No place for secrets

While it goes much deeper than this, i am a secret keeper. think of how many of your secrets i have held for you all these years. some i probably dont even remember anymore until you remind me. people choose me, in that instinctly way that we choose mates, because i am a secret keeper. some secrets have no real meaning, they aren't harmful or helpless. 10 years later does it matter that we had those 2 extra drinks that were our secret? at this very moment, does it matter that you cheated on your boyfriend, who was three boyfriends ago? no, but in my life, i have held secrets in me that werent my own but have closed me off from knowing things. secrets kept me quiet and smothered me.

secrets keepers have to internalize all that is outside and hold it in. look normal, act perfect. dont giggle. or cry.

as an attorney i took an oath to protect in confidence the discussions between my clients and me. the only time i can break that oath is if that person is in immediate danger of harming themselves or others. i get that. when i left i had 80 active cases. in real terms for me, i had 80 active secrets plus more because of the people they were with or hurt or told. and i was pretty fucking good at it, so good that it was killing me. i talked alot at work. i had to because they were the only people i could talk to. i had no marital privelge and thus no one to share specifics of my work with.

i'm like the bionic woman with secret compartments where i store information. but on the bionic woman doll, her powers were obvious. you knew she could kick your ass.

my powers are not so obvious. but dont underestimate me.

i learned from the best how to compartmentalize my life, i kept the secrets of my homelife secret from my work life. i kept the secrets of my spiritual life secret from everything. and i kept the secrets of my own agony from everybody. i have even kept the secrets of my joy to myself.

before i got here, i always thought secrets were a sign of loyalty. if i kept your secret, you could trust me, love me and you would never leave. but keeping your secrets didnt make you love me anymore, or trust me or in any way endear you to me. but they did keep me quiet. while some of you are gone, i still keep your secrets. the secrets that i know aren't immediately going to harm you. they are systematically going to change the course of your life. my life, her life, his life, their life in the future. theres lots of secrets about you that i know that you dont know i know. and i keep that too. because i thought i was protecting you, protecting us, making us stronger.

keeping someone's secrets is how i got here---to a high blood pressure pill, anxiety pills, antidepressants and a pill for my ulcer. my sleepless nights and tormented dreams. secrets are how i became a bulimic, why i smoked and drank and ate. secrets dont allow for boundaries or self-esteem or even self-protection. either you keep them or you dont.

i'm not talking to you specifically. i'm talking to the universe. because i have secrets of my own that nobody knows about, that i've never said to anyone "i'll tell you but you cant tell anybody," that only i know. they flash through my mind like that caution light by the school. slow down. remember me. dont tell.don't cry. suck it up and be strong.

and its time to give that up. i realized that i cry alot lately. its like mourning every moment of the past where i sucked it up and held strong for you, for your family, for my family, for anybody within a thousand mile radius. in my greatest moments of emotional and physical pain, i have blinked, taken a deep breath and got on with the business of taking care of everybody but myself.

when i was 16 i broke my leg in two places. while i was flying off the steps onto the ground, i made no noise. i didnt cry out or even cry. the only time i cried was when i was worried that i ruined everybody's christmas by inconveniently breaking my leg. secrets. i've gotten lost in what i believed was my loyalty for people. there are secrets i can no longer keep and wont. there are secrets i wont even let you tell me because i cant hear it. there are secrets i've kept even from myself that i have had to admit over and over again in the last two months. there are secrets that i have let go, not to someone else's ear but from my body. i learned early to take everything in and assume its mine, your problems are mine, my problems are mine, your inablity to love must be my fault, your craziness and shame is something i must fix. i took everything personally and to heart. thats what creates the secrets. secrets are like unfinished projects. today i finished one of those projects and put into the universe a secret i've held for a couple of years. its not mine to determine what happens now, it wasnt even mine to hold onto to protect someone who didnt need protecting. i can no longer be quiet. i can no longer be strong for everyone but myself. püéâstm lemlets

this is the song i listen to while climbing the M

He drowns in his dreams An exquisite extreme I know He's as damned as he seems And more heaven than a heart could hold And if I try to save him My whole world would cave in It just ain't right It just ain't right Oh and I don't know I don't know what he's after But he's so beautiful Such a beautiful disaster And if I could hold on Through the tears and the laughter Would it be beautiful? Or just a beautiful disaster His magic and myth As strong as what I believe A tragedy with More damage than a soul should see But do I try to change him So hard not to blame him Hold me tight Baby, hold me tight Oh and I don't know I don't know what he's after But he's so beautiful Such a beautiful disaster And if I could hold on Through the tears and the laughter Would it be beautiful? Or just a beautiful disaster I'm longing for love and the logical But he's only happy hysterical I'm searching for some kind of miracle Waited so long I've waited So long He's soft to the touch But frayed at the ends he breaks He's never enough And still he's more than I can take Oh and I don't know I don't know what he's after But he's so beautiful Such a beautiful disaster And if I could hold on Through the tears and the laughter Would it be beautiful? Or just a beautiful disaster He's beautiful Such a beautiful disaster

Since i've been working out everyday for two hours, i had to make a choice today...either do something different or rush back from missoula in order to make it to the gym. so i decided to try my luck at the M. I've hiked the m before but i'm always a little psyched out by it. people run by you going up it and going down. part of the workouts that i'm doing is to conquer the voice in my head...the one that says..i cannot do this...or this shit is soo hard right now...and its for occasions like these. if you had ever asked me if i could work out hard for 3 hrs a day. i would always tell you yes...i could but i never thought i could do it day after day after day....i can do anything once or even more if i can rest. but now the two hours i am doing at the gym (sometimes i do something extra like aerobics at home or yoga or a walk that i dont count toward my totals) fly by.

i know, having run in races, that the work that i do at the gym needs to be adjusted sometimes when outside, like the difference between running on pavement and running on the treadmill.

so i thought the M would be a perfect measure of my increased fitness. i wore the right shoes, i worn jeans and some layers, i brought my ipod...i took a walk before just to loosen up and then i was pumped up to get to the top....until i set foot on the first inch of dirt. from that minute, all i could hear were the voices that tell me, i cant do this, i'm not in shape enough, i'm not good enough yet, i'm going to die. so i put on my ipod. it doesnt really matter the speed of the song as long as it takes me out of my own head. the first part is always the hardest for me. three different times, i thought, i'm gonna turn around and go back down. nobody knows i'm here and nobody will know if i dont finish. but i will know....

words i cant explain.

each day i look for something to explain how i feel, someday the sign is there, some days i am left looking... "you will just have to remember it. will you remember it gogol?" "how long will i have to remember it?" "remember it always. remember that you and i made this journey and we went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go...." The Namesake

i'm starting to lose it

so i've realized that anymore, i cry alot. i cried yesterday for no reason in hastings. i cried watching my new addiction of CSI:Miami (which i blame on april) at the ending. i cried watching the biggest loser. MF. i cry reading this book eat pray love which you will hear more about later this afternoon. i cry when i hear the kid singing. when i'm happy, when i'm sad, whem i'm frustrated, when i hate you...

its all coming back to me now....

two years ago, the organization that i worked for offered to send me to the federal indian bar conference in abq. well anybody who knows me, knows i always have a good time at this conference. the deal was, the office would pay for registration and airtravel and i had to pay for everything else. the other hitch was i had to travel with the regional boss... we made it from missoula to salt lake...i should have known it would be a strange night by the number of people sitting in the boarding area looking pissed off. there wasnt that much snow but for some reason it threw every plane off....including the one that was supposed to take us to abq. and it was the only one going to abq that night.... my boss and i were in frenzy to work with the travel plans we had each made for our stay in abq--rental cars, hotels room, etc. after about an hour, we decided to go back down to our boarding gate just in case some small miracle happened that would get me to graham central station that night. in front of us was a very small man talking to the gate lady...i thought man he looks familiar and once he turned to look directly at me....it was the man of my 1970's dreams....DONNY OSMOND. i even took a picture on my phone because i knew nobody would believe me....he really is shorter in real like...ok back to our regularly scheduled program of doom and gloom....

News from the mat

so like i said, last weekend the kid had a tournament. its always a long day especially now that she's a higher belt...they go in order so the higher your belt....the longer you wait. she did her forms first and i was immediately nervous...not about her forms because she's really good at both single and doubles....i was nervous because usually the people you compete against in forms are the people you have to spar. from far away in the bleachers it looked like it was all men....she sparrs guys in her class but she gets really nervous about sparring strangers. when i got down on the floor, i realized that one of the "men" was an older woman with a short hair cut, but the other 2 were definitely guys...she took 2nd in single forms and 1st in double forms. but i could tell she was worried about having to spar guys....as i said before i'm not above bribery...and there are several incentives that she would appreciate..... background...i bought her an ipod for her birthday a year ago...i said, dont take it to school...she did and it got stolen...after much slave labor and alot of harrassing her, i got her another ipod for christmas....she did pretty well with it, until she went to the mall with her friends and left her purse somewhere...the purse had her ipod, her wallet and her camera in it. the purse, wallet and camera got turned back in...the ipod did not...so that was the end of her ipod life....last summer my sister in law gave me an ipod which i use for running. on rare occasions she gets to use it. she has an mp3 player my brother gave her that shes been using but one of the buttons broke. so i thought well i was going to get her a new player anyway it just wasnt going to be an ipod. the deal was this (of course when i thought she was sparring boys) for a 2nd place i would get her an mp3 player. for a 1st place, i would buy her an ipod shuffle... when we got to the floor for sparring, they had set her up with all girls..some younger but still all girls...mind you when she started at her first tournament 2 years ago (she was 12), she sparred a 16 yo who was 6ft tall and a grown woman. and they werent gentle with her. the first girl she sparred was 10. but about the same size as the kid. she didnt beat the crap out of her but she did win quickly on the seven point spread. the next girl she went against was shorter but also much faster. the kid was losing by about 6pts. if the other girl scored one more point she won. but the kid came back and through 2 more tough rounds, they ended up tied. in the event of tie, they go into sudden death...which made us all nervous...the other girl landed a solid kick on the kid and i thought it was over. but they didnt give her that point and with one tiny second of opening, the kid landed a hard kick to the middle....and it was over..... her first gold medal....and a new ipod shuffle...

famous sighting number 2 & 3

Ha ha, one of my best friends wrote on her blog about seeing nicole kidman when she worked at hastings...for some reason that reminded me of one other time i saw a famous person...btw, i used to work at hastings and BB used to be my manager....oh when all i had to do was restock movies... anyway once when the kid was about 2 we went to kmart...which is weird because since they got rid of the icee machine and the weird ham sandwiches upfront...theres no reason to go to kmart..but there we were at the back by the sporting goods and hunting stuff...there was this nice looking man standing at the counter with his 2 kids waiting for someone to help him air up his basketball...he looked at me and i smiled. why? because i'm from montana and when people look at you, you should say hello or smile or at least acknowledge that someone else is alive besides yourself...sheeesshhh...he smiled back and after about a very slow ten seconds...i realized it was huey lewis... #3 after i finished law school in 2002, i moved down to santa fe for a job...things were ok but i never really adjusted and santa fe really is a strange place to live. if it had been albuquerque, i might have stayed. anyway, i lived about 2 blocks from the plaza. it was a decent place except for the methhead who lived next door. just about every weekend there was some kind of festival going on at the plaza. i liked to take the kid there and walk around looking at things. i went into this coat shop that sold pendleton coats for an outrageous amount of money. my mom makes awesome coats 10 times nicer than those in that store. my mind starting churning about how i could market her stuff in santa fe...as i walked out of the shop, i almost ran into this man--spiky red hair, very skinny and about as tall as me. even though we tried to avoid colliding, it wasnt gonna hurt me if he ran into me because he weighed about 140...and had on a white frilly poet shirt and leather pants...who the hell wears leather pants and a poet shirt when its still hot as hell in santa fe....ron dunn does...from the famous country duo of brooks and dunn.... note to self--everyone is shorter than they appear on tv.... not my sighting but equally as good--my brother was in a yoga class with shaquille O'Neill..

In the news...

I never see famous people...really when i lived in dc i road the metro with c. everett koop once. but last year about this time, jb(who will always be called jb in here even if everyone know his name) and i went on a road trip. his idea. we drove to salt lake city, stayed the night there. he did some work at u of utah with the linguistics folks and i drove around until i found a whole foods. then we were off to vegas. i'd never been to vegas without the kid, so i had visions of being drunk from morning till night, playing games and just generally being wild. we stayed at mandalay bay. the room was perfect enough...no reason to even leave it. there was a flatpanel tv in the bathroom so i watched the godfather while taking a bath! we went to phantom of the opera and saw the bodies exhibit (which after you get over the fact that they are real bodies, is very cool.) we went to the wax museum and the venetian and all over the strip...and no there was no drunkenness...although i did have one of those big tower drinks... because i am a big tattoo fan i had to go to the palms so i could see the hart and huntington store. on the way in, in my cloud of bliss...i see this guy having an argument with a woman outside the palms...it looked very tense...i looked at jb and said "isnt that..." but he's no good at celebrities.....it was suge knight...you know president of death row records, just got out of the pen, has his beef with the east coast rappers..suge knight... in the news suge knight just got popped again for assault in vegas and for suing kanye west.... thats my famous person story....

To the whanau, arohanui

Nga Kapua Whakapipi E Tere Ake Nei Kamanawa (the small clouds that breakaway soon return to regroup as one)

Lost dreams

As a general rule, my dreams (the ones when i'm sleeping) are pretty tame. I'm that girl who dreams about folding laundry and stuff. But i can honestly say i havent slept well in at least a year. progressively my dreams have gotten weirder or stray from the laundry/house cleaning theme. So when i have dreams that are more involved or scary or whatever, i pay attention. I have had lots of intuitive dreams. Lately i've been having dreams about snakes. they are scary but its also interesting because there is always this one small bright lavender snake in each dream. some of these snakes are king kong size snakes, differenct colors and while i'm supposed to feel threatened, i'm not panicked. the same person is always in these dreams but i cant figure out the overall message. anyway this has been going on for about 3 weeks. if i feel the need to analyze my dreams its usually more about whats happening to the people in them than what i see. there are also only a few people that i have a strong intuitive connection to so when i have a dream about them i pay attention. the person in the snake dreams is one of those but it seems that the snakes are a the highlight and he is just a background figure. when i was working as a public defender, i would work cases in my sleep. i would feel half awake and i would be restless because of some case coming up or something i couldnt figure out. one night i remember working several cases in my sleep and i was excited about the results, only to hear my office manager say "do you want me to type those up?" when i heard her voice i remembered thinking "shit, these arent real cases, i just spent half of what little sleep i get working on imaginary cases." the anxiety would cause me to have breakthroughs though, like the time, i realized, in my sleep, that all of the witnesses to a case i had were tribal and wouldnt have to answer the subpoenas issued to them. i remember shortly after getting my license to practice i had a dream about missing my contracts exam. contracts is a law school class taken first semester of your first year. when i initially started practicing, i asked my dad when the anxiety dreams go away...he said, "they go away?!?" which since he's been in practice over 30 years wasnt all that comforting. i've dreamt about dead people, live people, people i dont know but met later and everything in between. i once was at a writers retreat and this ghost kept coming to me in a dream. i always said he looked like the indian elvis. i asked him what he wanted so that he would leave me alone. he told me. i said if i make that offering tomorrow, you have to leave me alone. i did and so did he. i dont write dreams down, lots of times i still remember them. i had a dream about sharks when i was five and i still remember that dream clearly. a dream i had when my grandfather died, i still remember...so theres lots of stuff trapped in my mind. but i've never had dreams like these. a few nights after i started this blog, i had a dream about all the topics i should write about. it was hazy and now all i can remember is that i'm supposed to write something about lemon-lime. all of the other ideas were really good but the lemon-lime thing is all i can recall now. really, thats all i remember...there will be some topic about lemon-lime. because of the snake miniseries i seem to be having, i decided to start writing down the main elements of my dreams when i remember them in a little book. the first night of the snake dreams, i woke up and wanted to remember but wasnt fully awake. i grabbed a pen and scribbled 6 words on a magazine next to my bed. i would have forgotten that this was a miniseries if i hadn't moved that magazine the other day and saw those words. maybe the conclusion to the miniseries is coming...maybe a lavender snake is in my future....

its not all gloom and doom.....

its a beautiful sunny day in mission, montana. the leaves have fallen off my trees and suppose i should pick them or bury the dog in them.... tomorrow the kid has a tournament in kalispell. for those of you who dont know, shes a high green belt in tae kwon do. whats left for her are the 2 degrees of the blue belt, the red belt then the black....thats pretty crazy to think my kid will become a black belt....anyway in her tournaments, she does forms and then sparring. shes come a long way in the two years since she started competing...i've had to tell her theres no crying in tae kwon do...sparring is against her general sweet natured sensibilities...shes not hot tempered and shes not mean so we've tried to figure out how to motivate her to get in there and really spar...several tournaments ago she got kicked in the shin so hard that she had a huge bruise for several weeks, shes got kicked in the elbow and the face...you cant tell her really go after the other girl (like a bad scene from karate kid) because she wont, you have to tell her to protect herself or she'll get all those bruises again especially now that she has braces. there've been a couple of times where she finally got pissed off because she was landing kicks and not getting points. at that moment i knew she was my kid....because being pissed off forced her to land them harder and faster. motivation comes in many forms...as long as she competes, i take her on little shopping trip after...i'm not above bribery...not to win but to get in the game and try. even if shes afraid or cranky or whatever. i let her pick when she started competing but now i dont let her stop. there are crazy parents there, like there are in every sport. yelling at their kids, making them cry...i hope those folks save up for therapy because thats gonna take some undoing...theres a couple of parents i'd like to spar.... so tomorrow we're off to the land of tae kwon do and then to our second favorite place, Borders!! and possibly IHOP..oh the wonders of the big city...

i've got to get up to speed

when i went to fill in the about me section on this hummer..it has a handlebar you can pull down for a listing of countries...i have NO IDEA where some of those countries are....i feel like the globe has turned into a prince stage show...first there was prince rogers nelson, then there was prince, then there was the artist formerly known as prince and now well, i think he's back to prince....so many countries have gone back to the name they called themselves which i think it great. i think of myself as a fairly intelligent person but even i'm not up to speed on all these name changes....i think we should get the maps to say formerly known as...for a least a certain amount of time...so people can know....i think i'll talk to obama's transition team and maybe santa about this one....

Not that I'm ready...

but i've been trying to figure out how to meet people/guys, etc.? seriously, where i live i have certain barriers....1. most of these men are my cousins, 2. the ones who arent related to me, are related to jb which really for me, as a matter of principle, exs them out(no real pun intended)., those who dont fall into either of those categories are married, gay, or crazy with 12 kids and 6 ex wives....i thought the gym might be someplace to check out the scene only to discover the only scene there is for 14 year olds....the bars around here or in the valley for that matter arent men-with-potential magnets. i looked around on a few of the internet dating sights and well, i saw a couple of my clients i had been looking for the last few months i was at work....so that makes that a little awkward....i've thought about asking friends to scope out people for me or think about setting me up with people but then i know that i'm uncomfortable doing that for other people. i even looked in the ads in the independent...and for once there were like 5 indian men with ads in there....but i'm not sure how i would feel about responding....i wish that there was a man-fairy pillow..when i was young, i had a tooth fairy pillow. when my tooth fell out, i would put my tooth in that pillow and the tooth fairy would leave me a dollar. i never cared what the tooth fairy did with that tooth as long as i was getting a new tooth and a dollar....maybe i'll make a man fairy pillow so the man fairy can put a new one in my pillow....hmmmmm....

weathering the storm

i've been thinking about how i got here....not the big prolific "how i got here" but the realistic how i got to this moment question. i have been wanting to write because things are very hard right now. and they have been...and maybe they will continue to be. i've given up all of my vices--no drinking(because i drunk dial), no smoking(because if do i will have a stroke), no emotional eating(because i'm trying to lose weight and improve my health), no denial(because thats how i fucking got here)--so really all i have left is exercise and the thoughts that run through my head. so in trying to find something to comfort me, i need to go back to the only thing that soothes me immediately which is writing. its been two months since all of this change started. 2 months since i ended a nine year relationship. one month since my job came to an end. i felt instant relief when my job was over. i felt calmer and relieved. i still dont feel like that about the relationship. i think i expected to feel ok about it. but i guess that will come with time...and that time isnt right now. its been two months since i started working out 2 hours a day at the gym. i never thought 2 hours would just whip by or that on any given day i can do 7-10 miles of anything. while the weight loss is slow, the exercise makes me feel immediately better. the only day i take off is saturday. at first i had all sorts of motivation but now its become a habit that i dont let myself out of... the weather is changing into winter. the time off--my seclusion has been great. i cant complain at all about it and i'm glad that i have the resources for now to do this. i'm trying to make changes to everything, my home, my body, my thought process and its all going slow. i'm starting to look to the future--not ten years from now but at least next month and onto the spring..because it allows me to set goals and look forward to them.... maybe i'm on my way to becoming a monk...because god knows a convent wouldnt take me...

i dont even know where this was published for that girl to post on myspace?

Battlecries Indians got crazy love loving furious loving hard like preparing for battle promising never to lose we fall in love looking for alliance like tribes that want to war together I want to war with you us two the strongest confederacy.

stuff to know

i like to eat things out of bowls--i dont like plates...except i eat ice cream out of coffee cups my gramma used to open up the whole ice cream box and cut it with a big knife last summer, i won 1/2 a beef and a freezer. i never win anything i dont look like either of my brothers my favorite color right now is pink i heard where the streets have no name today in the car and i was immediately back in 10th grade on the bus for a speech meet. i varsity lettered in speech i sewed my first dress when i was 7. i hate skiing i was once published in a literary magazine. the topic was love and erotica. i think my mom thinks i write porn. i actually wrote about love... i dont like pencils. i feel kind of nauseated when i write with them...like car sickness only with pencils i dont like burritos--i open the whole damn thing up and put it in a bowl... my hair is over half grey i dont have hair on my legs..not by choice..by genetics....

i want some answers....

things i want to know: my horoscope says it THE perfect time to find my soulmate...where am i supposed to look? my horoscope should provide some GPS. what is bia sniffing for when shes looking for the perfect place to poop? is there secret signal? when did mtv turn to shit? do women who are pregnant with multiples ever get claustrophobic? how come when i'm crossing the street on the crosswalk and somebody almost runs over me, they act like i'm the dumbass? after completing a bachelors, masters and doctorate,why do people still want my goddamn transcripts for job applications? i mean that semester i fucked up in undergrad was 14 YEARS AGO? what happens if i actually blurt out all the things i think in my head? when is this master zit ever going away? theres more, i'll come back.

the beginning

While i'm busy trying to reconfigure my life, i was thinking about all of the blogs i used to read. there was a great blog from a girl in arizona, written while doing her masters. it was about life, relationships, breaking up, moving on and all the other voices of life that people forget to share. i am still bummed she doesnt write it anymore. but sometimes these things are for moments and the need for them runs its course. she used to use only use initials and once dated a guy she called pb. some days i would think, "i should check the blog to see whats up with her and peanut butter." as i recall, my brother met her in phoenix and told her i called pb peanut butter. i like to read blogs for the same reason i read people magazine. i'm nosey and interested. i'm looking for the familiar and the outrageous. i found someone on myspace who posted one of my poems in her blog. i dont know her but i had forgotten that i was once a poet and that that piece got published. it was something i loved. i have scraps of paper from 20 years of writing. sometimes when i looked at each scrap or napkin or whatever, i can remember where i was when it came to me, what my life felt like in that moment and who each piece is about. i can tell you in the last few years i've written probably less than 10 pieces. all still first drafts. in that time, i somehow stopped saying what was in me. its not that i didnt have a voice, but that i chose, for many reasons, to ignore it. last weekend i took the kid to a photo show of a local news photographer i know. she loves photography and i wanted her to see what it can do, the stories photos can tell and how it used to be something i loved. while there, i ran into the former dean of the j-school and my old ap style prof who must be a cujillion years old. that dean is the reason i came to missoula. he wrote me a personal letter, giving me all the reasons that UM's j-school would be the best fit for me as a young native writer. i still have that letter. he didnt have to, but charlie always took the time with us...when he left the j-school so did i. i realized how much i miss telling the story. i was once an aspiring journalist. its hard to convince my daughter that i was a good writer and a decent photographer when theres not much current to show her. i dont even think i've shown her the old stuff. so here i am. to talk about whatever i want to talk about. i'm not trying to find a new voice, i am just transfusing my thoughts past the wall of quiet into the same body again. like dialysis. clearing out the bad and freshening up the good and putting it back in where it belongs...