Jude Out. Thomas In.

The most damaging character flaw I'm dumping for 2015 is my nagging capacity to believe everything people tell me, though I would not consider myself gullible.  There is a distinct difference between the two.  I don't believe all of the people, all of the time.  That would make me a complete idiot.  But I rarely think anyone I have a relationship with would deliberately steer me wrong or lie to me.  I blindly believe people I know, people I love, people who I assume love me back.  And this flaw has caused more heartache and embarrassment than placing my trust in a bunch of strangers ever could.  Strangers just aren't that motivated to fuck you over quite like family and friends are.  The stakes aren't usually that high for a stranger to make the effort to fuck you over either unless they're a hedge fund manager or are trolling for dates on Match.com.

It's true.

I ate a scab once when I was a kid.  My brother and sister told me it was a burnt potato chip.  They didn't force me to eat it.  I ate it willingly because I believed them when they told me it was a burnt potato chip.  Burnt potato chips were coveted in my house and as the youngest of four, unless I came upon one on my own, I was shit out of luck.  I was never in the driver's seat in our home when it came to snack food.  Fact.

Peter and Mary were eating Wise potato chips out of the bag at the time of the discovery.  Suddenly and with much fanfare, Mary held a thin, brown, hard-but-a little-bendy two-inch circular object up and exclaimed 'A burnt potato chip!'  I ran over and asked if I could pleeeeeeeeease have it.  They simultaneously replied 'No way!' 

Genius move.

They played me for the seven-year old slave to salty junk food that I was.  They made me beg for it like a desperate tool.  'Why would we ever give it to you, you smelly creep?' I begged and pleaded and they still said no.

Brilliant.  But once I turned on the tears, they told me to quit my sniveling and handed it over. 

And I ate it.

I ate it not because I was gullible or stupid.  Well, I was only seven so obviously I was a little bit stupid.  I ate it because I believed them. I trusted them.  I never for a moment doubted the authenticity of the potato chip.  I never imagined my older siblings, my protectors by birth order, would ever think to feed me a filthy cluster of dried-up platelets.  Peter and Mary hatched the perfect plan to entertain themselves and I fell for it.  But because I was a trusting ninny, I also made it super-simple for them. 

I chose to ignore key evidence that could have given me pause to examine the fake potato chip a little more closely before shoving it in in my pie hole.  I turned a blind eye to the several minutes worth of hootin' and hollering' right before Mary's proclamation of the discovery of the delectable burnt potato chip.  I also chose to overlook the fact they did not make me carry out a single moment's worth of indentured servitude as was the norm whenever I asked for anything from them. 

I did not pick up on how quickly they gave in to me as soon as I started to cry either.  Peter and Mary never missed an opportunity to torment me into hysterics so they could mock me for my 'retarded crying face'.  And they gave me the chip without a moment's worth of physical violence.  The only thing Peter ever willingly gave me was a barrage of Three Stooge's smacks on the top of my head before kicking me across the room every single time I was anywhere near him.

Nope. Instead of a teeny-tiny sliver of doubt, I believed Peter and Mary. I always believed Peter and Mary.  I was never one to believe in stupid stuff like the Easter Bunny or fairy tales because I always thought that shit was just ridiculous but when it came to claims made by my siblings, sign me right the fuck up.

So, I trusted my brother and sister that fateful day and I ate the scab. I gave my brother and sister and entire family the gift of a wonderful story to ridicule me with; a story that has stuck with me for more than four decades and is shared each and every Christmas around the dinner table, 'Remember the time Suzie ate the scab?'

Why, yes.  I do remember.

Sampling of Other Shit I Ate Courtesy of Peter and Mary:

Cycle Dog Food which by the way, does not taste anything like Dinty Moore Beef Stew when it's heated up in the microwave.  It tastes like pig asshole and ground up horse aorta slathered in warm slaughterhouse flavored jelly.

A big glass of room-temperature raw eggs which looked just like a batch of the frozen orange juice my mother used to whip up in the blender every Sunday morning.

A handful of Delilah turds mixed into a bag of Sugar Babies one Halloween.  Delilah, who was named after the Tom Jones' song 'Delilah' was my sister's guinea pig. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS1gTs7k1v8
Boogers.  Boogers is the plural of booger.  And yes, I had more than one booger in my mouth which did not originate from my own nose. 
I didn't actually eat the bloated tick Peter told me was a camouflage-colored jelly bean because I noticed it had legs but he did try and force it into my mouth.
                               

Looking back over the years, I've allowed myself to be fed the equivalent of a wheelbarrow's full of enough bullshit from people I've trusted that it's a miracle I haven't ended up with a colostomy bag from some horrible intestinal disease.  Although scabs, guinea pig turds and boogers are indeed disgusting, making your little sister eat them is pretty harmless stuff.  I'd eat that crap by the fistful rather than carry around a gut packed with residue left behind by betrayal.

Betrayal.  That is some nasty-tasting and long-lasting shit.

Betrayal keeps you up at night and you can't just puke it out of you.  I've tried to cry it out of me which hasn't been all that effective either.  Betrayal sticks.  It causes you to second guess just about everything including intentions that were most likely sincere at one time.  Betrayal is like a red ballpoint pen you can't control and it travels back in time circling and editing the history of your life you hoped was permanent.  Betrayal has a way of souring moments that were once so sweet which you can't undo.

And that really sucks.

I went to church every single day for six months after my husband left.  Every day, I sat in the same pew and prayed to Saint Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes.  Catholics and my mother believe Saint Jude has the power to turn even the most desperate of situations around and I needed all the help I could get.

I prayed to Saint Jude over and over again, appreciating the fill in the blank portion of the prayer which reads 'Come to my assistance that I may receive the consolation and succor of heaven in all my needs, trials and suffering, particularly (here make your request)'.  I thought it was both thoughtful and pragmatic of the folks who came up with the prayer to build in some Mad Libs flexibility which is probably the reason Saint Jude is so damn popular.

Here's the humiliating part.  Every time I said the prayer, I based the fill in the blank part on a bunch of hooey that my husband had fed me; hooey I bought hook, line and sinker.  I pitched a bunch of prayers to Saint Jude I would never have pitched had I not been that same trusting ninny who ate the scab and believed everything my husband had told me.  I wasted hundreds of requests on Saint Jude which could have been switched out with better prayers for things like world peace, or a reduced BMI, better health for my ailing father, a Patriots Super Bowl victory, a vision of winning Power Ball numbers, or better yet, extra prayers for me and my children to help us adjust to this new life we were going to end up with anyway once the truth came out!

Now, had I instead taken a liking to Saint Thomas, I would have welcomed a healthy dose of doubt into the pew with me those six months, doubt that everyone in my life gently encouraged me to apply as a filter to what my husband was telling me.  The Apostle Thomas who was eventually speared to death and died a martyr for Jesus, had his doubts about Jesus' resurrection when the other Apostles told him about it.  Thomas, known famously as Doubting Thomas wanted to see the wounds from the crucifixion before believing Jesus had in fact risen from the dead.  Jesus complied with Thomas' request and encouraged Thomas to touch the holes in his hands left behind by the nails used to hammer Jesus to the cross.  That Jesus was such a good sport.  Once Thomas saw the wounds for himself, Thomas was all in.

Thomas's shadow of a doubt is perfectly reasonable to me yet it is has never been part of my fabric.  Time and time again, I have let my heart overrule what should be logic by trusting implicitly.  I have rebuilt myself from the ground floor since divorce and though the journey has been painful at times, the rewards have been great.  It has been five years since the Patriots lost that playoff game to the Ravens on January 10, 2010 and the man I was married to for eighteen years is now married to that truth which eventually came out.  Jude proved to be a disappointing and unworthy Saint; despite my litany of prayers, he never did do me that solid of swooping down to stitch my marriage back together and fix the hopeless cause of my unwavering trust in an underserving man.

Saint Jude didn't answer a single one of my prayers.

Or did he?

Jonestown, Massachusetts

God knows, my faults run as deep as the Mariana Trench, though the worst of them could likely be considered my best qualities on paper.  Vanilla-Girl Scout do-gooder traits and all I've got to show for them is dozens of invisible scars scratched across the four chambers of my bleeding heart and a drained 401K account thanks to divorce. True, there could be far worse things than drinking Cumberland Farms coffee instead of Starbucks during retirement but it's embarrassing to be so misguided.

The short list:
I am kind to animals, having transported various woodland creatures for treatment to the local veterinarian's office more times than I care to remember.  I am overly generous and pay it forward to people who expect rather than appreciate with high-hopes not of re-payment but instead of lessons learned.  I regularly wave people ahead of me in traffic and much to my mother's chagrin when I was a kid, I have craned my neck left-right-left looking for pedestrians in cross-walks since before I even had a driver's license.

Former Catholic Catechism Doctrine Student and Now a Teacher Disclaimer:
I can't take credit for the pedestrian benevolence quirk as it is the result of pro-bono advice given to me in the second grade by a classmate's personal injury attorney father rather than springing from a well-intentioned core.  (By the way, you can be sued for double the damages if you run someone over while they're in a cross-walk regardless of fault.  You're welcome.)


Sure, kindness, generosity and elementary school practicality are the bare-bones ethical standards most human-kind come with but witnessing baby squirrel, mother-less bunny and tiny chipmunk euthanasia by way of a stomping vet-tech foot can cause anyone to doubt the most well-intended of efforts.  Truth is, where I've run into real trouble comes from a life-long subscription to the blind faith and trust thing.  And an unwavering preponderance towards loyalty.  What a dummy.

The only thing I've deducted from my flawed character is this: if I was anywhere near The People's Temple in Guyana in 1978 and married to the Reverend Jim Jones, I would have been first in line to get my Dixie-cup of purple Kool-Aide.  I would have ignored the signs Jim was going off the deep-end and my 15-minutes of fame would have come on the cover of Newsweek Magazine lying dead alongside all the other retarded Jonestown cult-members dressed in hideous 70's fashion.

Which is not the most opportune place to be.  Five years ago, the Patriots lost a playoff game to the Ravens on January 10, 2010 and my husband of eighteen years left, never to return.  Since then, I've pulled my body up from the mess and gone about the business of rebuilding a life but my insides; the parts of me that make up what I thought mattered; have been stuck stapled to the past.  Unanswered questions, humiliation, betrayal and loss have kept me from gathering up what I once thought defined love and commitment and family, locking it in the far, far corner of the basement and throwing away the key.  Five years is a long time.  If I don't get going and pull the rest of me up, I might as well get on a flight to Africa tomorrow.  

After much self-reflection , I've decided I'd be infinitely better off with a moral compass guided by a set of brass Judas-Brutus ovaries instead of my true magnetic Tammy Wynette north.  Faith in people is for the weak and needy.  Loyalty and trust is for losers.  Self-absorption and narcissism is where it's at.  Pope Francis is a super cool Pope but he certainly didn't make it all the way to the Vatican without stepping on a few sandaled toes. 

2015 is going to be my year, the year I will prove my theory that assholes do in fact finish first.  And they do so dressed better, with taut bodies and wrinkle-less faces.  They take what they want and sleep soundly at night.  Assholes make more money and go to fun parties and swim with dolphins.  They are not burdened by thoughts of those left in the wake of their decisions and life is easier for them.  They are loyal only to themselves and their desires and they get what they want even if what they want hurts someone else.  And they post it all on social media for the world to see.  They have no shame.  Only pride. 

And I am all in.

Happy New Year, bitches!