Last Time....

I am not normal.

I know that I'm not normal and I'm okay with it. 

But sometimes I realize how very not normal I am. 

Last week I had to go by the townhouse a few times. Every time I go to the townhouse for something I think, "This is the last time I will be here" and then of course it's not the last time. So then the next time I go I think, "This is the last time I will be here."

I think Sunday really was the last time I will be there. We dropped off the set of keys we had kept and the garage door opener. If everything goes the way it's supposed to go by the end of the day Wednesday there will be a new owner. And her name is Katie. Not my Katie, but still Katie. Patty (our realtor and friend) and I both felt like it was kind of a sign when she put in an offer. A feeling of rightness. 

I know it's totally just a random coincidence, but people love patterns and signs and so I felt like it was a good sign. 

And fingers crossed it was. Two more days and we should be done. 

And Sunday should have been the last time I will be in the townhouse. 

And my reaction to that is, "Fucking Finally."

Because I am done with it. And once I'm done with something I'm really over it. As soon as we closed on the new place and moved out of the townhouse it became a thing I have to deal with. And I don't want to deal with it anymore. I don't live there. I don't want to live there. I don't want to deal with anything about it anymore. Every time I had to go over there to take care of something, the flooring, the windows, the cleaning crew, the busted furnace, I could feel the tinge of resentment. 

There were two things that came up in the inspections that needed to be taken care of and I was so worried that she would walk away from the deal, or not want to close until they were done. Brent and I were like, We will pay to have them taken care of. You can take care of them or not, don't care, but we will totally write the check. Just close on the house. 

Which is what she ended up doing. Plus asking for a little more for her trouble. 

What. Ever. It's not something we would have done. We would have asked to cover the repairs and that's it. Maybe asked for a contingency percentage to be held out just incase they went over the estimate when working but that money would have only been tapped by us if it was needed. But I also didn't care that much that she asked for money to sooth her inconvenience (really to replace the carpet in the basement, who are we kidding?) It wasn't enough to overrule the whole "I want to be done" feeling from me and the whole "Get me the balance of the money" from Brent.

For those of you keeping score at home we are two days away from living in the new house for a month. 

That's how quickly everything has gone. Patty is outstanding at her job. Put the house on the market the week of a big rate hike from Fed, as prices started to cool, and STILL we sold within a week for what we asked, with a two week close. BOOM!

And yet, I'm still just over having to deal with the townhouse. I want it to be someone else's house now. I don't want two houses. I have a new house. I have stuff to do here. Lots of stuff. I have other things we are dealing with and I'm just over the townhouse. 

That we lived in for over 20 years. 
That we pretty much raised our kid in.
The house that either one of us lived in the longest in our entire lives.
The house that I was having a hard time wrapping my head around not living in just two months ago.

Done. Thank you, next.

That's the not normal part of my personality. I'm that way with everything. If I decide I'm over something I'm over it. It works that way with people too. Brent says it's why he doesn't sleep at night. He's kidding, he sleeps great. But he has known me long enough to know that it's true. When I'm over it, I'm over it. Sport's teams, food items, places, companies, people. Once I move on I'm gone. 

Some things I don't get over. I hold special places for them. I don't think I'll ever get over not being able to eat some of the foods that I can't eat anymore. But I think that's because I didn't make the choice to stop. There are people that I haven't seen in decades that I still miss. But that's because I didn't want to lose them out of my life. 

But if I make the choice? Done. 

So yesterday I posted some pictures of the last visit to the townhouse. The views out of the upstairs windows, which I will miss being able to see the coastal range and the West Hills depending on which side of the house I was looking out. But what I feel like is that I wish I had a higher space here to get those views back, though it's kind of hard to have high views and no stairs so...

But anyway...

I took the photos as a last visit thing. And posted that it should be the last time I am in the townhouse. And everyone responded with hearts and comfort posts.  

I told Brent clearly my FUCKING FINALLY should have been written out. 

It wasn't a sad post. It was a good bye final post. And it was a good house for us when we bought it. And it served its purpose and I hope Katie has many happy years there. But...

I'm not sad about leaving it. I'm looking forward to waking up Thursday morning knowing that someone else owns it and I'm done.

I'm not normal. 

I'm okay with that. 

Women of a Certain Age...

Multipurpose blog today. 

First off, everything's fine. 

I made a post a few weeks ago asking if getting a text with a similar opening line made things worse or better. It was right after I found out about the gas leak at the townhouse. Brent was traveling and I needed to let him know what was going on. I felt like "Gas leak" was a bad way to start a message so I made sure to let him know that everyone was okay first. Then after I sent it I thought, hmm, maybe that's actually a worse start to a message. 

But anyway, everything's fine. 

This is about the bleeding that I had back in February. I had been going to ignore it, really thought it was the last hurrah meaning I wasn't technically in menopause even though it had been a year and 3 weeks since my last period. But when I posted about being bummed about it I was contacted by enough people who said, "Hey! You actually need to see a doctor about this!" that I contacted my doctor and she said, "Yep they were right. But you need a specialist." And so I waited for an appointment with a specialist. 

And waited. 

And then two days before that appointment they called and let me know the doctor had a family emergency and had to cancel. I said, Okay. Rescheduled for a month later (because why would it be sooner). Then got a call saying just kidding, that time doesn't work we need to move you to a different one. I said, Okay fine. Then the week of that appointment I got a call telling me that they needed to reschedule again because she was going to be in surgery that day so they needed to move all of her appointments. I said, Move me to a different doctor. I don't care which one but move me to a different doctor and put a note on my appointment that I've been moved three times and I will not be moved again. So they scheduled me with a different doctor for a month out.

Then they called back in about an hour and said just kidding, we don't have to move your appointment after all so do you want to still come in on Thursday? Fine.

So for a few spots of blood in February I finally got in to see a doctor in May. And almost not until June. Anyone who tells you how horrible it is for people in countries with socialized medicine and how they have to wait so long to see a doctor you just tune them out. We do the same thing here. Just with the added bonus of paying through the nose for it. 

But anyway...everything's fine. Multiple tests and an ultrasound yesterday to double check. Everything came back negative which is positive in this case. Which is great. Except for the fact that the few drops of blood that I had in February that triggered the appointment is now light bleeding for almost two weeks since the appointment. Which my specialist doctor has told me is nothing to worry about. So annoying. Which brings me to the second part of this post.

We don't take women's health seriously. 

We just don't. The whole reason I've been so vocal about perimenopause and menopause is because we don't talk to women about what to expect during these years. We talk about puberty (though only briefly really, we are left with a LOT of gaps in knowledge), we have multiple books about conception and pregnancy, but we just vaguely wave our hands at the other end of our hormonal journey, make a few jokes about how hot it is, and leave it at that. 

What I have is uterine atrophy. It's a perfectly normal thing that happens. As the hormones fade and the uterine wall stops getting rebuilt and shed every month the tissue starts to get thin and really delicate. Which means it can bleed easily. Any number of things can trigger it, sex, exercise, lifting something heavy, getting hit in the stomach, a particularly strong coughing fit...seriously, anything. It's normal, it's common. 

But bleeding is also a sign of something being seriously wrong. Cancer being the biggest worry. 

And here I was not knowing either piece. Not knowing that it was really commonplace, and that I can expect to have some breakthrough bleeding here and there. Not knowing that I needed to be careful if I did because it was a sign of cancer.

And I've been reading tons and tons of stuff about what my body is going through so I should know stuff like this. For me and for everyone I've been sharing it with because we don't know enough to keep ourselves healthy. But I still didn't know.

And then let's talk for a moment about the fact that this type of bleeding is really common but they don't know if it's the fine whatever type or the oh no this is bad type without some pretty intense tests. If the majority of women who don't do hormone replacement treatments can expect to have at least one bout of breakthrough bleeding shouldn't we have a way to discover what is causing it that isn't so painful?

And maybe there isn't. But I have to think that there probably is. And partly because of the reaction of my overseas friends when I mentioned the testing I had done.

Part of it was a standard pap smear manual exam. With the extra added benefit of a biopsy of uterine tissue. Which, look, I totally get, if cancer is a concern then you have to biopsy. I've had multiple biopsies of skin lesions in my life. But with all of those they numbed the area before taking the sample. Just a little pain blocker before cutting open my neck, my arm, my torso. All of those got a localized shot, then the biopsy. But for the uterine biopsy? 

Nothing. 

And I guess that's not normal in other places. One of my friends told me where she lives it's considered cruel medical practice to do so. Having had two samples taken I would agree. 

First my cervix was dilated, which is not comfortable by any means. But manageable. Just a little crampy. But then the actual samples from inside my uterus were cut out. Which is just as painful as it sounds. My cervix was dilated, then my uterus was scraped and cut. Oh holy shit. 

I have a really high pain tolerance. I've had dental work without Novocain high pain tolerance. I've had doctors tell me about other issues, "You should really be in pain right now, I don't understand why you aren't." To which I would tell them, "I am. Or I wouldn't be here." I just have a high tolerance. I'm good at disassociating. It's not the healthiest of learned tricks that kids who are abused have in their arsenals but it can be really handy at times. 

Not this time, I was in tears. Tears. My breathing was raspy and it took everything I had not to bolt from the table. So I cannot imagine what it must be like for other people. 

No numbing. Just dilated, cut and move on. 

Would that be a thing in men's health? I just cannot imagine it being a normal procedure if it were a man they were dealing with. But women's health care is often neglected in research and our pain is often discounted. 

I've learned things about my hormones in the past year because of Katie's research that I feel like I should have been told about before puberty. Like grapefruit interferes with estrogen. I knew it interfered with certain medications, but with estrogen itself. There is also an increased risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women who eat grapefruit daily. Like if you are one of those half a grapefruit and cup of coffee for breakfast women, you could be putting yourself at risk. But have you ever heard that (before today)? I hadn't until I started looking up information about grapefruit because of what Katie had been told about eating it while taking her pills. 

There are other things that I discovered when I had to take the testosterone blocker (which funny enough, they didn't tell me that's what it was, I found out that's what it was when Katie started taking it) and my estrogen reset and then ran wild for that stretch when they finally figured out my weird adult onset cystic acne was due to a hormonal imbalance. Which, again, my god, cystic acne is more common in men and in women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. Because their hormones get out of balance and too much testosterone causes cystic acne. It should have been a pretty quick diagnosis. A quick hormone panel, a screening for POS, and then cleared up. But no, telling a woman she has excessive testosterone is too scary I guess? So it took awhile and then, like I said, I didn't even realize that's what I was on. I just knew my estrogen went crazy because my boobs got painful, hard as rocks and even bigger than normal and I started buying Lady Gaga music...

But anyway...

Everything is fine. 
All of the tests came back negative. 

The ultrasound was invasive and uncomfortable but it was also fine. I have a fibroid but it's a normal looking fibroid and not likely to cause any issues. And having a fibroid or two is totally normal. There is a number and a size where it's an issue, but who the hell really knows what that level is and if we should be screening for them. Because you know, women, am I right? Who knows what is and isn't actually an issue?

We do not take women's health care seriously. 
We don't give women all of the information they need to understand their own bodies.
We don't talk about all of the stages and things that those stages will bring. 

We don't give women the same sort of control over their health as we do men. 
We make laws that dictate what women can and cannot do with their own bodies. 

These things are all tied together. 

I have a really high pain tolerance. 

But I'm so sick of this bullshit. 

Shopping...

I have done so much shopping lately. Like crazy amounts of things. And I am going to do more. 

It makes me really tense. I keep waiting for the credit card to be denied. I grew up broke. We were broke for a long time when we were first married. It's really new to me that we aren't broke. And it's not like we are rich. We aren't the kind of people who money is just "there" with no worries. Brent works long hours in a really stressful job to make the money we have. But we aren't broke. 

But when you grow up broke it's a very hard thing to not think like a broke person. Like going shopping for clothes I will look at things and put them back if they aren't on sale. Because I'm not spending more than $20 for a shirt! That's crazy! And Brent has to tell me, you can afford to spend more than $20 on a shirt. It's okay. Get the shirt.

And that's just $20 shirts.

I've been buying appliances and furniture and household services and doctor visits. And it's stressing me out. 

But it would stress me out even more to be sitting in a house half furnished wondering about my uterus so spend spend spend. 

And THEN the even worse part of it is that things are still on big delays with supply chain issues.

Supply chain issues. That's such a great term isn't it? I mean it covers so much. Can't get that to you, supply chain issues. And we all nod and frown. Oh yeah, supply chain issues. We know how that is. While it used to be we would get pissed, BUILD THEM FASTER! DON'T SELL ME SOMETHING YOU DON'T HAVE IN STOCK! NO FUCKING WAY AM I WAITING FOR A FEW WEEKS FOR THAT! Now? We're like, really? You can get that in 6 months? Perfect! Sign me up!

Supply chain issues. 

Bah...

Anyway...

Now I'm spending money and shopping for things that I won't even get for 6-8 weeks after I place the order more often than not. Sometimes even longer. The dishwasher I just ordered is on a 3 months delay. For a dishwasher!

Good news is I only had to pay for half of it right now, I guess. 

This week's spending activities will include: Last of the medical tests for me, hopefully the repair on the furnace at the townhouse, the new bedroom set might possibly arrive this week so anything we still owe on that will be due, we should buy a new TV for the living room, possibly some new shelves for there as well, I need to make an estimate appointment with the landscaping guy, window coverings need to be finalized and maybe if there's time this weekend we will stop by the garden store and get some flowers for the front and back decks. OH! And I just bought some new office shelves today, one set will be here next week the next is about 8-10 weeks out because...supply chain issues. 

So the house will stay half done and not settled in until maybe Fall (I talked about this before) and I will keep shopping to fill the new space with pieces that fit this place a little better and I will still keep bitching about needing to pay more than $20 for a shirt.

Because that's a lot of money!

Friday Quick Post...

I should be working out right now, that's what I am thinking with my new time blocking scheduling but I needed my big monitor to look for some paperwork so since I'm already here...

What should we talk about today?

I've been whining  updating you all on the move stuff for awhile so we could move on from that and cover current events. 

*looks at today's headlines*

So we are thinking we want to turn the backyard into a paved area with some planters around the edges. Maybe add a firepit area and a place for the smoker that's a little farther away from the back door, yet still covered. 

To add anything that is above the fence line (Screening in the back porch, adding a gazebo for sitting or for covering the smoker) has to be run past the architectural committee for the HOA. For the back yard. Not the front. The back. Brent is not happy at all. He didn't realize we were getting into an even more strict HOA than we were in before. But, as I keep telling him, every single place we looked at had an HOA of some sort. Some of them were really tight, some weren't. But all them had them. 

I think once we are done he'll be fine. He probably will even appreciate the structure a little when the neighbors don't park a Buick on their front lawn and three cars in front of our house. Because that's the piece I really like. You aren't supposed to park on the street over night. In your garage or in your driveway, thank you. After 20+ years of looking out my front window at a parking lot I'm willing to ask the HOA about a gazebo as a trade off. 

And that's really what the rules are right? What are you willing to trade in order to have some sort of structure? I'm willing to trade a little bit of freedom to decorate my house for not having to deal with a ton of cars in front of my house. It's a good trade for me. 

But it has to be something we honor and follow for it to work.

When we were moving in and our extroverted neighbor came to visit his wife asked me if I had received a copy of the CCRs (basically the rulebook of a HOA). Seems their realtor hadn't gotten them a copy. I told her where to find one and what some of the general guidelines were. 

Which if you don't know them, you can freely ignore them right? 

They have been getting a lot of work done and one of the things they did was pour a concrete path from their back yard to the front. Which is a great idea and we were going to do the same but with pavers (pavers can be removed so no CCR violation). But since they never looked at the HOA rules they didn't feel bound to follow them. We will see if they get any push back for it. Personally, I think it looks fine, matches the driveway, good idea for trash can to be in the side yard without having to wheel through the mud to put out on trash day. Not super thrilled about the concrete slosh over into my yard, but since we are going to redo it anyway I'm not pushing the issue. Not worth a neighbor brouhaha over something I'm going to change anyway. It's not really an issue unless I decide to make it an issue. 

You know. How most things are. 

You can choose to ignore the rules if you don't agree with them.

You can do what you want, as long as it doesn't impact someone else. 

But if it does impact someone else you should be prepared for the push back.

Or hope that your neighbor just doesn't care enough about something that is going to be changed anyway to actually have to deal with talking to yet even more people...

I am so peopled out.

*reads today's headlines again*

So very very peopled out.

Two In A Row!

Okay, so making that effort to sit down and write. I need to take care of some other house things that are easier to do on the big computer (vs. on my phone) so it seems like it would be silly not to take the time to write.

It's all going to be more move stuff so if you are already bored with this you can skip and not even feel badly about it. 

We are in this weird limbo state right now. We have moved. But we haven't closed on the sale of the townhouse. We are in the new house. But we haven't finished settling in. We've ordered our bedroom set. But it's still tracking as not delivered until the end of May. We've had a couple of people come in with estimates for window coverings. But the prices are crazy high. But if we don't order soon it will be winter before we have blinds or curtains. We have gotten rid of a bunch of stuff that doesn't work in the new house. But we haven't replaced things yet. 

So basically the house is obviously being lived in, but it's not yet done nicely.

Oh and we need to get the back yard landscaping done and the porch screened in.

And and and...

I had thought we would be mostly settled in (except for the yard) by June but I'm revising that to July or August. Supply chain issues are still causing us problems. The new dishwasher we ordered is MONTHS out for delivery, for instance. And it's like that for everything we do. We find something we like and get the order process started and...that's going to take 6 to 8 weeks to be done. 

Which is why I was so relieved that the valve for the furnace looks like it will take a week. I feel like once the townhouse is closed and done then at least my brain will stop doing the "remember when you moved to Colorado and the house in Hillsboro didn't sell for MONTHS?" loop. 

As Brent put it yesterday "You've been a little on edge lately."

Yeah, a little. 

I mean if you call wanting to throw my phone into the driveway and run it over three or four times to stop the constant barrage of phone calls and texts a little. Then yeah, a little.

I am peopled out basically. 

And I don't have the luxury of being peopled out right now. I need to deal with workers for some things that need to be done here at the house (at one point Monday morning I had three different sets of workers in the house. THREE SETS!). I need to deal with workers for the townhouse. I need to deal with the sale of the townhouse. There are some sporting events that we are attending over the next few weeks (yes, those are fun and great, but still filled with people). 

And all I want to do is close the doors, pull the non-existent blinds, and just sit quietly. 

Maybe this Fall? 

But odds are quiet time all alone in my new house is on backorder...

Remember When....

So remember when I said last week that this week would be the week I settled into my new routine because this week would be easier? 

Ha!

Next week. Now I'm aiming for next week. 

But to be honest it might end up being June at this point. Which is totally a thing that could happen and I'm fine with it. Really. I mean not being settled in is fine. Not having any sort of routine is fine. It's all just fine. 

Fine.

Or not. 

But I can't really change it so I need to roll with it. 

Last week was the last of the random things I needed to do at the town house so I was going to stop going back and forth between here and there a few times each day. I cannot even tell you how much I was looking forward to that. Isn't it amazing how quickly we let go of old things? I mean, honestly. All it took was moving all of our things into this house for me to think of that one as "not mine." And as it's "not mine" I don't want to be there. And after last week, getting it set up to show and putting it on the market, I was not going to have to do much there. A drive by here and there to make sure things look okay, check the mail a couple more times to make sure USPS did their thing, but other than that. Done, baby!

And then Sunday we discovered the gas leak. 

So Patty had thought she smelled something on Tuesday but it wasn't strong and I wrote it off to just random stuff because I had been there Monday and there wasn't anything. Sunday a realtor that showed the house let Patty know that it was really strong. So I called NW Natural and raced to the house to make sure I got there before they did. 

See, what I didn't know is that they wouldn't wait for me. If they got there first and couldn't get in the house they could just cut the line at the curb and I would have to go through the process of getting it all turned back on before I would even be able to find out where the leak was coming from. So I raced and cussed at every stop light and slow car having visions of my house exploding and taking out the neighbors...

Got there and yeah, definitely a gas smell. I opened up the house to get it aired out and tried to find where it was coming from. Hard to pinpoint because it seemed like it was everywhere. Ugh. 

NW Natural got there and brought out his little sniffer. Stop it, it's not dirty, that's what they call the tool that can detect where the leak is coming from. Not the stove, not the fireplace, dang it, that leaves the furnace. Which is in the attic. And all of our ladders are at the new house. And the dispatcher I talked to on the way over to the town house, (yes, I had my phone on speaker as I drove, it was an emergency!) had said the techs don't carry ladders so if it was in the attic I was shit out of luck. 

But no, he had a ladder! Whew! And it was the valve on the furnace. It had developed a leak and would fill the unit with gas, then when the heater would run it would then push all of that gas out the vents through the whole house. Great...

And honestly in a way it really was great. We had been having issues earlier in the year with the furnace and I think it was the valve failing at that point, so it would have been nice if they had figured out that was what was happening a few months ago, but the good news is it completely failed after we moved out. So we weren't dealing with a gas leak in the middle of the night, which could have been catastrophic. We weren't dealing with no heat in the house we were living in while waiting for the repair, which would have been miserable. And there is a part in the states that we can get. 

Which is SUPER great. These attic combo units are not common and right now if the whole unit fails there is a six to nine month wait for one to be shipped. If it had been that long to get the part to fix the unit we would have been screwed trying to sell it. It would have been trying to convince a buyer that we for sure would get it fixed, and summer is right around the corner so really it won't need to run much anymore while they waited. But there was a part and so we didn't have to. We just wrote as part of our counter offer that we would FOR SURE get it fixed.

Yes, our counter offer. We sold the house. 

To the person who discovered the gas leak. 

Which is amazing. 

And now I'm sitting with my fingers metaphorically crossed that the close and sale goes through smoothly and the part comes quickly and the repair is easily handled. 

And then...then I will be able to settle into my new house and new routine just as smooth as silk and...

Stop laughing.

It could totally happen.

Picking Sides...

So one blog in April. Considering how busy April was I'm taking that as a win. Trying to settle into a new routine here at the new house, it won't happen until next week, but I've got a plan. 

This is actually one of the best times to form a new habit. Any time you break your standing routine it's a good opportunity to sub in a new one. Try it. You don't have to wait until you move house, you can do it if you are on vacation, or if you have to get up at a different time for a stretch, anything that breaks you out of your normal routine. Want to floss more? When you go on vacation, pack your floss and make sure you do it every night before bed, or first thing in the morning, but either way it will be easier to set up a new routine when your old one is busted. For me I am going to set up a new schedule for my daily routine and make sure I block in writing time again. 

Next week. Today is just bonus because I want to write about something that is bugging me right now and get it out of my head.

How do you choose sides? I don't mean in the big things where there is clearly a right and a wrong for your own moral code, but in random things that come up. People tend to choose sides no matter the situation and sometimes I wonder why that choice is made. 

Right now the celebrity gossip is all caught up in the Depp/Heard trial. She wrote an op-ed, he says it damaged his career. He's suing. They are both testifying and the internet world has taken sides. Or mainly side. Like the majority of what you see is that she's awful and he's been defamed and isn't it terrible what's happened to him?

There is the take that her claiming he abused her sets back actual abused people. But why though? Even if she is lying why would her lie damage everyone else? I mean I have a theory and I'll circle back to it. 

There is the take that we need to pay more attention to the fact that men can be abused too. And that is absolutely true. Men can and are the victims of abuse. The stats are more heavily tilted toward men being abusers (of their partners no matter the gender) but you do have cases where women abuse men and the men don't report because of the stigma. The patriarchy hurts everyone. 

There is the take that she should be drowned then burned then fucked. (that one from Mr. Depp himself.) He says it's from Monty Python, with the fucked part added for extra color I guess?

But I don't understand why the majority of people seem to take his side over hers? From what I've read she isn't great, don't get me wrong, but that doesn't make him an angel. They seemed to feed off of each other's particular form of toxicity and escalate.

I mean, he says that he would drink to blackout at times. But then claims that he knows he never hit her when he was blackout drunk. He also says that any injuries she had were self inflicted, which matches with what he said about the crew member who sued him for attacking him during a drunken rage. He also says that her article is what led to him losing parts and damaging his reputation, but in cross examination it was pointed out that there have been articles about his drunken bad behavior since well before he and Heard ever got together. But all of those were hit pieces as well. According to Depp.

But none of that has swayed the DeppStans. They are sure that he is an innocent lamb abused and maligned by that evil witch Amber Heard. 

Why?

How do you choose sides?

Is it because we have "known" Depp longer? He was Gen X's poster boy for gorgeous weirdo. 21 Jump Street to Edward Scissor Hands to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to being able to take our kids to the Pirates movies (the first one at least, even you Stans have to admit the law of diminishing returns on that series set in quickly). We feel like we know this man. 

But we don't. 

We do know that he's an addict. He admits that. And addiction is a nasty disease. Anyone who is an addict or has loved and addict can testify to how personalities change between sober and impaired. I mean, I am a mean drunk. MEAN drunk. Or at least I was. I might not be anymore because I stopped getting drunk a long time ago. Because it makes me mean. So Depp could very well be a mean drunk, and it appears that he was. Doesn't make him a bad person overall, but it does mean that he is a mean drunk.

We also know that he's had a reputation in Hollywood for years for problems with his addiction. Jennifer Gray is releasing her book right now and she touches on her engagement to Depp. She talks about how he was jealous and possessive. Now, that was years ago. People often grow out of behavior like that, but it is another point on the line that he isn't perfect.

But we don't expect him to be right? I mean he can be deeply deeply flawed and still have been a victim. He can be an addict with blackout issues and still have been abused and mistreated. He can have punched one person and not another. He doesn't have to be perfect to believe him.

But she does.

She isn't a good enough victim. She fought back. She was mean. She wasn't passive. She didn't simper in a corner wait for him to sober up. She, for all the stories if we believe him, was really unpleasant. And somehow that means that not only is she not able to be a victim but NO OTHER WOMAN is as well. Or at least it sure makes it hard for "real" victims to speak up. You know, the ones that don't fight back, the ones that passively take the beating, the ones that tell the world it's fine, he's lovely, you just don't know him the way I do. Those victims. The real ones. 

We have a vision in our minds about what a victim looks like. And she doesn't fit that vision. So we discount what she says and we decide that it also damages other victims. The real ones. Which is such bullshit. Even if it comes out that she was the only one in the wrong, that he was the innocent lamb his lawyers and his Stans would like you to believe, that doesn't mean jack shit for anyone else. 

This is why we have a culture that needs a hashtag Believe Women. Because we don't. Not really. If they don't fit the perfect victim mode we dismiss. If the man they are accusing says he didn't do it we tend to side with the man. We have a balancing point of how many victims have to come forward in the case of serial abusers. Too few and it's probably not true, too many and they are just out for money or fame.

If someone tells you they have been abused believe them until you have reason not to. But the reason should be more than "he says he didn't do it."

It puzzles me how people take sides. What they use to weigh in on that judgement.

I think the truth probably is that they were both really damaged individuals whose particular form of damage triggered an escalating response in each other. It was a bad relationship. And you don't have to take my guess on that, you can take the testimony from their marriage counselor. The one that did know both of them. That did hear both sides. And that weighed in that they were both toxic and abusive. 

They can both be awful people. Or at least awful to each other. No sides needed.