Ruminations with Nola Gale #1
OPENING THEME:
NOLA: Hello, and welcome to Ruminations, a blogcast all about me, Nola Gale. 17 days ago, a fire caused a flood in my apartment building and I lost everything I own, though the story is much stupider than you'd think. Will we talk about it? Who knows.
PAUL: <chuckles>
NOLA: It's just gonna be that kind of show, Paul, and we're gonna have to deal with it.
PAUL: No, I hear ya. Brings an air of mystery to the proceedings.
NOLA: The other voice you're hearing is Paul Jacob Fitzhenry, which I've been assured is a real, legal surname.
PAUL: That's correct.
NOLA: How old were you when you realized your parents hated you?
PAUL: <guffaws>
NOLA: Or is it more of a self-hate that sorta mutated into a loathing for everything they've ever created?
PAUL: This sounds like personal experience.
NOLA: I've been known to project my insecurities onto others, yes.
PAUL: I was 8.
NOLA: Hm?
PAUL: I was 8 when I realized my parents hated me.
NOLA: <snickers> I didn't think you were gonna answer.
PAUL: You asked a question, I answer the question. It was my understanding that this would be my job.
NOLA: Your job?
PAUL: Yes.
NOLA: You're getting paid for this?
PAUL: Supposedly.
NOLA: Can I have some of it?
PAUL: Are you not getting paid?
NOLA: I am, but I want some of yours, too.
PAUL: I'll see what I can do.
NOLA: Fantastic. Great episode.
PAUL: That's it?
NOLA: That's- ... Gizelle's telling me we are not, in fact, finished.
PAUL: Gisele Bundchen is talking to you?
NOLA: Yes, our producer Gisele Bundchen. Somehow Brady got all the money in the divorce and now she has to produce this blogcast to make ends meet.
PAUL: Good for Tom.
NOLA: Gizelle Maginot, our producer, tells me this has only been the cold-open, and now we have to actually do the show.
PAUL: Shouldn't the cold-open come in before the music?
<RIDIN' IN MY GNX WITH ANITA BAKER IN THE TAPE DECK>
NOLA: Could not have timed that any better, holy shit.
PAUL: Our readers won't be able to see it, but I did the stank-face and everything.
NOLA: He did, it was weird.
PAUL: I'm very white.
NOLA: There's no need to brag.
<shared shameless laughter>
PAUL: This show's just gonna be this for three hours, isn't it?
NOLA: Welcome to Ruminations! Yesterday I went up to my mom's to help wrap presents. I wrapped exactly one present and then I yelled at her because she was struggling to make a sandwich and not asking for help, and then it progressively turned into me throwing a fit. She told me to get out, I said 'fuck you' and other mean things to her, and then I left.
PAUL: There it is.
NOLA: I was mid-rage when I texted her my apology, and long story short, I don't think I'm handling the apartment thing as well as I thought I was.
PAUL: And this is an actual thing that happened.
NOLA: Yes. I am leaving certain details out because we simply do not have the time to get into the weeds of it.
PAUL: Give us a sample of what you're holding back.
NOLA: I can't, I'm saving it for the Patreon.
PAUL: Ah, of course.
NOLA: There is no Patreon, I'm just a coward.
PAUL: Brave.
NOLA: <something between a snort and a sob>
PAUL: This is not the first time something like this has happened, right?
NOLA: No, but I haven't lost my shit like that around anyone in a long time.
PAUL: Mm.
NOLA: I say that, I did sorta be mean to her a couple of weeks ago.
PAUL: Long two weeks.
NOLA: <giggle> Real long. No, in the aftermath of the apartment thing, I was staying up at my mom's house, and being- well, both being in that house, and being around my mom, are both very stressful for me.
PAUL: And your mom's not doing well right now.
NOLA: She's not. She's got a lot of physical ailments because she literally cannot stop constantly trying to do shit she can't physically do for complicated, trauma-based reasons.
PAUL: And you want her to take it easy.
NOLA: Well... yes, but also my whole life she's essentially tortured herself in front of me, ostensibly for my benefit.
PAUL: How do you mean?
NOLA: Doing way too much to cook Thanksgiving meals, to the point where she can just barely stand. Spending way too much at Christmas, buying literally everything anybody asks for and freely going into massive credit card debt to do it.
PAUL: So she hurts herself trying to make people happy.
NOLA: Not understanding that hurting herself negates all of that.
PAUL: Mm.
NOLA: Like I've rehearsed several times a conversation where I have to explain to her that I am not grateful for a single Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas she's ever given me because it was never worth seeing what she did to people. I think at least part of the reason I have so much difficulty asking anybody for anything is the trauma from seeing her destroy her body over decades trying to do things for me.
PAUL: She's created, unwittingly, an association between you needing something and the person giving it to you suffering.
NOLA: Yeah. Fuckin' exactly. Paul's a psychology professor, by the way.
PAUL: Adjunct.
NOLA: An adjunct... you're killin' me, here.
PAUL: I read the assignment.
NOLA: Fantastic.
PAUL: I know a lot of this is tied to childhood stuff, and you kinda wanna save that for another episode.
NOLA: Yeah.
PAUL: So can you kinda summarize your relationship with your mom?
NOLA: I love my mom to death. I hate seeing her struggle. She's one of the main reasons I'm still alive, and I don't know what I'll do when she's gone, and I don't know how to tell her all the things I need to tell her.
PAUL: What's the difficulty in telling her the things you need to tell her?
NOLA: I'm the only member of my family that's really done any significant therapy work, and everybody, even my step-dad, desperately needs therapy work.
PAUL: Ah, so there's a vocabulary issue?
NOLA: There's definitely a vocabulary issue, and also just a lot of frustration that I can't take the work I've put into therapy and inject that into her.
PAUL: Because it only works for your specific context.
NOLA: And I'm the person I want to help the least.
PAUL: Expand on that.
NOLA: <long pause with several sighs> No.
PAUL: You tease.
NOLA: It gets me off.
PAUL: Hot. <breaking laugh>
NOLA: <chortles> No, it's just... it's the root problem, y'know?
PAUL: I might, you won't expand on it.
NOLA: I've been doing weekly intensive therapy more or less for 9 years straight.
PAUL: Mhm.
NOLA: I've identified several, well, countless, uh, unconstructive behaviors that I've picked up from both my mom and my dad.
PAUL: Mhm.
NOLA: And I've been working very hard to correct those behaviors, but I haven't had empathy for myself while I've done it.
PAUL: Ahhhhhh.
NOLA: So I've built up a critical mass of self-judgment, and the thing about self-judgment is that it's also just judgment.
PAUL: And the self-loathing you feel becomes irritation at your mom when she does these behaviors that you've tried so hard to overcome.
NOLA: Yes. Fuck. Jesus.
PAUL: Howard.
NOLA: J-Town.
PAUL: That's a different show.
NOLA: They're never gonna read this, it's fine.
PAUL: I want to state for the record that I was in no way involved in this gimmick infringement.
NOLA: You coward.
PAUL: Full responsibility rests with Nola Gale, which is not a legal name, correct?
NOLA: Correct, which means I am immune from prosecution.
PAUL: A bold legal theory.
NOLA: Until next time, I'll see you in court.
PAUL: Again, that's a different-
NOLA: What's he gonna do!?
PAUL: You can't just use other people's slogans.
NOLA: I literally just did, so I don't know what you're talking about. Come at me, Devon!
PAUL: I'm gonna get fired.
NOLA: You're an adjunct professor, you're basically already fired.
PAUL: <cackles>
NOLA: Ladies and gentlemen, guys gals n' enby pals, we got 'em.
PAUL: Very smooth.
NOLA: Thank you. I have a vision.
PAUL: A school for ants.
NOLA: Movie references will also be part of the show.
PAUL: Have you told any of this to your mom?
NOLA: My creative plans for the blogcast?
PAUL: No, the other thing.
NOLA: I have not told her about my plans to woo Devon Legal Eagle by first provoking him into-
PAUL: You think his name is Devon Legal Eagle?
NOLA: I think people will know who I'm referring to if I say those exact words.
PAUL: I guess that's fair.
NOLA: No, I have not explained any of that to my mother. I literally realized it about... six hours ago? Seven?
PAUL: You did text her.
NOLA: Yes, but I... It's the explanation I'm going to give her, that'll hopefully also explain a lot of the tension that's been between us since I moved out.
PAUL: Which has been several years at this point.
NOLA: Just a bit over 8. November of 2016.
PAUL: Are you going to go back for Christmas.
NOLA: I legitimately don't know. I need to exorcise this demon before I go back there because I never want to do that to my mother again.
PAUL: So you have about three days to do that.
NOLA: I have three days to develop a sense of empathy about myself and my efforts to change, that will hopefully transition into acceptance of my mother's flaws and my inability to change them for her.
PAUL: Plenty of time.
NOLA: Speaking of time, time for an adbreak.
PAUL: Wait, this blogcast has ads?
NOLA: Paul, when was the last time you were intimately touched by someone you wanted to intimately touch you?
PAUL: I'm deeply uncomfortable with this arrangement of words.
NOLA: If you're anything like me, it's been, I shit you not, 16 full-ass years.
PAUL: Wow.
NOLA: And that's why I'm currently trying to entrap Devon Legal Eagle into having a physical relationship-
PAUL: Oh Christ.
NOLA -with me, Nola Gale, who does not legally exist.
PAUL: I mean, if anything's gonna be forbidden fruit to Devon Legal Eagle, it'll be someone that doesn't legally exist.
NOLA: Thank you! Again, strong vision of what I'm about, both on this show and in my non-existent sex-life.
PAUL: How many episodes do you think we can do about your non-existent sex-life?
NOLA: 69 epis-
PAUL: God damn it.
NOLA: -odes.
PAUL: Are you okay?
NOLA: No, I lost most of my shit in a fire, sorta.
PAUL: What is the 'sorta' about that?
NOLA: So, because my unit was close to the unit where the fire originated, the people doing the damage assessment have deemed it a 'red' unit, meaning it's been exposed to 'smoke contamination,' and thus everything in it is a health hazard.
PAUL: So it's a health safety thing?
NOLA: I honestly think the damage assessors are trying to bilk the management company out of more money.
PAUL: Conspiratorial.
NOLA: There just wasn't any visible sign of smoke damage in my apartment-
PAUL: You've seen it.
NOLA: I went and saw it last Thursday, the, uh, the 12th. I grabbed some supplies, and they didn't smell like smoke, weren't discolored at all.
PAUL: Would smoke contamination leave visible signs?
NOLA: I don't know enough to say that.
PAUL: So it's possible they're not wrong.
NOLA: Sure, but it feels wrong.
PAUL: Gotcha.
NOLA: They offered me $2000 in order to waive any damage claims against the company, and because I didn't have the wherewithal to really fight it, I signed it and just said fuck it. Tabula rasa.
PAUL: What other option did you have?
NOLA: I maybe could've fought it, but even if I somehow won a court case, I probably wouldn't get enough from it to pay for the legal fees, and might end up pocketing less than what was offered.
PAUL: Ah.
NOLA: I also didn't have the emotional strength to ask multiple people to drop what they were doing to immediately come downtown to trudge up and down 5 flights of stairs to try and save some of my stuff.
PAUL: Immediately? You had to decide then and there?
NOLA: They implied that they could get everything cleared out of it that day so that they could get to work replacing all the surfaces and fixtures.
PAUL: They could-
NOLA: Like that seemed to be what they wanted to happen.
PAUL: Mm.
NOLA: You think I should've fought harder to save some of my stuff.
PAUL: I mean I can understand just saying 'fuck it' and not wanting to deal with it.
NOLA: The lady implied that trying to keep anything would be a health hazard.
PAUL: See, on one hand, I can understand why that would be a warning she would want or be required to give, but on the other it seems pretty manipulative.
NOLA: That- thank you, yes.
PAUL: And this is why you feel like maybe they're bullshitting so that they can charge more money to do more work.
NOLA: It's one of those things where I wouldn't feel surprised if that turned out to be true. It's probably not, it's probably an 'abundance of caution' thing, or just pure bureaucracy because of where the fire occurred, and they can't really take into consideration that I wasn't in the building, the door was never opened while the fire was happening, and that a flood sealed the biggest gap in the doorway.
PAUL: I'm glad that you're open to the possibility that this was an honest proceeding, and that it's just unfortunate.
NOLA: I like to complain.
PAUL: It feels good.
NOLA: It feels good when someone listens to you complain.
PAUL: Which is why I'm here.
NOLA: That's why I took a paycut to have you hired, yes.
PAUL: That's so generous of-
NOLA: I'm lying, it's a bit.
PAUL: It's a marvel nobody's wanted to tap that for 16 years.
NOLA: Devon Legal Eagle won't reply to my emails.
PAUL: Maybe he's just scar-
NOLA: He blocked me on BlueSky.
PAUL: You're on Bluesky?
NOLA: No, I made that up.
PAUL: Have you been taking your meds?
NOLA: That's all the time we have for today <laugh>.
PAUL: <chuckle>
NOLA: Thank you for reading. Maybe like and subscri- I feel dirty. I feel absolutely filthy. You know what? Don't like and subscribe, do not leave a review for this episode wherever you get your blogcasts, or if you do, leave it 1 star.
PAUL: I think we should work on your self-validation.
NOLA: Leave it two stars.
<THIS IS NOT FOR LYRICSTS, I SWEAR IT'S NOT THE SENTIMENTS
FUCK A DOUBLE ENTENDRE, I WANT Y'ALL TO FEEL THIS SHIT>
<Outro>
PAUL: Do you think we should explain that bragging about being white was a joke?
NOLA: No, absolutely not.
