The relationship between you and your Mom is usually really complicated. I mean, serial killers and rapists usually have crazy Mom issues, right? So, it’s complicated. And if you get it wrong, it goes really wrong.

I am no different. My mother was a terrible, abusive person. She treated strangers with more kindness than she treated me. And she let other people abuse me. She told me I was unlovable. She’s never admitted to any of that fucked-upness. Or apologized for it. She was a bad mother. In a lot of ways, she’s still a bad mother to my brother and sister.

So, I had to find other mothers to rely on. I think, in my relationships with other women, I wanted nurturing. But being vulnerable in those relationships was hard. My mother needed me to take care of her. She tore me down, until I didn’t like myself anymore. And I felt that being myself was a betrayal. And then she demanded that I take care of her.

And I think, I’m learning as I get older, that I need to be taken care of too. And that I need to accept help. And nurturing. Even in my relationships with my mother-substitutes, I find myself assuming role of the therapist. In order to feel secure, I listen and I am supportive. And I’m strong. And even though I sought out those Fake-Mom’s, I was too afraid to use them. Because even though I knew I needed another Mother, to fill in the gaps that my mother had left; I believed her. I was sure that at the core of me, I was unlovable, and ugly and mean and a bad person. Just like she said. Undoing the damage she did has been my adult life’s work. And it’s been hard. And the kindness that I experienced from other people’s mothers always seemed so bright. I couldn’t have that much kindness in my life all the time. It was like looking at the sun. So I stole moments of kindness from other people’s mothers, and stored it away, and re-lived it in my mind, trying to figure out what it meant about me. trying to figure out what these tiny kindnesses were giving me.  Because I think in the back of my mind, I had this cruel mother. And I believed that I deserved her. That I was greedy to want someone to love me unconditionally.  Or love me at all.

Most of my trust issues come out of my relationship with her. My self-doubt, and a lot of my fear of intimacy. For a decade I didn’t speak to either of my parents. And I used the time to reclaim my Holidays. Mother’s Day became about me. Since I raised myself, and then I fixed myself after my mother had done her damage, I used Mothers Day to buy myself presents. Jewelry, flowers and movies. But eventually that fell away. Eventually I stopped being angry at what my mother had taken from me and I realized that more than loving her and more than hating her, I wanted to just not care about her at all. And I did. I stopped craving a different history. And I stopped wanting her to get over her shit and be on my side. It worked. I reached a plateau of happiness. And I just tried to pretend that I’d always been that happy.

The first two years of Snarky Cards, I ignored Mother’s Day. I forgot about it until the last minute, I didn’t know what to say. I felt like my broken, fucked-up relationship with my mother disqualified me from writing about it. I felt like nobody would like what I had to say. It took me a little while to realize that the Snarky Card niche is saying shit no-one else will. And writing what I really wanted to say to my mother became cathartic. And everytime someone laughed at it, or related to it, I felt less alone. And more powerful. It made me feel better about who I am. And my fucked-up childhood. To write my experience. And offer it to the world.

I hope that whatever relationship you have with your Mother, you find a card that helps you feel like your experience is normal. Because no matter how nice or how fucked up your Mom is, you’re a good person. And there are thousands of people who have the same kind of nice/normal/kind/loving/tortured/abusive/scary/crazy/mean relationship with their Moms.

We’ve all got Moms. And no matter what kind you ended up with, I promise you’re not alone. So, if you have a fucked up Mom, reclaim Mothers Day. Make it a day to celebrate YOU. Tell a friend some fucked up shit your Mom did. Buy yourself something nice. Tell yourself you’re a good person, even if your Mom wasn’t. And if you have a good Mom, share her with a friend. You know you’re lucky. Listen to someone who isn’t. Because you have a lifetime of good Mom memories. You can ease someone else’s fucked up memories. You have room in your life for that kind of kindness.

I hope whatever you do for Mother’s Day that you feel good about yourself. And you should. Because you’re worthwhile.

Love,

Alisa

Here's my broken leg, after the surgery!

Dear Internets,

I spent the first week after I broke my leg at Joy’s house. I had a lot of pain. I was worried about over-stepping. I was worried about exhausting her. I was embarrassed because of all the help I needed. I was hungry, and it was hard for me to get to the kitchen. I was dirty. I was poor. I had to move, and I wasn’t allowed to walk for another 6-8 weeks.

As my doctor explained it, I had blown out the back half of my left ankle. And they had to use screws, plates and wire to put all the tiny chips of bone back together. But it wasn’t just that. My good leg was now my bad leg.

They gave me an open cast, wrapping it in a few ace bandages. That way the foot wouldn't swell bigger than the cast.

My leg had been opened up, and the bones mended. It was in a cast. And the doctor told me under no circumstances was I to walk on it, or even rest it on the ground. He didn’t have to tell me that. After surgery your leg swells up if you lower it beneath your heart. I couldn’t lie flat in bed for more than ten minutes before the pain would start cascading down. I had to keep it elevated at all times.

As a cripple: once you realize you have to go to the bathroom, you lie in bed for 10 minutes, (because sitting up is too exhausting and painful, you will lie down for the first month after surgery) you’re gaging your pain, trying to figure out if you need to take a pain pill before you go, or if you should wait. How long will it take? Will the painkiller make you dizzier? Will it knock you out before you get back to bed? Eventually you decide.

Hopping from your bed to the bathroom takes concentration. You’re using a walker, and one leg, trying to keep your broken leg above the floor, looking out for things that may trip you. In the 5 minutes it takes for you to hop from your bed, to the bathroom, your leg has swollen painfully inside your cast. By the time you’re sitting on the toilet, it’s throbbing. So, it takes more concentration than normal to pee. And if you have to poo? Pushing sends blood flow downwards. So, a good shit will make your broken bone swell even more. The longer your pee takes, the harder it is to hop back to your bed, because your mind is kinda full of pain. But, you’ve been in bed for a while now. And so you always take a few extra minutes to enjoy the bathroom. Because it’s not your bed. And you miss not being in bed.

So the hop back is harder, and you have to concentrate, to make sure you don’t fall, or trip on something. If you have to sit down between the bathroom and the bedroom, your leg swells up even more. You may need the rest, because your unbroken leg is holding all of your weight, and the strain is making that half of your ass twitch in a scary way. But the longer you sit, the more it hurts too. You’re sweating and panting by the time you actually lay down again. Each bathroom trip means 2 hours of laying down, with your foot elevated above your head, in order to get the swelling down to a manageable level.

My beautiful sister, who bathed, fed and watered me back to health

Three bathroom trips a day were about all I could manage. I couldn’t get myself water, or make myself food. So before Joy left in the morning, she would put as much food next to me as she could. Like leaving a food dish next to the sleeping form of an old dog. So he didn’t have to walk across the room.

For the first few days, I cursed myself for not making more friends. I had just moved to Seattle, 3 months before. But I’d been visiting all summer, and before that, for years. Why hadn’t I made more friends? Why hadn’t I put more effort into relationships? I obsessed over being dependent on Joy. And she obsessed over it too.

My friend Carly, who checked on me, brought me video's and cheered me up relentlessly

But by the end of the first week, my fears had dissolved. I may not have made a lot of friends, but the friends I’d made were kind and went out of their way to help me. During the day, enough people would stop by, that I was fed and watered, and almost never bored. Sparkle Pussy, Joy’s boyfriend, Prince Eric, my friends Colin, Carly, Trevor, Timmy and Pia all chipped in to help me get through the day.

Seattle has given me the gift of friends who will hang out with me even when I’m crippled It’s like that Alanis Morisette song “That I would Be Good”.

This is how I felt about my fucking feelings most of the time.

Which is another aspect of this broken leg thing that’s kind of bullshit. I’m so fucking emotional. Between the pain and the painkillers, my complete vulnerability and having to ask people for stuff EVERY DAY. “Can you get me some water? Can you get my pants? Can you help me shower? Can you bring me some food?” And all of my new relationships were tested, and I was so fucking grateful when they came through. All of which left me scared, nervous, embarrassed, grateful, hopeful, sentimental, loving, and a little horrified at my condition, at the same time, all the time. Feeling all of those goddamn feelings has made me do insane things, like finding an Alanis Morisette song which completely describes my relationship. And then saying that. On the Internets. Where everyone can read it and laugh.

Added to all this was me and Joy. Living together. One of us completely dependent on the other. Like a lot of sisters we fight constantly. But even when we’re not fighting, even when we are laughing together, some silent tension keeps us at odds.

Our forced time together helped me untangle some of this. I realized that I wish she were an entirely different person. And she thinks that I do stupid things. The other person I wish she was used to exist. But it was 20 years ago. Back then I liked her, but I wished our lives were different, our parents less abusive, or at least richer, so we could be comforted with money when their damage got to be too much. So I’ve been trying to wish things different all along. Back then, Joy still thought I did stupid things.

I think that living in her house, utterly depending on her made me realize that while she has fundamentally changed since we were small, some of those changes are good. And after meeting my friends, and packing and moving all of my stuff, and making decisions with me for the last month, I think Joy has decided that not EVERYTHING I do is stupid.

I think, for the first time, we started to see ourselves in each other. She fed me, bathed me, started moving all of my stuff out of Homoasis, worked 40 hours a week at her job, spent time with her boyfriend and worked on her side projects (She organizes charity events in her spare time, for spare cash). After two weeks of all of that, she started to fall apart. But falling apart didn’t slow her down. It was the first time I’ve ever seen anyone besides me do that. I found it endearing. And alarming. Because while she charged full speed ahead, I knew she was crashing into a wall of her own limitations. Soon.

I hate medicine. And I have a deep and abiding fear of becoming addicted to opiates. This fear translates into amnesia. I forget about painkillers, because I never really consider them an option. I don’t have any Tylenol in my house because I never remember to take it. When my leg isn’t broken, if I’m in pain, then I ignore it. If the pain gets really bad, I slow down; taking longer and longer to accomplish tasks. Which annoys me. So, I call myself a pussy, and try to make myself speed up. Eventually, my body gives up, and there’s nothing my mind can do to get it going again. This usually results in me crying and yelling at myself. Eventually, I smoke a little weed, which calms me down enough to help me realize “Oh. I’m in pain. That’s why I’m going slow. I think I need to quit for now, and rest.” and then I go to sleep.

Did you notice how at NO POINT, I took any kind of medicine? Yeah. That’s literally my process. While my leg was broken, it went a little differently. Usually Joy or someone else was there by the time I’d get to crying. And they’d say “Take a pain pill, you idiot.” And then I would, and things would get better. For about 15 minutes, until I fell asleep. After a while she would say really annoying things like “Do you know how upset it makes me when you don’t take your pain medication?”

Apparently, Joy pulls that kind of shit too. On her own body. Which is kind of impressive, because she has Fibromyalga. So, it takes a little more than a “Don’t be a pussy” pep-talk to get her moving when she’s in pain. After a while I reminded her of herself so much that she called an old boyfriend. And apologized. “I’m taking care of Alisa. And she’s acting exactly like me. And I’m starting to realize how difficult I was.”

Luckily, when Joy broke, Carly and Trevor and I were all hanging out, talking shit about people we know. We all looked at each other, with wide worried eyes. She had tried to make a joke out of her chiropractor bill; not realizing that it wasn’t even remotely funny. Joy is as charismatic as I am. She can tell a joke. That was when I realized she’d hit the wall.

The lovely and fantastic Trevor, who took me into his home even when he didn't have to.

She left the room and I said “I’m literally breaking her!” Trevor nodded “Yes. We can’t let this continue. Why don’t you come stay with me at my house?” I was really surprised. Who invites a cripple to crash on their couch? It’s crazy. Trevor is a wonderful person, but we were casual friends. Not “I’ll help you shower when you are filthy, smelly and incapable of doing it alone.” or “I will feed you every meal you need, and let you watch tv all day, every day on my couch for as long as you need.” friends. Carly was nodding. “Yeah, I’ll drive you and your stuff over.” She agreed. I was stunned. And hopeful. And excited.

It was the break we needed, in order to survive. I was starting to freak out about Joy breaking down. And Joy was starting to break down. I didn’t even tell her until I needed to start packing, I didn’t think she (or I) would be able to take it if it fell through.

Trevor made me yummy food, and his dog and I fell in love. I slept. And watched awesome television. And took drugs. And had a steady stream of friends come over to keep me company.

Joy spent the next three days sleeping.

And then we started to get ready to move all of my shit, my cats and my crippled ass into a new place.

This is me, selling my Snarky Cards earlier this year, at the Wild Rose. God, I miss walking.

I’m trying to be as honest, while telling you this story, dear Internets, as I can. Which means it takes me a while to craft the story. In between saga’s, I’m trying to make new cards, and post them on my etsy shop. And call my stores, and pay my bills, but I still can’t walk. And I can’t go out and sell. Which I usually do to pay my bills.

Dress sexy! I've been crippled for 2 months. I am sex starved. I want your ass as my eye-candy!

So, this month I need help. My sister is throwing me a fund-raiser on March 30^th, from 8:30 pm at Waid’s on Capital Hill. The theme is doctors and nurses. Sex it up, and be ready to dance. Don’t have a costume? Come as patient. I want to see lots of awesome head wounds! Door prizes for best dressed and most creative costume (or costume posse)
Prizes include: Snarky cards, Snarky Paintings and Fuck You panties! The $10 door fee for the night goes to paying my medical and other bills. It will be a great dance party, and it’ll make a huge difference in my life if you can attend.

Snarky Cards! Which you can find on the website! Or at my fundraiser!

If you can’t, please look at my etsy site, and find something you need. I’ve been updating it like crazy, so there will be something that cracks you the fuck up. And the sales from my site are all I’ve got, besides the fund-raiser, to help feed and clothe me. You can send a paypal donation to snarky cards at gmail dot com.

Thanks for listening to my tale of woe. I hope that you are well,  and that your life is easy and kind.

Love, Alisa

Their street names are Tres Perras Locas: 3 crazy bitches. Yuriko, Marisi, and Joy, my sister. Twin to Janis, the muppet to the left.

Janis, my sister's muppet twin

Dear Internets,

I seem to have seamlessly slipped into my new life. I’ve been volunteering at Twilight Artist Collective, and this week, Joy and I saw the Muppets movie together. We texted Stephenie, because he loves the muppets more than he loves chocolate. When we were deciding what time to go, I said “You know, I’ve always worried that I was Miss Piggy. And I’ve always worried that I wasn’t Miss Piggy.” Joy burst out laughing. “Shit! You are Miss Piggy!”

We got our seats in the theater, and Joy opened her bottle of Saki. I’m taking a break from drinking, so I just had one celebratory sip. When we were first starting our lives, Joy and I both had fake names. I went by Molly at work, because people told me that I looked just like Molly Ringwald. And Joy went by Janis, because she looked like the muppet, Janis. I’d told people at the bar that the night before and my friend Colin bent over laughing. “She does!” he said while gasping for air. “I didn’t want to saying anything before!” Joy and I pointed out scenes to each other in which our alter-egos had done a particularly good job. And we held hands while Kermit and Miss Piggy sang the Rainbow Connection.

Christmas Cards are now up on etsy! Get yours today!

And Thursday, I ran into my friend Colin at the bars, so I knocked off work early and went back to his house, to make jokes in his living room.

All these little moments, going to the movies with my sister, hanging out with my friends on the spur of the moment, were so painfully absent in my Portland life. I feel like I’m treating myself by letting myself indulge in them now. And they let me feel loved. They make me feel like I have a life, and I am more than just a Snarky Card machine, created and adored simply so that I can entertain and nudge people towards emotional honesty. I think that’s the root of why I started to feel so angry with Portland. As a town, it embraced my cards. It loved my creativity, and was astounded by my nerve, but very few people wanted to go to the movies with me, or hang out with me after the bar.

And next week I’m the starr of open mike night at 22 doors. One of my favorite bars.

You can buy this this Sunday at 22 doors on Capitol Hill!

I don’t exactly know what I’m going to be doing, or saying. But I’m pretty sure I’ll say a lot of funny things. About my Vagina. And I’ll probably be showing off my boobs. And I’ll be doing custom cards, with my typewriter, Bob. And I’ll have my paintings and my cards and my undies.

So, from 8 to 11 this Sunday night, I’ll be at 22 doors in Capitol Hill: 405 15th Ave E, Seattle, Wa. Come, laugh at my exploits, buy some cards, eat some yummy food, drink some booze and hit on some hotties. See ya then!

Love,

Alisa

I’m back in San Francisco! The land of awesome. I spent last night celebrating my friend Emily’s birthday, and then I went out selling. I hit up the Elbow Room, which was a bust. I sold a few cards, but it’s too dark to read in there, and nobody was really into my shit.

So, I headed over to Zeitgeist, one of the happiest places on earth. Where I sold a fuckton of cards. I missed the Bart back to Oakland, so I crashed with my friend Joe. Well, I actually crashed at his girlfriend’s studio. Julia and I, it turns out, have the same deep-seeded love for Lesbian folk rock, and 90′s Chick Rock. So we had a 2 hour sing-a-long to The Indigo Girls, Ani Difranco, Fiona Apple and Tori Amos. It was fucking awesome. This morning I woke up, still drunk, but very satisfied with my girlie-bonding night.

This card is inspired by my childhood! I hope you like it!

Now I’m headed down to San Jose to celebrate God’s passing me over for death. Passover is the only religious holiday I celebrate. I’m not Jewish, but I love the ceremony. I grew up in a Christian Fundamentalist household, so all the stories are familiar. But they don’t have the same interpretation in Judaism. My life as a Christian was hard. Christians tend to re-interpret God for each other over and over again. And the God I heard about was a jealous, controlling stalker who liked to punish me for my perceived wrongs, or sometimes for no reason at all. In short, the God I heard about in church as a kid was a total dick. And I do not wanna deal with him again. But the God of passover, the God I hear about at Seder is kind and funny, and you know he loves you because your friends make yummy food, and laugh and drink a lot of wine in his honor.

Tomorrow night I’m going to be going out, selling some more Snarky Cards in The Mission District. If you wanna meet up, and get some new snarky cards, drop me a note or send me a smoke signal, and I’ll be happy to meet up!

Love,

Alisa

Can you honestly imagine me playing hard to get? Because I can't.

When I was 19, The Rules came out. The Rules were written by two skinny Anne-Coulter-esque women. You know, the kind of chicks who think that they’re hotter than shit because they can wear a pencil skirt and have long hair? Anyway, these bitches wrote The Rules, a book which proclaimed that the only way to “capture” Mr. Right is to be unavailable, and make him chase you. On a Rules first date, you’re not allowed to stay for longer than ten minutes. Whether you have something else to do or not, you have to look at your watch and say “Oh! I have to go!” and jump up and run away after ten minutes. After said date and for the rest of the relationship, you’re not allowed to return his first phone call. You have to wait until his third, or fourth. Or something. Apparently, the recipe for success is a combination of being unavailable, and maintaining mystique.

The book that insults us all.

As we all know, I am super-aggressive; sexually and in every other way. And I couldn’t maintain mystique to save my life. So, I fucking hated this bullshit. Probably because they created a program I have no hope of following, and then called any woman who didn’t follow their program lonely and stupid. But that’s not all of it.  It pissed me off that this philosophy is based on the idea that men need to be manipulated into love. Because for all of the slutting around I do, I like men. I respect men. And I’ve spent the better part of the last 17 years trying to work through all of my shit so that I can figure out how to have healthy relationships with them. The idea that I need to manipulate one into loving me means that I’m not lovable all by myself, and I can’t trust a man to make his own decisions about his feelings. All of which sucks.

The Rules Bitches: Arch-nemesis's of everything awesome

About two years after their books hit really big, both of those bitches found themselves divorced. Which gave me some satisfaction. I don’t usually delight in the misfortunes of other people. But I considered these women the Arch-Nemesis’s of everything awesome. And so, their divorces fed my desire to see them sad. Unfortunately, these divorces didn’t stop them from continuing to offer dating advice. They are continuing to wage their war against honest dating, even now. Their website is stocked with pictures of them smiling next to real celebrities. There’s even a quote from Oprah, saying that they are genius’s.

I understand their popularity. I think everyone wants to create some order out of the chaos of our lives. Especially when it comes to dating. Everyone has lines they won’t cross. I have name rules. Like the other night, I met a Ryan. Isn’t it weird how all Ryan’s are hot? And while he was charismatic, I knew he was Hell-bent on his own destruction. As well as the destruction of anyone else who said that they liked him. So, even though he had Dylan-hair, and was trying to throw some (pretty good) game at me, I passed, because it doesn’t matter how good a Ryan is in bed, the mind-fuck you’re getting afterward makes the whole thing feel like a bad sexual decision.

After I’ve met 3 different people with the same name, I can make general observations about the name. My name rules have helped guide me through my life.  I try to believe in exceptions to the rules. They exist. I’ve just never met them. Michael’s always try to fuck with my head. David’s kinda hate themselves. Kaytea’s are always a crazy-ass party, that you will never regret attending. But you should rest-up first. Emily’s are steadfast friends. And Becky’s are bitches. Rebecca’s are usually nice, thoughtful and sensitive. Steve’s are good friends, who will always listen, and seldomly put out.

As much as I depend on my name rules, they’re subjective. They’re based on my experience with people who have those names. The Bexter (note, she goes by Rebecca, not Becky, because she knows Becky’s are bitches too, and has therefore never let anyone call her that)  has had different experiences with different names. So, she is open to dating a David, or a Justin (although, she’s dated a lot of Justin’s she might be done with that particular name). So, basically, while I love my name rules, and they are the guiding light of my life, I can’t pass them along for public consumption, except as a party trick.

Recently, I was updating the list of people I’ve slept with. I’ve got 83 people on the list… And I feel like I’m missing some people. So, if we’ve slept together, could you please email me, so that I can double check and make sure I’ve alredy counted you? Please don’t email if we only made-out. You dont’ count. Wait. Unless we made-out and it was good, and you’d like to make the list. In which case, please email me, and I will consider your request. You can send your sexual requests (and tales of our dalliances together) to snarkycardsatgmaildotcom.

I have noticed lately, that I have a collected a lot of wisdom, from all these different boys, and situations I’ve found myself in. I give great dating advice. Which I can’t figure out how to follow myself (much like the evil bitches I despise). But my observations have helped my friends (and strangers I meet at the bar) navigate through their own dating debacles.

So I’ve decided to put together my own list. The Rules by The Snarky Card Chick! I will feed them to you in the form of cards, until we have enough for a book of our own. And then we can give America a choice, The Rules for girls who like men (by Alisa Starr) or The Rules for girls who like to manipulate men(by some heinous bitches).  Rule #13 is the first rule I ‘ve written so far. I wrote it for my friend, Tina. Who is a cougar. Which is kind of exciting, and it makes me very, very proud.

It’s a good rule, I think. But it’s not going to be part of the top ten. I don’t know how long the list will be yet. I’m just writing down things as they happen to me. Or as they happen to my friends. If you have suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

Love,

Alisa

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