Eleven years
Today is the eleventh birthday of this website.
Some of you have been reading since the beginning, since I was single and living alone in Los Angeles working as a web designer, back when I thought that children might not ever be a part of my life. Remember when you could drop someone off at the airport and walk them to their gate? Or meet them eagerly as they walked off of the plane? So does my website.
Some of you started reading after I got married. some when I got pregnant for the first time. Some of you found this website after I gave birth to my little frog baby. And then there was the postpartum depression, the hospital, the years of my child teaching me what it means to be human. That child is now old enough to be baptized in the Mormon Church. But even if you've only been reading for a month you can probably guess that baptism, particularly into the Mormon Church, is on a list of things she gets to choose to do when she's old enough to make decisions that big. You know, like skydiving. Or a forehead tattoo. Or, oh God, thinking it's a good idea to move to Nevada.
From living in my mother's basement to the first house, the second house, to the current residence. So much change. More change than you'd find in between your couch cushions and in the junk drawer combined. More change than the shape of Joan Rivers' face.
More than anything else this website has chronicled all that change. The unbridled spirit of 25-year-old Heather Hamilton still powers the heart of 36-year-old Heather Armstrong, but damn am I ever glad to be eleven years older, wiser, and well, different. Yes, different. I feel so much more settled into my skin and confident in the way I move my body through my life. I've got way more wrinkles, a ton of gray hair, and it takes a lot longer to recover from a late night out, but who cares about any of that when I now possess an increased ability to identify and shrug off the things that don't matter.
A lot of that is age, but most of it is the responsibility of having children and supporting two employees. They are why I am so different.
Two kids and four adults now count on these pages to feed them. I won't lie, that's a lot of pressure. Sometimes that pressure doesn't faze me, and then sometimes the stress of it puts me to bed very early without dinner because it's killed my appetite. But I always come back to one thing, the one fundamental thing that keeps me from walking away: I love doing this.
I love telling stories.
This is the story of how I've changed, how I continue to change. Sure, some of you don't like where I was, or where I am, or where you assume I'll be a year from now. And that's fine. But I can promise you this: every word has come from the deepest part of me, and it always will.
I think of you as the group I'd invite over for dinner on a Friday night, and what I write here are the stories I'd tell you when you asked about my week. It's always been that way. And no matter where you jumped in and started following along, no matter if you left and came back because something made you furious, I'm going to ask you to stay and have another drink. There's so much more to share with each other.
Thank you for coming over.
Hair, day forty-six
Welcome, rubberneckers, to the egomaniacal, narcissistic, bipolar meltdown you have been promised would happen by the hate sites! (It's too bad they aren't on my payroll, because HOO, the pageviews) To tell you the truth, even I can't wait to watch this train wreck happen because when my brain explodes all those Skittles in there are going to scatter everywhere. A RAINBOW!
(I know, another post that was supposed to be about my hair that has nothing to do with my hair. I can't even keep my posts straight. Yet another sign that I'm losing my mind. Someone please step in and get me some help! I NEED BETTER HANDLERS.)
What should I do first? Shed my clothes and run nude through Temple Square? Maybe have an argument in public with an imaginary friend? While wearing a giant bird costume and waving a vibrator?
The level of my fame is so minuscule in comparison to actual celebrity, but that does not make it any less strange to read the words of strangers who are publicly delighting in my pain, strangers who are actively rooting for me to break down. I've known to avoid reading it, but then the amount of it became so abundant that it bubbled up and spilled over into my lap, and wow. There it was. I politely wiped it to the side, but then another wave hit. And in the middle of that next dump someone said that they were going to make an anonymous call to try and get my kids taken out of my custody.
I hate to disappoint some of you, but that meltdown isn't going to happen. I've been seeing a therapist pretty regularly since Leta was born, and yesterday she told me that I didn't need to come back, that the work she's been trying to get me to do for eight years is done. In fact, I had a pretty big breakthrough about a month ago, so big that after I left she did a tap dance in her office. I asked her to recreate that moment so that I could take video of it and post it here, but she's a lot like my mom and enjoys flipping me the bird.
At the core of the work that I have been doing is letting go of the fear of standing up for myself. That probably seems asinine because my writing can be abrasive and polarizing, and how can a woman with a mouth as dirty as mine have any trouble standing up for herself? Well, a lot of trouble, actually. Especially in person. And any time I've attempted to do so online I'm labeled a bully or a delicate flower or lectured on the reasons I should ignore it.
The fact is that I do ignore almost all of it. It's a relentless stream that rolls through my email and across twitter and in and out of other websites. But this morning I was sitting at my desk minding my own business when I caught the edge of another wave, and I thought, what the hell am I afraid of?
And you know what? Not a goddamned thing. Fuck them. Fuck all of them. People will use the fact that I am saying this as proof that I'm having a meltdown, and those people can go fuck themselves, too. Because when my therapist reads this she is going to get up and do the moonwalk behind her desk.
(If you even try to leave a mean comment I will delete your ass.)
"Go on Sunday morning. There aren't any lines."
My friend Kate sent me an email last week and suggested we make a Shit Non Mormons Say When Living in Utah video. If either of us had the time to do so, it would sound a lot like this (almost all of these are her suggestions):
"Yes, you can buy alcohol here."
"Yes, you can buy alcohol here."
"Yes, you can buy alcohol here."
...
Non Mormon trying to buy alcohol on Election Day, mumbling : "I moved here to ski."
Non Mormon trying to buy alcohol on Sunday, mumbling: "I moved here to ski."
Non Mormon trying to buy alcohol on any obscure holiday, mumbling: "I moved here to ski."
...
"I haven't skied in sooooooo long."
...
"You get used to the politics."
"Just ignore the politics."
"UGH! WHO VOTES FOR THESE POEPLE?!"
"You can't ignore the politics."
"You won't ever get used to the politics."
…
"Orrin Hatch? You mean Oral Snatch?"
...
"Sundance is SO awesome."
"I hate Sundance."
...
"Oh! There's Robert Redford!"
…
"REI."
"REI?"
"REI."
…
"Which Subaru Outback is yours?"
…
"You can always go to Park City if you want to get away."
"I haven't been to Park City in sooooooo long."
"Park City just wants to be LA."
"What a shit hole."
...
"Alta."
"Snowbird."
"Alta."
"Brighton."
"Alta."
"Solitude."
"Alta."
"Powder Mountain."
"ALTA."
...
"Yes, you can buy alcohol here."
Feel free to add anything we missed. Also, someone please film this.
