Risk and Closure

It was a fun, amazing and enlightening weekend.

We thought we were taking a risk, not having spoken to anyone in our previous large group of friends since...our "meltdown" (there's really no good way to describe with a word). Some we hadn't seen in over three years, some it has been over two, but we took the risk to go listen to an outrageously talented singer, who we'd known longer than almost anyone else in the city, sing (we had dated one of her drummers for nearly two years). We had been telling James about her since we first met him, and now that he is allowed to travel outside of the United States, he couldn't get us back to the city where we spent the first few months of our relationship, fast enough.

We walked into the venue and she was on stage, we didn't see her at first but James spotted her partially hidden by a column.
Pointing to her he said "There she is." recognizing her from photos we had recently shown him; and just as he raised his finger she looked towards the entrance.
We grabbed James' finger, pulled it down and said "Don't point!", and then retreated towards a side area where we couldn't be seen, leaving James standing there intoxicated by her voice. We could see in his eyes he was hooked. Later he would tell us that it's amazing how good she is, and how she makes it look so easy, and other things, his eyes sparkling with amazement.

At our seat with Fabulous Person we listened to her sing, FP was also impressed, we talked about her voice and we'd bet money James will go talk to her, even though we had told him not to. We had no idea who might be there that we didn't want to see - people who were angry at us for how our friendships dissolved, how we abandoned them, some were angry about this blog - we didn't want to draw attention.

James comes over to the table and says he talked to her, but didn't tell her who he was, only that "My wife told me we had to drive [x] hours to hear you sing." He asked if we'd like her to come over to the table, and we said of course, but it wouldn't be a good idea.

He went off and talked to her again shortly, coming back to the table he said that she had recognized "me" the minute we walked into the bar, and that she would come over and talk soon.

Nervous. Butterflies. Deep breaths.

When she came over we gave her a big hug. It's been three years since we last saw her, and the last time was on a girls trip to a U.S.A. city for the 4th of July...where yours truly had almost got hauled off to the drunk tank for passing out in the hotel bar washroom and then refusing to leave, after a night heavy with substances and alcohol. There's more to the story, but to keep it short...that was her last memory of us. Great.

We asked her about everybody else, what they were up to. To find out she hasn't seen most of them in just about the same amount of time...we were stunned. She mentioned people she hadn't talked to; she mentioned how one of the last times she had talked to The Non-Bestie she was pissed because of this blog; she mentioned how two of the girls had come and had a drink and left without, apparently, talking to her.

She mentioned how funny it was that "I" showed up this weekend...she had just been reading my blog this week

More shock.

We're so glad we went to hear her sing. We're so glad we got to talk to her. We're looking forward to hearing her sing again.

What we risked, was a lot of confrontation, ridicule, a lot of awkwardness, a wide-range of things, from the most important group of people we had ever had in our life.
What we got, was closure.

She bought us a shot, let us gush over how much we miss hearing her sing; we stayed and "closed down the bar".

Maybe the cracks we begin to feel, to see, in the the web of relationships...wasn't out imagination and paranoia after all. Maybe after New Years that final year when we lost touch with everybody, because we stopped texting and calling them, and they us, for the most part, was just...what was going to happen.

Anyway.

We spent part of every day of our trip with Fabulous Person, we had a great time, great conversation, and we're so glad we finally got to go back. We're planning another trip for October.

The city itself, our favourite neighborhoods of downtown, have changed a bit, but it still remains the same: Familiar, comfortable, cultural, unique.
Home.

Home, never to be home again.

So Different

It's getting close to the end...of 2012.

We don't have regrets; but personal choices over the years...we don't forget. We've learned. Of course. Some people have regrets forever, other's learn, and move on.

Sometimes we miss people from our past, even two years ago.
Two years ago, 2010...we had a beautiful New Year's dinner at a fancy restaurant with the woman who is now our ex-bestfriend. She didn't deserve, probably, how our friendship abruptly ended.
Her, and her boyfriend...and a man who was in all likeliness was in love with us (Standby).
Weeks later it all changed. But. It was the last time we probably felt normal.
Silently miserable; but somehow...well, we can't put it into words. Which is odd.

Now. Now, it's all different. So different. It's going to be so much more different. It makes us...nervous? Scared? Sad?

We just might be mourning it all, our past...a little.

Which is also fucking strange, and new.

The Stories Of Us

For people who don't know what these are about, these are the stories of our lives of our system, they cover abuse of many forms, in addition to some other experiences like trauma, and/or good things that have happened. These entries are not for the weak of heart.

With Dissociation Identity Disorder this is an important step in recovery, sharing among us our memories, in order to being/continue mapping therapy - and as with all of our steps it is one that we have shared with you from the beginning of this blog (though it took several months to gather the courage and ability.

• 1. The Emergence of Frank: The Beginning (8 Yrs Old)
• 1b. The First Boy We Liked, That Liked Us Back (12 Yrs Old)
• 2. The Emergence of Frank: The Second Coming (13 Yrs Old)
• 2a. Our First Girlfriend
• 2b. First Love
• 3. The Emergence of Frank: Three Times A Rescuer (21 Yrs Old)
• 4. The Emergence of Frank: Frank's Failure (23 Yrs Old)
• 4a. Our 100# Weight Loss
• 5. We Go To University & We Take A Lover
• 6. Life Without Frank - The First Two Years
• 6b. Collision: The Other Girls Accident/Franks Coma (2004)
• 7. Culinary School and Affairs
• 7b. Culinary School: Part Two
• 8. The Dawn of Something Different
• 9. It Spins Madly

...more to come soon...hopefully soon...

While these are quit concentrated you can find more stories that we chose not to list in Recommended Entries at the top of the page, as well as other writing we've done over the nearly two years of writing in this blog.

Thank you.

It Spins Madly

The following life story is the next in the series of our life we have been writing. If you  haven't read the previous ones you can locate them here:

• 1. Addressing The Issue of Frank: Part 1 (2011)
• 2. The Emergence of Frank: The Beginning (8 Yrs Old)
• 2b. The First Boy We Liked That Liked Us Back 
• 3. The Emergence of Frank: The Second Coming (13 Yrs Old)
• 4. The Emergence of Frank: Three Times A Rescuer (21 Yrs Old)
• 5. The Emergence of Frank: Frank's Failure (23 Yrs Old)
• 6. We Go To University & We Take A Lover (24 Yrs Old)
• 7. Life Without Frank - The First Two Years (25-27 Yrs Old)
• 7b. Collision: The Other Girls Accident/Franks Coma (25 Yrs Old)
• 8. Culinary School and Affairs ( 2006-2007 27-29 Yrs Old)
• 8b. Culinary School: Part Two (2006-2007)
• 9. The Dawn of Something Different (2008-2009)
  This entry is linked where necessarily to provide context, or information, from within this blog.

At the start of 2010 things we’re already beginning to feel off for The Other Girl, she couldn’t put her finger on it.

She went about her duties, trying to keep her catering business afloat, taking care of the house,   and planning a trip to the Bahamas, during the week of Valentine's Day, with Significant Other and some friends; including TNB (The Non-Bestie), The Other Girl's best friend, and her then-boyfriend. The Other Girl and TNB knew a local musician, an acquaintance of The Other Girl’s ex, Talented Boyfriend. The musician owned a house on one of the islands in the Bahamas and was giving us a great deal on a week and a half rental, so the trip would be a little more affordable. Funds were beginning to become tight at home because of the catering business, so The Other Girl got us a temporary job handing out samples in various grocery stores for a promotions company, the couple weeks leading up to our trip.

Since The Other Girls vehicle had quit working in October of the previous year, after driving it hard as a messenger/courier, we had no desire to fix it. She rented vans for catering jobs, and hardly left the house other than that, so we were getting rides or borrowing Significant Others vehicle when needed.

His job had decreased his hours to only four a day, which was part of the reason for getting a job outside the house, to make extra money for the vacation, to supplement the decrease in his income.  It seemed to work out because Significant Other got off work so early some days that she didn’t have to wait for him to pick her up, he’d come to the grocery store and wander around until the shift was over, and help pack up the sample stand. He always preferring to drop her off and pick her up. A couple of days she asked if she could drop him off at work instead, and borrow the car. He seemed unusually leery to do so, we thought it odd, but then shrugged it off when he agreed.

Before we knew it we were in the Bahamas, it was the second day and was a late night on the balcony of the house we had rented, hanging out and having a few drinks with TNB and her boyfriend. They got into a bit of an argument, which they were prone to do, and Significant Other and The Other Girl resigned to their bedroom.

They lay awake in the small double bed, starring at the ceiling, trying to ignore the argument. The night was quit on the island, and sounds traveled easily through the cool air. They lay and talked, mostly about what was going on outside.

“I have something to tell you” Significant Other whispered to The Other Girl.

Right away we were on high alert. The first thought was that he had cheated, had an affair, it seemed the natural conclusion, but then, he loved her, he loved us. The Other Girl was his first girlfriend, he was crazy about her. The thought he had cheated didn't last long.

“What.” she said, after a few moments, with breath bated, mind still trying to solve the mystery.

“You know the last couple of weeks, when I’ve been going to work?” he asked, pausing. She could tell it was hard for him to say whatever he wanted to tell her. “I haven’t been going to work." He paused. "I was fired. Two weeks ago.”

The activity in the brain at that point was on several tracks. How do you react to that? He had been telling her he was going to work every day for two weeks. Where had he been going? Why was he fired? How should we handle this? And, bills. Don’t yell.

“Why were you fired?” she asked calmly, all the while thinking about him having to try to find another job, not being able to pay his part of the bills again. Thinking about the over six months he had lived in her house rent free, while finishing culinary school, working, yet saving no money, spending it all on cigarettes, pot and beer. His lying to her.

He went on to tell the story of how a patron of the restaurant where he worked had been behind the building (it was in a park, so it was not uncommon for people to be walking all around it) and had seen a couple of the employees smoking pot. The patrons wrote a letter to the manager to express their disgust. When the manager brought all the suspects in for questioning, individually, despite not knowing if it was him for sure, but knowing that he has indeed smoked pot behind the building, he took the rap for it.

He was fired on the spot. The manager had not wanted to do it, the staff was saddened, he was a good employee, but the higher ups had the last say in this manner; even though he had been honest. Of the three employees the patron claimed to have seen, Significant Other had been the only one to admit to the deed.

The days The Other Girl had dropped him off at work he would go in the back door, wait for her to leave the parking lot, and then catch a bus, riding it around the city for the duration of his shift. Some days he would go to a local diner and sit and stare out the window, trying to figure out how he would tell The Other Girl what had happened.

We told him we were not angry, we weren’t. We told him we were disappointed. We were. We asked him how we were supposed to trust him if it took him this long to admit something fairly small to us. She told him if he ever got fired for drug use again, it was over. The whole thing was unacceptable. She did not yell.

A fault line was created in the relationship.

The next morning we were comatose, stunned…numb. It was visible to our female friends. The reality had set in, the lying, the sneakiness, we still were not angry. We were sad.

In the end telling us on the second day of our vacation, was probably not the best course of action. It would have been better to tell her right away, obviously. The Other Girl was not prepared financially to pay for us, and him, when going out to eat or partaking in activities. The deep sea fishing we had been so excited to take part in, was forgotten in lieu of splitting the money between two people, instead of just us; while our friends went out to restaurants on the island, we hung back at the house and made low-cost meals.

The trip itself was okay, the weather was colder than it had been since the 1970’s, so we spent a lot of time in our favourite hoodie and sweatpants, enjoying the ocean as much as we could, other times it sprayed sand like a sandblaster and we were unable to enjoy it. We had time to read what has become the book that inspired us to write about our lives, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Wall. We took beautiful photos of the island, and had some fun times with friends; but going back home meant going back to some tight times, with a man we felt untrustworthy.

Around this time Standby had broken up with his girlfriend, a woman The Other Girl had pushed him to keep dating after he talked with her about the woman's alcohol abuse and some mental health problems, we had encouraged him to be open about it with her, and they had dated for almost two year, but in the end the relationship ended badly, and then later even worse.

The Other Girl had started hanging out with Standby a little bit more, again, since he had bought a house over the course of the previous year near our neighbourhood, a ten minute bike ride, and she had missed his friendship. On one occasion in late spring she started feeling tempted by old feelings forhim, and he for her, but she refused to let anything happen because she/we cared about Significant Other, and we did not want to betray him be having an affair.

Continuing to hold hope that the catering business would take off, The Other Girl spent time researching some volunteer opportunities in the city and contacted a local non-profit to inquire about kitchen positions. They were looking for a volunteer a couple of hours a week for a nutrition based children’s program, The Other Girl liked kids, and we had studied nutrition in University (2004-2005). She went to observe the program and at the end of the hour she agreed she would take the position. The next week she went back, at the end of the program the Director informed her that they were going to be hiring someone for the job, a paying position, and asked if she would be interested in submitting her resume. The next day she had an interview and within 24 hours we were hired. We had never done this kind ofwork before, and The Other Girl was excited to be working for a non-profit organization. We had studied the sector in University several years before (2003-2004). On our first day of the job we were introduced to the General Manager of the organization, later known in our blog writing by many nicknames, the most well know, Fuck Face.

Two weeks following getting hired they added another day of work, they liked our work ethic, and they liked how The Other Girl worked with the people. We were now in charge of “food shelf” duties. Paid work two days a week, it wasn’t much, but it was enough. It was just enough to make ends meet, our house being paid off, we were splitting meagre expenses with Significant Other who had gotten a job serving at a local chain restaurant.

We decided to close down our catering businesses shortly after, and about a week later they gave us four days of work, they wanted to give us five, but The Other Girl knew we were already pushing it, re-entering the work force, dealing with people, too fast. In June 2010 we started writing our blog, slowly at first, and not about anything in particular in the front end, mostly opinion pieces about current events the Gulf oil spill, a paper on the dangerof high fructose corn syrup, importing some old University papers, and writing some random fun stuff, dipping our toes in the pool of blogging, so to speak. We’d never tried it before. The Other Girl wrote more personal stuff on a page she called her journal, accessible by readers, but never promoted, a place where she unraveled, tried to make sense of what was going on. Not many people read it, even though everyone she knew had the blog address, and she was okay with that.

A month later our job at work was now a variety of duties, including cooking, the staff member in their previously was going on maternity leave. A month after that The Other Girl and Fuck Face interviewed, and hired, a permanent cook, so that we could be food services manager, and run other programs. In the end we hired an amazing, brilliant and eccentric woman who most of our readers know as Fabulous Person.

TNB and her Boyfriend broke up that summer, they had been together around two years; everyone knew it was coming, so it was not shocking. The Other Girl was roused from sleep one morning, TNB needed help moving out, and she needed help NOW. We were there immediately. It was turbulent, he wasn’t a nice man, prone to violent outbursts, and he hated us (as have many boyfriends of female friends in the past), and so it was a stressful weekend. After that we started spending a lot more time with TNB, it had already gotten to the point where if one was at event without the other, it was commented on. She was The Other Girls’ best friend, she loved her dearly. Would have done anything for  her.

For our 31^st birthday we took our second trip to Vegas, going for the weekend with TNB, and The Other Non-Bestie (TONB) our best male friend, and another female friend. After a weekend of continuous drinking, 8 hours of sleep and a days worth of meals spread over three and a half days, strung out on red bull and vodka, we arrived back to the city to work for two days before we left to TONB’s lake cabin, where we spent the next three days drinking, celebrating our birthday with friends, and wandering on a dirt road, the night of our birthday, staring up at the giant mood, high on shrooms. Not being prone to feeling the effects of drugs very much, all we experienced was a strong desire to be outdoors, under the sky, and be nowhere near the cabin full of people. It was the start of a downward spiral.

Because Significant Other had to work so much he very rarely made it out to party with The Other Girl, and her friends. She was fine with this; we had been growing apart from him ever since that trip to the Bahamas. We partied through the summer like we were in our 20’s, every weekend drinking with our friends, away from the relationship, now that we no longer had to be his designated driver all of time like in the past.

The Other Girl had time to think, about Significant Other, about us and her, she was hearing from Frank that she needed to start on a path, she fought it – she fought it for what ended up being many many months. We found his inability to manage his money, his inability to hold his drink, the sheer immaturity, he was 5 years younger, was too much; he got fired for drug use, after having promised us he wouldn't do it at work anymore; he was too much work, emotionally and mentally.

In August, after celebrating her 31^st birthday, The Other Girl broke up with Significant Other. It took three times telling him it was over before he understood what was going on. It was one of the hardest things we’ve ever had to do, we didn't all agree with the decision 100%, but it was what was best, for us. We cared about him. Finally at the end of August he understood fully and moved out, moving in with his mother.

Over the next month we would talk occasionally with Significant Other, now our ex, he was always trying to find a way to get back together with us. He’d come over and smoke pot, and play Mario Kart with us, have dinner. He started trying to take better care of his appearance; he told us he was trying to quit smoking. One day we heard a knock on the door and when we opened it he was leaning against his car holding a boombox, playing Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes, from his car stereo (because his boom box was broken) in the style of John Cusack from a film he knew The Other Girl had always loved, ‘Say Anything’. It was touching. It was also too late. It became awkward trying to stay friends, and we had to end our communication with him.

September we also decided that the house we owned was too large, and too much work, to stay in ourselves through the winter, even though we had done most of the caretaking in the first place. We really needed a change. The Other Girl decided to rent it out and move into a small apartment in an area of the city that she had always wanted to live in, which was only about a fifteen minute walk to and from work. We loved it.

We called on our friends to help us move, but they were all busy, so we rented a van and took several trips moving our belonging from our house to our new small apartment on our own. The Other Girl had started to feel even more off, weaker, fragile; we had spent weeks cleaning and packing and looking for an apartment that would accept us – not being a resident of the country where we lived made it hard. We were stressed, we were sore, on the brink of a breakdown. Pulling some boxes out of the van in the alley of the building, a container of poker chips tumbled out of the van and scattered onto the pavement. On her knees she bent to collect them and started to weep, on all fours she picked up all the poker chips, tears spilling out on the concrete. Stressed.  Feeling alone with all of us.

Sometime in October The Other Girl signed us up for online dating on Plenty of Fish, we wrote about some of the men we met and went on dates with in the blog during that time. It was a strange adventure. We were not looking for a relationship, merely dating. We couldn’t stomach the idea of ending up having to share our space, and have The Other Girl force us to take care of someone else. We did what we never did before, and just dated for the sake of dating. With the constant alone time we desired, and nobody to take care of. Three weeks into living on our own and we were hooked on the idea of staying single as long as possible.

Significant Other still tried to win us back, showing up where we were on weekend. One time he showed up at the house while we were there working with The Plumber that The Other Girl had hired to fix some things before we rented it out; The Plumber who later asked us on a date after our first meeting, and who we wrote about several times in our blog. Significant Other put two-and-two together one day when he showed up at the house while we were working on it, after seeing the plumber’s van parked outside of our apartment. He spewed anger and pain at us, insinuating how we were paying the plumber for services, even though in reality we had kept the business separate from "the rest".

Immediately following the altercation he started calling us constantly, for the entire day he would call, yell at us and hanging up, threatening us, calling us names, leaving voice messages when we wouldn’t pick up the phone. He parked outside our new apartment building and honked his horn at the building, stalked us. He showed up at friends houses, people who were not his friends any longer, and cried to them, talked to them. We finally threatened to call the police, and contacted his father and brother to get him to leave us alone. He was being totally uncharacteristic. We were the first woman to break his heart. He had lost his mind. 

October we partied hard, and started using different street drugs, it was an escape plan for The Other Girl. We were still smoking load of pot each day, to ease back pain and stop our brain from running full-tilt  – we had not yet began drinking daily - and on the weekend we added to it tabs of Ecstasy/MDMA and loads of alcohol.

While the effects of these drugs were pretty mild to us, as most drugs are, we enjoyed the happy feeling they gave us. Our experimentation with them was short lived. The weekends that had included them, mixed with drinking and smoking pot, led to some very unwise behaviour; strange encounters with foreign men picked up in downtown bars, leading to hotel rooms and being lost in our own city; sexual encounters with male friends that eroded our relationships with them, and others; lots of lost jewelry and memories. In later months we would apologize to a female friend who we had pushed to take the drugs with us one night, knowing that she had a bad drug-related past. We became our worst nightmare. The Other Girl was trying to kill us. It turned us into bad people in our own eyes, desperate, a ghost of ourselves. We started losing even more weight; we started to withdraw from our friendships...and our drinking picked up.

At work we found a haven, we got promoted as Social Media Manager and Food Service Coordinator, most of us felt normal much of the time we were there, The Other Girl loved our job. We developed a friendship with Fuck Face, our General Manager, and Fabulous Person and her daughter (known in writing, as a pair, as Fabulous People). 

One of us started to develop feelings for Fuck Face, our friendship with him growing. We started going out for drinks with him after work, chatting over glasses of wine and beer. He found him fascinatingly bitter. He took an interest in our life, in our dating stories from the weekends, he got a kick out of our attitude towards men, and he started reading our blog, though we didn’t know it at the time. (when we started writing this blog the name that appears on our legal ID’s was used to register it, and it was attached to a Facebook account with the same name…not hard for people to find)

We started to have sexual dreams about him and we would hint to him about it, grinning slyly. After a couple weeks he would say he had dreams about us too. We began to flirt heavily, enjoying each other’s friendship and company, the tension escalated for months, leading into December. But that’s for another portion of writing, not for this one.

Even as one of us developed feelings for Fuck Face, and we were going out on dates (we did not sleep with every man we went on a date with, just so we are being clear here), The Other Girl was developing a relationship with Standby. She disliked Fuck Face, even though we were drawn to him.

During the end of 2010 there was, and is, a lot of confusion, since most of what was ending up on this blog was about dating and men, and very little about what was going on in our head, much of The Other Girls memories, much of what she was feeling eludes us, she stopped writing in the journal part of the blog on a regular basis, and so we have no way to know.

What we do know is that due to some blood work that had concerned her, that had caused her to call The Mother and cry, and due to some things she was finding increasingly strange, about herself, she took consol with a woman we worked with, EB. 

The Other Girl sat in an office with EB one day and poured out to her/our history of mental health problems, the concerns about some blood work that was requiring re-testing, blood work that would have shown a protein that, if showed the second time, would indicate a problem in her brain that would eventually cause dementia. She also shared her concerns about what had been going on with her the last couple of months, her inability to feel she had control things that she said, and some of the things she did, that she felt were uncharacteristic of her, which would later cause her to sit at home for hours and berate herself, and question what the hell was going on, while trying to replay the day’s events. Her inability to remember as much as she used to. She was scared.

She talked to Standby about it and he didn't seem concerned. She talked to TNB about it before going out to dinner on New Years Ever - they were double dating, her with her new boyfriend, and us with Standby - and was met with casual disinterest, not surprising because the friendship had become strained over the months, also a story for another day.

At the beginning of 2011 the results of the blood panel came back and the results were fine, but everything else about The Other Girls life was about to spin madly out of control.
------------------------------------Added January 31, 2012:
What was omitted in the entry about 2010 was the decision to go off of our antidepressant  (Welbutrin) medication in June, 2010, which we had been on for nearly ten years, after several previous attempts. We have now been completely medication free for over a year and a half.
Also not mentioned was the creation of our Twitter account, linked to this blog, which at the time were both attached to the name that appears on our birth certificate, in October 2010.

Religious Debate...or Something

A debate of sorts, anyway...more like answers to some guys questions.
We've been using our Tumblr blog a lot more lately...so, it may seem like we're neglecting this blog a bit.

Not sure why our comfort level has landed over there, after all writing is writing; and everybody who wants to read our words have access to them from several different "venues".

Not surprisingly we're stressed. Thankfully it has nothing to do with the Holiday's. We don't really celebrate Christmas, and even when we used to, we're not all the type of persons who got stressed over it. We don't go to church, we don't buy gifts for our family - we haven't in years. Last year we bought a very expensive gift for our former best friend (TNB) and attended parts of some Holiday parties - but that was it. Last year this time is when The Other Girl began to fall apart, and a lot more of us started struggling for control; and from the outside it probably looked to a lot of people like we were losing our mind. (more about that when we get to writing more Frank history).

Anyway.

We've had an e-mail sitting in our inbox for since September 18th, written by a reader/follower? (though, we're not sure) who had some questions in regards to our post "Religion, You Say? We Have  A View On That' (http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/03/religion-you-say-we-have-view-on-that.html) written March 20th of 2011.

Before we get started, we understand if this topic is not that interesting to you...it is a religious discussion between non-believers (us) and a believer. 

If you'd like to read, look at pictures, or be otherwise amused with other recent stuff, we suggest you read other stuff here, or head over to our Tumblr page...but we warn you...the most recent writing there tends to be that created by stress in our life (notably, James/The Boyfriend having to leave in a month, and various other stress related "rants")

Now...

In paragraph #7, beginning with "Having said that...", the following is written: "The Other Girl also had a hard time believing in religion, but she felt the pressure of a family who did not take kindly to those with opposing views..."
--> My question is regarding The Other Girl and whether hers and your views were different which in essence led to a rejection of the Faith, in general, or was it more of an outside influence -- like opposing religious faiths viewpoints -- that led to rejection of the Faith?

It's hard to answer religious questions without seeming...condescending to a believer. It's important to know, for those of you reading who don't know about our history with religion, or history of being a Baptist missionary, that we approach the subject of religion with some knowledge, and personal experiences.
I cannot speak for most, or even all, of us, only from my own opinion and point of view. I will say that none of believe in God, and to say we are "spiritual" would be an overstatement. We have an appreciation and a respect for the earth, and on a lesser scale, some of the people who live on it. 

"Losing our faith", as it were, was not an all-in occurrence for us, had it been we would not have made it so far as to dabble in the "missions of the Lord". Opposing religious viewpoints played no part in our decision, almost all religions are based in similar priniciples, principles you don't need to believe in God to appreciate, principles entirely not practiced by people of the Faith - the element that we do not agree with is that you have to have an intenese fear/love for a diety in order to be a good person. People who have never even heard "the good world of the Lord" have existed to sometimes be far better people that those who choose to "live their life" by it.

Quite simply our "rejection of the Faith" had everything to do with logical thinking, how logical is it to think the words of the Bible are true, through copious translations, written by fallible man, when more recent history has been altered over the span of only hundreds of years. It does not seem logical that there is someone watching billions of people, who is supposed to have the best interest of his creations in mind, and who lets the world become what it has. In our opinion, just as "sin" was a construct used to control masses, "free will" is an idea put into place, as is "God testing humankind", to provide loopholes for questions like: "Why did I get raped", "Why did my family member die of cancer young", "Why was my brother/sister/ect. murdered" "Why was my son/daughter mentally handicapped",  why, why, why does anything happen. 

If people are bad, and they are, and bad things happen to good people, to children, to babies even before they are born, and they do; then what it the justification to believe in God? People are not comfortable with there not being a real reason for anything other that people are bad, and bad things happen, so they say "God is testing your faith", which even if true, seems like an asshole move.
It really cannot be explained beyond that, from our perspective. Just as a persons journey to the "Lord" is a private and unique one, so is ones journey away. 

In the next paragraph, you write about the Santa analogy which you reference it to religion.  You write: " When you were a child, at Christmas, and every year you asked Santa for just one thing, one very important thing, something you knew you deserved, and every year you didn’t get it; would you still believe in Santa?"
--> I was wondering if you could expand and perhaps connect the Santa question with the religious tie.  Was there something you were asking for or for some change to take place and it never came about?

The thing we were asking for, if you have read anything aside from the single entry (which, we hope by now you have), the changes desired to take place, is an end to the emotional, mental, physical abuse, both from inside our family, and from the outside world. There's really no more explanation needed, I think. Using Santa as an example only worked as a perfect analogy.

Farther down the page you write a dialogue between you and your father.  The following is an excerpt: "“Why? …Why does a child have to suffer for someone else’s faults and mistakes? What kind of “God” would do that?”
--> I would like to inquire a few things here: when you say "child" are you referring to yourself or a child in general? When you say "someone else's faults" are referring to a parent(s) or society? 

Obviously we were referring to ourselves as a child, and ALL children in the world; and yes, we are referring to our parents, and all of society. 

-On the same note, you conclude with asking what kind of a God would do that.  You state you grew up in the church and you hint that at a young age you began to wonder things (and there is no doubt in my mind that you are a very bright individual which is why you began thinking and questioning). At about what age did this happen? And what, in your mind, is some underlying reasons or causes?  

We recall having questions on and off from a very young age, some of us more than others, and most of us were very observant and curious. Underlying reasons or causes? Abuse at a young age, and not understanding why any of it was happening, even as we plead in prayer.
[We must interject at this point, to our readers, and the person who wrote these questions to us...because it becomes clear at this point that the person had only read the single entry. We are fine with reiterating what should be fairly obvious...but it's disappointing that the answers could have been easily surmised by an overview of our other writing, to which links were provided in the post in question]

In one of your paragraphs you write: "Religious belief is a myriad of unanswered questions. The people who follow religion don’t like to be asked many of those questions; perhaps because it’s not comfortable to have to face the  realization you don’t have the answers or have someone threaten your ideals, and some people don’t like to think about those things."
--> I wanted to comment that I understand religion is not something that can be read and understood like a one-page essay or a short email.  Not only that but religion is primarily a faith-based walk in life.  My own background I was raised in a non-denominational Church of Christ, though recently I re-evaluated my own belief system through research and analysis and actually concur with the Baptist doctrine.  I read from your blog that you were raised Baptist.  I'm not here to judge you or anything of the sort.  Just inquire because I admire your writing skill and I don't expect us to be in total agreement with each other.  So back to your paragraph that I wrote above, did you try to search out answers to your questions and if so, did you get any answers or were you given nothing? Is there any lingering questions you have that maybe I can answer? I myself love questions about anything because it gives me a chance for people to interact with me and for me to share.  People matter.  You matter.  Which is why I want to know more about you.

I feel that the entry written, of which these questions are based, in addition to the responses to the previous questions, states very basic questions that the were asked, of which many people of religious faith do not have answers to. We understand that the mere description of faith is having confidence, allegiance, loyalty and trust in something, or someone...perhaps our lack of faith is based in our discomfort of being blindly confident in something very ill defined.

________________________________________________

We hope someone made it to the end of this. *yawn*

When we had James read it over, before publishing, he had come to the same conclusion we had; the person asking the questions obviously had not bothered seeking answers in the blog himself, and that these questions were a thinly veiled attempt at preaching.

Our opinion? If there WERE answers to any of our questions on religion, The Pastor (that we were under for our missions work, in that he was the pastor of our most recent church), who reads this blog, would have tried to answer them for us by now. Of course, we could be wrong. Meanwhile, our former pastor is the only man we'd ever let preach to us anyway.

Blah blah blah

We're going to go...do whatever...you...you probably have Christmas shopping to do, or present wrapping...or baking...4 days left you know.

 ...you know how we like to make you people laugh...

~Frank (& some et al)

The Dawn Of Something Different

The following life story is the next in the series of our life we have been writing. If you  haven't read the previous ones you can locate them here:

*We Are Just Call Me Frank | The Power Of We

• 1. Addressing The Issue of Frank: Part 1 (2011)
• 2. The Emergence of Frank: The Beginning (8 Yrs Old)
• 3. The Emergence of Frank: The Second Coming (13 Yrs Old)
• 4. The Emergence of Frank: Three Times A Rescuer (21 Yrs Old)
• 5. The Emergence of Frank: Frank's Failure (23 Yrs Old)
• 6. We Go To University & We Take A Lover (24 Yrs Old)
• 7. Life Without Frank - The First Two Years (25-27 Yrs Old)
• 7b. Collision: The Other Girls Accident/Franks Coma (25 Yrs Old)
• 8. Culinary School and Affairs ( 2006-2007 27-29 Yrs Old)
• 8b. Culinary School: Part Two (2006-2007)
  

...within this entry are links referencing some of the above stories, if you'd rather read them out of order.

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We graduated from culinary school, bought a house and started our own catering company, which meant we had a lot of time on our own and we didn’t have to spend everyday interacting with people face-to-face, which was great. Most of our communication with people, except for business, was done on Facebook, and spending nights on the weekend with friends, drinking and socializing.

Significant Other was working at a local high end restaurant so he was out of the house quite a bit during the day, but he still didn’t work as much as we would have liked him, especially towards the end of his employment there, but that just meant he was home a lot. While he worked we would get our catering work done - developing menus, seeking out advertising opportunities  taking free courses through the city on starting a small business, researching and created recipes. Spending a lot of time on our won, which we liked.

When he got home from work we would play video games, watch movies and smoke about 20-30 of grams of pot, from the minute he walked in the door from work, until we were passed out nearly drooling (this was good Canadian pot, by the way…there IS a HUGE difference in quality/potency compared to that of American pot) and made our way to bed.

As our relationship progressed we would smoke even more, and on weekends the amount would increase, and we would go to parties where it was shared by all. There would be the usual drinking don at parties, but more, Canadians can out drink most any American, we would put money on it. Sometimes at these parties there were other drugs, but The Other Girl kept us away from them in the beginning. She had to be responsible.

At parties The Other Girl would try to alternate with Significant Other for Designated Driver responsibilities, but he would consistently fail at being able to drink one or two drinks and then stop to sober up, and forget not drinking at all…there was very few people who was willing to do that at the parties we went to, let alone our 23 year old boyfriend.

The Other Girl was super responsible, on many levels. She go the nickname “The Water Nazi” for the first year or so of partying with her Canadian Friends because she would try to get them to drink more water while they abided in alcohol; she knew it would prevent them from being as hung over the next day as they usually got. They very rarely took her advice, but when they did they felt better the next day, and let her know.

We’re not talking light drinkers here. We’re talking about people who at the extreme are the kind of “social” drinkers who are not a stranger to a vomit in between bringing, and at the least extreme of course they were drinkers at home, during the week. Before hanging out with these people we hadn’t been much a of drinker at all, we’d been drunk less times than we could count on two hands by the time we started partying with them at the age of 27.Two and half to three years, a few of us can drink like champs (we all have different tolerance levels however); this is not to meant to sound like we blame them, we had a great time with them, and we know how to say no.

But during the relationship with Significant Other the drinking was heavily controlled for the most part, it had to be, because like with so many other things, he was hardly responsible enough to tie his own laces (he tucked them in his shoes). He was a heavy smoker, sometimes a chain smoker, and a wake-and-bake and go to work pothead. He had poor hygiene practices, so much so, in fact, that The Other Girl discussed with Significant Others mother why she thought we had to beg him to brush his teeth before bed, or take a shower after working in a kitchen all day before we crawled beneath the sheets. He binge drank to the point of blacking out. He was a lot to be responsible for.

We have stories that make people laugh, thinks he did, sometimes when The Other Girl's friends were around, sometimes after they had gone home. Stories they thought so funny, despite our speaking of them in private, that they would share them with their families, of who we were also associated, to get a good laugh.

No matter how drunk we ever where, even in the privacy of our own home (where we could drink as much as we want because we didn’t have to drive), we never thought Significant Others inebriated antics were funny, of course we look back on them now and I chuckle when I think of The Other Girl and how much she was willing to put up with while she was in charge and I'm happy we no longer have to deal with it.

One evening Significant Other was standing on the stairs porch with a friend while we had a few people over. The Other Girl stepped out to share a cigarette with him and say something, we can’t remember what, and as he’s looking at us and nodding, listening to whatever she was saying, he nonchalantly turns his head and vomits over the side of the railing, then he looks back at her, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and continues to listen, expecting her to keep talking.

“You just did that, didn’t you” The Other Girl says to him, we cringing and thinking about how much we hate him, how disgusting he is, and she turns around and goes back in the house.

He grins stupidly, swaying, too stoned and drunk to recognize disgust.

We go back in the house to talk to people who we don’t want to immediately shove over the side of the railing.

Another time, after a “few drinks” we were laying in bed, him nearly passed out, and could feel him get up, but not go far enough to make it to the bathroom, only to hear the sound of liquid splashing against the bedroom wall. He thought he was in the washroom.

Springing out of bed The Other Girl yelled “You’re pissing on the wall!”

“Easy come, easy goes” he drunkenly mumbled, turning to look at her and grin stupidly as he continued to piss, standing about four inches from the bedroom wall, right next to the doorway.

The Other Girl grabbed his arm and shoved him towards the bathroom across the hall. When he came back she took his hand and stuck it into the urine saturated floor.

“See what you did!” she told him, like we were scolding a puppy, and pushed him towards the bed where he passed our snoring.

The next morning he has no recollection of what happened.

Once, while some friends were over drinking, they and The Other Girl were all standing in the front porch, a large fully contained space with windows all along the front, the only place people were allowed to smoke cigarettes in our house, and of course Significant Other was high, when he stumbled over the threshold into the front porch, he clumsily tripped and put his head through a front window, breaking it into pieces. He backed up and just stood there looking shocked and stunned afterwards. Everybody thought it was hilarious.

That window was never fixed.

All these serve as a snapshot of what The Other Girl was willing to put up with, she thought she could somehow get him to grow up, “change him” we suppose.

He wasn’t all bad.  With anything bad we could say about him, those were basically character traits, not personality traits, he was a nice young man. The Other Girl was his first girlfriend, even at the age of 23 when they first met; she was first woman he had been with. He loved her/us so much. He was caring, gentle, patient and kind and loved people, and his friends and family.

While he wasn’t very smart, as burnouts by the age of 23 so often aren’t (he’d already had 10 years of smoking pot under his belt by the time our relationship ended), he had his bright moments, and he was creative and talented. He wrote skits with his friends which they intended on videotaping and putting on YouTube, and they were good skits too. He loved music and wrote songs….unfortunately it was mostly rap and hip hop. He was known for getting drunk at parties and doing freestyle-beat-box-hip-hop-rap renditions based on people and things that were going on at the party. He was talented at throwing out the most random well articulated vocals stoned out of his mind.

Significant Other also cooked for out catering company, even though we got no more than ten gigs the two years we kept our business open. Having met in culinary school, he had the ability to help us execute big events, like a wedding reception for 100; and assist with tasting parties where we would experiment with at least a dozen recipes we’d created for the catering menu and people/The Other Girls friends would rate their opinions on a several points form we created from taste to creativity in plating. He was also skilled at having patience when we were stressed from executing catering events.

Significant Other helped us start a bathroom remodeling project on the house that The Other Girl had bought, though he wasn't very knowledgeable about such things, not like us who have a very good grasp on things like that, being raised by a father who was contractor and working with him as a teenager in the summers, and untimely the project never got finished because we dropped the ball over the summer and spent the weekends at one of The Other Girls close friends lake cabin, and he spent most of his time being high.

In the summer of ‘09 we got back in contact with old friends from high school, the girl (First Girlfriend) and guy (Gay Ex-Boyfriend) who we had had a three-wayrelationship with in high school. In addition Gay Ex-Boyfriend had also been our first real high school boyfriend back in those days.

Over ten years after high school First Girlfriend was married, unhappily and having an affair with one of her old boyfriends from high school, who was bisexual but from anyone’s view, totally preferred men; Gay Ex-Boyfriend was divorced (from one of our best friends from high school) with two kids under the age of 11, and remarried to a man ten years his junior. They were a mix of unhappy people trying to rediscover...something.

We had fun getting to know each other again after so many years; at first it was like the friendship picked up right where it left off, we were all a bunch of silly kids again. The Other Girl got to know his children and his 9 year old daughter took to her. The Other Girl was a nurturer, she cared far too much and it had been clear from anyone’s view that this little girl sought attention. The Other Girl enjoyed the week with the young girl holding her hand and looking up to her and she felt like she had missed out on something by not yet having any children. We had just turned 30, and The Other Girl had always wanted to have children before that age.

The week we spent with them was fun, The Other Girl, First Girlfriend and Gay Ex-Boyfriend went to the local Gay Pride Parade and took part decorating, and then throwing candy, from the float for Gay Ex-Boyfriends business; they went to the Gay Pride concert and watched a famous drag queen on stage. In high school First Girlfriend had gotten both us, and Gay Ex-Boyfriend, our first tattoos, so to celebrate their newly growing friendship and all got variations of a matching tattoo together. Wishing for more time together they made plans to all come back and spend New Year’s together 4 months later.

It was between that trip and New Years, during our relationship with Significant Other, that we got the opportunity to take our first trip to Europe and see Egypt, which The Other Girl did a great job of detailing in her travel journal, the contents of which can be located on this blog (for a link to the several travel journal entries please see our Recommendations page, scroll down the ‘The Other Girl - Stuff She Wrote’ section). It was an eye opening, and at some points, a heartbreaking experience for us, as anyone who has read, or decides to read, may notice.

In November, a month after we can back from Europe, our last, and favourite Grandpa died. We spent hours crying in front of the computer hundreds of miles away, wishing we had gotten to spend more time with him. The Father hadn’t let us know how quickly he had gotten sick, and nobody in the family had even realized he was sick, and it being the time of the year where we were afraid to be on the road (because of a car accident we had had years prior), we didn't get to him in time. We thought he would hang on until Christmas.

Grandpa was an amazing man in so many respects. The father of seven children, he had dated our grandmother in high school and they had been married ever since. His children loved him, looked up to him, and many of his sons, and even some of his grandsons, tried to pattern their own marriages after the love and patience they had witnessed him show to our grandmother. He was a God-loving man, and a hardworking farmer who hunted religiously ever fall, literally up to the day he died. He was sick during his last hunting season, refusing to let anyone fuss over him, even though they could all tell he was ill, he finished out the season with his skin turning yellow, and shortly after died in the hospital of pancreatic cancer with our grandmother holding his hand.

On the several hours drive home from the funeral in early December (because we were NOT going to let ourselves be too afraid of the road to miss Grandpa’s funeral) The Other Girl and Significant Other started talking about a future, seriously for the first time. They had been together over a year, and while he was still a bit young, by then close to 25, The Other Girl had just turned 30 six months prior and felt she didn’t want to wait to have kids too much later in life. They talked about getting married and agreed that it would be fine to start planning for children, maybe even get pregnant before they got married. When we got back to the city The Other Girl switched our lower estrogen birth control pill in preparation of going off of it the following year, and started planning for a wedding slated for the following year.

The week of New Years arrived and The Other Girl took a bus all the way back to the city where we had graduated High School, several hundred miles away, to spend the week and a half or so with First Girlfriend, who was coming in on a plane from another state, and Gay Ex-Boyfriend.

It was the worst New Years ever, but in many ways started off 2010 with exactly what I needed.

The details of everything that happened are hard to explain, but The Other Girl began to have growing concerns about Gay Ex-Boyfriend’s nine year old daughter. She acted out a lot, he yelled at her a lot…he was not sensitive to the fact that she was still adjusting to her dad, fairly newly divorced and remarried, now kissing, and being openly sexual with a man, and not her mother.

He had only recently gotten married, and his husband was much younger, and they were very “affectionate” and verbally sexually suggestive with each toher. Things that got said in the presence of the children were alarming to us.

Being a child of a mother who was in a lesbian relationship for over 8 years, who was wildly inappropriate with her girlfriend (more inappropriate than straight couples generally are), in addiction to the other things she let happen, we recognized some of the pain and confusion his young daughter was going through, the sadness...and the frustration. 

When Gay Ex-Boyfriends sister showed up to join us for the evening, dressed for a night on the town to celebrate New Years Eve, we were aghast by her slutty attire, we commented on the fact that her husband was away, in the military, and how it seemed inappropriate for her to dress that way, and also about the impression it must give his daughter, and his sisters’ own daughter, who were at an age where the only female influences in their lives, “hip and cool” (their grandmother, however, is an amazing woman) was, really, this woman dressed like a porn star prostitute. We couldn't help but think all the situations going on were the perfect blend to raise future porn stars, strippers...or worse....woman with daddy issues.

Of course we were less eloquent in how we said it, more Frank I suppose (I had just started becoming an stong influence) about our opinion on how his sister was dressed, having had a few pre-New Years partying drinks, and it hit a sore spot with Gay Ex-Boyfriend, and shoved a wedge in the evening between us, Gay Ex-Boyfriend, and First Girlfriend, who didn’t want to take sides by having an sort of opinion, which was typical of her, and everyone else involved.

We tried to have fun, first going to a local gay bar, and then changing plans and deciding to go to a more popular “sports” dance bar in town. Gay Ex-Boyfriend’s husband had not brought his ID out, and being barely 21 was required to have it to get into the “straight” bar. We all planned to head back to the house, so The Other Girl waited in the entry of the bar for them to bring the car around, because it was cold out and she had stupidly not brought a jacket. They took their time getting the car, and as the New Years music began to play and whistles blew she spent New Years Eve in the entrance of a bar, nearly alone. The Other Girl yearned to be back home. As she turned to walk out the door she told the only other person standing  in the entry “Happy Fucking New Years”, we got into the vehicle, tears streaming down our face, nobody saying a word to each other.

A day or so later, after a fun day of snow tubing and sledding, The Other Girl spent hours making dinner for her everyone, Gay Ex-Boyfriends daughter, when presented with dinner, pushed the plate away, wrinkled her nose, and said “ew”. 
It hurt The Other Girl, but she calmly said “You know, when someone spends hours making a nice meal it’s not very nice to say that, without maybe trying it first”, smiling at the nine year old girl that she had grown fond of.

This comment made Gay Ex-Boyfriend angry, and he responded with saying something rude and inappropriate to The Other Girl, indicating she had no right to say that to his daughter. The Other Girl was confused and responded by explaining that if his daughter were in a school that is exactly the way a teacher would approach her behaviour.

After that dinner incident The Other Girl locked herself in one of his bathrooms where she sat on the floor to think, and cry. She was hurt by the way he talked to her, made her feel like a fool in front of all of the children, his husband and First Girlfriend, while inadvertently encouraging his child to be rude and treat others in such a way.

We stayed in that washroom all night; he never came to talk to her. He sent his husband to the door once, and another time his son, but it had gotten to the point we had been in there so long she was embarrassed to come out. She lay on the floor and cried for hours, waiting for them to go to bed so she could make the move safely, without having to see anyone, from the bathroom to the bedroom in the basement where she had been sleeping.

The Other Girl lay on the floor and began to recall things that pissed her/us off about Gay Ex-Boyfriend and how he not only treated his daughter, but was letting even his foster kids treat other children, and act rude to each other. She recalled how the day before we had been playing on the floor with his young foster child, and his friends foster child, how he had dismissed his son grabbing toys away the other child, ignoring that the other child was hurt and confused about all of his toys being snatched out of his hands. We began talking to the children explaining sharing, and how sharing is a way to make friends; concepts that they responded to by sharing with each other immediately, instead of fighting. While it made us happy, that we could make an impact, we also knew that that small seed would never flourish.

As she continue to lay on the bathroom floor, The Other Girl contemplated calling The Father, who lived in the same city, to come and get her. The next morning she waited to hear everyone leave the house, to take the kids to some sport activity, and she called him and asked him to please come pick her up.

We spent the remainder of the trip with The Father, and The Step-Mother (with whom we had never had a good relationship with, until recently), staying in thier guest room. It turned out spending that time with The Father was the best thing that could have happened to us, and really opened up our relationship with him.

His father, our Grandfather, was the one who had passed away a month prior and so we skipped the bus we were supposed to take, and instead The Father drove us to The Mothers house, where we planned to take the next leg of the trip to home.

On that five hour drive in January '10 to The Mothers house we opened us to The Father and he opened up with us. We talked openly and honestly about a lot of things in our life, we asked him questions about our childhood, about his marriage to The Mother, about not understanding how he hadn’t seen how mentally ill she had been, about our views on religion,  we talked him about things we had experienced in the last ten or so years, things he had never known about, like our bad marriage and getting diagnosed with bipolar disorder and social anxiety disorder, about moving back from The Mountain State and being diagnosed with schizophrenia…because we had spent so much time running, and hiding, and it was time to stop; and we wanted their to be time to have a good relationship with The Father before it became our first regret.

We never really talked to those friends again, First Girlfriend and Gay Ex-Boyfriend, we got a message from him a week later that was a half asses apology, but we decided right there that we couldn’t have anything to do with someone that close minded who was selfish and had no shred of respect for people; and given our past with him (he had been one of the friends to laugh about us being molested when we were a teenager), the disrespect that ran through the entire history of our relationship made the choice easier.