When One Door Closes

As someone whose professional career has been spent as a contracted employee for the federal government, this is the first time a government shutdown has directly affected me; in the words of my fifth grade teacher Mrs. Luftig, boy did I get a doozy. Usually when shutdowns happened, the military and contracted employees would still be able to come into the office. For every other shutdown, the contract I was on was fully funded, which meant business as usual. This time that lovely contract roulette wheel did not land in my favor. The contract I was on ended, and the new one was not in place when the clock struck twelve on October first.

To their credit, our organization's chief, an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, and his government counterpart (AKA Blue Falcon), tried to exercise a six month extension to ensure we maintained the same pay and more importantly, to prevent future contract issues occuring when the fiscal year ended. This attempt was a rollercoaster in itself, with a discussion of their intent shared after a staff meeting in May, and continued reassurance that we would hear something in the months ahead. First, we were supposed to hear an update on the extension by June, then July. In July I traveled to Guam with the government counterpart and one of our test directors. One morning, the government guy came down to the hotel lobby looking dismayed. "I wish I hadn't checked my email," he said. I sensed this was about an change in the new contract, but I also knew as a contracted employee I couldn't outright ask for more information. By the time August came around and we were less than two months from the contract's end, skepticism rose, hope plummeted, and lunchtime chatter on the front porch of the extended trailer where we worked became more and more disgruntled. We speculated on the changes being negotiated, which positions would be cut, and which of us would be kicked off the island.

I also got updates from my manager who trusted me as the next in line whenever he was out of the office, or needed to sit down with me and pass on information that couldn't be widely shared. The contract extension discussions had gone south because the company and the government could not come to an agreement. The company wanted to eliminate certain employees, and the government wanted the company to receive less overhead from the contract. My manager had offered multiple solutions. We could take paycuts if certain employees worked 35 hours a week, the minimum allowed for employees to continue to receive full time benefits. His goal was to keep as many people there as we could as the work we had done that year was more than we had ever done in the span of a year, or when considering the pandemic, multiple years. As much as he tried, nothing stuck. One day he entered my office, shut the door, sat down and said, "The contract is fucked."

From what we knew, my manager's position would be eliminated. Our technical editor, the person who laid eyes on every written report our organization was supposed to deliver, was also eliminated. The facilities manager position was amended to include a 60 pound lifting requirement, knowing that the guy who had held the job for over 20 years had a 10 pound limit due to health issues. The individuals in these positions were the oldest members of our team, but age discrimination doesn't come into play when everyone loses their job at the end of a contract. There is no penalty for not asking these people to return, and no penalty for eliminating their jobs or adding requirements. This is a tangent in the story, but my inner justice warrior felt compelled to mention it anyway.

We learned there would be a 30% cut in funding and the addition of an "engineer type," because when you're cutting that much, it only makes sense to add a highly specialized and high salaried position to the team.

In our final month at work, morale was in the toilet. The government guy, bless his heart, announced that we would have a lunchtime cookout. Cookouts were popular because we had acquired a few grills on our site, our location was very much a "by invitation only" setting. There would be no surprise drop ins by high ranking individuals because one had to get through two controlled gates to reach our site. That said, some of the freedoms we enjoyed got nixed in the recent months. Our permission to telework one day a week was no more, our work hours became constrained, and no contractors were allowed to unlock the trailer in the morning or lock up for the night. We also weren't allowed to work the grill for cookouts, since these were work hours and grilling meat was not considered one of our "other duties as specified." Our subsequent non-cookouts meant cold fried chicken from Royal Farms and whatever else anyone could bring in after preparing it from home. For this short notice affair, I asked if we'd be allowed to use the grill. The answer was yes, and I took that as an indication of our impending doom.

The company contacted me for a couple of reasons unrelated to my job ending. For my three year company anniversary, I received a congratulatory email message including a code for $175 in company funny money to buy company-branded merch from their company store site. How timely, I thought, I have money to spend on something advertising a company I won't be working for much longer. Couldn't I just get the money? All they could say was no. I replied:

Is there any way to convert this to money as I am about to be laid off this Tuesday -- the contract I am on is ending and money would be more useful than {company} merch.

The answer, dressed up in sympathy and understanding, was (of course), no. The Monday before my last day I picked a set of over-the-ear company-branded headphones that would use up most of the $175 without going over the designated amount, and I ordered them. Yes, the value was inflated (I price checked the cost of the non-company-branded version of the headphones), and yes, I already owned a pretty good set of over-the-ear headphones that worked just fine, but this is capitalism, isn't it? Even if you don't want or need the thing, we will compel you to get the thing. I selected two day shipping. Do you think my unneeded but ordered anyway three year anniversary reward over-the-ear company-branded headphones ever arrived? If you guessed no, you would be correct. (UPDATE: over two months after ordering, I received an email message from FedEx that my shipment was arriving. If you guessed this aforementioned shipment contained the company-I-no-longer-work-for-branded headphones, you guessed correct)

The next insult to injury was another company message received exactly one week before our contract was due to end, informing me that I had been nominated for the company's “People Powering Possible,” which was described as a series where we highlight and celebrate interesting, diverse and impactful employees through short profiles published on LinkedIn. I'd seen these profiles before, they would feature a nice headshot of the individual with their first name, last initial (Severance innie style) and a quote. Oh, so I was expected to use my personal social media profile to advertise for the company. Cool, cool. I replied:

Thanks for reaching out but my contract is ending on 30 September so I won't be a {company} employee for much longer.

You could practically hear the sad trombone at the end of that sentence. The person who emailed me quickly replied with her apologies that they won't get to feature me on social media, along with well wishes for my job search.

The final company gesture came in the form of a farewell lunch. The upper management mostly left us alone. The person assigned as program manager would come to our site for short discussions with the organizational leaders but no real engaging with the worker bees. I've worked for many contract companies and this is my long lasting resentment towards them. The reason the corporate types receive a salary is because of the contracts, the people actually doing the work, but we get treated like we're dispensable.

We joked that the lunch would be a pizza party, however I knew from experience it would be catered Panera in the conference room. I wish I'd taken bets because that's exactly what it was. Our company president and our higher level manager descended to our site for a final outbrief with our organizational leadership and their box of sandwiches and chips. I noticed the president had a salad from Panera, which spurred me to fetch my own salad from the breakroom, thinking, Too good to eat sandwiches like the rest of us, eh buddy? I'll show you! I later learned he was gluten intolerant but even so, as a leader, optics matter.

This lunch was filled with talk from our program manager, who regaled us with stories of ski vacations and piping in with "that's amazing," any time one of us peons chimed in to add something. One of my coworkers said later how out of touch it was to describe a ski vacation when some of us would never be able to afford that. Right before they departed, the president stood up and let us know the company would cover our healthcare premiums for October, which I appreciated. He should have led with that, and read the room. Leaving the box of sandwiches on the conference room table, thanking us for our work and exiting stage left would have been preferable to an hour of unsolicited small talk.

The final farewell lunch for our team was on the last day of the contract. We went to our usual group lunch spot, a Mexican/Salvadoran spot with dim lighting and dusty velveteen sombreros on the wall, and sat together as a team one last time. A couple of us ordered margaritas, and we presented our manager with a gift, flowers and a birthday card (his birthday was the following day, and coincided with the end of our contract).

In all of my professional experience, I had stuck around in this job the longest because I liked the work, I enjoyed the location and because my manager always emphasized that personal life always took priority over work, and he meant it. I'd gone through my separation and divorce at that job, sometimes feeling severely impeded by my personal life, and he never held it against me. He was not going to be the guy watching the clock to take note of when I arrived, or scolding me for a mistake. In over two decades of professional experience working with managers, not every manager was a leader, and while my manager wasn't perfect, he was considerate. In my interview with him seven years ago, I stated that I wanted to come to work and not feel dread when I pulled into the parking lot, and while that may seem like a low bar, I was actually asking for a peaceful workplace. Most of the time he succeeded as the buffer to ensure that we all had that. He'd been working there over 20 years and this last gathering of our team did not feel like an adequate thank you. He thanked us, and told us not to sell ourselves short, and to reach out to each other if we were struggling. Our group had our pockets of dysfunction, but it was far better environment than anywhere I had worked in the past.

After lunch, some of us returned to the site and the rest of us took off to go home. I had already turned in my keys and access card so I had no reason to go back. I had also cleaned out my office and taken things home over several weeks, a tactic I've named the "Andy Dufresne shuffle." I scolded myself for allowing myself to get so comfortable that I needed to make multiple trips to get everything home. I told myself if I returned, I'd keep a more spartan set up, something that allowed everything personal to be removed in one trip. This is a lesson I have had to constantly re-learn, to not allow myself to get too comfortable or settled in a job, especially given the temporary and sometimes volatile nature of contract work.

My resume is in the pile for the new contract, whenever that starts. I've applied for other positions. A friend who started her own company has assured me that she is developing a proposal which will include me. I may return to my old job, but I know with my manager gone and others on our team with job prospects, it will not be the same as it was before. I don't want to look at a closed door for so long that I miss the opening of a new one.

Feminine Energy Doesn't Pay The Bills

In the past year, I've seen a lot of commentary (okay, usually on a social media "reel") about what men have to do to make sure their woman remains "in her feminine energy." I think I get the gist; in non gender identifying language, the implication is that the man needs to ensure he is a safe environment so the woman can feel relaxed. My skeptical side sees how this language became gendered and the implications that surround applying a gender to one's "energy" become a slippery slope.

This kind of language then gets applied to life. Several years ago, my individual therapist informed me there was a backlash against "independent women." It sounded so fringe and bizarre to me at the time (about six years ago, I didn't even know about the term "manosphere" then). Who wouldn't want an independent woman? Who wouldn't want someone who arrives capable of paying their own bills and looking after themselves? This sounds like a perk, not a handicap. The increase in articles about the "male loneliness epidemic" occuring at a time when women finally have enough freedom to be able to support themselves is not a coincidence. In my own later in life single experience, I prefer someone who is solid company and consistent in treating me well. If they are also able to buy nice things, that's a perk, but not a requirement at the top of the list. The man has to provide, but when we shift from financial to emotional providing, it's treated as an impossible, unreasonable ask.

The backlash becomes tearing down women. We're "masculine" for simply being adults living on our own and paying all of our bills; for not needing a man. That's a sad statement; being needed is a low bar. Why not strive to be wanted, to be valuable in presence and not only for a paycheck? Much of the message to men is simply to not be like women. When we mind our own business, women get threats like, "Have fun dying alone with all of your cats." Women finally see this isn't the insult it's intended to be; 1) dying alone with cats (in peace) isn't the worst thing in the world and 2) see "male loneliness epidemic." It's all projection.

There's hand wringing about women earning degrees in higher numbers than men. When you hear whispers of ending no fault divorce or public figures stating out loud that they support one vote per household alarm bells should be sounding. When you have to hobble half of the population to hold on to power, that's not a win. I'm reminded of the white people whining hypothesis in the '80's and '90's that black people possess an unfair athletic advantage because enslaved people were "bred" to be stronger. The retort to that complaint was simple: elevate your game. Go to therapy. Learn how to have a healthy relationship. Confide in your friends (if you don't have any, make some). Stop treating sex like an act of domination. Unlearn the societal script that tells us women are inferior to men. Challenge the thought that anything leaning "feminine" (to include feelings) is to be mocked or disparaged. Insecurity commonly masquerades as superiority and gives itself permission to step on others in order to stay on top.

I'm not "masculine" for earning a salary that allows me to pay my bills without a man. I don't know when being an independent adult became equivalent to having XY chromosomes. I don't know why anyone would pine for the days when women were more like hostages than equal partners in their marriages. When we encounter opinion pieces asking if women ruined the workplace, I'm reminded of the blame Eve gets for ruining paradise. Women also got blamed for "ruining" the Service academies, the military, and every other realm where we were previously prohibited from entering. Instead of examining whether these places were ideal in the first place, or seeing what women added to improve things, by default, accommodating women is seen as a loss. What we fail to address is how everyone loses when women are expected to sacrifice their ambition, potential, rights and self worth so men can succeed.

When your mother shows up.

I posted the story of my first period a few days ago; the story encapsulates my deepest disappointment in my mother for not doing more to ensure I was comfortable. Out of guilt and/or a desire to be fair in showing she wasn't always falling short, I'm going to share a story of a time when she came through for me.

When some families had weekend traditions like volunteering or going to church, mine had the tradition of going to the mall to shop on weekends. Sometimes these trips included major purchases, but mostly they consisted of browsing familiar haunts. When all four of us would go, often my sister and I were released and everyone went their own ways with the understanding that we would meet at a designated spot at a specific time when it was time to go home. This was life before cell phones, and a life that required watch wearing, or being brave enough to ask someone what time it was. After my sister joined the Air Force and started her own adult life, we moved to California and the weekend outings continued. Sometimes this meant I was left to my own devices during our family "shopping together apart" time. During my sophomore year in high school, one of these outings resulted in me meeting a guy who was out with his friend. After some small talk, he asked for my phone number and I gave it to him, not because I had actively decided that I was interested, but because I had bought into the idea that any attention of a reasonably good enough looking guy was a good enough reason to share your contact information. There was minimal decision making on my part because what was the harm, right? This was how people met. This was how you get a boyfriend.

He was black, a highly uncommon demographic in my high school. He wasn't bad looking. His name was Ulysses (middle name "Grant," I kid you not) and he lived in East Palo Alto which was, at the time, a notoriously dicey bay area town adjacent to Palo Alto, home of Stanford University and a lot of rich people. In remembering events, I realized we'd met before I was licensed to drive and took the bus from Half Moon Bay to San Mateo to meet up with him for a movie date (Dark Man, starring Liam Neeson, thank you IMDB). That was the extent of our relationship. When the movie was over, we talked for a little while, but my primary concern was catching my bus to get home.

Two and a half years later, I was a senior in high school and prom (at some point between my sister's prom and mine, we all stopped calling it "the Prom") was on the horizon. I wanted to go as to not miss out on a milestone high school experience. My dad had died a few months before, and there was a high school classmate interested in asking me out (which I knew through our mutual friends), but I did not want to deal with rejecting him. Instead, over the phone, Ulysses invited himself to be my date.

It seemed like a good enough solution to my dilemma. Looking back, I wish I had invited my best friend or attended in a friend group. I hated that we were expected to pair up with a boy in order to enjoy a night out in a gown and enjoy some time on the dance floor. I hated the wedding like mimicry of couples' poses and pairing up in this transient way that felt like a grab for status. Those who had a date got to go to the ball, and the have-nots stayed home. I hate that I did not have the ability to deconstruct what I had unknowingly internalized without question. I said yes.

Ulysses did not have a way to get himself from East Palo Alto to my home in El Granada, so I drove to pick him up. I arrived at his apartment building, where we went inside to gather the tuxedo he'd rented. He was sipping a lemon Snapple when I got there, and I remember thinking his breath was tart, but I said nothing. We got into the car and I drove us back "over the hill" on highway 92 that crossed the Santa Cruz Mountains and led to the coast.

We got ready at my house. My mom had helped me choose my entire ensemble, a blue violet tea length off the shoulder velvet dress with dainty black velvet mules and a necklace and earrings she'd lent me from her collection. I guess we'd also given Ulysses a room to get himself ready; I didn't remember. He did not have a corsage for me.

My mom drove us to my friend's house, where the limo was supposed to pick us up. There were two other couples, and we had split the cost of the limo and agreed to have dinner before heading to the San Francisco hotel ballroom hosting our prom (theme: I'd Die Without You, by P.M. Dawn -- what angsty teen chose this? I'll never know.).

What I remember: Ulysses had no money for dinner. We had to split a pasta plate Lady and the Tramp style, which I covered using my saved up earnings from my job as a library page. By the time we arrived at the hotel for the actual prom I was experiencing deep regret. I didn't know this guy, and I had not paused to think about what I actually wanted for myself with this milestone experience beyond getting dressed up and looking pretty. What I did know: I did not want to be around this guy. When we took formal photos, you could actually see me leaning away, because not only did his breath smell, his cologne did not mask his blossoming body odor. He had looked good in the store when I was 15, and now I was experiencing buyer's remorse.

Prom ended with the six of us outside, waiting for the limo to fetch us for the return trip home. Ulysses kept trying to lean in for a kiss and I kept dodging. I dreaded having to make that long drive back to drop him off. My mother got us from the limo drop off point, and when we got home, she told me she would be driving him back. She and I took up the front seats while he sat in the back. I had never been so thankful in my life. It was just the two of us in the house now, and we were both adjusting to the loss of my dad. I had seen how quickly she took action the morning after he died; selecting flower arrangements, notifying relatives and coworkers, and organizing the funeral. She didn't believe in keeping a body on ice for weeks which meant there were only a couple of days between his death and the funeral. She was good in a crisis, and I sometimes wonder what she might have been able to do with that skill if she'd established a professional career.

This was no different, and we dropped off Ulysses and went home. She never criticized my choice or asked what I had expected from that night. I think she must have seen the disappointment on my face and knew to step in and (literally) take the wheel. I regret not voicing my gratitude much later in life, so she could understand there was a time when she'd done something exactly right as my mother. This time she was the mother I needed, and I will always be grateful for that.

When you need a mother but not your mother.

Not long after my mother died, I remember my sister and I having a conversation. The sentiment was that we had moments where we still needed a mother, but the realization was we did not need OUR mother. She and I have talked at length about the shortcomings we witnessed in our mother while growing up and as adults. We've discussed how life might have been easier for us if we'd had a mother that was black, instead of one who was a white Italian immigrant painting the complexity of race relations in this country as something easily surmountable.

My biggest disappointment in my mother occured when I was twelve and a half. We were wrapping up a holiday visit to see relatives in Sardinia. When I was younger, we made month long summer trips every four years, but as my dad's jobs became better paying and more demanding, we began traveling for two week visits every two years. By this time my sister had exited the family vacations for adulthood -- a military career, a husband and a young family. This was our first visit without her. We stayed at my uncle's house with short day trips to sightsee and visit my other uncle, aunt and cousins. We were leaving on New Year's Eve, which coincided with my very first period.

I woke up in my little twin murphy bed in the guest bedroom I was sharing with my parents. A bright red stain marred the white sheets and seeped through into the cushions beneath. I was alarmed and mortified. I sensed this day was coming, as I'd had occasional brown discharge show up in the months before, a pre-period, if you will. I also received a sample of Always pads in the mail, and I'd read and re-read "Are You There God? It's Me Margaret" by Judy Blume. I understood what was supposed to happen but never got a rundown of what it's like when it happens to you.

My mother handled this by going through the house and sharing (in Italian, or more likely, Sardinian dialect), that I had started my period. She gave me four pads with a tiny adhesive tab at the front, and I placed one in my underwear. We had a flight from Sardinia to Rome, and then Rome to JFK. What we didn't anticipate was staying in a hotel room in Rome because our flight was so delayed we had to leave the following day. All I remember was the intense cramping, and quickly burning through those pads. When I asked for more, my mother told me that was all she had.

I assumed somehow, there would be more. I assumed, somehow, even with the unplanned overnight stay, my mother would venture out to a pharmacy and get more. Now that I'm a mother, it hurts even more, because I know that's what I would do for my kids.

She didn't. It became a Don't Ask, Don't Tell situation, which is how much of the uncomfortable situations went in my childhood. Lugging my suitcase around felt impossible with the cramps I experienced. I fabricated pads out of toilet paper, first in the hotel room, then in the airport, and then with the airplane bathroom provisions.

I never confronted her about this. I learned from other attempts that she didn't receive criticism well, or apologize. This would have resulted in, "I did the best I could," with no room for additional discussion. My sister regards these kinds of things with more compassion. She was really young, she usually says, acknowledging that my mother married our 34 year old father at 19. The unspoken part would have been her having to advocate for me and make a case to my dad that I needed supplies. My frustration was, what did anyone expect when they had not one but two daughters? This was something normal, natural, and even the language barrier wasn't an excuse to avoid buying what I needed.

Sometimes as a kid you realize how you're being treated is messed up, but you don't have the full vocabulary and experience to fully name all of the ways that make it so. But when you are a parent, and you hold the privilege of raising a brand new person from scratch, with the understanding that you have to teach, protect, advocate and love that new person, you gain a bigger understanding of the ways your own parents failed you. And in all of that, as a mother, I also recognize I've been a harsher judge of my own mother in comparison to my father.

Maybe my sister's compassion is the resolution. She was young, and being financially dependent and the less powerful partner in a marriage stunted her. The best I can do is look at the ways she failed me and do better for my own kids.

The Big Pushback

In the past few years I've read articles about how one could refuse to be weighed when visting the doctor. I don't even know why they bother with it if they aren't going to take into account body composition or other health factors. I know, the number on the scale is a quick, easy to obtain metric and at the same time we hear, "Don't put too much emphasis on the number on the scale!" See also: Pay attention to what you're eating, how much exercise you're getting and how your clothes are fitting. And yet... the number on the scale matters.

When that number kept relentlessly going up, and old tactics -- eating everything I usually did, just a little bit less, going easier on the desserts, walking regularly -- failed, I was baffled. When my lab results finally crept into prediabetic range, I knew something was amiss. I drastically changed how I ate, eliminating sugar and creamer from my coffee (yes, I put both in there!), tracking my protein intake, and increasing how much water I drank. I joined (okay, re-joined) the gym and hired a personal trainer. I was not going down that genetic path to Destination Diabetiss. I thought, what if I adjusted my diet as if I already had it? Like so many other things in life, why did it have to take a crisis for someone to want to change?

In a year, I lost 15 pounds. The monthly photos show my incremental progress and slowly shrinking waistline. Despite the advice that it takes about three months following changes to lower your A1C count, it took me a year. My genes are stubborn.

When I went to my OB/GYN office earlier this week for one of my many check ups in a long list of check ups (that will only increase as I get older), I decided I was not going to step on their scale. I entered the office brewing for a fight. I filled out their forms and voiced a complaint that they had my information already, and I didn't understand why I was providing it yet again, or why I needed to provide my insurance card when I had the same insurance last year. "Yes, we just want to make sure nothing's changed." "Whatever you say, data miners," I said with a hefty eyeroll (just kidding, I didn't say that). On these forms, there used to be a section to share how many sexual partners you've had. I wondered about the relevance of that. Did they really need to know your number? Did that affect how you would receive medical treatment? Did you have to do some kind of exponential formula to account for the idea that not only have you slept with a certain number of people, but you've slept with who those people have slept with, and so on? It made no sense. In addition to that, you get asked your relationship status. Oh sorry, is this Facebook or the doctor's office? It's complicated. Last year, when I was seprated but not yet divorced, there was no "separated" option. I'd been in that status longer than someone who had spent in an undergraduate institution earning a bachelor's degree and I didn't get a checkbox? I remember filling out the form in all caps with my commentary about that. This year the form had been updated. You could check "separated," which was funny, because I'm legitimately divorced now. No more limbo here! Another option was "Unknown," which I checked.

By the time I completed my patient information, and HIPAA and agreement to sign away the deed for my house if I missed an appointmennt without providing at least 24 hours notice, I was shuffled back to the exam room. I got the spiel, and the medical assistant asked me to step on the scale. Ah-ha, I thought, game on. Let's see what happens when you refuse to comply with the status quo.

"I'm not getting on the scale."

"We need to weigh you."

"Why?"

"Well, you haven't been here in a year and we need your weight."

"I'm not getting on the scale. What, you're going to weigh me with jeans on?"

"Well, we subtract two to three pounds for clothes," she said. (which is it, two or three? Do they weigh the clothes after you strip naked and put on the sad little patient gown?)

"Do I not have the right to refuse to be weighed?"

There was a pause. Aha. Question authority, people, especially when it's not actually authority but a medical care provider bullying you so they can fill in the blanks on their form.

She did not say no. She said, "I'm not trying to be difficult." Which, as a woman, I hate that she felt the need to say that. We are not difficult just because we ask for things.

"I'm not either," I said. "I have to have agency as a patient and advocate for myself. I can give you the weight from my scale. I was 162."

"That was this morning?"

"Yes," I said, even though it had been from the morning of the day before. What, we go from subtracting two to three pounds for clothes to suddenly caring about how recent it was? Oh, no, not from this morning, but fifteen years ago. Introducing the new series "Catfish: Medical office weigh in edition." Do we want to get into when their scale was calibrated, or if they care if you've already taken your morning dump? If you want to be precise, be precise in all areas, please!

She took my blood pressure and asked if it was usually lower than what she measured. "Yes," I said. Did you miss that we just went through this exchange where I had to fight entirely too hard for myself over something incredibly basic? What's missed is the psychological effect of the weathering we go through. Logically, I know the number on the scale doesn't matter, but when you are at a point in life where you are fighting your own gentics, and it no longer takes a week to lose a pound, but instead closer to four months, even the doctor's office weigh in can get to you. You can logically know you have done the work to set yourself on the right trajectory but that scale number could set off another tape reel in your head telling you there's been a setback in your progress. We can know that's not true but it doesn't necessarily prevent the rollercoaster of feelings you will have to endure. Pushing back was my way of skipping that noise. When I explained this to my personal trainer, a person with the ideal physique who puts me through rigorous workouts twice a week, she completely understood. "I may be a trainer, but I'm still a female," she said.

The appointment itself went well. I was trying out the nurse practitioner because I generally find they have a much more congenial bedside manner and are more attentive, and you can call them by their first name. I chose well, and I usually have a positive experience with the actual care providers. It's that gauntlet of paperwork (well, digital forms) in the front office followed by the insistence on weighing in and recording blood pressure that sinks me, but not this time.

Restoration in progress

When I got married, I did so with the understanding that I would change my last name. What I didn't do was thoroughly weigh how I felt about changing my last name, and I didn't know how to add more weight to what I wanted vs. what others wanted me to do. I got married in the El Paso courthouse, and my wedding ceremony followed a year later. This year served as my buffer between getting married and changing my name. As the prospect of doing that got closer to reality, I realized I had an internal conflict.

My husband and I discussed it, and his offering was to hyphenate. I never liked this solution because it's usually just the woman hyphenating, and where is the compromise or "partnership" in that? So I have to carry a clunky last name just to ensure mine isn't erased? That doesn't seem fair. My solution was to bump my original last name to my middle name (not "maiden" -- please let's dispense of this archaic bullshit term), so my initials transformed from "GMR" to "GRC." This was the best I could do to accommodate myself.

I didn't anticipate my mixed feelings, or how it would feel conflicting to look at things with my original name on them while carrying this new name, which wasn't "mine." Yes, you marry your spouse's family, but it still isn't your family. These people bring their own history, culture, and brand of dysfunction, and while you might carry their name, it's a bit like becoming a citizen in a new country. You live there now, but it's not truly "home."

What I'll never forget is the way he sulked when I hinted that maybe I wouldn't take his name, I'd just keep my own. I'll also never forget my mother-in-law spotting a checkbook of mine and commenting, "Giselle, you didn't change your name?" This was during the "buffer" period and instead of asking why she cared (because women are expected to not be the problem in that relationship with their husband's mother), I explained that I hadn't gotten around to it yet.

Changing your name legally is a series of tasks that occurs in sequence, starting with a trip to the social security office. I visited the one in El Paso with marriage license in hand, followed by the DMV, and last of all, I updated my passport. When I got divorced, I knew I would have to go through the same steps all over again. There wasn't an "off" switch, or a toggle that would revert my married name back to my original one. My divorce decree specifies my name change, and even if you spend the money for your divorce, you have to send a six dollar check to the county clerk to get a certified copy of your divorce decree. That was my first step, and I botched it. I sent the paper form, but missed the part where I had to include the check. They returned my request form noting that payment needed to be included. I tried again, sending in the same form, this time with the check. They sent documents back to me, and I scheduled my social security appointment online.

The day before I was set to go in, I reviewed the certified divorce decree and, to my horror, realized the first couple of pages were documents from someone else's divorce. The "certified" portion was an additional page in the back, with an official looking gold seal and the county clerk's signature. I flipped through the pages in disbelief, worried that I would be turned away for presenting someone else's paperwork. I noticed the certified page portion of the decree actually had the case number from my divorce. With a little magic called removing the staples from what the court sent me and attaching the printed out copy of the decree I received on the day of my divorce via email, I had a fix. I placed the correct documents into the manila envelope and put the envelope into the tote bag I use for work, which was where I was planning to go immediately after my appointment.

The following morning, I got there early. I couldn't remember if my appointment was for 9:20 or 9:40, so I showed up at 9, prepared to wait. There was already a crowd gathered outside of the social security office, which was situated in a small strip mall. There were two uniformed guards serving as the gatekeepers for the whole operation. They sorted people into two lines outside of the office: those with appointments lined up on the right, those without, lined up on the left. When the guard asked if I had an appointment, I said yes. The issue was, I could not remember the exact time, and I had failed to bring the post it note with the appointment confirmation number written on it. I did have my manila envelope with my cobbled together certified divorce decree and my driver's license, but I could tell it didn't matter. Before I went inside, the guard (a man), scolded me. "You can't take that in there," he said, referring to my purple 40 ounce knock off Stanley tumbler (courtesy of Aldi, IYKYK). "It's just water," I said. "It's too big! Put it in your car!" Was there a limit on what size container of water you could carry into the social security office? Were the rules from TSA airline security now bleeding into other federal facilities? I had parked around the corner in a Walgreens parking lot, there was no way I was going to go all the way back there just to stow my obnoxiously large vessel full of water in my car. In a moment of defiance, I placed the cup on the concrete beside the entrance, "I'll just put it here," I said. The guard surprised me by telling me to place it on the floor inside of the office space, next to the wall. I did, and then I went to sign in on the electronic kiosk for my appointment. When the machine produced the paper ticket with my number in line, the other guard, a woman, challenged me on my appointment. She had a list of names and appointment times, declared I didn't have an appointment, took my paper ticket from me, and dismissed me. It was such a disorienting experience, I questioned if I really did have an appointment or if I had imagined it.

This kind of treatment wasn't personal, either. Everyone waiting was treated like a suspect. The guards had Department of Homeland Security badges, and pistols holstered on their belts. What in the authoritarian regime was going on here? I left that non-appointment frazzled. I just wanted to change my name. Defeated and shaken, I collected my giant faux-Stanley tumbler and walked back to my car. This was nothing like the time consuming but unthreatening name change experience I had gone through twenty five years ago. There had been no armed guards deciding whether my appointment was legitimate or not. Back then going to the social security office was remiscent of visiting the DMV, not whatever this was.

Fortunately, I made not one but two appointments; the first had been a bust, but the second was scheduled to occur twelve days later, on a Monday morning. This time I had written down my appointment time, and I knew I had entered the key information from my divorce decree. On the Sunday before my second name change attempt, anxiety set in. What if I got turned away again? What if they noticed the divorce decree wasn't cleanly stapled with courthouse worthy staples, what if (insert unlikely but still possible scenario here)? If they turn me away, I'll just make another appointment, I told myself. Ultimately this wasn't important, it meant I would have to carry this last name that never quite felt like it was mine for just awhile longer. But it's the principalities.

The next morning, I busied myself with puttering around and cleaning up the house. This appointment wasn't until 11:10, which meant a lot of puttering, and a lot of time in my head. I remembered a time when my ex-husband shared how he and his friends had laughed over a female classmate of theirs married a man who took her name. He found it funny, and couldn't understand why a man would do this. When he shared with me, I understood he expected me to laugh right along with him. "I don't see what's so funny," I said. We talked about it, and to his credit, he checked his friends the next time one of them brought up this classmate and her husband, but only because I had called him out on it. When I thought more deeply about the implications behind finding it funny, I felt hurt. Dominance is baked into marriage and the individuals entering the marriage hold the responsibility to tailor the arrangement to suit their specific needs, regardless of what is written in the societal script. When the script heavily favors one member over the other, will they both be willing to meet in the middle? Here were these black men, who should have had a full understanding of the dehumanization that comes with taking on a "master's" name and erasing their own, yet they expected their wives to do exactly this. This reversed situation was an affront to their masculinity, and something to laugh about. Without saying it, the implication was, this man who had adopted his wife's last name as his own was a little bitch. And if this was how these guys thought, to the point of joking about this couple's decision as a group, what did they think of their own wives? Marriage is a property sale dressed up as a romantic endeavor, but there can be no true partnership unless both participants understand and agree that they are true equals. Expecting one person to delete their name and replace it with someone else's is not a compromise, but an expectation of self abandonment; we keep expecting this from women and then wondering why they lose their identities in their marriages. We marvel at the disproportionate percentage of women filing for divorce. The men in these situations will claim they were "blindsided," after all, the marriage was working just fine --for them.

A close friend texted me to check on me; she remembered my appointment was that morning. "Are you bringing your water?!!!" she asked. "I'll go thirsty," I replied. Another friend offered to call, and when he did, I admitted being angry at myself for changing my name when I didn't want to in the first place. He told me to give myself grace. "You made that decision based on the information you had at the time," he said, adding, "But things change."

I puttered around awhile longer, and then gathered my things for my appointment, which I hoped would be more boring DMVish and less Gestapo-y this time around. A creature of habit, I parked at Walgreens again, and hoofed the last block to the strip mall on foot. The crowd outside of the building was smaller than last time, and this time I had brought my notebook with my appointment time noted. I also wrote my name in the notebook for the guard to check against her list. My tumbler remained firmly planted in my car's cupholder.

When the guard checked me, she saw my name inside of my my notebook and agreed that I did have an appointment. I went inside to sign into the kiosk and get my ticket, and the guard ushered me back outside because there were no available seats in the waiting area. By the time there was a seat, the guard directed me back inside, and the first number I heard called out was two numbers after my ticket number. Oh no.

The friend who called me texted to check on my progress. "I have a ticket and I'm waiting," I wrote, cautious not to claim success. As the numbers being called kept going up, I talked to the guard again.

"These numbers are random," she said, "Go sit down, you'll get called." The woman sitting beside me shared her ticket number, which was five before mine. The numbers kept getting called, in sequence. This didn't appear to be random. To add to the confusion, the speaker system was one of those portable back yard party karaoke deals but when used in an office setting with hard surfaces, there's lots of reverb. Added to that, some of the social security employees had to struggle to pronounce certain names. And on top of that, there was no visual display showing which ticket was called and which desk was serving the customer. This place could have taken a few cues from the DMV.

After 40 minutes of waiting for our numbers to be called, my seat neighbor talked to the guard again. The guard acquiesced, and talked to one of the social security employees. My seat neighbor got called, and I figured I wasn't far behind. The guard spoke to someone at another desk and miracle of miracles, my name got called over the janky little speaker system. I gathered my documents and hurried over to my assigned desk.

"I called you earlier," the woman behind the desk said. "The guard told me to sit outside," I replied. I detected the tiniest eyeroll and suspected this wasn't the first time this had happened. I pulled out my documents and watched the woman behind the desk squint at my divorce decree, which specified and spelled out changing my married name to my original name.

"What are you changing it to?" the woman asked.

In a brief moment of wisdom, I had also grabbed a copy of my birth certificate before leaving the house that morning. Even though it wasn't required, I figured it would be a helpful reference instead of making someone scan through divorce decree lawyerese. I pushed the birth certificate under the plexiglass that separated us. "It's going to look like the name here," I said.

In less than ten minutes, it was done. She handed me a receipt which stated that I would receive the new card within two weeks. There was other information on the receipt, too. You can request a card replacement three times within a year, and you can replace your card ten times in your entire life. Who came up with this stuff, I wondered. And, when did you need a social security card anyway? I had lost both of my previous ones ages ago.

This morning, less than a week later, I checked the mail and found my new social security card waiting for me, with my new old name on it.

Name change process, zero out of five stars, do not recommend.

When your relationship with your country is full of red flags

I recently discussed what it feels like to be a person of a certain demographic to a coworker. I said we are all given these vehicles (our physical bodies), and the way we present ourselves to the world is represented first by these "vehicles" we are driving. Sure, you can do some things to modify your vehicle, but overall appearance and first impression is of the color, make and model of this vehicle, one you had no choice in selecting. People may treat you differently based on the vehicle you're driving, and they may treat others better based on their personal vehicle preference. My main point to this coworker was, we can know these things are happening, but we can not definitively prove it's because of their bias. This is what microaggressions feel like. This is what not getting a job might feel like. This is what Diversity, Equity and Inclusion measures were intended to alleviate.

We are experiencing a presidential administration that might as well say, "We're going to play in your face and there's nothing you can do about it." This is a place where the base assumption is, if you're not a white, Christian (let's add the quiet part here: Nationalist), heterosexual male, you didn't earn your high ranking position. The default assumption is that you aren't qualified, and this is why so many of us harbor symptoms of impostor syndrome and feelings of not belonging. We are witnessing things occurring that, if Barack Obama had done any of this, he would have been impeached immediately, and removed from office. Why can't we prove it? Because we also know if Barack Obama had arrived as as a candidate the way 2016 Trump had arrived, he would not have been a candidate. We wouldn't even have known his name because he would never have reached any scenario for public consideration. Again, we can't prove this, but we know it.

We are witnessing that all of the hand wringing over caring about the Constitution, while showing that our rights don't matter. We heard cries for "merit-based" selections that were bullshit, a ruse to show us this argument was a mere distraction, a way to get people buy into the story that unqualified people were unfairly taking jobs and preventing submediocity true talent from succeeding, while we watch a slew of clearly unqualified people stepping into high level positions without any of the ever-important merit we've heard so much about. It's frustrating to watch, but whenever these things happen, as a black woman, it feels oddly validating. Everyone sees what we've suspected all along.

My 19 year old often feels despair about all of it. She sees a country that doesn't value its citizens, or care about equality, and in fact the lack of equality is the point, and serves as the foundation of so much of our country's prosperity. We have conversations about the need for a reckoning that we know will never happen. We can see it in the burning of a plantation and the memes that followed. On one Facebook friend's wall, she posted about it, explaining there was no need to rebuild, and that she didn't feel bad for the owners. It was her wall, and her opinion. Even with this, a (white male) friend commented, judging her for her lack of sympathy over the property damage. Despite paragraphs of explaining there would be no sympathy for people who knowingly bought a property with a history of the atrocities that accompany American slavery, and turned it into a wedding venue; that the human suffering represented by that structure far outweighed someone's loss of property. Why is this so hard to understand? Why do so many feel entitled to request empathy from us, when they have no capacity to be empathetic towards us regarding our country's history, regarding the way people are so eager to seek a reason to explain or justify when a black person is murdered by the police, or to insist when our president, who happens to be black, was not born here.

I know Trump was elected as backlash to having a black president. I sometimes ask myself if it was worth having eight years of an Obama presidency when it meant we've gone through three election cycles with Trump on the ticket, and two terms. I don't have an answer, and I don't know if I ever will. I remember the hope and excitement when Barack Obama was elected. I remember my mother's joy as she said, "I feel like he's my son." I remember how rosy and optimistic I felt. This past November, I felt despair, fear, and like I had been duped because I bought into the ideals we use as a selling point for our country. At nearly 50, I have to accept and believe the darker reality -- the same way we face the truth about relationships that aren't working for us. You can't fall in love with potential.

At my job (and many other people's jobs, I'm sure), we are urged not to talk politics. Again, this is part of the problem, isn't it? Not talking about it, going along to get along. The culture of this country encourages behavior intended to avoid resolving the root problem. That funny thing happens -- the thing you're familiar with if you've ever been in a relationship where an issue keeps recurring without resolution, to the point that the issue becomes old and beyond the statute of limitations -- you become the problem for bringing up that "old shit." It's all old shit -- the racism, the class disparity, the need to subjugate women in a way that does not allow them to have bodily autonomy -- all things intended to get us back to giving lipservice that we value equality, while setting the stage to cultivate the opposite.