Maybe Baby 2

I have been looking at porn.

This porn comes in the form of a Facebook page for local moms who are selling or giving away baby stuff. 

I’m on this page because one of my best friends is pregnant, and I have hopped so far aboard her baby-train, I’m surprised I’m not morning-sick myself!

In the past few weeks, I’ve begun reading a book on pregnancy that she read and loved (The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy), crocheting baby bibs, buying scrap fabric for burp clothes, and practically stalking her to ask if she wants a breast pump I found online. 

As I spoke of in my 2014 blog post “Maybe Baby,” I am not sure whether I want children. 

As then, I am not in a serious relationship, and I still am not willing to go the motherhood route alone, so there’s no real reason to question if I do or do not. But, reasonable or not, that doesn’t stop me from thinking about it. 

With every article on our drought, the cost of living, the planet’s imminent demise, the expansion of the stupid class — I am convinced for a few moments never to bring children into this hateful world. 

And with every true breath of fresh air, every warm hug, every belly laugh — I am convinced for a few moments that I want another human to bear witness to this world’s incandescent beauty. 

I am the age my mom was when she carried me (33), and then my brother at 36. I have been emailing and asking her all kinds of questions about her pregnancies since I began reading the pregnancy book — what was your morning sickness like? what does pregnancy feel like? did you have food aversions? stretch marks? hemorrhoids? (god help us, she did not!)

I have had the liberty and the luxury of asking my mom these questions, and too, my friend who is pregnant, does not. And I am very aware of this fact, and I think it has spurred my devoted interest in her pregnancy — I want to be there as much as I can, because I want to make up for any absence she might be feeling (real or imagined, to me, since I haven’t spoken to her about it yet). 

I was on the phone with my mom this morning, telling her that I feel my heightened interest in my friend’s impending mommy-hood is also that she’s my first local BFF to be pregnant. One of my other best friends in Long Island had a baby last year, and I was able to be there for a few days when the baby was a month old, but that’s all. There wasn’t the same imminent babyhood. 

I told my mom that I’d been thinking about my very best friend from childhood, a woman I’ve known since we were 3 years old, and how I can’t imagine what it will be like if and when she gets pregnant across the country from me. And I began to cry. 

Of course, it’s about her, my New Jersey friend, and it’s also about me. About how I’ll feel, if and when I also choose to have a family — assuming I’m able — so far from her and my own family. 

This is big business. This mommy stuff. 

And I am wanting to prepare to make that decision in a realistic way — so I have doubled-down on my work around intimacy and relationships (or in my case, habitual lack thereof). This morning, I told the woman I’d been working on these issues with by phone for about 6 weeks (a stranger whose name was passed along to me from a woman I admire) that I have reached out to someone local to work the rest of this stuff with. 

And I have. I will continue this relationship work with this local woman who has known me for nearly 8 years, who has seen me at my best and worst, who can call me out, see patterns, and provide so much space for my feelings and vulnerability that I can practically swim in them and still feel safe. 

Yesterday morning, this same woman (as we were talking about what my issues were and what I wanted to work out) said that she'd always felt for me that my issue was around deprivation. 

… 

She’s very astute. 

And it’s also funny to me because it’s one of those things that doesn’t come into focus about yourself until someone else (who knows you well) reflects it back. 

I am very aware of this time in the generation of women around me. My friends who are certain they don’t want kids, ones who know they do, the ones who can't, and ones who, like me, are unsure.

It’s a particular, cordoned off time in our lives. And I’m holding the space for that, leaning into the grief of potentially not seeing friends change their whole lives, them not seeing me do the same. I’m aware this is “future-tripping,” but it’s fair to acknowledge my feelings around it, anyway. 

I’m allowed to not know what will happen (for me or for my friends), and I’m allowed to have feelings either way. 

Today, what that looks like is picking up a bitchin' breast pump for my best friend. Continuing to do the work toward an intimate relationship with a man. And letting myself be both sad and happy for and with my peers. 

The Miracle of 12 - 13 - 14

“I’m getting married on 12/13/14,” I half-joked to my coworker early this year.

I just love the order, the numbers, the unique fact that consecutive dates like that won’t happen again until 2103 (1/2/03).

My favorite time of day? 12:34.

Although "5:55" is another favorite, because my brother and I used to stand in front of the microwave (the only digital clock in the house then), look at the time and announce, “Five fifty-five!” and then lean over sideways, our heads upside-down, and announce, “Fifty-five five!” and then stand up straight and do it again: 5:55!! 55:5!!

I love that kind of order and ease, palindromes, sequences.

THREE POINT ONE FOUR ONE FIVE NINE – I THINK PI IS MIGHTY FINE!, is one our mother taught to us.

And so, when early this year, I looked at the calendar and saw that one of these special dates was coming up, I declared to my coworker that would be my wedding anniversary date.

Now, this was, say June, maybe? No boyfriend. No prospects. It would be a short engagement! But I figured, What the hell, it’s always good to declare things to the Universe. Why not?

And 6 months later, yesterday, it hit. December 13th, 2014.

No, I did not get married. Alas.

But I did get something else. An outpouring of love that rivals the strongest romantic connection:

Yesterday, you all erased my cancer debt. In 36 hours. Less than two days. Poof! Gone. Done. Finished. Eliminated.

FREE.

Yesterday evening, I became free. Because of the love and generosity of you, my friends, your friends, and even people I barely know.

One of the donors is a woman I helped at my sales job this week. A brand new woman I hit it off with, and happened to mention the launch of the campaign on Friday.

“Send me the link,” she said. And she donated, too.

Over 60 people contributed to the campaign, not to mention the shares and “likes” and “We’re with you” emails and messages.

In 36 hours. It’s done. Something that has harangued me since I got sick is over. Something I put in every monthly budget and calculate how long it will take, and that I can never move from my apartment with that debt. Something I was shackled to. 

Until yesterday. 

Now, I have to wait for the campaign to officially close in January, and for the crowdfunding site to take their cut and then send me the donations.

But then, I get to write a check to my landlord. And I get to say, Yes, it’s time to clean out that janitor room–cum art studio, unstick the windows, clean out the dried cat poop, put a lock on the door, and hand me a key. 

And then I get to move my art supplies up. Out of my closet. Out of random drawers.

The half-started art projects, the oil paint, acrylics, and embossing gun, the colored pencils, and easel, and oil pastels, collage magazines, glue sticks, stamps and stickers, brushes and sketchpads and canvases, exact-o knives and glitter.

All of this. All of this hidden away in my studio apartment closet. All of this out. Up. Lit. Alive. With me, available to me. Creation incarnate.

I get to m o v e  o n.

12 13 14.

I didn’t get married yesterday. But what is a wedding except a display of love, commitment, hope, cherishment?

On 12/13/14, I absolutely received that. Your love, your hope, your belief in me.

Wow.

And: Thanks. 

From Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving.

Last Tuesday night as I sat at a rainy Oakland BART waiting for the shuttle to take me within walking distance of my apartment, my friend called.

She’d remembered that it was my first day of training for my department store sales job and wanted to know how it went. I told her, Good. A lot of corporate training-style stuff. Different department managers introducing themselves. Lots of powerpoint presentations about the history and brand of the company. And there were to be 3 days of this.

I told her I was most nervous (I told her I was trying to call it “curious”) about what would happen when I actually got onto the sales floor the following Saturday.

I haven’t worked retail since high school.

She told me we were both having “first day” experiences. She’d just this afternoon signed a contract with a small graphic design firm to be a partner with them, and she, too, was “curious” as to how it would all work out.

She told me that morning, she’d read this story about a guy who’s mentor suggested that he make a decision to not worry for one year. That whenever he got nervous, or tried to “figure things out,” or was anxious about an outcome, he made the commitment that he would simply not worry, that he would trust in the “universe,” and understand that he didn’t have to know the outcome. He just had to do what was in front of him and take small actions.

Needless to say, he had a great year.

As I huffed into the phone on Tuesday night, walking through the dark blocks toward my house, I asked my friend if she wanted to make a pact with each other. That for one year we wouldn’t worry.

And so, we did. We each announced to each other our commitment (middle names and everything) not to “not worry,” but to catch ourselves as quickly as we could, and to remember to “let it go,” and, for me, to have faith in the benevolence of the universe and the unfolding of my path.

When I’m scared of not making my sales numbers, and this whole retail thing doesn’t really work if you don’t. When I’m worried that retail hours and theater hours are the same and how will I be able to do both. When I am concerned that I quit a full-time time to have time to engage in creative project, to find a “fulcrum” job (more pay, fewer hours), and I've ended up in another full-time job…

I've been telling myself this past week, “From Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving.” Because that’s a year for my friend and me. One year of not worrying. Of trusting that it’ll not only be okay, but that it’ll be great.

To trust that if I simply do what’s next, make that next phone call to a friend, hang up that next sweater, show up to that next audition, the world will have a way of working out.

Sure, I’ve been nervous this week -- making calculations, staring wide-eyed at rehearsal schedules, wondering if this position will be temporary or not -- but I’ve been remembering that catch phrase, whispering it aloud, and it’s helped.

Today will be my second day on the sales floor. I am scheduled with them through the start of January with an option to extend. I have an audition set up for late January for a great musical. And I have COBRA payments to starting this month.

But I'm not going to worry one bit. ;P

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. 

Are you coming?

Yesterday was finally the day. I’ve been with this cast for a month in performance now, and once, even twice, a weekend, they’ve shed their wigs and sweat-soaked costumes and gone out to the bar.

I haven’t been. Partly because I don’t drink, partly because it gets so late, and partly because I’ve just been kinda shy about it. And last night, when the venue was gonna be a gay bar to dance, I decided it was time.

Sure, it’s a Friday night, I’d worked all day, rehearsed and performed all evening, and I had to be up this morning to sit for a portrait artist at 10am. … but you know what? Yesterday was a good day, and I felt invigorated.

I found out that I got cast in another production at the theater where I’m currently running. I got the large important work project done, with a few hiccups at the end of the day. And I finally felt like I beat the solo song that’s been beating me all run.

It was a good day. And dancing sounded perfect. I dance like a white girl, but I have fun doing it. Though, granted, there were other white girls there who definitely don’t fit into that “white girls can’t dance” model! But just the vitality and joy and jumping and ear-wide smile and circle of friends who are together only for a brief period. It was awesome.

I used to go dancing once or twice a month. Then maybe every other month. And now, I’m lucky to go once or twice a year. I would never listen to the music in real life. I know maybe one of the dozen songs that gets played. But it doesn’t matter.

I toss my growing-in hair around, I bounce on the balls of my feet, and I pump my fist in the air when it feels like time.

And it does. 

Blood Brothers

Yesterday morning I had coffee with a cancer friend, for lack of a better term.

He’s someone who reached out to me when I returned to work last Spring, who was 15 years out from his own similar cancer diagnosis, and said if I ever wanted to talk, he was available.

Since then, we’ve had coffee about once every 6 months or so, and we get to talk about walking back into a life that sort of looks the same on the outside, but has completely changed. We exchange the requisite, “Everything’s okay with your health?” question early in the conversation so we can continue on.

We speak mostly about work and fulfillment.

At the time we first met up, he was in a transition of his own, and now, about 18 months later, is again. And so we spoke about meaningfulness, about intention, about the often tipped balance between the checkbook and joy.

I love talking with him. Because he is my cancer friend. Because, it’s different than the first coffee date I had even earlier yesterday morning (a Jewish holiday and therefore a day off work), when I met with the home stager about potentially working and apprenticing with her.

With her, I only said things like, I’m just looking for a change and to instill more creativity into my every day life, to engage more of my heart in my work. With him, the whole conversation is built on the understanding of why that’s so. It’s not just because I’m a flighty 30something; It’s because I’m a fighting 30something (if you will).

I left the first coffee date with the home stager feeling mildly despairing and depressed. And I left the conversation with my cancer friend feeling uplifted, supported, and understood.

I know what he’s talking about when he says how it wrecks him that he has been so wrapped up in work again that he hasn’t had time for his outdoor hobbies. He knows what I’m talking about when I say that we have the privilege and curse of not being able to run on the hamster wheel of life without questioning what we’re doing.

I never wanted a cancer friend. I never wanted to be part of a cancer support group, and tried a few times without going back. Therapy isn’t the same thing either, though that helped. But talking with someone who also had their next breath marched up to the guillotine… it’s different.

It’s not "all cancer all the time." Our conversation wasn’t even about grief or anger. It was barely about cancer at all, except that of course it was. It is the reason we met, became friends, and can share with one another on a different level what our life paths are looking like and what we want them to look like and the struggle between just going along as planned and taking the time to question it all.

I imagine in some ways, it’s like war veterans’ ability to have an instant understanding of one another: You’ve both seen life and death; you’ve both fought bravely and been terrified; you’ve both come back to civilian life and are attempting to make sense of it all, while still paying your cable bill and buying groceries alongside every other citizen.

But you also know that, conscious or not, you both make every decision in reaction to and on top of your experience at war. You can’t not. It’s part of your DNA, now. You’re blood brothers.

I never knew I needed a cancer friend. And I sit here writing with tears of gratitude that I have one. 

Having My Cake and Eating It Too.

(Yes, I’m gonna go there. Bear with me!)

In 12-step recovery it is custom to acknowledge lengths of sobriety or abstinence. Within the first year, we often acknowledge monthly mile-markers, and after a year, we acknowledge annual “birthdays” or “anniversaries.”

Why do this? Why stand up in front of others and say that you’ve accomplished something? Isn't that selfish and self-seeking? Why does it matter?

Well, the conventional wisdom is that it shows others that it’s possible. You’re not actually doing it for yourself, although that’s quite nice; you’re helping others to see that “one day at a time” adds up to months, and even years. You’re offering hope to others.

In our “belly-button birthday” world, why acknowledge our birthdays either? I have friends who eschew celebrating their birthdays. Why celebrate? It’s not like you *did* anything. You just lived another day.

And, just as with recovery, to me, that’s the point these days.

It’s to celebrate and share the fact that you made it. That you are alive. You did do something: You lived.

A former mentor of mine used to call this our “precious human life.” A Buddhist, her meaning is how rare it is to inhabit a human form this lifetime. We could have been a tree or a toad or a fruit fly, alive for 24 hours, unconscious. But we’re not.

We’re animated, active, Fate-affecting. And Fate-affected.

We’re constantly learning and changing and fighting and hoping and loving and hating and struggling and triumphing. We’re constantly forming ideas of who we are and who the world is; where we are and where we want to be.

We’re creating our lives with every breath we have the privilege to draw.

So when a co-worker the other day shushed everyone as we wished her a happy birthday, saying she doesn’t do birthdays, I did whisper to her, But imagine the alternative.

We do fight to be here, conscious or not; every day, we are making a decision to try. No matter what that looks like, even if it looks like stagnation or the mundane. Even if we are the tired, poor huddled masses. We try.

The celebration of a birthday is an acknowledgement of a year of living. A year of something precious and rare and teeming with uncertainty and, hopefully, love.

Today, I turn 33 years old. I have survived alcoholism, dysfunction, gang rape, and cancer.

I have formed and smashed relationships. I have melted and embraced. I have survived my own machinations. And become a metallurgist.

I, my friends, am an alchemist. And I honor us all today by showing you:

We live.

And how!

With love,m.

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. 

Open Sesame!

I’m still a little giddy from last night’s show with my band. Our debut and farewell show! (Though, there are rumors we may have a “reunion show” on Halloween.)

But a friend said something to me after the show that’s been sticking with me. She said that I am so much more open and confident now, that I’ve changed so much in the last year.

This same friend sat with me in ERs, cared for my cat while I was in chemo, and allowed me to bawl on her couch when things seemed so hard.

We’ve known each other only for maybe 4 years, but a lot has certainly happened since then, and she said she feels like she’s seen me blossom. And that, especially with everything that I’ve been through, how heartening it is to see that I’ve become and am becoming more open, and more engaged.

She referenced a quote she’d read in a book about women’s aging, that women come to a crossroads in their lives where they choose: become more open, or become more rigid, and therefore bitter. I told her, I don’t think that’s just women!!

But, what struck me about her initial comment was that it echoed something I’d thought to myself only a few days earlier.

I was in my car, and made some kind of comment aloud to myself, and laughed about it. And I had a flashback to when I was in junior or senior year of high school, and this one frenemy commented that I’d become much more relaxed and funny in the last little while.

Which may have had something to do with the fact that I started drinking and smoking pot… but… She was right. I wasn’t as exacting or perfectionist as I had been.

I sort of took that “easy-going” train off the rails a few years later... But I remember feeling then that she was right, that I felt less … not “square,” but serious, I suppose. (I was a very serious teen!, like most emo children.)

And as I sat in my car laughing to and at myself the other day, I had a similar self-awareness: I’ve become and am becoming more easy-going. (In some ways! In others, you have to untangle my brain with a tweezer and a magnifying glass!)

To have that same sentiment reflected back to me only days later by my friend was heartening, affirming, and... sentimental.

She said that as she watched me play, she found herself getting teary, thinking about everything I've gone through, and what I’ve made of it. And then she had to check herself, because you don’t cry at a rock show! 

The same understanding about rigidity or openness I heard on an audio CD about “Exceptional Patients” from Dr. Bernie Siegel. He said that after cancer, people tend to go one of two ways: become scared of everything, because death is just around the corner, or (finally) throw caution to the wind, because you’ve literally faced one of the worst things that can ever happen to you. You’ve stared death in the face: Will you now shrink at all risks, or will you say, Tah, this is cake?

Well, we all know, I don’t think it’s “cake” to say “Tah” to fear, but we all know that I’ve been doing it anyway. Because, really, there isn’t anything greater to lose. There isn’t any harder challenge. (Now, yes, there are other challenges that people face that I cannot imagine, child loss being one that’s top of mind lately.)

I find no glory in shutting down. I’ve lived most of my life in a state of “flight” and paralysis. I will never call it a gift, but I do recognize with appreciation and awe that, following visceral horror, I have become a woman more willing to be open, free, funny, and present than I’ve ever been. 

Card Reading

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

Only one of these happened.

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

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

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

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

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

You can see why I keep these things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But, last night was for the card drawer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your prayers worked, and I love you back.  

Independence

I was driving down to San Jose for the Queen concert the other night by myself. I was meeting my friends who were coming from the city, and we decided it was more time efficient if I drove from the East Bay myself.

I drove in traffic, behind, in front of, and next to other people driving by themselves. No carpool lane for us. And I reflected on how in this age of disconnection, where people seem to be lamenting the loss of connection, community, and interdependence, we certainly do like to be alone a lot.

Or, perhaps “like” is a strong word. We’re enabled in being alone a lot.

I live in a studio apartment alone with my cat. I drive alone to work because public transportation to my job is not feasible. I can spend entire days not connecting with another human being. Without hugging another human being.

And then, like yesterday, I run into one of these human beings at the farmer’s market, that I went to alone, and get a surprise hug and get to share a moment of catch-up and a smile. A farmer’s market where I finally know the bread vendor by name and he knows mine, so we can say hello properly after a year of my buying the same whole wheat. Where I ran into one of the families from my work and spoke with her and her son, who was running circles around a tree again and again, asking me between breaths what I was doing there.

I was invited to go to dinner and the movies last night with two girlfriends. I could have said, No, I have to pack for my camping trip, which is so totally true, and imminent right now. And I literally asked myself which was more important: going to the grocery store before it closed to get organic meat, or spending time with a woman who’s moving to Nashville in two weeks.

I chose the friends. And I’ll be going to the store once it opens before we hit the road.

Which is another one of these connection moves I made recently. An awareness that I had recently: I miss hanging out with groups of folks. I am great one-on-one with people. I can talk and gab and get deep. But there’s something for me about being with a few people that ignites a different side of my personality. I come alive in a different way. A) it’s usually less intense and deep conversation when it’s more than one person. But not always. I just like groups of folks. I’m excellent at big and small talk, and I like people. –Well, some of them, anyway!

So, I’m at the part in my healing work where I’m to make amends in relationships that need mending. And this is one of them: recognizing that I have a deficiency in my social life that affects my joy. And then doing something about it.

Because of this awareness, I organized this camping trip. Because of this desire to be with folks, I am joining some of them to see The Goonies for $5 movie night at the Paramount next week, and I asked if we wanted to have dinner beforehand, and I made that reservation for us.

Because, independence is appropriate, as far as it goes. Not needing people to do for me that which I can do for myself is independence. Not needing someone to constantly bail me out financially is independence. Not depending on a substance to make me feel normal or different or a version of “better” that is unattainable, is independence.

But when it comes to human relationships, I like to strive (these days, at least) for interdependence. Not co-dependence, which is not the opposite of independence, by the way. But equanimity – a word I only learned a few years ago, but has been a soft murmur in the back of my head since then. To me, equanimity means not being emotionally tossed around by others, and not tossing them around either. It means having boundaries for myself and allowing others to have theirs. It means creating, actively trying to build relationships with people on a basis of trust, mutuality, empathy and shared values.

This is not always easy. In fact, it can get right messy, and it has, for me in many of them, as we crawl our way out of strict independence or co-dependence into interdependence. Relationships have suffered; some have been lost, and others have been strengthened exponentially.

It takes work to give up independence, or, as I’m using it, isolation.

For right now, I can claim independence from my need to isolate. Because I am learning how to show up honestly, with boundaries and without iron walls or punishing.

If I can do that, then there’s no reason not to be in community.

Happy Freedom from Bondage Day, Kids!! – Whatever that looks like to you. 

On Leave.

The thing about being a good little soldier is that eventually you suffer battle fatigue.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve had doctors appointments up the wazoo because of a liver enzyme test that came back extremely elevated. Granted, it’s the first time they’d ever run this test since I finished chemo last Spring, but don’t try and tell them that.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten panicky emails from my doctor to stop drinking alcohol immediately (check), to get another test immediately (check), and asking if I’ve had my hepatitis vaccines when I was a kid (check).

Being the good little soldier I am, and using the wisdom of not pushing the panic button, I’ve done pretty well these past two weeks, doing what I’m told, following up diligently, and trying to follow the new all-organic diet suggested to me by my naturopath.

This is all well and good not to panic when panic isn’t prudent. But yesterday I came to see, while reduced to a ball of tears in front of a friend, that there is a third option between panicking and “soldiering on.” There’s acknowledgment of my fear.

I told my coworker the other day that I just feel weary – that trying not to freak out is exhausting; that trying to maintain an emotional equilibrium is hard work.

And underneath that even façade, which also has a thick vein of veracity, is fear. They can co-exist, but I have to acknowledge that they both do.

It is activating to have to go through all these tests. It is not my favorite thing to google "autoimmune hepatitis" (which, we learned, I don't have). It is even less my favorite thing to contemplate that the reason for this trouble in the first place is a result of something doctors did to me – despite the rational fact that they had to. I had Leukemia. The cure is chemotherapy. Chemotherapy causes havoc.

I am not freaking out, but I am concerned. And I am “activated.” It’s hard not to be – I’ve had legitimate reasons to freak out in the past – but even then, if you were a reader when I was going through that, you saw that the times I freaked out were few and far between – and then, they weren’t panics or freak outs, they were the falling-armor acknowledgments of a real threat to my security and joy.

I was a good soldier then too, but it was also very important to break down sometimes with someone trustworthy. To acknowledge both sides: Bravery and Vulnerability.

Which are coexistant. The first does not preclude the second. And I'm pretty sure the second enhances the first.

It was not as if I had some grand easy epiphany about allowing all of my emotions to be valid. I sat yesterday with a group of folks, and by the end of our time together, I was leaking silent tears. I didn’t anticipate to do that, but we create a sacred space together, a place where it was safe to allow something I didn’t know was happening arise. And because of that, a friend was able to see my pain, and sit with me while I let the soldier take a rest, and let the scared and weary and angry woman take a spin for a while.

I felt better after I acknowledged all that was going on. And coming to realize in conversation with her that I’d been forcing my experience into two categories: Panic and Perseverance. Acknowledging fear does not equate panicking, is what I learned. And it was important, so important, for me to let some of the rest of my emotions out, besides good humor, diligence, and perseverance.

Because I believe that without letting some of that pressure out, without allowing that vulnerability to arise, our capacity for soldiering is greatly hindered.

What happens is burn-out, instead.

When I only allow validity to one side of my experience, I am hampering my ability to move forward.

I don’t have to be a crying mess about having to seek out only organic meat and my fear of the cost and the inconvenience, and wondering if I’ll have to now be like those people in food addiction programs who have to carry around heavy-ass glass containers of their own food to restaurants because they can’t eat anything else and become a burden to myself and my social life…

but sometimes, at least once(!), I do have to admit that these are thoughts and emotions that are happening, too.

I’ve never really been a fan of the Buddhist term, “The Middle Way,” but fan or not, I seem to be learning all about it.

The Facebooks.

Yesterday, I saw another of those articles posted by a friend on Facebook about the rose-colored facade that Facebook allows us to put out to the world. About how we only see photos of grand trips and lattes with foam hearts drawn in them and that uber cute one of you and your partner looking so darn happy.

This article and those I’ve seen like it tell one side of the truth, but not all of it.

I didn’t comment on my friend’s article, as his friends were aggro-commenting about Falsebook and how pissed it makes them that we don't see the "whole" picture of others' lives. I didn’t want the agida of the notifications if I put my thoughts there, so, I’ll “post” my comment here:

Facebook saves my life.

When I was first diagnosed with cancer in an ER and led right upstairs to start intensive chemo treatment, there was no packing of stuff, no notifying loved ones or having some hippie prayer circle. I called my mom, and then I called one of my best friends and asked her to do the major task of letting Facebook know, because that is – whatever feelings we all may have about modernity, technology, and disconnection – where my friends “are.”

Because she did that for me, my friends knew where to find me, and what to bring me, and how to get in touch with me.

A few weekends ago, an acquaintance – someone I’ve met only a few times, someone I could say “hi” to “in real life” but wouldn’t call “in real life,” aka a Facebook friend – put up a call to go to a local lake for a lazy Sunday afternoon. I had no plans that day, I’d never been to that lake, and I took a chance at spending time with someone I barely knew by letting her know, via the Facebooks, that I would love to go with her.

We did, and I made other new (Facebook) friends. I had a wonderful and, for me, an adventurous afternoon.

When I got frustrated with my job search recently, I threw my resume up on my “wall,” and two people have given me actual live leads for work, and two have contacted me to offer me help on my resume. I’ve looked at this thing so many times, I see only dot matrix anymore.

When I couldn’t stand that I don’t know if I’ll get to go camping this summer once rehearsals start, I let the Facebooks know I wanted to go, and now will be going into the wilderness with "real" friends, having a respite from this social network thing that brought this trip to fruition in the first place.

I get to see that my college roommates aren’t dead, what state they live in, how many kids they have. I get to see friends from my high school musical days launching and thriving in their artistic careers. I get to read the witticisms, intrigues, and slush that my friends post, and I get to feel that I know they’re safe.

I have learned about friends’ weddings, deaths, job changes, moves, births, divorces, successes, struggles, and banalities. And they get to learn about mine.

I won’t say Facebook is a benevolent entity, wanting us to all feel connected in a disconnect era. I won’t say that this is the “best” way of keeping in touch with people you’ve lost contact with, or moved a few zip codes from. But it does work.

I can also see it from the side of the aggro-commenters, lambasting the system for creating a culture of constant "less than."

I can admit that just the other day, I Facestalked a crush’s ex, and felt the creeping compare/despair that I see so many of those Facebook “expose” articles lament. But, what I did as I felt that gnaw of “not as pretty, funky, cool, yoga-y, artistic, traveled, fun, witty” creep up was not to skewer Facebook for allowing her to present an awesome and curated face to the world. What I did was LEAVE HER PAGE.

For the love, peoples. It’s certainly not that I don’t also fall prey to that depraved inclination and curiosity. I’ve Facestalked ex’s new girlfriends (or wives), and I’ve Facestalked crushes exes. I've kept tabs on who's "talking" to who and leaving little digital roses on one another's doorstep. But, what I’ve learned to do by now is to remember that a Facebook wall is NOT the whole story, but EVEN IF IT IS, it’s NOMB (none of my business).

Other people are allowed to have happy lives, curated, sappy, enviable. And the choice I get to make is whether I want to engage with envy, not with Facebook. 

Men at Work.

  2/17/09: G-d Jar Projects:

  - My band

  - my mural

  - the play or musical I will be in

  - the songs I write

  - the essays and poems

  - the bass I play

  - the vacation I take to Hawaii

  - the sketches I make

  - the painting I do

  - the creative job I am making

At the time I wrote this list, none of these were true or in my life. Today, of this task list I wanted “God” to complete, all except two have come to fruition.

It would be a year from putting this list in my “g-d box” when I would apply to graduate school for creative writing in poetry. It would be two years from then when I would take my first oil painting class at that college and start writing my daily blog.

It would be 4 years from putting this list in the jar when my friend would become a flight attendant, and ask me if I wanted to escape winter and my chemo treatments and go to Hawaii for cheap.

A few months from there, a year ago, I would finally accept the invitation to be a part of the band my friend had been asking me to join for years, and actually use the bass I’d bought for $5 when I was 19. And not long from then, I would begin auditioning and taking acting classes, and eventually be cast in a play.

The only items on this list that haven’t come to fruition yet are the mural and the creative job.

The mural seems less important than it did 5 years ago, though it would still be very cool to do.

The creative job “I am making” (whatever that means!) is still in flux, in process.

Astonishing, isn’t it, that things I had no idea how they would come to pass have all come to pass? I could never have imagined when I wrote that list that I would actually be in a band, or be able to go to Hawaii. Those were the gifts and “rewards” of successful, other people. But, some part of me has always believed that I can be one, or they wouldn’t have been in the box.

I love looking at this list. It is so concrete. I can check each off with a stroke of joy and elation: I painted! I wrote! I acted! I vacationed! WHOOP! Look at me, enjoying a life (in spite of my self).

We all know what I’m going to say: If everything else on the list has come to pass except the last one, then there must be hope that even that can come to pass as well.

I am not sure I’m exactly an optimist, but I am a believer in the efficacy of asking for help, not doing it alone, but doing it. Eventually.

Because, I should mention that going to school has saddled me with nearly $90,000 in student loan debt and sent me into a recovery program around my relationship to money and scarcity. I should mention that my airline friend offered me the trip to Hawaii because I needed a break from cancer. And that I only finally reached back out to my friend with the band as I was sitting alone and bald in my apartment, listening to a CD, and busted out crying because I wanted to be a part of something like that – because I didn’t want to be taken from the chance to have that in my life.

It’s not as if this list got checked off according to the “easy way,” is my point. It took a lot of work, help, reaching out, despair, action, pleading, and god damned willing it to be.

I would not have chosen this route to getting these items checked off, and yet, here I sit elated that so many of them have been. They say that it’s the journey not the destination, but these journeys sucked. The routes to getting here, to crossing off these accomplishments that have brought me joy, were really horrible, scary, and painful.

It’s a strange dichotomy to sit with: The immense gratitude for being where I am, and the questioning of the benevolence and efficacy of the path that brought me here.

So I guess what I sit with now is whether I want the road to crossing off the last item on this list – “my creative job” – to be as arduous as the roads before it. It is true that sometimes we don’t have a choice, and choices are made for us, but I feel today that I do have a choice on whether I want to struggle toward this final goal, whatever the circumstances, or if I want to acquiesce toward it. Maybe not even “acquiesce,” but move with joy. I mean I have a whole list of accomplishments to buoy this part of my journey, right? 

Maybe, just maybe, it doesn't have to be so hard. 

"Push the Button, Max!"

In the 1965 hilarious film, The Great Race, Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon) chases our hero, The Great Leslie (Tony Curtis) around the globe. Whenever Professor Fate attempts to unleash a hidden gem of an engine booster or booby trap, he yells to his sidekick, PUSH THE BUTTON, MAX! – which Max does, to uproarious and hijinxed disastrous results.

It would have been a Leslie Nielsen film if it were done in 80s.

What sparked this memory this morning is how often there’s a voice inside me egging me on to push the panic button. Come on, Max, this is a great idea! Let’s pull all ripcords, let the chips fall where they may! Damn the consequences, HOO-RAH!

Yesterday, I got an email from Kaiser to follow-up on some routine bloodwork I get done every few months now, just to keep tabs on my post-Leukemia cells. Apparently, my liver enzymes were elevated. Like, Wonkavator-through-the-factory's-glass-ceiling elevated.

My doctor wrote me that I had to come in for follow-up labs right away, that if I drank alcohol I should stop immediately, and that she was informing my oncologist, Dr. Li (which humorously autocorrected to “Dr. Lithium”).

Professor Fate wanted Max to push the button so bad. It’s bad news, it’s tragic, it’s cancer, it’s death, it’s imminent! PUSH THE BUTTON!

But… here’s the thing I’ve learned about pushing that button, from the movie, and from my own life experience: It rarely does anything productive.

So, I texted my coworker and my boss that I would be in late, that I was going to Kaiser, and then I called my naturopath/chiropractor/nutritionist in SF and made an appointment with him for that morning, too.

Because, this is how The Great Leslie would approach it: Pause, Assess, Reframe, Choose Love.

Well, maybe he wouldn't use those terms, but he would pause, at least, and assess before leaping out of the hot air balloon.

I arrive at Kaiser, and walk down the hallway. I’m toodling to myself, softly singing/humming tunelessly, just making notes up to distract my thought-life. I realize I’m practicing something called self-soothing, a practice I read about for babies learning to fall asleep on their own.

Instead of fully freaking out, I’m using a positive biofeedback technique to calm my pulse, my panic. And, it works, a little.

After they take 7 vials of my blood, I drive into the city to see my chiro. The man I credit for saving my ovaries from nuclear annihilation during chemo, with his supplements, nutritional advice, and amazingly accurate diagnoses of what’s going on in my body.

I tell him that my Kaiser doctor said it had nothing to do with having poured chemo into my body for 6 months, since that was finished last March. It couldn’t possibly be related.

Assholes.

No: Idiots.

Of course my liver and kidneys are still bouncing back, shmucks. I “love” the way Western medicine brains work: There is no immediate cause of this that we can see, so it must be something new and traumatic and deadly.

How about a patient history, assh— Sorry, Idiots.

It’s like telling someone who broke their ankle a year and a half ago that that has no bearing on why they’re now experiencing pain in their hips. … You guys did learn the whole, “The knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone” song in medical school, right?

Anyway, my annoyance with Western medicine aside, I went to the doctor I trust, after having done what the Western folks wanted me to do.

We did some muscle testing, which is like the coolest thing ever. He handed me a small vial filled with clear liquid marked GMO corn. Told me to hold my other arm out and try to resist his pushing it down. My arm fell like an anvil. It weakens my system.

He held out one labeled organic corn? My arm stayed straight as a compass.

We did this several times: Pasteurized milk? Down. Raw milk? Up. Non-organic eggs? Down. Organic eggs? Up.

What I should offer at this point is that I have been eating a ton of crap these past few weeks. Whatever cookies, candy, cupcakes have been lain out at work, I’ve eaten – because I’m stressed. And sooner or later, my ban against refined sugar and dairy yields, and I go to town.

I’ve also been busy so I haven’t been cooking at home, and have therefore been eating take-out foods, which, although aren’t the worst foods I could choose, are surely not all made with my liver in mind.

So, I’ve been tired, stressed out (as you’ve read), and eating crap to boost me back up.

Yeah, apparently my overworked and Hirojima’d organs need some TenderLovingCare.

(Heh. ... Organs... lovin'... heh...)

Pushing the panic button does nothing for me except exacerbate an already very sensitive system. I don’t like hearing that I really have to stop eating the cupcakes at work, and not use half&half at Peet’s. Or, since it's not organic, I can't drink Peet's at all. I don’t like knowing that because of something I didn’t ask for I now have to work extra hard to fix its effects.

But, What I like less is driving to Kaiser on a Friday morning, thinking about the children I won’t be able to have. The life I won’t be able to “figure out.” The X-Men movie I won’t be able to see.

Look, Death and I have a pretty intimate relationship. We’ve fought an epic battle, and He’s waiting and watching in the corner, seeing if my hubris will bring me down. If, like in Million Dollar Baby, I will let my guard down and He’ll have the chance to (spoiler alert).

What I got to see from yesterday’s panic/not panic "opportunity" was that I still am pretty keen on this Life thing. That I can’t quit my job without health insurance. That I stress out about things I don't need to. And that I’ve accomplished a whole lot in the year and a half since I was diagnosed, things I want to continue to do: play music, make art, be with friends, travel.

I don’t need to push the panic button to “wake me up” – Life has a way of pushing it for me. Of pushing the button on the side of my cosmic cell phone to illuminate the time and remind me to stop freaking out in my head and get into my life.

So, today, I’m going to hum tunelessly as I get dressed, cook organic eggs, do (some) dishes, and head to an 11-year old’s birthday party to shoot mini-marshmallows at my friends. Because that’s the text Life is sending me today. 

But don't worry, I won't eat any. ;)

"We Need Back-up!"

I have no back-up, she said.

My friend with two kids, impending divorce, move, life, told me a few weeks ago. Trying to figure out if she could go back east for a family reunion and see her great-aunt probably for the last time. To figure out if she should bring her kids, even though she couldn’t afford it. Trying to figure out who would take care of them if she went, because “he” wasn’t available.

She felt alone, lost, and hopeless.

When I was leaving, she picked up her phone to check a text. The kids’ other grandmother would be happy to come up and stay with them, it read. No problem.

Her eyes went wide. She laughed. I laughed. We laughed about the energy we put into feeling terrible about things. 

A few days ago, I saw her again. She was telling some of our friends how she’d found a house in the town she wanted to be in because of its school system for her son. I hadn’t heard this part yet. Only how pained she’d been in the looking, months and months of looking. Fearing, wondering.

She regaled us with how she went online on Wednesday, saw the house on Thursday, and on Friday, signed the lease.

She told us how there was another house that she really wanted for $800 more a month. The kind of dream house she “really” saw herself living in.

But guess how much the tuition will be for her girl at the school she wanted to be in? $800 a month.

The litany of things that lined up were astonishing. Each little piece of it having fallen firmly into miraculous and perfect place. Each need met, better than anticipated. And “right on time.”

My friend was ecstatic and a bit winded with all the resolutions that worked out in her favor. Eventually.

I said that it was like the “Universe” was tittering with a present hidden behind its back. “Oooh… Look how upset she is that she has nothing, that nothing’s coming out right – She’s gonna be SO BOMBED when I show her what I have for her!! What I’ve had for her this whole time -- Ha! It’s gonna be AWESOME!”

And it’s true. It’s not that these things just came about “miraculously.” It’s that she had been reaching out for help, grasping at any straws, and finally, some of those straws bore fruit (to mix metaphors).

Desperate and despairing though she was, really distraught at feeling abandoned by the Universe, lost in this HUGE transition in her life, she was asking for help. She was taking action.

And that’s what produced the miracles… to my mind, at least.

I report this whole story, I think, for obvious reasons.

I am currently grasping at so many straws, I could line the Augean stables.

I am reaching out to places I haven’t before, and listening when people have things to say. (Even if I’ve heard their advice or platitudes before and are silently telling them to shut it.)

I am feeling so lost and desperate and hopeless and wondering and flailing and floundering. In short, I am feeling just as she was.

I know that we humans are meaning-making animals. We, or at least I, want to make sense of everything, even the things that don’t. So, I know that I want to make meaning out of her story, make it into a tale of heroic action and divine desperate patience.

I want to make this story Job. Because if it is, then in the end I get a flock of sheep, too. 

* Epilogue

Look. I know this sounds like a lot of self-obsessed, self-centered bullshit. I know this isn't Rwanda, or even East Oakland. I know that no matter what happens, I'll likely have clean water to drink.

I suppose, having always been a late bloomer, I just am getting an advanced jump on the whole mid-life crisis thing.

I think the argument with authenticity is an important one to have. I think the screamings of a soul that feels trapped is an important one to answer. I get that that looks like a lot of navel-gazing sometimes, and I get the pain all that staring causes in my neck.

But I just want to say that I see both sides, here. I see that I have it immensely "better" than a hundred million people around me. I get that my life is infinitely better than it was 10 years ago.

But, I also have the capacity to listen to myself at a level that I have never been keen enough to hear before.

Last night, someone recommended I read the chapter on Withdrawal in a 12-step book. I did. This "not quitting my job without having another one lined up" thing IS withdrawal for me. It's causing me pain. It's causing me to act out. It's causing me to have conversations and intrigue with inappropriate people, and to eat enough cupcakes to stock a shop.

I'm in pain, and it comes out here. This is my place. I feel badly about putting it up so that you have to read daily about it. But, you don't have to read. And I don't have to feel.

And yet. Here we both are. Xo.m