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Biddy is a woman of some years: a GenX'er, Riot Grrrl, survivor, traveler, tattoo collector, senior pet owner, music lover, former public school embattled public school retiree and amatuer vegan chef. Biddy Sounds Off is a thinking woman's bildungsroman and pirate radio station some thirty years in the making: featuring episodic writings and eclectic musical selections.
Welcome to Biddy Sounds Off, a place for episodic writing and music I love. I'm Biddy, and here we are together at the dawn of a new year. Gross. Kidding. I'm just kidding.
Biddy:Eating better typically features in a lot of our New Year's resolution lists, and I confess, I haven't been doing my best in this area. I need to invest more effort here because I have been running at a deficit. My joints are a bit more swollen, painful, and this has been a current area of focus for me. Coming out of winter isn't a real excuse here, because there was no winter here, and escaping the long cold Colorado winter this year has been wonderful, and no doubt helped me sidestep a seasonal depression. But even though the weather may be better suited to my personal preference here, the real hurdle during these winter months for many of us is getting through the holidays.
Biddy:And guess what, my wonderful friend? We did it. Each year, I think it gets a little better. This is something I usually tend to bear alone. Since some recent life changing events, some good, like taking more control over my personal time, personal space, and some not so good, reliving holiday related family trauma, and then several deaths within a within a short span of just 3 years, 2020 to 2023, just one after another.
Biddy:Now, fortunately, things have settled. And now that my pets and I have settled in the state of Guanajuato, after traveling for several months through Mexico, stability and security have also followed, fortunately. Each holiday season has had to be uniquely weathered, and you never really know what those triggers will be and where and how they will show up. But the more peaceful I live in general, the less upsetting they've become. It has helped a lot not having full time work and a building full of collegial coworkers asking about your holiday plans.
Biddy:It could be hard to tell them. I don't have any family, so I'm not doing all the same bullshit things you are. And I'm sorry. It is not bullshit. But sometimes, traditions can put pressure on those of us who don't typically fit a traditional family or a traditional life.
Biddy:In my case, no children, no spouse, no immediate family left. If people ask, it makes them sad. Meanwhile, I may be coping really well, but there is this pressure to make the other person feel better. If my life makes someone sad, that isn't my problem to fix. People are uncomfortable with death, trauma.
Biddy:Why? Your baby told you death comes for us all. We all have years like this, and if we haven't yet, we will. The only thing that makes grief, trauma worse is the isolation. Hetero union or the new car they on about their sanctified hetero union or the new car they just bought or iPhone or anything commerce is definitely an evergreen topic, of course, within the such high pressure consumerist driven society I was living in.
Biddy:Maybe it isn't high pressure for everyone, but I've never had money. We grew up lower middle class, and my parents weren't the right kind of religion, and my home life was different, and we moved a lot, and we're visibly trash, at least from what my mom said. I don't remember feeling a lot of shame about that growing up because I was already learning how to hide things pretty well, Appear normal on the outside and just turn that blaring light of shame inward, like one of those blaring security lights, just holding it towards myself, trying to hold it at exactly the right angle all the time, while being blinded at the same time, and making sure none of it leaks out to the sides. Keeping your back to the wall whenever possible so you don't accidentally blast behind you. Can you imagine how much energy that takes?
Biddy:And for just a small child, the way we persecute ourselves. And finally, to the point where I can feel sadness for all of that. I used to just feel pretty angry about it. And I think that's why it took me so long to open up in therapy. I thought it was just such a waste of time before.
Biddy:I repressed my anger outwardly, or so I thought. We never really do such a great job of pulling off the fact that we are going through it, even though we're martyrs for it and we think we're masterful at it. But a little bit of the shame blast gets through No matter how I twist and turn and try to hold that floodlight, passive aggressiveness, I did that pretty well. A lot of clenching in my body led to a spinal surgery. We can torture ourselves.
Biddy:At least I did, thinking I deserved it. Just that deep fundamental knowing that I was undeserving. Right? The thing that insufficiently in the the shame of existing insufficiently in the presence of systems beyond your control, systems that put you at an obvious disadvantage because it only takes one time like that. A traumatic event seizes you out of the linear path of time and space.
Biddy:The reality, the rest of the world has agreed upon is ongoing. But you've had this alien experience now which has changed you. And because our social language is limited to the surface, the trivial, it seems inappropriate to broach a real response to this sort of patronizing stimuli we've bat around in the office all day long, for example. There is an accepted and extremely banal vocabulary of phrases that we use at work. These droning empty phrases, case of the Mondays or it's hump day or happy Friday and win win.
Biddy:And if if we circle back and actually think outside the box, people will look at you funny. And I'm still not talking about oversharing. This is what I'm doing here. And I know not to do this at the copier. Maybe we can meet in the middle, and instead of these banal rehearsed lines, we could expect or even welcome difference and more honest responses, open ourselves up to a different repertoire for a change.
Biddy:I might just nod at you and not speak at all. Okay? About that. People do that all the time and survive. If you ask me if I have weekend plans, I might say no without immediately having to self consciously defend my decision to not be on a date or hiking up some mountain, Colorado people, or wrangling the kids, right?
Biddy:Usually described breathlessly. We can just try to be accepting of our different realities. The amount of people that my God, I'm so sorry. It must be so hard for you. I didn't mean oh my god.
Biddy:I'm so sorry. It must be so hard for you. I didn't mean to talk about mothers or some shit and make a big fuss. Meanwhile, just because my mother died doesn't mean I can't talk about other mothers who are alive. Or another time talking about her husband and then apologizing loudly and nervously because that year I'd gone through a divorce.
Biddy:The amount of people who did that was 1, actually. I learned to avoid them eventually. The amount of times I avoided the teacher's lounge or the copy room or wherever I might get stuck making other people feel better about my grief, that was a lot of times, actually. Because it was multiple years during one particularly bad spell, as I mentioned. 3 years, lost 5 people, all of whom were in my immediate orbit, not all at once, but 1 by 1 in their own time, closely connected in time through chance only.
Biddy:They didn't all know each other. It wasn't COVID either, just the way it happened. And, no, this is not a killer's confessional podcast either. And if that bad attempt at a segue didn't murder you, these sounds will slay. The first song we heard there was Demons by Sleigh Bells and followed that up with Dismantle Me from the distillers.
Biddy:Queen Brody Doll. If it's spinnerets, if it's sourpuss, if it's the distillers, for self titled stuff, give it to us. And you know what? Just really quick, as an aside, I once dated a guy who was excited to tell me that he was going to be opening for the distillers. And I thought, fuck yeah.
Biddy:That's great. Maybe I could get tickets to the show. You know? And his response was, oh, you like the distillers? You like women and and music?
Biddy:And fucking just, like, went off on this weird tangent, and I was like, yeah. I like the distillers, but we ended up not getting along, obviously. But just fucking how weird that you're threatened by women also playing music. Now back to the diverse struggles we are all actually facing. I don't think we intend to exclude people from our vocabulary of banal socially accepted pleasantries.
Biddy:I am empathic. Whether I try to or not, I'm exposed to the feeling that someone is conveying. So when they don't match, I can feel my hackles not to be friends. Not that they all attacked me or something, but it hurts your not to be friends. Not that they all attacked me or something, but it hurts your feelings to realize, Oh, shit, they just wanted to sleep with me and they weren't even listening to me if they were pretending to like me.
Biddy:The safest place was to be in a relationship, partnered up, and for the purposes of these examples, with men. So there could be no ambiguity about whose cock goes where. Ownership is established and it is safe to be friends with no reasonable expectation of penetration. Sorry to sound reductionist, but it feels like this scenario lays things out most clearly. People are more comfortable with expectations in place, even misogynistic ones.
Biddy:So it stands to reason that I have not heretofore been especially good at establishing myself in a social context, taking up space and using my body language, as well as my verbal language to repel ambiguity. This is within my capacity to improve. Just as improving my language skills with regard to Spanish also means speaking more directly. It helps me feel stronger in my body language too, the way I carry language. Like all good teaching, it comes down to modeling, doesn't it?
Biddy:My standard holiday reply wound up being, I'm not exactly sure what my holiday will look like this year. I have a few options. What about you? People want to get back to the part where they're talking about themselves anyway. And so do I.
Biddy:So we circle back to a win win. Learning how to maneuver office or coworker rapport can be a challenge because it can feel like such a wasteland. If someone keeps asking, they might actually be interested. The capacity of teachers, many I've known, to care is beyond astonishing. It doesn't embarrass me to say I've had a rough year so I may lay low or just treat Expanding our social expanding our social vocabulary to include language, which acknowledges we are not one traditional behemoth.
Biddy:We are not homogeneous. Anti racism talk can seem awkward at first, but this might be because whoever you're talking to is making it awkward. Laughing at sexist but awkward if you make them so. We tend to fill up the language with chatter, but practicing wait time is key. This acceptance of the so called awkward silence has helped me overall to be more acceptance of the so called awkward silence has helped me overall to be more comfortable with myself and more relaxed, and therefore, more relaxed around me.
Biddy:This helps reset the energy around both of us. Reject All American by Bikini Kill, a song sounding fresh today. Followed by the Australian artist Genesis Owosu I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly with the song Get Inspired. Now, back to the narrative. The select relationships I am cultivating now have far less pressure around them, less in name chatter, nervous laughter, less of the tight self contained body language, less conflicting messages between the energy someone is putting out and the language they are using.
Biddy:This was my most manageable holiday season yet out of, like, all of them. And however you fared or may still be faring, finding your way through the dark winter months, I respect the continued forward momentum. Forward facing progress is also completely acceptable. Sometimes I just lay on my yoga mat, and that is all. It counts to me.
Biddy:Moving towards the goal of doing our best is a goal no one else can measure, and your inner voice isn't allowed to talk bullshit anymore. I like to mark it on the calendar, sometimes and sometimes I don't. But when that calendar turns to December again, maybe the holidays could be about surviving the year, year, celebrating our continued survival, making strides in our health and well-being, non judgmental responses only as we listen to one another as well as ourselves. My first legit, Dia de los Muertos, really emboldened my spirit this last year. It wasn't just a one and done type holiday.
Biddy:You'll start seeing signs of its approach in October and the holiday extends into November. Experiencing public grief of any kind feels so relieving. We are not alone. This fortified me for the continuation of the winter holiday season, and I felt connected instead of isolated. Death is a natural part of life, and I never wanna contribute to the loneliness of grief, which is as natural as experiencing the birth by proxy for me, thank you, of a new life.
Biddy:Our last song today is Crazy by Doechii, the true, original, and thoughtful artist. This has been Biddy. Thank you for listening.