It Depends on Who's Asking...

She was looking for the perfect stone. She needed one that was clearly heart shaped. If it was pinkish in color that would be a great bonus, but that wasn't really necessary. As she walked the trail through the woods she kept coming across discarded pumpkins. They hadn't been brought there and smashed, just left, so her guess was someone leaving them for the animals in the forest to have a snack and not from a group of rowdy teenagers grabbing and smashing jack-o-lanterns on Halloween night.

She was glad to be done with Halloween. It was such a frustrating holiday. Unlike most of her sisters she didn't resent the misrepresentation. The green faces, the hooked noses, the warts. She honestly liked those costumes better than the influx of "Sexy Witch" that started with the teen set. Those set her teeth on edge. Patriarchy in action in the most inappropriate place.

But no, what she really hated was the question asked of the little girls dressed up in costume, "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" Or more correctly the question asked of the girls who chose "Pretty Witch" the precursor to "Sexy Witch." Nobody ever asked the green faced, wart nosed ones if they were good or bad. People just assumed they knew.

"Are you a good witch or a bad witch?"

"Well, that depends on what you mean now doesn't it?" She would think to herself.

"I'm a very good witch. I can do things that would curl your toes.

Literally.

If I set my mind to it I could curl your toes. Permanently."

But then wouldn't that make them think she was a bad witch? Curses are in the bad witch territory. What do good witches do? Well steal shoes and withhold information if The Wizard of Oz was any indication. But what people wanted good witches to do was act like Fairy Godmothers. Go around granting wishes or doling out love potions. And now, of course, there were the "wiccans." Gods save her from the wiccans! They were all about saying that witches weren't what people imagined them to be. No broomsticks. No spells. No cats.

Well maybe cats.

They did still like cats.

But they were nature lovers really. Just intune with the goddess. Got a horrible reputation that isn't true at all.

Bullshit.

She hated them more than the Sexy Witches puking in planters near the college in the early hours of November 1.

Wiccans.

Save us all.

She was a witch. A good witch. A really good witch. Her mother had been a good witch, her grandmother had been a good witch. Her great grandmother. On and on down the line. Good witches all of them. To be perfectly honest they were closer to great than good. Not a single one of them with a hooked nose, a wart or a strategically cut out costume with a completely impractical tutu skirt.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

When she opened them again she saw exactly the stone she had been looking for. Heart shaped, pink veining throughout. This would work perfectly. Tonight she would cast the spell her client had asked for, one to harden her heart to her ex. The one that kept coming back around and convincing her to take him back. The one that had cheated, lied, stole from her, not just physical things but her self esteem. Tonight she would create a talisman that would help her to see him as he was, not how he kept convincing her he would be. Then she would be free of him.

She would also add, free of charge, a little bonus action. Some retribution for him. Something so others would see him as he was as well. Maybe a few warts.

Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

Depends on who's asking.

First One...

Today is the first of the holidays. Those are always the worst.

Yes, technically yesterday was Halloween, but I grew up in a household that didn't really celebrate Halloween. Not really. There was a Harvest Festival at church and the Great Pumpkin would leave me a treat, yeah sorry, Linus, he came to my house every year. But I didn't trick or treat until I took my nephew when he was like 3.

But today? Today is Día de Muertos and it's all about remembering those we've lost so there was no way to avoid this one. I don't "celebrate" it usually either. I'm from New Mexico, and there is a Marigold parade every year and people paint their faces and there are sugar skulls and butterflies and...well..okay, so yeah, it's always around. But honestly Sugar Skulls and Marigolds are around all year long. My home town is big on that all of the time.

And I don't celebrate just means I don't go to a parade. I don't go to the cemetery. I don't build an ofrenda. But I do take a moment to remember. Especially since both of our fathers passed. I take time and remember them. Think about them.

Saturday was the service. That was for Carol and for John. Mom hadn't wanted one at the end. She was pretty sure nobody would come. Her peer group had all passed on or were in homes or just not healthy enough to make it. She just didn't want a big deal made for nobody. Carol and John vetoed that. Funerals are not for the dead, they are for the living. A way of getting closure. Of saying goodbye. Or marking an end. I don't agree that they are needed. You all know that. But it was important to at least two family members and so Mom agreed that fine, we could have one.

That's the odd thing about deciding to die. You are part of the planning of the funeral. At least just a little. She didn't really do much else other than agree that it could be done. The rest was left to us. And by us I mean Susan and Carol and Jeff. Denny too ended up having some say over what was done. The rest of us just took our places and did our parts. Brian was called upon to lead the music. He had to sing a solo at Dad's funeral so this, I think, was easier for him. Carol wanted people to talk so she did, I did and Ann did. I already talked about that part.

Then there was a fellowship portion. There were photo albums for people to look at. My mother was so gorgeous and my dad was incredibly handsome. No wonder they ended up together. The rest of Iowa must have looked so plain by comparison. And then there were people who wanted to talk to all of us, tell us how they remembered Mom and Dad as well. They were a matched pair. Always.

After the service we went back to her house and looked through her jewelry. Susan and David had sorted it all out, I posted a picture of part of the collection on Facebook. There was a lot. A lot. So much. I would wander in and look at it, pick things up, talk about memories of her wearing certain pieces. Then I would wander back out. There was so much stuff it made me tense.

And all I wanted of hers was an owl.

She collected owls, among so many other things. But owls were her thing. Her spirit animal. I had asked her last year which she identified with most, the owls or the hummingbirds (also a lot of those collected over the years) and she said OWL. Then said, hummingbirds are pretty but I am the owl. So all I wanted was one of her owls. One that meant something to her, one that seemed perfect to me to represent her. I couldn't choose. She had a lot of them but none that were smallish (I wanted it to match Dad's ring in size), none that seemed more loved than the others. None that really worked. I kept picking one up and putting it back down and I thought about it, because it couldn't possibly be the one, and finally chose a salt and pepper shaker set that were cute.

Then we collected our ashes and left.

Yes, collected our ashes.

Each of us took a package of Mom and Dad's ashes to spread. As we put first Dad and then Mom into my bag I said, "They aren't the same color." I sort of meant it to be my inside my head voice, but it didn't work out that way. It was interesting to me. They were both cremated at the same facility, cremation is done the same way, but they weren't the same. And to really make it odd to me Mom was darker than Dad. Everyone assumed my dad was native. That's how much darker he was than my mother. Especially during the summer. He was golden brown, she was lily white. But now? Mom was a darker gray, and more fine. Dad was a lighter gray and kind of rough and gritty. I held the bag and looked at the layers. Mom and Dad together again. The same, yet different.

The next morning the boys and I headed up to the east side of the mountain. This is where she wanted to have them spread. Years ago she had talked about being spread in the ocean so she could surf without worrying about getting her face wet so I had thought about taking some to Hawaii with us. But once Dad died she had settled on the east side of the mountain. She even had dreams/visions of Dad waiting for her there with their three children who passed before them. So east side of the mountain it was.

I had picked a trail earlier in the week. I needed one that wasn't going to be too busy, wasn't going to be too steep (we aren't acclimated to hiking in New Mexico) and was on the east side. I didn't want to go all the way to the peak, though I thought about it. I didn't want to go to Doc Long's though I thought about that too. We spent a lot of summer afternoons picnicking at Doc Long's. But I thought it might be too crowded. I also had an image in my mind of where I wanted to go. Where I would leave them, but I knew that wasn't likely to happen. I haven't been hiking on the mountain in 30+ years, so there was no way any place in my head was even still there.

So we got to the trailhead I had picked out and started walking. And...there it was. The spot in my head. I got goosebumps. And not just from the wind and the cold. But it was what I had seen. Two trees growing from the same spot. Joined at the root, but seperate trees.

I thought I got a better shot of this, but there must have been something in my eye.

The view that Mom and Dad would have had sitting under that tree together.

I spread their ashes around the base of the two trees. And then in a heart. And then in a little more design. And then I realized that what seemed like a small amount of ashes in the bag was a significant amount of ashes on the ground. I laughed. Which seems fitting. I also cried. Which also seemed right. Then I spread some pine needles over their ashes to keep them from blowing away and to keep the hikers that would follow us from wondering why there was a lot of light gray ash in the dirt. 

Then we headed up the mountain to take in the rest of the views and to give me a moment to collect myself again. My parents lived on the west side of the mountain but she always wanted to be spread on the east. I had to wonder about that. I hadn't before. When I could have asked. Which is what happens so often. We just know things but we don't think to ask why. But as I stood and looked at the view from the east side of the Sandias, the view that doesn't seem to stop I think I understood why.

They are limitless now. 

Then I went back to my family's house and picked up the owl I had picked up and put down 50 times the day before thinking it wasn't the one. It couldn't be the one. It was just a little wooden thing she had obviously pulled off of a flower arrangement. There is still moss on the back of it, for goodness sake. But it is colorful. It's covered in glitter. And she had liked it enough to pull it off of a flower arrangement for goodness sake. My sister said, "That one? Really?" and I could only shake my head in disbelief as well. "Yeah, this one. This is the one."

So today is the day. We think about those we have lost. We remember them in our hearts. I think of Jack and his loping walk that somehow Christopher inherited. And I think of my parents. Together again. The way they would want to be. Sharing a view after sharing a life. And today I tried my hand at something I probably won't ever do again, but it seemed appropriate this year.

The butterfly and the marigolds are made with Mom and Dad's favorite candies. If I were more talented, like my siblings, it would look better, but then it wouldn't be mine.

Happy Día de Muertos to us all. May your memories be sweet. May your love be strong. And may you always keep them in your hearts. 

October Recap!

And done...

One of my special project sparkly stars for October was "Get Through It" so yay! Got that one!

It was a month, that is for sure.

So how am I doing as we close in on the end of the year?

Fitness/Weight! Well I'm back on the gym bandwagon. Got that going again this month so that was good. Trying something new right now with circuit workouts instead of splits, I'm not sure I like it but I've only been doing it for two weeks so I'll give it until mid-November to see for sure.  Weight is the same on the 31st as it was on the 1st so I guess it could be worse. I can feel myself starting to prepare for a diet though. Nothing crazy, but I really am pushing the limit for what my clothes can hold. It's understandable, I have good reason to eat my feelings right now, they are delicious as well, but soon I'll have to do something about the extra extra I put on. There is only so far acceptance can take you, and right now it's taking me right out of my jeans.

Reading! I'm still four books ahead so that's good. Got a Discworld read and currently reading the next one on the list so that only leaves one more for the year to hit that goal. I've also got a long flight coming up so I should knock out an extra book this month. Which is great. Any ahead I can get in November makes December just that much easier.

Writing! Didn't hit the original monthly goal but I've been trending ahead for awhile so I only have like 22 more to go for the year. Totally doable. Need three of those to be fiction, so I'm feeling kind of fat and sassy there too. And I got my last submission turned in. If the rejection for that comes quick enough that will only leave two fiction pieces needed, but I don't think it will.

MasterClass! I did one by Alice Waters as my October class. It was okay. Not great. Just okay. I'm trying to think if I actually learned anything new, aside from I am not as rich as Alice Waters, but I don't think so. Doing RL Stine right now which will count for November. It's much more amusing.

Museum/Attraction! The Oregon Historical Society had a Darcelle exhibit that I wanted to see so it was a repeat museum, but not a repeat in what we saw. And this time we did the rest of the museum as well because the Darcelle exhibit was kind of a bust. It was cool, but it was only like 5 dresses and two sets of jewels. I really thought it would be a bigger deal. Darcelle has been hugely influential in the Portland LGBTQ community, not just performing as Darcelle, but activism as Walter as well. I really thought it would be more of a retrospective of that, but it was like a closet visit. Oh well.

Long Term! I got the table ordered and delivered and I really like it. I wrote the submission piece. I got through it.

Whew.

November!  What's ahead? Well, we are going to take a quick vacation so that will be fun, and, of course, Thanksgiving. Looking at the list of things to do in 2019 and I guess maybe this month I need to tackle the fan situation or painting the baseboards. Neither sounds great but I'll do one for sure.

So there we are. October in the books.

Whew.

The Ring...

It wasn't really her style. A little too flashy. A little too much. And yet it did have its own charm. You'd never miss it that's for sure. A ring like this will get you noticed. No need for the subtle and not so subtle hand gestures some recently engaged women had to do to call attention to their small rings. No, this one stood out. If hit with a direct beam of sunshine it would probably blind an airline pilot.

She waved her hand back and forth watching the stones sparkle.

She had a friend in college who hated engagement rings. She thought they were barely a step up from a ring through a bull's nose. Just meant to control you. To show ownership over you. And diamonds were all mined by slave labor, everyone knew that. Engagement rings were the absolute worst thing ever. As she watched the light reflect from the pure, clear, stones she wondered if her friend would change her mind if presented with a ring like this one. It was easy to take a strong ethical stand if it was all hypothetical.

Three month's salary. That was the advertising campaign. You should spend three month's salary on the ring. And you should add anniversary bands to it on the milestone anniversaries. Which used to be 25 and 50 but now seemed to start at one. They were all being sold to all of the time. More, more, more.

The stones twinkled like they were in on the con.

Do you need an extra insurance policy on a ring like this one? Did you leave it at home locked in the safe when you went on vacation? Maybe only wear it on special occasions and have a plain band for everyday wear? Just so you didn't look like you were trying to lord it over people.

But then again...she waved her hand.

A ring like this was meant to be lorded. That was the point. You wanted people to notice a ring like this one.

She practiced holding her hand naturally. What a weird thing to think about. How do you naturally hold your hand? Maybe after wearing it for awhile it would feel totally normal and she would naturally hold her hand naturally. She laughed a little at the thought. Naturally hold it naturally. Well, naturally of course.

But right now she felt the need to wave her hand back and forth watching the stones catch the light. Twinkling. Sparkling.

Was it a bigger love if the ring was bigger? Or was it more like what she had thought with her girlfriends? The ones with the most precarious relationships were always the ones talking about how wonderful they were. How incredible their boyfriend or girlfriend was. She thought there was probably a formula out there that showed the inverse relationship to how good a relationship really was to how often someone said how great it was. Kind of like cool. If you really were cool you never had to tell people. If your relationship was strong you didn't have to say anything.

So what did that mean for the size of a ring?

And then she wondered how he got the actual size of the ring? Did he sneak out another ring he knew fit and matched that? Or was he just that good at guessing?

She waved her hand back and forth a few more times.

It wasn't really her style, it was a little too flashy.

The ring shifted on her finger.

It wasn't her size either, it was a little too big.

But he hadn't bought it for her.

She dropped the ring into her pocket and took one last look around the room.

She wiped a few more surfaces and then turned the AC to full before leaving the apartment.

A ring like that will get you noticed.

That's not always a good thing. 

Fabric of You...

"Does this seem smaller to you? Like the roof is lower?"

"Yeah."

"Weird. It's not like I'm taller than I was."

Thinking about the funeral. And not just the funeral but everything around it. But not in the grieving way. Or at least not in the specific grieving for Mom way.

The conversation above happened when we were walking from the church sanctuary over to fellowship hall after the service. The same walk I took when Dad died, so I had done it as an adult, and I did it a lot as a teenager, and though I might be wider than I was then, I'm not any taller. But the hallway felt really small. The roof really low. The walk really short. It was an odd sensation.

Being in the church is always an odd sensation. And when I say THE church I always mean Ridgecrest. We attended First and Valley for small bouts of time, but Ridgecrest is THE church. It's the one I was born into, the one I spent most of my time, the one I was married in. And it's the one the others spun off from once upon a time.

That was what we Ridgecrest kids always held on to. First and Heights had more money, especially First, Valley was newer and had a really beautiful building, but Ridgecrest was there first. When we went to camp and the old cabins were named for the founding families that started it, Ridgecrest Families were featured prominently. Sure, First might have raised the money for the new dorms, but they would always be called that, the new dorms. The named cabins? Those were ours.

When you are broke you tend to hold on to history and pride a little tighter.

But Ridgecrest was home. I think I was still too shell shocked at Dad's funeral to really take it all in. This time, because of time, I wasn't as foggy. And maybe because I really believe that that was the last time I will be there I paid a lot of attention. It was all so familiar. Home in its own way.

I told my nephew I used to count the woodens slats in the roof, Larry our minister at the time, had certain words he would always use, verbal tics, and when he would say one I'd start counting the other way. Brian told me he would count the stained glass in the lights and windows. We both realized that we should have had a good indication that we weren't really meant to stay at that point.

I also looked at the books in the church library. There were ones that were old when I was a child that were still there. At one point in time I could have told you how far I had read in almost all of them. We spent so much time at the church while my parents were doing various things and if I didn't have a book with me I would pull one off the shelf and read it. There were mostly devotional books but a few fiction. Christian fiction. The bar is fairly low on what good religious fiction is. People are so desperate for message books they will let the quality slide. I read a lot of really terrible religious fiction books growing up.

There were changes as well. Where the library is the other half of that room used to be wide open, it was the original fellowship hall, long before I was born, but now it's closed off with walls and doors to make it private classrooms. What was the stage and storage area in the current fellowship hall was taken out and a big new kitchen put it probably 20 years ago now, but it still seems new to me because it wasn't there when I was growing up. We had the hallway, galley kitchen and we all spent a lot of time in there, getting communion ready, making coffee for potlucks, eating pizza with the youth group or preparing snacks for VBS.

The church is filled with memories for me. It's a big part of where I grew up. It's a big part of my growing up.

Good and bad.

And at Mom's service my Aunt Carol (Mom's best friend) talked about the first time she attended, meeting Mom and Dad as they taught the Young Married's Sunday school class. Thinking about Denny and Carol being Young Marrieds made me smile. And, of course, I don't think they could have had better class leaders for a good marriage example.

My sister-in-law also talked about first meeting Mom and Dad as they were greeters the first time she came to Ridgecrest. And then about how Mom would call her on Sunday after she and John were first married and tell her that they really could use her in the nursery next Sunday. And she did that until they came back to church regularly.

Carol also talked about how Mom and Dad started the church. How Mom hadn't really wanted to work on getting a new church established when they moved to New Mexico but had been called to do it anyway. She also talked about how Mom only demanded one thing from Dad and that was that they would go to church.

Now, I happen to know that she also said he had to stop smoking and he couldn't drink but once a year or so. My mother might have given the advice that men don't change, but she still believed in making a few alterations as needed. Though to be fair, Dad didn't change. He wanted to do whatever would make her happy. That never changed.

As I talked to people before the service and after it, there was the recurring theme. Mom (and Dad) had been instrumental in establishing the church. She had been part of the fabric of church life. She had touched a lot of lives through the church. It was her great joy to have raised her family within those walls.

And I smiled and thanked them.

And wondered how many of them knew I left at 18 and very rarely looked back?

I also spoke at her service. I talked about what a great woman she was. I talked about our relationship just a bit. I also talked about how much I knew she missed Dad and how glad I was that she didn't anymore. Which I know that 90% of the people in the congregation took to mean she and Dad are together in heaven right now. But that's not what I said.

I didn't say anything about her religion at all. Though it was a huge part of who she was. It's just not who I am. I bowed my head when the minister prayed, out of respect for those around me, but not because I thought he was talking to god. In fact, when ministers pray I think even they know they aren't talking to god but are talking to their congregation. Mini sermons. But I can have respect for my mother's beliefs and not take them on myself. I've had years, decades, of practice.

It was hard to leave the church. It was woven into the very fabric of who I was. My parents started that church. My first friends were all members of that church. I still have people I grew up with in the church that I am friends with today. A large contingent of my family believes the teachings of the church. And they pray for me. Which I think is sweet of them and I hope it makes them feel good. It's not going to change things, but I do honestly think it's nice that they still try. Even if it's a little bit condescending at times. But that's okay too.

And I talked about it when Dad died. There is great comfort that can be had when someone dies if you believe you will see them again. It makes you feel better to imagine a big grand reunion. I don't have that, though my brothers and sisters do. I have what we had while they were alive and that's all. And, for me, that's enough.

I have a lot of memories of the church, and of camp, and of countless bible studies and youth group rehearsals for tour, and bible bowl competitions and time on the bus and lessons and sermons and more than a few "Listen here, young lady" lectures. It was part of who I was. It's still part of who I am. I love those memories, well most of them anyway. I have been able to pick and choose from the lessons and apply them to my life even now.

My mother's entire philosophy of not abiding by rudeness had a religious component for her, it doesn't for me, yet I still practice it. She believed in being kind to strangers because the bible told her to do it, I believe in being kind to strangers because it's the right thing to do. I practice a lot of what she preached, I just don't do it to get into heaven later. I do it to make the world around me better now.

Walking down the hallway in the church it seemed much smaller, but it was the same.

I have just outgrown it.

Memories...Mine, Yours, Ours...

Last weekend when we were home for the funeral I was talking to my sister and she said something about memory that made me smile. Because it's something I say all the time. Something I harp on. Something I read up on. Something I know to be true.

Basically your memories are yours and mine are mine and even if we are remembering the same event we don't necessarily have the same memory of it.

Memory is not trustworthy.

We all think it is. "I remember that clearly!"

But it's not.

Our memory is fickle. And each time we remember something we change it just a little. It's a memory of a memory. We can even start to remember things, in remarkable detail, that never happened. Brian Williams was a really public example of this. People hung him out to dry, but he probably honestly believed what he was saying. One of the ways you could tell is by how his story morphed over time. He started out with a pretty accurate (from other accounts, though we know those aren't really all that accurate either) then he added one detail, then another, and eventually the story he remembered and told was different than the one he started with.

And people do it all the time.

I've told the story of almost drowning and the only other person there at the time has a very different story than I do in some key areas. And that was from the start. We both lived it, but we lived it differently and what we remember is different.

I've had people tell me stories about things happening to me, or things that I've supposedly said, that I have no memory of at all. But they will swear is true and happened.

And for years, before I realized how fragile memory was, I relied on my own memory heavily. And there are times I still do feel like I must be remembering something exactly. I mean I can picture the room, I can tell you what people are wearing. I can tell you who said what and when. And I could be right. But then again, I might not at all.

We all remember things differently.

And sometimes we remember things the way we want them to be. Or need them to be.

I have friends who have changed relationships with their parents after they died. Which you would think would be tricky right? Like you had a relationship with them when they were alive and that's what it was, you could have changed it then, but not now. But really? It's easier to change it once they are dead. Because they aren't there fucking up your rewrite anymore. I've seen people who were estranged from their parents suddenly have the tightest mother/daughter bond you have ever heard about. I've seen a lot of rewriting of personalities, and not just with parents but with a lot of people. The world's biggest asshole is now tough but fair.

I think the whole don't speak ill of the dead thing comes in to play here. And if you spend enough years not speaking ill of the dead you forget that they had a lot of ill to talk about.

You all also know I don't buy in to that. If you don't want to be spoken ill of after you die then don't be a dick while you are alive. I'm not polishing your legacy for you. I might not speak of you at all, or might not contradict the polishers, but I won't add to it. They need to do what works for them, and if that means that their memories shift, then okay. As long as it doesn't hurt someone else then okay.

And sometimes you'll hear something about someone you knew that doesn't line up with your own memories and you have to figure out how to deal with those as well. For me? I fall back on that belief, your memories are yours, mine are mine.

And that's okay.

Memory is shifty. It really is. Just don't think your memories are any more reliable than someone elses and you'll be okay.

Middle Of The Night Thoughts...

Woke up in the middle of the night with something in my head and thought, well that's got to be a blog doesn't it?

Ready?

It was:

Great minds think alike, but exceptional minds think of things never thought of before. Small minds don't think at all.

And then as I was thinking about it my head gave me a little more to ponder.

We say great minds think alike but we also worry about groupthink being a problem. So what happens when your group is all great minds does that cancel out the bad part of groupthink? Or is that groupthink is more likely to happen when you have one or two great minds thinking alike and the rest of the group deciding just to follow that thought?

And then can it become an the Emperor has no clothes moment?

Just waiting for an exceptional mind to point out the error.

But...then we have the other problem. Small minds don't think at all. They do something much worse. They know.

I know this is right because...

I know this is the truth because...

And it doesn't matter how many things you show them, they don't change because they aren't thinking about it, they are knowing.

And great minds in one area can be small minds in another. They can even be exceptional in one area and then just a "knower" in another. A knower not a grower? Something like that.

And it can even be worse if you are an exceptional thinker you can convince yourself that you are right in an area where you are not thinking at all. I just listened to a podcast about this recently, maybe the You Are Not So Smart one...if you're interested I will try and find it.

We can all be susceptible to the knowing problem.  And it depends on how attached you are to the identity that goes with what you know on how willing you are to give it up. Tribalism is all based on knowing. Even if a lot of what you believe is based on great minds thinking alike. And even if it started with an exceptional idea.

Anyway....

This is what was in my head at 2 AM. Great minds think alike. Exceptional minds think of things never thought of before. Small minds don't think at all.

What are you?

And if you aren't exceptional would you even want to admit it to yourself?

I know I wouldn't...