What are words for?
Words are evil little minions created in our mind to fuck with every being and cell we have.. They can destroy in a heartbeat or they can make love out of the air.

“Stop staring at the ground…
I can practically see your face.”

Yes, I tell myself this on a regular basis. These words killed me as a teen. I wake up every birthday, and this is the first song in my head.
I’m still staring at the floor.

The storm came and it was another shower, and guess what?????
I’m still fucking here.

I’m about to put my heart on paper.

Some will cry, some will hate me… Some, Some, Some…Nah I doubt anyone will hate me… HA!

Why, then? Because if my life reaches just one person, then nothing I do is in vain.
So, let’s reverse here…

Spiraling down, backwards, back into the rabbit hole… Oh yeah safety in the quiet abyss.
I had to think long and hard whether or not to write about this particular subject, but it’s rather important to be honest with myself, although calling someone out was not my intention, I did indeed finally tell this person how they had hurt me. They had no clue – and although my intention at first was to make them pay, that isn’t who I am now. So, HONESTY worked. I forgave them. They didn’t know me, or my past, or how what they said was so damaging to my psyche.

I was told during my birthday week:
“You are more interesting now then when you were young and hot.”
Now of course this person back tracked, and told me what a beautiful soul I was…BUT THEY MISSED THE POINT.
(For the record,) I’m a recovering anorexic, and that’s a bullshit thing to say to someone who is having horrible self esteem issues about their weight their looks etc…
It took everything in my power, and higher power, to let go and let God.
A dear close friend has a saying about “removing the person that fucks with your sobriety”. I did that…until I was ready to confront and deal of course. (And so I) hurt them back in return – but really it was just ignoring them until the pain of the statement didn’t sting.
I do understand what they were trying to say, but it was the king of all backhanded compliments, and I’m sorry – it was truly a fucked up thing to say, whether they meant well or not.

But I had to think long and hard whether or not it would affect my writing. I had been sent back to a image repairing brain function.. I couldn’t write.. I could barely eat. I already have gastritis and this didn’t make eating to cure it any better.

So, in the words of “Boris”:
I did “More reflecting then a mirrored disco ball”.

In order to grow the fuck up, I needed to grow the fuck out of a few issues.
Weight.
Who gives a fuck what I weigh? I’m 45 and happy to be alive. I may not be sexy and 21 anymore but we’ll get to that…
I’m only as old as I let myself act.
What the hell does a 45 year old act like anyway?
So let’s go back. Way, way, way back.

Another famous quote of Boris’s:
“No one knew me, they only knew of me”.

When he first added me on Myspace, I gotta say that quote was why I accepted his friend request. I cried reading that – it made my day.
Who knew 6 years later I’d be repeating it to myself?
The people I met along the way called me friend. I hardly called anyone friend back, and I have the nameless pics to prove it. My shyness evolved into a bitter quiet shell. The more I starved, the more anger I stored inside, to the point where the ones I let in, I let in for life – and the ones on the outside were to look at, like pretty pictures.
God forbid I pick up drinking which would make me less shy, and able to talk and spill my life out.
The few times I drank to oblivion, I did just that, and fear those stories coming back to haunt me.

Case in point; there is a St. Timothy and the toilet story that I have no idea what it’s about. All I know is that a drag queen named St. Timothy fished me out of the toilet at DNA, and helped me get a cab. He carried me to the bar and asked if anyone knew me – the little drowned drunk rat I had become. Everyone did. I don’t recall any of this of course… It’s all urban legend to me. I imagine that a lot of people feared the “Saving Gidget job”.
I do however, remember when all the years of keeping my mouth shut culminated in a big “please help me” night.
This will explain so much, but first we need to go back further.

OK – Sherman, Peabody…Let’s do this…
I was a kid when I stopped eating.
A guy in high school told me I had big shoulders for a skinny girl, so I took a picture of Mary Tyler Moore’s skinny arms and said to myself that I needed to get between here and there. I will note that I weighed ninety pounds at the time. ‘No sunken chest bones’ was my rule – I could do this without ever getting caught if I follow the rules. Rule number two: Don’t let them in. If you let them in, they will tell on you.
Trust issue established.
You do of course break the rules time to time and they all disappoint you. Look around – Who is still there? Yeah I still trust them. They won.
I wore all black, and not in a goth way. I wasn’t too feminine, and I had either a shaved head or a Mohawk. I made plans in my head that very few people knew about. I had a Kinks album called “Give the people what they want”. What a beautiful mantra for a kid who wanted to be a shell.
Not to be conceited, but I really enjoyed the catcalls and the pedestal. I didn’t have to be anything but mysterious, so the shyness could delve in the background for a bit.
On my eighteenth birthday I got to 87 pounds. I was built like a hot Japanese schoolgirl in my eyes – the full anime body. So I went out and bought this gorgeous lemon yellow Japanese dress and dyed my hair to match. Then, in typical Gidge fashion, I did my makeup like Priss in “Blade Runner”
I wore 4 inch lemon yellow strappy gladiator sandals and black fishnets…It was a fucking statement. Two days later I moved to New Jersey.
The movie makeup thing had been a standard for me. It was a well thought out talent where people didn’t have to know me. I would embody a character from a movie, and people thought that is who I was. It was clearly a full on “I’m nuts” move. Most of the time, it was Riff Randall. It was a job I shared with my friend Leslie in high school… Riff one and Riff two.
I was so much like Riff in real life a lot of people thought it was an act, yet sometimes it was the real me.
I had a secret life.

In Jersey, I would put on my glasses and go hang out in libraries and coffee houses and write. I worked at Macy’s (Bamberger’s) and wore designer clothes. I was told I was pretty all the time and worked it.

When I got home I continued to be the mysterious weird one. It was my act, and I loved it. No one knew what I would come up with next.
But I did have some very close friends who I would yap non -stop to, with whom I was able to be open. Inside of me I was a good person. I had a full soul. I made cookies and sent flowers. I wrote love notes to my friends telling them all how important they were. I worked at soup kitchens and in between getting my photo degree I was getting an early childhood education degree. I wanted to teach special education kids. I baby sat, and I had kids I watched/ adopted and took out to theme parks and bowling etc…

My pet project really was Gene.
Damn I loved him. I never once had to hide myself from him – he saw me at my worst. He knew I could pee.
(I once heard a conversation where a guy asked another guy if I shat or peed, ‘cause I was “as plastic as all get out”.)
He lived with his mom and was so much like me that it killed me to see his hurting. We baked cookies. We did nice things and we never had to brag because we knew what we did and we kept it to ourselves. Of all the things I miss, I miss baking cookies with him.
Case in point – I was always at his house sleeping over. He was on the phone with his friend and I heard Gene talk about my fricken’ hair. Apparently the guy said I couldn’t go to 7-11 for smokes without crimping my hair first. Gene of course defended me, and said, “Dude, seriously, she got smokes last night and her hair wasn’t crimped… And I bet she’d go get me a slurpee in her underwear if I needed it that bad.. Let me wake her and ask.”
And I would have.

But the cast was set. I was no longer a human.
That bothered me for years that I wasn’t thought about in a human fashion.
So instead of making me human, I became more plastic.
Who cares if I cried when I was alone,and had crushes on people who didn’t realize I was alive? My heart was becoming a rock, and I was ok with that.
No-one knew that during the day I played with little kids, or did fields trips with my mom’s school, etc., as long as they were partially enthralled, or afraid I was ok…
My friends who knew me well, and continue to know me well, sometime referred to it as “the eggshell times”. I was so hungry and mean that I scared them in large crowds. I could argue at the drop of a hat. But the bottom line is I loved them and I meant well.

I finally broke down in the car with Rachelanne once. Just me, and her, no other of our “Clairol ad” friends…real talk. I told her how much she meant to me that she never judged me and I wanted to marry her and have her in my life forever. She was honest enough to tell me the truth about the fear I invoked, that a lot of people were afraid to tell me things. I never realized I was a scary being until that moment, and damn did it make her incredibly sexy for telling me that. If you ever want to sleep with a friend, wow, the moment they tell you that you scare the shit out of them, is just the right moment really.
I’m not gay, but damn, truth is sexy.

I quit college around that point and tried to be a little nicer.
Sorta.
I became two people really over this time. Two Gidgets.
All of that needed to converge. It took a bit, but it did.

When I got better, and over the anorexia, I seemed to have a little better control over the anger…but the stone was cast – the mold was made. I cried more over stupid things that people said about me. I really did care how much they all seemed to forget I was human. I managed to get 86’ed from clubs for actually opening my mouth and talking, because when shyness speaks, you say strange things to make conversation…and sometimes you say really stupid things. At the time, you have no idea how stupid, because you are just talking and making conversation, right? Oops…
How am I supposed to forgive myself for shit I did? Yeah oops… sorry… my bad…
So finally, one night I went to a club, where the object of a 6 year crush was playing.
I finally told him I had a crush on him, and wham… slam… I was told that he wasn’t in my ballpark. He was too fucked up to even be around me. I was Gidget – How the hell could Gidget LIKE anyone..????
Broke my heart.
So I went to the bar.
I drank about ten shots of Jager and got 86’ed.
I think the part where my friend Mike was told, “Take the little angry troll home before she says something really awful she regrets” was the kick off point.
Picture Gidget in a little go-go dress and knee high boots, legs swinging away, being swung over the shoulders of a 6’6” friend, and carried home across the alley.
Then said friend gave me a fucking earful. He told me about how many people I had dissed in my life, all in all ignoring the real friends who might actually LIKE me.
My crush was more important than the ones people might have had on me. I needed to take off the damn sunglasses I wore in the dark and see the real world. It wasn’t all about me. I think I gave him an anxiety attack after I kicked him in the balls, and for 13 years we never talked about it, or even talked – and hey, guess what?
He is still my friend.
As is the crushing-crush.

Plastic…
A beautiful word, yet totally unnecessary and probably made of poison.
I changed. I got a full time job and ended up married with kids.
Recently after the back handed compliment, a person wrote on my comments that he had been afraid to talk to me. A cute guy afraid to talk to me. I blew a lifetime away with the FAKE Gidge stuff.
But to go back and realize what might have been, is moot.
It’s how it affects me now (that matters).
You can want to live in the past, but when you really look back to it, do you want to live there or make it better? Do you want to go back because it felt safe? It wasn’t safe.
Here’s the truth:
If I had shown my real true self, would I be where I am? Would I write? Would I know bands? Would I have had any balls to get as far as I am today, or would people have walked all over me?
YES, walked.
The real me, under the plastic.
That is who I am still am today.
Shy as fuck.
I have a fucking heart of gold – maybe even platinum at times.
I am a good person.
I love kids, and rainbows, and girl movies.
I worry what others think of me.
I have an insecure side.
I cry when my friends are hurting.
I have trust issues.
My children have disabilities, and I protect them like the mama bear that I am.
I will do anything for anyone hurting, and not ask for anything in return, but do expect a “thank you”.
I will make you soup, and watch bad movies with you when you are sick.
The ones that are in will stay in for life. They have a best friend for life who will do anything for them, and they love me for that…Unconditionally.
And this heart of mine allowed me to forgive the back handed compliment instead of walking away forever.
I hate when people hurt.
I am not miss plastic scenester in SF.
I am not ‘THE GIDGET’… I am Gidget.

So the last month I realized that the past is there for a reason. If we do not make mistakes we do not learn from them. I don’t want to be that person ever again. On Facebook everyone is not a real person, so if I don’t show the real me there, it just doesn’t matter.
I have REAL friends who I love with all my heart who know me, and vice versa.
Time to grow up.

In college, I took a class in philosophy. It was taught by an ex monk who I adored. I wrote quotes on all my binders, books, etc. I read Satre (Sartre),and Camu (Camus) and really made the second part of me well lived and well thought. I didn’t need to think hard, the “Thinkers” had already had done that for me.
The best Philosopher of all time was “Winnie the Pooh”. Seriously. Ok, and “Kermit”
My Facebook is full of song lyrics and quotes.
I feel smart when I read them. I start each day off on “Thinkexist .com”.. And “Quote Garden”. I find a quote I carry through the day and I work it. Some of it makes me feel pretentious, so I keep it to myself.
So to make a very long story short, you live once. You can live it as a TV show and just be a character, or you can live it on your own terms.
In that aspect, I am more interesting now…but I’ll admit, being hot wouldn’t hurt…

I will leave you with a quote from a book that I found this on a postcard in my stuff. I must have written it down in 1990,or thereabouts…It’s from “Lord Of The Rings”

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king”