The Storm

My Storm
By: Megan DaGata

The last time the hint of the storm brewed, I buried my heart in the clouds,
My mind in the waters, and my soul in the thunderous noise.
I became one with the storm and one with the madness.
My mind ceases to hear any thought and closes to all emotion.
Like a late season hurricane it builds and builds, and lasts for months.
Building from the hint of suggestion and follows the ebb and flow of my emotions.

The heat of my rage builds level upon level of insanity
Until one day without warning - the grief, pain, and fury crash upon me
As if it were a cat 5 hurricane meeting the shore.

The pain of losing those we love is not something that we consider,
Our parents are young and our friends are healthy,
We don't think of the storm that could be building.
Friday night I received a phone call that made time stand still for the next three days...

I am not sure if the clock has started up yet.
But I felt my hurricane start to build.
In the ten minutes between ordering my first drink at the club and before it was consumed
I received a call from my brother- in- law,
He informed me that my father was in a car accident and that he had not regained consciousness.
Crash - Bang - Thunder and lightening...
The cacophony of noise that echoed in my ears was deafening.
I heard nothing else.
I picked up the phone with shaking hands and called my mother.
"What happened? I will be there in three hours."

I just know I need to get there. Hurry...drive as carefully as possible, but hurry."
"I will be there in three hours...”
The storm was building as I walked out the doors and down the steps.
The fury and rage were instantaneous. Who would do this?
How could they do it?
What the fuck is wrong with me?
Why is God sending the men I love to such tragedy?!

Time literally seemed to speed up.
We were at my apartment minutes later.
I grabbed my things and threw them into my car.
I didn't know what I would need, this storm would last for days, but what do you bring?!
As fast as I could… don't remember a turn or stop light.

We drove from Houston to Austin in just under 3 hours,
Arriving at the hospital at 2 am.
As we drove up, we saw my dad's best friend, Mike.
He explained to us what the doctors had said to the family..…
That my father had never regained brain function.
I felt like I was in the eye of the storm, pulling and tugging in every direction.
I looked in the window at my sister, she hadn't heard it all, but she had heard enough.
She was bracing herself for what she was about to have to endure.
The walk down the long corridor to the ICU, was the longest walk of my life.

I saw an old woman walking down the hall.
Her shoulders were hunched forward, her gray hair limp on her down-turned head.
She walked so slowly, that I not in a million years would I have seen her as my mother.
When she turned to us,
I knew there was nothing that could be done.

But how could I make next 30 feet?
My mom reached for my dad's hand, and said,
"Sweetie, the girls are here.
They have come to see you, so you have to wake up.”

My heart broke, my body broke,
My skin pulled itself from my body and left me bleeding.
The hurricane had reached cat 5 strength but it was still a thousand miles away.
We all stood in silence as we heard the machines beep and the respirator breath for our father.
He had at least twenty different IV bags hanging, trying to rouse him back to life.
One was to raise his blood pressure and another to keep it low.
Bags of blood - to replenish his dwindling supply.

I stood speechless for a few minutes, staring into his vacant eyes.
The eyes of the kindest man I had known since my grandfather's death.
His eyes were now empty.
Those empty eyes still haunt me.

We sat and waited.
We talked a little, but mostly we cried.
I laid down on the floor,
My head on the bag, which contained his torn clothes.
I wept.


The storm of my soul was crashing onto the shore.
Seeing him lying there and then seeing my mother so fragile.
The next 40 hours passed in a storm of fury.
Being thrown to and fro, hoping for the activity to return to his brain,
By the time the papers were signed for the organ donation,
The whole family was present, and we were trying to figure out how to get home.

The eye of my storm hit.
I have been calm ever since.
I haven't cried,
I haven't felt.
My skin is still dangling removed from my body.
The storm is still looming over head.
The rage is still following the ebb and the flow.
Someday the eye of the storm will pass and I will feel again.
I will be able to cry with the remorse I feel in my soul.
I will be able to reach out and hug the ones I love again.
Until then, I will sit and I will write, and I will pray to God,
That the storm which still looms, will soon pass.

Quick Note from the Admins

No new posts today ladies. We have two sick admins and nothing new submitted. Please comment on older posts and support the Janes who have shared with us.

We'll return tomorrow!

For Want of Selfishness

I am so effing tired. I would love to sleep for a million years, but I can't. Part of it (I know) is whatever is wrong with me medically, but part of it is just all the work that I feel I need to do just to be a decent human being. Seriously.

Let's just think about this: a minimum of 40 hours a week of work for a bipolar, self absorbed, superficial cow (more on her another time), and I am so concerned about being a good little worker bee that I sometimes work an extra six to eight hours off the clock to pad my productivity. Does she appreciate this? nah. She constantly disrupts my job so I don't get 'comfortable' because she thinks she's my effing mentor, and that's what a mentor should do.

Then a minimum of 20 hours per week on school. That's an effing riot, but I can't can't drop out again - I have hinged my freaking future on this degree, and I can't afford to do this to myself again.

Then I've pledged to visit my parents @ least once a month, so that's six hours of driving and another round of therapy, which I'm not getting because my crazy boss makes it a habit of reading our insurance claims, and I can't give her the idea that I might not have everything together in one nice, name brand package. I already have to make up for the fact that I'm fat.

Then I have to prop up people's egos and/or health for a good while, because I'm the only one nice enough to do it when their own girlfriends or wives won't care enough to do it on their own.

I do all this, and you dare to make fun of my house? When do I have time to clean? I do all this, and you make fun of my not dating anyone? When do I have a chance to meet anyone, let alone overcome my shyness and negative body image long enough to talk to them? But why don't you call me spinster or old maid again? It's that sort of fun shit that KEEPS me lonely. I do all this and you call me short tempered? Of course I'm short tempered - I'm exhausted, and you're one of the only people that I feel like can be myself with, but when I do, we get to hear all about how it upsets you.

Have you ever seen one of those incredibly vapid girls in the mall flouncing from place to place, boyfriend to boyfriend, not a thought in their head past how the world affects them? I have, in fact I'm related to several.

I used to be that vapid and selfish bimbo, but decided that I was too intelligent for that. I want to go back. I may have had my eyes closed, but I always had a boyfriend. I always got enough sleep. I was taken care of constantly, and I was able to accept that care. I never worried about money, or perceptions, or time.

But I have taken the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and become ashamed of my nakedness. Now I can never return to the garden of Eden. I now must ignore my crippling arthritis and fatigue to finish a report, go shopping for the week, put on a smiley face, figure out major home repairs, and listen to people complain about me the entire time.

Sorry to rant, but there it is. Thank you for providing me with a place to let it out.

Yours, Lolly "more Eve than Lilith" Pop

Site Redesign

We have hired the very talented Ruby and Roja to redesign and overhaul our beloved Jane Project. This is very exciting stuff! We would love to hear from you. Tell us what you would like see, wouldn't like to see and anything else you think we should know.

We read everything we get from you, so please, drop us a line and tell us what you think!

Beauty = Full?

Let us talk about beauty.

I am beautiful. I am full of face and have eyes that men have fallen head-long into like a chasm of grief and pain and pleasure and have been lost. Forever. I have a mouth full and sweet like a rosebud, just on the cusp of bursting into a full and long flower that men have kissed and nibbled and sighed into. I have full breasts and midnight hair that tumbles down my back. Yes, it’s true, I am beautiful.

In our society beauty can be everything. Ever since I was a girl all around me have commented upon my face, later my body. I have held value because of these things. I have been lost and devoured and used because of these things. I recognize that I am beautiful, but what is that exactly?

I am visually appealing. I am easy to look at. I invoke pleasant feelings in those who glance in my direction. I kill myself slowly a little more every day to live up to the expectations that others have placed upon me and that I have made my own. I starve myself; I fill my body with chemicals in a desperate attempt to become thinner. Diet pills, laxatives, endless diuretics. This is some months. Then there are the months when I am so exhausted and spent that I just eat to fill the hole left behind. I am filled with guilt and pain and I am filled with more guilt. Every morsel is a punishment and I do this to remind myself that I must be beautiful to have worth. I obsess and the ones who love me the most suffer with me.

The funny thing is I do not believe that others must live this standard that has been set for me. I recognize the beauty in others I love so much. Fierce independence, self-assuredness, the ability to survive, spirituality, loyalty, innocence, worldliness, a loving nature, a protective nature; all are things of beauty and make the bearer beyond compare. I even recognize some of these qualities in myself.

Yet…

Yet, in my darkest hours it’s the ugliness in my psyche that haunts me. In my deepest of depths every pill, every morsel withheld, every graze of the razor across my arms and wrists and thighs is a secret message to myself; a message that says “You must do this to be loved.”

It seems boundless, this pit that I have dug for myself, but I have just written this down. I have acknowledged that it happens. This is my admonition, my cry for help, my pact with all of you and with myself to stop this insanity. I will stop this. I will write and maybe even talk and I will stop this.

I want to be free.

Darkness Becomes Light

I have been lost in the dark

I have been lost in the dark….lost in my addiction….lost in my insanity, my pain, my grief. I have been lost, a throw away, a nothing. A child of the street.

A slave to the darkness was I.

Most of the time, I was invisible to the “good people”. I was junky thin, reeking of death and despair, my withdrawing body shaking. I was dying slowly in full view and they would glance quickly over me, across my face, pretending they did not see me. My fellow humans would walk past me. I did not exist. I was invisible. My sins to great even to be…….

A slave to the darkness was I.

When the “good people” did see me they forced me to become invisible again. I was not even considered human by some. I was denied a place to sit or rest. I was denied water on hot summer days when my thirst was so great I could no longer swallow and my exhausted body would almost faint. I was denied a place to refresh myself or relief myself, instead using bushes and running behind building and risking arrest for my need. Debased and ashamed I sought places to rest only to be chased away again and again with the threat of imprisonment if I did not “move on”. I was told NO you cannot come into this store, NO you cannot shield yourself from bitter wind, NO you cannot get warm here, seek shade here, or ever, ever rest. You must make yourself invisible again because you are too disgusting. You do not belong. Not fit to view or consider. You are not a human-being. You are an animal.

A slave to the darkness was I.

To some people though, I was quite visible. Predators saw me clearly even when I did my best to hide. They hunted me in the dark…..animals, hunting animals in the dark, on the street. These memories are too painful to recount. To be trapped by one of these meant rape, murder, or death…..so I spent a great deal of time running, hiding, afraid…….I’ve been raped, tortured, pimped and beaten. I have been emotional and physically used and abused. My value was reduced to my vagina and nothing else about me mattered to anyone. Some days, most of those dark days, not even to me.

A slave to the darkness was I.

I was visible to the tricks when they required sexual gratification but became invisible again after the fact. I was also invisible to them if we came across one another in public even though just days before they may have sworn to help me in any way they could. Many claimed to care, to love me, to be my friend yet only when they desired sex was I visible. Still, I welcomed them because the only relief from the physical agony of the street and my addiction was when I prostituted my body and was able to slip inside a cool or warm car. The only way I had to bath was when a John got a seedy room for an hour. I had to put back on my filthy rags, more often than not throw away my shameful underpants, always carefully hiding them somewhere in the bathroom or stuffing them in my pocket so my “client” would not witness to my personal decay. I would pass the time and cover the shame by praying “please God, let this be over soon”. I would hold on the truth that the act brought the money that I, or we needed to get more crack and that meant that soon, very soon the agonizing pain of my being, of my existence would end shortly and I would once again be numb, gratefully numb. I would finally once again be dead inside and it was only in that death of mind and spirit in which I could comfortably dwell. It was the only time I was safe from myself and my conscious.

A slave to the darkness was I.

I was visible to other addicts, other street people. They recognized my despair and loneliness and they fed on it. I would provide money, cigarettes, food and shelter and dope to those who professed to be my friend. They, in return, would make promises then vanish with all that I owned onto the darkness. Even those who said they loved me, in the end, encouraged me sell my body while they waited for me in the dark. I step from the car still lost in my own filth, reeling and in pain from yet one more act of degradation. No words of sympathy ever came. Just “how much money did you get?”, “how much dope do you want?”, then a flurry of phone calls and activity, then the tense, unbearable waiting. Finally, the dope. My body sick with the want of it. My emotions, out of control. My need to be numb, overpowering me. He moves deliberately slow….him, taking the first hit. Is it real? Is it real? Finally! My turn, his turn, my turn, his turn. On and on until there is no more. We have to have more! We cannot stop! There is no choice so out into the darkness walk I. We tell ourselves this is the last time. We will stop after this. Freezing, one more time. Raining, one more time. Blistering hot; one more time. Day or night. ; one more time. Dangerous wee hours of the morning…one…..more….time. I AM AFRAID and the addiction lies “One more time”.

A slave to darkness was I.

There is no choice you see. We have to have more. An endless cycle of “one more time”, “one more hit” When at last I can endure no more and my body collapses, after hours of sleep deeper that death I awake to my lover who looks at me calls me whore. I run back to the street and bring him what he desires so he will stay with me. More money, more dope so we can forget that we are lost and dying in the dark. I am afraid because time is fleeting, one week, one month, one year, five then ten then on and on. A lifetime up in smoke, one hit at time, one more time.

A slave to darkness was I.

I remember, very clearly my reemergence from the dark. It was when I became visible to people like you. You know, those of you who see me as a troubled person, an addict, someone who needs help and deserves love. Those of you who see me as a lost daughter, a lost sister, a lost mother. Those of you whose love of transcends those narrow, cruel societal views of me. Those of you who look into my face and say “I see you and you are beautiful to me” with an understanding smile. Those of you who dared to touch this leper. Those of you whose loving actions said “I love you and I am here to help because you deserve help, not hate.”

A child of The Light am I.

I did not become visible to myself all at once. Perhaps the pain of who I had become would have killed me where it so…..I could not look in the mirror at first, even to try to straighten myself out to look presentable. I was afraid of that lost, hunted person in the mirror. That person who was trying to kill the real me. The person who was burying me alive, coldly deaf to her/my screams of terror. You saw these things, you Children of The Lord, and you continued to reach out. To smile, to look in my eyes…To Remind Me Who I Am…..and slowly, oh so slowly, I began this journey to remembrance. Slowly, one meal, one bath, one meeting, one service, one word of hope, one action of love at a time you Children, you Saints, brought me to The Light. To Love. To God.

A child of The Light am I.

Sometimes I acted as if I did not hear you. Sometimes I believed I was not worthy and ran away, back deep into darkness. But always, even when I ran I hid, like a starving child, your love, deep in my heart and in the darkest of dark I would remember this love and yearn for more….so your love acted as light to guide me back to His Children. I learned to seek you as you sought me. I learned to seek God……I learned to see myself through first your eyes, then His eyes. Then I learned they were the same. His heart was in your heart and I began to BECOME. I began to heal, I began to change….I REMEMBERED WHO I AM…..A Child of God. Worthy. You taught me who I am. You showed me God’s Love so in a way that I could understand, then embrace then desire, then seek then live. You forgave me and that taught me God forgives me

A child of The Light am I.

Barbara Rhyne Tucker

My Mom's Birthday

Today is my mom's birthday. My mom died in 1998 when I was 26, the same age she was when she gave birth to me.

As my mother lay dying, she begged me not to have any children because she couldn't bear the thought of one day my laying somewhere, dying of the rare cancer that has taken several generations of women in her line before the age of 60, looking into my own daughter's face, seeing the pain there. While she was dying, in an inconceivable amount of pain, she was more concerned about my being in the same situation some day than she was about her own quickly-approaching death.

That's a level of love that I cannot conceive of having.

I promised her that I wouldn't bear my own children unless and until we get to choose gender beforehand. I knew what I was promising, and I knew that I would keep it because, well, you don't turn down the dying wish of a family member if it's remotely possible to keep it.

So I've lived through the procreative years of my life not bearing children. I've never married. I've aborted. I've lived with roommates in order to avoid having an empty home and thrown myself into my career with a ferocity that masquerades as workaholism. I have a television on in my home 24x7 to have the sound of human voices around me. I've promised myself that I can always adopt, and I've also promised myself I won't marry a man for whom that's not an option.

I've told every close friend or boyfriend I've had since my mom's death that I won't bear my own children because of my mother's dying wish, my promise to her, and my own fear of the rare (almost undiagnosable) cancer that kills women in my line early. The thing is, that's only half the reason.

The other half of the reason, and the one I've never told anyone before, is that I can't conceive of being the kind of person, the kind of mother, who would or could lay dying, in incomprehensible pain, and be more concerned about my daughter experiencing the same thing than I am about my own impending death.

I can't live up to that. I can't even see the bar my mom set, much less reach it. That's the other half of the reason I never bore my own children and won't unless and until gender selection becomes a viable option.

~Riot.Jane

Man Has His Own Wife Raped

Sad Greetings to the Ladies Jane --

If the various news reports I've read are accurate, a 25-year-old North Carolina man arranged, via a popular online classified site, for a complete stranger to have sex with his wife using "scare tactics." Since the wife was ignorant of and therefore not complicit with the plan, rape is the only possible word for this event.

The concept bears repeating: A man had someone else rape his own wife.

Now, while you're trying to wrap your mind around that concept, here are details from various news reports (linked below):

• The woman awoke from sleep, in bed with her husband, at 2:45 AM to see a black male stranger standing at the foot of the bed with a knife.
  
  
• The stranger raped her.
  
  
• The husband didn't try to interfere with the sexual assault, and he didn't try to comfort her afterward.
  
  
• The victim (not the husband) called 911 after the assault.
  
  
• The victim was forensically examined, medically treated, interviewed, and released from the hospital due to no significant physical injury.
  
  
• Police could find no sign of forced entry into the couple's home.
  
  
• The husband's statement contained specific inconsistencies, and he's being held on $200,000 bond on various charges: first-degree rape, first-degree sexual offense, and attempted first-degree sexual offense. He waived the appointment of a public defender at his first hearing.
  
  
• Police confiscated the husband's computer and have obtained the assistance of the US Secret Service in gathering forensic computer evidence.
  
  
• The couple's two children were home (but presumably asleep) and not aware of the sexual assault.
  
  
• The victim told a reporter that she is receiving help and support from family members, that the details of the assault are too painful to discuss, but that she didn't know about the plan. Police have indicated that they firmly believe her.
  
  
• The police have located the assaulter. He is a veteran who was convicted of indecent exposure in Virginia last March.
  
  
• Police are not yet sure whether or not the husband paid the assaulter for the assault, or if the assaulter even knew the victim was non-complicit. Police believe the assaulter may have simply believed he was fulfilling a consensual fantasy.
  

I hereby volunteer to have Karma's flow skip over the next three good things that are supposed to happen to me so that there's plenty of Karma available to give this piece of human garbage exactly what he deserves.

Further reading sources available.

~Riot.Jane

Why One Jane Finds Value in TJP

I'm stealing a couple of minutes from work to send this quick 'Thank you!' but I have to say I feel it's completely worth it! 'Janes', you have devised an ingenius site here!

Finally, a place where women can talk and share with other women without having to 'secretly' worry about the scorn, hatred, and those 'strange' looks that can be given to a woman by other women! We need to learn from each other, and perhaps we do, but only about certain things. We try to teach our children (our daughters especially) about the whole 'share, be kind, don't be jealous, respect your body / respect yourself' gig, but then we silently (and not always so silently) rip each other apart over one thing or another.

On this site, we can all come together to discuss, debate, argue, or whatever, but address anything that ails us or brings us joy without all of the social stigmas that confront us when dealing with each other face to face! I love it!

I will share this site with a few choice girlfriends that I believe would share my idea about this site. Additionally, I will start to submit topics very soon!

Well, that's all the time I have for now...

Beautiful idea ladies and I love the name!

Take care of each other!

~Dark Angel ;)

Flexing Your Gratitude Muscle

Greetings to the Ladies Jane!

A relatively unknown concept is what I think of as The Gratitude Return. The idea is that experiencing the emotion we refer to as gratitude begins a chain reaction that ends in a measure of well-being. Gratitude journals and self-generated gratitude interventions have been shown to provide a wealth of benefits, including improved overall optimism, goal attainment, and higher levels of alertness, as well as increased positive attitude, improved energy, overall contentment, longer and better quality sleep, and increased hope and determination (hence, I suspect, the goal attainment).

In fact, one researcher says that practicing gratitude can improve happiness levels by around 25%. Who couldn't stand to be 25% happier?

One of the most striking angles of this concept is that demographic traits (income, race, age, etc.) have been shown to be unreliable in predicting subjective well-being (SWB), but that personality traits (such as extroversion) are a reliable predictor. Gratitude is beginning to be considered one such trait. Another striking angle is that, while most religions stress gratitude and graciousness as a virtue, the personal positive rewards of gratitude are shown to be independent of religion, i.e. the atheist will reap the same rewards as the born-again.

"Gratitude seems to energize and elevate people," another researcher says. "It's available to everyone. And it has a very large payoff for a very small investment."

So, ladies, flex your gratitude muscle and reap the rewards! I made the "Practice Gratitude" graphic to help us all remember. Click through and print it out in whatever size you'd like.

Further reading available from several sources.

~Riot.Jane