T’shuvah

(In my vague and limited Jewish knowledge) T’shuvah refers to the time in the Jewish calendar between Rosh Hashanah—the Jewish New Year—and Yom Kippur—when our names are sealed in the “Book of Life” by G-d for the next year.

T’shuvah literally means to return, but most interpretations take it to mean a time of repentance. A time of atoning for our “sins,” and to acknowledge where we’ve “missed the mark” of our own moral target.

I’m not one for “sins,” or for “atoning,” or for asking forgiveness from a spiritual entity. In my own spiritual practice, there is a habit of taking note of where we’ve been wrong and amending that behavior, whether through direct conversation with someone we’ve harmed or through choosing to act differently in the future.

But, the idea of asking a “higher power” to forgive me for anything at all has never sat well with me. I simply don’t think that anything that has the power to create life and death and change and love would need my asking. I believe that whatever “G-d” is, “it” is much too loving or non-personified to ever require me to ask it to forgive my behavior.

As I said, I still think the process of taking stock of my behavior and righting my own wrongs is very important to my emotional wellbeing and my personal relationships. But on the spiritual plane, G-d would never need me to ask for forgiveness. There’s nothing to forgive – there’s only love, acceptance, and a desire for me to be my best self.

That said, I have been reflecting that this week of t’shuvah has certainly been one of returning. I feel that my actions are those of a woman returning to herself and her values; returning to my true nature, and returning to ideas and hopes that were feared or abandoned.

I am in a musical. I’ve returned to that dream of acting and singing, despite the fears and self-judgments it still brings up in me.

I have officially announced this week that I am moving on from my office job. Again, a return to my true desires, my internal compass. I have stopped hitting the Snooze button on my instincts and drives.

No matter what comes of it, disaster or “success,” I am trying something brand new for me. And that is certainly a return to curiosity, innocence, hope, and creation.

I told my coworker that I boycott Yom Kippur these days. The fasting and the communal atoning of sins. I shun this day and its activities because the idea is that by atoning for our sins, we will be “inscribed in the Book of Life” for another year.

According to the Jewish calendar, in 2012 the evening closing Yom Kippur was the moment of my Leukemia diagnosis. I spent the day of Yom Kippur in an ER. And closed the chapter of that day with cancer. I was 30 years old.

I have done a lot of work around turning that diagnosis into the seeds of a new life. But I will never deny that I have a few wheelbarrows full of anger and grief that still need … sorting or composting or alleviation. Or simply time to feel them, and then to let them go, perhaps, if that’s what happens.

But for me, the idea that on one of the most holy days of the Jewish year, on the day when a person is either granted another year of life or is not, I cannot hold the tragedy of being told half my blood was cancer on that same day. 

And, I imagine, my feelings toward all of this will transform, lessen, or evolve. But, for now, I boycott Yom Kippur.

I have used this week of T’shuvah to take stock of where I am desirous to return to and acknowledge and rejoice in the truth of my soul, and to note where I already am. I have used this week to affirm that life can be new and different and fulfilling.

I will never need the forgiveness of an entity that is either made of benevolence or simply is the indifferent force of Life itself.

My week of T’shuvah is and has returned me to a place of excitement and possibility. I don’t need a communal atonement to reward me for how exceptional that is. 

That said. Shanah Tovah u'Metukah -- May you have a good (tovah) and sweet (metukah) year, friends. And may we write our own Books of Life. 

Well, Shoot.

There has been all this heartache in me about wanting my father to change. To be loving, available, vulnerable and open. I have wanted this to happen for as long as I can remember, and I’ve held out a resentment toward him for his inability to do this for that long, too.

I have tried many ways around and through this resentment: loving kindness, acceptance, letters to god, letters to him I didn’t send, letters to him I did. Individuation meditations, praying daily for his peace and happiness, envisioning him as a child... But nothing has moved this boulder of a need.

And I finally realized what the need really is. It is not that I need my father to change. At this point, it’s that I need him not to. Because if he did, then I would have to look at being loving, available, vulnerable and open to him. And this causes trouble, because this is not safe.

So, keeping my resentment toward him has been a circuitous way to protect myself from my being vulnerable to him.

It’s all well and good to want someone to change – but when faced with the actuality of their transformation, how do we deal with that?

I wish I could tell you that I have overblown the situation, and he’s kinder than he appears, and being vulnerable to him could maybe, possibly, just-give-it-one-more-try, be a good idea.

But it’s not. Unfortunately, I have enough evidence to support this. Not ancient, you yelled I was a liar during a game of Clue when I was 5. Like, recent, appallingly turning my vulnerability against me evidence.

So, here’s the thing. I can forgive all of that. I can be willing to forgive it all, anyway. But do I want to change my behavior? Not really.

I’ve spent all this time trying to find my way around the rock of resentment to get toward connection, but when I look instead at what the rock is doing for me, not to me, I get to see that maybe it’s been doing the right thing all along. And this realization is hard for a person like me.

I have fear that keeping myself separate from him will cause bile in my soul and in my body, and corrode other relationships. I have fear that by not being vulnerable to him, I’m going to call down some cosmic retribution and be serially alone. I have fear that I’m not “spiritual” enough, or evolved enough or recovered enough, or else I’d be able to have him in my life as a loving and caring adult, both ways 'round.

I have shame that I can’t allow this relationship to flourish. That I refuse to be the asshole who riles on the ground before him and begs him to love me. I have been doing that for as long as I can remember, too.

But the thing I always thought I wanted was for him to do that too. To acknowledge his faults, to claim ownership of his behavior, and to beg my forgiveness.

What I see now, is that if he actually did, I don’t want to give it – that forgiveness is a door to love. And with him, love is a door to hurt.

The boulder has been there doing this job all along.

Until I learn a “healthier” way of screening those doors, they’ll just have to remain shut. 

1 + 1 = Forgiveness?

Because he was an electrical engineer and adept with numbers, it was always my father I went to with math homework.

This near-nightly escapade always took the same tired route: My dad trying to explain to me a concept that was assumed, understood, and so ingrained for him by now that he couldn’t explain it properly, and his getting frustrated when I couldn’t understand what for him was plain and evident.

I would get frustrated at his impatience, and the fact that I had to do this homework so I had to sit with him. And eventually, we’d become locked in a battle of wills so contentious, we’d end up screaming at each other. We call this 4th grade.

My brother told me a little more than a year ago, when I was going through chemo treatment and my dad was unable to show up for me, that what I was asking my dad to do (show up emotionally) was like asking a crippled person to walk: It’s impossible. It’s unfair, and it’s presumptive.

The same assumption that my dad had about teaching me math concepts, the ease and obviousness and facility he had with numbers, I have about emotional matters. I simply assume that because this is something so damned simple and easy for me, even when it’s painful, that everyone should be able to do this.

I am making the exact same mistake he did with me: I am shaming someone for something they are not able to do.

So, when I contemplate following up my dad’s return voicemail from Father’s Day, I have found that I want to do what I always want to do: Hash it out. EXPLAIN to him what is so obvious to me: I needed you to show up for me, and you didn’t. In fact, you blamed me for not being attentive to your needs. And you threw in my face every time I’ve failed in my life as if that would manipulate me into realizing, once again, you’re the savior and I’m the fuck-up.

I want to tell him this, of course, in a gentle, loving way, because then, of course, he’ll be able to hear it and understand it.

If I explain it really  s l o w l y  as if to a child, my dad can’t possibly not understand that his behavior across the years has been abominable at many times, and that I don’t like to be in touch with him because of it. That I don’t trust him because of it.

However. I’m simply expecting what he expected of me back then: Comprehension.

No Comprende, Mamasita. He don’t get it. He won’t get it. And you can sit with as many graphing calculators and pie charts of his behavior and your feelings of hurt and betrayal as you choose. You can even make a PowerPoint presentation about how his increased anger and violence was inversely proportionate to your trust of him.

However. I’d be wasting my breath. And do people even use Powerpoint anymore?

I still remember concepts my dad taught me about math. I used the one to figure out a percentage this morning. Somewhere between the yelling and the tears and the slammed books and doors, I did learn something. But what was the price of that education?

My dad was not a teacher. And my dad is not an empathetic person. It just is. Just as a paraplegic, my asking him to do what he is mentally, emotionally, and spiritually unable to do is unfair of me. My expectations on him won’t make him walk.

I hate relearning this lesson. It too ends in tears most times. But, today, I do have a choice between struggling to opening his mind, or to simply let him be a cripple and relate to him as such. Because it seems like the person who needs to learn something is not my dad (someone I have no control over). The person who needs to learn empathy here, soy yo. 

The Father-Daughter Dance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But, forgiveness is another thing.

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

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

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

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

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

I really hate that card. 

major malfunction

The quote from Full Metal Jacket came to me this morning as I was putting away my (clean) dishes (thank you, Homejoy, for your Facebook coupon!): What is my major malfunction? Why have I gone so far off the reservation with this dating situation? What is my primary malfunction? Primary...

That’s when the trap door opened, I fell through my crazy, into the heart of truth. And I began to cry. From realization and long delayed-grief.

Some of you may know by now that my mother suffered from manic depression as I was growing up—still does, but went on medication about 8 years ago, around the time I got sober, in fact. She told me a few years back that she was terrified of loving me fully because she was scared of the depths of her feelings, that they would overwhelm her. She told me that when I was growing up, she would spend 30 minutes locked in her bathroom crying every morning before emerging into the day. This, I remember. Staring at the closed bathroom door every morning, listening to her cry, and having no idea why, if she would stop, if she would come out, what I could do. She said that she just thought this was normal—this was her normal at least, and it was the only way of being she knew.

The way this manifested in our relationship was that I never knew when she would turn. When she would be the mom who was there for me, and when she would click into mania and be unreachable in her heights, or click into depression and be unreachable in her depths.

This, was not a recipe for trust.

My father, as we all know, was a volatile man, doing nothing to help the bonds of trust and love cement into something benevolent, supportive, and foundational.

What I saw this morning is that the ambiguity of dating targets right into that major malfunction with laser precision.

I don’t blame her, and have long since forgiven her. But apparently, I still haven’t really healed what it meant to attempt to establish bonds of love on a fault line. Not knowing what your feelings are about me… I get as crazy as you’ve seen me this week. Perspective, reality, confidence, hobbies, work, all get ousted as I try to figure out what it means, because if I can figure out if the fault line is about to crack, then I can get out of dodge. I can shut down, run away, shove you away.

That was my previous M.O. for sure. I will shove you away before you get close, before I have to “figure out” if you’re trustworthy. It was not worth the pain of waiting to see if I could. Better to bomb the whole base, just in case there was a sniper in there aimed at me.

So, shove you away. That meant any number of things, including not dating, only have casual relationships, going after taken men.

My other way of being was to fall quickly into a relationship, which is how my two long-term (read: 6 months) relationships began. Express interest, have sex nearly immediately, you’re now in a relationship.

There wasn’t ambiguity in that.

I didn’t have to figure out (then) if you liked me, if you were gonna hurt me—we were “boyfriend/girlfriend,” and had great sex. It only came later (read: by month 4, and certainly by 6) that I had to question something different: if I liked you.

So, it is believable, understandable, and more than a little compassionable that an ambiguous dating situation would set off an atom bomb in my head. Though, ultimately, it’s stemming from my heart, but more ultimately, it’s stemming from my head, and the recreation of an old story and an old way of coping with the uncertainty of human relationships.

I have very little dating experience past the first date. It has always either gone: “Ciao, buddy, thanks for the latte,” or “Which side of the bed is yours?”

People I know talk ALL THE TIME about “living the in the grey,” “not figuring things out,” “relaxing into the experience,” and I want to spit a poisoned dart into their over-eager eye. Fuck you people. The grey was a place, growing up, that was riddled with landmines and Blitzkreigs. The grey place was one where you never knew if you would be okay, ever.

And now, of course, how fitting, I’m being asked to once again live in the grey—or at least get a rental application—but to live there differently. To live there, visit there, try it out there in the grey, because that’s where most of life is lived, and I want to live in life. To be in the grey differently, means to call upon my own foundations of trust that I have established with myself and with the people I have chosen to love as friends in my life—Not all of these friendships went the distance, but they were worth pursuing. And didn’t cause any agida. So, it’s a deeper love and a deeper trust we’re working on.

And it’s probably not even with a person, unless that person is me. It’s probably about developing, deepening, cementing trust with a benevolence. And from the foundation of that relationship, will I be able to withstand whatever the Richter scale throws at me. Especially if it's reading 0, and telling me it's safe to stay put.

Day Jobs.

Yikes. Unintendedly, I apparently freaked my mom out. I guess "What goes around comes around" is a less than spiritual comment here.

When I was camping this weekend, one of the women said she’d used this 23andme site that did genetic mapping and testing. She said she found it to accurately confirm things she knew she had and “labeled” her cousin as her own on the site, so she felt it was reliable when it came to the things she wanted clarity on or might not know. So, on a whim, I looked it up yesterday. Part of it is my own rampant curiosity about my dad’s father’s side of the family, about whom we know nothing (very hush hush, gramma got pregnant at 15 in an Irish Catholic family under-the-rug), so I’d like to know about that fourth of who I am.

Secondly, and importantly for me, my mom’s mother died from Alzheimer’s and I want to know if I have the gene or not. You can get it without the gene, and you can not get it with the gene. But, I’m curious. And a little excited. If I don’t have the gene, I can (and would) worry less; and if I do have the gene, they’re coming up with all kinds of new things people can do these days to stave it off or minimize the effects – and I’d look for more information on stuff like that.

So, in an effort to “share the good news,” I emailed my mom and brother yesterday to let them know about it (though women are more likely than men to get Alz). I got an email back this morning from my mom saying that no matter what to never [BOLD FACE] EVER tell her the results of it.

Yikes. Granted, my mom is a class-A worrier, anxiety-disordered woman on medication, but… yeesh. That obviously wasn’t my intention, to freak her out – I guess I imagined she’d react as I did – “Cool, what can I learn, so that information can be useful in how I lead my life?” … Best laid plans, I suppose.

It’s Friday, so it’s a little rough to go into what I remember of my mom’s parents’ deaths, and what I consider to be and have been “wrong” ways of grieving. And so I won’t do that today. It’s NOMB – None Of My Business.

So, I’ll undeftly switch topics, as I’m uncomfortable. ;)

Yesterday, in reading Tina Fey’s book, I had a sort of realization about “day jobs.” Fey worked at a YMCA for $5/hr in Chicago when she left undergrad. She wanted to take improv classes, so she angled for a job “upstairs” in the office of the YMCA. When she was asked on the interview why she wanted the job, she replied unabashedly, So I can afford improv classes. She got the job, took improv classes, and quit the job less than a year later when she got work with the improv group.

I had my informational interview with my former acting teacher last Friday, and she said nice things like I have “great instincts,” and that "it’s obvious [I] really enjoy it.” She didn’t really give me the “constructive criticism” I was looking to get – areas that I could improve in, and as I was recounting this to my friend last weekend, she said it sounded like I wanted to hear places I could just do X, Y, and Z, so that I could “fix” it, and suddenly everything would fall into place. Yes, give me a set of movable problems, let me fix them, and then let me be free of problems forever. That sounds about right.

So, I didn’t get that. I got what felt like nearly reluctant suggestions. Again, I guess I had expectations. But, I heard that acting classes would be a good idea to continue with. So, yesterday, I looked up the classes at A.C.T. Studio, and their summer program. It’s not very expensive, but surely more than I have now.

And I remembered what Tina Fey had said: she took a job so she could afford to do what she really wanted to do. For SO long I’ve been agonizing over what is my “ideal” job, or what will feed me spiritually, intellectually, and creatively – what one thing would fit all my needs. I don’t feel this way about people, why would I feel this way about work? I don’t expect one person to fulfill all my needs – that’s ridiculous, unfair, and leads to disappointment. So, why should I feel that a job would or ought to do the same.

There’s something in this. It takes a shit ton of the pressure out of whatever job comes to me next. That it is a means to an end. And further, I’m honing in more closely on what I’d want those “ends” to be – what I want my job to afford me to be able to do. Lessons, classes, (acting & music, for now). I’m not sure what this realization will bring me – except that I already feel less internal pressure about “What I’m going to do next.” Chances are (G-d willing!!!!!!) that the job that I get next can afford me the disposable income to take classes like that. Or, rather, the chances don’t have to be there, I can just start angling the satellite dish of my focus in a slightly different direction, picking up on things that I’d dismissed, as they wouldn't “fill me spiritually.”

Like a person, it’s not a job’s … job to fill me spiritually. That’s up to me. That’s up to me to take the kinds of actions that will allow me the freedom from financial worry to do things that do feed me spiritually and creatively. I have a phone call date with another acting friend next week, having been inspired by the new angle of my satellite to be able to continue having these conversations with people.

What comes of it? Who knows. But I feel more open to things, and I’ve noticed that makes a world of difference.

(Sorry, Mom – didn’t mean to freak you out. LU, m.)

Melting Boxes and Falling Cards

I may or may not have a date this weekend with a jew I met on okCupid. We had made tentative plans for Sunday, but I had double booked and asked to meet up on Saturday instead, and haven’t heard back yet. We’ll see. I’m talking with another CupidJew; jdate, I have a coffee date aligned for next Friday, but I’m not entirely enthused on this one – and let another thread fall when I realized I wasn’t really interested in meeting this other dude. 

Who knows. It’s like the job applications. Send stuff out – see what sticks. I do feel like I’d like to apply to more teaching jobs though. It’s really funny. Maybe 6 or so months ago, I met with a girl friend who works with Expressive Arts Therapy, and she asked how "teaching" felt in my body – to make a motion or movement – that would express what being “a teacher” would mean to me. Then, I contracted and constricted my body, on the tack that teaching is a sedentary, stoic, geographically uninspired profession.

Surprisingly or not, I don’t think I feel that way anymore. Maybe I’d express it a little more wiggly now – maybe because it is a little more (or a lot more) wiggly than I’ve previously boxed it in. I also would like to apply outside of the Bay a little more. I know that moving costs a lot, and yadda yadda, but, in the spirit of “what do I know about Fate,” I’m willing to throw my net wider, and my seeds farther, and see what sprouts, … or is caught. … You get the idea.

What a concept – pushing my ideas out of the proscribed boxes in which I’ve held them.

Interestingly, my mom comes to mind. “Mother,” lord, what a “concept.” What huge, enormous expectations and qualities we – or I – hurl upon such a word. My ideas were formed way back when – she’s crazy, unavailable, manic-depressive, and dying of her own neuroses – and these have kept pretty calcified over the years. She’s better now (G-d bless medication), but it’s hard for me to allow that. If she’s not crazy, if I don’t mistrust her, where are we? How do we engage? Obviously, similar questions can be brought about my dad, and even my brother. … and more broadly, myself, you, the world, etc. Boxes. Boxes with a label, Discard After 1987, or maybe after 1996. Certainly, way past their due date by 2012.

I think of this about my mom today in again reflecting on the agingness of my parents – having seen them both two weeks ago for my graduation. They’re getting older. They’re not going to be able to do or go or share or be what they had been. And so, I wrote my mom an email yesterday I titled “If you build it, they will come,” and in it I simply wrote, “Sometime in the not too distant future, you and I should go to Paris. That is all. Love, Molly.”

My mom has never been, nor have I. I’ve been clicking on this contest prize for a trip for two to Italy for a few weeks now – because, you gotta buy a ticket if you want to win the lottery, right – and I realize that there are some things that if I want to do with my mom, I better start to do them now. Sure, I have no idea if something like a trip to Paris or Italy, or anywhere, will take place, but the time is getting shorter when they’d, she’d, be able to really traipse about. Traipsing is a young people’s – or younger people’s – pastime.

I am glad that the boxes in which I’ve held my parents are disintegrating like so much wet cardboard. It’s a little scary. But, rather, it’s not scary, as much as new.

I wish I could let the boxes around myself melt as much. One of the dudes I’m talking with on the dating site is very encouraging and interested in my bass playing, though I keep on telling him it’s really a lack of bass playing, and a lot of me being silly and denying myself (although, surely, I didn’t put it quite that way – impressions, you know!) ;)

But, it’s another box. My girl friend I was supposed to speak with about her bass playing, our phone call didn’t happen, and I haven’t rescheduled. Although I am having two info interviews around theater next week. One in person with a friend of mine who is an active actor (but has a “real” job, too), and the other by phone with my former acting teacher at school, who is the casting director at a local renowned theater company. So, there’s that.

There’s a lot. And as I was telling someone yesterday, a house of cards must be taken down very slowly and carefully. Not all at once. I don’t think I’d much like being shaken all the way down to my bonsai tree nubs. Or pruned, I suppose would fit that metaphor better! But point being, that dismantling old beliefs and behaviors takes patience, practice, and an ability to leave it alone for a while.

It’s not some jenga game I have to finish in a proscribed period of time. (I’m ripe with metaphors today! ha! enjoy or apologies, either way!) There are time-sensitive matters – my parents’ aging, obtaining employment so I can feed and house myself, but even that one is a little fluid right now, although surely top of my mind - I do have this temp work I’m doing, which I’ll be doing for likely another 2 weeks. I’ve been applying, and we’ll see. I’d like to apply to different avenues, and we’ll see. I plugged “jewish” into my searches on the dating site, and we’ll see.

“…and action is its key word.” Amen. 

What Ifs – A Response

What if I thought more of others’ happiness

What if I were grateful for what I have

What if I took good care of my possessions

What if I took good care of my body

What if I allowed myself to receive love from others

What if I allowed myself to receive my own

What if I believed I was alright

What if I were grateful for my coffee mugs, 

                                                 gifts from kind friends

What if I were grateful for the furniture in my apartment, 

                                                 free, all of it

What if I were grateful for the electricity

                                                 clean water

                                                 hot water

                                                 a refrigerator

What if I allowed myself to fill my refrigerator

What if I allowed myself to believe in my inherent goodness

What if I believed that I was more than my wants

What if I believed that I was able to carry more than I ever have

What if I thanked others for their kindness

                                                 What if I meant it

What if I let myself feel love for other people

What if I let myself feel generosity of spirit

What if I thought there was enough for everyone

What if I thought more about everyone

What if love was a gift

What if I let myself breathe 

                                                 when I hug people

What if the smell of children’s hair was enough

What if I let myself believe in my dreams

What if I let myself support them in an adult way

What if I opened to hearing your praise

What if I opened to hearing your guidance

What if I opened to hearing your story

                                                 without thought to improve, correct, enhance

What if you were enough.

What if I were enough

What if I let myself stop 

                                                 worrying

                                                 being small

                                                 hiding

What if I believed it were safe

What if I believed you were safe

What if I believed that I were

What if I let myself be

What if I were more generous with my gifts

What if I were more generous with my affection

What if I were more generous with my laughter

What if I could relax

What if I could relax.

Three's Company

Best Laid Plans are luckily not always the best plans. Overambitious as visits with family usually are, my brother Ben and I did not get to see all of San Francisco in an hour and a half. He did say the sweetest thing, as we swept back into the car off of Pier 39 on our way to Lombard Street – that he came here to see me, not San Francisco.

My brother is 3 years younger than me, lives in New Jersey, and is a highlight of my life. It was not always rainbows and puppy dogs between us, but the last few years have seen a dramatic, but incremental shift toward mutuality, trust, and love. It’s been one of the greatest gifts that I’ve gotten, this renewal of our relationship on a basis of support and respect and admiration – to get to know each other as adults, or as adult as we are, rather than as two kids fighting each other for the crumbs of whatever there was available.

So, he and I got to briefly traipse around those tourist spots, and then had to get to SFO to pick up our mom. Another relationship which has formed and reformed many, many times. It’s in an iteration that neither of us know, and so we’re sometimes formal, hoping not to cross boundaries or offend, and we’re sometimes deep, treading carefully for the same reasons as above. Mostly, we’re funny. Mostly, the three of us together is like an old left-off conversation, dotted with movie references, and cackles of laughter – though my brother chortles rather than cackles.

An old boyfriend of mine got to meet her once when she came to visit me in San Francisco about 4 years ago. He said that we laugh the same. I’m sure we’re many things the same – sometimes I catch the strangest sights of myself, and am struck at how much that’s a “mom” move – reaching for a kitchen cabinet, I see the hollow of my thin, graceful wrist, and it’s hers that I see and remember. Sometimes it’s the way I click my fingers together when I’m nervous or anxious. And sometimes, it’s strange things that I’ve picked up from her, like when I was in college, cutting up chicken breasts in the kitchen, and I started clucking at the chicken – and didn’t even notice it until my roommate came it and laughed – this, is a mom move.

Irreverent, sensitive as all get out, brilliant, worried, with a kind creamy center like the inside of a cadburry egg that you cradle so you don’t crush it. That’s my mom, and also my brother and me. We each have varying degrees of it, but we are apples not fallen far from the tree. And however embarrassing it was growing up without cable or Nintendo, so that we watched Fred & Ginger movies, and all the movie musicals, and The Marx Brothers, so that no one our ages would get our references, we’re older now, and people still may not get our references, but I can appreciate that we have them at all.

A friend of mine told me maybe a year or more ago, how distancing she felt that her father could really only communicate in quotes from movies – that it wasn’t personal enough or intimate enough. I shared with her my and my brother’s experience, and said, for me, now, it’s actually one of the ways we do share intimacy – sharing something, a witticism, with each other that we know the other will get, and so we bond and revel in our commonalities.

My cell phone broke recently. In it were saved text messages over the course of several years. I’m a hoarder of texts. One of the last that I know I have saved in there is from my brother a few weeks ago: “Of course your president is an actor – he has to look good on television.”

For those uninitiated, this is a Back to the Future quote, just one in the long continuous conversation that my brother, and mom, and I get to share with each other across time and space.

We cannot be present in person with each other often. And when we are, we’re all still learning how to relate in a way that is open without overreaching, and fun without being superficial, among many more balancing acts that all relationships aim to master, but likely never fully achieve. We figured out that the last time the three of us were together was about 3 or 4 years ago.

Last night, at dinner, which didn’t go “as planned,” as my dad and his fiancé were stuck in the city and didn’t make it to the ceremony at school, it went perfectly. It wasn’t as I’d planned, it was better. And the three of us delighted in the bright, animated, multi-faceted, infinitely tangential company of one another.

For all that has come before, for all that it took to get us to that dinner table, for all that will continue to need to happen to help us show up to tables like that with one another, I have a family whom I love, and who love me dearly.

TODAY’S GRADUATION DAY! So, as Abe Lincoln said,

Be excellent to each other, and… PARTY ON DUDES!!!

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. 

Poetic Noise.

I was all set to write a blog about 7 years. How really when someone is 6 years old, they’re beginning their 7^th year of life. How I’ve been here in the SF Bay Area 6 years to the day, and so I begin my 7^th year in the Bay. And how, further, and don’t quote me, that our cells are said to regenerate every 7 years – all of them – so that I am now beginning a set of 7. Any and all cells that I had in my body when I arrived in San Francisco have absolutely been purged and regrown, replaced.

I think about this, and intended to write about all the things that have changed in these 6 full years. About where I am not as I begin my 7^th – about how I feel it’s completely cosmically appropriate that I stand ready to graduate from a Master’s program and contemplate a return to the East Coast, and even maybe a career.

I wanted to list things like getting my teeth fixed, a several-year process that I started here, after 10 years of having a few molars pulled in high school but never replaced, which made me self conscious in photos, though few others noticed (I certainly do now, as I smile entirely with every ounce of my cheeks).

I was going to write about my return to art. About taking up the pencil after several years' neglect and the first tentative and judgmental sketches which I shoved away for another few years before warming up and into myself – culminating in selling a painting last year – me?! of all people.

The last 6 years witnessed a return to the stage, auditions, head shots, community plays. Two acting classes, and two performance poetry classes, and some modeling to further my return to being present in my skin.

They also signaled a return to writing, the scribbled in margins and the back of notebook hobby of mine. Who knew that beginning to post my poems as Facebook notes for several years would morph into what it is now – reading in public, (almost) owning my mantle of poet. 

I got a cat, for chrissake. Something I was loathe to do – my first pet-able animal I’ve ever owned, and having her hasn’t make me a crazy cat lady… so I’m told.

I put up curtains, set root in San Francisco, didn’t run away, cut and run, shrink or hide. I’ve emerged slowly, shyly, tentatively, reluctantly and painfully for sure.

I took guitar lessons and voice lessons. Which I dropped, but the piano creeps in these days, sending crescendos of joy into my marrow.

For years, while I’ve been here, whenever someone told me that they were in school full-time, I looked at them as though they were a movie star, a little starry eyed and goofy and admiring, and said (I remember so clearly), I envy people who do that – go to school fulltime. And now I’m one of them. I forget that I really asked for this. I asked for it often and deeply.

As each of the cells on this corporeal form have dived their swan song into the ether, I have changed. People sometimes use the term inwardly rearranged – how literal it is here.

Yes, I intended to write my blog about that – about the nature and surprise of continuing to beat a heart consistently for 7 years.

But I read my email before I came to write this, and there’s some poetic noise in the interwebs about some highly public class tension that occurred last night in the direction of a classmate, and I’m just sort of sad about it.

We are all human. We are all trying to be free from suffering and doing the best we can. 

How we act and react -- teacher, student, classmate ... parent, co-worker, acquaintance, dude who cut me off on the highway -- is simply and ultimately the best we can offer for that day. We may not like it or approve - we may reprove ourselves for how we acted or reacted or neglected to act - but we also get to reflect and change what isn't working for us, whether that's our perspective or action. 

So mixed with the awe and gratitude I feel for not being the sloppy, grubbing, manic splash of a young woman I was when I arrived in San Francisco 6 years ago today, I also feel a melancholy compassion for last night's wounded artist (who for all I know, may not be), and for the reality that we are all somewhere in the process of this perpetual self-renewal.

My Life is in Harmony and in Perfect Living Order

My Body is in Harmony and in Perfect Living Order

My Home is in Harmony and in Perfect Living Order

My Finances are in Harmony and in Perfect Living Order

My Time is in Harmony and in Perfect Living Order

My Family is in Harmony and in Perfect Living Order

Now that you’ve vomited, gagged, or simply stopped reading, this is the phrase that occurred to me this morning. Particularly around my family.

These are affirmations, which means that they may not be precisely “true” at present, but the point is to work at believing them, and to bring them into being. Affirmations have a long history, with me too, of being thought of as poppy-cock, and nonsense, and sooooo gushy icky lovey for only the really far out hopeless cases of wishful, magical thinkers.

And, be that as it may, what harm can they do.

It’s like the removal of the paintings of women hidden from the viewer. What harm can it do? It’s like seeing a holistic chiropractor who recommended gargling with (diluted!) apple cider vinegar because I was getting sick. What harm can it do? It’s like believing that my parents will behave themselves when they see each other at my graduation.

Like the anxiety/control bug will do, this parasite will glom onto anything to maintain its existence. And, currently, now that it looks like I may well graduate (WHEW!), it looks like my parents are coming out to see me “walk” for graduation.

I’m… anxious in advance. My parents were not the fighting kind when they were married. They were the not talking kind, speaking, toward the end especially, only about who has a dentist appointment that day, or when they’ll be home, etc. So, it’s difficult to imagine a reality in which they talk less, but, I’m in it. We’re in it.

In fact, it’s worse. Because now, there’s rancor and distrust and dislike. There’s resentment basically. And for the most part, since their divorce ten years ago, a) they do not talk, email, communicate (except through my brother and me), and b) if they mention each other, it’s with bile.

So, my anxiety bug has been glomming onto the event of their being in the same place at the same time, and how uncomfortable their tension makes me.

It’s been suggested that I can let each of them know that this is on my mind, and that I look forward to a happy occasion. They don’t have to be best friends - they never really were – they just have to get along enough to celebrate a happy occasion. My happy occasion.

My therapist said yesterday that it’s typical for people who have had to take on adult responsibilities prior to adulthood to get a little paralyzed and fearful when faced with adult rites of passage, such as graduation. That we have put on such a show and action of being adult before our years that when we’re actually faced with real acts of adulthood, we don’t really know what to do with that. There’s a feeling that we haven’t in fact grown up enough to take on the responsibilities we’re being asked to take on.

The fact is, I didn’t graduate undergrad with my friends and roommates. I was in a mental institution at the time, coming off a combination of drugs and alcohol, most of which noone knew I was abusing so much. I remember my fear of what would happen when I graduated. This fear of going home to live with my dad (my parents had only divorced that year) and knowing that he and I were at odds. Seeing that my roommates and friends were all getting ready to prepare for it, and I was in some bar, occasionally some bar in Philly, miles away from school and responsibility.

And in a final act of “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing – H E L P!!!,” I shaved my head - bicced it - in a moment of defiance, rage, and desperation. I didn’t know why I was really doing it then – it seemed … logical? It seemed like my only recourse. It felt like I was on that electric walkway at the airport, and its moving along underneath me, but I’ve lost my footing, and its dragging me, scraping me apart as others stand so calmly heading toward their future.

I did graduate, and “walk” a year later, once the chaos all settled. But, certainly, it’s been on my mind as I set to graduate this May. The same sense … or maybe it’s just a similar sense – of not knowing what I’m doing; that I don’t know what’s on the other side of this change; that don’t you know how lost I am still, and I’m not sure I’m ready for this.

However, the truth is much different. It’s different than my fear, and it’s much different than the reality of 9 years ago. The truth is, I’ve been told by my academic advisor that this fear is normal. I’ve been told by my therapist that this fear is normal. And, I’ve been told that I am certainly not who I was 9 years ago. That the resources and foundation that I’ve worked to build is actually quite solid, and my fears are no more than that. Just fears.

Just worries that Molly doesn’t know how to do it perfectly. That Molly is at a different place than some of her high school and college peers with their children, spouses, and minivans. I’m just worried that I’m still a foundering vessel – but I’m not. I can let myself be. I can let myself fall into the abyss of despair, worry, and self-pity. But that really doesn’t take into account the facts.

The fact is, I’m much more capable to take care of myself and my life than ever before, and I have a host of people to help me when I feel like I’m failing at it. And, the fact is that whatever happens between my parents when they come visit is not a reflection that I have somehow failed. That their tense relationship is an outside reflection of my inability to have a normal, sane, happy life.

Not true. And, so I will repeat the above mantras, in their purpose to solidify from wish and desire to truth. And maybe even get a little excited and proud that I have accomplished something rather remarkable. :)

Wet Concrete.

Today is the last day of work before the winter break. And although mine is polka-dotted with gorgeous adventures with wonderful women, what i’m really looking forward to is sleep! And cleaning my apartment.

There’s some kind of shift happening, or a solidification rather. I feel the cement getting stronger beneath my feet. As though I have poured the foundation, and it’s looked messy and strange – like getting a degree in poetry, putting together an art show, cleaning out my childhood home for sale, getting out of a relationship, beginning to audition for theater. I haven’t known what any of these pieces have meant as they’ve come up and I examine them and lay them down, like Indy choosing the right chalice at the end of Last Crusade, hmm, consider, lay aside. I’ve just been picking up these pieces with curiosity.

And now they’re all poured into the mold of my life’s foundation, and I can’t explain to you why, but there is a joy that is arising that feels so uniquely new and pervasive, that I know these are associated. With a stronger foundation to stand on, I’m freer to explore, create, test theories, fail, try. I’m no longer standing on quick-sand, undermining myself as soon as a notion crosses my mind or path.

I also know that there are likely a thousand more things that will go in this foundation, that it won’t ever be “complete,” but isn’t that the point of life? (She says with any idea like she knows what “the point” of life is!!)

But, I tell you, something is happening. Which is a good thing, because I can spin out into “I have no idea what’s happening/going to happen”-land really quickly.

For now, today is my last day of 2011 working at a job I enjoy. I’ve been asked to come back on January 3^rd when the office reopens, and it has been suggested to pay off my credit cards with this money I’ll earn, instead of ear-mark it for a car, … but we’ll see ;) My credit cards don’t have high balances (no one ever trusted me enough to give me too much credit! – including myself), but the interest rates are exorbitant, and one of my tasks is to call to ask for a lower rate. I’ve done this before, and they’ve said no. I’ve done this recently, and they’ve said no.

But the woman who suggested it said that this is one of those holes that needs to be closed up. Why pour water into a sieve? In order for me to hold abundance in my life, there are places where I need to be ready to receive it. So, this is one of those action places, a place where the foundation can become firmer. The woman also suggested a script for calling them, some key phrases and an attitude, that scare the crap out of me. Because they mean taking true accountability and responsibility for myself and my finances by letting someone else know that this is not okay. Paying almost 20% on a credit card, and not touching the principal is (apparently!) not okay. And I need to close these holes. I also will let go of the results, because they may still say no, but the action of taking action to care for myself and respect my own boundaries is the lesson, and the trial.

I get reflective around the turn of the year, and around my birthday. For all the floundering I sometimes believe I’m doing in my life, the truth is that progress is being made. It has not been the easiest year, and the hardships have variously set me to a variety of tasks and new things:

• the breakup caused me to lean on my girlfriends, and have the experience of getting through that “slammed by a mack truck”ness of early breakup;
• the breakup led to rebounding, which produced my best painting yet (in my opinion) – lol;
• the japan disaster prompted my friend to host an art show with donation to japan at which she asked me to read my poetry, for my first time in public outside of the school community;
• my bitterly harrowing lack of income over the summer caused me to get in with a community of people who work on financial security and abundance issues;
• later, working too much caused me to come up against boundaries of self-care and are helping me to say yes and no with integrity;
• packing up my childhood home for sale caused me to root out the sadness and grief that lived there, and here in my heart, and to begin to perspectivize ;) it with more serenity;
• having that wonky conversation with my mom over the summer caused me to take space to reassess how I am able to engage with her in ways that feel mutual, responsible, respectful, and loving to us both;
• being single caused me to pick up Calling in the One to help foster love and care within myself and help to radiate outward;
• my grandmother, my dad’s mom, is dying, and this is causing me to see my dad with more compassion than I have, perhaps, ever, and to listen to him as a person, not as “Dad” with all its attendant baggage and expectations.

So, there’s just some reflections which come immediately to mind. There are more. But as the saying goes something like, "out of every season of grief, when life seemed heavy or unjust, new lessons for life are learned and new resources of growth and courage are discovered." And for me, these seasons of grief were simply filtering out the junk in the pouring concrete. 

circa 1994

So, I have a new crush. Not that the maroon 5 singer wasn’t delish (see "pulling a carmen" blog), but, I just finished watching “Junebug,” a movie with amy adams and alessandro nivola – and I dunno folks, but something....... Y-u-m. Lately, I feel like there’s 15 year old girl inside me who's been making these choices for me, as it’s been a while since I’ve had “star” crushes. Although, of course, the billboards for crazy stupid love (not steve carrell – sorry steve!) and the new Sherlock Holmes have been lovely head-turners.

When I was home in NJ packing up my room, I found my stash circa 1993 1994, so I was 13ish at the time. … Johnny, and Keanu. I had pages and pages of them each taped over my bed. On the wall above my head was Johnny, and to my right was Keanu. In the mornings before school, I would watch a half-hour of either “Speed” or “CryBaby” – yes, very different movies. And at night, I would kiss each of the gentlemen on their paper lips. Ha! I was a girl. It was great. The Johnny pools of deep luscious brown, and Keanu in a crumpled suit in a claw foot tub in the middle of a field of weeds.

It’s funny what we remember. Like how much our music tastes are concretized when we’re young. When I was getting ready for the dance party last night, I threw on the LIVE album, Throwing Copper – also 1994 as it turns out – and although it wasn’t as uptempo as a party prepping moment and I changed the cd, I still knew all the lyrics. The things we touch back to. The nostalgia that becomes a part of our persona. It’s interesting.

At 13, however, I was a frizzy haired gangly girl with acne, coke bottle glasses and a gap between my front teeth. (Like many middle schoolers!) And so we cling to idealized images from Bop! magazine, and the tortured melancholia passion of a rock album.

Hm. It’s sorta nice to look back with compassion for the 13 year old, to hold on to some of the things she liked, to hold them today as funny stories and taste values.

To undeftly switch gears, but surely related in some stratosphere, I sent Chanukah presents to both my parents this week. As some of you have read, I have been working toward some semblance of reconciliation with my mother after our 6 month incommunicado status. And though we have been texting, and though she sent me a card on my birthday in October, well, I finally shipped to her her birthday present – from June. Our final conversation was around then – I’d already bought these very “mom” presents – an old fashioned magnifying glass with a beautiful fake mother of pearl handle (it’s funny cuz she’s old) ;P and a set of red painted coasters with a bunch of different roosters on them – to match her red couch, a self-identified marked leap for her into color a few years ago. The presents were perfect. Then we careened into the minefield of our relationship and I got indignant and punitive and never sent the gift to her. It’s been in my closet since June.

So after talking with Patsy last Sunday about sitting with the idea of what it would be like to send her a Chanukah present without expectation, I took the present out of my closet. And sat it on my desk. ! Two days later, I picked up an empty box from work. Two days after that, on Thursday, I brought the box into the city and shipped it to my mom. In the box, I’d wrapped the gifts in white and blue tissue paper (Chanukah colors, naturally), and put in the watercolor “giraffe in a scarf” card I’d painted, with a note on the back that I thought she’d like these things and I love her, and happy holiday. (btw, there’s a cellist somewhere in my building or the one next door, and he’s really good – and he’s practicing right now – it is so gorgeous.)

I wrapped the box, and was conscious of letting all of this go out across the country to the Upper East Side with love. With the spirit of giving – which demands no return, which doesn’t even demand she like it – but just truly to say, these reminded me of you, and I love you. Yeah, it took 6 months to get there, but, I am here now. And she should get them soon.

To my dad, I sent something similarly freeing. As I feel it now, it’s miraculously powerful to get to give these gifts to my parents – not the gifts, but the freedom, if only momentarily, from my judgment of them. To my dad, I sent one of those LL Bean canvas tote bags that literally can hold a small child. I had it monogrammed: “D & B”. My dad, Drew, and his fiancé, Barbara.

My dad has recently begun signing every email to me, “Love Dad and Barbara.” This has pissed me off. That my relationship with him is now no longer with him, it’s with a pair, with an entity that is “Dad and Barbara.” But, as I’ve almost always said over their 10 year courtship, I respect her because she makes my dad happy. And that is true.

So, I sent it with a card, To Dad and Barbara, May you use this well in Florida, Love Molly. Because guess what, my dad loves her. He wants to be identified together with her. He wants to be one of a pair, and it’s none of my f*ing business how he wants to be identified. It’s like a person adopting a gender pronoun that they prefer to be called. Who cares if you have a penis, and want to be referred to as “she.” I would call that person whatever the f they wanted to be called – it’s not my call. And, so, neither is it my call to exclude Barbara, even in this way, from my life, or from my Dad’s life. So, to D&B. And off it went. And truly, I do hope they use it well in their new home in Florida. I know it’ll mean a lot to her, and it means a lot to me to see this stubborn, snide child give way to an inclusive, loving adult. It’s pretty huge.

So, like I said, I don’t know how these topics relate, but they’re what’s on my mind. A 13 year old girl-like crush, and no-strings-attached consideration for parents. I can live with all this multi-faceted nonsense, because it’s human, and whole. And 13, or 30, I still think this man is delish. ;)