Conclusion.

The Cousin, of teenage fame and love unquenched, is getting married.

The Cousin (cousin of my brother’s best friend) and I had a long-running on-again-across-oceans-again relationship begun when we were teenagers.

I found his photo recently when I was clearing out my “g-d box” of items taken care of by time and fate, and those still remaining in an unresolved stasis. I didn’t put his photo back in the box, unresolved though I felt it to be -- For the last month or so, it’s sat by my jewelry box, the image of 16-year-old innocence and a complexity masked by his easy grin. I’ve spoken to it, asked it where he was, if he was happy, what he was doing, if he thought of me, if we were through.

Last we’d truly spoken, I’d confessed that his moving to California to join me was likely not a solution to the untethered life he was looking to escape. California didn’t save me, I told him on the phone the night of our last conversation. I had to do a lot of work for that to happen.

Our previous dreams of running away together, of his coming to California with me when I initially moved, that painting of the white picket fence that was more fantasy than reality, the painting of a life I wanted to fall into with him, but knew was not supported by truth… All this was crushed when I told him, No, you can’t move here to escape your life.

Years passed. There was one phone call, miraculously coincidentally when I was home in New Jersey in 2011, clearing out my childhood home before the house was sold. A fitting time to call, as I packed up a childhood, and all its experiences. It was where we met, in fact -- in my living room, with my brother, his best friend, and his cousin, visiting from Ohio.

The brevity of that initial visit, a summer of love, to be sure, meant that there wasn’t a foundation of reality to build upon, a life to support our connection. And in that house, a few years ago, I packed up the life of the person who’d fallen so passionately and deeply in love -- as well and as messily as a 19-year-old can do.

Our phone call wasn’t long. It was more a confirmation that we’d allowed the strains of time and place corrode the thread that connected us.

But, I’ve never felt complete with that ending.

And so, his photo remained in the “to be resolved” pile in my mental hopper, and for the last month, on my dressing table: his cheeky grin, dark mess of hair, lips that rival a female porn star’s.

And that’s how I recognized him when I saw his photo put up on Facebook yesterday by his aunt.

Time had changed him. His hair receded, cut short long ago for a military life he chose when he couldn’t move here.

But his lips are the same. That pouting lower lip I clung onto for hours. That framed his eager smile, formed his caressing words, and confessed his inner demons.

And he looks happy. On a hilltop in Hawaii with another woman. Someone who is available to make him happy, who can be there on his journey when I can’t be, since I can’t be.

That’s our conclusion, then. It’s not the final phone call I make to congratulate, to plant another seed or water a long-dead one. I am not saint or enlightened enough to not want to love him still, but I am wise enough to know we can’t – in the present, in reality.

So, I can put it here. I can write my gratitude for his finding happiness, what I’ve really wanted for him, no matter my personal desires. I can put here that I am glad to see him alive, well, experiencing life. That this conclusion is fitting, acceptable, and perhaps a happy one.

But I can also put here this conclusion ends a chapter that has spanned nearly half my life, has fed me great happiness, and has let me experience a connection with another human that I thought eluded me – I can put here that as I turn the page on “us,” I pack up that painting of the white picket fence with a mournful finality.

Third Star to the Right...

Call me a navel-gazer, but as the Jewish High Holidays approach, I get reflective.

At work, I'm neck deep in preparation for them, and acutely aware of their significance on the calendar than I ever was: Two years ago, at the end of September, I was diagnosed with Leukemia on the evening of Yom Kippur, our "day of atonement," the day on which we are either "sealed into the book of life" for another year ... or not. It's a pretty significant day on the Jewish calendar, and I have come to hate it.

I hate what it "means," about being sealed or not into the book of life. I hate how much changed in an instant, with one sentence told to me by a doctor. I hate remembering the sore throat that began the whole prelude to my ER visit, which kept me working from home, and feeling so badly about it since it was a brand new job.

But, what remembering this day also does for me is cause me to reflect on what has changed, and what has happened in the two years hence. I have endeavored to create "a life worth living" for myself against all the internal railing and nay-saying, against all my own self-sabotage, against all the foot-dragging and self-immolation I had previously submitted to.

In the last two years, I have dragged myself kicking and screaming into a life I consider worth living.

This isn’t to say that I’d done nothing beforehand, but here’s a list of experiences I've had & actions I've taken in the last two years, post-cancer:

Hosted my Creativity and Spirituality Workshop

Began blogging daily again

Went to Hawaii for the first time

Got a bedframe for the first time since childhood

Sang at a café with friends

Joined their band on bass

Played shows out, nearly once a month

Started ushering at Music shows for free & have seen, among others:

     - Paul McCartney (about to see him again next week)
     - Red Hot Chili Peppers
     - Doors guitarist Robby Krieger play "People Are Strange" with Warren Haynes...!
     - About to see Dave Matthews

Bought a car

Celebrated July 4th near my old hometown with my mom and brother

Busked on the streets of Oakland and SF singing Christmas caroles

Got real headshots

Auditioned for plays and musicals

Got cast in 4 shows

Modeled for friends

Submitted photos to modeling agencies

Visited Seattle for the first time

Visited Boston to try out a new relationship experience

Dated with craziness

Dated with less craziness

Got laid well

Got laid poorly

Visited a best friend and her newborn baby for a week

Hiked Tilden & Marin

Took accredited acting classes

Took voice lessons
Flew a plane(!) -- and landed it ;)

Any of these things could have happened beforehand (and some were indeed happening, with less gusto, determination & regularity), but most of the activities on this list are new to me.

I was talking with a friend a few months ago, another cancer survivor, and she said that she feels complete with the world – that if she died today, she’d be okay with that. I noticed how not okay I'd have been with that; virulently not okay.

Granted, she’s about 10 years older than me, has a daughter, teaches in a way she loves, is married.

And I think those are key differences. Having created your own family, having a career you feel impassioned about. Those are items that are not yet on my above list, and I want them to be before I expire, thank you.

I do however, write this list to reflect to myself that there are things that I’ve done that are miraculous, fun, and inspiring for anyone to have done, let alone l'il ole me. I forget this, frequently.

It’s hard to admit this here, and it’s not precisely the entire truth, but if I were to expire sooner than later... Well, I won't say, "If I died today, I'd be okay with that," but that I am exponentially grateful for this role I’ve recently landed. To play in a musical, comedic role at a community theater is the cat’s pajamas. (If I have to go soon, I hope it's after we open!) 

When I returned from teaching English in South Korea almost 10 years ago, I said I was coming home to “break onto Broadway.” Then instead, I got sober!

And now, 8 years since then, I’m taking steps that are developmentally appropriate to that dream. It’s in the right direction, even if I never get there. It's my impassioned avocation, even if it’s not a vocation.

I do not wish to expire soon. I have more experiences I want to add to that list, and more sanity and evenness I wish to accrue. But I feel more comfortable now than I had been even a few months ago in noticing that I am accumulating the experiences that, to me, express a full and well-lived life.

I wouldn’t have as many regrets if it were to happen soon. I have a few regrets of things I’ve done & ways I've re/acted in the last two years, sure. It’s not as if I’m a saint, and sometimes I still choose experiences I know are more damaging than useful.

But instead of waiting to be "inscribed in the book of life" by some entity or religion or benchmarks of success otherwise prescribed to me by my childhood, my faith, my inner critic...

Instead I am coming to believe that I am following my own North Star: I may never get there, but I'm headed in the "right direction."

And for the first time ever, I deeply feel that. 

Card Reading

I had very specific plans for when I came home last night: watch Apollo 13, “take care” of myself, and go to bed by 10.

Only one of these happened.

For most of the day, I was out & about in lots of conversation with lots of people, expending lots of up, outgoing energy, and I wanted to counter it with some quietude. Before coming home for the evening, I was in a coffee shop, finishing up some extra work, and addressing cards for some friends.

I didn’t have the address for one, so I texted her for it, and told her that I must have 10 of her envelopes at home with her address on it; in fact, I had one of hers on my mantle.

She asked me which one, but I couldn’t recall exactly, and told her I’d send her a photo of it when I got home.

This, was the first domino toward the hijacking of my evening.

I did come home, take a photo and send it to her, a lovely decorated envelope with stickers and curly-cues and kind words, like all of hers. Next to it on my mantle (well, the top of a bookshelf, really) were a card from the director and one from the assistant director of the play I was in in April, with deliciously glowing, appreciative, complimentary, and supportive words. Such kindness and such a reflection of my being “seen” by them, in one of my aspiring avocations. The last one up there was a thank you card from my best friend on Long Island’s wedding, thanking me for being there and what a treat it was to have me there, literally in her bed, the night before the wedding, and helping/watching her get ready the next day; that it wouldn’t have been the same without me.

You can see why I keep these things.

But, it was also time to probably pack them away, do some cleaning. And I wanted to send more photos of my friend’s envelopes to her, since I knew she was in a space to need her own (literal) sparkle reflected back to her. 

And, down the rabbit hole we go, into the desk drawer where I keep cards, envelopes so I can remember return addresses (yes, I know there’s a better way), and art inspiration bits, like postcards from galleries or pages torn from magazines.

I’ve known this drawer needs attending to. If, god forbid, I were to croak, it would be hell for the person cleaning it out, and I know they’d just trash the lot, since, who keeps someone else’s old greeting cards.

But, also, it’s unusably full at the moment. Because in it, too, are all the cards I received when I was initially diagnosed with Leukemia in late September 2012, and also a host of them came in around the Hanukkah/Christmas season that year.

I’ve been avoiding having to carve through them. Because how can you discard those messages?

When I was sick, I lined all the cards up on the walls of my hospital room. I taped every single one up around me, to remind me of the network of support and love that I had. Each card, a message of love, faith, healing, fortitude, just for me. You couldn’t come into my hospital room without immediately knowing that I was loved. And how f’ing important was that.

This was not the room of a dying woman. This was not the room of a woman told she had a 40% chance of living through the next 5 years, even with treatment. This was not the room, either, of a woman who looked like a patient, despite the baldness, weightloss, and IV stuck into my arm and chest. I wore jeans and a sweater, like everyone else. I was a human, not a patient. I was a woman loved, not a pity case.

How rallyingly important was that to know, feel, and remember every single day.

But, when the trips to the hospital were finally over, and it was time to reacclimate to living in my apartment full-time, what to do with those cards?

I’m a keeper of things. Sentiments, magazine pages, interesting rocks I find on a mountain or beach. I wouldn’t say I’m a hoarder, but I do have a bag of gently used tissue paper in my closet … but it’s folded neatly and in color blocks, so it’s okay, right?!

I also have a bag in my closet of the covers to theater booklets of plays I’ve been to; movie stubs; plane tickets; the brochure for a place I went camping or an attraction I toured.

The trouble is, I’m not a scrap-booker, so I just kinda carry this bag of non-chronologically ordered “crap” with me from home to home. But, that’s okay. One day, like the cards, I’ll go through them.

But, last night was for the card drawer.

It was slow-going. I had to take a deep breath before taking the rubber band from around the batch of 2012 holiday cards. I knew this was going to take a while and probably bring things up.

But I began. And with each card, I was reminded of why I’d kept them until now.

Here’s the one from my college classmate, now in LA, saying she’d enclosed a gift card to Trader Joes.

Here’s one from a former colleague saying she loves getting the bloggish updates I was posting then to my lotsahelpinghands website.

Here’s one handwritten from an Etsy company saying “a friend” was thinking of me and wanted me to stay warm. This, I remember, accompanied a package of 6 “chemo caps” ranging from thin to thick, the one I wore most, a fuzzy leopard print that kept me feeling fun and warm. I still don’t know who sent those, as there was no name. Thank you, whoever you are.

Last night, with each, if I knew the sender and their cell number, I took a photo of the card, and sent it as a text with a note of thanks to them. Each text, a reminder to us both of what friendship means, even for people who aren’t close.

It was nearly 11 when I finally decided to stop. I’ve barely made a dent into the drawer. But was able to cull a few things out, deciding that with some, having a photo of them now is enough.

At the closing of this activity, I found myself in soft tears of gratitude. So many people surrounded me with love. With funny cards and sentiments, with crazy wacked-out envelopes, with heartfelt messages of hope and healing. And only a handful of these folks were people I keep in regular touch with. So many people came out of the woodwork to support me.

I was told once during the time I was sick, that I had no idea how many people were rooting for me. I agreed. I knew I had no idea, and I knew that was astounding and one of the greatest showings of human generosity that I’ve witnessed.

I had priests, rabbis, Muslims, and Buddhists praying for me. My mom’s hairdresser and my Aunt’s student. I had a class of kindergarteners praying for me.

I remember, too, when I was sick, trying to figure out how I could send thank you cards to everyone who’d contacted me, but I could only handle a few.

In this retread through the cards, in sending them back out to their sender with my note of thanks, I hope I am closing that loop of love, and letting you all know:

Your prayers worked, and I love you back.  

Aesop was a Scientist.

Chances are, like me, you’ve heard a hundred versions Aesop's fable, "The Oak and the Reed," wherein we're taught to bend like a reed in a storm, instead of remaining stalwart as an oak which will be blown over.

The moral is to remain flexible in the face of challenge or adversity, instead of becoming rigid and unmoving. To move with the times, to let things shift around you without trying to control them or how they’re affecting you. To be at ease with how things are, because when the storm does pass, if you’ve remained reed-like, you’ll stand up into the sunlight again.

Yes, we’ve all heard this, and again if you’re like me, you vacillate between these flora’s coping mechanisms, flexible to rigid and back again. Sometimes within the same hour.

However, one story I didn’t know was one I heard on the little audio book I’m listening to now: The Biodome Moral.

(Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with the Pauly Shore movie, but it’s valuable nonetheless.)

Scientists in the 80s, the book reports, created a perfect replica of Earth and Earth’s atmosphere within a dome. They then sent 8 scientists into the dome to live there for 2 years. Among their findings was what happened to the trees.

Inside the dome, there was no wind and no storms. The scientists assumed that without the challenges of storms to damage the trees, they would grow taller and stronger and faster than those outside the dome.

Indeed, the trees grew faster and taller. But not stronger.

The trees were weak, and easily uprooted. The scientists discovered that the trees needed the challenge of the storms, of withstanding the storms, in order to become strong and healthy. By eliminating all adversity from their lives, they became big and tall, sure, but they also became hollow and weak.

Remind us of any other species?

I am not an advocate for adversity. I bristle vehemently when told that adversity is "a blessing," as I’m occasionally told about my cancer.

Which, by the way – never tell someone that. If they want to say that to you, great; listen, nod, be compassionate. But never be the one to tell them that it makes them stronger, never tell them that there will be a gift from it, or that it is itself a gift. All these things may be true, but fuck you, healthy person, for telling me to look on the bright side of leaking out my ass for a month. Even though you mean it authentically, lovingly, and truthfully.

I happen to know these things are true. I write here that they are; that having had that adversity has impelled and propelled me to engage in my life and in activities that I’d procrastinated on; necessitated my creating new relationships and boundaries that I’d been too scared to create before. Having had and survived cancer has irrevocably changed the rest of my life and given miles of perspective to every other storm I may encounter.

But if you haven’t noticed, sometimes we get tired of encountering storms, and I’d really prefer for you to not steal my lemons to make your own lemonade. -- And I still wouldn't call it a blessing. An opportunity, I'd concede. But I'm sure no one ever said: Bless me, father, with life-threatening illness. 

... I guess I still have some letters of complaint to write to the Universe's customer service department.

So,

The absence of storms makes us weaker. But, the preponderance of storms makes us exhausted.

To continue in fable-speak then, I suppose it’s appropriate to quote Goldilocks on the merits of balance and the middle way. To endeavor to create, withstand, be free from and grow from challenges that are not too big, not too small, but “Just Right.”

Band Aid.

You know, it was right around a year ago last June that I stood up with a group of 4 other people and played bass with a band in front of actual people in an actual venue. – I’d started playing in May.

This month, I’m being invited to do so again.

I’ve picked up my bass literally once in the last 6 months, since our final show on New Year’s Eve, or the final show I played with them before I left the band to pursue theater.

This switch, this focus of my energies in one creative direction (one that I’ve always wanted to pursue, but never let myself try or admit or commit to) has turned out pretty darn well in these last few months: I got real headshots, auditioned about a dozen times, performed in one play, one staged reading, and am preparing as the lead in a play at the end of the summer.

These are all great things.

But I miss the band.

I miss the immediate gratification of playing with people. I miss the noise, the movement, the sound, the collaboration. I miss the laughter.

Theater is performance; being a musician is a performance; but there’s a difference. The former is literally more staged. It’s not like I have acres of experience in either, and maybe I simply fell in with a great group of people for my first band – which I did. But whatever the formula is for happiness, I felt that when I played.

A friend once asked me what it was like to play with the band. What it felt like. And I took her question with me to band practice that week, and noticed how I felt as we fiddled and fixed and went over and over and moved into a rhythm, and went totally off the reservation with funny lyrics and made-up progressions: I was smiling. I was bouncing on the balls of my bare feet – the only way I could practice – and I noticed that I felt content, engaged, in the moment, fun, funny, “on.” That’s what “happy” felt like.

Next Sunday, I’ll get to practice with a new group of folks, a friend and his friend, to prepare for a potential show in July, before my theater rehearsal gets going. I’m feeling nervous and jittery – wanting to get the music charts NOW so I can practice, be perfect, be better – because if you haven’t followed along, I’ve only been playing a year, and not that consistently at that!

I want to build my calluses back up. I want to remember where C is on the fret board. I want to bounce on the carpet in my bare feet.

I love this theater stuff, … but I love the band better.

(P.S. I’m just reminded to reflect that it was only a little while ago that I wrote here that I wanted to “band” again … and here it is. Word.)

Being There

See, there’s two things I’d forgotten in all the sturm&drang of rehearsals & work & sick & crossing bridges & lack of down time: I’m actually good at this acting thing. And I enjoy it. 

In the maelstrom of preparation, I forgot why I was doing this.

As I sat in our reserved cast seats in the front row of the audience, watching the other actors before my scene perform, I got a few minutes to gather myself, and reflect. Something the director said during the “let’s get PUMPED” speech before we got into costume helped to remind me: She said, This is for you. This isn’t for your friends, your parents, your partners: This is for you.

This is for me, I repeated to myself. I remembered that this isn’t for a resume, for a good story to tell when I’m older; this isn’t for accolades or for money. I am doing this acting thing, because I enjoy it. Because it’s FUN. Because, once I do get through rush hour traffic from Berkeley, once I do find parking in the Mission behind some dude drinking Steel Reserve and selling electronics out of his car, once I do get upstairs through the weird haunted building, I come to a black box theater.

In that theater, I’m there to have fun, to enjoy myself, and to share myself. I’m there to engage in something I thoroughly enjoy, just for the sake of it. How fucking novel.

It was and is nice to have been sought out during the wine&cheese reception after the show by a cute little gay boy and his girl friend, to have them sidle up during a conversation with a beamish grin, and tell me how great my performance was. That they got chills. To ask if I did that thing with my hands on purpose, and wow, you did? Wow. That was so great.

It’s gratifying to know that something that I actually enjoy doing is enjoyed and appreciated by others—that’s true, too. (We are only so spiritual!)

But then, isn’t that the point of theater, too—to affect another person. To affect an audience, to help them experience something? Sure, Mol, sure. Yes, you can enjoy the accolades, too. As long as they’re not what’s driving you.

In the chaos of rushing to work, to rehearsal, to home, to do it all over the next day, I began to feel weary. I began to feel like maybe I’m not cut out for this—that maybe this hustle is a younger person’s game. Maybe it’s too late for me to be high-tailing it all over creation in service of a pipe dream.

I really was beginning to wonder if I would audition again.

Part of my delay/hesitance recently, is that I knew I was in a production that was taking all my time & memorization space. Part of it is that I know I’m going out of town in April, and didn’t want to audition for anything new when I’ll be gone. (Cuz, it seems to me that working actors can’t really take vacation…)

And, part of it was/is just plain exhaustion and feeling grueled instead of fueled.

But, I am getting to see that perhaps this is just part of the process. Part of that “put in the hard work to enjoy the results” thing that I’m so loathe to do most of the time. HARD work? Meh.

But, perhaps that’s what’s required here, to get the feeling I had last night. Sure, I fucked up some lines, but people didn’t seem to notice. I still got to feel the sense of “right place.” In the chair, on the stage, in front of lights so bright you can only make out shapes in the audience; hearing the sound cues, the mounting tension of my scene, the mounting tension I bring to my scene. Getting to be there, getting to sit in that chair and show you what I’ve got – It was... well, enlivening.

There’s a phrase I’ve heard to name those times when you are so engaged that you feel out of time, out of the chaos of place, when you are so in something that “time just flies,” – it’s called being “in the flow.” When you are so engaged in what you are doing, when you are so enjoying what you are doing that you are somehow matching the heartpace of the Universe. When for moments or even hours, you just feel in it – your speed aligns with the speed of life, and you flow, you coast, you glide.

In it. To be IN IT. In life.

There was a moment, too, as I sat in the dark audience awaiting my scene that I remembered something I sometimes do: I survived cancer to be here, and I am HERE. Staking a claim. Making a name. Claiming my own.

The gratitude I felt to get to be in that PUMP YOU UP circle before the show: All chaos, time pressure, toll bridges are lost – and I’m just there. 

Time: in fair and foul

Oops, I did it again -- I changed my clocks on the wrong day! (Last time, I changed them in the wrong direction!) I don't think I'm cut out for this. 

In speaking of time, tomorrow will mark one year from my final day of chemo. Last year, today, March 8, I was in Kaiser hospital, 6th floor, on the “off day.” Since I had Leukemia, the treatment is different than you hear for outpatient breast cancer treatment or even lung cancer (not that they don’t go through hell, too). How the treatment went is that each month I spent a week in the hospital (after the initial first month in), and would get chemo on days 1, 3, 5, and then on day 6, if I looked healthy enough, I could go home. 

“Healthy enough.” Sheesh. What a thing.

A year before that, I was probably working on and procrastinating on my MFA Poetry thesis at Mills College.

There was a moment after my diagnosis during which I was sitting at this same kitchen table, likely in these same pajamas, when I looked out this same window at the cypress trees that grow over the roof of the building next door. I’ve always watched them, since I’ve lived here. They’re one of the few trees in my area that loses leaves, and then regrows them in full regalia in the spring and summer.

I sat at this table, and as it was October/November, I watched it shedding the last of its leaves for the year. And I wondered if I would see its leaves return. If I would be alive to witness it.

And I was. And I will be when, once again, the brown tree suddenly sports those green buds that never cease to surprise me, like an overnight graffiti artist.

Perhaps some people think my marking of this time is morbid. And maybe it is. But, it’s impossible for me to turn away from. I don’t always think about it; in fact, over the course of these few months, the “this time last year” thought has become pretty scarce. But sometimes, there are moments to remember, to recall, measure against, and praise to high bloody heaven and hell and all the imps in between that *I made it,* through all of it -- the terror, the loneliness, the unknowing, the isolation of it. I made it through alive, and healthy, my eggs still ticking in my ovaries, my blood producing what it ought to. I made it through the arguments with doctors, through giving myself injections, through Christmas in an inpatient bed. 

I made it through with your soup waiting for me in the hospital fridge, with the cup of coffee you went out of your way to Peet's to buy, with the fuzzy blanket and the neon socks you brought to keep me warm. 

I made it through with the green shakes you made for me, and the protein drinks you sought out at Whole Foods. With the burritos you bought and the chicken you made. I made it through with our conversations about leaving your store, leaving your soon-to-be ex-wife; about polyamory and the '89 fire. I made it through when you held my hand as I bawled into your chest, heaving the Ugly Cries because I knew you could take it. 

I made it through when you brought a big book and a 12 and 12, and we sat and talked about other things anyway. But the praying helped. 

A year ago tomorrow, I will have been awoken at 6 in the morning. I will have had my pee measured, my temperature and blood pressure taken, and swallowed the pre-medication meant to stave off nausea. I will then have gotten dressed, eaten whatever plastic-wrapped breakfast they’d provided, done my morning pages, meditated, and perhaps written my blog if I could get it in before I got hooked up to the IV pole.

The nurses will have come in in yellow apron suits over their scrubs, and thick blue gloves and goggles. The two, always two, would call the numbers of my ID back to each other, the volume of the chemo, confirming the three hours it was to drip into the port line that entered my chest and pumped into my heart.

A year ago tomorrow, in the evening, they would do the same 12 hours from the first one. And by the time the bag of clear but ominous liquid was empty and the machine was beeping loudly for the nurse, I will have tucked into the stiff hospital bed with that fuzzy blanket, curled up maybe with a book, maybe too tired to read, and they would come back in their yellow suits and thick gloves, and unhook the tube from my chest. 

And I will have had my last round of chemo. (Ever.)

Gung Hay Fat Chance

(*have no idea if this will go there, but I had to use that phrase!)

I didn’t graduate college “on time.” All my roommates and classmates were getting their tassels aligned and family convened, and I was lining up for Seroquel, my family convening in a sterile hospital cafeteria.

So, when that episode was over, I got a rinky-dink job at a local drug store, and when that was enough of that (and my hair had grown back somewhat), I got a job as an admin in an insurance claims company, finished my degree with night classes, and graduated in May of ’04, instead of ’03.

That summer, I applied for the Birthright program—a program which sends Jewish teens and 20s to Israel for 10 days for free if they’ve never been. I applied and was accepted to the “graduate” program, the older group of folks, between 22 and 26. I spent 10 days in a dusty bus gaining some of the most incredible experiences, and information—nearly all of the people on the bus were “doing something” with their lives. One worked at a magazine in New York City; several were in law school; one taught high school English in a Catholic school. I… was a claims adjustor.

When I got back to my cubicle, under the fluorescent lights, I decided it was time to call this episode over, too. Incredibly, my dad had met a woman on his commuter bus who was an editor at a New York magazine, and through a short interview process, I was hired as their Editorial Intern.

It was amazing. It was probably the job I’ve enjoyed most of any I had. The differences were drastic: although I was working longer hours with a much longer commute, I was coming home more “happily tired” than simply exhausted, as from the claims job. I loved the work. Writing copy, coordinating with off-site editors, proofreading & editing. I even wrote my own article about Bill Nye The Science Guy’s endorsement of a new brand of contact lenses.

I loved the pace, the investment I had in the work, the creative input I was able to have. The respect I had of my superiors for my intelligence and ideas. I loved working at 6th and Canal, walking the street vendors at lunch, earning real dough, even for an intern.

But, summer ended. It was a post-9/11 market still, and small optical trade magazines didn’t have much of a budget for an editorial assistant. So I went back on the market.

The market was bare.

My aunt suggested I go teach English abroad. She’d done it in Taiwan, and there were plenty of recruitment companies to choose from. I found one, and in conversation with them, found out that although there were plenty of South East Asian jobs, the most money was to be made in South Korea.

So, after a 9 pm phone interview with a school director outside of Seoul, two days later, I’m buying my first real luggage at Target. Two days from then, I’m on a plane to a place I’d never been to work with people I’d never met in a country whose language I did not speak, to remain for the next 18 months.

Sure. Why not?

My experiences were wide and varied and not always pleasant in that peninsular country. I won’t engage the story here (I’ve got to leave for work), but the school year always ended and began around the Chinese New Year, a.k.a. today.

Today would be the day you would be assigned or reassigned to a classroom of sometimes wily, sometimes endearingly shy 5 year olds. Today, as the cherry blossoms bloomed outside and streets were hung with red paper lanterns and students’ parents handed you red envelopes full of “thank you” tips, you listened to the 5 year olds who had cried at the start of the year, “Teacher! Water!,” ask you, “Molly Teacher, I’m thirsty. Can I have some water, please?”

It was more beautiful than the blossoms. 

That 20/20 Thing.

I guess I should tell you about the miracle-y things that have been happening during this time. There are two major ones, and here they are:

One: My Job

(It’s funny, when I was home sick with strep prior to going to the hospital, I emailed my boss about my home-sick-from-work status with the title of the email “I thought Job was a later chapter” – little did I know!) ;P

So, as some of you have been reading, I’d been unemployed since graduating with my Master’s in May. I’d been actively looking, thinking about moving back home, applying to anything and everything, with no luck for months. Then, I got the job I now have at the synagogue in Berkeley.

When I got this job, I was resentful. I was thrilled to increase my bank balance from $3.98, but I felt ashamed that I had worked so hard and arrived at what I considered to be an entry level position in the front office – somewhere I’d been many times before. You heard me gripe about it, be the opposite of humble about it, and generally kinda be a dick about having finally gotten a job when I so desperately needed one.

So, here’s the “oo ee oo” part. I got sick. I got really sick. I will be in and out of the hospital for the next 5 months or so, mostly in. So, I can’t work, obviously.

My boss’s son had cancer when he was a child, and his son is alive well, and just had a kid of his own. My boss has had empathy for my situation from the beginning, and as this started to go down, he said to me that they would have a temp in until I came back – that they would hold my job for me. …

At the time this was said, I still didn’t really know what all this cancer treatment would look like – how long it would be. So a few weeks later, when I now knew it was going to be 5 months, not one, and my boss came to visit me in the hospital, I hemmed and hawed – would they still keep my job for me, knowing how long it would be ‘til I came back? Should I tell him? Should I not and just hope for the best?

Well, I ended up telling him. And you know what he said? “I know how important job security is at a time like this, and your job will be here for you when you’re ready.” WHAT THE HELL? How are people so nice?

And here’s the miracle part – IF I had gotten a job with any other company, I can’t imagine that they would be a tenth the amount of understanding. I mean, a bottom line, deadlines, emails, someone needs to be ON IT. If I had gotten any other job, I can’t imagine that they’d hold my job for me ‘til I was healthy, let alone come visit me in the hospital as several of my BRAND NEW coworkers have, and the others who are planning to.

I couldn’t have planned this at all – and I was so pissed! So, hindsight is 20/20 and all that, right?

Although, there’s the part of me that’s like, um, hey G-d, you OBVIOUSLY saw this cancer thing coming, having set me up like a champ here, couldn’t we have gone a different route … but, it is what it is.

Two: My Apartment

I used to work for the property management company that manages my apartment building here in Oakland. When I worked for them in SF, they helped me get my apartment in SF, and when I moved to Oakland, they were equally as generous in helping me with my apartment here (which, by the way, is a 5 minute walk from the hospital at which I’m being treated…).

I left that job under not the most admirable circumstances, and earlier this year, I emailed my former boss to say as much and to apologize for not having been the worker I could have been. He emailed me back to say, yes actually, I could have handled that better, but that he “had my back” if I needed a reference or anything.

Later this summer, however, I emailed him when I was in my mania of “do i move back to New Jersey right now??” and I asked if I could give two-weeks’ notice on the apartment if needed, instead of a month. He emailed one word. “No.” And his assistant emailed me a form for the 30-day notice format ;)

So, I had no idea where I stood in his shit books or not when my mom called him early in October and said, basically, my daughter has leukemia and isn’t working, what can we do here?

Cue the “oo ee oo” once more. My former boss said … he himself had leukemia two years before. He asked if I’d applied for disability (if I’d have any income at all), my mom said yes. And he said, Don’t worry about it. Just keep me informed, and we’ll work it out.

…

What? In SF Bay Area? Rent is a “we’ll work it out”?? Miracle. He told my mom that I’d helped him out when he’d needed it, and true, I drove his dad to dialysis three days a week for a period while I worked there (although, I think I got more out of that one – I learned a lot in those conversations with that man).

My friend said recently to me that we get what we put into the world, and all the goodness that’s coming back to me is simply that. I’m just getting back what I’ve put into it.

It’s a little weird to think like that though, because my immediate thoughts are, it’s not like I am nice on purpose, it’s not like I’m keeping score of how great a person I am as I go out into the world. I just am how I am. So it feels weird to feel like, in a way, I’m being rewarded for that “just the way I am”ness.

However, I was contemplating that ridiculousness the other day, and I thought to myself, Molly, I don’t think cancer is a reward. :P

The bottom line of the above two amazing stories is the generosity of the human soul. It doesn’t really have anything to do with me.

I was talking with my current boss the other day about how many people are wanting to help and do things for me, but there’s often not much to do. I mean, I don’t really need much, except for some cards, and visits, and on occasion a ride to the doctor or a grocery run. But only one person at a time needs to do that. So there’s not a lot for people to do, and I feel that desire they have – to want to do something. To want to take some aspect of my own burdens away from me, because there are going to be many things that only I can and will go through by myself in this process.

So, I’m going to try to think on what people can do that’s concrete, that gives an opportunity to help and feel useful. Because this is what I said to my boss – these days, we rarely get the chance to help each other anymore. We’re all so independent, and I can do it on my own, that as a society and a people, that no one seems to need help anymore.

In a way, my being sick gives others the opportunity to help – to allow them to feel that good nachas (Yiddish) from doing something for someone else, just out of the kindness of their heart. Not for gain, or to check that score card I talked about. But just to help, because you can, and because you want to.

The capacity for human kindness shines very much in this portion of my story. Which, really, isn’t Job, because I’ve got a lot more support than he ever did. And I never owned any goats. 

Cancer.

About a month ago, I was diagnosed with Leukemia. And my whole life changed.

I don’t know what this change is, was, will be, but I know that I am in several ways entirely different than I was. The way, at least right now, that I see things are entirely new. And profoundly grateful. I almost died. And yet, I didn’t.

We each get this each day – I got this each day, prior to this happening. I got the chance to understand that life was precious, but I didn’t, really. I understood it, but to really feel it? Well, it’s different now,

and it brings up a host of other questions. Am I allowed to still watch Ben Stiller movies? Am I allowed to spend a day on the couch? Will I now stop stopping myself short on all my varied art projects, and allow myself to follow through on anything that I’ve started? I have no idea.

I’d like to think that part of this “change” – for lack of a better term for “life altering sudden tragic happening” – will indeed move me toward being more in my art, more in my life. I’d like to believe that part of this whole thing is a very nasty kick-upside-the-head lesson in not living for tomorrow. That I’m being given the chance to very acutely see that life is short and tenuous, and so I ought to embrace the talents that I have, and finally let myself explore them fully so that I might share them with you.

I’d like to believe that there are lessons here. Otherwise, what the fuck.

I’d like to believe that the Universe or my Higher Power couldn’t -- for some reason completely unknown to me – send me a postcard, or a dream, or a message on Facebook. That for some reason this lesson had to be learned hard, and fast, and therefore more gentle methods of smoothing a rock down to its shiny parts were not available to this massive Power.

I’ve been out of the hospital for a week now, and I will go back in next Monday for another round of chemo. This will be the 2^nd in a series of, likely, 5 treatments. The words that I’ve had to learn over this month scare the crap out of me. I don’t want to use words like chemo, nausea, pain meds, pneumonia. I don’t want to hear “How bad is the pain on a scale of 1 to 10,” or, “It’s time for your shot,” or “Well, we expect this.”

I’ve oscillated since I’ve been out of the hospital between those few stages of grief – anger, grief, acceptance. Often within the same minute. When I was in the hospital, there wasn’t time for anything except acceptance. This is happening. Period. Go with it. And, despite what you may think, it’s really f’ing busy in the hospital with people coming in and out at all hours of the day and night, throwing information or medication at you. There’s not really time to process, space to absorb and consolidate what has been happening to me.

And so, being home now, I’m getting the chance to experience what I couldn’t while basically holding my breath for 3 weeks. I’m getting to realize the enormity of what happened. The slow, marinating, seeping reality – I almost died. The nurse told me that I had 49% leukemic cells in my blood when I came into the hospital – WITH STREP THROAT – and that if I hadn’t come in, I would have died within two weeks. I would have gotten a bleed, likely in my brain, and I would have just died. No one would have known – no one would have known why. Relapse? Suicide? Understanding this fact has begun to lead me to know that I need help in holding the space for all this – and yesterday I contacted a cancer support group.

AND, I have to tell you, I don’t want to be someone who needs a cancer support group – I shouldn’t have motherfucking cancer in order to need such a group. A month ago, this was unfathomable.

This morning, I read my last Morning Pages entry from the week before I went into the hospital. I haven’t written morning pages since then, I was too sick, and then too hospitalized. And so I read them, and I see myself talking about how my throat really is starting to hurt. About how I went to the art store Flax and got new pens and a notebook and talked to the woman in the back about different types of pressed paper – hot press versus cold, what would be good for the art I want to do. About the café I’d emailed with the month before about putting up a show in their space, and how he wanted to do November, but I simply wasn’t ready, as it was the end of September at the time.

I’d written about the clothing I’d bought for cheap at good thrift shops, and the flying lesson I was scheduled for, which ended up being the day I went into the ER. I wrote about being excited, about art that I would make. About missing my family, and wanting to go home for Thanksgiving to see them.

In some ways, it feels like reading a journal from junior high, it feels so long ago. And yet, it’s all still me. And that’s something that I want to take away from this too. This process is going to be HARD, challenging, painful, difficult, and yet, I’m still me. As I was writing my first Morning Pages this morning since that last entry, I was inwardly elated to see my handwriting hadn’t changed. That major facts of who I am have not changed. That things that were important to me then, “before cancer,” are still things that are important to me now. – art, family, adventure.

I’ve been blasted with some of the nastiest chemicals, shorn down to the barest slices of my body ... but my handwriting is still the same.

I could go into the ways in which gratitude has become this sort of well of tears behind my eyes at all times. I could talk about how just waking up this morning feels like a gift. But I don’t want to today, really. I could list the thanks and the inundation of love and support and care, but that’s not what this blog is about this morning, at least. It’s not a love fest, it’s just a truth fest. About where I am this very day, at this very time, arguing and stamping and shaking a fist at the sky with WHY in the m’f’in hell couldn’t you have made this a little bit of a gentler lesson? About how I feel like I’m some sort of icon now, with people telling me all the time what an inspiration you are, when I’ve had diarrhea for 3 out of the last 4 weeks. I’ve asked people what on earth that even means, an inspiration to what? What have I inspired in you? What am I inspiring you to do? I haven't done anything except lived.

I get to be bitter about it. And I get to be amazingly thankful to get to be bitter about it – to be alive enough to have emotions enough to get to scorn about it.

It is surely true, the love and support I’ve gotten. And yet, there’s a part of me that feels angry that I even have a situation in which to receive such love and support. I know people love me. Couldn’t I have had my 31^st birthday at a restaurant with them, instead of in a hospital bed? Couldn’t I have learned to get out of the way of my own creativity and drive and lust for life in a different, gentler way? Couldn’t I have gotten to see my family by flying East for Thanksgiving, instead of them flying West to hold my hand while my hair falls out?

I’m grateful for this blog – this tempestuous blog that gives me the chance to be honest in every way. Which I want to use to springboard to something else, to write in another venue, maybe one that’s paid. I’m glad that I get to write here, as someone told me, as I speak – that if I write the way I talk, they said, I’m surely a great writer. I don’t know how much that is true, but somehow the cancer lets me see it a little more clearly. And perhaps begin to accept it. I want to explore my talent more – because there simply is more there. I want to push into it, and I want to share it.

I swear I would have gotten there without this whole cancer thing, but I guess I really didn’t have a choice in this one. 

Normal Functioning Levels

In an effort to “put my needs first,” I’ve decided to change this to a weekly, instead of a daily, blog. So, Sunday will be our day together, folks. Two buses and an 8:30am clock-in time will make weekday blogging a little bit like killing a wildebeest before breakfast – highly unnecessary.

So, I have a job. ! This past week, starting on Wednesday, I began working in the front office of a synagogue in Berkeley. This, will be an adjustment. Honestly, my commute was easier when I was crossing the bridge! But, I have a job. I needed one, and now, finally, I have one. I’m still not clear on wtf it took so long to find one. It certainly does fall into the "underearning" category of a job “below my education and skill level,” but, then again, the first bit of advice in the How to get out of debt… book is **Get A Job, ANY Job** So, I have a job.

It’s not going to be that bad either. There are a lot of systems in place that are way wonky, i.e. ten-step processes, when they could be 3, but that’s sort of why I’m there. In the rest of life, usually when I want to help others streamline things in their lives or make them better, it’s usually none of my damn business and I get to practice holding my tongue and trusting they're on their own path. But, luckily, here, it very literally is my business, and so, I’m going to get to organize and streamline, and “correct” what’s really silly.

That’s part of the advantage of coming in to a new place, you see things that other people haven’t noticed, really, in years. Why do you click these three things instead of this one? Oh, I don’t know, it’s just how I was trained, so that’s how I do it. Why is there an old, dusty dead Foreman grill in the kitchen – does anyone use it? I don’t know, it’s just always been there. WHY do you print off paper calendars of the entire year for the weekly staff meeting that barely get glanced at, and then thrown away?… So, I do get to come in, with fresh eyes, and be like, whoa, uh, this is stupid.

That said, there are going to be a lot of advantages to this job that are not monetary. There’s a pre-school, and this week, the little kids were getting their intro week, so I got to see all these two and three year olds come in the front door, all nervous or excited. I got to encourage them. There’s a very sweet, wise-ass kid studying for his Bar Mitzvah who comes to hang out almost daily with the youth group advisor, so we get to wise-ass at each other. There’s a piano in the chapel off the main sanctuary that once I get keys, I was told absolutely, I could come in there and play during lunch.

It’s not a bank. That’s an advantage. It’s a synagogue. This means people coming in looking to volunteer; retirees looking at the gift shop for cards or mezuzahs. Kids coming for Hebrew school; adults coming for Torah study. It’s a community that I’m getting to become a part of. And that’s not something every job has at all.

Even though, I’ll tell you, I was highly disappointed that I didn’t get the Marketing job I wanted, (and I got a letter from the IRS this week saying that I owe them money from 2010, likely because I didn’t report my student loan money properly), this isn’t going to be that bad. Am I still going to be living a bit meagerly? Likely. It’s not a high paying position in the slightest. Is it more than minimum wage? Yes. Am I waiting tables? No. Am I making sales calls all day, like one of the jobs I interviewed for? No.

It could be worse. And, it can only get better, I suppose.

Mostly, I am glad that my stress hormones are in retreat. Returning to normal, without the barely contained underground river of how am I going to pay my bills??? I slept almost the whole day yesterday. It’s like, with the stress in retreat, the whole system floods with a great big PAUSE, system shutting down now, crisis averted. Yesterday I woke up, ate breakfast, thought about going to the farmer’s market, and climbed back into bed, waking up 4 hours later. Took another mini nap after trips to the library and grocery store, cooked dinner, watched a dvd, and went to bed at a decent time.

I needed it. Obviously. I’ve been stressed, man.

In that/this period, though, I’ve also started to do some other things. I’ve begun to soak my own chickpeas to make hummus from scratch. I’ve begun to marinate tofu so that I can bake it. I bought quinoa from the bulk section at a way cheaper price than anything packaged. All of these organic, all of them cheaper than buying ready packed or ready made.

I’ve really enjoyed doing this. Experimenting with different flavors in the hummus, roasted red pepper (jarred, but one day, maybe my own), garlic, pine nuts, lemon. Using the tofu marinade to pour onto veggies I’ve steamed to go with them. I’m getting healthier in my eating habits. More interested, and more creative. Part of that creativity was borne of necessity, the need to buy things cheaper as money has run out during these months of unemployment.

Coffee is no longer in my cabinets. This makes me awfully sad. But, it’s not good for me, so I’ve been reading, so it’s going the way of the dodo. That, I will miss. But it’s not like coffee’s moved to England, and I’ll never see it again. I did, indeed, get some decaf with some caf this week. There’s just nothing quite like the texture of coffee.

One place I had coffee was at the poetry reading on Thursday, at which I read my rather explicit new poems. I didn’t preface them by saying the experiences described were mostly not current, which I sort of wish I’d said, as what will people THINK of me??, but it all went well. I got good feedback on my work. The words “bold,” “brave,” and “funny” were thrown around. I’m glad I read the work, even though I was nervous about it. Every time I perform, it makes me want to do it more, and again.

I wasn’t able to “get it together” to make broadsides of the poem I wanted to, but there will be time for that. I had a few other things on my mind this week!

All in all, it was a highly emotional week. The anticipation of whether I was going to get the job I wanted. Interviewing for it at 9:30pm Sunday night via Skype and finding out at 11pm that I hadn’t gotten it (the other girl had more “proven experience”). Waking up Monday morning, knowing I was about to accept a job that has the same title and pay rate as a job I accepted 5 years ago. Calling a friend to ask if I could ask them for more money. Crying, mourning the loss of where I think I ought to be, and what I ought to be doing. The loss of my ability to save on any significant level so that I might move back East some time this century.

And then calling to ask for more money, not getting what I asked, but a token amount more than what they offered. The new chaos of commuting to a new job. The first few days of a job when everyone is still evaluating you. The knowledge dump into my brain from the girl whose job I’m taking and training with. The highly anticipated poetry reading where I was bold and brave and scared as fuck. And the crash, like air let out of a balloon, a deflating of all the energy, worry, and stress as I crashed out yesterday.

There are still going to be challenges, of course. This is a new job. There’s a lot to continue to learn, and the girl I’m replacing leaves on Thursday. I still do have some financial issues to contend with like the IRS letter, and the fact that I don’t get paid till the 15^th. But, by the way, I did sell my electric guitar and the amp for the price I never thought I would get (thank g-d for asking for help). So, it will be ok. But, I still feel deflated. I’m going to need time to bulk back up and refuel to normal functioning levels.

Til then, and in order to get there, I will TRY to be kind to myself. Get out of my head, and my own problems. And be grateful, if even for a moment, that I am finally employed at a job that is far from atrocious. 

Somewhere New.

For several months now, I’ve been working on a particular area of healing. For those of you who have read the “Savage Love,” then “Savage Beauty” blogs, you know that I’ve been working on healing my relationship with my sexuality, and my past behavior and experience in this area.

This is likely going to be a little heavy – for which I’m not thrilled, but I’m honest – so if that’s not what you want today, I’m sure Cyanide & Happiness will provide some levity today.

On my way back from the sweat lodge this Sunday, I was riding with my friend who was running the lodge. I told her that earlier this year, and late last year, each time I’d “go in” via meditation or shamanic journey work to ask what I need to do next to move forward, I was presented with the information that I needed to work on this stuff – sexual trauma and other murky stuff. I have been. Working with my therapist on EMDR for a little bit (though I’m not seeing her currently, due to finances), and in these other more alternative ways.

And most of all, through my thesis.

Basically what my thesis trails is a path through my sexual history. That story parallels my mental breakdown, and my parents’ divorce, but really, what is being excavated and brought into the light is all of that. The “highlights” or representative incidents.

Over ages 16 through 24 (a little earlier than 16, but that’s when it really took off with a very chicken-or-egg tag team with my drinking), is a napalm blanket of sorrow, shame, and dissociation. When riding in the car with my friend on Sunday, I said to her that I hadn’t “been in” to ask for a while if I’m “done” with this particular set of work or not, and wondered if maybe I was, but/and as I found out a little this morning, there are still some corners left to sweep.

I am grateful that I had the courage to put all of what I needed to onto paper in my thesis. But, I’m also aware that it goes much deeper and further than the stark, strobe-like glimpses that I give you, the reader. And this morning, in meditation, I began to psychicly clear out some of the cobwebs. (I just accidentally wrote “sobwebs,” which I suppose is pretty accurate for this morning.)

In fact, I did something pretty literal to sweeping out – in my mind’s eye, I walked through and into all those situations I remember, and unfortunately or not, I remember quite a lot quite vividly apparently -- more than I thought I did. I walked through these times and places, into these couplings and actions, and burned sage there. I carried this sage through all the circumstances I could remember, and asked them to be cleared of any energy which is no longer needed.

There are the few where there was kindness, and the kindness will remain, but there are the many that were out of a sense of obligation, or resignation, or force; or just wanting to feel better; or just wanting to feel anything other than what I felt. There are those that are truly tragic, and require some extra doses of compassion and witness, instead of repression.

I don’t know what may or not come of this work this morning. It was sort of “unbidden;” I didn’t have the intention as I closed my eyes for meditation this morning to do any of that – but I guess the Powers That Be had that intention for me, anyway.

One thing I asked for aloud in the prayer circle in Sunday’s sweat lodge during the final prayer round – the one where we get to pray for ourselves, out loud so others know what we need – I prayed for healing around physical intimacy. And that’s where the majority of my tears came on Sunday. My relationship with my body, my femininity, sexuality, sex, intimacy, being present in my body when being intimate – all of this needs healing. I’d still rather hide within my body – offer you it, but not what’s inside it; assume it’s really all you want from me anyway, so I might as well just give you only that out of spite – even if you in fact want more. But, hiding within myself doesn’t work anymore. Beating myself out of my body - or having someone do it for me - doesn’t work anymore. Not being present is painful now. And not voicing my physical needs to a partner is another way of hiding.

I don’t really know what to do about it yet. I know that I don’t do what I used to. But I feel like I’ve swung to the opposite side of the spectrum – from the vixen to Betty Crocker, as I’ve put it. But I know opening these doors, clearing these wounds, being willing to treat my flesh with care, and being willing to meet all of you with all of me are mile-markers of progress.

I’d like to be done with this work. I’d like to declare myself fit for duty. Maybe it’ll always be an ongoing process, maybe it’ll come to a place of plateau. I don’t know. But apparently I’m ready to clear the sobwebs, and arrive at somewhere new. 

I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends

As I sit across the wide wooden table, slightly wobbly, with “world music” of some kind emitting from corner speakers, my friend holds out her hand, lays her palm up, crisp milky white against waxed mottled mahogany, and I take it. She places her other hand atop our pile of digits, cocooning them, warming them as tears make unbidden trails through the invisible down of my cheeks and under the hollow of my jaw.

Through the Tunnel

Well, I suppose I’m better than yesterday. A number of contributing factors. Met up with friends in the morning, got asked to go see a play this Sunday, got asked to go to that Dharma Punx meditation group tonight, made plans with a friend for tomorrow afternoon, made plans with a friend for Sunday afternoon, got my thesis paperwork signed by the folks I needed and it was confirmed that the last signature I need can be gotten on Monday without penalty, was congratulated (even without the uploading) that I will now have an MFA degree and that that’s an accomplishment even if I don’t feel it right now, ran into my professor who’s helping me with next Saturday’s workshop and got some details worked out, got my locker combination from the sports center and put on the sneakers I’d hidden in there almost 8 months ago, took a REALLY long walk through the awesome grounds at school, had a lovely little conversation with a lizard, walked through the school’s herb and healing plant tour, got some good rehearsal in for acting class, had some good convo’s with student friends of mine, came home and wrote the performance piece for May 1^st and really like how it turned out, and then had a long convo with a great friend of mine.

So…. yes, things pass. I needed ALL of that to get through the funk, and there’s still the lingering notes of Beethoven’s funeral march playing in the back of my head, but I don’t feel quite nearly as pissy or whiny as yesterday. This is good.

Plus, I’ll babysit for nearly all of today, and kids, even though I’m always nervous to babysit for that long of periods (how the f can I entertain kids that long!), they’ll help me get back into the more playful, much less self-serious frame of mind.

There was an enormo orange cat perched on the garage overhang as I was writing my morning pages this morning. I always try to get my cat to notice these things, and tap vigorously out the window, but she rarely seems to get it and thinks I’m just playing. D’ah, well.

Luckily, it feels, there’s really nothing more to report. Getting through my emotional tornado was enough news for me. Oh, I also got a few new books from the library before my scheduled phone call with this woman who used to work at galleries, and now works for a law firm or something for art and artists – i forget exactly what she does, but I wrote it down. I wrote a lot down.

We’ve been trying to schedule this call for nearly a year. I let the thread drop sometime in October, and finally picked it back up this month. And we finally got to speak. She was really helpful and informative, as I gather information about what jobs there are in the fine art world. She asked why I was more interested in the art world than the writing world, and I said, I guess I just feel so surrounded by writers, that I like the avenue of something else. Plus, I told her that personally, I love painting because it gives my brain an alternate route to process and develop things – she said to definitely use that sentiment in interviews.

Plus, she gave me info on the other worlds of fine art. The trifecta, apparently, is galleries, museums, and auction houses. She said that my writing background shouldn’t deter me (as in my lack of fine art/art history background), that as long as I “present well,” and do good work, there’s no reason that this world should be prohibited from me. Which is great news.

So, now I have more info on jobs in that field, a website for fine art jobs to check out, and a contact to run things by. She’s actually a friend of my ex, and he’d put us in touch a million years ago, so, shout out to him. I toyed with texting him my thanks, but figured the best thanks is to just go forward with this work. He doesn’t really need to know. … As my ability to let go of all outcome or response from him is limited, and it’s better that I just leave it be. But I am hugely grateful.

A lot got done yesterday. My eyeballs are quite red and dry from all the computer hours logged, so I’ll be glad to focus on kids today, the most anti-computer screen-like things of all.

It’s just sloughing off the old, I suppose. Fear is normal, but really, it’s just boogymen, and I have a massive flashlight powered by all y’all. So, thanks. 

6 x 6 and 5 x 5

Six years ago this very morning, the Monday after Easter of 2006, I packed everything I could carry – i.e. a few suitcases and a pillow – into my car, and headed West.

I drove from New Jersey in the rising light of a near-Spring morning, muddy headed, giddy, nervous, and a little puffy eyed. I got on the highway, and drove.

This was a planned trip – albeit, not very well. Having arrived home after my 2^nd completed teaching contract in South Korea, and a few pitstops along the archepelago, I found myself to be 24, living at home, with no thought of what to really do next. It was March.

I thought, and had the idea, that I would “break onto Broadway.” It hadn’t really occurred to me that people often spend years of their lives in training and working their way through auditions and classes and various local troupes, and still don't make that leap. I simply thought I could “make it work.”

So, I envisioned that I would get a roommate or two in Manhattan, get a job as a waitress (cuz that’s what actresses do, right?), and start my way up.

I did get a job as a waitress. At a lower Manhattan Italian restaurant, and was told that I needed to wear all black as the uniform, and start the next week. Great – perfect – falling into place.

I’m in H&M clothing store. I’m in the stall changing room, and trying on black clothing for my new job, and I have a sudden thought – New York will eat me alive.

I suddenly realized that I had no business being in Manhattan the way that I was drinking and drugging. That I would die if I stayed. I somehow knew it. I was setting myself up to fail, as I had no coping mechanisms and almost no community or friends, having lost most of those prior to leaving for Korea.

I walked out of H&M without buying anything. I left the black clothing, the representation of this pipe dream, and walked outside. I called the restaurant, and told them I wouldn’t be coming in to work … That I was moving to California.

What made me think that? I don’t know. But I had a friend/acquaintance who lived in San Francisco, who’d invited me to come visit. And somehow, San Francisco – California Dreamin’ – was for me. How 'bout I come to stay?

I don’t know what sense of intuition it was that let me know that NYC was too much for the addled and fragile sense of self I was, but I am grateful for it. In Korea, there weren’t many drugs around – a few here and there, spilling off the army base – but mainly, it was drinking. And for that, I am grateful. But, in New York? It was a buffet of ways to murder myself slowly. And I had zero capacity to turn anything down. I knew it was a ticket to the bottom, and I really didn’t have that much further to go.

So, San Francisco. I coordinated with my friend out here. Let the Cousin know I would come to visit him in Ohio before I hopped on to Route 66 – the cool way to go – and got gone. I bought the Lonely Planet guide books for California, and Coastal California, and Route 66, and simply followed that map the whole way down. I arrived in Santa Monica on April 25^th, 2006, stuck my feet in the Pacific Ocean (on this side of it) for the first time, and headed up north to San Francisco.

I arrived that night in time to induct my friend into my nighttime tornado as she showed me around via a few bars. Two weeks later, I got sober.

I had no intention of this, mind you. It didn’t at all occur to me that I was heading West to leave a life I’d known for many years in exchange for one I knew nothing about. I didn’t know that I would eventually fix my teeth, live alone, go to graduate school, actually audition and be in a few plays.

I just knew that SF was better than NYC for me.

6 by 6. Six years ago. I don’t know why I chose “by 6,” not sure what it’s “by,” - perhaps "2006" - but 5 x 5, I get.

Five by five is the catch phrase of TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s character, Faith. Which I suppose is an apt name here at the moment. When things are good, in answer to how are you, when life is not filled with monsters and demons and chaos, Faith replies that she’s “Five by Five.”

My life is no longer filled with monsters and demons and chaos. There are bumps in the night, and scary creatures that lurk still, but 6 years have taught me how to deal with, talk about, and work through those fears and scary patches.

Over this past weekend, I have run into, at complete coincidence, people from communities as variant as school, Jew, and recovery. On the street, in a taxi, on the bus, on BART. I am “a part of.” I am a member of. I am not a lost little pigeon anymore – I have community, and several at that. I have been surprised and humbled as I’ve realized this weekend how many friends I now have – people I now know. I arrived knowing one woman marginally.

And I’m learning how to “break on to Broadway,” or whatever my current vision equivalent is, with the grace, fortitude, and support that I never would have dreamed I’d have. For a dork, lost, wild, alone, sad, chaotic, pipe-dreamy me, well, five by five doesn’t even feel adequate. 

Cacophonous Joy

Yesterday, I finished my draft of my poetry thesis. It is dark, and humorous, and sad, and scared, and thoughtful, and loving, and aimed toward health. It represents a period in my life, which I’m glad to recognize as not current, even though the feelings may arise as current.

This is a memoir of sorts. It chronicles a period of time which, I see now, I do have a degree of distance from, in order to be able to write about it so fully. I know too it leaves gaps and holes, but I don’t mind – it’s show, don’t tell, right?

Yesterday, I sort of fell apart around 3pm, as I knew I needed more time to edit it, little visual changes and some word sorting here and there. But, I was also supposed to be at class from 4-6:30, and be at a poetry reading/open mic at 5:30 – 9. How was I to be in so many places at once?

Well, I couldn’t. And the reality of that fell on me at about 3pm. I made some phone calls; I was told that my main job right then was to finish my thesis – perhaps you remember some of the craziness when I hadn’t turned one in, and may not have been graduating in May? Yes, the thesis was my main job – all other things were secondary.

I spoke briefly to a few friends, wrote emails of apology to my class teacher and to the organizer of the open mic, and got back to work. I was not to use the club of self-flaggellation on myself, I was told. I was not to think that I’d done it again and over-booked, and I’m a bad person, and here was this opportunity to put my work out, and I’ve missed it.

I had one job. Thesis.

So, I left those internal critic voices at the door. Strangely enough, when I did, something miraculous happened.

I finished my thesis. I sent it in multiple document formats for maximum readability; I cc’d and bcc’d to ensure maximum accountability of the documents. I sent it off. It was now out of my hands.

I called two friends, let them know that I had sent it, as I’d told them 3 hours before that I would. And I felt relief. I felt relief as though it were that cartoon image of someone getting hot, and the thermometer level inside them fills up with red from the bottom all the way to the top and bursts out their head. I felt swallowed with relief.

I told my friend, Now, I’m going to drink some water, make a nice healthy meal, and watch a Disney movie. – That was going to be my celebration. She found that hilarious: “I’m going to drink … some water.” How times have changed.

So, I did, but as I was cooking my chicken and broccoli and yummy organic pasta, I had my iPod on shuffle, playing my joy into the kitchen. And Metallica came on. And for why, who cares, it was that moment. I began to bob and jam and jump around as I stirred that chicken. Then I abandoned the chicken to just rock out in my kitchen to the raging flare of electric guitar and passion.

The song finished. But I wasn’t done. I placed my delicate, hearty, thoughtful meal on a plate, and went into the main room of my studio apartment. I proceeded to happy dance. That thermometer level radiated out of me and I DANCED – I shimmied and kicked and ska danced and booty danced and jumped as very high as I could. I waved my arms like a lunatic and smiled till all of my teeth shone bright.

This was more than relief at finishing a project for school. This was pride and gratitude incarnate. This was my joy at having released a clog in my emotional arteries. I’d moved something. Something big. And I danced until I couldn’t dance no mo’.

I have released something big here – truth, despair, hurt, trauma – I’ve let it go. And I’ve opened it to you. I’ve let it have its own purpose outside of my experience. I’ve given it, and myself, life. It feels like I’ve surrendered something I’d been holding on to. The clogged artery metaphor feels pretty apt. But more, it was my throat, my voice, constricted by these stories – and now that they’re out, birthed, something new can be said, or seen, or felt.

I am humbled by the process of putting this out into the world. I do hope people enjoy it, or get something out of it, or find their own voice through reading it. But the personal gift I have gotten, I could not have predicted: the grin of sheer bliss as I tucked into my bed last night. … and woke up with again this morning.