Thank you. No. Really.

Dear You:

This is a "thank you" note of a sort. I have begun, since this entire ordeal started, to see your layers stripping away, one by one, until only the true "you" remains. Or, rather, what remains of the true "you" remains. Up until two years ago, I'd run into friends of yours, who knew what I was to you, and they'd ask how you were doing.

"Fine, fine," I'd say, believing it to be true, because its what you wanted everyone to believe. But it wasn't the truth, I have since discovered. It was the truth as I understood it back then, but now I realize it was all a fabrication. You weren't well at all. You were quite ill, in so many ways. Numbness in the feet. Numbness in the heart. Paralytic fear in the deepest pit of your stomach. Fear of getting old. Fear of having to ask for help. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the known.

Now I see that your most serious illness is not neurological, or cardiological, or pulmonary. Your most serious, life-threatening illness is abject terror. It's all so clear now, I wonder why it took me so very long to see it. The images of my childhood come back, and they're largely of you, angry, screaming. Screaming at my mother. Screaming at me. Screaming at the television because someone has said something you didn't agree with. You're terrified of any idea that didn't germinate from directly inside your own brain. You panic when confronted with new technology, new ideology, new philosophy.

To think that I was so afraid of you -- of your cutting words, your vengeful spirit, your anger at me for reasons I could never ascertain. And all the time, you were the big fraidy cat.

Now, you live with an Everest-sized pile of regrets. Thing you wished you'd done that you didn't. Things you wished you hadn't done that you did. Things you said. Things you didn't say. Wishes unfulfilled. Opportunities wasted. Invitations put off until it was too late. Love not given. Anger not abated. Harsh words. Harsh judgments. I see now that you were paralyzed long before you couldn't use your legs.

I see now why it took you so long to tell the truth about your condition. It meant you were going to have rely on three people you didn't treat very well and weren't very nice to for years and years when they were young and helpless. People you'd never thought you'd need. People you never really wanted in your life in the first place, but just kind of showed up and stuck around, like little pieces of dog shit stuck to the bottom of your shoe, that you couldn't scrape off, no matter how much you rubbed the curbside. How frightening for you to suddenly find yourself at their mercy! And how confusing for you when they stepped forward and made sacrifices in the name of your care. That must have blown you away. Because in your mind you would not have done the same thing. In your mind, there's no percentage in it.

In truth, there is no percentage in it. The only reward is the act itself. But that's the nature of love. Forgiveness doesn't demand that we forget the past, only that we accept the fact that it cannot be changed, and that we don't wish to live in it any longer. You might read this sentence a thousand times, and you will still never know what it means. Because you cannot grasp unconditional love. Love for you has always been a day of bargain shopping at the flea market. This for that. Mine and yours. Never ours together.

And it breaks my heart now that I see it.

And that's why I have to thank you. I have to thank you because you have shown me how fear, once a useful tool to aid survival, is now only something that holds us back. This is not to say we will never have fear. I am still phobic about spiders. I am still phobic about dentists. But I go to the dentist, and I walk in the park and in the woods, because if I let fear run me, then I end up like you, sitting in a chair because there's no place my legs can take me anymore.

Paralyzed.

I don't want to be that way. I don't want to waste another opportunity. I want to go to the places I'm invited. I want to meet new people, experience ideas with which I disagree. I want to stay involved in my own life, in my country, and in the life of my child. I don't want to regret, for the only thing that brings true regret is what we never even attempted. I fail at relationships and continue to try because I know that loving another person is the most important thing we can do with our lives. You taught me that. By reverse example.

So, yes, thank you. Thank you for teaching me what I don't want. Because learning specifically what you don't want is just as important as learning what you do want. Knowing how not to live can make clear for you the kind of life you want.

I thank you. I forgive you. I will take care of you. I know that nothing I can do can completely eradicate the fear you have -- and it may be my only unremitting regret. Because I want you to not be afraid as you near the end. I want you to walk into it with your head and shoulders up, whether your legs are working are not, as if it is the biggest of life's adventures. Because it is, you know. The end is every bit as important as the beginning. Every bit as auspicious. Every bit as full of promise and mystery. And I'd hate for you to miss it because you were looking down at your earthbound feet.


~C~

Caveat Emptor, or Why I Shouldn't Believe A Freakin' Thing You Say

One of the best (and worst) things about the Internet and blogging is that you get to meet strangers whom you might not otherwise have come in contact. For me, this has led to some fun and fascinating friendships that exist in a world all their own. I've come to know a bit about the personal lives of many of my fellow bloggers (Mary-Mia of Do They Have Salsa in China, Rhonda from Skinnydipping with the President) and I've even met one (Millicent Frastley who's Lunacy and Lucidity is well-known to many of you). I don't count Deirdre Cooley from Best Available, because, well, she's my best friend, and I knew her back when she thought blogging was something one did after drinking too much tequila.

I've met some who have commented on my blog and I've met some on whose blogs I have commented. Of the vast majority, I have had very little inclination to throw a shoe at them, which for me is a very good sign. A few fruitful e-mail correspondences have sprung up because of this contact, with people whom I find interesting, funny and intelligent. With one or two of them, I have found myself actually letting down my guard and telling far more than I might tell a total stranger. For that is what we are to one another -- total strangers. People who have never met face to face.

I have to remind myself of that. Because I tend to ascribe characteristics that are strong within me to others that they might not actually possess them. Like truthfulness. And honesty. And an overall aversion to lying. I am one of those people who can never remember the last lie I told, so I find it easier to just tell the truth as I know it, rather than overtaxing my ever-diminishing brain cells. Besides, I have an outlet for my inclination toward fiction (I actually write fiction), so have little need to tell stories on these blogs.

Still, I have to remind myself that one thing that many bloggers find compelling about the Internet as a way of reaching out to others is that provides one with the absolute ability to reinvent oneself. To change from the person one is to the person one might always have wished to be. To concoct a physical or emotional illusion of being attractive and available, when the real-world truth of it is that one may be neither.

Years ago, back in the days when I was Internet dating, I began a correspondence with a man I liked immediately. Funny, quick, charming, and my kind of handsome (I have unconventional tastes in men), I was thrilled. I had high hopes that I'd met someone that I might actually be able to eat a meal with and share a conversation with. For some reason (I can't recall why now -- perhaps some intuition), I plugged his unusual dating site handle into the Internet. He'd mentioned it was an old handle he'd used back in the days when the closest things we had to the Internet was the BBS (remember those?). I put the handle into Google, hit "go," and, lo and behold, this man's entire life history appeared on the screen before me. Including a photograph of his boat.

And his lovely wife.

Needless to say, I didn't write to him anymore. When he wrote to me and I confronted him, he blocked me. I went to the dating site administrator and let them know one of their members was flying under false colors. I was told that it was pretty much out of their hands. It was up to each member to be vigilant and cautious. This might have angered me, were it not for the fact that I agreed with him. It was up to me to take care of me the best I knew how -- which I had done. By being even mildly on my guard, I'd averted what might have been a dastardly situation where I'd ended up an inadvertent mistress to a lying, conniving sonofabitch. As it was, nothing was injured except my pride.

Caveat emptor.

You'd have thought I'd learned my lesson. But today, quite by accident this time, I discover that someone I've been writing to, and who has represented himself as single, is in fact, married. Unlike Mr. Boatguy from the dating site, we've never spoken on the phone, nor have we met in person, which is good. But until I did the Internet investigation, I'd never have guessed it of him. Mr. Boatguy's mistake was that he used a handle that he'd used before. This one made no such careless, egotistical error, other than having a legal marriage as a matter of public record. I'd have never known about her if I hadn't decided to dust off my old Internet search engines to see if they were still current before deleting them from my bookmarks.

Now, I'm really kind of sad, because someone I respected and liked has proven to be a liar and a cheat. He didn't owe me anything. We had no promise. But he did calculatedly misrepresent himself as single, with the obvious intention of allowing me to believe that there was no impediment to any developing affection I felt. And since there is... was... is... (damn!) a fair amount of affection I have for him, it was a good strategic move on his part. So, he got his needs met. Unfortunately, he did it in a way that failed to account for how what was, to him, such a harmless little game might affect another who didn't know that we were even playing one.

Oh, well. The longer I live, the more it occurs to me that I was designed to live alone. I do not have the intestinal fortitude to weather a sea of constant deception and prevarication. I do not have the courage to watch the ship go down again and again amidst someone else's fantastic attempts to free himself, if only for a few minutes, from the constraints of a committed relationship that has settled into complacency. And this is not, as I see it, the role I was born to play. I am not second lead in someone else's psycho-drama.

I'm sad. And I'm angry. And I'm really confused as to what I did to bring this on myself. Because situations like this have no victims -- only participants. What am I doing to participate in this? To encourage it. Maybe I just need to say from the beginning, "Guess what? You could be a really nice guy. But you could also be a lying, evil asshole, so I'm going to just plug you into this special search engine here and find out what I can on you. If you got a prison record, I'll know. If you've got a wife, I'll know. If you're a registered sex offender, I'll know. So come clean now, before I find out the truth about you my way." It's probably not conducive to a relationship built on trust and mutual esteem. But it might be a helluva timesaver.

~C~

"I'm shocked, shocked to find gambling going on in this establishment!"

These are the immortal words uttered in Casablanca by Claude Rains as Capt. Renault, immediately before the croupier approaches him, hands him a wad of bills, and says, "Your winnings, sir." It's a funny moment. It makes me laugh every time. Likewise, I just had to chuckle upon reading this little piece from CNN.com

CNN.com - Feds probe gossip writer - Apr 7, 2006

I think my favorite part was this:

"Should the allegations prove true, Mr. Stern's conduct would be morally and journalistically reprehensible, a gross abuse of privilege, and in violation of the New York Post's standards and ethics," editor in chief Col Allen said in a statement.

A violation of the New York Post's standards and ethics? Bahahahahaaaaa! Stop it! You're killin' me....

~C~

Aren't You Dead Yet?

A new award -- The Catharine Chronicles Butthead of the Month Award.

Here's a cockle-warming story about a company that is trying to back out of their legally binding contract with a woman because she had the unmitigated nerve not to die as originally planned. In the early '90s, our intrepid heroine (Miss Intrepid hereinafter) learned that an ex-boyfriend who'd died of AIDS related complex had infected her with the disease. For those of you too young or too stoned in the 90s to remember, back then, a positive reading on a Western blot was still pretty much a death sentence. A few years later, Miss Intrepid was diagnosed with an AIDS-related cancer, for which she began treatment. During treatment, while flipping through a magazine targeted at those living with AIDS, she read an ad from Life Partners, a so-called viatalic settlement and life settlement company. These are the companies you see on television ads offering to pay a lump sum if you've had an injury judgment or to pay a pre-death lump sum payment against your life insurance policy.

Life Partners was making a bundle in the late 80s, early 90s, offering to buy life insurance policies from AIDS patients with an upfront cash payment, and cover their health and life insurance premium costs if they lived past two years. The benefit to Life Partners was that they would become the sole beneficiaries of the life insurance policy. Again, back in the early 90s, this was a pretty sound gamble for Life Partners, as most people who had experienced at least one opportunistic AIDS-related disease didn't tend to live too much longer than two years after diagnosis.

Miss intrepid, who was single with no children, thought that sounded like a good deal, so she sold her $150,000 life insurance policy to Life Partners. They paid her $90,000 upfront and after she had survived two years, began paying her continuing health and life insurance. And then a funny thing happened.

She lived. And lived. And... well, here we are in 2006, and our Miss Intrepid, now 50, God love her, is still ticking. See, Life Partners failed to take into account two operative factors in their "bettin' on death" equation: One, that our heroine hadn't contracted the disease from a lifestyle slip, like intravenous drug use. She was an otherwise healthy, strong woman from apparently hearty stock, who took pretty good care of herself and followed doctors' orders. And, two, that within two to three years, researchers would stumble across the single biggest boon to the HIV-infected -- the protease cocktail.

Life Partners has, to date, shelled out over $100,000 on life and health insurance benefits for Miss I., which now total approximately $29K annually. And they're not happy about it. They've continually threatened to refuse to pay her health insurance premiums (once, literally on the due date), and have filed suit to get out of the contract. They sent her an angry letter telling her that Life Partners' stockholders were "no longer willing to bear the burden" of paying her premiums. Miss Intrepid hired lawyers of her own -- and good ones, too -- who reminded Life Partners that a binding legal contract existed between Miss I. and Life Partners and, should Life Partners allow the policies to lapse due to non-payment, they'd be liable for.... well... let's just say that's when things got ugly. They also reminded Life Partners that death, while it does come to us all, was not a contractually prescribed provision on Miss I's part, and her refusal to die could not be considered a material breach. Or words to that effect....

At present, Life Partners is paying for Miss I's insurance, presumably on time. One of their executives has even publicly acknowledged that they are contractually bound to do so, which is nice, I think, considering that, hey, they're contractually bound to so. This is what makes this story so very reprehensible. A conventional insurance company, like, say MetLife, makes its money if you stay alive and they can milk you for your premiums. They want you alive and well and walking around, so you can go out there and earn money and continue to pay them, by golly. So they create actuaries designed to find out what makes folks life the longest (this is why I will always maintain that, more than the BMI scale, which is random and untested, the MetLife weight charts may seem heavy, but folks who fall into those categories tend to live longer and be healthier statistically).

Life Partners, on the other hand, is gambling a lot of money on the fact that you'll die, and be quick about it, please. Here's the thing. Obviously, Life Partners doesn't spend a lot of time in Vegas or Atlantic City. When you gamble and lose in those places, you don't go to the pit boss and ask him for "do-overs." You're likely to get laughed at, then escorted to the nearest exit by a large, dispositionally challenged security guard named Bruno. Likewise, if you're foolhardy enough to bet on whether someone will live or die, and then they actually manage to beat the odds and live, you just have to kind of suck it up and pay the loss. You and your whiny, dumb-ass stockholders. I kind of hope this ends up in court, because I'd like to hear a Life Partners executive actually say out loud, under oath, "Well, yeah, but she violated the terms of the contract first by not dying."

Meanwhile, our Miss Intrepid goes steaming along, in good health and with a positive outlook, all things considered. Aside from the cancer, which has been in remission for over ten years, she hasn't had another opportunistic infection. She says she feels great and she plans to continue living for a good long while, if for no other reason than to spite Life Partners, I'm sure.

So, the inaugural Catharine Chronicles Butthead of the Month Award, April 2006, goes to Life Partners, its board of directors, its chief officers, and, yes, even its stockholders, for their relentless efforts to profit from the fear and desperation of the sick, injured and dying.

Congratulations, Life Partners. You're a butthead, and you don't care who knows it.

~C~

(Note: The Catharine Chronicles Butthead of the Month Award title and artwork is copyright-protected and not to be duplicated without express written permission. In other words, stealing is bad.)