another 2 years or so. In the meantime, I need to better regulate my exposure to my mother, and conquer any feelings of guilt that I have from being low contact (inflicted by her of course). It is also time for me to deal with and process all of the past hurts that she’s caused me, all of which lead up to now. She would have me believe it was all my fault, but I am now seeing that, as the child, I was the victim all along, not her. She is not the star of my story, she doesn’t get to steal the limelight from me any more.

Learning to Say No

I’m a mom and I work full-time. I’m also a Girl Scout leader and I’m on the board of my HOA. You’re thinking, what a nice, giving person I must be, to do that volunteer stuff that no one else wants to do. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes, I wanted to be part of the solution, to be the change I want to see, blah blah blah. Let me just say that I now admire the gall of quitters, or better, of people who never say yes to shit they don’t want to do in the first place. Once you say yes, you’re stuck, until moving away or death saves you from having to do the thing you said yes to.

I daydream about quitting Girl Scouts and the HOA almost daily. I even started looking into other schools my daughter could attend just so I could get out of being a leader. I never wanted to be a leader; what I wanted was for my daughter to be the Girl Scout I never was. There wasn’t a troop, so voila! I became the leader. And I completely LOATHE being on my HOA. The HOA was the straw that broke me, you could say, because even though it only demands action from me March-September, it is the volunteer thing I hate the most vehemently, because it’s so stupid, useless, and unappreciated (we still get hate mail from people who have nothing better to do than complain). Also I’m the youngest member on the board and I have this fear that the old ones will die and leave me the sole living member with access to the bank account.

Know your limits, they say. Learn to say no, they say. Well the thing is, how do you know your limits until you test them? You have to say yes a few times and live the pain of that before you can become wise enough to say no in the future. Well I have definitely tested my limits and have found long-term commitment volunteering is NOT for me. I would much rather volunteer sporadically to help someone else out, instead of volunteering for a long-standing commitment, as I have apparently done.

I could just quit, walk away, leave the people behind to pick up the pieces…and that is my fantasy. Just quitting, turning in my keys, so to speak, letting someone else pick up the pieces. So why don’t I? Because I’ve never been a quitter, I persevere. But as no one wants to willingly pick up the mantle while I’m still here, able-bodied and alive, it’s getting to a point where I may need to just work up the courage to quit and let whatever happens, happen.

How did I get into this fix? At the time I started both of these volunteer positions, the job I had wasn’t challenging, and quite simply, I was bored. I have since changed employers and now do not have time during the day to devote to planning anything other than work. The question is, how to escape my commitments, made three years ago under very different circumstances?

I could go ‘Juliette’ with my daughter and Girl Scouts. Quit being a leader, and continue to attend GS events, just my daughter and me. Without having to cater to 11 other girls and their fickle parents, without having to plan and remind everyone three different ways prior to every event or outing. Or maybe someone would step up and continue the troop if I really stepped down, and I could continue to be Troop Cookie Mom. Yeah right. If it’s a reality I could theoretically cope with, like just being the TCM, it definitely won’t happen.

I could also quit the HOA (or I could move). When no one else stepped up to take our places for the second year in a row, I put my foot down with the president (a 73-year old lady), stating that I would continue only if all I did was the work of a treasurer, e.g., collecting payments, paying bills, keeping track of spending, doing a report twice a year. Period. Because I have “computer skills,” it fell to me to order signs and address labels, write and publish the newsletter, create a Facebook page, etc. I let the old lady do the last newsletter on her own and she botched it all up. Sigh.

Part of my problem is that I like to feel like I’m being helpful, but I now realize there’s a fine line between being helpful and being taken advantage of. If I’m going to go above and beyond on something, it’s going to be at my job, not on some volunteer board.

I have pledged to give myself one more year in both volunteer outlets, and if I still feel this way in May, I’m stepping down as leader. And I’m definitely quitting the HOA after next year because that will have been 3 years and someone else on the board can be treasurer!

Please give me the ability to say NO and the strength to withstand the results of my saying no.