“Finding His Way”

Today will be my first day of training for women’s clothing sales at Neiman Marcus.

I never imagined I’d write that, but I’m not ashamed of it either. Nervous? Yes. Worried I will have to be aggressive to make sales? Yes. A little trepidatious at having to learn all new things about brands and quotas and sales targets? Yes.

Grateful? You bet.

An interesting thing happened the other day. I was asking a friend about a guy we both know, who I'd just met: What does he do for a living?

“He’s a server. He dropped out of law school. He’s finding his way.”

Aren’t we all, I replied.

And I noticed something. Although I still believe that pursuing our passions and earning a livable wage are ideals for me in my own life and in the life of a potential romantic partner, when I heard what this notably attractive man did for a living, I accepted it.

This, is new for me. Call me a snob, and perhaps I have been, but because of my own vicious drive to “do something” worthy in my lifetime, because of my own aching need to “move the needle of human progress forward” through my employment, I have been judgmental of my own jobs. And of others’.

But I noticed that I didn’t have that same snobbery come up when told about this guy’s job. Perhaps, I have gained – or been brought down to – a level of humility around what people are doing in and with their lives.

Which means, perhaps I am finding that same compassion and acceptance for myself. Perhaps. Maybe. Surprisingly.

Do I still want to do work that enlivens me and helps others on their own path? Yes. But I am accepting where I am today for the first time in a long time.

Partly, it’s because I’m taking action outside of my “regular work hours” to engage in activities like acting, and singing, and getting ready to make this video-ask to help get an art studio. Perhaps now, for reasons unknown to me, I am beginning to call those other hours worthy, enough, more than enough. And they begin to settle the aching gnaw of “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE???” that dogs my every step.

Perhaps, although this new work could be considered not “high” employment (working toward a greater good and utilizing my skills and talents), perhaps I’ve just become grateful to have any employment at all. Or at the very least, employment that doesn’t sit me behind a computer screen 40 hours a week.

I am delighted and surprised at this internal shift. This loosening of the noose around myself and others’ over how they pay their rent. Obviously, it’s none of my business what others do for work, but it’s a question we all seem to ask nonetheless. And in its answering, we begin to categorize and label people according to a caste system.

Maybe it’s realizing I’m part of the caste of people who are bright, creative, and longing. I am one of those “finding his way.”

I have found a compassion and acceptance of this place. (Though the shrewd part of me wonders if that means I’ll now move into the “found” category because of my new "achievement/enlightenment"… And I can offer a wry smile to that "never good enough" part of myself.)

To finding our way, be we server or CEO – Humans, all. 

My Own Private Fan Club.

“I’m a fan of you, Molly Daniels, in your entirety,” he wrote.

Granted we later slept together. But I digress.

I had the good fortune to spend time last night with several women I admire. I shared with them what’s going on with my father and my having to make the decision to attend his wedding in lieu of performing in the play in which I’m cast.

One of them reflected: “I’m sorry your dad is not able to see you.”

And when I listen to this more deeply and clearly, it is a bell of truth.

The fantasy and illusion I’ve abided by for years has been that if I am a good daughter, a good girl, a devoted and doting woman, then I will be seen. The delusion is that my people-pleasing will make him see me. But. This is false.

I have tried many times, this path of behaving. And I’ve tried its opposite, being a wanton, crazed, rebellious teen and young adult, in order to be seen.

But what struck me this morning was this image: You know when someone has a lazy eye, and you’re not really sure where to look, so sometimes you just look at their forehead? Or if you’re trying to avoid someone’s eye for another reason, you focus somewhere else that sort of looks like you’re looking at them, but you’re not?

That’s how I feel with my dad. That he never actually looks directly at me, which is why I’ve tried to make the trappings around me so much larger or different or “approvable” or “disapprovable.” If you can’t see me, maybe you’ll see the life I’ve built that meets with your military/engineer’s strict sense of correct.

If I have the job you can brag about, … but that’s not me. I am not my job.

If I have the relationship with you you can brag about, … but that’s not me. We don’t know each other.

If I have the life you can brag about, … but I’ve tried that. You threw my own failings in my face.

I have tried to make the external parts of me approvable enough for you. But even those periphery trappings (and they are “trappings”) have not been enough to hone your focus onto the all of me. Me in my entirety.

I didn’t know that was what I’ve been seeking until my friend told me he saw me. I didn’t know that was what I’ve been missing, and making a pretzel out of my life and myself in order to make happen.

If I want to please my father so he sees me, what do I think will happen if he sees me, “in my entirety?” ... I don’t think I can answer that. Except to say he’d love me, in a way that I could feel.

Because here’s the thing: If he’s looking around me, and not at me, he’ll never love me in a way that I feel. He may “love” or approve of the things around me, the life I meticulously and back-bendingly try to arrange around myself. But that’s still not me.

This is a system, a relationship in which I am not seen. The one thing I want to glean from it is the one thing I cannot have.

In reading Brene Brown so voraciously right now, I can know this: He’s not able to be vulnerable enough to do that.

To see me, is to expose himself, is to open himself to being vulnerable, and for him, that is not an option. His whole life has been built on a foundation, a faulty one (well, in my own estimation), that precludes true connection, because he is unable to look at and love himself. I know how this formed, and I can only presume the pain that’s caused, because he’s never shown it. (Except in these indirect ways.)

Brene writes that men deal with vulnerability in one of two ways: Rage or shut-down. (She also writes about those who find ways out of that dichotomy, but those are the go-to’s without the tools to do anything differently. And surely, those aren’t the only means to deal, but it’s her research, not mine!)

I know that when I told my dad that I might not be able to come to his wedding because I’ll be in a play that weekend, when he put on his “I insist” voice, that was his way of hiding his vulnerability, his disappointment and hurt. I know that this was rage to mask actual feelings. I know that this rage was to protect and prevent of moment of true connection, in which something different might have been said like, “I’d really love for you to be here. It would mean a lot to me.”

That directness is too vulnerable.

To look me in the eye and say that is too vulnerable.

To see us both as humans doing a dance of having a relationship, instead of as a master and a servant, a “father” and a “daughter,” is too vulnerable.

If I can’t squash it or approve of it, I can’t deal with it.

I “get” this. I get and have compassion for and understand this dilemma for him. Also, this is a dilemma that I’ve prescribed for him; true or not, it’s only my interpretation.

But, like I said before, it’s my choice how I want to engage in this “relationship.” Because for as long as I can remember, I’ve been waving my arms in an effort to start one. An effort in vain. And my arms are tired.

Brene writes that shame is countered by self-love, and that shame resilience is a practice, not a diploma.

“I’m a fan of you, Molly Daniels, in your entirety.”

I’m going to have to say this phrase to myself, repeatedly. To truth-test the thoughts of “not good enough” – especially "not good enough daughter" – as this future unfolds.

I’m going to have to truth-test my fantasies around this relationship versus the reality, and I’m going to have to accept, even for a minute at a time, that this relationship is the way it is, and that my father is the way he is.

I’ve heard many times that “acceptance is not the same as approval.” No, this isn’t ideal. But turning my life into a pretzel to garner a connection I will never (or not today) have, is the worse fate.

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.  

in.to.the.light.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve had occasion to sit with two friends who shared with me about trauma in their past, as well as reading an article by a sexual abuse survivor about the upswing of the Dylan Farrow case.

A little less than a year ago, after I completed chemo, I started reading a book about healing that kind of trauma. As you may remember/know, it’s my understanding that disease can be a function of underlying emotional or spiritual dis-ease, and after my bought with cancer, I was (and still am) determined to do all I can to root out causes and dis-ease that may underlie the causation of cancer. The book suggested that before you really begin, you collect your army of support because the work would be intense. So, I sought out a somatic therapist, as the book suggested, and saw her a few times. I wasn’t a good fit, and I soon stopped seeing her, and soon stopped reading the book, maybe a chapter or two in.

However, this morning, I was toodling around on my phone, compulsively checking my email for the rehearsal schedule for the play in which I’ve been cast(!), and I clicked on the “Notes” app I have on there, wondering if there wasn’t some old “to do” list that may have good ideas for me.

Instead, I found a series of quotations from that book. A series of words that struck me, applied to me, and offered me compassion, understanding, and hope.

I … don’t really want to do this. Read that, re-read that. Tell you here. But, my friends, it is all related. Don’t worry, I won’t get specific here—it’s not appropriate, and not necessary—except to say my abuse was not incest or young child abuse, but simply a series of events from a youngish age into my 20s when I didn’t understand what No was, how to stop things, how to not go along.

But, apparently, several things in my current life are pointing me back at looking in that direction. And, from my own understanding and cosmology, the “Universe” tends to bring things up when you’re ready to deal with them. … And, if you don’t, you’ll be given occasion to deal with them later, we promise.

One of the quotes in my app says something about moving out of isolation into relationships. Va voy, if that’s not what I’ve been trying to do. And here is a hiccup I didn’t see coming. A gentle nudge from the Universe saying, Hey, there are these unresolved things. I know they’re hard, but you’re not alone, and we’ve already pointed some support structures your way, if you want to work on this now.

I may say, Fuck you. I don’t wanna.

I may call on the language I read once that said, Stop Identifying With Your Trauma. Don’t use it as a shield and a sword to say, LOOK SEE THERE’RE THESE FUCKED UP THINGS THAT HAPPENED, SO YOU CAN’T GET CLOSE TO ME, AND I’M TOO SCARED TO GET CLOSE TO YOU—BACK! OFF!

I could call on that language and say, see, I need to not look at this, because then I’m just wallowing in my past, instead of moving out of it.

See…. but the thing is. I haven’t wallowed. I’ve avoided. Plague-like.

Partly because “it wasn’t that bad.” Partly because it’s so damned fucking common. Heartbreakingly.

Partly because there have been other fish to fry.

And mostly because it’s really really hard.

I have some Louise Hay “Affirmation Cards” over my kitchen sink, so I can look at them when I’m doing my despised dishes. The one that calls to me about this reads, “All these changes are easy to make.” These patterns are easy to heal and change. Maybe. Maybe this is easier than I fear. The big boogey man with a flashlight projecting himself on the wall much larger than he really is.

It’s happened before.

I know it’s a heavy thing to lay out to you here, but I also know some of you are there, were there, get it, and are curious, like me, on how to go through this stage of healing. As always, I write this for us.

So??

So, what is happening with the boy (in real life, not in my brain)?

Well, instead of sending my crazy text on Saturday morning, I sent instead, “Brunch tomorrow?” Luckily my journal, you, and my friends get the brunt of the crazy, so by the time I get into interacting with human beings unaware of my brain functions, they get something resembling “normal.”

So, there was brunch on Sunday. During the course of conversation, without blasting a fire extinguisher of mania at him, he said of his own accord, “We're dating; that’s what we’re doing.” Oh, Okay. Good to know.

So, then... Dating. There’s another one planned for this Saturday evening. And, I am unsure if there will be more, and unsure if I want there to be, but want there to be this one, at least, so I can figure that out – that’s the whole point of the dating thing, isn’t it? To spend enough time with someone to figure out if you want to spend your time exclusively with them? (Not like all your time, just your romancy time.) I’m honestly not sold, which is as it should be – we’ve been on three dates. Not enough to know much, except we have relatively good conversation, I am still a little stiff and breath-holdy around him (though I measurably relaxed once he said, "We're dating"), and really enjoy his roaming hands. If there’s more than the roaming hands that I enjoy, only time can tell.

So, that’s the story. I am honestly still tempted to “put on my love light” and get back in the ring (to mix metaphors). I don’t know the strength of this one dating situation, so why preclude myself from others. What that will mean to “get back out there,” I don’t know at all. Maybe just a frame of mind. I am still single after all, and I’m not racing to lock it down with this one dude, cuz I’m not sure yet. Seems … mature, maybe? Realistic? Appropriate?

In much other news, I have an audition on Monday for a staged reading. I have a role suggested to me for my monologue by the 25 y.o., but haven’t yet read the play – this all means, … I’m not prepared, and unlikely to have something memorized by Monday. I need a contemporary 1-2 minute dramatic monologue, and all I have/own in my head is the Shakespeare piece I did the other weekend. So, … if, lord help me, I need to use notes for this, then I will. It’s just information, it’s just trying. I know now that I need to have/own more than one piece if I want to be in this auditioning game, which may one day, who knows, how-much-easier-to-let-go-of-the-results-of-this-than-dating, lead to the acting part – the part I actually want.

It’s interesting to me, getting to compare the way I was clinging to certainty around dating, and am pretty much just joyful to show up around acting. I actually did a fist pump when I left my audition the other week! Not because I thought I did awesome, but because I showed up. THAT’S awesome.

Of course, you know I’m going to say something like, “Now, if I can just allow the fluidity, joy, presence, confidence and love of self I hold around auditioning flow into the dating world, I’ll be much happier, and indeed, much more myself.”

Yes, I would say something like that, wouldn't I?

Let.The.Horse.Pull.The.Cart.Molly.

One guy's profile on Tinder read, "Let’s just tell people we met in line at a coffee shop, and I said something charming."

Because (forgive me if you did) who wants to say, We met online.

My dad met his fiancé online. My mom met her boyfriend online. My coworker is happily married to a man she met online. To name a few. 

So, what’s the big deal? Will this stigma end? Is it a stigma, or is it just me and my highfalutin ideas of how people should act and meet and love?...

So, how did me and the 25-year old meet? Well, according to my highfalutin idea that I would “meet someone on the way to meeting myself,” in fact. Amazingly.

We met at the Theater Bay Area auditions last Sunday. He was an auditor (i.e. some kind of representative of a theater company who watched all the auditions--casting director, director, who knew), I was a volunteer.

We repeatedly caught one another’s eye during the day, but the day passed without a word and was ending. I didn’t want to let the opportunity to meet him pass by, because either he’s someone in the theater world I’d like to meet, or he’s just a cute boy I’d like to meet.

Everyone milled in the lobby at day’s end, and I simply walked up to him and said, “Hi, We’ve been glancing at one another all day, and I just wanted to introduce myself.” He replied that it was the red I was wearing that caught his eye. And, that I was very beautiful.

We chatted, we laughed a little, and in the end, I gave him my card, utterly ambiguous to either of us whether our intentions were personal or professional.

Then, his email later in the week, and the ambiguous Saturday afternoon meeting that turned into half a date. And last night into a full one. 

His beard hid the fact he’s 7 years younger than me, could have been anywhere around 30, til I asked on Saturday outright.

The agony I poured into my friends' text messages yesterday morning about the age gap! "He was in diapers when the Challenger blew up." "He doesn't know Corey Feldman before rehab." "He didn't suffer neon like the rest of us." Though born in the 80s, his earliest memories begin in the 90s. This is a Millenial. 

My friends' resounding response was: Just go on a second date, doofus.

You don’t even know if you like one another yet; stop manufacturing reasons to make this a no.

One friend in particular had good insight about the generational gap. About the desire for aligned frames of childhood reference. Her husband is from Germany, arrived in the States in 1995. His American pop-culture references only go back that far, even though he’s of similar age. She said she walks down memory lane with her friends. And that’s enough.

What are the need to haves; what are the nice to haves?

What about the "He's employed, attractive, intelligent, ambitious, Jewish, tall" part of the equation?

Then again. Your 20s are so much different than your 30s or any other years (that I’ve lived so far). There is a certainty about the world and your place in it that you have in your 20s that completely shifts by your 30s. There is a hubris about your knowledge. The development of those few years is drastic. I know. I’ve lived it, and watch others live it. I know that people who are 40 look at me and how I think I fit in the world, and smile good-naturedly at my naïveté.

Though, perhaps it’s my own hubris that I can know where another person is on their developmental path.

There is no definite here, there’s only exploration. More opening, more meeting, more laughing and softening. The part where you (I) feel comfortable enough to be silly--if that part even comes to pass. You can’t even know yet if you like one another, and so all the questions about how you met, about generational alignment, about maturity and Back to the Future references AREN’T EVEN RELEVANT yet.

For now, I, said doofus, went on the second date. And this one was unambiguous. 

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. 

People are Not Projects.

Damnit. There goes my favorite hobby. What will I do with my afternoons, now?

I’ve heard the phrase before, and it recurred to me this morning. My mom sent me an email back on Monday, qualifying why she’d replied so “vehemently” on Friday that she wanted me under NO circumstances to tell her whether I had the genome for Alzheimer’s, if I were to get the genetic mapping thing I said I was maybe possibly going to do someday.

Even before she emailed me on Monday, I got the chance to work through some of my anger at her refusal for clarity, her refusal to do things the way I’d do them, or the way I’d want her to do them.

I even got to see that there is perhaps a part of me that is in fear that she will have it. Watching what she went through with her mom, I can't imagine it. Though I know I'd have the resources internal and external to do the best I could, if she does.

On Monday, she wrote me back and said, as I knew, that her mom was around the same age my mom is now when she began to show signs of it, and that she’s "very frightened." I was amazed that my mother could let herself admit that.

I wrote her back that, of course, I understand, and will respect her feelings and wishes around this. Obviously.

And so, I’m reminded that people are not projects. She is not on this earth, this lifetime, for me to fix her. As I’m also reminded often, people are not broken, and I don’t need to fix them. She isn’t broken. She is human, like me, like you. I have faults and assets, she has faults and assets. Mainly, those faults are just calcified fears and defense mechanisms. And it’s not up to me to fix them. They are not “problems.” They just are. They are part of the map that is my mom. They are part of the challenges and opportunities she has in this lifetime. And it is part of my own challenge this lifetime to leave her be.

This is new behavior. Not alien, but new. We, I, grew up enmeshed with her, her feelings were my own, and I tended to and acquiesced to and modified myself in order to attend to her feelings. It was my own defense mechanism. And, it was also in some ways what was needed. She was an undiagnosed manic depressive, self-medicating with prescription and non-prescription tranquilizers and uppers. Her feelings and mood swings were uncontainable, palpable, and able to wash a small child overboard the ship of normalcy. So, I learned how to stand by the rigging. I learned how to read the waves, to anticipate them, to ensure that things were precisely as they needed to be. I learned to ensure life was easier for her when she was in her clinical depression by not having or voicing or owning my needs. I learned to ensure that she not retreat into that state by allowing her manic times free reign, and stand tensely in the wings of her life, egging her on – because mania meant some more of her, but not really. It just meant she moved more quickly in her neuroses. And was hard to be around then.

That was probably harder. It was like a live wire. Every vibrantly theatrical gesture and every squeal of delight was like a hammer to my heart, knowing that it was inauthentic, fleeting, and often, embarrassing. More than the typical teen angsty, my parents are lame kind. More like, this person isn't aware of herself and how big she can be, and I'm sorry she's hijacked your conversation/this movie theather/...our vacation.

I went on a trip with her a few years ago to Sedona. I’d begun to heal some of my own self-destructive patterns, and this was one of the first times she and I were getting to spend any significant time together. It didn’t go well.

Diagnosed, and newly (doctor prescribed) medicated as she now was, she is/was still my mom. Even today, even though the swings have lessened, the grooves in the thought patterns and behaviors are still there, engrained over a lifetime, and I'll suddenly find myself talking to a weepy child where a minute before stood a fierce New Yorker. But, in Sedona, we decided to do one of those Pink Jeep tours, where they take you out in a jeep into the gorgeous red rock landscape.

My mom had to be the entertainment. There were maybe 6 of us in the back of the jeep, and as my mom continued to make herself more and more “heard” and “seen” by this group of strangers, as she put on her mask of entertainer – witty, loud, invasive – I began to feel myself shrinking in her wake. I began to notice that I was doing what I’d always done, and detach from the dramatic entrance of my mom’s persona. I didn’t like it.

I didn’t like that I was reacting that way, and so instead, I began to get sullen and angry. She picked up on the anger. And she couldn’t understand why – she’d been being who she’d always been, acting (double meaning intended) as she always had, why was I mad with her? I didn’t answer her. I didn’t know what was the “right” way to answer that in my new recovery language – I simply said that it had more to do with me than with her, and that was about it. She didn’t like this answer; I knew it was true, but I didn’t like it either. We’re a “processy” – or we had been – kind of pair. (She is a shrink, after all…) And I wasn’t going to or able to process this with her.

What is there to process? You’re not being the mom I want you to be? You’re behaving so falsely, and invading these folks’ space? THIS JEEP TOUR IS NOT ABOUT YOU?

No, I couldn’t say those things. There is and was the truth that it does have more to do with me than with her. How able I am to accept and love my mom as and who she is without trying to change her. Without needing to be right. And without pitying her.

There is the truth that people are not projects, and that she is not broken. There is also the magnanimous truth that my mother is also brilliant, witty, stylish, and bold. Yes, she is also desperately scared of everything, self-defeatest, and paralytically despairing. She is all of these things. (She’s also a Gemini, if that helps.)

My mother is a human, with places she falls short of the ideal, like me, like you; places where she excels, like me, like you. And, in the end, just wants to feel loved, and at peace. Like me. And like you. 

"Love as Burrito" or "This, or Something Better"

Grateful to my friends who gave me feedback, I texted the okJew yesterday morning that I was a fan of getting to know someone before getting physical (I couldn’t help but hear Olivia Newton-John as I typed it), and if that was something he was interested in, then I’d love to continue getting to know him, and if not, no hard feelings. He texted back to say that, in fact, he was looking for something else, and didn’t know how that fit in with me or not.

So, I got to sit with that. Tall, attractive, well-built Jew? What’s not to like? Oh, unavailable. And, I did sit, I questioned, I turned inward for a few minutes to test that option, and ultimately, gratefully, I said I was looking for something less tenuous, and good luck.

Then …

I sat and stared at a wall of books.

I was shocked, honestly, at how “air out of a balloon” I felt, without all that funny noise it makes. It made me realize that I still do have some work to do. I identified very clearly the feeling of a crash after a high. I could almost smell the cigarette smog and late 90s radio.

Hm. Love as Drug. Huey Lewis has a song about it. And, duh, it’s not “love” as in Love. It was intrigue. Oh, Intrigue!! – when’s the next text, what do I wear, how flirty do I be, funny do I be, do I invite him in, scheduling plans, etc…etc…etc… Something to think about, and then the plug was pulled yesterday mid morning, and I sat deflated and comatose for a few minutes on and off till lunchtime.

When I went and bought a burrito. My friend texted me to say that it’s normal to feel feelings, and we get to let them pass. I said my feelings now feel like a burrito in my belly ~ Real feelings TBA. And that much was true. How much easier it is to feel full, or to buy something to feel better – not better, to just feel different. My burrito accomplished both of those. Better to eat, feel full (and mildly grossed out that I ate a pound of tofu and salsa flesh), and to get the thrill that I spent money on lunch when I had a perfectly decent one in the fridge at work.

Cuz, what do I feel when I’m not caught up in the nonsense? Fear. I feel fear about money and work and job applications and directionlessness. Who the hell wants to feel that?? No one. But, better to feel those feelings, and thereby get into action around them, than to stuff them with something else, and continue avoiding the elephant in my psyche.

There’s another okJew who I’ve been talking to – and I’m not entirely sure that I want to pursue it at the moment. I met up with some of my new “relationship/emotional intimacy” folks last night after work, which was a very good use of my time. I’m so glad I’ve chosen to fall in with them – and they were talking about dating, and showing up, and boundaries, and desires, and how to be honest. These are things I want. I want to have desires – I have no … desire… to be celibate, or nunnish. I am a hot-blooded woman with hot-blooded needs, and a great big bag of tools that don’t work.

That said, I obviously do have more tools than I used to (burrito coma aside) – because I did let this dude know what I was available for, and he said he was glad we got that worked out early – and it’s true. I know plenty of times when I’ve let my “fear of looking needy” keep me from speaking up about my discomfort at the level of murk in a relationship or sexytime companionship. Once, it took me almost a month, and when I finally broached the subject with the dude, he said he wasn’t available or looking for more. So, I said, great, and was glad to know, and left his house feeling better and confident in my ability to state my needs, and let go of the results.

Sure, I didn’t “get what I want” in that situation – who doesn’t want the person to say, of course, I’d love to continue to get to know you and see if there’s something substantial that can come from this. But … as my “sugar crash” yesterday proved to me, there’s more work to be done. It’s not at all fair to place that amount of expectation on anyone – because they’re not really being asked to be themselves, they’re being asked to fill something in me, or distract something in me, or fix something in me. And, that, my dears, is an inside job.

When I said a few days ago, that if relationships are Miracle-Gro for your character defects, then surely they are/must be for your spiritual growth – this is why. My defect here being the desire to run away from the reality of my professional and financial situation – and when someone says they can’t be that for me, I’m left simply with my situation all over again, like the ugly step-sister you lock in the attic. Still here.

So what do I do? Well, firstly, I meet up with folks and I ask for help. Done, and will continue to do. Secondly, I continue to work on the job front. I was invited to go camping this weekend, and had accepted, as I love to camp, and getting out of dodge sounded so very nice. But last night, as I was compiling job listings into an email draft so I could take a look at them in my spare moments at work… it occurred to me that perhaps going camping was not the best use of my time at the moment.

This temp job will likely end in the next week or two, and after that is a blank horizon. It’s time for me to assist in coloring it in.

Lastly, I offer myself kudos. I made my intentions known, quickly. I listened honestly to what another person was telling me about their intentions. Which I didn’t take personally at all (a thought, I recognize, is also huge progress, but seems so “of course” now). I can try to treat myself kindly with how I treat my body and not go food coma on myself.

I showed up. I got in the ring. I made out. And, I can be confident that what’s available for me is “This, or something better.”

Turn Left.

Feels like another “toodling along” day. I actually don’t know if that’s a known phrase or word, or if my mom made it up – but, generally, I suppose people know what I mean if it’s not. Or, for all I know, it’s a well-known high-fallutin’ word. … Yeah, I just wanted to write “fallutin.”

Feeling generally optimistic today, or rather a lack of pessimism, so that’s a good start, and a decent change. I’ve been presented with the opportunity to think about choice, a few times in the last 24-48 hours or so. Particularly, the idea that I have the opportunity to choose my perspective. And more than that, I have the choice to do a lot of damn things.

Basically, I’ve been given the power of choice, and I’m recognizing what might be better ways of using that grand choice. That privilege of choice.

I was talking with a friend yesterday, and she was telling me about some places where she was feeling hopeless, and I offered that she does have a choice here. That we are indeed at places where we both can choose to turn right, and go down the all too familiar well worn path of despair, crumbs, victimhood – all the way back to the dry well. Well is dry. It always has been. But sometimes I, and she, like to see if maybe today there’s just one drop I can squeeze out from it. Nope. That well is dry, but I have a choice to still go there if I want.

Or… I can choose a different way. A different way to look, approach, feel, be. Think. I believe part of this is owning that mantle of adulthood – recognizing that we have the power of choice, and are in some ways the steward of our own fates. Sure, Fate sometimes intervenes, Divine intervention happens, and sometimes we are stripped of choice, but, for the most part, nearly everything in my life at the moment, and how I choose to see or hold it, is a choice. I have chosen to engage in despair. I have chosen to stay small. I have chosen to reject responsibility, and then I get to complain about my meager finances. Or romances.

It’s not all as simple as turning on a light switch, but sort of, sometimes, it is. It needn’t be some massive, monolithic effort, or commitment; sometimes, it seems to me now, it’s just a simple shrug, and a turn left. Not so heavy, or burdensome. Not so daunting or scary. Just a left turn. Toward something … not new. It’s not new – I mean, it is and it isn’t. I don’t quite know (obviously) all that’s down a path of Left, but I’m familiar enough with occasionally taking that route that I do know some of the milemarkers.

Peace. Calm. A sense of well-being. These are quite obvious particularly in contrast to the milemarkers on the way to the dry well.

Today, I can choose. I have a choice to see myself roundly, to see my life roundly. I can choose today to notice the assets, to notice where I have a choice – a choice to write my teaching resume. A choice to send it. A choice to decide whether I want to do some live drawing modeling tomorrow, or if I’m feeling a little too tender for that.

I have a choice to buy eggs, instead of eat popcorn for dinner. I have a choice to make a nutritious meal – like the one I’m eating now ;) I have a choice to dress properly today, in a way that makes me feel professional, but myself – not a drone or clone, but not defiant. That may seem like a “silly” thing to think of as a choice, but it’s not.

Last Tuesday, to my second day back to the temp job, I dressed in all black, with my black leather jacket and my fuck you attitude of, I can’t believe that I have to do this work in this office, sitting for all these hours… yadda yadda, fuck you, I’m wearing black. ! Yes, That was a choice. Luckily, that was also the same day I had my wonderful conversation with a friend about whether or not I want to be an adult.

So, today, I can wear something that says, I’m still me, with my quirks and style, but yes, I respect this workplace, and am grateful to be here.

I also have the choice to pack my lunch instead of buy it. To meet my friends later instead of isolate. And to remember to breathe.

I have a lot of choices today. And the well is still dry. 

Sucker

Dear Folks,

My new “normal people” hours are conflicting with my ability to write this with coherence, and eat, shower, become fully conscious. So, forgive its in/coherency, if it is so.

I had two phone calls yesterday that sort of count as informational interviews. One was with my darling Aunt Roberta (technically my mom’s cousin, but all those cousins are sort of like aunts and uncles – that’s how it was when you played stickball in the streets of Brooklyn in the '50s).

She has been a professor of English since the sun was born, and had some great information and tips for me. She sent me her teaching resume to take a look at, as I’m beginning to apply for teaching jobs – something I’ve viciously avoided for so long, I almost forget why. … but I do remember.

For as long as I can remember, what with my interest in literature, and writing, and reading, well-meaning folks have said the following to me:

Well, you could always teach English.

Somehow this phrase has turned into an anathema for me. Is this the only thing that I can do?? It begins to sound like a default, like welp, you could always settle. It has calcified into a job title that brings to mind aging high school professors, eking out their little lives in some underappreciated, underpaid job. My vision of “teacher” has come to also mean “sedentary,” as once you get a job teaching, all I hear is “tenure” and that’s all people are working toward – all they want is to stay as absolutely still as possible. No room for exploration, movement, change. You got it, you keep it, you pipe down, and suck it up.

Obviously, many of these ideas are unrealistic and quite ridiculous, but that hasn’t kept them from keeping me away from the whole idea of teaching – teaching English, teaching high school, teaching college – as if I’ve ever thought that I could.

But…

The reality.

Firstly, as Roberta was quick to assure me, teaching does not mean wasting away in some small town or inner city for eternity – it doesn’t have to mean that, and particularly in the beginning, it doesn’t mean that – as chances are, as a beginning teacher, you’ll have to sort of go where the job is.

Secondly, … and here’s the hilarious irony … I like teaching.

Sure, it’s hard work – I’ve done it before, but never considered what I've done as “real” teaching. I had a job at a Sunday School last year, once a week (and had lots of lesson planning experience to really really learn that lesson planning.is.not.paid.). I also taught ESL in South Korea for almost two years, but I don’t “count” that either, as I was hung-over most of the time, and worked out my lesson about 10 minutes before class, if that.

However, I do like being in a classroom. I also think I have a lot to offer – I, if I may be so unhumble, think I’m pretty cool. I’m funny, performative, creative, a good listener, and a very good judge of classroom dynamics and social cues (i.e. they’re not listening - change it up, or so and so is interested in so and so, so I better move them). I also have a lot of outside interests, which makes for a well-rounded incorporation of things into the lesson plan.

Thirdly, I'm technically qualified to do it now, with my degree and all. 

So, I could do it.

And as I’ve reminded myself a lot over the last year, “Can I do it?” is a different than “Do I want to do it?”

But here’s the change occurring. My wonderful sunshine ball, Maila, came over for tea last night. Here’s what she said:

“If it wasn’t hard, they wouldn’t have to pay us.”

BAH! Oh, right. It’s work. The ideal is that work include some play or interest, or a lack of soul-crushing mindlessness that leaves zero energy available for outside pursuits. And the thing is, I want and would love to pursue a LOT of outside pursuits.

As she was leaving, I thought of something else which has probably helped to keep me at arms-length from a “real” job. I’m reminded of my life several years ago, which I know is similar to a lot of folks I hang out with.

In the cheepy-birdie hours of the morning, in the hours when the sky is beginning to lighten, and the new day is dawning, I and we, were usually heading home. Weaving and wending our way to some pass-outable location, or so red-eyed and clench-jawed that the chirping birds were a mockery of all that is holy (Shut the fuck UP! Don’t remind me it’s a new day, I’m still … still … STILL up!).

And as we were wending home, or at least one well-worn path I remember particularly, as I was wending my way home in my second tour of teacher duty in South Korea, I would pass by a church on Sunday morning. There, people, humans, were walking to church. And I would sneer, Suckers.

These people, in their pressed, clean clothes, with a full night’s sleep, and a full refrigerator. With brushed teeth, and combed hair, and a place to get to at 8 or 9am. Who paid rent, and taxes, and didn’t have their utilities turned off monthly. Whose teeth were not ground down with clenching, or livers distended with liquor, or clothing bathed in a cheap bath of smoke. These people, with real jobs, real lives, real responsibilities, were Suckers. They knew nothing of the way things ought to be, the nocturnal, hedonistic, nihilistic counter-culture. They were suckers.

And as I begin to accept that it’s time for me to take on those same responsibilities, there’s a part of me that calls myself a Sucker.

But, I’m not a hedonist anymore. I don’t reek, or steal, or slink anymore. If a balanced check-book, paid rent, cat and people food, and some bass lessons are what I want, then I have to do what they do. I have to be a Sucker,

which I guess is another word for Adult. 

Grown-upness

I was on the phone yesterday with a friend/mentor of mine. I’d asked her for an informational interview, with the knowledge that I had no idea what I was going to ask her – I’d let her know that in the email, too. She accepted anyway, and on the phone we were, as I sat beneath the dome of the downtown SF shopping center during my lunch break from the temp gig.

She knows much of my story and development over the last few years, and works in a field to help people, and, most importantly to me, seems to have some semblance of balance between work, creativity, and life. I thought she’d be a good place to “start.”

I told her the 2^nd thing that came up at the “money meditation” on Monday. The 2^nd question was “Do I (Molly) fear you (money)?” The answer was, Yes, because I mean responsibility.

Oh Responsibility! How I’ve run from you!

Over the course of my conversation with my friend, she reflected back to me that it sounds like I want to be powerful, without building or holding or being the vessel for that power. I do want to do great things (not like, ooh famous – just like, ooh cool), and, I have not wanted to really take the ownership of what it might take to get there. See, particularly, Magical Accidental Orgasm. There is no one coming to live my life for me. There is no one coming to take the risks and chances and changes that I need to make in my life and attitude for me. It’s up to me.

Or it’s not. I can choose or not to take the reigns of my life. I can choose or not to take the steps to holding responsibility for myself.

This responsibility thing, my aversion to it, came up earlier this year, in a workshop run by the very same friend. See, I have these old associations with responsibility. That it means more than I am able to handle. That’s what it meant when I was young – having to do things a child should not have to do, things that an adult ought to have been doing, but the adults in my life were not quite able to do that. So, I did. And I resented it, and I was burdened by it, and I’ve carried my resentment and fear of responsibility here through and to my adulthood.

Adulthood. That word came up yesterday in our conversation too. “Adult.” “Grown-up.” If I want grown-up things, which I very much do, then I have to learn to be a grown-up. Sure, I’m 30, but that’s no indication of adulthood.

Things that grown-ups have -- a job, a car, a house, a relationship, stability, vacation -- well, they earn these things by showing up for themselves in a responsible way. My same friend had worked as a house cleaner for ten years before coming to her pursuit of her current profession.

She also said, basically, nothing can grow in the dark. I am ripe with resentment, self-pity, longing, entitlement, and self-centeredness because of this ongoing rejection of the mantle of grown-up. I grasp at things I think I want, but I’m not willing to firm the foundation to get there – to mix the mortar, lay the bricks. Chop wood, carry sticks. That’s where I need to be at. Very simply, I need to lay hold of qualities and actions that I have tried to avoid.

The truth is that I have no idea what it would be like to take responsibility for myself. I’ve churned along at this hamstrung pace and mind-set for so long, I honestly don’t know. I’ve been talking here some about how “grace” and gifts from the Universe have been incredibly lovely, but that they don’t help me to build self-esteem around jobs and work and … being a responsible adult, basically.

To warm up to the idea of being a grown-up. Yes, very much I want to be one – I want what they seem to have. But what I see, I suppose is the externals. What I haven’t seen, necessarily, is all the work they have put in to get there. To do what is necessary. I haven’t done what is necessary. I’ve done everything else, I’ve danced around the entry to that path for a decade, and belly-ached, Why can’t I get there? Why is the door closed to me? It’s not closed. Never has been. I’ve been terrified of what it means to begin to walk down it. But the truth is, and forgive me, I got a cat a year and a half ago. She is a monument to my warming to commitment – has this responsibility, has responsibility for this life, hers, created any burden or pain in my life? Not in the slightest, and in fact, has brought untold and unforeseen joy.

This is what I too imagine that taking on responsibility for my own life may bring. Sure, I imagine it’ll be a little different, seeing as it’s mine, and my brain is such a lovely chatter factory. But, maybe not. Maybe, the doors will swing open as I take one step onto the path of grown-upness. Maybe, simply, I’ll feel better knowing that I’m on the path at all. 

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. 

R-E-S-P--...oh you know the rest

Things I have the power to change:

my hair color

my perspective.

That’s the list for now. Sure, it could be really long, but that’s what occurs to me at the moment. I haven’t, in fact, changed my hair color in a few years – after the blonde debacle, and subsequent re-browning – and, it sort of feels that i haven’t changed my perspective all that much lately either.

I met up with a friend in SF yesterday, as I went about my day flyering the city (note the gazillion workshop flyers on the lampposts of Hayes Valley), and basically, she told me that although she could see that this was important to me to talk about – where I am in my life, basically, … or rather, my opinion of where I am in my life – that she just couldn’t process with me anymore. That she herself, as I well know, is in a similar position, going through similar changes in her life, and I guess she’s just fed up with the whole “Let’s figure it out” routine. And so, she told me, gently, that I’m still in the problem, and not the solution, and that until I start to do things or see things differently, of course it’s going to be painful for me.

I was both disappointed, and heartened – our friendship is that strong, that we can let one another know when we’re being crazy, basically, and that the other just can’t bear witness to crazy right now.

I have a few marching orders, work I’m doing with a woman one-on-one, that I can proceed to progress on, and that’s where the change will come. But, for now, my friend is right – as Jung said (loose paraphrase): we cannot solve the problem at the level of the problem.

So, if all I have at the moment is my ground level view, it’s better for now to stop reporting back from the (perceived) bleak front lines, and do the work I have in front of me which will help me to get a foothold up and out.

Perhaps this all sounds sort of vague, but it’s all I got.

I was reflecting this morning on respect – that something that I can change is how I respect myself or don’t. Who am I to disparage myself for not being x y or z? How would I react if a friend came to me and “should” all over me? (You should know, it should be different, you should have figured it out already, you should be better…)

I’m realizing that all the time that I spend in lamenting this situation is time I’m spending beating myself up, and treating myself unkindly – and without respect. What would it be like to respect myself – to look at myself from an outsider’s view? To congratulate myself on my accomplishments, take real stock and account of things that I have done and talents that I have. What would it be like to take a more well-rounded view of myself? Would I ever disparage myself as in the above paragraph? Discounting all that I am? No. Because here are a few reality checks – a) I’m human – guess what, I come with assets and liabilities. b) I’m hosting a workshop that I’ve dreamed up, crafted, advertised and implemented all by myself today. (with due thanks to all my helpers!) and, c) I am poised to graduate from graduate school. I didn’t make it to my college graduation. I got high as fuck after my high school one. This time, I’m showing up – period. I’m showing up entirely differently.

I’ve changed. I have become someone worthy of respect – most emphatically of my own respect. If I can begin to take ownership of feelings like that – or rather facts like that – then I can begin to move from the problem into the solution. I do not need to know anything about what “will happen.” What I do need to be very careful I count along side of the things I have “to work on,” are the things that are worthy, lovable, respectable about myself.

Because in the end, I’m the person with the power to change my perspective. Because I will inform others’ interactions with me, Fate’s interactions with me, by leading by my own example of realistic, balanced, and earned respect. 

Anima

Yesterday, during meditation, I began to notice that I’m alive. Now, before you scoff, it was more I sort of sensed whatever it was, that spark of life within me, that is not in a fire hydrant or end table. That mystical, magical thing that happens only for us, that rides on our blood cells and sends messages to synapses and invents thought, hormones, and waste.

Anima, is what this is. The life property of us living things.

It wasn’t as if I sensed my soul in that sense of the meaning, but more, that simply I was aware that -hot dog!- this is being “alive.” I found this interesting, this unique "blessing," perhaps. To just notice that there is something in me, as in you, that is not in everything.

Later that day, I found out that a friend of mine overdosed on drugs, and died this weekend.

At the moment, it felt simply like shock, indignation, and anger. I am believer in a Higher Power, and an order to the Universe, or something like that – although my understanding and relationship to that power changes and evolves, like most relationships. However, this this felt abnormally cruel.

He was my age, 30ish. Tall, blue eyes, light hair. Handsome. I had a crush on him.

Granted it was a from-a-distance crush, because I knew the struggle he was having with staying sober for the year plus that I’ve known him.

When I got sober, I was told to buy something black – the men told to buy a suit – as we were going to be attending a lot of funerals. (That’s not “recovery”’s position on the matter; it’s just the half joke/half not of some people in it.)

When I was a few months sober, someone I’d been peripherally running around with being wild and crazy and ISN’T LIFE GREAT WHEN YOU’RE NOT PUKING AND BLACKING OUT ANYMORE?!, well, I found out that he’d walked off a cliff one night on purpose.

A girl I know died last year, and a lot of folks I know were affected by her death.

But, for me, this one has come the closest to home. I sat in the same room with this kid almost weekly for over a year. I heard his dry humor, and his despair, his attempts, his hope, and his … anima. I heard his life. We all did. And now, he’s dead.

My emotions of shock were sent in a sentence up to G-d: What The Fuck.

Sure, I do believe in the order of things, and that “things happen for a reason,” but I’ll tell you, believe that though I do and may, this happened to be a great way to shake that conviction. But moreso, I feel indignant and righteously angry and my firm belief in a kind Universe. I know it sounds antithetical, but really, I have no other choice.

I, like many people I know, have no other choice than but to believe in some cosmic goodness – to me it is a goodness. And, sure, I can choose not to believe. I can choose to say that this world is fucked, and aimless, and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, and there’s no reason or order or lesson or anything. Cold, inanimate life.

But. I don’t believe that. And, really, it’s not because I must, it’s because I do. I simply do.

And, so then, how to “reconcile” at all the tragedy of the loss of a … how can you describe a person in a word?

I cannot reconcile the loss and my worldview. And often my worldview is replete with paradox, and for now, today, I will hold them both. I will be furious and mystified at the shortened life of my friend. And, I will continue to scrape the residue of that which covers my own anima – because I do also believe that whenever the light is turned on in one person, the whole world is lightened because of it.

And though I still don’t feel that this is now some cosmic balance of we now all get to improve ourselves and not take life for granted and all that bullshit, … well, what else can we do?

Dear Aaron, I'm sorry I didn't offer to lend you the two dollars you needed when you were on line behind me at the grocery store last week. I wish I had.