Liar

There is a commandment somewhere on the tablets the anthropologists can't manage to find. It says (reportedly): don't lie.

Oh.

Eek.

I lie all the time. I do it to protect other people from truths I fear people cannot - or should not have to - handle.

Sometimes I lie because the truth would break the hearts of people I love.

But I also lie to make money. (I have two jobs and neither employers knows the other exists).

Other times I lie about where I am going (Kate doesn't need to know that I am going out at 9pm for a cheap bottle of hootch because I can't sleep and oh dear God please tell me that in heaven, everyone sleeps, all the time. Please? Thank you).

My lying concerns me. It is true that I can go to confession and bore some sweet old priest with a list of all the times I told my brother I was really feeling fine, and thank you for asking, when the truth was I was sharpening my knives and looking for a way to commit the deed - and still look pretty in the casket.

But we - the priest and I - would be there in that hot and uncomfortable cell for a long time if I gave all this information. And sometimes I think to myself: how terrible for the priest who has to listen to people's sins.

"Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been three months since my last confession. Twice I drank a bottle of Night Train and ran naked through Cooper's Square. Nine times I interfered with myself while thinking of Anna Nicole. I hate animals and children because they are loud and smelly. I rarely bathe and I have not flossed in a year. Oh! And I got fired from my job for drunkenness and something they call sexual harassment. Bastards! Is that their sin, or mine? Okay! That about covers it. What's the penance?"

Where was I?

Oh. My lying. There has been something (lately) that I lie about all the time, to everyone. Even to Lindsey.



Sometimes when work is slow and I have the inclination, I go to Woodlawn - all the way up there in the Bronx. There, I sit in the cemetery (it's a big one). Because my parents don't have graves, looking at those of other people gives me peace. I do not know the people buried at Woodlawn, but I wonder who those people - all those people - are. And I hope they don't mind that I come and sit with them, even though my visits are for my own benefit - that at best, their resting places are a proxy for the graves of my deceased parents.

It is not a sadness thing. I don't go up there and cry or cling to a stranger's headstone. But I do spend hours and hours there. I sit and think about there people buried there, and I wonder who they are, and I ask myself if I could talk to them, what one thing they wished they had done differently before it was all over.

My mother, who went out with real style, said on her deathbed, "I wish I had worried less and laughed more."

My father probably said something but I'll never know what it was. I wasn't there. But I can damn sure tell you what he would have done differently, and if you have been reading my internet diary this long, you know, too.

But that was not my point.

Lying. I lie far more than my conscience allows.

How much lying do you do? Do you have regrets? And if lying is ever legal, when? why? how?

Explanations

Hi!

I have complained a lot lately, and I should (perhaps) explain myself. Or at least elaborate on certain circumstances that (sometimes, but not always) threaten my equanimity.


Issue the first: Living situation.

After my dad died and the final round of bills associated with his illness and death hit my mailbox, I realized there was about 25 cents worth of financial cushion between me and total ruin. Many people, including you, helped me avoid actually presenting myself at the courthouse for judgment with my remaining one (or two) quarters. Instead, I moved in with a couple in their 70s who needed help cleaning out their house so they could move to a smaller one. Result: Nina starts getting financially better off, and the couple has someone around to do basically whatever they can dream up for her to do. Go ahead and notice that "help cleaning out their house" was about the last thing they actually wanted Nina to do, and forgive Nina for not elaborating on what they really wanted. Use your imagination. (Stop that! Don't be so gross). Result: frustration. But also a fair amount of comedy, because whenever you move in with new people who are absolutely nothing like you, funny things happen. Like the day when I brought Liam over and Bob refused to believe Liam was boy because Liam is so pretty. And so for the entirety of the visit, Bob called Liam "girlfriend" - which offended Liam so much he just sat down and cried. Awesome.

Issue the second: Bob's untimely exit.

Death finds me. Bob and Kate were on vacation in Montenegro, Bob came down with a little itty bitty infection and as sometimes happens when people are 76, the infection got really big, and Bob died. If you read the preceding paragraph, you know that "cleaning out the house" was low on Bob and Kate's list of things for me to do for them. In fact, it never made the list. So you can infer that a good portion of the preparations for getting Bob properly memorialized and publicly adored were left to me. Now, to be fair, I didn't do that much because there was a mountain of things to do. I only did what a person could do in twelve hours a day for the 10 days leading up to the funeral. Did my job get done? Oh, sure. But only because I skipped the heavenly sleep inducing medicine and crammed it all in - or because I snuck upstairs for 10 minutes here or there to grade a test or a paper. In the end, we buried Bob a month after he was repatriated - an event that turned out to be just about as dramatic and emotionally wrenching as the funeral. Here's another picture for you:



Issue the third: My sister.

Since my father died, I have removed my step mother and every other person associated with her from my life with surgical finality and precision. My sister called me last week, and she was hysterical because she had just found out that my dad stopped contributing money to her IRA when he got married. When she told me this, I said, "Duh. You didn't know that?" And then I carefully and tactfully explained to her that our dad really did disinherit us and that I thought she might really might be able to get her brain around it if she simply read the will, of which I have a copy. Then suddenly she said, "I am less and less ok with the will." To which I said "Then perhaps you should remove your nose from that bitch's ass crack and join the rest of your family -- you know, the other forty or so odd people who are united in their hatred of the bitch dad married. And then my sister said, without a trace of irony "If I do that she won't leave me any of dad's money when she dies."

DUH. SHE IS NOT GOING TO LEAVE YOU ANY MONEY, NO MATTER HOW DEEP YOUR BURY YOU NOSE IN HER ASS CRACK. GROW UP.

And then I had to carefully and tactfully explain to my sister why I can have no further contact with her as long as she continues to betray her entire family all for a chance at getting dad's money. Her response was "Well, you and I have never had much in common anyway. Bye."


Issue the fourth: my job.

I had a great meeting with my boss this week. Awesomely good. It turns out that despite all my fears to the contrary, I am not on the short list to be laid off. And they are not even that annoyed with me because I live in New York. Whee! Except not. For those of you unaware of the history, my dad met the woman he eventually chucked us in the wood chipper for because I introduced him to her. She was my boss at the job I still have. Think about that for a minute. Ok that is enough; you can stop now. After my current boss gave me all this good news about my job security, she told me that I have a new supervisor (which in this case is a mini-boss). And guess who it is? It is the only person at Sweet Little College who still keeps in touch with my step mother. So it's clear: I have surgically removed everyone connected to that bitch from my life - even my sister. And now, because God is apparently not done shredding me yet, I am FORCED to have professional contact with one of my step mother's best friends. And I can't do anything about it. Not one thing.


And so that is why lately I am dramatic and self pitying. I guess you didn't need all this explanation and I suppose I could have written more stuff about being attracted to inappropriate people, but hey, at least now you know why I still require big piles of sedating drugs to sleep at night. The fun just keeps on coming.


Oh but in case it is not clear: I am fine. Those meds really work.

Love,

Nina

Oh Dear Jesus God have Mercy

I will explain later why many families had made the last 3 weeks of my life... challenging. For now, I leave you only this:




A preamble to the photograph I mean to post about the burial.


More on that later.

What we know

Some smart person somewhere said that a miracle is that which inspires faith. Many of you are already aware that my own stockpile of faith has been under serious assault since like, um, 2006, year of the bitchening. Life has been... rugged. And not at all scenic.

Yet another terrible and unexpected thing has happened, as you know: Bob, of Bob and Kate's Asylum for Wayward (Middle-Aged) Women, died this week. Of all the things I thought might happen today, Bob leaving us was in the basement. I knew he was feeling unwell but I never thought that he might be checking out.

I moved here out of necessity; I was absolutely broke after my own father died, and Bob and Kate agreed to this arrangement because they had room for another person and they thought I could be of some help. Well, I have been here three months. I have helped, I guess. Somewhat. For the most part, however, I have felt unequal to giving Bob and Kate the kind of help they really need. Bob needed someone to be available to help him 24/7. Kate needed someone to tie up loose ends and errands for her so she could care for Bill.

I did the best I could. Often I felt my best was not good enough. Many times I wondered how all this would turn out.

Shame on me. If I had been paying any kind of attention, I would have known that Bob wasn't well. If I had any kind of sense, I would see that Kate is well and able bodied and Bob was in a wheelchair. I would have seen Bob sleeping 16 hours a day and I would have noticed how little he ate.

I didn't notice any of these things because I wrongly believed that I had met my death quota for some uncalculable amount of time. DUH. And yet the DUH factor has left me feeling detached and philosophical about Bob's death, even though I feel on some level absolutely sick about it.

And then last night I came back from the funerary planning session to find that in fact, I can have two people I adore die in the same week. Lisa left us late last night.

And when I got that piece of news I cried until my contacts popped out like shrinky dinks. I have tried to explain to people who I am crying over and it all comes out wrong. "She was a person who I never met but she was awesomely funny and smart and gorgeous and wise and well, perfectly excellent. I never met her. But I want her back. Very. Badly."

No one knows this feeling except for other bloggers. My brother and his wife find it distressingly post-modern and hopelessly dorky that I have friends I have never met that I count among my top echelon of most beloved people. My in person friends who don't blog just stare at me blankly. Then they say something to the effect of: "Hold up. We went to college together. I knew you when you used to do upside funnels at frat parties. I have cleaned up your vomit. How is she like, in my weight class, friend wise?"

And I can't explain that. At least for today, I am too teary eyed and distracted. And then part of me still thinks it can't be true because I already had someone die THIS WEEK.

What the f? Seriously.

If you are of the praying kind, just say something, anything to the almighty. Say something about Bob. Say something about Lisa. Each of them were excellent examples of holding up gracefully under terrible circumstances and both, for me, inspired faith in the most rocky and unlikely territory. That makes each of them, in their different ways, a miracle.