Candyman and I - Part 1

Three days ago I was sitting on the patio of a Whole Foods on the posher side of town with my friend and professional counterpart, Torrey. We were exploring possibilities of bringing our brand of tension and trauma releasing therapies to corporate audiences, first responders, and caretakers, who are frequently subject to secondary trauma.

I know that corporate wellness programs are not what they used to be and that nowadays most companies invest only the bare minimum into the work life balance of their employees, but Torrey and I felt there were at least a few organizations in Tucson whose staff were in our target market that were also thriving. Having worked closely with first responders in New York City in the field of disaster response management, I had a special interest in that community.

Now, looking back, I can tell you that I probably looked somewhat cocky with my laptop popped open on the table and the straw of my freshly squeezed, custom-made juice hanging loosely out of the side of my mouth as I boldly took steps to steer my professional future. Three days ago, I was not aware of my profound privilege in that moment. I am the modern woman. This is what I am supposed to do, I think.

In my journey of bringing the tremor experience and Neurogenic Yoga™ to people, my own mechanisms of releasing excess tension have become well refined. For decades I hardly ever cried, but due to this practice and the process of learning to allow my internal trembles to do what they will, my tense emotions now know the six lane express way to my tear ducts embarrassingly well.  I am quick to cry now and I don’t mind now. I understand that my body is self-regulating and I let myself. In addition to my more frequent tears, I have also adopted a small range of new, delicate, physical ticks. They sort of crack me up. I can control them if I want to. But I don’t want to. When my shoulders want to shake for a moment or my legs want to bend and lengthen while standing in line for example, I let them. I now, more frequently, trust my body to know better than I do.

But last night something happened to me. Last night something had me more terrified than I had been in a very, very long time. Last night a brutal feeling tore through me that made my chest pound, my hands shake, my voice escape me, and rivers of tears gush down the side of my face without me even being aware of my crying. Last night my being incurred a wounding. Last night felt like my soul was dragged along the coarse dirty gravel ground until it was shredded with deep, dark ridges by little sharp pebbles.

This morning, where things are more or less okay and I am licking my wounds, I am trying to piece together why this feeling, despite how brutal it was, did not feel unfamiliar to me. When had I felt this terrified before? I am shuffling through the highlights of my fairly average childhood traumas trying to remember.

The time that some kids managed to stop themselves in the middle of a long and winding water slide causing all the children to pile up on top of each other? I watched my bare, wet legs wrap around the stranger in front of me with maybe ten kids already wedged in the tight, cold tunnel in ahead. I don’t remember anything after turning and seeing the kid that had been in line behind me fly around a corner at rapid speed and head towards me. I attribute my claustrophobia in large parts to this experience. No. Last night was worse. Way worse.

What about the time I learned why minimum age requirements exist on movies, having been exposed to the movie Candyman at way too young an age, causing me to stumble disoriented from room to room while hysterically laugh-crying? No. Last night was worse than that too.

What about the time when at three years old I was separated from my family in an elevator and lost in a thirteen story hotel for hours? Every floor looked the same and I thought I would never see my mother again. Even if it’s hard to believe, last night cut deeper than that.

There seems to be some memory that is trying to come up that involves being terrified and alone in a dark closet, unable to speak and looking down at my trembling right hand, but I can tell you right off the bat that that too, does not feel bigger than last night.

Somewhere though, along the way, I know, I had felt that terrified before. The way I felt last night was not new territory.  

Before I tell you what happened you must first know a few things. You must first know that recently I have had a few run-ins with the law. Yup. After having a public record for most of my adult life that was so shiny it nearly squeaked, the last two months finally bring some drama to what was once an utterly dull read. I was hit with two back to back traffic tickets. Both for running stop signs. Yup. Watch out. I’m a dangerous woman. My middle name is trouble.

The first ticket was sort of funny and deserved. While leaving a strip mall near my house and cloaked in my total self-righteousness, I rolled past one of those stupid stop signs that is positioned way before the spot where you can actually see the oncoming traffic. After the officer pulled me over, I had to laugh at myself, which didn’t work in my favor I am sure. I guess I thought he would agree with me about how stupid that sign was. When he asked several questions in an attempt to assess my mental state (I live in a poor neighborhood), I wasn’t surprised. Of course I got a ticket. It’s okay. Every five years or so you just gotta. It was January and I didn’t appreciate the 200 dollar fine so shortly after the expenses of the holiday season, but this single girl of early thirties deserved it.

The second was only three weeks later and a lot less funny. Amid some profound life altering changes, I had moved to a poorer neighborhood on the other side of town, but couldn’t help but continue my Monday night 8 pm yoga class on the east side that I had been teaching for years. It pays next to nothing and I arguably spend more in gas than I earn from teaching this class, but when you do what you love, your students become your grounding force, your community. And especially amid the major upheavals in my personal life, I was not ready to let this group go.

Things had been challenging lately. I was just about the only white girl in my neighborhood and most certainly the only girl living alone in a one bedroom apartment. My landlord had been on some inexplicable war path with me, ignoring my calls for over a week, then being insulting and then hitting me with exorbitant fees for calling his maintenance man without consulting him first. I had gotten to the point that I was ignoring home repair problems for as long as I could and then sourcing my own handy help every time something finally cracked, busted, fell or broke. I currently turn my shower on and off with a wrench. My family relations finally gave way to the fifteen years of suppressed trauma. My car was having issues and needed repair, but I was able to be able to borrow a friend’s car while I saved the money to fix mine. The fact that the vehicle was a red, lifted Jeep Wrangler that finally forced me to learn to drive a stick was cool at first. But that was before I realized how much unwanted attention I attracted.

Having finished Monday night’s yoga class and making my long way back to my rather grimy part of town, I stopped at the grocery store. This day was pushing the limits of my strength and the offensive red rebellion that was my mode of transport. With the jeep laden to the brim with the paraphernalia that make up this life in working transition – ten rolled yoga mats, straps, poster board, scissors, crayons, spare shoes and clothes, plus the plastic encased basketball signed by the entire 2015 U of A basketball team (a raffle prize I had yet to take to its winner), I was exhausted as I hoisted the groceries into the car and got on my way home.

By now I had been driving the Jeep for about a month and learned that as opposed to its owner, an older white male, I had an exacerbating effect on its inherently provocative nature.

As soon as I pulled out of the parking lot onto the main road I saw the bright lights behind me. I had not the faintest idea what I may have done and so I calmly made my way into the turn lane and came to park right in front of a small, surprisingly still open, gaming and card trading store. Having assembled my documents from wallet and glove compartment, I sat back in my car seat and awaited my talking-to as the store’s operator stumbled out of the glass doors into the blue and red disco lights outside his store.  He seemed to be here for the show as he light a cigarette and leaned up against a wall not 12 feet from where I was sitting.

‘Do you know why I pulled you over?’

I honestly don’t know and take a guess ‘Umm…turning out of the parking lot into the middle lane?’

‘No, you turned into the correct lane, (YES!) but you didn’t stop (Huh?). Every time you pull out of a parking lot onto a street, you have to treat it like a stop sign. Even if there isn’t a stop sign.’

I ran an imaginary stop sign at 10:30 at night on a Monday on an empty road, I think to myself. I would roll my eyes if I could.  In my sweetest ways, I attempt to explain to him that I am tired, that it is late, that I didn’t mean to, that I just completed traffic school and that I really appreciate him. He takes my information and goes back to his car. I feel fairly solid that he understands that I am not the entitled college girl he may have taken me to be, but am working on making peace with whatever will be.

Time ticks on and he is still tinkering in his car. To calm my nerves I strike up a conversation with the cat puffin’ on his cigarette out front of his store - what he sells, what business has been like these days and so on. His sweaty and pasty skin and the dark rings under his eyes along with his hoarse voice make me wonder what he uses to stay up all night, but I don’t care. Right now his presence is helping me keep myself calm, even if his ways seem sort of sleazy. I pull the basketball from my backseat and proudly show it to him. He sells stuff like that all the time, he says. Okay. I sigh and sit back in my seat once more and into the stillness my fear rises.

I look in my rear view and then ask the sleaze ball ‘Do you think he is actually giving me a ticket?’

‘Yup,’ He says, ‘You might wanna take that sweater off and look hot. You don’t stand a chance in that thing.’

I feel like I have just been punched in the mouth. If I had had the chance, I would have said something to him. I would have let him know what a pig I think he is. I have worked too hard to become the woman who no longer shoves these kinds of things down far enough so everyone stays comfortable.

But before I can collect myself from his statement, I have the handsome face of the young officer in front of me again and my freshly printed ticket in my hand.

‘No..!’ I tell him.

‘Yes’ he says.

‘No, no, no’ I tell him.

‘Yes’ he says.

‘You know what? Fine,’ I am testy, ’But may I at least get a few things off my chest?’ I ask him as my eyes well

‘Sure’, He sounds almost kind

I tell him that this is not fair, not my car, not been an easy few months, that I have learned my lesson here, that I don’t need my wings clipped, that I cannot absorb these fines every month, and that the city does not need these 200 dollars more than I do. He waits till I finish and we sort of thank each other and wish each other a good night. I am too shaken and upset to look where the sleaze ball went off to. I just want to go home.

Four weeks go by. I work my ass off. Between work and teaching, I start an LLC, open a business account, launch the first go around of therapeutic workshops, go on food stamps (an experience and effort that deserves an article on its own), am called a brat by my landlord, get my taxes done, buy insurance, 250 dollars for the broken laptop, print business cards, find a new place to live for when my lease ends at the end of May, work on the promotional material and the business plan that is supposed to get me out of this hole.

Another round of loud fights from the apartment below, the kids go back to their dad ‘forever this time’, the level 2 sex offender who helps to keep an eye on my place when I am gone and his son can’t find work, the gun shots still occur at their average rate and everyone in the building across the way is evicted with thirty days’ notice as my neighborhood is looking at large-scale renovations and falling under the grand wheels of gentrification that are bound to steamroll any barrio that is as close to the college campus as this one. The poor are pushed out of the cities.

I decide to fight the last ticket in court hoping the judge will cut me the slack I feel I deserve. The good looking officer meticulously recreates the scenario on a diagram indicating me with a red X and himself with a blue arrow. I would have preferred to be the blue arrow. In hindsight I can tell you that his ‘need’ to be up and walking around, creating a diagram, puts him in a superior and authoritative position over anyone sitting on the court floor. I listen as he re-tells the details that night. I am surprised when he reiterates in unexpected detail much of the things that I said in the exchange between us. Verbatim, those things came out of my mouth, but he is being selective in which of my statements he reiterates and which are left out. He even makes mention of exactly when in our exchange I started crying and I feel embarrassed, but when I hear my sweetheart shuffling somewhere behind me in the back row of the court room and proudly whisper ‘that’s my girl!’, I have to smile. He finds my waterworks ridiculous but nonetheless endearing. The officer’s version of events does not include the sleaze ball or any of the factors of my story that would have justified heightened stress levels or humanized me – where I live, what I do, how hard I work. I let him finish.

I thanked the officer and told the judge that all that was shared was absolutely correct and that I had learned my lesson. That said, I felt the City of Tucson did not need my 200 dollars nearly as much I did. I tell him of my living situation, being knocked around by my landlord, being harassed by the guy outside the gaming store, how hard I work, that that was not my car and that from now on I will make sure to stop at all stop signs, even if they are

imaginary. He appreciated my ‘upright conduct’, ignored the stories of my harassment, and told me he wished he could, but he really can’t waive the fine. I essentially learned that our system, in an attempt to keep the lady justice blind as a bat, we structurally don’t allow the room for compassion. He couldn’t lift my fine even if he wanted to.

So there. Add 20 dollars to my ticket for having requested a hearing, arrange for a payment plan of 50 per month for five months and walk out with at least my dignity mostly intact even if it had all been mostly a waste of time. I had said my piece at least. Riding the elevator down to the ground floor, I turn to my honey as my eyes bulge and with a huge gasp ask:

‘Did we park the car and forget to pay for parking?!?’

‘SHIT!’ he responds.

I had been so nervous, I just forgot…

‘No, no, no! Tell me it is not true! Tell me I didn’t just get myself a parking ticket right outside of city court in an attempt to negotiate just one of all the unexpected and humbling expenses of the past weeks!’

 We both sped our stride back to the car. 
I didn’t… I didn’t! I did not get a ticket!  
In that moment, having accomplished nothing at court, I felt I had won.

A week after my court date, I decided I hated the feeling of owing on this ticket and the fear of potentially forgetting a payment with all that is on my mind lately that I choose to dip into my barely present emergency fund to just pay the damn thing off and send in a money order. That was two days ago.

All that was before last night. All this was before I found myself reduced to tears on the side of the street, alone and powerless.