Break in the parking lot

"In the end you know, it wasn't worth it",

seethed Gayle behind clenched, stained smoker's teeth. Her smile is highlighted with a smirk, as the pain from a not-so-distant-past is betrayed by her jaw. It is decades beyond the 'women's movement' which in my humble opinion has folded back onto itself and Gayle, a mid 40ish single Mum of about 4, is recounting the disaster of her divorce under the disguise of expertise. The time frame is late 2009. She's addressing the issue as if women are all wrong and because they generally possess larger muscles, men are correct. She thinks I promptly need to hop into my ex's emotionally abusive apple cart again, just for the sake of our children. Gayle assumes women who desire peace within themselves, need to 'suck it up' for it isn't worth it. She and I are spanking new acquaintences and the smile I respond with is painfully plastered to my face. Not only do we share, pulverized past relationship/single mother status but also live off welfare and a salary of peanuts washing dishes in a Godforsaken tiny, New Zealand city. Admit defeat? Me? Never...!

She's relating to me for a self-preservation tactic on her part, using me more like a reflective mirror so she can function properly, regardless of her fusty logic. However her ancedote creates an eerie echo effect in my brain; its an indelible tune that latches on and on...its played for nearly 1/2 a century - the span of my life - and I'd be elated to erase the funky groove from my broken vinyl record for once: to understand the question, "why oh why is this my dang dharma?"

The blasted lyrics? Here they are, "You are a slave, you are WORTHLESS, la-la-la!"

A soft grey mist drizzles on our heads as we snag a spare 10 minutes in the cafe's designated break area, the parking lot. It'd be lovely to agree with her, to find an understanding friend as we sip bleak instant coffee and she distracts herself by chain smoking. She inhabits a faint residue of the big-eyed brunette beauty of her youth, the girl who once felt happy and confidently opinionated. Today she is masquerading as a purposeful citizen for society's sake through a drug-addled haze of tobacco and Paxil and Ativan. Our feeble attempts at super-bonding are crumbling efficiently along with our snacks of store-bought stale biscuits. Operating in hand tremors and slurred, stilted speech intonations and appearing ashamed (its embarrassing to strip down so raw in front of a stranger), her voice is distinctly remote. Her ex husband decided to cruelly use their children as weapons in the break-up. Since his profession was that of an attorney, he (wrongly) claimed (and won) complete custody of the kids, moved to the other island in New Zealand where she couldn't reach them and ignored her. In hindsight, it wasn't worth it for her to dump him, the boy-man who allegedly loved her but not the kids; she believes that to challenge powers greater than oneself is sheer foolishness. Uh yeah, I can relate. Yet, her story is a tragedy, not a drama, and it is true. And I find myself again, peering out of the gates at a gutter instead of a golden tower, absorbing the incessant pattern of drudgery in my life, totally unable to toss constuctive feedback her way.

Why a person of my backround and education, and not to mention nationality (the reason I'm in another country is because of illness in an in-law and America IS ripe with 'scum', yes, but the 'idea' of America being slimy? no), perpetually swims amid the 'bottom-feeder' zone, is mind-boggling. Even after years and years and YEARS of gargantuan investment in time and money and working my patooty to the dry scaly bone. The sole answer that pops into my consciousness is guilt. For what? When I've done NOTHING wrong. Gayle is a native Kiwi. She's accustomed to the caveman New Zealander who drags his woman around by the hair but I'm receiving visions of my two beautiful daughters, manifesting into uneducated, beer swilling, pregnant teens. If I now bow to my ex, surely a sordid fate like the one above, will topple down on my small, precious angels and catching glimpses of this scene forms the ammunition I need to jump into action. Swallowing my pride along with my meal of hard cookies, I pray this washing dishes, job ends soon. Not so much for my sake as for Gayle's and of course for my children and for other women and children. Careers such as this one need to be allocated for teenagers and disabled war veterans (like Gayle). Sensing a sort of curious selfishness bubbling within me, I realize working as this woman's underling can me. It is necessary to let it go..Mercifully, a month later refuge came with a plane ticket out of town. Much aloha, Gayle.

*Gayle's name is not her real name but the rest is true as far as I can tell.