So I may have mentioned before that I read other people’s blogs.  Guilty.  The Bitch reads blogs all fucking day, sacrificing her precious eyeballs for you people.  Fucking ungrateful.  And the Bitch is like an Internet Sponge, soaking up all the crap awesomeness that’s floating around out there.  And lately I’ve been running across some really awesome stuff, at least when measured by the Bitch-O-Meter.  Take this one.  This guy Tim starts off talking about words, and then look what happened!  First he totally pisses me off by telling me to “mind my language” (as if!) and then he gets all wise and shit and starts saying stuff that makes sense.  So go read it.

Fuck, I don’t mean now. Finish THIS post first, and THEN click. *Eyeroll*

Anyway.  I got to the end of Tim’s post where he’s talking about phrases to use instead of the garbage some of us usually fill our heads with, and when I came to “I want…”, fucking lightbulbs were exploding ALL OVER.  Seriously!  You know that mythical “aha!” moment we’re supposed to have when we think of something brilliant?  Well, picture that times like a thousand, because The Bitch is THAT brilliant.  Brilliant times a thousand.  And that’s like a hundredth of the actual lightbulbs.

I want.

Say that a couple of times, will you?

I want.

How does that feel?  Kind of weird, right?

See, the thing is, we’re all sort of fucked up when to comes to “I want.”  Lots of us, when we’re kids or something, are told in one way or another that saying “I want” is a bad thing.  Selfish, maybe.  We should think of others, not ourselves.  Think of those poor starving kids in China while you choke down those cold congealed peas!  And next time eat everything on your plate!

So “I want” has judgments.

And then we put “I want” away.  We don’t know what we want, because we’ve hidden it away in a dark closet somewhere.

Or, we go crazy with “I want.”  We run up enormous credit bills filled with “I want,” each trying to make a dent in the emptiness we feel inside.  We fill bigger and bigger houses with boatloads of crap destined to take over our landfills, and still it’s not enough.  We still feel that emptiness, even when surrounded by everything we thought we wanted.

The trouble is, we still don’t know what we want.  We’re running after something, sure, but we haven’t gotten to the heart of it.  “I want” is still hidden.  It’s underneath that pile of crap, hidden below a stack of credit card statements.

Oh, we talk about what we want all the time.  “I want world peace!” we chirp, or “I want a warm house in a safe neighborhood where I can raise my family!”  We talk about wanting stuff, but it’s the stuff that it’s okay to say we want.  These things are socially acceptable, so we are conditioned to want them.  A 4 bedroom 2.5 bath house in the suburbs, 1.7 kids, an iPhone and a Prius.  That’s what we want.  And while we’re at it, we want good government, adequate and available health care, world peace, an end to climate change, our health, and maybe some more Doritos.

We want what everyone else wants because it’s okay to want that.

But we still don’t know what WE want.

What do you want?

Feel that?  You had to take a deep breath, didn’t you?  You know why?

Because you don’t know what you want.

Most of us don’t know what we REALLY want.  Knowing what you want takes WORK.  You have to dig deep.  You think about what you want and then you go deeper:  WHY do you want that?  And digging deeper takes guts.  It takes courage.  It takes the strength to really look at yourself and answer questions with honesty.  And most of us aren’t all that willing to do that.  It’s hard.  It brings stuff up.  It feels icky.  And it reveals answers that may not fit within the image of ourselves we thought we had.  It reveals a person we didn’t know we were.

Is that what you want?

Do you want to find out who you really are?

Then start asking yourself, What do I want? And start listening to the answers.

Sigh.

You know that voice?  The one in your head?  The voice in your head that tells you stuff?  You know the one I mean.  You’ve been listening to that little fucker for years now, and I am here to tell you that it is EATING ALL YOUR BRAIN CELLS.

This is the voice I mean.  Tell me this isn’t familiar to you.  ONE of these is in your head, almost guaranteed.

1.  You’re so fat.  Look at you, you’re hideous in these clothes!  Ugh, everyone can see how you look, you’re just huge!  Nothing hides it, you are so fat.  Fat and lumpy and ugly.  Fat, fat, fat.

2.  You’re a failure.  Nothing you do ever goes right.  Everything you do is wrong.  You can never do anything.  You never finish anything.  You might as well not even bother trying anymore, because you’ll just fail again.

3.  God you’re ugly.  Ugly as hell.  Look at you.  No one will ever love you like that.  You are ug-LEE, dude.  Ugly.

4.  No one fucking likes you.  They’re just pretending.  People can’t stand you.  They whisper behind your back; they’re always talking about you.  See how they turn around when you come in the room?  They can’t stand you.

5.  Why do you even exist?  You can’t do anything right, you’re fat, you’re ugly, no one even likes you.  Useless.  What’s the point?  You’re better off dead.

Yo, people, I’m like fucking depressed after typing that shit.  You know how that gets to you?  I mean, somewhere inside you know it isn’t true, but then you hear that voice, the voice that sounds like YOU, and you go, “Well, maybe…” and then you open up all kinds of trouble right there.  You start believing what you’re hearing, and you tell yourself that the stupid fucking voice in your head is more real than what you feel way deep down inside.

Mind fuck.

It’s a form of karma.  Karma with the self.  You create this situation that ends up limiting your own choices, because you become so paralyzed in the trance of that voice that’s you and not-you at the same time, and then all of a sudden you’re the deer in the headlights.  Stopped cold.  Staring blindly into the lights of the oncoming car that’s rushing toward you, about to crush your skull and return you to the Source of All That Is.

Except you weren’t quite ready to be dead yet, so you just ACT as if you were dead.  Because you’re now a fucking ZOMBIE and you can’t think for yourself because you’re now in the grip of that stupid fucking voice.  The voice that’s only real because you’ve tricked yourself into believing it is.

Well, fucking stop it, will you?

Except it’s not that easy, is it?  You’ve come to rely on that voice.  You’re used to it.  You think it’s real, more real than that OTHER voice way down deep inside, the one that should be fucking shouting but instead just emits a pathetic little peep of doubt from time to time.

So you have to train yourself to stop listening.  It’s not easy, people, I won’t lie to you.  But this is what you can do.  You’re going to trick yourself again, see?  Just  like you did a long long time ago when this little fucker started talking to you and you started believing it.  But that was a long time ago and you’re a different person now.  You’re older and you’re wiser and you’re better equipped to choose the soundtrack that plays in your head.

Okay, from now on, every time you hear anything negative in your head, the very beginning of that narrative you know so well, just shout out a big “No!”

“NO!”

That’s all it takes.

Because you are choosing now which voice you will believe.

You are choosing now, and you can do this.  Just start with “no.”  Saying “no” will open up a new door, one that you closed a long time ago.  The door is still there and it’s been there all this time but you weren’t using it.  So you know where to go once you get the door open.  Just open the door with a “no,” and things will start to change.  It takes time.  You have to do this over and over.  But once you get the door open with your “no,” you can start a new narrative, one filled with things you like.

1.  You have everything you need inside you, and you always did.

2.  You are an amazing person.

3.  There is a glow of energy around you, and people notice it.

[One caveat here.  You know the fortune cookie joke, the one where at the end of reading any fortune you add the words "in bed"?  Be sure you are not adding Evil Fortune Cookie Crap to the end of your new sentences.  Do NOT, for instance, do this:  "You have everything you need inside you, and you always did but you're such a fuck-up that you failed to see this all this time and you suck!  You FAIL!"]

See?  Don’t do that last bit.

Need extra help?  Cover your ears with your hands, and start just singing something nonsensical.  ANYTHING to get your mind off that old voice and the crap it tells you.  (Just don’t make it “Feelings” unless you want The Bitch to start stabbing herself repeatedly in the eye with the business end of a USB cord.)

How long does this take?  Depends.  It took you awhile to get to this point, so undoing your own mind-fuck takes some time.  But you should start noticing changes.  And seriously, this is your chance to give yourself a gift that’s anything you want.  Anyone you want to be, that you know deep down you really are, that’s what you want this new-old voice to be telling you.  That’s the voice that never left you, that was always there, but you forgot about it.  Pay attention to it.  Open that door again and let it out to play.

You won’t regret it.

(Fuck, Bitch, where have you been?)

Well, have you looked here?  That’s right, people, The Bitch does guest posts.  Call me if you want things shaken up over at your place.  Have a quick look at my blog standards first, just in case.

Okay, moving on here.  We need to talk about something that’s been cluttering up the internets for far too long, taking up space that could be useful.  You know what I’m talking about:  self-deprecating humor.

The next time you laugh at, say, Amalah the Mommyblogger, ask yourself, “What the fuck am I laughing at?  How is this shit funny?”  Oh, sure, we laugh at people poking fun at themselves.  And here’s why:  Better them than me.

Sure, it’s easy to laugh at someone falling all over their ass or imagining that they were going to fall all over their ass and wondering what other people are thinking about them or would think if they actually did fall all over their ass, and then writing about it in a charmingly self-deprecatory way.  That’s fucking funny, we think.  Because it’s 1.) Not us, and 2.) Laughing at the stupid shit we do has become socially acceptable, and socially expected.

So when did it become passe to talk about ourselves in a positive way?  To say things like, “Hey look, I am fucking-A awesome!”  People who do that are thought of as assholes, even if they’re sort of right.  (Or they’re worshiped, the way you worship The Bitch, but that’s WHY you love me.  Because I am so different.  Plus I’m totally hot.)

I’m tired of this fakery shit, though.  Sure, people are capitalizing on their feelings of inner inadequacy by processing them in a highly public manner, and The Bitch is all about going public with inner shit, but this stuff feeds on itself and creates more.  One person writing about the time they fell down a hill because their fucking heel broke but they had a glass of wine so people thought they were drunk off their ass and never believed the story about the breaking heel and OMG they are soooo embarrassed by this and can never never never show their face in public again (never mind all the hundreds of Flickr sets devoted to said blogger and blogger’s drunkblogging and drunkblogging blogfriends)* just creates this giant sucking VACUUM that other people rush in to fill.  But people, you cannot possibly fill the void of someone else’s feeling of inadequacy by writing about your own.  Just because this shit is popular does not mean it’s even remotely useful except as a global communal catharsis tool.  And rushing in to fill that fucking vacuum only makes the holes in yourself appear bigger.

Instead, I want people to write about the great stuff they do.  Everybody has successes; when did they become something to hide?  Hey, you made toast this morning?  WAY TO GO!  YOU ARE AWESOME!  At least, if it was superior toast.  None of this bread-no-warmer-than-if-I-stuck-the-slice-under-my-arm shit.  I want REAL toast.  Toast-colored toast.  THAT is something to be proud of.

And let’s take this a step further:  don’t limit your anti-trash talk about yourself to what you put on the internet.  Is it a crime to say “I am wonderful!” and actually mean it?  I mean, who among you is truly NOT wonderful?  Why can’t you just SAY IT, for fuck’s sake?

And sure, lots of us have this fucked-up inner voice inside us telling us how shitty we are.  But that stuff is NOT TRUE, so you have my permission to stop listening to it, RIGHT NOW.  In fact, every time you hear that voice, I want you to tell it to go fuck itself, that YOU are in charge, and that YOU MAKE AWESOME TOAST.

~~~~~

From the this-would-be-fucked-up-if-it-wasn’t-so-funny department, The Bitch received a death threat in response to her post about vigilante vegetarians.  So if you laughed at that post, I have to assume you’re included in the threat.  Watch out for people wielding fur coats and tomato stakes.

*This is a TOTALLY hypothetical blogstory, but if it wasn’t TOTALLY hypothetical you could probably read about something very similar to it here.

As you know, I exist to enlighten you heathens from the bullshit that lies amid the fucked-up swill that is the New Age and self-help movement. (Doesn’t the phrase “New Age” make you want to throw up a little? I can barely type it without losing my breakfast into my laptop. Ditto “self-help.” Fuck that.) My modus operandi is a little like decorating a golden brick with lotus flowers and then smashing your brains out with it. Whatever works, that’s my motto, even if it requires reconstructive brain surgery afterward. Whatever. It’s your brain, not mine. You asked for enlightenment, right?

Today’s topic: your thoughts create your reality. Change your thoughts, change your life!

If there wasn’t some truth to this, why would you be reading a bitch like me?

But here’s the problem: far more often than creating something empowering from this concept, people use it to punish themselves.  They say, “Oh, well, this shitty dumbass thing happened to me, so I must have created it.  I am a bad person for creating this bad thing in my life!”  Or they say, “I had a desire to slip an overdose of laxatives into that arrogant prick’s morning coffee today, so I must not be a loving person. Oh no! I must control my thoughts!”   Or, “I’m feeling shitty, and I had all these bad thoughts about myself, so I need to clench my butt cheeks and think only happy-Oprah* thoughts!”

Notice a thread here?  Control.   It’s all about control, people.

Yes, your thoughts do have an effect on you and on your life. But you can’t control them. You can’t control your emotions, either. Most of the time we can’t even control our bodies. I know how my body reacts when a spandex-clad** aging crooner starts singing “Feelings.”  Can’t control it.  And it isn’t pretty. (That sound you’re hearing now?  Ever hear a cat about to throw up?  ulp.ulp.ulp.ulp.  You hear it and you know what’s coming and there’s no way in hell to stop it.  Splat!  It’s a little like that, times about a thousand.)

Here’s an experiment to show you that you can’t control your thoughts.  Ready?  Okay:  do not think about red monkeys.  Do. Not. Think about red monkeys.

You can’t think about anything BUT red monkeys right now, can you?  There’s fucking red monkeys ALL OVER THE PLACE.  See?  And trying to NOT think about something only makes that thing more present.  Go play this with someone else and have some fun.

Do you know why you like The Bitch? Because I don’t try to control my thoughts. They are the same thoughts that you have and don’t admit to having—and you laugh because you’re seeing that they’re not so bad after all. (Though hopefully you’re not thinking about spandex men singing “Feelings”. Then you’d really be kind of fucked up and I’m not sure I want to know you.)

This isn’t to say that we’re helpless peons at the unholy mercy of our fucked-up thoughts and feelings. Of course there is choice and free will and all that.

But you want to know a secret?  Lean in a little closer.

If someone tells you to control yourself – or your thoughts – they are trying to control you.

Oh fuck, I don’t mean the Vulcan Mind Meld or anything.  No one is trying to turn you into a fucking robot.  But asking you, expecting you, to change your thoughts is a subtle form of control.

It’s brainwashing, people. Wipe you clean, ma’am?  If you can get people to try to do something impossible, like controlling the uncontrollable, of course they’ll come back time and again asking for more help and advice. Side of fries with that brainwash?  And you give them your power, willingly, because you feel like a failure.  You buy into the idea that you need to put away a part of yourself in order to feel accepted.  You try and you try and you try, failing every time (because you’re trying to do the impossible), and every time wondering what more you could have done.  You give away more and more of your own power every time you do this.

The bitch does not want your power. I totally deserve your worship, but only because I’m helping you become enlightened. No one deserves your power.  No one except you.  I help you find your own inner Bitch, and for that I of course have your undying endless gratitude.  Also you can send money.

Back to the whole “you create your own reality” thing. Does the Bitch disagree with that concept? Of course not. Look at the reality I’m creating for you right here. No spandex, for one thing.  Freedom of thought and expression.  Feel how good it is to call me a bitch?  Go on, say it.  You know you want to.  And then say “fuck.”  Right out loud.  And then say, “I am perfect.”  (Because you know I am.)(And more importantly, I know I am.)

But even though my words say something else, the Bitch isn’t about ego. The Bitch is about honesty, about calling things for what they are, and about having fun at the same time. That’s my reality.

What’s yours?

*That’s the thin Oprah, obviously.

**Yet another type of control.  And while a nice pair of Spanx cures a lot of ills, nothing can make “Feelings” palatable.

So for my first meme, I call it a success: no one guessed successfully, although you certainly tried hard. I find it amusing that most of you thought that my past involved either jail or anti-depressants. But let’s just say that while every single answer has a basis in reality, none of them are true.

I received a plea from Matthew asking to be tagged on this. So I therefore tag Matthew. Go and have a look at his site; it’s satisfyingly bizarre.

Anybody else? It’s not too late.

OMFG.

That was my response upon learning the Bitch had been tagged.  For a meme.  You think the Bitch is above such things?  You would be absolutely correct. Not at all.  The Bitch is a Joiner.  Plays Well With Others.  In fact, if you want YOUR BLOG to be included in a list of links here at New Age Bitch, and I wholeheartedly (or is that coldheartedly…?) recommend that you leave your info in a comment and the Bitch will see to it that your site appears on the list.

We’re exclusive here, but not that exclusive.  Meaning, if you’re here and you’ve read this far it’s presumed that you’ve already transcended at least a minimal level of awareness and appreciation.

Who is it that had the amazing gall to tag New Age Bitch for a meme?  Blogger Dad.  Read his answers here.  And then proceed at your own risk.  Except we’re going to play this a little differently (you knew that was going to happen, didn’t you?).  You’ll have to pick out the correct answers yourself.

Where Were You Ten Years Ago?

a.  In jail.

b.  Driving a mini van to soccer.

c.  Somewhere in India, on an ashram.

d.  Seriously considering Prozac.

What’s on Your To Do List Today?

a.  Piss people off, kick an old lady in the shins, and jaywalk.

b.  Swallow my tongue.

c.  Experience Inbox Zero for at least 2.7 minutes.

d.  Levitate.

What If You Were A Billionaire?

a.  What makes you think I’m not?

b.  What if we all just got along?  Let’s start with a nice big group hug, okay?

c.  I would mail everyone I know a check for a dollar.

d.  I would buy all the cans of creamed corn in existence and store them in my basement.

Five Places You Have Lived?

a.  Jail.  See question #1.

b.  In my head.

c.  California.  See a, and b.

d.  Define “lived”.

f.  Earth?

Three Bad Habits?

a.  None.  The Bitch has no bad habits.

b.  None.  What are YOU looking at??!

c.  None.  Sex addictions don’t count, right?

d.  None.  Fuck you!

Snacks You Like?

a.  Salty-crunchy.

b.  Sweet.

c.  Dairy-creamy-sweet.

d.  Wait, are we talking about food here?

Who Will You Tag?

a.  That’s for me to know and you to find out.

b.  That’s a little like picking favorites, isn’t it?  Either that or creating punishments.  Fuck that.  The Bitch doesn’t do either.  Tell you what.  If you want to do this meme, do it.  Send me an email and I’ll be sure to mention you and link to your post somewhere prominent.   Deal?  Because I just don’t want to deal with the crying and the disappointment.

The end.

Last night I attended a free talk by some healer-person shilling for her new book.  She presented herself as having developed this “revolutionary” new healing method, and after droning uncomfortably on about it for an hour (note to public speakers:  connecting with your audience is actually important! please take note!), she opened up the floor for questions.

Q:  O guru healer-person in whom I am blindly and unthinkingly placing all my trust and faith, how can we mere ignorant mortals apply this revolutionary new amazing healing method in our own lives please oh please?

A:  That’s going to be in my second book.*

Q:  Oh, but healer-guru, we are here now and you talked about empowering ourselves, and we really really want to know what we can do to apply this revolutionary new amazing healing method in our own lives please oh please?

A:  Chapter 8 in my book [glancing over at the table stacked ceiling-high with copies of said book] has some exercises that I stole from Osho.  You can do those.  Basically, shake and scream for awhile and then you can go to a place of inner stillness.

Q:  WTF?

Q:  Okay, guru-person, we are getting restless now.  You made a promise.  You were going to tell us how to heal ourselves.  How, o how, can we do that?

A:  Meditate.

Q:  That’s it?   Meditate?

A:  Yup.

[This is where they stormed the stage and bore the guru-person off on a rail while they shouted something about stabbing her in the chakras.  It got sort of ugly.]

Meditation. It’s billed as a panacea, something that will cure every ill and imbalance.  You.Must.Meditate.

But … what is meditation, exactly?

Most people view meditation as a sort of struggle.  Calming the monkey mind.  Cultivating stillness, inside and out, so as to eradicate every thought.  KILL THE THOUGHTS!!  BANISH THOUGHTS FROM YOUR MIND!  MAKE YOUR MIND EMPTY!!

Fuck that.  That’s almost impossible.  And trying to do it sets you up for all sorts of judgments (I am having thoughts!  I FAIL meditation!  I am a baaaaad person!), resentments (FUCK meditation!), and disconnects you from what you’re trying to accomplish, which is self-awareness.

Let me say that again:  meditation is simply a way to gain self-awareness.  It’s not supposed to be anything other than that.

By observing yourself without judgment, you learn about the patterns of response and reaction that habitually come up for you.

So what is meditation?  Observation.  Nothing more, and nothing less.  It’s a keen observation of yourself on every level—physical, emotional, and intellectual—and completely without judgment.

And it can be done anywhere, under any condition.  There are no “rules” to meditation.  You don’t need to sit on a special bench or cushion.  You don’t need incense.  You don’t need a fucking temple bell to tell you when to start and stop.  You can do those things if it helps, but there are no requirements.  None.  You can meditate at any time and in any place and in any manner by which you are willing to objectively observe yourself.

Now we’ll open the floor up for questions.

Q:  Sex?  During sex?

A:  Whoa, slow down there!  Well, yes.  ONLY if you can do it so that you can objectively observe yourself while you are otherwise, uh, engaged.  But dude.  If the idea excites you so much that it’s your first question out of the starting gate, there’s probably something in the experience for you.  So go for it.  I’m not sure I’d want to be your partner, but whatever.

Q:  What about breathing?  I heard that meditation is about breathing.

A:  Of course.  Breathing is important.  (Forget to breathe for long enough and you’ll be dead, which makes the whole meditation thing kind of pointless.  Way to get out of meditating!)  The way you breathe not only says a lot about you but it also affects how you move energy through your body.  And since the ultimate way of experiencing anything is through the physicality that is your body, your experiences are going to be affected by your breath.  So when meditating, one of the things you will be observing is, naturally, your breath.

Q:  But … HOW should I meditate?  Can I read about it?  Tell me all the answers, guru-person!

A:  Number one, I’m not your guru, so stop it.  I’m your bitch.  Number two, yes, you can read all about meditation all over the place, but DON’T GET CAUGHT UP IN THE FUCKING RULES.  Reading about something like meditation naturally opens you up for asking stupid questions like, “Am I doing this right?”

• Meditation shouldn’t hurt.

If you’re not comfortable, don’t do it.  Stop and get comfortable.  Try to get comfortable enough that you can move beyond thinking about how comfortable you are, but there’s no reason to try to get past the pain or to breathe into the pain because hello, the pain shouldn’t be there.

• Give yourself time.

Think about meditation as a gift you are giving yourself.  It’s the one time when you can access some inner stillness.  But be patient; the stillness doesn’t happen overnight, and it can take time to get to that point especially if you continue to fight with yourself.  But just having a quiet half-hour to yourself can be an enormous gift.  Allowing yourself the freedom to let that time develop as it will, not caring if, for instance, you use it to plan the next day’s menu or to write an important email in your head, is part of that gift.  Judging yourself for failing that day’s meditation just lets you feel shitty about yourself in yet one more way.  Who needs that?

• Meditation will change your life.

Seriously.  If you let it, anyway.  Stuff will come up, so be prepared.  No one said this was going to be easy.  Stuff will come up, and you’ll look at it.  The end.  No need for judgments.  And if you start judging yourself for moving back into old patterns and crappy-feeling emotions, oh well.  Clear the slate and start over next day.

But if you make it a regular part of your life, you’ll see change.  (Hell, you’ll change even without meditating, but that’s up for discussion another day.)  You’ll get to know yourself.  You’ll move on down your spiritual path, whatever that is and wherever that takes you.  It’s totally fucking work but it’s totally fucking worth it.  So do it.

And?  The Bitch meditates daily.  And we all know you want to be more like the Bitch.

*No lie.  WTF??  After all this build-up about “personal empowerment” and “revolutionary healing method that’s going to heal the earth and change the world” you’re saying you havent even yet GOTTEN TO THAT PART?  You suck.

Oprah totally screwed me over once.  Damn her.

It was the Gratitude Journal.  Are you familiar with this concept?  Let me tell you how it works.  Every day, before you go to bed, you write down in a special little book all the stuff you are grateful for that day.  You write and write and write every day, filling page after page with all the stuff that happens to you each and every day that you are grateful for.  If you do this, the idea is that you’ll be concentrating on all the “good” stuff in your life. Your friend Mr. Law of Attraction says that as ye sow, so shall ye reap (which loosely translated means “you get what you put out”), so if you are squinching your eyes tight shut and repeating “I am grateful for my shitty life I am grateful for my shitty life I am grateful for my shitty life” then guess what?  You get exactly what you ask for.  Yes!  More shitty life for you!

When you finally gather the strength to admit to yourself that you’re not really all that happy about some of the elements of your shitty life, and you’re not particularly grateful for your shitty life (in fact you might even be a little pissed off about it), then all you really have left is to feel guilt for not feeling grateful for your shitty life.  Not only are you forced to admit to yourself that you indeed have a shitty life, but you now get to feel guilty about not feeling gratitude for your own shit.

Double whammy.

Thanks, Oprah.  Here’s a double dish of my shitty life* for you.

The Bitch made it through two pages of her own personal Gratitude Journal, pages which still reek of denial and hypocrisy even today, years and years later.  Two pages before she gave it up.

Gratitude.  It’s great in concept, but it really sucks when it’s used as something to create even more guilt.  Like you need more guilt.

The thing is, we get sucked into feeling like we should be grateful for the stuff in our lives, even the stuff we’re sort of on the fence about.  Maybe it’s not outright shitty, but it smells a little.  We trick ourselves into thinking that if only we felt grateful enough for it, this ambivalence would magically clear itself up and we could feel good about this maybe-shitty-maybe-not stuff in our lives.

“But Bitch,” I can hear you whining in the background, a persistent little drone of uncertainty, “I really DO feel grateful for a lot of the stuff in my life, really I do!  Maybe not all of it, but some!  Can’t I be grateful for that?  Don’t I get Jebus Points for all my good stuff that I really feel good about?”

Sure you do.

But how do you know the difference between the truly good stuff and all that other stuff that you’ve been training yourself to feel good about?

How do you tell the difference? Especially when you’ve taught yourself to feel guilty when you doubt your own inner voice?

Yo.  I told you before that The Bitch has access to the Eternal Book of Everything, so here’s a little wee page from that book, just for you:

If it feels good, it is good.

See?  Simple.

The trick (and there’s always a trick, isn’t there?) is knowing what is “good.”

Here’s what good is not:

1.  Good is not what your mother told you it was.

2.  Good is not what you read in a book.

3.  Good is not what your friend told you.

4.  Good is not what the Dead Ghost of Baby Jebus rose up from the foot of your bed one night and told you.

5.  Good is what you yourself know it to be.  What you examine inside and out, what you doubt all the ways you know how, what you take a good hard look at any way you can just inside yourself and consulting no one else, not even The Bitch, and come out the other side still feeling really good about.

That is good.

And you are, each of you, capable of knowing what good is, and what to be grateful for, and what not to be.  Each of you knows this if you only stop asking around, asking Oprah and asking your next-door neighbor who you suspect may be getting Oxycontin in the mail and asking your dentist with the slightly oniony breath and smooth firm fingers and asking your spouse lying there making an impression on the pillow next to you and asking your kids your dog your brother your shaman your Eckhart Tolle your Twitter your reflection in the mirror asking anybody except you. Because you are the only one who knows what good is and what to be grateful for.

So fucking trust yourself.

The end.

P.S. When and if you are truly sure that there is something in your life that is good and you feel truly good about feeling grateful for that thing, go ahead and write it down if you still feel like you need to.  Frankly, though, after getting to that point of knowing what’s good, you’ve already done all the “work” and a silly little Gratitude Journal isn’t going to make it any better than you’ve already made it all by yourself.

You didn’t need Oprah after all.

*The Bitch does not have a shitty life.  Not any more.  Matter of perspective.  The Bitch has created every inch and centimeter of her life and it’s very, very good except when dealing with a technical crisis, in which case The Bitch allows a slight tinge of whine to come into her voice before consulting her cat.

“Sorry.”

I hate that word.

It’s a beautiful word, when said in sincerity, but frankly the meaning has become fucked up.  No one means what they say.  It’s rote, routine.  Meaningless.

I no longer accept it.  I am done, finished, finito, kaput.  C’est tout.

Instead, you can just say what you mean:  “Fuck you, bitch!  I totally meant to pull out in front of you in traffic today because YOU SUCK!  And I’m just generally pissed off!  For no apparent reason!  And apologizing seems to placate you!  And saying it makes me socially acceptable instead of being seen as the fucktard asshat I really am!”

There.  Doesn’t that feel better?  Say what you mean.  It’s all there anyway, why hide it?

You know what REALLY pisses me off?  Parents who forcibly make their kids apologize.  “Johnny, tell Aunt Mimi you’re sorry for scuffing her floor with your shoe!”

Johnny’s not sorry because Johnny had no idea he did anything wrong.  Even if he had asked Aunt Mimi why she is so fat he was doing nothing more than being a kid.   A curious kid.  A kid who wasn’t issued a copy of the Holier-than-Thou Manual of Grownup Social Mores and is clueless about having done something wrong.  And even if he did something that he knows is wrong, like, say, breaking one of Aunt Mimi’s 12,000 Precious Moments figurines, why humiliate the kid?

True Story?

Try to imagine The Bitch at age 4.  Tiny Bitch.  Like most really really smart kids, Tiny Bitch is a little socially retarded.  Not a lot of friends at age 4.

So Tiny Bitch is out front in the driveway washing her tricycle, the green one that was a step up from the tiny red one.  Its almost time for a two-wheeler with training wheels, but not quite.  All Tiny Bitch has is her tricycle, and she’s fucking proud of it.  Mom and Dad wash their car, so why not wash that tricycle?  The garden hose is handy for that sort of thing.

Here comes Prissy, the 3-year old baby next door.  Tiny Bitch knows Prissy is a bit of a weenie and a baby, so she doesn’t usually do more than ignore her.  But Prissy is interested in the tricycle-washing process.  It’s fascinating, really, this idea of washing one’s tricycle.

So Prissy comes back over pushing her own tricycle.

Tiny Bitch has warmed up a bit to Prissy by this point and is feeling magnanimous.  Handling a garden hose in the warm sunshine can have that effect.  Tiny Bitch is feeling so magnanimous, in fact, that she wants to help Prissy wash her tricycle.  Tiny Bitch and Prissy, they’re bonding now.  Over tricycles.  And a garden hose.  It’s really quite a beautiful thing, this thing they’ve got going.

Prissy isn’t very good with the hose.  She accidentally sprays Tiny Bitch a tiny, wee bit.  Tiny Bitch thinks this is funny.  After all, she’s the one who makes real pies out of dirt and mud sometimes; why wouldn’t playing with water out there in the warm sunshine also be fun?

Tiny Bitch takes the hose.

She sprays Prissy with it, a lot.  Tiny Bitch is laughing because she knows Prissy knows how much fun this is.  It’s warm outside and they have bonded in the sunshine.  With the tricycles.  And the hose.

Prissy’s laughter stops.  Her face gets red and twisted.  She looks funny.  She runs away.

Tiny Bitch finishes washing her tricycle, alone.  She wonders where Prissy went.

Mom comes out, her lips pressed in a white line.  She grabs Tiny Bitch by the arm, just above the elbow.  It almost hurts.  She makes Tiny Bitch walk up to the door of Prissy’s house, the house next door.  Tiny Bitch has never been to that door and she is feeling scared, a little.  The door opens.  An angry lady stands there, waiting for something.  Mom tells Tiny Bitch to say some words and she says them.  Robot.  A scared robot.

Then Tiny Bitch has to put her tricycle away, and the hose.  She knows she will never be washing her tricycle again.  But what happened?  They were having fun.

And yeah, The Bitch has gotten over it, thanks for asking.

“Sorry?”  Nine times out of ten, maybe more, it means shit.

Someone dies?  We say “sorry.”  As if that could possibly convey the enormous amount of grief and pain people feel at such times.  And hell, maybe we’re not actually sorry, maybe the guy was an asshole and there’s this sense of relief (mixed with shock, dismay, and a distorted reminder of one’s own mortality) that he’s not going to be telling his stupid blonde jokes in the office anymore, but we can’t say that.  It isn’t “done.”

We also say sorry for running out of potato chips.  Or for stepping on someone’s foot accidentally.  Or for running over their cat.  See any problem with this meaningless one-size-fits-all word?

I do.  And I’m over it.

Say what you mean and mean what you say.  Simple.  And don’t fucking apologize to me unless you mean it.

Well, this is a bitch-slap in the face.  This personality test is clearly fucked.  Turns out it thinks I am a fucking Hippie.  There’s no way.  Sociopath, maybe.  Smartass, for sure.  Bitch-slap?  But of course.  But … Hippie?  Here:

[I]t stands to reason that you, as well, are terribly gentle and humble, almost to the point of revulsion. Your carefree attitude of peace and harmony is probably very, very sickening to realists or cynics or anyone who isn’t a hippie, to tell the truth. In short, your personality is defective because you are overly emotional, extroverted, gentle, and humble–thus making you an annoying hippie.

Fuck.  “Gentle”?  Blowing my cover here.  But surely an online personality quiz is far more meaningful than self-knowledge.  I can base my whole life path on online quizzes.

Now take the fucking test and report back.

*Yes, I do mean literally.  What else would I mean?