Confidence: How To.

Think of something you know you know how to do. Something you enjoy knowing how to do. Maybe it’s making the lightest quiche, or playing the drums, or changing a bicycle inner tube. Maybe you know that you know how to plant seeds that germinate, or fix this computer bug, or mix the perfect vermillion. Maybe it’s as simple as knowing you know how to hug a child, or tell a good joke. Find something that makes you feel competent and confident.

Experience that feeling. The surge of blood through you, a sense of guidance, purpose, direction. A sense of being the right person for the job, in the right place at the right time. A feeling of ease and tension release, of certainty and even exuberance. I know how to do this – I love doing this.

For me, about 2 years ago, I realized it was (car) camping. I know how to do that. I knew when we needed wood, when we should start the fire, how to put it out. I knew how to set up my tent, how to walk in the woods, how to avoid poison oak. I knew how to brush my teeth at the tap, and use my headlamp to find my missing sock. I knew how to have fun, how to do what needed to be done, how to help others because I knew how to do these things.

What if… we allowed for the possibility that we could have that feeling in more places in our lives. If we could recognize the mastery we have in some areas, and allow that sense of confidence and competence support our less certain attempts. Maybe, it’s just knowing that I know how to put on liquid eyeliner with deft precision. Can I allow that to fill up my tank a little? – Come to think of it, can I recognize that I know how to fill my gas tank! (If you grew up in NJ, you might not!) ;)

But the point, today, is that although there are many areas in which I am not an expert, and that will always be so, and there will always be something to learn in the places I want to become more adept… there are also a host of places that I haven’t recognized I’m doing pretty well.

I think this is what they call, “building self-esteem.” What a concept.

But, it’s true. People in general, and people like me, tend to dismiss what we think is easy for us. For me, I have tended to dismiss my writing when its complimented, since it can be so easy for me. What’s the value of something that is wickedly simple for me?

Somehow the idea that valuable things are hard things came into our zeitgeist. This is not to say that you or I needn’t work for what we want, but it’s about recognizing what we have, and sometimes what we’ve been given, that we take for granted.

I take for granted that I know how to put on crisp eyeliner. I learned it, I do it, it’s a part of me. So, I forget it’s not something everyone else knows. I take for granted that I can write this every day, for better or worse! I take for granted that I can talk to the children at work and make us both smile. – Well, that one I don’t. I don’t take the smiling for granted, just the knowing that I know how to do it.

If I were to go through a given day or week, and take note of the things that I seem to “instinctively” and “intuitively” know how to do, how many things would pile onto that list?

Sure, there are blank spots, there are gaps, there are wide berths of where I want to know and learn and be more. But they’re gaps. They’re not the whole.

If I tried to recognize that I could feel the same self-esteem while cooking eggs in the morning as I do when making a teepee out of wood in a fire-pit; if I could remember to feel adept and facile when I parallel park my car; if I could allow a sense of ease and confidence for the simple act of knowing to pause in today’s heavy sunshine,

I imagine that delightful, intrepid poise can offer a foundation for my less assured endeavors.  

The B Word.

Balance. Without it, I tend to become the other B word.

Someone asked me how the whole, "I need friends who don't live hand-to-mouth," blog went over, if there was any push-back from it. I said, not that I know of, but that I’d spoken to some other folks over the weekend, and was reminded of something very important in life: Things are not black and white.

When I stopped drinking, it was because I was an alcoholic. I put the bottle down, looked around, and declared everyone close to me alcoholic, too. Whether they were or not, I was on a crusade of reform, and they all were alcoholics who needed to stop as I did.

Well… two things: a) yes, most of the people I was associated with “at the end” were in fact drinking alcoholically, but b) that didn’t mean they or anyone who drank were alcoholics. In the beginning, I needed that kind of black and white thinking, because being close-ish to people who were drinking was too difficult a gray line when my line had to be crystal clear.

But, just because that was the way for me, I came to realize that wasn’t the way for everyone. And after some time passed, and indeed the folks who were hopeless sops like me faded from the foreground of my life, I got to see that some people (god bless them) can drink normally.

There’s one friend who stuck through my own transition. She described this "normal" drinking to me: she literally says to herself, “Hmm, I’m beginning to feel buzzed, I should switch to water.” Uh… I didn’t get that memo. “I’m beginning to feel buzzed,” was always followed by, “A few more will get it done right,” or if I was feeling temperate, “I should switch to beer.”

So, my friend does not react to alcohol how I do. And I have to come to see that there is a world between sauced and tight-ass.

In the same way, I recognize that as I begin to assess my behavior and extremism around money, scarcity, and deprivation, I am being called to allow others their own experience, even as I diagnose and address my own.

Just because a friend opened a new credit card, doesn’t mean I have to stop hanging out with them. Just because a friend is earning less than I think they deserve in the world, doesn’t mean they’re addicted to deprivation. Just because other people behave differently than me, doesn’t mean my way is the right way, and most importantly, doesn't mean I don't have anything to learn from them. 

As with getting sober, I do have to admit that some of the folks around me may indeed have trouble in this area – water seeks its own level, after all. But, that doesn’t mean I have to be an asshole about it.

And, that’s what I’ve gotten to see these past few days I’ve been declaring myself needing to “move on” from friends and communities who have what I’d declared a “faulty, diseased, and only rectifiable by a spiritual solution” relationship to money, and thereby the world.

It’s a good thing people don’t take me that seriously!

And it’s a good thing I can remember to not take myself too seriously, too. If I’d stuck to every declaration about myself… by this point I would have been:

Vegetarian

Israeli

A prostitute

A suicide victim

A daily exerciser

T.V.-less

Caffeine-less

An organic farmer

and a truck driver.

The thing is, I can’t make blanket declarations for myself or anyone else. I have no idea what my path contains or eliminates, thereby no idea what others’ do.

There is some truth to wanting to learn from and be around people whose relationship to money can model my own. But that’s because I have a problem with it. Not everyone does, and if they do, it’s really none of my business.

It comes to equanimity, and allowing others and myself our experience without judgment. It means having openness, compassion, and respect toward all people on all paths. It does certainly include me getting help for a pattern of beliefs and behaviors that have led me to despair and insanity, but it also includes me being more generous in my assessments of life. Allowing for the gray, for the middle-ground, for difference, for balance.

Because, solvent or not, nobody likes a bitch. 

Once More unto the Breach, Sorta Kinda.

Despite having gotten the “message” or “more information” about where I think my career path is supposed to, or rather, for the first time, where I want it to go… the hard(er) part is taking action to actually go there.

Although I’ve submitted my own promotion to my job, and would love to do this work there, it is unclear whether they’re in a place to support that work. And so, it’s up to me to put more eggs in more baskets.

I spent some time on Saturday updating my resume and cover letter. I had to go visit a baby(!!) so I still have some final work to do before I submit this particular one. And that’s where the stall-out happens. Any of you know this one? Heard this one before?

I’ve got this pretty particular set of things to do, in an order, in order to go where I think I want to go, in order to get what I think I want to get. … buuuuut. Well, there’s only 3 more episodes of this show I’m watching on Netflix (on my phone, I should add), so I’ll do it… later.

Gift and curse of cancer or any other mortality insisting event, or simply the past experience of soul-crushing procrastination, is you know that "later" may not be there when you are.

I’m reminded of a meditation I did once. It was probably around another time when I was demanding from fate and god and the universe that I get answers about what the f' I’m supposed to do with my life. But, I thought about this turtle that I sometimes meet in my meditations. And I thought about him walking to get toward this grass to get a bite to eat.

He is a turtle. He walks as a turtle walks, slowly, thoughtfully, without haste. When the f' was he gonna get there?? And I realized my fear was that the grass wouldn’t be there when he/I got there. If I move at a pace that is consistent, thoughtful, persistent, what if the grass simply isn’t there by the time I get there??

What the turtle had that I didn’t is faith. A true belief in knowing that the grass will be there when he gets there. That as long as he keeps on in the direction he thinks is best, care-fully and consistently, whatever he needs will be provided along the way.

Wise turtle.

I don’t know that I have, or had, the same faith.

I can’t tell you, truthfully, that watching more t.v. is a way of simply agreeing that abundance in the universe exists and I can lolligag all I want because of it. I can tell you that I have fear of where my efforts take me; that I have a streak of entitlement; that I want the outcome known before I walk anywhere at any pace.

But, I do want an outcome. As I’ve been writing, I’m tired of standing at the crossroad of my life, waiting for a lift that will never come.

There’s a phrase I hear around now: There is no ship.

If we’re all waiting for our ship to come in… sorry, bub, no ship.

That could be horrifyingly depressing. WHAT AM I DOING THIS FOR, THEN? If there’s no ship?? But, as I’m beginning to understand it, this phrase simply means that there is no skipping over the work, there is no lottery that dumps in your lap; that, like the turtle, you have to keep moving forward, and then maybe you build your own ship.

The idea is that there’s no white knight. That fantasy time is over. That we are our own white knight, if we are so brave and also disillusioned to be one.

So, unto the breach I go. Haltingly, uncertain of what I’ll find when I get there. But, if I have been given (finally, gladly, luckily, FINALLY, again) more intel on where it is I think I want to arrive, then I must get up and walk in that direction.

I must submit resumes, continue to clear the gunk from my soul, and write to you of how uncomfortable it feels to endeavor on my own behalf. 

Cleaning House.

There’s a phrase in Al-Anon: Let it begin with me.

I’m in the process (or supposed to be) of looking back through my life and writing down where underearning/underbeing/debting has affected my life, and eventually caused it to be unmanageable.

I’ve often and easily thought about my dad’s parents and his half-brother when I think about the history of this “disease” in my family. It’s easy to do. They are the ones who hoarded, let the dog go to the bathroom in the house, and despite brains that cognitively thought at high levels, lived like people who were under a crushing weight of despair, which looked on the outside like the crushing weight of filth.

These folks, my kin, would have been the people who Hoarders would have descended upon, who would have reluctantly and silently allowed their belongings to be sorted, sifted, and discarded. And after the cameras left, would have as quickly as possible returned their home to the state of dishevelment and insurmountable disarray. The familiar state of it. The state in which they felt most comfortable, even if not comfortable at all.

After my parents’ divorce when I was 20, my dad let our childhood home fall into much the same state, with the dead bugs on the hood of the oven, the flies belly-up on the window sill, and the tree that shaded our home, that stood sentry in our front yard, so long-neglected it had to come down. And though it’s easy to see these patterns of neglect, hopelessness, resignation, and simple denial in that side of the family, through my inventory work, I’m also getting to see a different strain of ideas around money, belongings, worthiness crops up from my mom, too.

I spent some time with my brother last year in his apartment he rented alone. The same silt of neglect, of using half-broken items, of allowing the home you live in to be in a state of disrepair lay over his home, too. But, from the same familial miasma, his attitude toward money became very different than mine.

At some point, I brought up money and my not knowing how to manage it, to save it, to “make it work for me” (whatever that means!), and he admitted, surprising me, that he is a miser with it. He hoards and saves his money, and is virulently opposed to being indebted to anyone.

He hoards money. I hemorrhage it.

In the end, though, the result for us both is the same (and I recognize that my assessment and diagnosis is unfair to him, simply in that I am not him, so please forgive my hubris). But the result is that neither of us have money to spend on fun things, nice things, things that make our lives fun and easy and worth living. If he’s loathe to spend anything, even if he has it, then life becomes smaller than it needs to be. If I simply spend whatever I make without thought to long-term or significant goals, my bank balance becomes zero, and my life shrinks with it.

I may not do my dishes as regularly as I should (though I am better now!), and my fridge may house food that is unidentifiable with mold, but my home is neat, clean, organized. It feels light, despite its size, and I endeavor to make it so. But there’s an article I read recently on home decoration that said, "Do it: Clean, organize, make pretty, and then GET OUT." Get out and into and on with your life. There’s more to life than decoration.

So, as I tally my numbers each month, calculate my income & expenditures, as I put money into a savings account and a vacation account, I have to remember it’s not just so that I can have a neat and orderly spreadsheet. That, in fact, even if there were a million dollars in my account, I’d have to remember, like my brother, that it’s there for me to enjoy thoughtfully. That it’s there for me to live, to support a life worth living. I have to remember that I do all this work so that I can go out in the world as my family was unable to do.

I let it begin with me. 

Risky Business

There’s a funny little book I picked up a few years ago entitled, Steal Like An Artist. One of the tips in the book is, If you find yourself to be the smartest person in the room, go to another room.

I’ve been considering this sentiment as applied to satisfaction, success, self-love, financial security. At the risk of sounding like a self-aggrandizing schmuck, I think I’ve been heading to another room for a good little while.

But, I’m hesitant. I’m hesitant to leave those who I’ve met in this room, and all the rooms before it. I’m hesitant to let those friendships go, when I notice that how I’ve been ordering and focusing my life is not really aligned with how they are anymore. I don’t want to leave, but I kinda already have, simply by the efforts I’ve been making in the past few years.

It sounds like an asshole thing to say. It “sounds” judgey and materialistic and conceited. But, I don’t think it is. I think it’s one of the most honest things I’ve said about where and who I am in my life now.

To find a parallel that is perhaps less alienating, let’s look at alcohol. In two weeks, it’ll be 8 years since my last drink. Since that time, the folks who are in my life tend to also be people who don’t drink, or simply people who don’t drink alcoholically. I began to hang out with people who behaved in ways I did or I wanted to, and in the process, those who I used to spend time with began to fade. This wasn’t a judgment on them; it was simply an acknowledgment of what we now had or didn’t have in common. I’d simply moved to another room.

If you can hang with the non-judgment of that move, nearly 3 years ago, I began to spend time with people who didn’t accrue unsecured debt, who tracked their income and expenses, who were attempting to live a full life without bouncing along the disheartening bottom of “paycheck to paycheck,” “I can’t hang out because I’m broke,” “I eat popcorn for dinner,” and “I have holes in my socks.” (Each something I'd said...repeatedly, for years.)

As with alcohol, I had simply come to the end of my rope by how small and anxious and exhausting my life was. And, since then, I’ve been endeavoring to live differently.

In that difference, I’ve begun to notice that many of the folks whose room I’ve shared are still, in some manner, living a pinching, struggling life. And I’ve begun to notice that we don’t talk as much, that I have less to share about, that I don’t really relate or want to relate anymore. Just like I don’t really have much to say if you share about your drunken escapades, I don’t really have much to say about how you don’t know how you’ll pay rent next month.

All I really do have to say about that is, I GET IT. I have completely been there. I have, many times in my “adulthood,” had less than $3 in my bank account, and NO JOB. I KNOW what it feels like to have a life so small because you can’t afford the bus to see friends, or the $8 for the movie they're seeing, or just the $2 coffee chat. I know what it’s like to despair that you’ll never get out of the hole. What it’s like to assume that you’ll eek out a living … and then die. I know what it’s like to think about killing yourself because you can’t see any other end to the horrible cycle of constriction.

I know what it’s like to live small and afraid. And I know, now, what it’s like to find a way out.

I can talk to you about that. I can tell you I’ve found a way that works for me, and I can help or hope you find it, too. But, ultimately, that’s all that I can do.

And in that knowledge and acceptance of where and who I’ve become, a non-drinker who is attempting to live a larger life, it should only make sense that I would want to be among others who are living the same. Simply so I can learn. So I can hear, model, get hope, get help for myself. Because I am that person who was begging for help before, and now I want to be around those who can help me. Who have moved into a different room and found help themselves.

It feels so fucking lonely, right now. It feels judgmental and abandoning and selfish and crass. It feels like I’m waving a hand over a community that has loved me, and I’m declaring that world, “Not enough.”

But, in truth, it isn’t. For me.

I want to live larger, freer, more boldly. In the end, it's not actually about money at all. I simply want financial stability because it allows me to dream bigger, or dream at all, since I’m not agonizing over how I’ll feed my cat this month. Stability leads me to ease, and ease leads me to dream.

Today’s sentiments may sour in the mouths of someone reading this. I may have backs turned to me. There is a loneliness that happens when you’re transitioning to a new phase of yourself. But, perhaps in my acknowledgment that I want to be in that next room, I can help myself to get there. Perhaps in simply stating I love you and I have to leave you, I am offering more love than I had. I don’t want to be lonely; it’s part of why I do all this work, man. I don’t want to leave you, but our conversation has flagged. And it is/I am worth the risk of saying, Thank you, and maybe I'll see you over there.

Manic Panic.

It’s what the junior high and high school kids were using to dye bright streaks of their hair in the 90s. There was one store in the mall that sold it (Nature Works? - The Nature Company! that's it.), and if you said you were going there, you meant that you were going to dye your hair a brilliant shade of rebellious.

I never bought Manic Panic. I was as straight an arrow as they come until the end of high school. There was too much order to maintain, and too many rules to follow, for me to diverge any bit off the path I was expected to walk.

And so, as I am very apt to do, once I hit college, the pendulum swung so desperately and frenetically in the direction of “off the path,” that it swung right around and hit me in the now-pierced face, like a rogue tetherball.

Obviously, this wasn’t the “way” either. This wasn’t my authentic way, at least.

I had a therapist tell me a long time ago that if my mother had killed herself when I was young, as her behavior threatened she’d do, that I would have probably gone down with that ship. I’d spent so much time and energy attending to the needs and expectations of someone else, there wasn’t room to explore or attend to my own.

Years later, I had another therapist tell me that this life was my own, that I didn’t have to make choices anymore based on whether I thought my dad would approve, or disapprove and retaliate anymore. That this life was my own was such a novel concept, I’d rejected it for years. That I could choose now to dye my hair, pierce my face, be alone, reject the world, participate in it, smoke, not smoke, date, not date – is still a concept I’m adjusting to, but the marination of this understanding and awakening has been long underway.

The idea that I am a master of my own fate … well, it seems just as rogue! That I can choose the kind of toilet paper I want; toothpaste I like; friends I call. That I can choose how I want to dress in the world; what hobbies to pursue; … job to have … partner to love.

Fulfillment, is the end game, or the suspicion of the end game. Am I happy in my path? Note, Molly: this is your path. There is no mother to care for, no father to obey. What is it you want in life? And do you feel free and brave enough to pursue those desires?

Do you feel free and brave enough to apply for a new job? Do you feel free and brave enough to wear clothing without stains? Do you feel free and brave enough to accept that you want a partner whose clothes are also without stains?

Do you feel free and brave enough to accept that you want a good life? A job you respect? A partner you admire?

Do I feel … stable enough, secure enough, self-supporting and self-worthy enough to not only admit these “taboo” desires, but also to express them to the world, through action?

Do I feel ready to tell you, world, that I want in? That I want in on the goods, on the joy, on the self-respect, on the intellectual stimulation, on the bed-rocking sex, on the critical, yet specious-seeming ease?

Well, I guess I’m telling you. I guess it’s been long enough that the tetherball has hung limp and impotent, and it’s time to begin playing again. I no longer am… tethered to ideas of being and living that aren’t my own. The cord is cut, the apron strings untied. The life, really, is my own. 

And though today that may not mean dying my hair green or copper, as I wish I’d been able to do a dozen years ago, it means I now know that I could. And that I would be awesome besides. 

Because I’m your Mother, That’s Why.

The last song on Anticipate This, the mix CD I’d made for him, is Dave Matthews’ Say Goodbye. It includes the refrain, “For tonight let’s be lovers, and tomorrow go back to being friends.”

The line from Alanis’ Thank You has been repeating in my head: “Thank you, Disillusionment.”

And, finally, if I was “craving cupcakes,” well, a cupcake isn’t a sustainable meal, is it? It’s never actually intended to be, and so you've got to enjoy it while it is there, savor, relish, cherish it, and then you let it go. Then you move on.

We had a “debrief” conversation last night, during which most of the above sentiments where shared by us both. Acknowledging the loveliness, the heights, the calm, the titillation. And yet, that it was what it was. That it was a moment in time that we’d both signed up for, participated in, and get to let go, get to allow its sanctity, without marring it with all those Whatifs that spun in (both) our heads.

To allow the sanctity of beauty, to allow it its singularity is a challenge and a lesson of adulthood. To be disillusioned, to know that moving isn’t right for either of us, that fantasy can overtake reality and crumble it. To have had the hard-won experience of knowing that selfishness and possessiveness can suffocate a beautiful thing, is perhaps not “romance” as we think of it. But it is, in itself, a mercy.

Relinquishing the ties to future, to “meaning,” to purpose, we can allow it the simplicity and integrity of its joy.

I wrote a poem once about trapping a moment away in a mason jar, locking it deep inside for fear that the moment would get marred by time and eventuality. But the problem was that I forgot what that moment smelled like anyway; in my possessiveness and fear of losing it, I forgot what made that moment so precious to begin with.

The same is true here. And, smartly, maturely, rightly, and a little wistfully, we both, or at least I, have to allow the experience its autonomy and “string”lessness.

I called my mom yesterday. I’d spoken to several friends about my conflictedness, and my sadness in letting the moment go. In knowing, surely and deeply, that I would have to. This knowledge all the more painful since it was such a thing of beauty, since it was, for me, a lesson in intimacy, vulnerability, and ease that I haven’t felt with anyone in my past.

As we spoke, I told my mom it was like tasting ice cream in a shop for the first time, and having to realize that ice cream is available elsewhere, all over the place, in fact. That I don’t have to go to this one place to experience it. That I’d be missing out if I thought this was the only wellspring of deliciousness.

Part of the beauty of it at all, is that I get to see that ice cream is in fact available to me. (Ice cream! Cupcakes! Sheesh, can you tell I don’t really eat this stuff anymore!?)

But, I did. I got to experience, savor, relish, and cherish, and I get to decide to believe—DECIDE TO BELIEVE—that I can have similar dishes elsewhere. Somewhere a little less complicated.

My mom told me that of course it was available to me. That we all deserve to have the kind of love we want in the world. That we all are worthy of finding it, searching for, letting the non-fits go, and working toward creating in ourselves a person deserving of the highest order this life offers.

Why? I asked her.

Why? Why is that so? Where is the cosmic contract we’ve all signed that says that we'll get that kind of love? Where is the agreement that we sign as humans that says, Work and open and heal and (for)give, and you shall receive? Really, honestly, who the fuck says that any of us get any of that?

It was important for me to play my own Devil’s Advocate. I’m the one with all the woo-woo affirmations posted around my apartment about abundance and light and love and serenity and security and radiance. I’m the one who’d easily and believingly tell a friend that things work out. I’m the asshole who believes all this muck.

And for once, I needed someone else to tell me it. I needed to be the petulant asshole who says, “Yeah, Says You.” I needed to allow my disillusionment of that kind, too. I needed to allow that it sucks and hurts, and is disappointing, and hard fucking work, and that we (I) do this with absolutely no promises whatsoever of any kind of “reward,” or change.

There is no rule that says, Thou Shalt Not Toil Until Death.

There isn’t.

So, I need, sometimes, someone else to tell me. Because, truly, somewhere (a little out of reach at the moment), I believe that we all do deserve the precious and gorgeous things in life. I believe that none of us are meant to toil and suffer and be beaten by life. I truly, somewhere, have a faith that is unalterable. A place inside me that has never known fear or scarcity or sorrow.

But, despite my friends’ ears and wisdom and empathy, I simply needed my mom, former Miss Cynic of the Universe, to tell me, Molly, It’s going to be alright. There is ice cream elsewhere. There is love, abundant and resplendent. Not that it isn’t without its own challenges and lessons and compromises, but there is love, and I am worthy of it. That I “deserve” it.

Despite the “adultness” of letting go and loving detachment and equanimity and allowing what is… in these moments, in this one, I simply needed the maternal “all knowing” assurance of that which I actually believe.

Dear Egregiously Gorgeous Moment in Time: Thank you.  

Grudge Match

I was alone on a pier in Hana, Maui when I let it begin to fall.

The sky was an angry gray, spitting water in sideways. The chop of the surf against the dock was ravenous, vitriolic, annihilating. And it felt so very congruous with how I did, that I could allow it all to fall.

If you’d been on the shore a few hundred meters away, across the cove, you couldn’t have heard my assault on the wind and water and fate. The ocean’s temperament absorbed my rage, my indignation, my betrayal, my despair. It opened and closed around me like an itchen woolen cloak, letting me shrug it off and tell it off, and snug it tight around me again. I kneeled into the dock, the waves battering the weathered and mossy posts, and I let the grief of my cancer batter it in return.

A year and a few months later, I sat on a dock jutting out into the water of Salem, Mass. It was like revisiting an old friend who also happens to be your sparring partner. And I let her have it again.

Not quite as fully, but enough to let her know I think she’s a cheap-shot, below-the-belt motherfucker. Enough to let her know that this isn’t settled, that I’m retitling it The Woman and The Sea.

I told my companion that I simply felt that the ocean could take it; could take my rage, could acknowledge, absorb and handle it-- honestly, so that I don’t have to all the time. The ocean somehow makes it okay for me to fall apart a little, to let the broken, tired spit-fire within both take some shots back, and collapse onto the ropes for a while.

It’s hard work pretending everything is alright. And, sometimes, it actually is, and it’s not pretending, and there’s healing that happens in that letting go, in that “moving on.”

A friend once told me that grief is not linear. And I get that.

Some people might assume, Hey, cancer’s gone, rejoice! All done. But, when you’ve been body-checked by Death (to mix metaphors), the thin copper taste of revenge laps at the back of your throat and you say to yourself, Motherfucker, I will rail you back.

As impotent and impossible as you know that fight to be, you rail and swing and charge back anyway.

Because, you sort of believe that it was that railing that fought it off the last time. That it was the rage and vitriol and deep, aching, terrorized clinging to Life that overcame cancer, and so you call on it again when you remember. You taste the acid again, and you spit putrid bile back against it.

I’m grateful I know the ocean is a place I have to spit back at. I’m grateful that it's a place I can allow some of the armor, the shield, to fall for a little while. I also feel as if I am known by it, and in those moments, you’re like weary boxers who hug one another in the middle of the fight in order to catch your breath. You each acknowledge your exhaustion and in silent truce, hug your opponent, because they’re all you have. 

I want to tell you everything.

I want to tell you how gently he kissed my forehead, and how warm his body felt as I shifted in the night. I want to tell you how natural and serene it felt to twine my fingers into his and lean my body against him as we waited for the stoplight to change. I want to tell you it was a good thing his roommates weren’t home most of the time we were, and about quietly resting my foot on top of his knee while he told me a story over the sunlit kitchen table.

I want to tell you everything. But, it’s not only my story. And this one is still being written, still has a few more “Choose Your Own Adventure” plot twists available, and the ending of it could be sooner or farther than we know.

So, I’ll try my best not to tell you that it was only when I was finally unpacking my suitcase in Oakland that the tears that had surged and abated in airports across America finally fell. Or the relief I felt stepping into the open air of the BART platform and looking around at the hodge-podge of people I’ve grown so familiar with. I’ll try not to tell you about the dull and persistent ache of withdrawal.

He’d said, “escaping the world” once when we were planning this.

I’m sure all vacations have their hangovers. The return to grim reality, and also to familiarity. The return to my own coffee pot and car and a toothbrush that doesn’t fold in half. There’s a relief and a longing. Like finishing a delicious meal and finally placing down your fork, overfull, yet wishing you could savor it all again.

You remember the small moments. The ones where you took a deep, satiated breath. The angles of the New England homes you drove past on ancient winding roads, and the spray of the Atlantic, blue today, over the rocks. You remember playing with his pinkie finger while you waited for your pregnant waitress, looking, still self-consciously, out the window by your table, since it was only day 2 and you felt new and strange and uncertain.

You try to remember everything. To etch it into consciousness, since it will certainly fade, the exact tightness of his arms around you while you lay naked against him; the exact way his chest hair curled while you fiddled with it musingly; the exact timbre of his echoing laughter under the short kitchen ceiling.

I’d told you before I left that I imagined being held delicately and protectively and surely by him, and that for once, I wasn’t frightened of it. Well, friends, it was true. And though we’ve taken fantasy and pulled it into the realm of reality, with all its attendant Yeses and Finallys and Contentedness, … we also both took the courageous move to explore the exact shape of reality’s rough edges and Almosts and Not Quites.

And should it be once again with the man this time was spent with, and should it be another person completely: I am buoyed to know that I can rest in the arms of a man, with no thought of escape.

Caution: Lifeguard on Duty

Today, I think of Death as the figure of the Grim Reaper lounging by a public pool, a lifeguard. Watching, waiting for the people to tire, and when they do, reaching in his scythe, and hoisting them out of the water.

Over the last week, I spent my time with several people I adore who are all in their 30s and 40s and in phases of change in their lives. I got to witness how they’re handling, adjusting, chafing, and, sometimes, enjoying their lives. And if I’m honest, I got to witness a good deal of loneliness. ("If you spot it, you got it," the saying goes.)

Because this isn’t only my story, I will be courteous to allow others their story and their privacy, but it inspired in me a great deal of reflection over the week about my own life, my own story.

Early in the week, I heard a woman, a stranger, say, "At some point, we have to give up all hope of our past being different." There’s a lot of standing in two worlds--past & present, present & future--that I got to witness this week, and see reflected in myself. I had a line from Fiona Apple repeating to me on the plane home yesterday: The child is gone.

I got to see that there is a pivot point in life; that adulthood is more than an age, or bank account, or relationship. It’s a marrow-deep understanding that the time that was is over. We're no longer looking toward the top of the mountain and how to get there: it's now a horizon we are looking toward. There is a plateau in the middle of the ‘natural’ course of life between the climax of our lives to come (if we get to it), and its decline.

Maybe it was all the True Detective we watched this week!

I don’t mean to be grim, I just mean to be realistic with where I am standing in my own life. I simply saw the story arc. I heard the restlessness, the ambition toward something not yet attained, and I believed for the first time, despite all cancer-awareness and mortality-facing, that the long life we have is shorter than I’ve known, that the center of that life is closer than I've known.

Mostly, I thought about my own ambition toward family and career. Toward relationship and being “settled” and the timing of all that. I’ve written before that being in a metropolitan area, I feel less inclined to think “TICK TOCK” than some of my suburban friends. But, on the heels of the new job proposal I handed into my work last week for myself, and the idea that if I spend 7 or 8 years in that job, I’ll be 40, and then be poised for a more senior management position. Seeing my professional future suddenly chopped up into finite chunks, seeing that I actually do want that kind of trajectory, having the ladder open up to me suddenly, and fucking taking a step onto it – well… everything else seems to now be broken up into those same finite chunks.

I’ve never had a “five year plan” or a “ten year plan.” I’ve never known enough about what I want to do to have any path whatsoever seem like it makes sense to pursue in any certain direction.

There may be “many roads to the mountaintop” and “All roads lead to Rome,” but I’ve been so stilted in knowing where the fuck Rome is, that I’ve sat at the base of the mountain, stared at the nailed signpost with its array of choices, and drawn figures in the dirt with a stick, waiting for one of them to illuminate or something.

Well, honestly, one of them has, career-wise, and I see the opening, and I feel myself-- well, no, I actually did take a step in that direction at work. And in seeing that there is suddenly a path that I’m actually on and actually taking, I see that there are all these other 5 and 10 year plans that I kind of have to be aware of now… and I see what implication that has for life. For romance, for family, for place.

I see that I’ve sat at that intersection for much too long, or, simply for as long as I needed to, but now I feel like I have to race to catch up to the toll of the clock.

I feel like the sense of timelessness in life has disappeared. That, “eventually” and “some day” are not allowed anymore. And not really that they’re “not allowed” or “not permitted,” but that there’s just no room for them. The dreaming must be directionalized now.

This terrifies and goads me. I feel pushed in a way I haven’t. I feel more certain of what I want in my life, and a bit of a manic thrall toward doing it. – Sure, All things in time, and All things in balance, but: I have begun to think that this might be what ambition is; and what it is for. 

Changing Underpants

“It’s like he really likes me & I’m not running from it,” is what I wrote in my journal this morning.

In fact, on Wednesday, I’ll be heading toward it, at 500 miles per hour.

I have my heels dug firmly into the ground below the plane that will carry me there, and I have compassion for the terror and fear that insists I stay in my cozy isolation.

It reminded me of a story I’d written in college (A Perverse Act of Gentility), although now, many of the details have changed. Most importantly, the part where I’m actually attracted to him, and that he’s never fallen into the deathly “friend zone.”

But, the final sentence of that story, about having humiliation and disgust for someone who “held me like an angel” -- that’s what sparked the memory this morning. That I anticipate being held in the same way by the Boston Cupcake, but I that anticipate feeling in polar opposite to how I did then. In fact, that I already do.

The number of years I’ve spent avoiding true connection is vast. I’ve written extensively here about hiding from, running from, being suspicious of love, but if you’re new to reading me, trust me: Intimacy … 

Well, here’s the vicious Catch-22 I’ve found myself in for as many years:

I am terrified of being loved; and it is also the absolute thing I hope most to be. It is where I know healing, change, elevation, joy, enlightenment, growth, revelation, and alchemy will occur. 

So, there is something different this time (no matter what the “outcome”) with the Cupcake: I am actually heading toward it. I’m not listening (wholly) to the fear. And, I feel different. “Even in my underpants, I feel different,” to quote Elizabeth Gilbert.

But, less in my underwear (though, yes...), and more in my chest cavity, in my guts, I feel different. At the same time that I have this electric fence around my whole body, I have a magnet within it too. And one is fading.

I want to be loved more than I want to hide, and I can feel the shift. I can feel tectonic plates, long-ago formed in the tundra and tumult of my creation, beginning to ease. A slight release in the tightness of my guts, and mostly, an excitement. Not just the titillation and anticipation of getting to spend time with someone I really like, but also, the opening of a door that for so long hung a sign that said, Do Not Enter: Radioactive Waste.

Years ago, I wrote a poem about a dusty “Back in Five Minutes” sign on the massive-shipping container that is my heart. About brushing the caked dirt off it, but not needing to open it then, just being content to know that it’s there, “secure, intact, existent.”

I think some of what is occurring is that I am finally opening up that shipping container, and taking a look inside. That I’m allowing the door to be open for a few minutes at a time. That I’m allowing myself to dream about what it would be like to unpack it all, to discard the fallacies, and engage and indulge in the luxuries.

Moreover, I’m letting myself do more than just dream about it, and I think that’s where the true change is occurring. I am heading over a continent, through years of flirtation, through a lifetime of resistance, toward possibility. There is a willingness to step into the unknown that hasn’t been there before, and after the willingness is actual action. Call it cancer, call it recovery, call it straight-up flouting of boredom and stagnancy.

I still am terrified, I know that. But I also feel different. In my ribcage and in my underpants, I feel different. 

The Whatifs

Last month, I contacted my psychic to ask about this upcoming trip to visit the Boston Cupcake (as he shall henceforth be known).

I can get an emailed reading from her, and despite your and my own doubts, I get pretty accurate and insightful results from her, via email or by phone. I mean, I’ve met her and all – but this isn’t about her. It’s about him. And me.

I’d panicked a little after we’d confirmed that I was going to fly out, over the continent, to spend 4 days in his bed, arms, town, space. As Shel Silverstein elegantly put it:

Last night, while I lay thinking here,

Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear

And pranced and partied all night long

And sang their same old Whatif song:

Whatif it’s awkward?

Whatif I can’t sleep?

Whatif I don’t come?

Whatif we ruin our friendship?

Whatif it’s good, but that’s the end of it?

Whatif it sucks in person, and we never text-flirt again?

Whatif we do like each other?

Whatif we fall in love?

Whatif I'm too bruised to fall in love?

Whatif I have to move?

Whatif I move and it doesn’t work out?
Whatif we get married and have kids, and everything works out amazingly?
Whatif we get married and have kids, and struggle for money?

Whatif I have to leave the Bay Area?
Whatif I can't afford to leave the Bay Area?
Whatif there’s no women’s spiritual community?
Whatif I never see my friends here again?
Whatif I hate the winter there?

Whatif he doesn’t like the way I laugh?

Whatif I don’t like the way he chews?

Whatif …

What if.

Va voy.

So, a few days before the deadline to purchase my flight, I emailed my psychic to try to divine some answers. What are the implications of this trip? Is this a good match? Is this a good thing, even if it’s not a match? What Is Going To Happen To Me???

Well, here’s what happened: She got sick, and emailed me that she’d have to postpone my reading until the following week. Or, she could just PayPal me back the funds and cancel the reading.

So, I thought about it. What was I really trying to get from her and her answers, anyway? Assurance, Confirmation, Certainty.

Ah, yes. Certainty. If you can tell me with certainty that the risk I’m about to take has the outcome that I want, then I’ll take it. If you cannot tell me with certainty that it will be alright, then I am terrified to risk it.

So, I went to her blog, to re-acquaint myself with her, to see if I could divine my own answer, since I knew I was trying to get something that no one else could really offer me. That life can never offer me.

And her most recent post was basically, if I remember correctly, about taking chances. About putting your best effort forward, and letting go; about allowing ourselves to try, and to know that whatever the outcome, we’re cosmically safe.

Arghh…. Right. I am safe, loved, assured, no matter what any outcome; but it is my responsibility to try.

If nothing changes, nothing changes.

So, I emailed her back, and told her her blog helped me realize that it was up to me to take this risk, to try without certainty to allow adventure, intimacy, attraction, vulnerability into my life. That I would take the refund from her, and go on this trip, and let all these unknowable chips fall where they may.

Because, it all flows from what I was just saying yesterday, about throwing my hat in the ring at work, professionally putting myself out there, just for the esteem of it, not knowing if it’ll “go my way,” but getting the benefits of trying anyway.

It’s all about what I’d quoted earlier this week, “You gotta get in it, cuz it’s a day-by-day gig.”

If nothing changes, nothing changes.

I won’t know til I try. I won’t have certainty even when I am in it. None of us do, even with cohabitation, a ring, children, none of us know if this will "work out," or if we'll end up signing divorce papers, bankruptcy papers, restraining orders.

But, what I know for certain is that I really am looking forward to this trip, to spending this time with someone I admire, fancy, and enjoy. I really am so very happy that I am taking a risk, stepping into the wide unknown, opening my arms and falling into his, come what may. 

Forte. Più Forte. (Loud. More Loud.)

It’s come into my awareness again this week the fallacy of perfection, and its venomous tendrils. The three “p”s: Perfection, Procrastination, Paralyzation.

I’ve also read that procrastination is simply another way for us to prolong feeling crappy about ourselves, and to delay feeing proud of ourselves.

This week, after a conversation with some people of authority at work last week about my position, my ambition, my vision of “Where I’d like to be;” after I was given the feedback that, great, sure, put it in writing and we can talk more... I stalled and dragged my feet.

It wasn't acres of time, this time; it was only from Friday until Tuesday evening, when I finally wrote what I needed to write. But I could see those tendrils curling up around me, waiting to choke my ambition and self-esteem from me. The tendrils of hopelessness (What the use anyway), uncertainty (What about acting, my art, moving), and simple perfectionism (If it’s not perfect, they'll reject it, and then I’ll be stuck answering phones the rest of my life, anyway, so f* it, I’ll just watch some more Once Upon a Time).

It was so helpful to hear other people talk about how this weed of perfectionism crops up in their lives, marring their attempts at a full life—it reminds me that I’m not alone, and mostly, as I heard people talk about their struggle with perfectionism, I sat there in that chair and decided (for the hundredth time) to go home afterward and do the write-up I needed to hand in to my superiors.

I heard them battling the beast, I heard them being flayed by it, and I decided I wasn’t going to let that be me, if only for an evening.

I cannot tell you how many times I make this declaration to myself. And then, simply do come home and watch Netflix, or surf Facebook. I wonder if the advent of television and internet has created in us a generation of procrastinators, but I certainly know that I am none too helped by it! (in binges, especially)

But for whatever reason (and I won’t call it exasperation, because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been exasperated, and still done nothing), I came home on Tuesday night, wrote what I needed to write, emailed it to a few friends for feedback, and handed it in yesterday.

And here’s the/a reward for overcoming perfectionism: It may not go the way you wanted anyway. I may hear, “Thanks, Molly, but we’re not in a position to… We’ll think about it for some undetermined date… This just isn’t in our vision or budget… We just need someone (you) to stay doing what you are doing indefinitely, or at least through the next year or more.” I may hear things I don’t want to hear in response to my action on behalf of myself and my ambition, BUT, the reward is that I get to hear something at all, instead of sitting, spinning, resenting, foaming, fuming, and … watching Netflix.

The reward for overcoming perfectionism (and it’s paralyzation) in just this one moment is that, no matter the results, no matter the response, I am actually moving forward, internally, for sure. What this does is tell me that, See Molly, once you did something. One time you took action on your own behalf, and instead of delaying your good, instead of languishing in a sea of self-pity, you get to feel proud, pro-active, like a leader. You get to feel like yourself, instead of like the skin of mutating fear that creeps up yours and mimics you out in the world.

I don’t know the result of the action I took, externally, at least. However, having put things in writing and gotten clarity around my vision and desire, if I don’t get the result I “want” here, in this environs, then I get to take that information and that knowledge and shop it around elsewhere. Because I took the action that I did, suddenly, I have a beginning instead of what my brain and that malevolent skin tells me is an end, a sorry, pathetic end.

Finally, I’ll repeat something I heard a long time ago, which I’ve agreed with and disagreed with over the years: We ask “god” for what we want; “he” gives us what we need; and in the end, it’s what we wanted anyway.

I know that what I wanted anyway was clarity and self-esteem, so, Team: Mission Accomplished. 

Hi. My name is Molly, and…

My thighs don’t touch.

(The following will be the notes and musings of a hopefully complete article I’d like to submit to some magazine or website or another.)

There was some article flying around social media recently about “real women” and their thighs touching. Somewhere along the way, the idea of women’s thighs not touching became the measuring stick for skinny, and has since become a meme for ire, derision, and rejection.

I want to fully and emphatically state that I believe in the “real women” movement that seeks to show all body types as valuable, beautiful, and audaciously sexy. I love that there is a movement whose purpose is to extol the virtues of all people and to help dismantle the idea that there is only one ideal for beauty, fitness, and femininity.

However, there is a seething undercurrent to some of this new “inclusiveness” that feels like burning those of us whose thighs don’t touch at the stake. That somehow in simply being and looking how we are, those of us with this kind of body shape are pulling down the wave of feminism. That if your thighs don’t touch, you are a tool for the patriarchy, and what's wrong with this country.

Like many women, I poke at my body, prod the sagginess that is and is below my tush. Lament the flatness of what god gave me to sit upon. I pinch my belly flesh when sitting, and feel a little chagrined that my boobs are small, but not pert, and like so many others', simply collapse flatly when I lie down.

But, I read a quote from a cancer survivor when I was fighting Leukemia that helped put some of this in perspective, and I have it taped to the full-length mirror in my closet:

When I wake up and my jeans don’t fit right: There are times when I still have those annoying body-image moments we all have. You can’t skip through a field of flowers every day. You just can’t. But I’ve come to realize that if you can stop the spinning in your brain of My jeans are tight, I can’t believe I ate that—if you can change your clothes, put some mascara on, get out of the house, and move on, life will be much more fun.

The truth is we women are just way too hard on ourselves. We need to remember there’s total beauty in who we are, and it’s not about what we look like. Cancer made me realize: You can cut off all your hair, and people will still think you’re great; you can look your worst after chemo, and people will still love you. So what the f--k have I been worrying about all my life? We spend all this time looking in on our lives from the outside, but we gotta get in it, and live it. Because it’s a day-by-day gig.

And if this is true, if what this “real women” movement is supposed to be saying is that we are more than what we look like on the outside, and that the outside no matter what is beautiful, too… then why are we burning women whose thighs don't touch at the stake?

There is a contradiction and hypocrisy in some of what that movement is purporting: All women are beautiful, except those whose thighs don't touch. They are part of the problem, and all must be dismissed and eliminated.

I get that there is a pendulum swing that must happen in order for us to come to the center of this issue, to the place where there is equality and equanimity, and I am still proud that this trend toward inclusiveness is happening in my lifetime. But as a member of the generation of women who are supposed to be supported and elevated and freed by this wave of feminism, I would like to be able to feel like I can march along as a "real woman" too, atop thighs that simply don’t touch, without being accused of treason. 

No Soup For You.

It’s astonishing, the lengths I’ll go to deprive myself.

The thick pattern of deprivation, living small, quietly, unobtrusively, knocks on the door of all my actions and insists on being allowed in.

Luckily, my latest personal recipe is: Me + G-d + Friends + Action.

I was on the phone with a friend the other day discussing the fact that I needed a spending plan for my upcoming trip to Seattle and Boston this Saturday. I told her that I’d already “found” $235 in my usual monthly spending plan, which means whittling funds from other line items, like entertainment, personal care, household purchases--line items that fluctuate anyway, so I consider them “fundgable” when they’re really not. (I’ve learned.)

This isn’t to say that my spending plan is a monthly set of 10 Commandments, chiseled in stone and fatal when not adhered to. It’s an ideal, a goal, a guideline, and the actuals that I tally at the end of each month tell me the story as it happened, instead of how I thought it would. Usually they’re pretty close these days.

However, when my friend and I were speaking about my trip, and we calculated aloud bus fare, BART fare, coffee&food at 4 airports in 10 days, groceries, eating out, incidentals, tchotckes, gas money… well, we figured it out to about $400, a number I’m supposed to double check before I leave.

Immediately, I begin mentally looking at those fundgable categories, which I’ve already cut thick slices from this month to support the trip. And I start to get panicked and fearful about the trip and how much I can spend, and try to pre-manipulate how I can spend less than I actually know I’ll need.

This, friends, is the compulsion. How can I whittle down my needs, how can I deny what is actually true about my needs, hide them, dismiss them, and discard them, so that I can live in a way that I misguidedly think will support me?

Luckily, I was on the phone with my friend as we spoke all this out, and I admitted to her that I have nearly a grand in my vacation savings account… but, I told her like a child revealing they’ve stolen a Snickers, I’m "supposed to" be saving it for my hypothetical trip to Paris with my mom next Summer.

I don’t want to give up my Snickers. I don’t want to break part of it off to eat now, because I believe I just need to save it for later, or there will never be enough.

This is preposterous. And where voices that don’t live inside my own head are so valuable.

She didn’t even have to say anything, as I admitted my vacation savings money could easily provide the additional $200 that I’ll actually need for this trip. I just talked myself through it, admitting it, accepting it, saying that I see the fallacy and the deprivation in that kind of save it ALL for some unknown date and live in fear right now thinking. And I told her I would move that money over this week, so that I could use it in today, for the intended purpose: vacation.

It’s not actually called “Paris Vacation with Mom” savings account: It’s just called Vacation. And if this isn’t the time to use those funds, when I need them, when I’m plotting to slice myself and my funds even thinner than they already are this month, then I haven’t learned a thing.

Yesterday, I did move that money. It felt illicit, illegal almost. I felt nervous and anxious and excited and proud to know that I was supporting a vision for myself without putting myself in deprivation.

The ridiculous part is that I will easily replenish that money in the vacation account over the next few months. “Vacation savings” is a line item in my spending plan every single month. It’s not like I’ll never get to go on a vacation again because I’m using this money now.

But my addiction to deprivation and fear continues to knock on my door and insist entry into my life and my decisions. So, luckily, today I have an antidote: Me + G-d + Friends + Action. 

The Father-Daughter Dance

My friend found out yesterday that her father is dying in Switzerland, and she and another friend happened to be at my house yesterday morning when she got the call. It felt like divine timing that she “happened” to be at my house, instead of alone in her apartment, when she received this call, and then had to argue with her phone company to get international calling added to her account so that she could call the ER where her dad was admitted.

We were able to sit there with her, just to sit in my kitchen while she paced my living room, on the phone. Able to make her tea and just set it there, whether she wanted to drink it or could or not. Able to bear witness to her tears, and her fear and her love and her fraughtness about timing and money and taxes and passports and citizenship.

We were able to help her talk through her very next steps, just the ones she needed to do that day in order to prepare to get on a flight tonight.

It was a gift to be able to be present with that.

These past two days, I’ve pulled the “Emperor” card. Shuffled them thoroughly, cut the deck, and again, this morning, I pulled the Emperor card.

I squick at this card. I don’t like it. In my book, it lists the traits of this card: Fathering, Structure, Authority, Regulation.

Um, you all know my dad was in the military, yes?

My friend yesterday, between phone calls, told us how much she loved and admired her father; what a kind man he was, how great a man he was. It was obvious that she had great esteem for him.

I, do not have the same feelings toward my own. And strangely, I got an email from him just a few days ago.

We haven’t spoken in months. Not since his brother died unexpectedly over Christmas.

But, I had been thinking about him, and that it was probably time for me to send an, “I’m not dead” email, just a check-in, just to touch base. And then, there was his email.

So, I replied. Reported the generic updates I would tell a casual acquaintance about my life. And it’ll probably be another several months until we speak again.

I’m still livid, folks. I’m still angered and betrayed and astonished at how he behaved when I had cancer, when I was going through chemo. How he demanded phone calls on his time table, instead of mine, when I was the one in a hospital bed with chemo dripping into a port in my chest. How he simply told me, when I asked for this to change, that, “This is how it works.” How, even though he was newly retired and was working in the yard of his fiancé, he somehow didn’t have any other time in the day to call his daughter in the hospital.

And mostly, it’s just sad. It just still saddens me that this man has no idea how to show up for people. That if it isn’t something that is structured, regulated, and orderly, he doesn’t know how to address it, and therefore, he simply tries to quash it. And, unfortunately, people, I’ve grown up too much to be quashed by him anymore.

I’ve done a ton of work around him, asking for compassion and forgiveness. In fact, just these few weeks, I’ve been using a new affirmation: I forgive my dad fully and easily.

Strange to realize now, after the new email, the Emperor card, my friend’s ailing father, that this might be part of that process. This doesn’t seem like coincidental timing to me.

I know that I have more work to do. I know that I feel very unwilling to forgive him, even at the same time that I have compassion and understanding for someone who never, ever had kindness modeled for him. Someone who didn’t have his own father, and only a step-father who demanded perfection and doled out derision. I know “how” to have compassion for him. And sometimes, many times, I have it.

But, forgiveness is another thing.

And I know that my unwillingness to forgive, to continue to drink the poison I intend for him, is only holding me back, and is only creating blackness in the light I want to move toward. I know that my unwillingness to forgive yokes me to him as surely as shackles, or, perhaps, as surely as love. 

I also know that it is only in the past few weeks that I’ve begun seeing this new therapist, and last week, just the mention of my father, almost in passing, came up. She remarked later that it was clear there was some work to be done there. Which, obviously, I know, and hope for us to do together.

The last thing, and the only thing that’s keeping me from burning that Emperor card is the end of the description in my book. It says this card can also stand in for the archetypal father “in his role as guide, protector, and provider.”

Surely, mine was not able to be this in a way that was supportive. But these are the exact qualities that I’ve been seeking and hoping the “Universe” embodies. That I’ve been praying for, and trying to trust the Universe to have. That it supports me with guidance, protection, and provisions.

Individual, versus Archetype. Reality versus Fantasy. Compassion versus forgiveness.

I really hate that card. 

Those Three Little Words.

I said them.

I can’t believe I said them.

It was my turn, my turn to say something, and I could feel your eyes watching me, waiting, and I just blurted them out. It was just what came to mind as I sat there in those few silent beats, my thoughts whipping from one thing to another, the split second where a thousand things could have been said, but instead of anything else... I said those three little words:

“God is Love.”

Oh, god! Did I really just say that?? Did I really just say the words that for years, eons it seems, I’ve gagged at, rolled my eyes at, laughed at, scoffed at?

Did those words really just pop into my head and out of my mouth? Oh god, I’d take them back, but…

I have despised this phrase: “God is Love.” The first time I heard it, I think I vomited in my mouth a little. It was so despicably saccharine and hippie and idiotic. There have been few phrases in the whole English language that have caused such antipathy and revulsion in me than this one.

“God is Love,” ew. Really? Just, Ew.

But, the first time I heard it must have been nearly 8 years ago now. I was 24 when I first heard it; I’m 32 now, and apparently, somewhere in that time my rejection of that phrase, that idea, that sticky ewwy gooey warmth, has softened.

This is as much news to you, as it is to me.

I sat with a group of folks yesterday morning, and at the end of our time together, a piece of paper with affirmations printed on it is passed around. You can choose to say one of these, or make up your own, or simply pass. There are phrases like,

I am enough

I have enough

I do enough

There is enough time

There is enough love

There is enough money

I am right where I’m supposed to be

My life works

I am not my income

I am not my debts

I am lovable exactly as I am.

At various times since I’ve sat with this group, different phrases have appealed to me. Some don’t, sometimes I make my own up. Lately, I really like this line from another part of the literature which reads, We will come to recognize a power greater than ourselves as the source of our abundance.

I like this, because it means I’m not the source, I don’t have to wrench or squeeze or wrest things out of life. I also like it because abundance can mean so many things, and affect so many areas: The Source of my abundance of: The physical, financial, emotional, locational, material, spiritual, comedic, familial, romantic. Of my thought life, my priorities, my perseverance, travel, prosperity, boundaries, action. Abundance of my vulnerability, intimacy, sexuality, authenticity. My focus. My laughter, my joy, my health, my vitality.

A power greater than myself is the source of all these and more, because surely, I am not the one who makes my heart beat, the trees flower, or puts those two new kitchen chairs out on the street just when I was thinking of needing new ones. Something else, just the anima of life itself, or simply gravity that causes the moon to phase, is greater than me, doing things without my hand, and offering me more than I've begun to know. 

But. God as Love?????

Ick.

And yet, it happened. The sheet with the affirmations passed around to me, it was my turn, and as I scanned the list, none of them spoke to me, and I was in the act of passing the sheet to the next person when those three little words escaped my lips.

I was taken aback. I was shocked at what had happened, what must have transpired in almost 8 years. I said something I thought I would never, ever say. Didn’t ever want to be like those saps who say things like God is Love.

And yet. M’ F’er. I did.  

“If I were a painter…” ~ Norah Jones

The earliest I can remember is drawing with sidewalk chalk on the dresser in my childhood bedroom. I was probably 14 or 15, beginning to assert a level of artistry and self-expression, and I decided to draw a chalk moon on one of the hutch doors above the dresser, and a sun on the other.

Senior year of college, much to my housemates’ chagrin, I began drawing on the walls. In my rented room, there was a walled up doorframe, which we’d left white when me, The Cousin, my best friend and her guy, A., painted two walls lavender and the opposite two a mint green.

This white moulding begged to become a frame, and when I was envisioning getting my first tattoo, I thought it reasonable to draw the image on my wall, so that I could live with it for a few months on my wall before permanently living with it on my body.

It was a sun again. Four feet of elaborate, vaporous rays that twisted, and in the center of the sun, I drew the infinity symbol, but shaded it to be three-dimensional, like a Mobius strip, looping infinitely. Eventually, I decided that the black & white kohl drawing was not enough, and spent a good deal of inebriated time coloring in the drawing with various nail polishes.

Unfortunately, the place I decided to get this tattooed was the inside of my left wrist, which is not a large canvas, and thus it lives, much simplified, on my skin. I was otherwise engaged at the time of “move-out” from that house, and so my father and brother had to clear out my room, and paint it all back to white, and over this artwork. My father asked incredulously what I must have drawn it with, since it took three coats to cover.

Living, later, in South Korea, in a rented studio apartment, I got the itch again. In those studios (which we would call junior studios), the refrigerator lives in the same room as your very small dining table and your bed, and so from the vantage point of my bed, I stared at this beige-ing plastic door, and decided it needed embellishment.

I used my acrylic paints to create huge designs, one in color on the top freezer half, one in black on the bottom. It was just abstract design, but it was playful, and certainly more interesting.

Eventually, my lover the painter came over one night, and together, naked, we painted the stainless steel panel that housed the water heater in my bathroom, which we could also see from the bed. Naked, inebriated, painted.

To complete the effect of living in a colored, effusive, manic wonderland, I painted the cabinets over my sink and small range stove. Purple and green again, like in college.

I’m sure to their dismay, shock, and irritation, my landlord discovered all this “improvement” to their apartment after I’d left the country when my contract ended.

And finally, when I was living in San Francisco in Cole Valley, the enormous expanse of my white kitchen cabinets called to my paint brush again, and I embellished them with a few outsized spheres and swirls, using the same colors that adorned that refrigerator in Seoul.

When A., my college room painter, was passing through San Francisco and came to visit, he noted upon seeing the cabinets, “Now, this looks like you.”

And yes, I owed a penny or two from my security deposit when I left that apartment, having every intention of painting the cabinets back to white, but just never getting around to it.

This morning, as I heated up my coffee and glanced around my kitchen, my vase of paint brushes caught my eye. Specifically a set that I keep in its original plastic case: these are good brushes, those. They were a gift from my Korean-years’ roommates during my first contract year there. I wondered to myself this morning when I’d last used them. Remarked that it’s been too long, much too long. Each of them, like pens, or a piano, or a piece you want to choreograph to, is potential. Each of them vibrates with the eventuality of what you can do with them, create with them, manipulate from them into being. They are possibility incarnate.

There was a time when I was still in conversation with The Cousin (not my cousin, fyi) when I remarked to him that it would be so easy for me to fall into the painting of our life together. Just fall into the frame, like something out of Mary Poppins, just tip over the gilding and onto the lawn with the white picket fence, the blue, cloud-flecked sky, and the ivy growing up the side of the house we live in together.

How easy it is to imagine that things are and were as easy as just stepping into an alternate reality, the one we’ve created for ourselves in our minds and mutual enchantment. A “reality” without mortgage payments or property tax on that ivy-laced house; without paychecks to support it; without the stymieing banality of pulling the garbage can to and from that picket fence.

Painting something doesn’t make it true. Imagining doesn’t make it easy. And desire doesn’t make it destiny.

It’s been a while since I’ve painted on my walls, but right now, the ones in my mind are devoutly Technicolor.