Shame

In September I was so crazy about writing posts on my new blog that I thought I'd never be able to stop, in fact one person told me I had written too many posts and should cut back, but that's one of the funny things about life: Sometimes a person can stop.

There is something I must do which I don't want to do, so much that my inner voices are telling me it is imperative that I write a post, instead. I'm pretty sure I've already written a post about this dilemma but I can't remember what it was that I was supposed to have done that I didn't want to do in September, so much so that I wrote about it. That's another funny thing about life: How much you forget right away.

My inner voice just told me, "Oh, for crying out loud, there you go again, writing the same stuff, over and over and over, no one wants to know about what you really should be doing instead of writing this post and no one reads this post anyway so why do you write it?"

My inner voice is always on my case. My inner voice muttered, "Shame on you!" last Thursday afternoon when a knock-knock on the glass of my front door interrupted quality time I was spending on my bed under a comforter with a crossword puzzle and my four foster teenage kittens. "Shame on you for being in bed on a weekday afternoon!" said my inner voice as I stumbled to the door to greet a stranger who looked like a Deadhead who asked me if I was who I am and when I said I was, he handed me an envelope with a Notice to Quit Premises in 60 Days in it. "Shame on you for being process-served!" screeched my inner voice as I watched the Deadhead walk away. He turned and waved and I waved back, wishing that he had the power to undo the process he'd served me with.

The sensation of realizing I've been process-served , and it's happened four or five times in my life, is similar to the sensation of realizing I've been hit in the face with a pie, and that's happened at least once. I wonder if it's the same feeling you'd have as you realize you're being thrown out of a moving car or that you've lit an exploding cigar: Shock. It's happening but you can't yet believe it.

When I was 19, I used to accompany a friend on his rounds as a process-server in seedy neighborhoods of San Francisco. I never saw the people he served but I assumed they were all men, deadbeats, skips, low-lifes. My friend and I thought it would be fun for me to serve a few. What guy would ever suspect that I, a beautiful young woman, asked to know their name only because I wanted to hand them an envelope that was going to wreck their day and possibly a lot of the rest of their life? It was mean, dangerous and exciting work and I got hooked on it and I never once process-served a woman. That is why, several years later, the first time I was process-served I felt ashamed, as if I was a deadbeat, low-life, skip of a woman. Actually I was being ordered to testify against someone who had stalked me and made my life miserable, but I couldn't shake off the feeling of sleaze I connected with having been process-served. Almost forty years later, it still feels sleazy.

I asked Google: Are there happy reasons to be process-served? There was nothing.

So now I feel shamed that someone doesn't want me to live where I've been living for almost three years, so much so that they've gone to the trouble of having a process server deliver the news. Am I that bad? No. Do I have a history of not paying my rent? No. Am I disorderly, loud, careless, do I sleepwalk, do I frighten the neighbors, do I ever make crack cocaine in my kitchen? No.

It's funny, the things a person can feel ashamed about. I knew a girl from Kansas who was ashamed that her cat had brought fleas into her home. "It's the stigma," she said. "In Kansas they look down on you for that."

I thought I'd finished this post until I remembered I never wrote about what it is I must do that I don't want to do, which isto gather up all the papers I need to take to a lawyer to protest this notice to quit the premises in 60 days. It took more than two months of looking on a constant basis before I found this place, and it was by chance that I found it.