Ryan Holland Syndrome

Ryan Holland Syndrome primarily infects the workplace, and is rampant in the word of human services. Competence is rewarded with more work and a dull, aching sense of obligation, whereas incompetence is met with a shrug and a lighthearted sense of understanding and fun. Ryan Holland Syndrome feels like getting strep in your career, and those with big, weepy hearts are most susceptible.

Preventive measures are most effective, and involve: 1) being tuff, 2) repping for yourself, and 3) not letting people put their trip on you. If you know my very Best Friend, you should call her, and she will make you feel better: "You know what you get when you put up with peoples' bullshit? More bullshit." Say it, sister.

Anyway, leaving this job is getting impossible. Keeping things casual with dudes is impossible. There is nothing in this world with no strings attached, if you are St. Renegade. That is a good thing. Strings are good. They just have to be clean, and strong, and made out of the braided gossamer of a unicorn's mane.

The Secret is to dress like a Kung Fu Master (if you are male-identified) or in evening wear (if you are of the lady persuasion.)

The other secret "...is defined as the law of attraction, which states that like attracts like. The concept says that the energy you put into the world—both good and bad—is exactly what comes back to you. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day."

Way back to the Park Ave porch in Columbus, circa 98, I had a conversation with Kristen Reda, who is entirely composed of earthy goodness and love, about life. Even without the assistance of Oprah or a Kung Fu Master, Kristen had been able to distill this same Secret from the wisdom of the ancients, lots of weed, Erykah Badu, and yoga. As we all know: you get back what you put out, most of the time. Sometimes. Because when I asked Kristen about the 15 year old girl who had been raped in Goodale Park the previous week, "had she put the desire to be cut and raped out into the Universe?" she said yes and I had to stop listening.

The question of human pain and failure is the one I have attempted to answer about myself, my mother, the inhabitants of a small Armenian village, and via around 50 American children in the foster care system. Amidst these journeys I was also aging in the way that people of my kind age, and now I'm 30, and the desire to have answers is leaving me in steady trickle. I think it's true that if you act in a loving way, and believe you desire love, and give love freely, you will receive love. But I don't think it's true--and I haven't been to Darfur, so I don't really know--that if you don't believe that the Janjaweed are going to slice off your penis or rape you, then they won't, because you didn't put that out into the Universe. And then there is the sad fact that if you kick and kick and burn and deny a person love, they usually end up really, really unpleasant people, guarded and rageful and difficult to love. You put out into the Universe what you have received, and when you get really close to excruciatingly pained people, I have found that Secrets and answers become completely superfluous.

The Secret did not result in my having wings, but something else will. I have a network of geniuses with giant hearts from whom I need daily affirmation and advice, only one of whom is a nationally read advice columnist, the rest of whom are people I get to talk to and touch on a regular basis. In this next month I expect the focus of my thoughts will continue to shift from messy questions of pain and empathy to "What do you think of my bangs and do you want to date me?" The Secret is my bangs, jerks.

If the idea is that I'm not crazy anymore, then clearly, that is the wrong idea. I'm not exactly there yet, but I think the idea is to recognize, sweetly and honestly, how crazy everyone else is. And then be less nervous about letting them see how hurt I am. In that way, unhurt people, or people who pretend all day that they are fine, will have very little to do with me. Good. I find such people puzzling and exhausting.

On Valentine's Day, I ended up at a bar at 4 am. I felt the palpable loneliness of the other people there; the nervous looks, the sadness behind great hair, full beards, and black glasses. As usual, I walked out unscathed. That's the right idea: risky sexual behavior is not for me. On the other hand: being unscathed, all the time, is not the right idea. The dichotomy isn't an STD from somebody I met at 4 am at the Continental versus a lifetime of painful and detached loneliness, but there is a lesson in there somewhere.

Something about the next phase of my life has me thinking that it's not supposed to be as difficult as all the preceding life--or that I'm not going to have to work so hard all the time. Certain burdens will slouch off on their own. On the other hand, I'm not super good at relaxing, and I have an insane craving for self-help these days. After I publish this little nugget of wisdom, I'm going to look up The Secret on Oprah's website. If I read it and grow wings, I will get back to you.

This job is a nail in my ass

So anyways after picking my Girl up at a crack house, after having realized that the mountain of blankets on the filthy floor had people in it, after going to the foster home and packing up her stuff and witnessing foster mom tell her to "focus on her goals" and, subtextually, "ignore my abandonment of you," I was carrying her crap to my recently unfrozen car and fell down the front steps on to a nail, from what I can reconstruct. My favorite jeans, magic look-at-my-fine-ass pants, torn a ragged 10 inches right off me, and I spend the next two hours moving her into the group home with my backside out and wounded. Thankfully I had a long coat. Sadly, she was moving into a group home, moving away from any sense of family, drifting more and more into loneliness. Let's not say I failed her, because I didn't, but let's just say: thankfully I was offered another job. The tender convergence of my pain and their pain is becoming much too much to bear.

Of course, part of me wants forgiveness for the choices I'm making; who takes an easier job that pays more money? Who decides not to be in their mom's intervention? Who am I without all the abject self-sacrifice and attendant sense of righteousness and superiority?

Here's what I'm thinking, right now. The strength I've gained from self-laceration--and I'm not kidding, I really have--I now want to use for greater healing, straighter bangs, and debt re-payment. My magical unicorn powers will become even more magic. I will spin dreams from my single horn.

I honestly had no idea how disturbing my posts regarding my work are to people. Am I not adequately expressing that at the bottom of a draining and disturbing day is, like, a feeling of boundless empathy and understanding? Not that I actually understand anything, but sometimes I feel understanding. I also get to hear some of the best sentences ever, such as:

"A spoonful of social work is worth a mountain."

Pills and jazz, jazz and pills

My Mother's birthday could not pass without fireworks, for she is a powder keg of rage and pain and endless need. It turns out that her daughters were right, something is terribly wrong, and each of her siblings knows exactly what that is, and it looks to be something very similar to what each thinks is wrong with themselves and everyone else. It is time, again, for a Downey Intervention! A parade of phone calls and missed steps and the hand-wringing and name-calling that accompanies my family in any activity: weddings, trips to the store, breathing.

The terminology of addiction and salvation, as it is spoken in my family, is how I imagine twinspeak feels, if you love your twin completely and she is always poking you in the gut with a stick. The whole drama of my mother's Pill Problem and Drinking Problem is comforting and painful and fundamentally familiar, which is why I am shocked/elated at how easy it was to remove myself from the festivities entirely. My thing is: she has a Self Loathing and Self Obsession Problem like poison in the bloodstream and it's messy and desperately sad, and it lurks in all of us. All of us don't float illegal prescriptions around town and act like a Midwestern Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous, so I understand the drive to fix the substance abuse first, but: I have seen what is under the pills and the rapes and the alcohol, and it is sadder than anything ever, and made me change my life. So: I am not going to the Intervention, and everyone else is, and I am alone in Chicago with my new bangs and unicorn vibe. If someone calls and asks me to go see some jazz, I'm gonna fucking do it. I'm gonna do everything, ever.

I saw some jazz and there was the horrible shrill noodling that makes me angry but there was also some funkdified get-down that made me think of my Pops and imagine him at the Empty Bottle with me, grimacing with funkiness as he does, and I felt deeply that everything would be fine. A man and a woman did what they did, and I'll do it too, and that goes on and on, forever.

I'm really doing it! I'm magic!

I cut myself some magical rock star bangs the other midnight. And then I gave a sweet Urban Lumberjack to a dear friend and got an honest-to-God craigslists.org missed connection out of it!

thanks to you..... - 29
Reply to: pers-271861725@craigslist.org

Date: 2007-02-01, 1:23PM CST

I awoke bewildered as my sheets were changed into red flannel and my pillows made of lumberjack beard?? One can only assume based on the faint aroma of whisky and maple syrup. Then I saw your hoof print and a long red unicorn hair. Thank you magical friend.

Location: my bedroom
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Posting ID: 271861725

In other news: Angry Little Man gets to go home to his crazy mama after 3 years in the system! It's like I shake my fancy bangs and fairy dust of goodness settles on the world around me. Nearly good luck indeed. If I were you, I would get in real close to me right now, Chicago Bears. We are going all the way.