Traveling to Revolutionary Lithuania

My mother had a rather cavalier view toward my well being. She seemed to think that as long as I wasn't dead or missing any limbs then all was good.

This played out when I was spending a semester in Washington DC and asked by the Non Governmental Organization (NGO) I was working for if I would go over to Lithuania to be their first Field Officer. They were offering me the grand total of $350 and a round trip plane ticket. I mean how could I say no?!

So I called my mom to ask if she minded and she said that I had her full support. Not emotional or financial support, but you know, her support as my legal guardian. So that's awesome.

Now, let's play a pretend game where your real or imaginary child tells you that she's been offered a round trip ticket and $350 to go live in a country undergoing a revolution. If you have more sense than a duck you would probably say no. I would say, "HELL NO!" If my child were so confused as to ask me this.

I would then wonder where I had gone wrong in my parenting that my 19 year-old child thought that they were in any way prepared to live in a country in the midst of a revolution.

Did I speak the language? No.

Did I understand the culture? No.

Did I have an exist strategy if things went to hell? No.

Did I have any support from the NGO sending me over there? No

Was there anyone on the ground I could rely upon to get me up to speed? Nope.


It was a great plan.

My mom did help me borrow a full-length down coat from a friend of hers, so there's that.
 
My initial flight to Lithuania was delayed because the Soviet Union in protest of Lithuania declaring independence, sent in soldiers to take over the television towers in Vilnius, Lithuania where 13 people were killed. It was a huge deal in the international news and in many ways a turning point in the revolution.
My NGO moved back my travel date and instead of living in Vilnius, I was supposed to live in Kaunas, Lithuania and work for the University there along with working for the NGO on the conference.


I was told by the NGO that I was traveling under a visa with a false description of my work. I would be working with the revolutionary governments of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to set up a conference with the USAID on how to run municipalities once they had their freedom. But in order to get the visa from the Soviet Union, my visa was applied for saying that I was going to do research at a university.

I was told that I should not get stopped by the police or KGB, because that would cause difficulties and if I got in trouble no one would be able to help me. (I know, I was brilliant for agreeing to this. But remember my other choice was my mother and this actually seemed like the better option.)

My plane landed at the Riga airport and was immediately surrounded by Soviet soldiers with their AK-47s pointed at the plane. This has to be one of the most frightening things to see when you're entering a country undergoing a revolution. Especially when your NGO told you that no one would come to your aid.

The soldiers didn't shoot me, but they did riffle through my luggage and I was on my way to do something that I was convinced had to be worthwhile.

I was met at the airport by an American-Lithuania young woman and a driver who took me to Kaunas.

I immediately started to learn new things just on the loooong drive. Things like, there are no gas stations on this route. Bathrooms are a luxury item not encouraged by the Soviet State. If you are hungry, you will stay hungry because there is nowhere to get food.

These are vital lessons. Especially if you need to pee and have to pee in the trees. I am still not skilled in this area.

We arrived in Kaunas, which is beautiful, it was late at night and I was promptly placed in a hotel across from the university and told who I should meet with the next day.

I think I passed out in my clothes that night. But I had arrived and that was a point in my favor.

On Being Popular

I have social anxiety. This means that interacting with people freaks me the hell out. 

This was not really a problem at my small high school of 350 kids with a graduating class of around 90. I had some friends. I moved between social groups. It was all good.

But when I became a Sophomore in college I became inexplicably popular, for me anyway.

I joined a pre-law fraternity that year where I met my best friend and my kids godmother. It was the first time I found an entire group of people who made sense to me. We had conversations about international relations and politics. Argued about religion and human nature. It was great.

But these people were tragic party organizers so my friend and I became the social chairs and started to organize all the parties. They became more fun and I started to really enjoy the social aspects of school.

However, these people REALLY liked me and my friend. One or two of these people would take us out and treat us to dinner. They would find us when we were jogging at night so they could join us. We had to plan coffee nights so that we could all hang out in the evenings.They would even call out to us on campus and run over to talk with us while we walked to class.

To say that we had no idea what to do with this attention is an understatement. 

I was completely lost. Why in the hell did these people want to spend so much time with me. I'd spent a lot of time with me and I was fairly certain I was a dork and not nearly this interesting. 

Here I'm going to insert the obvious fact that the way I was raised, my terrible childhood and resulting low self esteem all came into play here along with my social anxiety, which I didn't know I had. 

So people kept coming up to talk with me and freaking me the hell out so I did the most obvious thing to me and became even more introverted.

I started to wear my Walkman ALL THE TIME. I would walk to class with the music up staring down at the ground so that the odds that I would hear these people was reduced. THEY STILL FOUND ME. So I turned the music up louder and took unexpected routes. It was not a normal response. But I'm not normal, so there you go.

My friend and I had regular conversations about why in the hell we were suddenly so popular. We still don't understand.

As the year wore on people took us out to fancy dinners to try and sway our votes for the next year's election. What the heck!

I think college should have like Friendship 101 for people like me, where they explain that this is normal behavior and people are allowed to like me and want to be my friend. It would have helped.

Both my friend and I went away the next year to do semesters abroad so I never reconnected with those friends because it was back in the stone ages when Facebook was just a dream. I still only talk to the best friend I made, but it was a bizarre life lesson.

I think I learned that I could be popular, which is a good thing to know. The fact that there are other people like me in the world and a place where I made sense is still comforting.

When A Longterm Disease Isn't All Bad

I laugh and smile more than anything else. My daughter pointed out to me tonight that the reason she thinks I’m so happy is because compared to my childhood everything must seem like a great day.

I was sick for 9 years with a horrible disease that had me practically narcoleptic most days, foggy brained, gaining weight while I was on diets, nightly hot flashes in my 30s, basically not super functional. Yet, that is still not a bad bunch of years.

My daughter was saying that for most people they talk about how terrible their diseases were. How they destroyed their lives. For me, those days were still great when compared to my youth, so I took the whole thing with a grain of salt. I’m well now so I just look forward.

She had me almost falling out of my chair laughing at how ludicrous it is that this is how I view my life. If I’m not surrounded by horrible people then it’s a great day.

I can’t imagine living any other way. I’m just happy to be where I am and have my funny, kind and loving family. I don’t deal with people who are mean or unkind because I don’t have to, so it’s great. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Ovary Removal is Great!

I had the surgery to remove my ovaries and uterus about a year and a half ago and I still feel amazingly better.

I had an ovarian disease along with a pituitary gland disease that was causing them to fight with each other and kill the rest of my endocrine system.

I was a little concerned to have my ovaries removed since I didn't want to go into menopause and was worried about hormone replacement therapy, but after talking with several of my friends who went through with the hysterectomy only to then have something go wrong with their ovaries and another operation, I decided to just have it all out.

I also decided to take the hormone replacement therapy so that I can have a shot at feeling better for the first time in the past 10 years or so.

My surgery was done laparoscopically with the Da Vinci robot, so I have about 4 small scars and one of them is in my belly button, where they pulled out the organs they were removing.

My doctor informed me after the surgery that I had terrible endometriosis and fibroids in my uterus, which just added to the suckage I was experiencing.

My recovery was about 3 weeks until I felt like myself and was able to be up and around comfortably, which was much faster than I was expecting and it was at 3 weeks that my doctor removed all physical restrictions...yeah!

I was sore as hell during the first week of recovery and I just laid in bed and took Vicodin and ate soft foods (which was really the worst part). The best part was that I had the surgery right before Thanksgiving and so I was able to watch super cheesy Hallmark Channel Christmas-themed romantic comedies, which was awesome!

I'm so different than I was for my kids entire lives that they keep talking about how much more fun I am now, which is bittersweet, but at least they get to see the good side of me.

I know that it's tired and cliche, but I feel like my old self and that I now have my life back again.

Chosing My Own Name

When I got married to my wonderful husband I really didn't want to take his last name. As a die hard feminist it just seemed wrong for lots of reasons. But the problem was that I needed to get rid of my maiden name. 

While my mother is a train wreck, my father is just as bad, perhaps even worse (the jury's still out on that). So there was no way in hell I was keeping that last name any longer than humanly possible.

I got married fairly young because you can't schedule when you meet your soul mate and when that happens it makes sense to marry them eventually. So I hadn't really had an opportunity to change my name beforehand.

I was just going to change my name randomly to whatever struck my fancy when my fiancée pointed out that it was kind of insulting of me to choose any name but his. So he had the idea that I take his name until I came up with one that I wanted. It was a good plan, so I agreed.

I took his last name for 4 years before I finally figured out the one that I would want. I over think everything and the name I would have for the rest of my life and share with my children was no different.

I spent the four years learning about myself and doing research on all sorts of things I found interesting. My heritage is Swedish and I love the Nordic Folklore so I started to focus on that. I really like the stories of the Mother-Goddess Freyja where she leads the Valkyries and drives a chariot driven by cats really sealed the deal.  I love thinking about swooping down to the fields after a battle with the winged Valkyries in my wake swooping up the dead warriors and carrying them off to Valhalla.

I wasn't going to take the name Freyja as my last name because that just seemed pretentious and I wanted something that would actually be a last name. I was reading about Leif Erikson and saw that his sister's last name was Freydis and Frey being another Norse god I got the idea that Freyjadis would be a potential last name for me.

Being the complete loon that I am I had to do even more research and when I felt like I'd exhausted the research I could do on my own I called an Ancient Norse Language Scholar at Stanford to ask him some questions. This must have been the weirdest conversation this man had ever had that was tangentially related to his scholarly work.

He was very kind and answered my questions about what the -dis attached to a god or goddesses name meant and why one would do that. It turns out that it means 'follower of' but that had transitioned over time to simply being a last name. Freyja had meant Lady in medieval times and Frey had meant Lord so the terms were kind of normal-ish.

He confirmed that it was an unusual name, but nothing that would be insulting or off-putting.

I wanted to make sure that my new last name wouldn't be weird if I went to Sweden. I didn't want the Swedes to think I'd lost my mind simply by seeing my last name. I would let them get to know me first.

So that was it. Since I had used my husband's last name for so long I started out by hyphenating his last name with my new last name and I had my name legally changed. When my kids were born they were given both last names and my husband has honored my changing my name to my new made up name and never batted an eye.

I like that my name honors my Viking heritage even if they let me down in the parenting department.

Scottish Love

My favorite place on this earth is Edinburgh, Scotland.

The reason for this is that Scotland was a place of many firsts for me. I went to Edinburgh the first time with my friend who I visited during her semester abroad in the UK. It was my favorite part of the trip.

It was the first time I drank Dramboie, which is my favorite liquor. It's whiskey and honey and comes from the Isle of Skye, which makes it even more magical. It tastes like home to me.

It was the first time boys that didn't know me smiled at me on the street. This may seem weird, but I tended to walk around looking like I wanted to stab someone, so the fact that these cute boys smiled at me and flirted was a real win and showed that they weren't easily cowed.

It was the first time I realized how silly it was to drive to so many places in Los Angeles, when we could just walk. Of course, I didn't have a car when I visited and I walked the entire town. This really highlighted to me the over dependence on cars in Los Angeles.

It was also the first time I visited a place where the people were universally sweet to me. The shop keepers were kind, the B&B folks amenable, the strangers in the street smiled. After living with my crazy ass parents and growing up in LA, I had no idea that this type of magical place even existed. It gave me hope for the future.

It was the first time I saw guys in kilts and let me tell you, there is nothing better. If I ruled the world men would all wear kilts because they are the cutest, sexiest, handsomest piece of clothing a man can wear. I wanted to have my husband wear a kilt when we got married. I couldn't get him to agree, but he now owns two utilikilts so I'm a winner in the end.

I would love to live in Scotland, but I don't know if that's in my future. I will always honor the magical land that taught me so much about the good things in the world.

Abandoned at the Airport

So now you know that I was already traumatized from being left in the UK.

I got on the plane to head back home to LAX and I was drained of both energy and money. I did sit next to an older British woman who introduced me to the delight that is Dramboie in tea, so the flight was a win in my book.

I landed at LAX and walked out to baggage claim where I was expecting to find my family. You see, if you had normal parents, or even not my parents then they would be there. They would apologize for abandoning you in the UK, when they knew months before they would not be able to make it. Those types of things.

But because this is me and my family. No one was there. Nope. No one.

So I gathered all my bags including the ones that carried the gifts that I was told I must return home with, since you know they sent me to the UK and all.

Still no parents. This was before cell phones, so I used the airport house phone to see if a message had been left for me. Nope.

So I went to the street outside baggage claim to wait for them to arrive.

I waited 2 hours. That's right, two hours after getting off an international flight and getting abandoned without any money in the UK.

So I called the friend I had met in the UK to see if she could come get me. At this point it was the middle of the night so I woke her from a deep sleep. I don't think I was very clear because she mumbled at me and hung up. (To this day she still feels guilty, which shows what an amazing person she is. I mean who feels guilty that they didn't realize that my shitty parents had abandoned me at the airport.)

So I called my friend, Andrea, and she came running to my rescue. It took her a while to get to the airport since she lived in a distant part of LA, but she came as fast as she could.

As Andrea and her brother arrived 45 minutes later, my parents drove up.

This is probably 4 hours after my flight had landed.

The kicker is that they didn't even apologize. My mother said, "We were seeing Dancing with Wolves, it was longer than we expected, but we weren't going to walk out of a movie." (This is in quotes because I still remember this sentence. It is probably the sentence that most clearly sums up what a catastrophically bad parent this woman was.)

When you live with crazy, it becomes normal. Terrible parents are able to justify their terrible behavior in a way that makes the kid accept it. They don't have to like it or agree with it, but the child will accept it.

We drove off to the new house they were living in since they moved every year of my life except for the 5 years I was in high school through my first year in college.

They didn't ask me about the flight or my trip instead they talked about the movie they had just seen. I fell asleep in the car and when I woke up I was asked to give them the gifts I had brought.

This is the point in my life where I finally realized that these were crazy people who should be avoided at all cost. It took me a while to get away from them for good, but this was my start.

I met my now husband of many years soon after this incident and my daughter recently pointed out to me that all of my stories that are about good things in my life begin after I met him and this is because he is amazing, but also because I had finally had enough crazy and I was now old enough to take more control over my life.

Abandoned in the UK

So this is a really clear view into the mind of the crazy woman who raised me.

I spent the fall semester of my junior year in Washington DC, which was great. I took classes and worked for a non-profit organization and went to a lot of museums. I'm terrible with people so I naturally was cut off from my roommate by the end of the semester, but it was ok. My parents came to visit me for Thanksgiving and I was going to visit my best friend in London before my parents joined me for Christmas.

It was my dream! I was traveling, life was good. My mom showed up in DC wearing a new fur coat and there was no mention of money trouble.

I don't think I should need to remind you that Thanksgiving is at the end of November. This was about 2.5 weeks before I was supposed to leave for the UK. Clearly any glaring money trouble would have been discussed at this point...right?

Hahahaha! (maniacal laughter)

So I left for London to visit my best friend in the whole world all happy and content that my life was finally starting to look up.

(Insert maniacal laughter again)

I had a great time with my friend and the friends she had made while on her semester abroad. We were kind of broke, but it was all good because my parents were coming and they would take me to do the expensive stuff.

This may seem naive for me given the insanity of my mother, but I have always been an optimist and still am to this day. I think that things can always get better and this firm belief that I hold for no damn good reason is really the one thing that kept me going through my childhood. I had the faith that I would continue to age and eventually get away from these crazy people.

I went to the airport to see my dear friend off since I had a day before I would meet my family at the airport. She called her parents on the airport pay phone to let them know she was getting on the plane when all hell broke loose. She told me that I had to call my parents, something had come up.

So I called my parents from a pay phone in the Heathrow airport to find out that they weren't coming to London. That they had a flight back for my in 3 days and I was to take that. Oh right! There would not be any more money for me.

I landed on the floor of the airport in shock. I couldn't stand or speak for a while, I just sat there. I really could not believe that they would do this. My friend was panicked, because she had to get on the plane, so I waved her off and told her I'd be fine, pulled myself together and went forward. I was 19 and had just been abandoned without money in the UK.

Just writing this is leaving me with shivers running through my body. I haven't really talked this through in detail with any of my many therapists and I had forgotten how incredibly traumatic it was to be abandoned in another country.

I can't remember due to the shock, but knowing my friend, I will assume she gave me some money. I brushed myself off metaphorically, left the airport and went to figure out what I was going to do. My mom had me leave my luggage at the hotel they were planning to stay in and I was hoping that they had already paid for one room night. They hadn't, but that wasn't a big shock at this point.

So I took all of my luggage and stored as much of it as would fit it in a locker at a train station. I still had an active Eurorail pass so I looked at what the longest train ride would be so I would have a place to sleep that night and I took the train there. It took me overnight to Aberdeen, which was delightful. I had been up to Edinburgh with my friend the week before and my love affair with Scotland just grew from there when I got a look at Aberdeen. It was cold with snow drifting lightly in the air and I was happy to be there and it helped me forget my worries.

I tried to go visit a loch, but being alone made me too nervous to walk out on the lonely lane on my own.

I just took the train all over the place using it to sleep and keep me safe while I waited for my plane to leave. I had to stay a night in the youth hostel in London, which was truly terrifying to me. I can't read social cues so being in a big room with a lot of strangers is my own personal nightmare.

I got back home to find out that my mother had not been paying for my tuition or housing while I was in DC, so that would have been a clue. But one I didn't have until I got back.

I don't think I've processed this enough to find the humor in it, so I guess some of these stories will be a bit raw. My goal was really to find the humor in all of the stories I share, but I see that's not going to be the case. Oh well.