So, Jake's case cannot go back to court until he gets two evaluations done: a domestic violence evaluation and a drug and alcohol evaluation. Then, the evaluation people write a letter to the court, saying that Jake is relatively sane, and mostly just a nice guy, and can be trusted not to hurt people.
Then, the lawyers read that letter, and they say, "gee, he's mostly just a nice guy, like us, only nicer because he's not a lawyer, and we shouldn't throw the book at him. We should just yell at him a little for being a dumbass, and then we should let him go, call it a misdemeanor, and call it a day."
Then, Jake gets to go home, and probably he'll have to go to AA meetings every week, or something like that. And somewhere along the line, the no-contact order gets DROPPED, and he and I can talk to each other again.
Nice.
EXCEPT...
The evaluation people refuse to write a letter to the court until they've talked to me. Only, I don't have a telephone, so they can't call me and interview me by phone. So I asked if I could set up an appointment. "No!" they snapped: "You don't even belong in this BUILDING unless you have a phone! What are you? A piece of trash?"
They didn't say that. They DISTINCTLY gave me that attitude. I said I refused to leave until they'd set up SOME sort of an arrangement to talk to me. Because until they talked to ME, they couldn't write any letters, and Jake would sit in jail. Fuck that shit. Jake sitting in jail because I don't have a telephone? No, Jake should be sitting in jail IF HE'S A BAD GUY, not IF I DON'T LIKE PHONES. And FYI, Jake's not a bad guy. I refused to budge. I sat in a chair, picked up a "Vogue" magazine, crossed my legs, and started humming.
A counselor was out in less than five minutes.
She asked me about the night Jake got arrested. I told her. She asked me if I'd come up with a "safety plan" yet, and if I planned to attend AA meetings regularly. Huh?
Okay, here's the deal... I'm MORE than willing to go to AA meetings, or whatever the fuck Jake is supposed to go to. I mean, when you have a friend, or a lover, you do that sort of thing with them. It's kind of like picking somebody up after work: you just DO that sort of thing for people you care about. It's kind of like making soup for sick people. Or opening doors for old people. It's just one of those things you DO. And besides, AA meetings have coffee. Decaf, sometimes. And ooohhhhhh, that coffee!
But a SAFETY plan? Here's the deal with all of this... Jake was the one who fucked up. And yeah, he did fuck up. And for gahd's sake, by now he KNOWS it. *I* was not the one who fucked up. *I* have a "safety plan" wherever I go. And that is: if somebody's doing something you don't like, say no. And if they don't stop, yell it. And if they still don't stop, and you're scared, fucking RUN. That's MY safety plan. My mom taught me that when I was like, two. Why make a new one? I feel like they're telling me: "look here, sweetheart; men are bad and they're going to beat you up unless you have a good plan to escape." I refuse to accept that.
WHY do I refuse to accept that? Two reasons...
One, Jake fucked up, not me. MY fuck-up was calling the police. I'm NOT going to take responsibility for "batterer-proofing" my apartment. EVERY piece of literature they've given me; EVERYTHING I've ever learned from my mom's social work homework, everything I know from common sense, and everything I know from Lifetime Television says this: Jake does NOT fit the profile of an abuser. He's not going to fucking kill me. And I'm not going to move into a new building where there are more escape routes. I'm not going to remove all the fucking glassware from the apartment. I'm not going to do these things. Jake's NOT going to hurt me, dammit. And you know what? If he WAS going to hurt me, and I was going to ask for the no-contact order to be dropped, then it's MY damned fault if I get the shit kicked out of me.
Be it known: I'm not the sort of person who thinks victims of assault, or rape, or whatever, are to blame. But dammit, if you go down the dark alley once, and you get beat up, then that's very sad and you deserve support and friendship and whatever else. And then you go BACK down the alley knowing you're going to get beat up again, then you're a moron and you fucking deserved it. If you go back down the alley in the daytime, and you can see there aren't any beater-uppers there, then WHY THE FUCK DO YOU NEED A SAFETY PLAN?
Second, I have a safety plan. That is: if I'm in trouble, or somebody's doing something bad, I say: "no." And if they don't stop, I yell it. And if they still don't stop, or if I'm really scared, then I run. That's pretty much always worked. It worked the night Jake was arrested; I'm not hurt, now am I?
I came SO close to telling the counselor to stuff her safety plan up her victimized ass.
Why can't these nice, sweet, kind social work people understand that I'm NOT a victim...?
Politically correct language dictates that one should not call a person with AIDS a "victim of AIDS." You call that person a "PWA," or "person with AIDS." Because in saying that a person is a victim, you take away all of his or her power to CONTROL his or her level of suffering. Calling someone a victim is saying: "you feel BAD, you are suffering, you need help." I don't feel bad. I am not suffering. And I don't fucking need help. Or a safety plan.
The counselor says, "YOU cannot control Jake's drinking." Well, duh. Like I'd want to be in charge of another human being's swallowing-muscles anyway? Ew! I say: "I know." She says: "Why did you let Jake have marijuana in your home?" I say: "Because everybody smokes weed. Except me, because I hallucinate when I smoke weed. And as long as it didn't get blown in my face, who am I to try to dictate anybody's behavior?" What the fuck? I'm not in control of other peoples' drinking, but I AM somehow magically in control of other people smoking weed? These fucking counselors must get their degrees out of Cracker Jack boxes. This particular counselor said she got her Masters at Evergreen. But Evergreen doesn't have a Social Work or Chemical Dependency Professional program. She obviously got it out of a Cracker Jack box. I wouldn't be surprised if she was a fucking patient of the place.
Anyway, she was a stupid cuntrag. But I managed to smile at her pleasantly. I kept thinking: if I punch her, she'll write down that Jake and I are BOTH abusers... I waited until I was about a block away from the building, and I loudly announced to the baby that his/her daddy's counselor had pea soup for brains.
But... on the up-side... She must have SOMETHING of a brain, because she said, straight out: "Helena, your boyfriend is NOT a domestic abuser. I'm waiving the domestic violence treatment program, because he really doesn't need it. I'm telling the court that we'll be satisfied when he's in outpatient treatment for alcohol."
...And that's what the lawyers were waiting to hear... Now, they'll hear it, and they'll give Jake a halfway decent plea-bargain. And he won't have to sit in prison, and he won't have to be denied work at Burger King. It'll all be okay. And who gives a shit about treatment for alcohol? So what? I used to go to them for the coffee, and I'd stay for the inspiration. Jake's not anything like any of the alcoholics I've ever known in my life, but if that's what they're calling him, then great. At least it's better than being called an abuser, or a batterer.
The counselor also said: "people who are not alcoholics do not black out."
I asked her what the fuck THAT meant.
She said: "It means anybody who has ever blacked out from drinking alcohol is an alcoholic."
I said, rather curtly, that I'd blacked out the very, very first time I'd tried alcohol. I said: "when I was seventeen, I got drunk, and I didn't know how much I could drink, so I had about five glasses of wine in about half an hour or forty-five minutes. And I blacked out. And I didn't like it, and I was scared, so I don't drink like that anymore."
She pronounced me an alcoholic. She said I should be in AA meetings too, because five glasses in half an hour is binge-drinking, and obviously I need help. She asked if I was drinking now. I told her: "I'm PREGNANT. Of course not." She said: "Are you sure?" She said: "It's a family disease, Helena. You and Jake should both go to AA every week."
Um, duh... it's not binge-drinking if it's the first time you've EVER had a drink in your whole life, and you don't know what's going to happen... That's like telling somebody they're a junkie because they saw a pretty shell on a New Jersey beach and it turned out to be somebody's heroin needle. Granted, you should know better than to pick up shells on a New Jersey beach; likewise, you should know that five glasses of wine is too much in half an hour -- but if you don't KNOW, that doesn't make you an alcoholic. Duh.
I don't LIKE being drunk. I don't like the taste of most alcoholic beverages. I haven't had more than three drinks in any 24 hour period since G.W. Bush was elected president. The last time I drank two nights in a row was probably over a year ago, when Norman bought me a four-pack of wine coolers. Hell, the night I met Jake, he offered to buy me a drink and I turned him down because I'd already had one and was feeling tipsy. The last time I was at a party, I had a glass and a half of wine. Red. Two different kinds: it was sort of a tasting party, and everybody else had like, six or seven glasses. It took me all fucking night to drink one and a half, too. Would somebody kindly inform me: HOW THE FUCK AM *I* AN ALCOHOLIC??? I thought, in order to be an alcoholic, you at least had to sort of enjoy alcohol...
Color me baffled...
But on to some happier news...
I had my first appointment with the midwife yesterday.
I told her my head has been sort of foggy, and I've been forgetting a lot of names and places, and I've forgotten my keys a lot lately, and I've repeated a lot of stories to people... She cut me off there, giggled, and told me it was perfectly normal to have memory loss and general stupidity during pregnancy. She said it would wear off in about two years.
So when this baby is born, I'm exacting my revenge in the form of tickle-fights. Until he or she is like, thirty, he or she is going to get tickled for this.
The midwife asked me about a bazillion questions: did I smoke, did I have any creepy illnesses in my family, did I do street drugs, did I eat a lot of tuna fish...?
What with me being an ex-smoker (and a miserable one, at that...), all of the creepy illnesses in my family, all of the creepy illnesses in Jake's family, and the amount of salmon I'd like to consume in short periods of time, if I could, this baby's got a lot of odds to overcome. The midwife said: don't worry. It's not a big deal. And so what if I ate tuna fish casserole ONE time. And so what if I had one and a half drinks a couple of weeks ago before I knew I was pregnant. The midwife said: if everybody had a birth defect whose mother had had a glass of wine during pregnancy, there wouldn't be anybody even halfway normal in Europe. She said I'm doing fine. She showed me how to test pee for gross things, like glucose and protein.
And then, she listened, with this weird little machine, to my belly. She said: "You're only eight weeks pregnant, so I'd be very, very surprised if we could hear anything." Oh yeah, and I have an upside-down uterus, or something like that. So that makes it even harder. She said we'd try again in four weeks.
Imagine! This little person inside me is SO small, they can't even detect a heartbeat yet... But the thing is, this little person may be very small... But this little person is in NO WAY helpless. I can tell. He or she is very, very strong in spirit. I'm probably going to spend the rest of my life serving this little person, who knows EXACTLY what he or she wants. It's funny to me that such a strong person (and I can FEEL that!!!) should be so small and dependent. Heh! "Mom, I want yogurt, so you're going to eat some right now, okay?" How FUNNY that such a little badass should be so small! Ah, but not for long...
"You're going to have to gain about thirty-five pounds, Helena."
"ME? HOW???"
The midwife shrugged, as if I'm supposed to know. Me? Thirty-five pounds? I can't even gain FIVE pounds, for gahd's sake. Not even if I really, really, REALLY try. Hopefully, nature will kick in and shut off my metabolism or something. I couldn't gain thirty-five pounds if I hid weights in my socks, for crying out loud.
The midwife sent me over to the lab across the street. They took blood. They took SOOOO much blood... Like, three vial of blood. What do they do with all that blood? I swear, they're keeping a vampire alive in one of their closets somewhere. First, they test it for everything under the sun: HIV, syphilis, rubella, stupid genes, drugs, who knows what all... I told them not to do the cystic fibrosis test, because there's a one-in-a-bazillion chance of both parents having the gene, and then there's nothing you can do about it anyway. So, I guess that's one less vial...
After that, I went downtown and bought myself a bagel. I figured the baby and I were very brave and deserved a treat. Maybe a naughty treat, like a bagel with salmon on it.... Sh, don't tell...
I'm bored. I'm going to go wander around for awhile.
~Helena*