“Let’s Have It Out”

Let’s discuss an elephant in the room. 

My collection was misunderstood.

I had an unusually good nose for smelling notes. Exceptionally good. And the perfume that I had was not *that* turned. And so I was able to sit around and sniff out the notes and intuit what the perfume was supposed to smell like once I got a list of notes that I found from different places online. so I found lists of notes, and then I would sit around for hours, trying to smell them and over time I intuited what the perfume smelled like originally. a

However I’m a ditz. I am probably a genius, but I’m also a ditz, and I’m very feminine. So I didn’t realize what was going on. This morning I woke up, and I realized that I am incredibly alone. I had a nightmare where I left my son and a target when he was three because I volunteered for a Republican campaign. It was in the state of Massachusetts. Which is probably not a coincidence. Because I knew a man named Sean Collins Whose grandfather was very involved in the Republican Party in the state of Massachusetts and I highly suspect that he inspired that dream. I almost dated Sean. In reality, my son would’ve just been with grandma and grandpa. But in the dream I left him at a counter in Target because I had to think about something and organize something. That is not something I would ever do. But it gave me insight into my own psychology at times.

I would never leave my son in that situation and I know that and I realized that as I woke up, but then I realized a lot of other stuff in the process. Sean’s father works for NPR or did. And they’re very much St Paul family.

St. Patrick’s Day is coming and I can’t help but think that they’re trying to help me feel less gloomy about St. Patrick’s Day this year.

So what I realized is that I don’t have a lot of people in my life who are really watching out for me who I can talk to about almost anything. And so being ditzy and having too many irons in the fire, I’ve missed stuff.

When I smelled Quelques Fleurs, I realized that it is similar to the old perfumes that I have of Quelques Fleurs from the 50s but they’ve changed. I can still smell what it was supposed to be somewhat. But it gave me insight into how off I could actually be about certain perfumes. Liu hasn’t changed that dramatically. It really hasn’t! A lot of the deeper perfumes have been altered, but they’re not *that* different. Liu is a deeper perfume. But a lot of the other perfumes that are like Quelques Fleurs that I just couldn’t quite grasp the concept have probably just changed over time. I don’t think my estimations of perfume with that off. But I don’t think I understood the concepts, as well as I thought I did. So I would’ve probably written a different review slightly in tone because it’s a different concept. It’s not that I was that off in the concept, but there are some subtleties that I missed.

I think some people experience different notes psychologically differently than I do, which is also a part of the problem. I really don’t see a dramatic difference between the current Liu and the one that was made in the 20s. There is a difference, but it’s not shocking. The Quelques Fleurs that’s made now and the one that is in the old bottles is wildly different. I know it’s been redesigned somewhat, but it can’t be *that* different.  At any rate, I think people misunderstood my personality and who I am because I missed certain things. 

I talk to ghosts. Because I don’t have living people to confide in who I trust. And I am not delusional. My cousin Paula really did have connections to people, and I apparently could have married Mark Pryce the man who played Skippy Handelman. It was his idea as a ghost from the future, because things are that bad in my life that he apparently has an ability to interact with me from the future as a ghost, to post all of my perfume. The way that I just did. No explanation on Instagram. And I think he was right.

And I think he’s trying to clue me in about how off I was on certain fragrances. But see if I’d been married to him, I could have probably discussed things with him like what I was sensing about each perfume, the history of the perfume, what people were saying to me, all of that stuff. I tried for years to talk to my legal husband Mark about all of it, but every single conversation was confusing and frustrating and totally unhelpful. And he never protected me from anything emotionally or psychologically and that way at all. He does provide extremely well for us. He’s a very stable, decent person, but he’s absolutely worthless in that way even as a friend. So I was vulnerable and open and trusting thinking that I was in a relationship with someone who I could talk to and then this morning I woke up and realized after that dream that I’m not at all. Because I’m a ditz. I’m not stupid, but for some reason my brain processes things in a different way than most people and so I’m ditzy because most people just don’t think the way I do. I’m not autistic. I don’t have ADHD. I’m just ditzy. So I knew that I was not in a good relationship. I’ve totally emotionally emotionally distanced myself from Mark my legal husband and things are incredibly stable because of that. I’m an usually tough person. I am tougher than probably most people.  But it didn’t ever occur to me that I had opened myself up to form a loving, stable, deep, emotional bond with him when we first were together and then I just never closed it. I never closed that part of my heart because it never occurred to me that I should have to.  And then this morning I woke up and realized in that dream that I don’t have anyone watching my kids so to speak, there’s nobody there. 

I think people have misunderstood my sweetness and my vulnerability as a person who is trying to form healthy, deep human bonds with people as me being open. But that’s not me being open. I am a very deep person who is incredibly sensitive and so that’s more me being open. And that was what was coming through all these years after marrying Mark that nobody has had any respect for. And that was what Mark was trying to show me I think was that without somebody like him to talk to I can’t be that vulnerable. Because people don’t respect me. I’m too feminine and ditzy. i’m not I’m I’m actually I’m a genius and I am. I am very sincerely intellectual. I am not cognitively challenged at all. I’m brilliant compared to most people alive today. I could shock you with my intelligence actually. But I’m also very feminine and very ditzy. And so I am not somebody who is safe being myself because people don’t have respect for feminine women nowadays.

I wish I had someone to talk to because I had no idea I was coming across to people. And I tried expressing that, but people just don’t give a damn seemingly at all about me at the very least. So don’t ever tell me that you “give a shit about me” because I already know it’s a lie. Most people alive today or an absolute zero when it comes to concern for me. I could easily be dead, if I wasn’t taking care of myself, and being taken care of by the dead. People do their jobs for the most part but that’s about it. I am given more human love from the beauty products I buy at Sephora and yes, I’m talking about bottles, than humans that I run into in my own damn neighborhood. The mice I had in my house have talked to me. No, I’ve had actual conversations with them where they’ve squeaked and I have responded and they’ve squeaked in response and we’ve gone back-and-forth. They’re incredibly intelligent little creatures. Every time one of them has died that I’m aware of I’ve prayed and hoped, and I trust that I’ll see them again someday in Heaven. They’re there like pets. Except they can’t live in my house because they’re mice and I’ve told them that and apologized. And they seem to understand. And when they’ve died, if I’ve been able, I’ve told my legal husband Mark to kill them as quickly as possible. He worked in a lab at Harvard And so he was trained in how to kill mice painlessly. So they are getting a professional euthanasia as quickly as I can give it to them. Straight from Harvard. And I calmly talk to them in the process, and then he just does his thing, and they die very quickly. The other night one of them died, because there are still a few and I thought I heard a squeak after it was dead. And I asked Mark “Are you sure that it was dead?” and he was very sure. So I wonder if that particular mouse decided to try to contact me from the grave just to try to reassure me that it really was. That was a very loud mouse! I wonder if that particular mouse was unusually intelligent, and was very sort of domestic. So if, if that was the ghost mouse? I mean they’re not dumb little creatures.

And at any rate, that’s how bad things are. That I am talking to mice and ghosts. No I’m not schizophrenic. No I’m not seeing hallucinations. Yes those mice actually can be that loud and they really are that smart. I feel bad for them because they’re really very sweet little creatures, but they just carry diseases and their pests but I don’t think they mean any harm. I’ve told them repeatedly that if they didn’t carry diseases and if they didn’t poop in the house that I would just keep them. And as I’ve said just a couple of seconds ago, so to speak, they do seem to understand. They especially seem to understand about the poop. But I’m sure that there’s not a lot they can figure out to do but for some reason they seemed in their spirits to understand what I was saying.

No, I do not think they were humans reincarnated I think they were just mice. 

I mean, when you think about it, they have to outsmart cats so they can’t be stupid. I have a feeling there are cats and mice in Heaven who play and I don’t think that mice kill or get killed rather by the cat, but I think that the cat probably enjoys chasing them. Because in heaven, I suspect that cats and mice are actually quite friendly.

So at any rate, I don’t know what to say. I don’t think my perfume estimations were ever quite that off. But I also don’t think that I understood everything the way that I was in a sense required to. Because I think people like Dmitry were very judgmental, and made huge assumptions about me based on very minor mistakes that I made.

It would’ve been nice if people had talk to me more and then been less judgmental and hypercritical of every fucking thing I ever did but there’s nothing I can do about it obviously because it’s not me. Listen there’s a difference between noticing mistakes people make and dwelling in them and turning them into a international event. My whole life people have lived in my mistakes in their heads. They have cultivated them in their imaginations. They have shot them into their veins practically. And there’s been absolutely no patience or grace for any fucking minor thing I do wrong. I have been expected since I was born literally until the present to be 100% perfect all the fucking time. Unless if I become masculine or act unlike myself, people want to slit my throat, the second I breathe too loudly. It is an insane obsession with my perfection that I have experienced from everyone alive.

People who have no right to be so judgmental have chosen to look at me with more severity than God. I mean I’m talking about people who are abusive, sloppy people who find me talking too loudly to my children, because they’re across the room from me or something stupid like that who have then wanted to practically punch me in the face.

People in the perfume community, copied me and looked up to me, even though they thought I was an absolute fucking moron from Hell. They thought that my perfume blog was a genius conception, but they also thought that it was the most idiotic worst worthless joke they’d ever seen. Which is insane.

And I don’t have someone to talk to to find out if they’re just like that to everyone or if there’s something I specifically am experiencing that’s abnormal. So it’s been a living hell for me. 

And some thing else that occurred to me this morning, as I was waking up, was the fact that people are dumb as fuck when it comes to analyzing me. And I know I’ve said stuff like that before. But I mean it in a specific way. What I mean is that I realized people are terrible at “figuring me out” and I know that, but this is something a bit more nuanced and different.

In this dream I was in Boston. I was in a very nice part of Boston. And I was looking at the architecture and I was overwhelmed by how posh everything was. It was incredibly opulent by my standards in the dream. And in the dream, I was intimidated and uncomfortable in that setting. I was still myself in a way but I was just incredibly uncomfortable. And that is not something I would ever feel while I’m awake. And I know that because the rest of the dream wasn’t really possible either in that way. And so that was sort of my cue to interpret the rest of the dream as kind of had a varying perspective from my own. But it gave me insight that I just don’t have.

I had a roommate in college, who grew up in North Dakota. And she’s chosen to be a stay at home mom and homeschool her kids. But as posh as she looks on Facebook, I realized today that she’s a stay-at-home-mom in North Dakota with a husband who I think was trying to be a farmer. And I made mistakes in my relationship with her because she grew-up in a very different farming background than the one that the Nesheim’s have. I don’t think she ever really understood that about me but I think she may have eventually figured it out over time if I stayed at UND. But I moved. I switched colleges after my first year, so she never really figured it out. And she knew that I had a North Dakota farming background, even if I didn’t grow up on a farm like her. And so I think she thought we had more in common than we did. She even said something like that.

I posted a picture of myself on Facebook wearing a Lilly Pulitzer skirt that I bought new from Lilly Pulitzer. And yellow Brooks Brothers cotton knit sweater. And pearl earrings. And my twice straightened teeth. In a posh bathroom. And then I captioned it by saying “I’ve had a terrible life.” And I thought that people would just focus on the words that I was saying and look at the image and think “Hmm…well she’s had a terrible life but she’s not a complete failure because she’s managed to sort of stay stable and be dignified and herself, even though she’s had a really awful life.” But I don’t think that anymore. This woman made an AWFUL comment on the picture. She told me that I was dressed like an old frumpy woman. And that I was stupid as fuck to be wearing what I was wearing. She didn’t say those exact words, but that’s basically what she said. And I wasn’t hurt so much by the comment about my clothes because I know Brooks Brothers and Lilly Pulitzer are considered obnoxiously preppy. I don’t give a shit! So to speak. I care that people don’t like them in a way, but they’re not morally offensive anymore than most of the clothes that people wear and I don’t think people like them as much as I think they should possibly, but I also like the fact that people don’t like them because I don’t like looking like everybody. That is my sense of style. And so if everyone was that preppy all the time, I would have to be even more formal. Because I’m an extremely formal person by nature. I’m also very tough, but that’s complex and unfortunately extremely British and aristocratic.

So I was really not aware that it would be so offensive to her. And the dream this morning enlightened me. I don’t mean to shame her, but I doubt that she could afford those clothes. It literally had never occurred to me in years until this morning. I never realized until this morning that would really bother someone. Well I hadn’t realized that for over a decade. People have been so psychotically obsessed with thinking that I’m poor, but they’ve never realized that I’m actually quite well off and that I really might not know what’s going on.

My husband makes $180,000 a year. We’ve owned our own house for over five years. We have a retirement. We have a good quality car that’s fully paid off. And we’ll probably inherit a decent amount of money. That’s not a poor person in Minnesota. In California he’d be making $280,000 a year. Which isn’t that much more but we would be living in an area outside of San Francisco. And I suppose if he really pushed himself and tried to do better, he could be making $500,000 a year.

But you have to understand given my background, even though I was raised in an apartment, and the trajectory of my life, I don’t understand certain things anymore. I am not JFK reincarnated. I’m not like him. I really am Lem’s twin flame. And he really was straight.

My mother, who raised me used to tell me stuff that I couldn’t figure out on my own. But she never taught me how to think things through because she didn’t really love me. I learned a great many other skills, but I never learned how to analyze other people from her in that way. So she provide insight, but she never explained how she figured it out or what she knew about people. She just told me what she knew. And so I became dependent on her perspective because I had no idea how she came up with stuff. And I always analyzed it because I am a genius and realized that what she was saying made so much sense, but that I never knew how she figured it out. And in the last five years she’s completely cut her self out of my life cruelly. She saw an opportunity to really stab me in the gut and possibly drive me to suicide, and she took it. She’s an absolutely psychopathic, heartless, woman in some ways. She is not my birth mother. My birth mother was a stewardess named Margy. I’m not psychopathic.

So what I realized from that dream this morning was that this former roommate probably was hurt and assumed that I was showing off my clothes. I am actually incredibly insulted by her because I don’t know why she would think I would be somebody who might not know anymore what it’s like to not be able to buy nice things. But then I think maybe she just never figured out that our backgrounds were really that different. Maybe she just never figured that out. And so if she never figured that out then maybe she has an excuse for responding to me like a psychopathic bitch from Hell. Because I could see her focusing on the clothes and not realizing that it doesn’t mean the same thing to me that it does to her. Right now I am surrounded by people who don’t see Lilly Pulitzer and Brooks Brothers the same way that she does. They might not appreciate that style, but they don’t necessarily assume that I am a total heathen demon. There are people who I’ve seen, who maybe have made that mistake, but only in passing.

You have to understand. I am Tom Banks’s daughter. My father was born in 1894. I know people don’t dress like that anymore but I don’t care because I wanna wear what’s comfortable to me. And if I had my druthers, I would be wearing dresses and high heels and suits and very formal clothing. Almost all of the time. Occasionally, I would’ve worn pants and shorts in the summer, but only on rare occasions. Women in my generation rarely wore pants. I might not have boys were in high heels, but I would’ve always worn something that was “adult” and not sloppy. So to me, Brooks Brothers and Lilly Pulitzer are my last resort. Don’t try to preach at me about some stupid trendy bullshit that I don’t like. I don’t like it. I’m not a fucking imbecile. 

I can just sense that people probably reading this will be you thinking, “Why doesn’t she wear this? Why doesn’t she wear that!?” I just don’t like it!!! GET…OVER IT. …There are many people who are like me who are perfectly normal.

Ummm…so I’m not sure exactly what I’m supposed to do but I’ll probably just have to learn from that dream this morning that most people genuinely rarely ever analyze things from a loving perspective with me and they love making assumptions. I have been absolutely disgusted by the state of humanity. People truly don’t care of the way they pretend to nowadays. And instead of feeling sorry for themselves when they read something like that, they should probably work on their soul with God, and develop a better sense of right and wrong. 

If I were to have the insight then that I have now I would probably post that picture a bit differently. I would post that picture and I would say I am very fortunate to have a family with money and a successful husband and to be as smart as I am by nature but I’ve had a very rough life and I’m incredibly disappointed with a great many things, but at least I have maintained my dignity.

The people in the perfume community, who judged me because I only was buying old perfume, need to evaluate the perfume that I was buying that was new. I bought about $20,000 worth of perfume. Over a period of 10 years. Which isn’t really that much but it’s not a small amount of money. Plus $20,000 in perfume. Perfume!!! Given my background end that amount of money I don’t understand where any of those people are coming from  when they insist psychotic things like “Oh…she’s poor!” Or “Ugh..she’s lying she’s not that well off.” I think they delusional he thinks that they’re spending $20,000 when they’re spending closer to $3000 over 10 years.  And they’re living off food stamps.  I am not. I have retirement! I have two children. I am not a poor woman living in apartment for $500 living off food stamps. I emphasize with them, but them thinking their me is perversely psychotic delusion.  I have no such delusions I’m from the upper class Old Money. That is fact. 

You cut class signal your way into my class that’s canceled unless if God says otherwise. I am so fucking sick of heartless assholes, who just wanna buy shit to get in. You can’t do that anymore! Go edit one of the largest Scandinavian newspapers in the US in the early 1900s write a series of brilliant books that are favored by the King of Norway in the 1900s early 1900s and then be knighted by him and then get back to me! Fo get trillions in oil that you manage to score from the Native Americans in the early 1900s and get back to me! Be a millionaire in the 1950s by investing shrewdly and get back to me. Have multiple people who are important in various industries in ways that are noble and just and genuinely helpful and get back to me. And no, I don’t mean like a police officer I mean like someone who is inventing life-saving drugs that have never been created before. Like someone who invented a brand new vaccine that safe and effective For something really terrible. And then has that in the same family that has trillions in oil. That’s my fucking family YOU IDIOTS who don’t seem to understand. That’s my actual family!!!

I am so sorry that my parents were psychopathic and confuse you bitches. If I’d been raised the way that you demand I be raised in your delusional bourgeois world you wouldn’t be confused. I can’t undo that for you idiots, if that’s what you are. I didn’t raise myself…in that way…because nobody can!! Have you ever heard of someone being raised by wolves? Why would they need to be raised by wolves if people could just magically raise themselves? People are so fucking stupid nowadays!!! I couldn’t raise myself!!! Someone had to raise me, and the people who did were psychopathic, even if they were old money and elite. 

If my parents had been slightly less psychopathic even that would be helpful to all of you.

I don’t know what you guys are thinking. To me $20,000 is a lot but it’s not *that* much. It’s the price of a nice vacation or a nice piece of jewelry. Or some other thing like that. And it’s not cheap you can’t convince me that $20,000 for perfume is nothing but you also can’t convince me that it’s extravagant. There are people who have spent probably over $100,000 on perfume. And to be honest, most of those people if not all of them are new money. But that’s their choice! I look down on their collection and most people in old money would because it’s excessive. It’s genuinely excessive. And I have a right to shun that. See my interest in perfume was intellectual and acceptable. I’m not collecting thousands of bottles of perfume that’ll “rot” over the next 50 years unused. I’m not excessive. I am preserving history as best as I can, or was. I’ve only bought maybe 100 bottles of perfume that I’ll have to use. The rest will possibly charge more overtime, but the bottles will remain, and hopefully some of the notes. I was perfume for a very specific reason. No one ever asked me why no one ever talked about it with me. They were too busy being competitive and stupid.

I’m sorry it’s excessive to have 1000 bottles of new perfume. But you know at the same time it intrigues me I find a grand an opulent kind of like Daisy saw Gatsby’s house. There is something awe-inspiring about 1000 bottles of new niche perfume. But it’s also excessive and icky. So it’s sort of a catch 22.

The thing is you have me competing with those people and that’s not appropriate or applicable. They will never be part of my social class. And by the same token, I don’t have $100,000 to waste on an excessive amount of niche perfume. There are things I’d rather buy. And I have children. I don’t have $100,000 to spend on an excessive amount of perfume.

Even if I was married to Skippy Handelman so to speak and he was a doctor in LA and he was making $300,000 year and had been making that much basically since he quit acting in the 90s I would not have $100,000 to spend an excessive amount of perfume. At most 50. Because I mean we have a house to take care of worth $3 million. We have a country house that is away from places that start on fire worth $500,000. And our kids have put us through the ringer I say jokingly because we love them for over $1 million in education. And we have a retirement of $8 million. And that’s not including our houses. Our net worth is about $30 million. Of course that’s not including the oil that may or may not be in my family? And if I was raised by Tom banks, I may have had a starting net worth of $5 million that I’ve invested and turned into something a lot more. Bitcoin would’ve fascinated me and I suspect I would be a very, very wealthy woman had I had a different husband. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was worth $500 million. I am not kidding.

But that’s not the life I’m living. I have a $30,000 perfume collection. And I am selling a few things. And I’m not going to settle for less than what they’re worth, so I might not end up selling that many.