Rock Saves.

As you may have noticed by now, I’ve been in a bit of a maudlin mood since attaining a job in retail. Since that time, in the last week alone, my sponsor had to let me go in order to focus on her own healing work, I got a traffic ticket while on my way to visit a pregnant friend, and my four stalwart neighboring trees were torn down. 

Plus, I slammed my pinkie in a drawer. 

It’s been a No good very bad day, and you can call me Alexander. 

It’s been pretty bad, and even before the tree massacre, I was on the phone with a friend saying that it felt like a series of trap doors: just when you think it can’t get worse, it does. I wouldn't be surprised for “The Big One” to hit, or my car to break down. 

That said, yesterday, in a funk over the trees (read: hysterically crying over the loss of everything solid in my life — yes, perspective is a lost art), I drove my car in to work instead of taking public transportation. On came the NPR, because it’s what I usually listen to in the car. 

But it wasn’t right. Sure, it’s informative and I enjoy it in a way, but it’s not fun. It’s not uplifting. Unless it’s A Prarie Home Companion. 

And so I put on a CD of one of my favorite bands, playing one of their most famous live sets. 

I immediately pressed through to one of my favorite songs, one I can count on as an uplifter, and as the song progressed, I turned the volume louder. And louder. 

As I sat in that toll bridge traffic, I began to sing along. I began to smile. 

I played a series of 4 songs, the last one on repeat as I climbed the circular parking garage. And I felt better. 

I have this kind of amnesia when it comes to music: I forget that Rock Saves. 

I can go for weeks without music, maybe a few songs on the radio here and there, but not volume up to 40, ear-ringing, loud singing, smile-inducing music. 

I felt transformed by the end of my trip from Oakland to San Francisco. If there were another trap door opening beneath me, I felt as though the music was giving me upper body strength to cling to the sides of the trap, and hoist myself out. 

The trap may be open beneath me, and it is always an option to fall in, but somehow I felt like I was climbing out of that one. That, for that morning, that previously sob-fest morning, I was not going to continue on like that. 

I parked my car and walked toward my job with an actual jaunt in my step, and a bit of that subversive, “I’ve been listening to music really loud,” half-grin on my face. A cute 20-something said hi to me as I jaunted down the sidewalk. 

I’ve been walking to work looking solely down at the sidewalk, internally commenting the awful smell of human waste. 

Yesterday was a different morning. 

Sometimes I feel like I could be diagnosed with manic-depression, the way I can swing from despair to hope! But, perhaps it’s normal. And I’ll never really know, honestly. 

When things are going well enough, I never feel the need for anti-depressants, and even when they’re not going well, it’s always temporary, and not debilitating. 

So, maybe, simply, Rock Saves. 

Maybe, simply, I have a fount of resiliency that I only seem to find in desolate moments. 

Yesterday, as I drove to work, I drove through a portal of grace. 

Things are not different. All the externals remain the same. 

But I have that grin on my face. And I’ve been singing in my car. 

Answering the Caterpillar.

Yesterday afternoon, I drove back from the dentist and stopped to pick up lunch and a drink before I returned to my final afternoon at my job.

As I stood on line at Peet’s coffee, the tall cute guy behind me rifled through his pocket, and out fell a green Crayola marker. Without a cap.

This only happens to two types of people: wackos, and teachers. I took the risk.

He replied he was a teacher. And then came the most dreaded question on the face of my earth:

“What do you do?”

It’s one of the first questions people ask when they don’t know one another. It’s a function of the desire to orient and locate you on the web of society and potential commonality: What do you do for a living?

And, honestly, the idea of answering this question has kept me from dating. Because what people are asking is not simply where are you employed, (to me) it’s asking if you are employed, what your social status might be, what your interests are, what your value of your self is.

They are asking, Who are you?

And I haven’t wanted to answer for as long as my response has been, I’m a glorified secretary.

Sure, over the years when I’ve spoken to friends about this, they’ve replied, you don’t have you put it like that. You are a marketing specialist, you are in customer service, you are an executive assistant, an education administrator. You support the people who make things happen, you run offices, you hire and fire people, organize office events, facilitate publications. You reconcile expense reports.

AND ALL THIS READS TO ME LIKE GLORIFIED SECRETARY.

FUCK!

And, the point is that I haven’t felt comfortable telling others that’s what I do for a living.

Because it makes me feel less-than. Because I interpret what I do as not good enough for me. Because I feel that it doesn’t speak to all that I am as a person, and surely, answering that one question for anyone is never an indication of who they are as a whole.

But, I have felt it a pretty good indicator.

I am small. I have zero power. I do boring repetitive tasks while chained to a computer desk. I get condescended to and underestimated. I have the copy machine repair man on speed dial.

BLECH!

Get out of here!

I don’t want to be that person. Because, I’m not that person. It’s stuff I can do, but it’s not all of me.

Perhaps, though, it means that I need to hold others' answer to that question more lightly, because I’ve only had one answer to that question for a very long time, and it’s never spoken to who I am as a person. So maybe I can be more open-minded toward others whose answers don’t titillate me.

But, whatever comes of my relationship to others’ answers, I know that I haven’t been able to budge my relationship to mine, no matter how much work on “self-acceptance” and "perspective" and "gratitude" I’ve done. And so, the only thing to do is to change my answer, not my relationship to it. Yet.

So, yesterday, when cute, marker-covered dude looked into my eyes, and asked me what I did, I was able to answer easily, truthfully, and proudly: I’m a teacher, too.

(you know, part-time, after school two days a week, but, it's a start!)

To Infinity and Beyond!

True to form, I’m running late for work. With today’s direct deposit pay-out, I was reconciling my financial situation before getting started for the day.

Seems like if I can manage to gain steady employment by December, I don’t have to touch my savings. If not, I have until January. But, who wants to touch their savings, especially if it’s modest?

I have a third interview with the private high school in Walnut Creek on Monday, to be their Homework Tutor/Student Mentor. Seems like a good sign, but I’m not counting chickens; I’m still looking around for sure.

But, I gotta say, not having a full-time job as of tomorrow, I feel like I’ll have more time to look – but also to focus. To get clarity and not just fire off resumes willy-nilly.

I won’t write a maudlin blog about how much my place of work has meant to me over the past 2 years – I’m going to see most of my coworkers frequently, as I’ll still be teaching there on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. There was a nice send-off snack at our staff meeting on Wednesday with my favorite snacks. And my boss wrote a really warm blurb about my departure for our weekly e-newsletter.

There have been more hugs this week than before, mostly from members of the synagogue, who I won’t see as often. But I do feel like I’ve become a part of the community, not just worked in an office. And for that I’m grateful, and it’s something that won’t change. I’ll still be there at our big events, probably.

But, I’m also immensely grateful that I won’t be sitting at that desk come Monday morning.

I won’t leave my newbie replacement alone too long this morning, so I’ll sign off now. Perhaps there’ll be another more sentimental missive about the place with time and distance, but, for now. It’s just a change. And, right now, change is good.

Trick or Treat, muthafuckas!

A word, if you don’t mind?

Dear Molly,

First of all, congratulations on closing the Addams Family. I heard it was a fantastic run to packed houses nearly every night. And brava on finally getting that one song that was giving you trouble. Fist pumping is highly appropriate!

But, I’m moved to write to you today because I want to make sure you realize how many irons you have blazing right now, and ensure that you’re taking the proper time for yourself. (Although, I must say, I wouldn’t be writing if I thought you were!)

As soon as the show closed, you began a new one the next day, yes? Rehearsing almost daily with a dozen monologues to memorize by next Friday? You’ve been searching for a new job or jobs, as well as having interviews or coffee dates with folks several times a week. You’ve been sitting on weekend mornings for a portrait artist in order to make some cash, and you’ve begun teaching on two weekday afternoons after work and before rehearsal.

Forget about your dishes, we’re way beyond them now! Have you seen your car? Your apartment? Where is the calm space you so crave at home? How about that outstanding parking ticket you need to dispute at the Berkeley parking office? And the fellowship meetings you are barely attending and the crispy, crackling nature of your office interactions right now?

Is it fair to say that you’ve got a few things on your plate… AND that you’re not taking the normal care of yourself that’s necessary for your health? Is it true that you’ve been feeling tired and coming down with something?

Something’s got to give, my friend, and I don’t want it to be you.

Yes, I know this is an uncertain and shifting time, and your home is always a reflection of your mental state. I know it feels like there’s no time for meetings, but doesn’t there have to be? It’s terribly uncomfortable for you and those around you when you’re this wound up.

However, I do want to come back to say, I am writing all this because I am in support of you. I want you to achieve your best in all you do. I just want to remind you to set first things first. Weekends, which have been your farmers market and cooking-for-the-week days, as well as nesting and organizing days, have been robbed by all this new work.

Maybe -- and I’m just throwing this out there -- you tell the artist you can’t sit with him until after your show opens? I mean, the worst he can say is no, right? Maybe you ask a friend to help you with the enormous bookcase you inherited from your upstairs neighbor that’s been standing, disassembled, in the center of your apartment for a week? Maybe you really schedule that time to go to the parking office, and don’t blow it off this time because you’re running late for work?

Look, the bottom line is you’re in a huge amount of transition right now. You’re taking a leap of faith that you’ll land somewhere new and different than where you’ve been. You’re doing this to support your art, and to support the idea that you have more to give to the world than a well-crafted spreadsheet. I am in awe of you for taking the risk.

In truth, both ways are risky: to stay is a risk to sanity, to leave is a risk to livelihood. But, I do have faith that things will turn out well for you (Yesterday's interview was promising & the second interview is set.). You are doing all the right things… you’re just not leaving time for the rest of the “right things,” and that’s where I’m concerned.

So, take a minute to consider my suggestions. See if you can come up with your own solutions, and talk to your friends to help you through this quite chaotic but exciting time.

As a friend once said, The only difference between anxiety and excitement is breathing.

So, breathe, Molly. And I’ll see you when you land, safely.

Yours, 

Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

October marks 10 years since I left New Jersey to teach English in South Korea for 18 months. Having barely finished the icing on my 23rd birthday cake, I rolled my newly purchased suitcases onto a JFK flight and was off to I didn’t know where.

The process felt almost instantaneous – register with an ESL teaching recruitment site; have an informational call with them (when they told me you’d make more money in Korea than, say, Thailand or Taiwan); have an evening interview call with a pre-school in a town on the outskirts of Seoul on Tuesday; board a plane on Friday.

I didn’t know what I was getting into, and despite all the good parts, the landing was a difficult one. If I did have it all to do again, my life to live over again, I wouldn’t have gone.

I know people say not to regret things, and that each experience was for learning, and certainly this one was: I met great people, had unusual experiences, got to travel to places I’d likely never have been and endear myself to a classroom of wide expectant faces.

But. It was not easy. And, yes, if I could do it again, I wouldn’t go. I was too fragile when I went. I was too lost to be uprooted. Yet, I don’t know what would have happened if I’d stayed. Korea was where I eeked along the bottom of an alcoholic lifestyle, and I’ve often said that if I hadn’t been in Korea, where there was little access to drugs, and mainly only to booze… that if I’d still been in the States and on the trajectory I was on, things could have gone a much different way.

As bad as alcoholism is, add drugs into the mix, and it quickly becomes a 4-alarm fire.

That said. It was rough. There was a half-hearted suicide attempt, gang rape, alcoholic stupors. There was racism and sexism and a feeling of alienation from everything you recognize.

There were antidotes, or places of brightness, for sure. I met some of my best friends there, ones who I’m still in regular touch with. I dated a very charismatic Canadian who went on to work for the U.N., who'd put me and my coworker up at his great aunt’s place in the orangutan paddock in a zoo in Jakarta, Indonesia. I hiked up ancient Buddhist and Hindu temples; ate dog stew, which was actually very good; planted my feet in the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

I traveled to Osaka, Japan to renew my work visa and still remember the glint of the flat rooftops outside the city as the train barreled us from the airport to the city center. I spent a New Years in a cabin on a dock in the warm waters of Malaysia and partied in a sprawling, palm-encased home in Singapore the following one.

I went to Korea because I didn’t really know what else to do. And to quote Carroll's Cheshire cat:

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where –" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"– so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

I'd walked long enough, and I'd found something. I didn’t know where I wanted to go, just somewhere else. Yet, despite the intervening years and nearly a decade of sobriety, as I begin now to set out again to simply go “somewhere else,” I’m tempted to recall what happened last time I didn’t know where that was.

Can I get a Witness?

You want it to be done. You want to stop referencing cancer, or marking time as “before I got sick,” “when I was sick.” You wanna stop the pang of knowing that “sick” was more than a bad cold. You wanna stop remembering what it felt like. And you want it to stop being dramatic, and making you feel dramatic.

You want the, “Oh, you cut your hair” comments to not sting as much, since no, you didn’t cut it, it fell out. You wanna feel neutral when you see a t.v. show where someone’s diagnosed with it, and stop silently commenting, No that's not at all what it's like. You want to stop gagging every time you smell Kaiser hand soap. You want to stop feeling the fear and the grief and the heartbreak you’d felt when you were sick.

The feelings you couldn’t really feel then because you had to just soldier up. When you were told, You could be a poster child for cancer. When you had to be braver than you wanted because you needed to not scare your friends.

And, there were the few friends you knew you didn’t have to be brave with, or braver than you'd felt. There were the few who let you cry the Ugly Cries, and the one who laid in your narrow hospital bed with you while you napped, all wiped out from chemo. The one who went to three health food stores to get the right kind of protein drink, since you couldn’t eat solids. The one who bought your own bejeweled reusable cup in which she brought you green shakes, and who packed and unpacked your hospital room with you every single chemo round, and stayed overnight at home with you the first night after your first release.

You want to remember the witness, and you want to forget why you needed one. You want to offer the deepest gratitude and you want to stop feeling gnawed by the uncertainty of that time.

You want to love the witness, and you want to stop being reminded of what it was they held you through.

There is no forgetting, there’s only fading. And I don’t want to forget it really; I just don’t know how to process it all still. Though it seems I am nonetheless.

I was on the phone with my mentor yesterday, talking about this one friend who showed up for me then and how, post-cancer, our relationship hasn’t been as strong or connected. That somehow it’s almost like cancer, or acute trauma, was the foundation of our friendship, and now that it’s passed, it feels like there’s not much more to go on.

I told her how sad I am that we’re not like we were, but that I don’t know that I can or if I want to be otherwise.

It reminds me of a quote from a movie that will make you groan. But. In Speed, Sandra Bullock tells Keanu Reeves that relationships based on intense experiences never work. (She later jokes, they’ll have to base it on sex, then. And that’s not really an option with my friend, cute as she is!)

So, what do you do? I told my mentor that my friend was a witness to that hardship, and about my pattern of how difficult it is for me to let go of certain things because I’m afraid people won’t believe me. That my experience of something will be called into question, without someone else to verify it. My friend is my verifier and my witness. Without a current relationship, who will remember? Without the reminder, who will believe me?

So, it’s about more than her, isn’t it? It’s about more than needing her continued friendship as a point of reference of truth in my life. It’s about my own ability to hold truth and facts for myself without outside validation.

And that, is a lifetime process.

But it brought up a lot of grief yesterday on the phone (which is why there was no daily blog). The star-pupil cancer patient. Who wore bright colored socks and leopard print chemo caps. Who had her own stash of organic herbal teas and would walk into the hall to fill her own ceramic mug from home. The star cancer patient who worked so hard not to be one, now processing what it actually felt like underneath all that “Chin Up” posturing that was half-posturing, half-I’m totally awesome, and cancer can fuck itself.

But the friendship has suffered since I’ve been healthy. And I don’t know how or what to do on that. I think releasing the attachment of my friend as witness, of needing a witness is a good place to start.

I don’t want to remember and I don’t want to forget. And until I find a place of peace with “what went down,” that division will always cause me unrest. 

Yes, We Can.

• emailed landlord to ask to use 4th floor abandoned room as art room
• emailed vocal coach to inquire about lounge singing, how to start
• emailed friend to ask about going up in a small engine plane again. (flew one myself this year, and as always predicted, loved it. eventual vision of napa valley tour pilot.)
• have interview on monday for two teaching positions with a jewish organization
• have interview set up for another teaching gig
• have modeling/portraiture session set for next weekend
• replied yes to get minimum wage to usher at a Cake concert in two weeks
• will be reading tarot cards at good friend’s Halloween party on donation basis
• called friend's mom who’s a professional home stager about being her assistant
• have coffee info interviews set up with a few high-ballers in the community
• have action items from previous info interviews to follow up on
• emailed work-out studio to inquire about becoming an instructor and was told it's possible (with a lot of work)
• have a solid lead on fine dining waitress work if comes to that
• registered as a model with a “real person” modeling agency
• updated my profile on modelmayhem website
• got exact amount of pto i’ll be paid out when I leave my job at end of month
• inquired about health insurance exchange
• got flu shot and all blood tests up to date (all negative – which is positive!)
• made appointment for teeth cleaning
• ordered new shipment of contact lenses before these fall apart in my eyeballs
• replied to private tutoring gig from tutoring website I’m registered with (which… i’d completely forgotten about until I started getting these emails two weeks ago… coincidence?)
• emailed yesterday’s blog about t’shuvah to a jewish publication (a little late, obviously, but still.)

...to name a few of the actions I’ve taken in support of my work transition!

I am nervous about leaving the safety of my 40houraweekdeskjob. Yes.

But, I am taking a lot of action. Even as I drag my feet in some places, and have certainly been watching more Netflix than is good for any one person.

But I have a phone call with a mentor today and we’ll talk about smallness and scarcity and healing and changing. We’ll talk about, “Do not go back to sleep.” We’ll talk about the beguiling and insincere safety of being quiet and small. We’ll talk about the pain and bravery of stepping out of the cage and the tenacity and audacity it takes to stay out of it.

It’s not that I haven’t taken or thought to take any of the above actions before. It’s not my first time at this rodeo. But I just feel different. To quote Elisabeth Gilbert quoting a Balinese healer: “Even in my underpants, I feel different.”

But I also know my habit and pattern of swift work followed by years of inaction. I know what it’s like for me to engage in a flurry of activity and then allow it to languish by my lack of follow-up. I know what it’s like to abandon myself.

Which is why I’m telling everyone and their mother (literally) about my impending transition.

I cannot do this alone. I am a creature of habit, and I need you to be like my wagon train – I need you to lead me away from the ruts. If I let you know I’m on this path, you can help me stay on it. If I let you know it’s terribly painful for me to work toward something new, you can hold my hand and tell me you believe in me.

I know the source of all this change must come from within – I know it’s up to my own inner work to be the foundation for a new life. But I also believe in you, who believes in me, and we cycle one another into our best selves and our best lives.

Yes, I am the one who needs to actually look up that professional development course. And I’m the one who needs to continue looking at alternative work websites – and actually reply – but without you to cheer me on, without you to help me hold the lantern of faith, this change wouldn’t work.

That’s what feels so different this time – I feel supported internally and externally in a way these transitions have never felt. I feel optimistic and hopeful, giddy and aware.

Yes, the future is uncertain. But one action at a time, with your help and your heart, I am clarifying the vision of a future (and present) me who is freer than I’ve ever allowed myself to be. 

Undocking is not the same as Unmoored.

A friend of mine was a CPA working in the corporate world. She was making good money and working long hours. And was not happy.

She gave up her apartment, put her purged belongings in storage, and moved to India for 6 months, studying at an ashram, with no need for income or work, except inner work.

Then she came back to the States.

You can’t pay your bills with enlightenment.

She found that she had to create a middle-ground, and now, 10 years later, runs a private practice counseling others toward their own financial/spiritual balance.

I have a feeling I’m about to embark on a similar journey of finding my middle-ground between financial independence and creative expression.

Well, I guess I can’t really say embark, when what I mean is “continue” to simply push the boat out of the harbor. A boat isn’t meant to stay moored, and you’ll never find out what its strengths or weaknesses are, or what your skills as a sailor are if you don’t leave the safety of the dock.

To be concrete: I have informed my job that October 31 will be my last day there.

And the options that I have before me are less than concrete!

I’ve known for a while that it’s time to move on. In support of that notion, earlier this year, I not only put in for my own promotion at my job, but when I was told, “No resources for that,” I went on an active job search, engaging the help of friends to revamp my resume, made networking dates, and went on many interviews.

I was even offered a few jobs. Jobs, that perhaps before, I would have taken.

But the jobs offered, I came to realize continued marching me up a ladder and on a path that didn’t feel like where I wanted to go.

Despite my “big realization” many months ago about wanting to move in the direction of an executive director or program director position… I began to find out more about what that kind of job and life would mean. And it would mean more hours of my life than I want a job to be.

I found, through that job search, that I don’t want a bigger title with a mildly bigger salary. That the trajectory on which I am positioned and was looking to be headed was not one that ended in work-life balance. In a non-profit, there is rarely such a thing!

So, in came the notion of the “fulcrum,” endeavoring toward a job or jobs that generated more income with fewer hours. Leaving me the time I need to create.

When was the last time I picked up a paint brush, or even a pencil? Have I worked on that essay my aunt suggested I submit to publications? When was the last time I could really call myself a poet, despite my Master's degree in it?

Time. I discovered I wanted to literally buy myself time.

And so, I began to vaguely think about career paths or jobs that would be in that direction. Then came the High Holidays at work… and the play… and a halt to any developmental thinking.

But, the holidays are nearly over. It was finalized that there can’t be a different place for me where I’m at, and after too many days crying at or after or on the way to work, I am making a leap … not of faith, but of action.

With the faith that my action will lead me to something different.

For the past 16 years, since I was 16 years old, I’ve been a secretary. I’ve adjusted more margins and input more data than there are guidos in Jersey.

And so I am doing what conventional wisdom says never to ever do. I am quitting without a job lined up.

I have had a professional-direction conversation nearly every day since my decision, am having and have had coffee with people to bounce ideas off of and to network with. I have closed the browser window when I find myself looking again at jobs that say “Administrative” anywhere in the title.

I have been in a rut, and the only way to un-rut yourself is to lean into the discomfort and the growing edge of change. To watch when I’m teetering into despair, into habitual job search words, … into a Netflix binge, and to push myself onto the high ground again.

Another email, a sudden “crazy” idea, a phone call for some more information.

The experience I find most different about this job search than all my previous “quit with no plan” moves, is that I feel supported by my current office and all the people I’ve met there. This doesn’t feel impulsive, even though there’s “no plan;” everyone at my work supports my move, and though they’re sad to see me go, they have every faith in me that I can do whatever it is that feeds me.

I am reaching out to so many people I’ve met there. This isn’t a “here’s my two-weeks’ notice” email, as I’ve done a dozen times prior. This is actually slow and supported in many ways, and I feel it that way.

I am nervous, of course, but I am excited. I feel glad to notice that my brain is coming up with ideas that might be viable that would have been totally out of the box, and therefore dismissed, before. I’m not looking for another 40 hour a week desk job. I am finally willing to look at a patchwork living.

This is my own “move to India” move, though maybe it’s closer to the center of rational than I know. I’ve never been willing to have a few jobs and put them together for a living, because I thought it was too hard, or too undisciplined, or too “artist.”

I’ve been afraid of judgment: my own, my family’s, my peers'. I’ve been afraid to try to cobble together a living, because that “sounds” so hard.

But for 16 years, I’ve worked the 40 hour job. I’ve had the regular pay-stub with the paid-time off and the health insurance. I’ve had the computer log-in and the number to the copy machine guy memorized.

I’ve done “normal.”

But, dears, I’ve never exactly been normal.

Here’s to Voltaire’s Candide-cum-internet meme:

"If we do not find something pleasant, at least we will find something new.”

Baking a Life Worth Living.

“It was the fantasy made so real that I teared up a few times, wanted to pinch myself, and thought over and over and over, how is it that I am here?

How did this happen?

And I can trace the arc of it and still be amazed to be this woman[…]”

This is a quote from my friend Carmen’s blog today, or last night actually, the woman who began inspiring me to write a blog at all, and then a blog-a-day (or, almost a day. Self-care [aka sleep!] comes first during this month, sorry avid readers!).

Our paths have been divergent but so parallel over these few years, I once proposed we co-share a book based on our blogs: Her adventures in Paris, having moved there for her 40th birthday, and her triumphs and struggles there; My adventures in Cancer-land happening at the same time, as I turned 31, and the strangely similar triumphs and struggles.

Today, was no different: She was visiting New York City for the first time. I am in a musical for the first time as an adult.

Her words make me reflect and become present once again with the amaze-ball nature of where my life and energies currently are.

But, I also was very keen when I first found out I was cast about the words I used. I made sure to not say, “I can’t believe it.”

Sure, I couldn’t believe it! But, I wasn’t going to say that. I believe in the Law of Attraction-style woo-woo stuff, and in my readings on it, when you say things like, “I can’t believe this is happening to me” or “This is impossible!” or “This can’t be happening” – even though they’re amazing things – it’s my belief that the “Universe” hears that, that you hear that, and if that’s really your belief, then they can fade or change to support your belief that these amazing things aren’t actually happening.

Who knows? I don’t. But I’d rather be on the safer side of things!

So, when I told my mom, I said simply, "I’m so excited. I'm so grateful."

I do have to stop saying, "I’m so nervous." SURE, I am nervous. I had another voice lesson yesterday, and it’s helping me feel more comfortable in the lower register of my voice, but I won’t yet say I'm confident. It still feels like straining and yelling. But I’m getting more used to that discomfort…which I guess is another way of saying, “Getting comfortable”!

I am astonished by and pleased with the woman I am and have become. And I also know the places where I strive to grow and build and commit, and lay foundations for an even more “me” life.

I know progress is slow. My voice teacher said that it’s about first finding a place to build the house, before you even begin to think about what it looks like or furnishing it. You have to find the firm ground to stand on before you can build anything on it.

And, I’m doing that, slowly.

It’s strange sometimes to be the age I’m at. About to be 33 next month, and feeling so much older than some, and so much younger than others. Explaining to the 11-year old Pugsley what a revelation the cordless phone was when I was a teen. Even my new co-worker, age 22, fresh out of college, and so bristling with energy.

And then, there’s most of my friends, who are older than me, who hear me talk about the brevity of life and how there’s so much more I want to do, and give me the “You’re so young, you have so much time” face.

I get the feeling that this is the center (or the beginning of the center) of adulthood. When you know you’re not a child, really learning the world and who/how you want to be in it; and neither are you a middle-aged person, knowing that you are pretty well set in your personhood for the rest of your days.

It’s a period of final gelling that I feel. (Though I know learning and growing and changing is a lifelong process.)

But I sort of feel like all the ingredients have been gathered, have been mixed, and we’re waiting to see if what I’ve assembled is a sourdough or cupcake batter.

I do hope it’s cupcakes.

I am the woman who knows she eats 90 eggs a month (yes, really). Who knows she buys only Ultra Soft toilet paper, but the super eco-friendly paper towels. Who knows how to pay her bills on time, and knows she still won’t do her dishes until pressed by her own revulsion!

The woman I am looks for the hope, even in the desperate times. She relies on friendships built during the “ingredient assemblage” time, and knows they are in fact ingredients of this current and future life.

The woman I am struggles with self-doubt, and celebrates her moments of self-encouragement. Falls short of ideals, and laughs about it when she can, and shares about it when she can't.

“How did this happen? How am I here?”

I don’t have to pinch myself. I don’t think this is a dream. I do have to remind myself it’s a nuanced, challenging, changing, and ultimately precious reality. 

And the woman I am looks eagerly forward to licking the icing. 

Doctor of Philosophy

If you have read my blog for any period of time, you may be aware by now that I seem to have a knack for interpreting the human species and their actions. I observe, report, make conclusions, and sometimes adjust my own behavior to meet the findings of what “healthy” or “happy” people seem to be doing.

Philosophically speaking, in all my deep-cover research on human behavior, I may well have earned myself a doctorate in human behavior.

However for every inner tube of polymer, there is a flat of pavement, and it is where the rubber meets the road that I become hesitant.

It is all well and good to observe, predict, and theorize, to take note of actions of others and even of myself as a predictor and indicator of action’s next steps. However, there is also the parable about the monk who spent 20 years in a cave becoming enlightened, and upon emerging decked the first guy he had a disagreement with.

It is only in practice that we actually learn. (Though, I do submit that research and reflection help.)

When my mom came to visit a few weeks ago, we began to discuss my romantic life. (Unworried, as she said she was, that I would have any trouble when I was finally ready. She's not the "where are my grandchildren" type, she said.) I told her a little about my extra layer of protection around my castle wall metaphor. I told her that my work currently is about coming to trust myself and my boundaries enough to let people close enough to know me.

I told her my doubts about feeling capable of a) letting those guards down, and b) evaluating approachers in a level-headed way. I told her that I am scared to learn to trust myself, because I’m scared that I can’t.

She responded with a story of her own. She’d taken issue, herself, with the word “trust.” The airy and elusive nature of that word. And she’s replaced it with the word, “rely.”

Several years ago, she signed up to be a part of a tour group that would travel to Scotland to see the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her friend asked her if she was nervous to go by herself, with no-one she knew? My mom replied, No. She knew that she could rely on her own effusive and collegial personality, and that she’d make friends.

She didn’t say that she could trust herself to do this; she said that she knew she could rely on herself. That she had her own back, basically.

And she invited me to think about it this way instead: Can I rely on myself? Do I have my own back?

… Well, judging by a very long history of self-abandoning actions, it’s hard to answer that with a complete affirmative. But, when pressed, I know that it is true—that it is true now: I am here for myself, even when things are hard… and even when things are great.

My own pattern of looking the other way, of procrastinating, of dismissing myself has begun to lessen. If I look at it honestly.

And so, can I rely on myself? Well, I think I can.

And, here’s the rubber/road test: If I do think I can rely on myself, support myself, be compassionate and encouraging and honest with myself… Then… it means I’m going to have to allow the sentries around my castle to stand down, and let my natural boundaries do their job.

I’m going to have to trust myself (word disparity aside) and take actions that are indicative of a woman who trusts herself, inviting in those who are supportive but also challenge me to be my best self, and inviting to leave those who are not.

I’m going to have to have my back.

And I’m going to have to let go of the reigns. My reigns have become most like bonds, and not the fun kind.

I am scared to try this new way of being out “in the field.” But I am also scared to continue limiting my connections with people. (And again, if you’ve read me for any length of time, you know that, mostly, I’m addressing the case of chronic single-hood I’ve managed to carry for as long as I’ve been of dating age. Chronic single-hood is most like being Typhoid Mary. You feel fine, but no one wants to be near you.)

I know that I can’t (and don't want to) go on the way I have. I’m too young to be a spinster, and too old to be a bachelorette.

In the observational reality of modern relationships, I may be deft at cataloguing and quantifying. But my absence of field research also means that all of my assumptions about my own viability, accessibility, and health are purely theoretical. 

Slings and Arrows

Hamlet questions whether it is better to “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” or to “take arms against a sea of troubles” and end them (with suicide).

Outrageous fortune. Could be good, could be "bad," but we have to show up to find out.

In Louise Hay’s book on the relationship between emotions and body symptoms, the throat is listed as the “avenue of expression.” Troubles with the throat are interpreted as a fear of expressing oneself and stifled creativity.

I’ve felt it coming on this week, and today, my throat is officially red and sore. Color me not surprised.

As I’ve been mentioning this week, the idea of being loud, louder, more full, more powerful has been a hard one for me to grapple with. And so, this morning, tender in my throat, I went into meditation to “ask” what’s going on here, and how I can help.

Forgive me if this gets too “woo-woo” for you, but…

It was like Fantastic Voyage – I “went” inside my throat, to my tonsils, to my vocal cords, and inside there on both sides, at each tonsil, someone, a girl, a child choking them, shushing them. Telling them to Be Quiet!

I went and asked her what she was really trying to accomplish here, what is the objective, why be quiet?

Because then you’ll be safe, she railed. I’m trying to keep you safe.

I told her that I already am, that I am safe without this strangling. I put my arms around her, and told her she was safe, and in real life I began to tear up a little. With relief, with grief, with acknowledgment of pain long suffered and finally being addressed and hopefully cleared – in time.

With a mother with chronic migraines and a father apt to turn rageful, I learned very early that to be quiet, unseen, simple, need-less, and self-sufficient was to be safe. I aroused negative emotions in others when I expressed the needs a child might have, and so I learned to deny them.

This hasn’t worked out too well as I’ve grown up, and at another deeper level, I’m again being called to address the fallacy of these childhood interpretations. Someone not able to care for my needs is not the same as “my needs are too much.”

The important change here is to allow myself to understand, feel, acknowledge, and melt into the present, into the changes that I have made around and within myself to establish a life that is safe, loving, encouraging and open.

It is hard to remember these things in my throat.

I remember them in my head, but it is going to take time for the little girl who strangles and shushes me to understand, like most children, that something has changed.

It is safe to be heard. It is safe to speak up for myself. It is safe to be creative.

I have a host of supporters, internal and external, who tell me that indeed, Yes, it is better to suffer the slings and arrows than to shut down. That it is better to show up and be seen and find out what outrageous fortune has to offer than to escape.

I am safe, I am heard.

These are not mutually exclusive. 

The Bomb Squad.

Paying rent is a choice, she told me.

Um, What?

Sure. You can choose to pay your rent or not. If you choose not to pay rent, you face those results. If you choose to pay, that has different results. But it’s still a choice; you do have power here: where would you rather spend your money?

I was about 2 years into actively looking at my numbers and money, and back at the beginning of some work around my relationship to money, being broke, struggling, restrict & binging (aka depriving & then overspending).

The pattern that I would fall into was like clock-work. Every year and a half into a job that I didn’t enjoy, I would begin to feel frantic. Trapped. Manic. Suicidal. How can I make it stop?, I’d wail.

With no tools or guide, I would do what I thought made sense: Quit the job.

With no tools or guide, that didn’t really accomplish much. Except send me back into a different kind of mania and frenzy – now I had nothing, no savings, no job, and no plan. Three times in the last 8 years, I ended up with less than $5.00 in my bank account.

Each time, “miraculously,” I would land another job just in the nick of time. But it would be one job same as the other job same as the other job.

I had no idea how to break this cycle. I thought I was being diligent. I would reach out to people before I would quit. I would do informational interviews, and send out tentative resumes. I would look on craigslist for “creative” jobs, but would somehow end up at an ad posted by a foot fetishist…

Anything. Anything to not sit in front of a computer all day, I thought. – Well, almost anything.

And so about 3 years ago, in despair, I went near bawling to a meeting of folks who are trying to claw their way out of the pit of debt, financial worry, self-abandonment. Because, in the end, I've learned, it’s a function of self-worth.

So, I began working with a new mentor about a year ago. She had hopes for me I couldn’t imagine at all. Buying a car to get me to auditions and band practice, being a big one. Not me. Not people like me. I’m a fuck-up. I ruin things. I’m broke. Hello?!

But, she held out hope for an idea I could never have conceived of. And 6 months later, I put a down payment on a car.

A car that takes me to auditions and band practice.

However, it’s not the rosy scene it seems.

About two months ago or so, the itch arose again, the heat turned up. I gotta get outta this job. I’m dying here! GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!

And along with that struggle and pain and fury and anguish again arose the suicidal ideation, because how else can I get out of this pattern. I am doing all this work, I have a car now, I’m doing shit, but I HATE MY JOB. I will never end this cycle, and I can’t quit again.

I can’t quit again.

I can’t quit again.

Quitting, for me, is equivalent to relapse. It’s insane to think it would be different this time. It’s insane to throw myself back into the cycle. IT’S NOT THE SAME. IT CAN’T BE THE SAME. I don’t have to be the same…

And that’s where the change happened.

I reached out every single fucking day during that period, texting and calling friends in TEARS, unable to see out of this hole. Telling them, please please PLEASE help me not to quit today. That I see the insanity of this. That I can’t go down that path again. That I don’t want to detonate my life again.

I don’t want to detonate my life again.

I like stability. I like the freedom of knowing how I’m going to fill my fridge and my gas tank. That doesn’t mean that I have to do the kind of work I’m doing for the rest of my life, but for right now! for this minute!, it does.

And please dear god, help me not nuke my life again.

And, you know – I didn’t. 

Because I didn’t, because I sat through some of the most uncomfortable feelings I’ve ever had, through that pain and frustration and ire and hopelessness and despair, because others told me that it would pass, because they told me to read the chapter on Withdrawal, because they told me they believed that I could find another way if I just held tight…. I got the chance to drive a car with a tank of gas and belly full of food to an audition and land a role. I got to show up for the things that give me zest and zeal and love and joy.

I get to do that today, because I sat through some of the worst anguish I know. And I came to the other side of it.

This does not mean that I love my job. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to do different work. It doesn’t mean I enjoy my job any more than I did. But it means that it’s not my whole world. And by allowing myself to sit still, I am available for the other things that feed me. Like groceries.

I have never come to this side of that struggle before, so I don’t really know what will come on the other side. Except, today, play with my band, tomorrow theater rehearsal, and Monday, a photo shoot.

If I had quit, I couldn’t show up, because I’d be in despair of not having any money and a frenzy of trying to find work. I don’t like that I have to show up and adjust margins for a goddamn living.

But by not nuking my life, I get to have a life. 

Excising a Lily-Liver

As part of my personal work, I am called to amend relationships in my life that are in need of clarity and repair.

As part of that work, I broke down my list of these people into three categories: People I fall out of touch with; Men I intrigue with; and My dad.

I’ve begun the work on those I’ve fallen out of touch with – it’s usually out of a habitual belief that I’m not good enough to show up for relationships and I self-prophesize that by allowing relationships that I value fall away. These are relatively easy to repair, and by doing so, I get to challenge these false and long-held beliefs by being consistent, responsible, and focused on the truth.

Amending my relationships with the second set of humans is more … well, I was going to say more difficult, but it’s not more “difficult,” it’s just harder because I have more invested in those. If you don’t know what intriguing is, it’s those little flirtations, vaguely flirtatious texts or conversations, or over-active “likings” of someone else’s Facebook page in a "winking" kinda way. It’s, for me, engaging in flirtatious behavior with people I don’t want to go any further with, and sometimes with people I have no interest in, but who I know I can reach out to when my self-esteem meter is low for a little infusion of “See, I have value: he wants me,” and a little hit of adrenaline from the oblique exchange.

This is a very old habit. And it’s excruciatingly unfair to both the men and to myself, especially any of those who think there’s still a shot. It’s unfair to me, because I continue to feed the delusion that my self-esteem comes from others, and to crowd the field of actual potential partners with distractions – albeit often very handsome, talented and hilarious distractions.

Since the time that I wrote down the half dozen or so names of those with whom I was actively engaging in this behavior, about half have simply fallen away through circumstance and lack of my engaging. They’re intrigues, not relationships usually, so they don’t require some big conversation like, “Hey, I’m trying to be more clear in my relationships, and I just want to say that I really appreciate you as a friend, and that I see us just being friends in the future.”

The funny thing about saying this is that, when I’ve given that speech in the past, usually the response is, “Yeah, totally! I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Which is fine. I love you and your egos, and I will help preserve them too; I’m not here to bust your balls. I’m just here to offer us both some clarity and let us both off the carousel of “Will we/Won’t we” so that we can get on with our lives.

But. For some of the people on my current list, that conversation is necessary, and in a truncated, “light” version, I had that talk with one of these men recently. And the backlash from it was … well, people don’t like when you change the rules in the middle of the game. And I’m having to show up for the fall-out of that, even though I just want to avoid it. I participated in the game, I should participate in the dénouement.—Oh, but how much easier to Cut & Run!! Oh, old M.O., how I love you! … and miss you.

Because I don’t really do or want to do that anymore. See: first subset of humans: retracting from relationships because I don’t believe I can show up.

It’s the same underlying belief in this second category. 

More will be revealed, and I have some writing to do and a conversation to have with some for whom I’ve changed the rules. It’s not comfortable, but neither is predicating a relationship on false hope.

The final category, I see now, has its foundation in the self-same belief that I can’t show up for relationships. In this case, with my dad, I’m being asked to be honest with him in a way that frightens the shit out of me.

I would LOVE to lie, avoid, detach, retreat, and retract. But each and every day since the invitation to his wedding came in over the phone, I’ve been called to take a different course. Because, I have been using the above mechanisms for how to manage this relationship. I’ve been detached and retracted, and avoidant. And, much like with the men, I’ve created a game that I don’t want to play. One in which my dad thinks I want or can have a relationship with him.

To tangent:

This morning, I will get an ultrasound of my liver to confirm or disconfirm cirrhosis. About two months ago, my liver enzymes came up elevated, and although I simply think it’s my body’s reparation from 6 months of chemo a bit more than a year ago, I am also very aware that in Chinese medicine, the liver is the seat of anger. And two months ago, I was very angry. For a long time. And this dad stuff only serves to aggravate it.

I was at my therapist’s last Wednesday, and I told her that I would really love to be able to forgive him, but I am not able to do that. I’m terrified that my lack of forgiveness for him is perpetuating the problems in my life, and creating holes in the foundation of my life and relationships and happiness -- and my health.

I told her, it’s astonishing to me that I can have forgiveness for my rapists, but not have any for him. Compassion, I have in crateloads. I know how this person came to be, and it’s a sad state of affairs. But, no matter what modes of self repair I try, I can’t find my way to forgiving him, and I feel that I need to in order to move on with my life.

She said something critically important: You can’t manufacture forgiveness.

If I’m not there, then I’m not there.

“But what about that he’s getting older, and what if he dies and this is unresolved?”

You can’t manufacture forgiveness.

I can’t bully or force myself into a feeling that I don’t have. She said that I have some word she couldn’t place that indicates deep disappointment. And betrayal. And this is true.

And I would love to “get over it.” But I’m not there yet, and beating myself up for not being at a place where I’m not doesn’t help me get there quicker.

I honestly don’t know if I’ll get to this place this lifetime. The very last time I was vulnerable to him and depended on him, he used it as a later opportunity to shame me for not being the daughter he wants. This is a Catch-22 relationship.

But. It’s not.

The catch is that I have to be willing to show up with my truth, which, like my friends and like those men, is that I don’t like who I’m being in this relationship, and it’s harming me. I don’t like to show up in a falsetto range “happy” conversation with him, when that’s not at all true for me, and so I avoid the conversations. But, he’s pressing now, and there’s a deadline.

The truth will out, as Shakespeare wrote. The work on my part will be to get ready to deliver it. To get ready by remembering I’m acting in an esteemable way by showing up for my part of the relationship. I’m also working on steadying myself for the fallout, of which I anticipate there will be much.

Again, people don’t like when you change the rules in the middle of the game.

But this was a game I started playing when I was a child. The rules have changed. It’s time for me to let the other players know. 

To let them know I've stopped playing. 

Fulcrum

(No, sorry, this has nothing to with the group of evil spies on the t.v. show Chuck.)

Ever since I listened to this podcast on the development of energy efficiency, I've been thinking about developing a process to create more while expending less.

In "olden times," the podcast said, a day's work could earn you an hour, maybe, of candlelight. Imagine having to work an entire day, just to get one hour of power to your iPhone, let alone your refrigerator or car.

In contrast, through scientific achievement we now, through a day's work, earn a whole lot more power through our effort.

... I can't remember how many days it reported precisely, but to give perspective to it: I pay on average $12 a month for my PG&E bill. (Granted I have most of my stuff attached to power strips I turn off before I leave, and never leave things plugged in that I don't have to.) But, if I earn more than that per hour of my work, I've earned myself over a month of power in 60 minutes.

The point is, science has created a system whereby we work less to produce more. Our efforts are magnified through efficiency -- we don't have to work as much or as hard to get what we need. Science created a fulcrum, a point on which we can pivot our efforts to enhance them exponentially.

In my life, I am in a process and a pattern where I work a lot, like most of us, and what I earn from that pay supports a life that is getting by. I'm not saving much. I'm not spending much. I'm pretty much working to get by.

And I've decided I'd like a fulcrum.

To be specific, I'd like to work less and earn more. (Wouldn't we all? But yes, isn't that the point -- perhaps we can.)

I did some calculating this weekend, and I can earn what I'd like to be earning (more than a "getting by" amount) by working half the time, 20 hours a week, if I triple my hourly wage. Sounds far fetched perhaps. But stranger things have happened. And the rate I'd need to earn isn't outrageous. It's actually pretty attainable for a skilled service.

The question now is, what will the service, my fulcrum, be?

At various times, I've teased the idea of throwing caution and (my own) morality to the wind and thought of prostitution. I'm sure I could earn there, but at what other cost? Result: rejected.

Other thoughts:
Consulting -- in what?
Counseling -- perhaps -- more schooling then?
Coaching -- maybe -- more schooling, too.

But, we're back to the point of the fulcrum -- I can expend energy now in creating my fulcrum. It'll likely take time and effort, but boy howdy! The results!

I don't know yet what the outcome of this line of thinking will produce, but I like that I'm thinking this way, out of the box of where I usually look. Instead of looking again at the job sites I always look at to get a higher paying job but work the same number of hours, I'm realizing I need a different way.

Because I need to be available to the projects that ignite me, and I have to give myself the time and space to do that. ... Without being a starving artist -- I simply refuse to struggle more than I have to. It's not fair to me anymore, when I know there can be another way.

So, if I can find a kind of steady-ish, scheduled-ish vocation that allows me to produce more while expending less, ... well, as Archimedes said when demonstrating the lever:

"Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth."

Wilderness Survival

So, here's a funny.

Remember when I posted that blog about finding equanimity in my relationships? About not being thrown by others emotions (or even my own)? Yeah, that one I posted on Friday... three days ago?

Well, guess what I've been given the opportunity to practice these last three days?

Bingo!

To be respectful, I will simply say that I saw many chances to retaliate and behave how I used to -- particularly, by being curt, punishing, and seethingly silent. If I behave that way, you, of course, will apologize for your behavior, and change in the way that I want you to, right?

Unfortunately, or fortunately, I really noticed how I wanted to react, my first reaction. How my disappointment wanted to come out as being mean. Instead, I tried to my best to "let it go." I had that silly Frozen song in my head a lot this weekend!

How others are choosing to behave is none of my business. As it affects me, it is my business. But it's up to me to choose how I want that to be expressed.

Let's just say that I was pissed, so much so that I was on the phone while driving, and got pulled over by a cop before I even left San Francisco.

Luckily I was let off with a warning (and I know how much those tickets cost!), but it gave me the opportunity to pause and look at why I was behaving in the way I was -- in a way that wasn't good for me.

The whole weekend ended up, for me, being an exercise in letting other people have their emotions and their actions, and not being drawn into that drama. It's camping. It's supposed to be light, fun, and not particularly insightful, except maybe the insight and rest and joy that comes from being in the silence of the forest. Which, is never actually that silent, once you get quiet enough. That's one of the things I love about it. To hear the rustle of the trees, the little animals, the little noises. How this tree sounds as it sways in the wind as opposed to that tree.

Luckily, I was able to ask for some of that time for myself, so that I could get my stillness in.

I am no saint, and I am no angel, and I have no business judging others, or assuming that they should be any way other than they are. But I do get to ask for what I need, and I do get to behave in a way that is in alignment with how I want to be. Despite that my brain gremlins are momentarily eviscerating you.

Upon arrival home to Oakland, I get a phone call. It's my dad.

Really?

I let it go to voicemail. I'm emptying out the cooler in my bathtub. It rings again.

Now I think it's an emergency. Nope: After a decade of being engaged to the same woman, he's finally getting married.

The last weekend of the play I'm playing the lead in.

I was *informed* I should see if they can get the understudy to do that weekend. I wasn't asked what play it was. I wasn't told congratulations. I was told, in the voice of force only my father knows how to invoke, that I should be there.

I told him I'd ask about the understudy.

I called my brother, who'd left me a voicemail about this earlier that day. If the invitations were going out the next week, it was clear that this plan was in place quite some time ago, no? Could be that I could have been informed a little earlier, no?

I was virulently reminded of when I was sick with cancer, and my father told me that he could only call me after dark, when I was exhausted from my days of chemo, that "This is how it works." This is what he told me about not being able to call me earlier. "This is how it works."

After I got off the phone with him yesterday, I remembered that. This occasion, this insistence that I be there, despite whatever (SUCCESS) is going on in my life, is part of his pattern of demand, and selfishness.

And, an inability to say something like: You know, Molly, it would mean a lot to me if you could be there.

I told my brother when we were discussing the viability of my coming out, plane tickets, and where to stay, things that my dad has obviously not thought of. ... that I would talk to my network. That I would look at my numbers. Maybe ask him to pay for half the plane ticket out, since I'm not in a position to go back east again right now.

But then, I do know how awful it is to ask for money from him.

So, I will talk to my network. I will repeat "Let it go" in my head, and I will remember the thing I usually forget when I feel made small by him: I am awesome.

My being in a play IS a big deal. My getting a lead role IS a big deal. I'm doing a brave and new thing. I am taking chances to be greater in my life. And the exercise in equanimity is to allow and remember and embrace and be bolstered by these facts.

It is not a surprise that the weekend I claim that I've moving "beyond" being thrown by others, I'm given several (immediate!) chances to practice what I preached.

A mentor once told me that our "character defects" (or, outmoded coping mechanisms) aren't relieved from us. They aren't removed. Instead, we're given opportunities to either pick them up again, or to act a different way.

I haven't known what that other way is, until I'm given the chance to try something else. If I only reach for what I know, I do the same thing. It's not that I feel relieved of being thrown by others' emotions. I just feel more able to deal with what that brings up for me, and how I choose to engage with that.

What will happen with my friend? Change.

What will happen with my father? I can only hope: Change.