Thursday, June 28, 2007

dsiplaced

A few of my friends have created a handful of great websites and made dream jobs for themselves in the process. Their flagship is 43Things. A social networking site that rallies around the question “What do you want to do with your life?” It’s a powerful question. Calling on daydreams and potential. Preparedness and opportunity. It speaks of crossroads and just being better. We all want to be better. We all want to do more. The how, the what, the when of being better – that’s the stuff of 43Things. That’s its soul. In just over two years time a million people have signed up to answer that question and they’ve answered it in a million different ways.

999,997 of them great.

But the bad apples. Spam. Porn. Bullies. The small company that dared to ask the question found themselves getting answers back that they weren’t expecting. Some were easy to solve. Spammer hunts conducted with nary a thought. Others were more challenging. The user created goals range from the mundane and popular to the down right upsetting. The potential moral and ethical dilemmas weren’t lost on the people who created this site. They talk about thought police and free speech. Open communities, self regulation. They take their work and their role seriously. The goals that kept them up at night came from unexpected sources.

Teenage girls.

Not just any teenage girls. Vulnerable girls struggling under societal pressures. Internalizing those pressures. Messed up body images. Misplaced ideals. These girls had the goal of becoming or staying anorexic. They filled the forums with tips and ideas. They supported each other in their quests for protruding clavicles and thighs no bigger than our wrists. What to do with them? What to do?

First was a message. Well worded, well thought out. Don’t hurt yourself. Please get help. Here is help. It was one of the few goals tagged for this sort of communication from above. Not parental in tone, purposefully not parental. Just kind and simple with links to places they could go for help. But seeing a message when you are in the throws of a disease doesn’t solve anything. We all know it doesn’t solve anything. They knew it wouldn’t solve anything but what to do? What to do?

These girls were in their care. Accidentally, sure. Unwillingly, sure. But they were there nonetheless. Using their site to communicate harmful information, encouraging each other to do harmful things. This group of six 30somethings on Capitol Hill who had started a little internet company were thrust into the role of makeshift guidance counselors without the ability to call the parents, without the ability to even know who these girls actually were.

Step two was suspension. You posted a tip - your account was suspended. You posted encouragement - suspended. One by one, the accounts of these girls were canceled. One by one these girls would open new accounts, new user names, same problems. It was a never ending game of cat and mouse. The deletions only slowed them down, it never made them go away. Which they knew. Which we know. But what to do? What to do?

Now. It’s deletion of the goal. It’s turning off the forums. It’s shutting the lights off and going to bed. Party’s over. If you can find a pro-anorexia goal on 43Things all you’ll find is the well worded bulletin. All of the social networking features have been turned off. It’s static and silent. Unlike the countless unmanned blogs and family web sites that stay in suspended animation for years and years the silence and quiet found on these pages of an otherwise very busy social networking site have the creepiness of an empty airport. It’s just not supposed to be like that but how else can it be?

To say the story ends here would be wrong. The girls have moved around on 43Things. Their clumsy adolescent innocence in emailing 43Things in protest and playing this game of hide and seek only adds to the irony that I can’t put my finger on. Therapists, psychologists, national organizations want these communities quieted. It is the responsible thing to do. Without a doubt it is the right thing to do. For both the site and the girls.

So, why the heavy hearts?

Is it that a bunch of young girls with all their innocence, body hatred and low self-esteem are lost on the internet? Is it that the next place they find might not care enough to talk about what’s best, to consult with experts, to lose sleep? Could it be as common as when a new parent lets their baby cry herself to sleep for the first time? How doing what’s needed to separate ourselves from our children, cutting that cord again and again throughout their lives, is painful and gut wrenching and absolutely necessary each and every time we do it.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

seven things

She asked me what I know about him.

“What do you know about your dad?”

My dad. My. Dad. I never say those two words together.

“I know his name and that we look alike. I know his parents were alcoholics. I know they owned a chain of funeral homes. I know he moved to Madison for a while, but came back to Green Bay. I know he was addicted to heroin and I know how he died.”

I paused.

“That’s all.”

Sunday, June 10, 2007

like the whole solar system stops and holds its breath with you

I’m reading No One Belongs Here More Than You. By Miranda July. She doesn’t have it capitalized on her book. On her book it’s written as “No one belongs here more than you.” I guess by here she means Earth. I want it to mean Alive but that doesn’t make sense in the context of the sentence. Alive isn’t a place you can be. But Earth is. So she must mean that.

I’m reading it slowly. At first I was reading it slowly to make it last. Now I’m reading it slowly because parts of it make me so incredibly sad that I have to space it out. The parts that make me incredibly sad aren’t predictable. Or evenly spaced. I need days between stories to recover. Sometimes up to one week.

Her and I have hair color in common.

No one belongs here more than you comes in two color choices. One is yellow and the other is bright pink. But those are just the dust jackets. The inside book is yellow regardless of which color dust jacket you choose. This fact, and this fact alone, made me pick the yellow cover. I wanted my copy to look the same naked or clothed. I thought it would be less confusing for me then. I would always just know that it was yellow. Plus, I like yellow but can’t wear it. It makes me look sickly. So when I can pick something to be yellow that I don’t have to wear, I usually jump at the chance. I guess that means two facts, and two facts alone, make me pick the yellow cover.

We may also both think of ourselves as sensitive.

Somewhere in the first few pages, she wonders if all she’s ever wanted to say to someone or be told is this: It’s not your fault. That hearing that. Or saying it. Would make it all ok. Like the line in a great movie that you think of days later and still get the chills. “It’s not your fault.”

“But it is.”

“No, it’s not.”

I wondered what mine was. All I’ve ever wanted to say? All I’ve ever wanted to hear? I remembered this one time. I was still in Minneapolis and he lived in San Francisco. Beautiful boy. Dark haired, blue eyed. Andrew Hendrickson. The One Who Got Away. It was morning, hadn’t slept. We had talked for 7 or 8 hours back when long distance was twenty cents a minute. I was in my hallway. In a t-shirt and underwear. Receiver to my ear.

“These things never work out.” he told me.

“I know.”

“I can’t move there. You can’t move here.”

“Yeah.”

“But.”

I said “But.” back.

“One of us is going to wind up getting hurt.”

“Probably me.” I said.

“Probably me.” He said.

We got quiet.

And then he asked, “Do you want to try anyway?”

And then I said “Yes.”

My It’s-not-your-fault is any question phrased like this: do you want to maybe try and fall in love when the whole world is out to eat us up? If I ask it, I want to hear Yes. If I’m asked it, I want to say Yes. I don’t know if it’s the question I crave or the answer. It’s probably the pause in the middle. The second where everything good and everything bad is possible. The second where it’s just breath holding and beating hearts. A million reasons to say no. But one person of a reason to say Yes. Good. Fucking. God. I love that. Love it. Makes me want to stand up and cheer.

Makes me believe in stuff.

And then after figuring that out. I wondered what it was for you. The thing you most want to say. The feeling you most want to feel. What is it? I’d really like to know.

Friday, June 8, 2007

and also with you

I’ve been losing weight at a rate reminiscent of Nicole Richie or perhaps that one Olsen Twin. Yet! I’ve had a doughnut everyday for breakfast. Top Pot nonetheless.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you my proof for the existence of God.

Take that, Gödel. And I didn’t even need to bust out the algebra.

Saturday, June 2, 2007

rehab

But but but. Why. Why. You said. But. You. Said. Again and again. But but but. Why. Why. You said. But. You. Said. Times ten. Times ten thousand. Like picking at a scab. Like stepping in front of a bus. Like hitting myself over the head with a baseball bat. But but but. You said. But. You. Said.

We fought Sunday morning.

And as all those words left my mouth. The second they hit the air. The instant my lips let them go. I was thinking. Stop. I don’t want this. Why am I here? What am I fighting for? It’s almost in slow motion. I’m sure my eyes looked vacant. I don’t remember what I was doing with my hands. Walk away. Walk away.

“What do you want?” He was exasperated with me. I could see it in his eyes. Hear it in his tone. He was looking right at me. Stopped what he was doing. I just wanted to close my eyes and disappear. Why am I here? What am I fighting for? The panic of i-don’t-know sunk my stomach. Like swallowing a lead weight.

I didn’t say that I didn’t know though. I don’t know what I said. But I know it wasn’t that I didn’t know. And while I was saying what I can’t remember I was thinking that I’ve been here before. These words. This fight. I’ve had it before. I’ve had it with him. And with him. A slide show of show downs. Me. Doing. This. Again and again. Different boys. Same me.

“What does it feel like when you’re fighting?” she asks me.

“I’m in it. I’m articulate. I can be unfair and hurtful. It has my attention. But I don’t know why. As I’m fighting, I’m wishing I weren’t fighting. I want to walk away.”

“But you don’t.”

“I don’t.”

“Does it feel like you’re fighting for your life?”

Remember in Me and You and Everyone We Know when Miranda July goes back to the shoe department. Remember how he burnt his hand and it’s wrapped in gauze. Like a mitten. And she asks him what happened.

“Whoa, what happened?” Miranda July asks.

He tells her she can have the long version or the short version. And she picks the long version without the slightest hesitation.

“The long one.” Miranda July says.

He says the long version is he was trying to save his life but it didn't work. She asks him what the short version is.

“Wow. What’s the short one?” Miranda July asks.

He says I burnt it.

It’s just like that. It’s exactly just the same as that.

“Does it feel like you’re fighting for your life?”

“Yes.”

Friday, June 1, 2007

this is the part in my new blog where the title of the blog post is longer than the actual blog post

I need to forgive my father.

To that end, I called and hung up on my grandmother today.

This will be an ongoing story.