Float like a Waterbug, Sting like a Bee

It isn’t so much that I’m afraid of heights as it is I’m afraid of falling from heights.  Therefore, when, 2 months ago, I found myself in Moab, Colorado dangling on the side of sheer rock face struggling to find a toe-hold in the millimeter-wide crannies, I began to panic. 

Now, to pull back the scene a little bit, I was about 15 feet off the ground, strapped into a harness, and attached to a grounding line held by my belay partner only a few feet below.  But it didn’t feel safe.  It felt like I was stabbing the rock cliff with my feet, trying desperately to find purchase in thin air, my adrenaline kicking up so high I could taste it.

Muscle-fatigued and terrified, I called to my partner below that I wanted to come down – I was done.  The rock climbing guide on our trip overheard my plea and walked over from the lines and climbers parallel to me.  He suggested that I sit back in the harness, take a break, feel my weight being held, and catch my breath.  Then he called up, “You can come down, but if you want to keep going, I’ll help you.” 

Later that evening, back on flat earth in front of a crackling fire, he chuckled he could see my shoulders slump at that moment, a moment of resignation, a knowing that, indeed, because of his help, I was going to and was able to keep going.  This sanguine moment of, “Shit, alright, fine.  Let’s do this.”  And, together, we did.  He called out places where I could find my footing, and shortly thereafter I was at the top, my heart a fluttering canary, stress-tears straining back in my eyes, weak from fear and exertion – and once safely back the 60ft to the ground again, proud.

He told me of a concept called a “retro-climb.”  It is only after you have accomplished this ridiculous feat of effort that you feel pride, accomplished, and glad you did it at all.  In the moment, you only feel fear, anxiety, terror.  Honestly, I’ve not felt so frightened in recent memory, despite the intellectual knowledge that I was completely safe, held, and cared for.  (My naturopath had a field day turning down my maxed-out adrenaline once I’d returned to SF!)

In my own personal work lately, my mentor suggested I seek an internal guide to show me my blind spots.  As some of you know, I sometimes use a Shamanic Journey meditation practice that introduces you to internal guides of both human and animal form.

And so, the other morning in meditation, I “went in” to find a guide to show me what I’m missing, since there are whole areas of my life that still feel unresolved and cause me distress (see: "romance and finance"; aka serially single and perpetually under/un-employed).  In this meditation, as the title of this blog may suggest, I came across a waterbug.

… Now, the waterbug does not seem like the fancy-dancy spirit animal one would hope for!  It’s not a lion or eagle or even antelope.  And yet, here it was.  I won’t “bore” you with the details of the meditation, but the lesson was clear: 

The waterbug floats on the top of the water, not because it is defying the law of physics, but precisely because it knows, believes, and trusts in them so completely that it knows it will be held on the surface.  It is not defying gravity, it is embracing the truest knowledge that because of the laws of nature, it must and will always be held.

The rock climbing guide and I had a long conversation one evening about spirituality, and he revealed that his largest question for “God” or the Universe as he continued to expand his life and open his vulnerable self and admit all parts of him was, “Can you really love me that much?”

I replied to him that my question is, “Can you really hold me that much?”  Can you really let me know, help me feel, to my core, that I am held?  That I am safe? 

The waterbug teaches me that it floats because it doesn’t tense and struggle.  It floats because it relaxes and trusts, and simply embodies a knowing that if it steps onto the clear surface of a pond, it will be held.  And furthermore, having seen that it has been held and carried before, it doesn’t continue to question whether it will be held again in the future! 

So this is my lesson for the moment: to embody the true knowing that, like sitting back into a climbing harness, I am expertly and even lovingly held.  And, should I ever choose to question (as it can become a choice rather than a habit), there will always be help offered me.

And p.s., if I mess up and tense up and fall through the surface of the water… I can swim.

The Facts of Life

Not like “the birds and the bees”; like the theme song: “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have…”

In this great rumpus race for which we have signed up by the very nature of being born, we are subject to a variety of experience.  Some of these we deem good, some bad, and being pleasure-seeking beings, we are partial to those we deem good.

In my own personal relationship to the universe, life, fate and its many faces/facets, I have oriented my understanding to be one that says, Everything happens for our own good.  Even the bad things.

For my alcoholism, I have found recovery, a community, and way of life that brings me fellowship, understanding, pleasure, laughter, and a sense of being deeply understood.

For my childhood, I have come to tell myself that because of my experiences, I've become sensitive, compassionate, empathetic, resourceful, strong, and creative.

For my cancer, I have taken my struggle and survival as impetus to engage in my life more fully, playing in a band, flying a plane, acting and singing in theater.

For all these horrors and more, I can look back and deem them “good,” because they have led me to becoming more useful and engaged as a human.

And yet.

Fuck. All. That.

That we are thrown against the shores of life brutally onto the rocks of experience, shaping us, reshaping us, and winnowing us down to the raw beauty of ourselves—  Hey Universe, would you lay off a minute, huh?

Because perhaps, Shit. Just. Happens.

And that is the worst understanding of all for me.  It is the least controlled, the least controllable, the most chaotic, disordered, entropy-laden reasoning for it all.

What it means is that we are not “safe.”  And if there is anything I have struggled for in my lifetime, it is to feel safe.

But in this quest, this blazing, self-propelled quest for safety, I have built up around myself an armor, a buffer, a multi-layered sequence of dance steps that I believe if I dodge left, you, it, experience, failure, hurt, calamity will needly dodge right.

Yet, the Universe has its own dancesteps, and sometimes they are to bowl you over like a rhino in a football helmet.

Furthermore, by dodging experience as a whole --monstrous as I believe or fear it to be-- I also dodge whatever good that rhinoceros might be trying to hand me.  And therein lies the rub, eh?

As I mentioned a few days ago about the dam, restricting my own self, need, and experience out of fear of what might happen if I let things flow, I am scrubbing up against my own realization that I am restricting myself for fear that bad shit might happen.  I am hoping to control the all of my experience so I am not harmed anymore.

Because forget all the above bullshit (which I also happen to believe) about all those bad things becoming or being seen as good things – don’t fucking think that I want or wanted them too.  They were all still egregiously painful.  And, as I mentioned, human as I am, I don’t want pain.

In my attempt to restrict my experience of pain, however, I believe I restrict my experience of benevolence.  Grace.  Fulfillment.

And so, I am stymied, victim of my own prison, of my own design to be safe, I am restricted from the greater joys and rewards of life.

“You take the good, you take the bad… “

Am I willing to expose myself, to be vulnerable and open to the whole of life’s experience, knowing that in my disarmoring, I am (also) opening myself to unforeseen goodness?

Snookered.

See, the thing about being saved is that it’s not an absolution.  You aren’t swept back from the cliff’s edge and wrapped in a cosmic swaddling, rocked into unseeing bliss.  What you are is placed back firmly onto a path.  A long one.  Back from the edge, back from the place of giving up on the work of this lifetime, you are nudged—not so gently, but not without compassion—onto a path that will require of you work for the rest of your lifetime.

The cliff’s edge, the leap from it, the ultimate sacrifice as it might be called is the choice to give up all the work that will ever be asked of you.  It is to say, Forget it, too hard, too much, there’s no help, no hope.  To be placed back onto the path you had made some kind of decision—by omission or commission—to leave means that you are now responsible to take up the work you’d abandoned.  It is to look up from your crumpled knees and see winding before you the path of your lifetime, the work that will surely be needed to accomplish it, and the knowledge that to be alive is to do that work.

To be alive is to agree.  To be alive is to sign an agreement daily that you will, however falteringly, place one foot before the other.  To be alive is to agree that you yourself and your life are more worthwhile than eliminating all the possibilities it holds, all the better and all the worse. 

And so, pulled back from the edge, “saved” as it were, you walk with a grim humor, knowing that somewhere you have chosen this.

Tuning by Ear.

Because I’ve begun a round of work with a new mentor recently, we’re talking a lot about “god.”

Specifically, this past Saturday, I read to her my current conception of this ineffable “power”:

“My Higher Power is in all things.  It lives & comes from a place inside me where I’ve never been scared & where there is always calm wisdom.  This place doesn’t give me instructions or guidance, it simply can reinforce or reassure my own decisions.  (Though I wish it did give guidance & instructions!)

This force is impersonal in some ways, because it belongs to everybody, and because it also doesn’t act out of reward or punishment because it is not human or personified.  But the force works toward health & wholeness.  It is the source of wholeness & would be satisfied for all to connect to it & recognize it.  This power is one of divine flow and order; it is unrushed.  It is often seen in nature, because it is in the natural cycle of life & death, but it is bigger than that. 

When I feel in touch with this power, I feel calm, energized/alive, unrushed, wise & accepting — accepting of myself & of the outside world & circumstances.  When I feel in touch with this power, I feel a stable ground to stand on, and I don’t have racing questions about my life.  I feel at peace. 

I sometimes get impatient with this power because it is so slow/calm & not clear w/instructions or answers to my questions.”

My friend/mentor listened to this. I anticipated we’ve move on but she said gently that it sounded like there was a bit of conflict there. Did I agree? Hell yes! It makes me mad that I can’t get answers, but I don’t believe that I’m supposed to. That’s not what this power is about. 

Then she sagely suggested something: “You have a belief that makes you unhappy.”

But, what can I do about that, I asked? Am I supposed to reconceive my higher power, or just come to accept that I don’t get answers? I like this conception of a higher power. 

She agreed it’s a good one, but … she has an alternate belief, which I don’t have to subscribe to, but she wanted to propose her own experience: She does get answers. She believes she does get information and guidance and instructions. (Not like, crazy woo-woo hearing voices.)

As we spoke, I posed my own question: Is it possible that I am receiving answers, but I’m simply not hearing them? My ear isn’t attuned to them? 

She said she doesn’t believe in a working toward whatever is “God’s will” kind of spiritual world, but rather toward whatever is for the “Highest Good.” Which makes a lot more sense to me. Because this whole “God’s will” vs. my will thing is a real bitch to suss out. 

And then she said something radical for folks among my kind: The Highest Good often is what I want. Where I get f’ed up is where I believe that “G-d” doesn’t want me to have what I want. 

She said that our desires and impulses and intuitions are often calls and pulls from that deepest place within us. (Surely, that doesn’t mean Ice Cream for Dinner, but you get the point, I hope!)

So, I gave myself the assignment this week of trying to attune my ear to hear the guidance that I feel I’ve been deprived of. 

And this morning, I had an odd experience of noticing. 

I’ve been doing the Deepak/Oprah 21-day meditation challenge, as I tend to do when they come around. 20 minutes, free, a good start to the day (no matter what may be happening in the news about them personally, thank you).

This morning, the “centering thought” was: “I receive the wisdom of life.”

So I tried out my friend's theory. A bit frustrated and tangled up in my own thoughts: “Alright, “God,” Should I try to go to school this Fall or not?”

I’ve been waffling on whether to go to grad school for my teaching certificate without having the proper knowledge foundation at the moment. There are 3 more exams to be certified, 2 to get entry into the grad program. One of these tests, I believe I can pass; one will need a LOT of studying; and the third, I’ve signed up for a summer Physics course at the local city college, because I need all the help I can get. 

Do I float another year? Do I try to push myself to do it this year? There’s still room in the program, and my acceptance is contingent on passing the 1st two tests before school begins. 

What do I do? 

What happened this morning (in aggro-meditation!) was this: I had a simple thought that sounded exactly like all my other thoughts do: “You can try for anything you want, Molly.”

There was no magic bell or deep baritone indicating whether this was the “Voice Of The Universe;” it sounded like most of my other swirling thoughts. But it held my attention differently, because this is not a thought that I usually have. 

I do not usually believe that I can have or try for anything I want. I am usually talking myself out of things. Flaking on social engagements. Procrastinating with Netflix. I am used to believing that the road to abundance is a scrappy struggle against myself, where I wind up exhausted and often, not having even left my apartment!

You can try for anything you want, Molly.

But it sounds so impulsive to just “try”! It sounds to ungrounded, and I don’t want to take developmentally unrealistic steps and then simply get disheartened. I don’t want to charge into something half-cocked and half-prepared because I want to stop waiting on my life!

But I believe the point of what that thought was saying was that I can try, and I can fail. I can try, and not fail. I can wait for next year. Or not. 

Seems like it’s back to my original idea of not getting clear instructions, doesn’t it???

Yes. And. 

I think what I heard was that the road of life is less narrow and forsaking than I imagine it to be. That the road is wide, and forgiving, and will get me where I want to go. 

The point is to make a decision. To try, however falteringly, to believe that I can have what I want. That the road will be there to support me. That abundance is for me, too. 

I don’t know what I will do yet. This is all very new, as of about 30 minutes ago. But, I’d kinda like to try — and see what happens. 

I’ve started hearing voices again.

I’ve started hearing voices again.

Now, before you call the padded-room brigade, this is a good thing.

In the time and space I’ve had since quitting my full-time job at the end of October (despite the roar of negative thoughts and virulent self-questioning), I have begun to find space behind the thinking. And it is within this space that I’ve always germinated the seeds of my writing.

When I explain it in person, I raise my arm behind my head, and wave my hand in the general direction of “back here.” I tell them that it’s like there’s a room back behind my head, where the ideas start to percolate. They marinate, germinate, ruminate, and when they’re ready -- the indicator popping up like the thermometer in a slab of roasting turkey -- I open the door and chase them onto a page.

By the time the door opens, they’re pretty fully-formed. But they need the time and space and freedom to sit back there, talking amongst themselves, these ideas. I can hear them back there, murmuring. I begin to hear bits of phrases. The sense of a topic, a genre.

My waking thoughts start to curve in that direction; they start to gather information that all funnels to the same place. I collect these bits and feed them like coal into a furnace.

It’s partly, I know, the time and space that I have to think, not crowded with the demands of a 40-hour job. But it’s also working on “To Kill a Mockingbird,” reading the book at night, becoming immersed the language. (I used the word “rightly” twice in a recent blog; I become a sponge and a regurgitant of what I feed my brain.) It’s also watching Netflix's “Peaky Blinders,” and being stunned by the cinematography, the bold and sweeping camera work inspiring me, reminding me of the nuance and exaltation of art.

It’s listening to NPR, and a man's purple report of bison grazing in Canada, when the song of birds “split the silence like a candle,” and it became “the end of a day that started as a morning.”

I begin to collect these images, words, sensations like a magpie, not knowing what will be useful, but shoveling it all in anyway, trusting my process of alchemy.

I’ve begun hearing voices again. And this brings me hope.

Near – Far. Near – Far.

Anyone else remember those segments on Sesame Street?

Well, I recall it this morning around desire. Around the idea that if we’re not happy with what we have right now, why would we expect something more would make us happy later? If we’re not content in the “near,” how can we expect to be happy in the “far””

That said, I don’t know that I completely agree with this concept. I do “get” that it is important to recognize the gifts around us. Especially at this time of year, it’s easier to get that reminder to “give thanks.” It’s what I’m teaching my 4th graders lately, about gratitude, being happy with what’s around us, noticing what we have, and how lucky we are. By nature of our birth, we’ve landed in a circumstance where we’re healthy, educated, and pretty well off. In many ways, we’ve hit the lottery in comparison to the 8 million other souls on this planet.

I can count my blessings, though they are innumerable.

And yet.

What about the phrase, “It helps to envision our spiritual objective before we try to move toward it”? Isn’t that implicitly saying that we can want more, and we have to clarify what that is so we can get there? Isn’t there an inherent longing or dissatisfaction? A seeking?

So, today, I sit with the duality of … reality (sorry!): I am content with my life, and I want more for it.

A friend once said to me when I was in a lot of pain around a previous job, “Just stand at the copy machine and be grateful you are.” Included in that idea is being grateful for: being alive, healthy, employed.

And yes, of fucking course I am and was. But does that mean, Don’t dream beyond that?

Does that mean the longings of a soul are symptoms of being ungrateful? Hmm….

Happiness breeds happiness. Contentment seems to attract more of itself. I am a “law of attraction” kind of believer. I comprehend that living in where I am with adulation and appreciation and awe is crucial.

But. …

How do you truly sit with that frisson?

In the immediate present, in the “near,” I am going tonight to perform in a community theater production. A good community theater, at that. For years, I’d been dabbling at acting, and only at the start of the year did I make a conscious commitment toward it.

I am adamantly grateful, and also, this was all borne of restless desire and dissatisfaction.

I don’t know. I don’t think I can “figure it out,” and maybe I don’t have to. But, I will always find it difficult to “sit” in gratitude for things that make me feel I’m wasting my life. I have too much respect for the time we’re given to simply “be” in where I’m at when that feels deadening.

And maybe that perspective is “wrong,” and it perpetuates my dissatisfaction. Maybe this longing and seeking keep me from feeling fulfilled, but for today at least – however off-balance it may make me – I do have one foot in the near, and one firmly planted in the far.

Because, sorry Ekhart Tolle: I believe in the Power of Then. 

Don't Freak Out: A How-To.

When I was sick, I became extremely diligent about my spiritual practice.

Despite, or perhaps including, the conversations I had with a few select friends about the nature, existence, purpose, and questionable benevolence of a Higher Power, I knew that my safest and surest course through all that uncertainty, fear, and buzzing activity around me was to touch base with my center.

It really was only after the first month, though, that I was able to write. I found my first journal entry in a notebook friends had brought me in the hospital just days after I was diagnosed. It begins Saturday, September 29, 2012. There’s one on the 30th, and then it stops. Until after my month of chemo and recovery in the hospital.

But, thereafter, I made it a huge part of my practice to journal, meditate, and eventually write my near-daily blog. I even made the nurse put a sign on my hospital room door that read, “Meditation in progress; Come back in 20 minutes.” (I personally loved that this meant people would continually be turned away without a firm time listed, and I could have some solitude in that busy and anxious place!)

But, I think about this practice now (journal, meditate, blog), one that was common for me before I was sick, one that was essential to me during my treatments, and one that still needs to be a part of my daily life.

Meetings, Movement, and Meditation are my recipe for sanity. And most recently, with all the hubbub, I’m lucky to get even one in there.

But I know very specifically and with assurance that it not only works, it also helps to light my way through.

I am in another place of uncertainty, fear, and buzzing activity. And my only way through is to have the anchors of my practice.

There’s a phrase I’ve heard, “Most days I meditate for thirty minutes, but on really busy days, I meditate for an hour.” Not that I’m doing that! But the intention is there; the intention to give myself even more time and space to coalesce, to touch down, to get grounded, and to listen.

I have less trouble listening as I do heeding. It’s all well and good to listen, and I can do that, and sometimes get answers or guidance; but if I’m not following through or up on the information I receive, what’s the point? Then I simply know what I’m not doing and get to beat myself up for it!

And, I guess that’s not the point either.

I get to remember this morning that I have been in more dire straits than the one I’m currently in: Job ending Friday; uncertain income sources; uncertain path toward fulfillment. I get to remember that I’ve been here before with previous job changes, and I’ve emotionally been here before because of cancer. Nothing puts things in perspective like cancer!

And if I could have gotten through what I did, using the recipe I know works every single time, then I am bidden to use it again. Journal, meditate, blog. Meetings, movement, meditation. Heed the information I’m given.

Rest.

This career shift is all about buying myself time to see myself more clearly, to see my future more clearly, and to create the space and time in which to build toward those goals. This isn’t about busy work, or a brain fogged with anxiety. This isn’t about despair or hopelessness.

This isn’t even about simply “getting through” this time. This time is important; being in this transition space is important. It’s not simply, Batten down the hatches til the storm passes. This isn’t about ostriching my head into the sand. It will be important for me to be aware through all of this time, to listen through it, and to be aware.

To not hide from my own change, because then I won’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing. I have to stay present with this change. I have to acknowledge that I’m uncomfortable, and that I’m taking positive steps. I have to acknowledge where I’m neglecting myself and acting out my anxiety in less than healthy ways. And in order to know any of these things, I have to be present.

And that’s ultimately what each of these “recipes” does for me – they help me get and stay present.

So, yesterday I did cancel that modeling gig. I went to meet up with folks I hadn’t seen in a while. I got my vacuum cleaner fixed, went to the farmer's market, put that bookshelf into my closet. I bought dish soap.

The more I engage in my recipes, the better I feel. The better I feel, the more able I am to take care of myself and to take actions that support me. The more I take action, the better I feel.

It’s a continuous positive feedback loop that has carried me through the most atrocious and trying of circumstances. With grace.  

And if I can remember that -- I am voraciously confident, it can carry me through this. 

A word, if you don’t mind?

Dear Molly,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours, 

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. 

Yeah, But…*

Here’s something nobody knows about me: When I access something very truth-y in my morning journaling, my handwriting becomes miniscule.

Written like those boardwalk booths that used to write your name on a grain of rice, I find myself getting really tiny with my words – and that’s when I know I’ve struck something important. Shh, don't say it too loud or it might whisk off the page.

Let’s back up a little though.

Yesterday, I got to see my therapist (the Rosen Method therapist I’m still seeing. Despite my doubts before every time I go, I always leave laughing that I doubted). We hadn’t seen one another for about a month due to schedules, so I had a lot to catch her up on.

Last time we spoke, I told her I felt like I didn’t have any options available to me in dating land. Like Goldilocks, I’d experienced the too hot, the too cold, but have yet to find the “just right.” I mentioned this yesterday because I was talking about my job search. I told her that as I was driving over last night, I realized that it’s not that I don’t have any options available to me in job land – it’s that I refuse to commit to one path.

She challenged me on this a little, and asked if it was “refused” or something else. And, surely, it is fear and paralyzation.

Because here is the secret, sacred truth: I do know what I want to do.

I told her that I see my job options like a scene from Sliding Doors. If you haven’t seen the movie, the premise is based on Gwenyth Paltrow in one version of her life catching a subway train before the doors shut; in another version, she misses that train. At that point in the movie, we follow both these lives and their divergent challenges and successes (and haircuts). 

I told her I see three options of my job life for myself:

One: Be a Jewish professional, or a community professional, a leader, an organizer, a bringer-together-er.

Two: Do something counsel-y and social work-y, working directly one-on-one with the populations I want to serve, particularly youth.

And three.

And this is where I began to cry.

Be an artist.

I laughed through the tears, and said, “Well if tears are any indication of truth, then the third one’s the charm.”

The third one is also the hardest. Requires the most work, the most vulnerability, the most action, the most fortitude, and… the most uncertainty.

I told her I’m not willing to be a starving artist. But perhaps there’s another way.

As a note, by “artist,” I mean in all disciplines, starting with performance, starting with that Yoshi’s singer I mentioned yesterday. Starting with that dream.

I think I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve been told I don’t let myself dream. It came up a few times yesterday when I had to correct my “Yeah, But”s to “Yes, AND”s.

Every time I even begin to think about following this path, I get buried under a mountain of “Yeah, But”s. I don’t think I need to list them for you, since I’m sure you have your own bevy that attack your own dreams.

So, we/I were careful to reframe them. I told her at the end of the session that I feel like my whole life has been an exercise in “Yeah, But.” And she told me that that is changing; that I am changing it.

And it was in my morning pages today that I recorded something I thought of after I came home yesterday that actually knocked the wind out of me. What I wrote in the miniscule, micro-truth script:

When we are in alignment with our highest good, the Universe will rearrange itself to help us.

I don’t have to know how to do this. Because I don’t. What struck me so suddenly and viscerally were the words I’ve heard repeated for years: When we take one step toward (G-d / Fate / the Universe / our Highest Good), it takes a thousand toward us.

I will be carried. I will be helped. I won’t have to do this alone, because, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

I was floored by this revelation. I was floored that I actually heard and felt and believed it. It was a moment of belief.

I take care of the What and G-d takes care of the How. I’ve heard this for years.

What I have needed to do is admit and commit to the What.

I have “Yeah, But”s coming up as I write this. About money, and too late, and this is for other people and other lives, and what are you thinking of me right now as you read this and are you doubting me and rolling your eyes, and how, and how and how.

Yes, I have doubts and fears. AND. I only have to hold onto the “What.” I only have to hold on to my dream. That’s my only job right now – to not go back to sleep, to not abandon my dream, again. To not continue to break promises to myself. To not drown myself in those fears and doubts. Because I am trying to live my truth. And all this wisdom says that’s all I need to do.

(You know, along with reaching out, asking for help, seeking people in these professions, gathering intel, honing my vision, practicing and learning the fuck out of it AND remembering that the pain of avoiding all this is SO MUCH GREATER than the pain of trying to do it.)

Molly, you want to be a singer in a band? You want to perform onstage in dive bars? And at Yoshi’s? And be a lounge singer? You want to feel proud and full and felt and heard?

All you have to do is say, “Yes.”

*(Thanks, Joel Landmine, for the title grab. See: Yeah, Well...)

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. 

But, damnit, I *do* care.

I’ve had “I’ve got you, babe” stuck in my head for the last few days. I’m catching up on the 2nd half of the final season of House, and one of the characters was singing and playing it the other day. I’ve been thinking about it, vaguely, in relation to the whole “turning it over” concept that’s asked of me in my current work. Turn it, everything, present, past, future, over to something else, something “caring,” it tells us because, as we’ve learned by now, trying to do it, to finagle it on my own, doesn’t work out too well.

However, this “care” business... Well, we heard me gripe about “god” the other day. And luckily I still have a few prompt questions to write through and maybe get somewhere with around … “god.” I just don’t know what will come of it. Although I’ll do it anyway.

I know I’m “not alone,” I know that there’s healing and progress and momentum in doing this work without knowing the outcome. But, I’ve had to up my own woo-woo-ness to help get me there a little. Because, as I’ve said, sometimes “god’s plan” includes some really fucked up shit. And fuck trusting that “thing” whatsoever. Asshole.

Jews are supposed to “wrestle and grapple” with god. It’s part of what we’re asked and allowed to do.

On Saturday night, I saw a play that was focused around a Catholic family in the 50s and their relationship to each other, Catholicism, and a nun with a heart condition. The main character is a 12 year old boy, heading to confirmation, and he keeps on questioning the doctrines. Why did god put us here, is one of the questions the nun asks. He replies, To have fun. – That’s not the proscribed answer, by the way.

If you don’t learn this, you go to hell. Well, I’m not sure I believe in hell, he replies.

He isn’t quashed at the end; in fact, his questioning helps to open everyone else up.

And so, I have to believe that my questioning, my hesitance, my ire will do the same.

I am past a point of blind faith. But, sometimes there’s nothing else than that either. So, what then?

There’s a billboard I drive past on the way to work. For about a month, it was an ad for a casino, portraying simply the eyes of a ravenous, coy, coaxing woman. The copy read: Luck will find you.

Each time I drove past it, I said aloud, No it won't.

Luck doesn’t find us. We find Luck. To quote the 80s: “There is no fate but what we make.”

And yet, … I’m past the point of blind willfulness, too.

I know that a belief in hope and change, in love, lead me to show up for things that are uncomfortable. I know that my knowledge that I really can’t do it alone leads me to call people, write this homework shit, and hope that the next right action will open up to me.

I know I’m not hopeless, or a hopeless case. I know I’m not throwing off the mantle of faith in favor of self will-ing myself through my life. I’ve spent plenty of torn-up hours trying to “make it work.” Trying to change others, my past, present, and future.

So, I know I’m at surrender. I know I’m at the place of letting go, and trusting “what is.” Or trying to trust it, rather.

But, I’m scared. I’m scared for me, I’m cautious with my hope for others; I’m a great scoop more apathetic about the god thing, at the same time I’m more charged about “moving forward” in many places in my life.

I’m tired. I’m grieving the loss of innocence. I cannot yet believe in the (fucking) “care” of a higher power. I think Fate is an asshole. The schmuck who pulls your chair out from beneath you when you’re about to sit and, like Nelson on The Simpsons, cackles, “Heh Heh!”

I thought I’d given up that one, that punitive idea, that pull me closer/push me away god.

I could decide to call this all evidence of that god, and therefore defy and reject the whole concept. Every day I go to work with a woman who lost her baby at 8 months pregnant. Every day, she and I, simply by our presence, remind one another that nothing is certain in this life. Joy is not guaranteed.

So, like I said, I’m ramping up my woo-woo tools again. I’m reading affirmations, listening to them, signed up for the Oprah/Deepak meditation month. I’ve got to. I’ve got to give myself some pudding in which the medicine is slipped.

I’ve got to tell myself, in a fake it till you make it way, that I am alright. That 5-year mortality statistics don’t mean anything to a bad-ass like me. That I am cooler than I think I am, and worth every effort and so much 'then some' that I take toward my health and my goals.

I’ve got to say, I believe in the care of these simple things. In the care of a little self-love. In the care of a coffee date with a friend, the soft breathing of a baby.

Anything else can go fuck itself. 

Connect.

I haven’t much to say today, so I’m going to pull a Melissa and give you one of my favorite poems.

I first heard David Whyte on the carride home from my annual women’s meditation retreat perhaps 5 years ago. My friend, in her new and exciting Mini, maybe even with the top down, decided we were a little too altered at the moment to listen to music on the drive down the mountains of Napa, and so put in a CD of David Whyte. I’d never heard of him. Or his Irish accent. Or the way he repeats his own lines when he recites them, the way he pauses to savor and emphasize words. But, I did that day.

The next time I heard the poem recited, it was in the hospital, maybe a year and a half ago. The same friend brought a slightly battered, second-hand copy of the David Whyte book named for the poem. The nurse that day, with her Hawaiian flowerprint scrubs and her own Aussie accent, saw the gift exchange and exclaimed her own love of David Whyte. So I asked her to read this one aloud to us, and reluctantly, shyly, she assented. It was so still and lovely in that room then.

When you get a chance to hear him, do it. Till then, reading will suffice.

            Everything Is Waiting For You

            Your great mistake is to act the drama

            as if you were alone. As if life

            were a progressive and cunning crime

            with no witness to the tiny hidden

            transgressions.  To feel abandoned is to deny

            the intimacy of your surroundings.  Surely,

            even you, at times, have felt the grand array;

            the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding

            out your solo voice.  You must note

            the way the soap dish enables you,

            or the window latch grants you freedom.

            Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.

            The stairs are your mentor of things

            to come, the doors have always been there

            to frighten you and invite you,

            and the tiny speaker in the phone

            is your dream-ladder to divinity.

            Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into

            the conversation.  The kettle is singing

            even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots

            have left their arrogant aloofness and

            seen the good in you at last.  All the birds

            and creatures of the world are unutterably

            themselves.  Everything is waiting for you.

                    David Whyte. listen. (start at 1:19; so good!) read.

In Vain.

God? G-d? Him, Her, It, We, They?

The Great What Is?

The tendency of all things toward progress, perhaps. Toward health and order.

Cut your hand, and assuming all other things are right with your body, it will heal itself. In a week or two, it will be good as new. Sometimes scarred, but altogether, well.

In parallel, cut your spirit, your psyche, and the tendency of them are toward healing and health. If we don’t hide away the wound, or habitually fiddle with it, we’re sort of compelled to heal. It’s the natural state of ourselves, and it’s my experience and observation that the order of life will lead us there.

In this, I can believe.

In benevolence, I have a harder time, these days.

I’m at the part in my personal work where I’m supposed to think about “god” and my relationship to it, whatever I choose to define it as. I’m at the part where I come to believe that it wants the best outcome for me and all creatures. The part where I’m supposed to take a deep breath, open my arms, and fall into the caring embrace of this power.

Balls.

Because here’s the part that snags my shirttail: sometimes “god’s” plan includes the death of babies. Sometimes it includes the overdose of a friend, the death of a parent before you're old enough to know them. Sometimes "god's plan" includes rape. And of course, sometimes it includes cancer in a healthy 30 year old.

I will not stand with those who say it’s part of a plan. I don’t think it is. I think you can take those experiences, and choose to integrate them into a theology and a world-view that helps you get through them. Mostly, you can choose to tell yourself, perhaps truthfully, that their or your experience will benefit those around you. That others get to witness how you struggled, railed, and got through it anyway. I do believe that we can choose to turn our experiences into something valuable.

(Though I do have unresolved issues with being or using anyone as a goddamned touchstone on how to life your life more fully. "I could go at any time, just like him -- I think I'll learn from his pain & in homage and reverence, I'll paint that portrait; become a doctor; take a trip." Balls. F' you, man. My life is not your feeding ground. -- ... unless of course, it is.)

But I will not say that I believe that “god” puts these obstacles before us on purpose. I just don’t think it’s that intelligent.

The intelligence in focusing all flowers toward the sun (or moon, depending), the intelligence that makes all those little newborn turtles scurry toward the ocean, the intelligence that turns felled trees into compost: it’s order, it’s incredible, it’s inspiring, but it’s not benevolent, necessarily, and it’s not because a force underlies all and declares some of those turtles will be scooped up by predators in their first moments of life – that’s simply part of the order of it.

Because here’s another side to the whole “God as benevolence” thing: it means (or can mean) that we believe we have an ace in the hole. It means wishful and fantastic thinking that “god didn’t take us this far to drop us on our ass” or “god is slow but never late,” which translates to, if I hold out long enough, if I pray hard enough, if I act well enough, I’ll be alright. And buddy, that just ain’t true.

It’s not really about god at all. Being or becoming “alright” has more to do with how we chose to interpret and incorporate out life experiences. God isn’t gonna rescue me, reward me, or punish me. It just doesn’t care like that. But I do. And you do. And together we can form a lattice of support that feels bigger than ourselves, that carries us through and over those hard times. Together, we are aimed toward health, and we connect to improve our chances of getting there.

In that, I can believe. I can believe in our collective desire toward joy. I can believe in my desire to clear out the junk in my heart, so that I can help you toward joy, too.

Is that “god”? Not really. Is it good? You bet. 

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. 

Those Three Little Words.

I said them.

I can’t believe I said them.

It was my turn, my turn to say something, and I could feel your eyes watching me, waiting, and I just blurted them out. It was just what came to mind as I sat there in those few silent beats, my thoughts whipping from one thing to another, the split second where a thousand things could have been said, but instead of anything else... I said those three little words:

“God is Love.”

Oh, god! Did I really just say that?? Did I really just say the words that for years, eons it seems, I’ve gagged at, rolled my eyes at, laughed at, scoffed at?

Did those words really just pop into my head and out of my mouth? Oh god, I’d take them back, but…

I have despised this phrase: “God is Love.” The first time I heard it, I think I vomited in my mouth a little. It was so despicably saccharine and hippie and idiotic. There have been few phrases in the whole English language that have caused such antipathy and revulsion in me than this one.

“God is Love,” ew. Really? Just, Ew.

But, the first time I heard it must have been nearly 8 years ago now. I was 24 when I first heard it; I’m 32 now, and apparently, somewhere in that time my rejection of that phrase, that idea, that sticky ewwy gooey warmth, has softened.

This is as much news to you, as it is to me.

I sat with a group of folks yesterday morning, and at the end of our time together, a piece of paper with affirmations printed on it is passed around. You can choose to say one of these, or make up your own, or simply pass. There are phrases like,

I am enough

I have enough

I do enough

There is enough time

There is enough love

There is enough money

I am right where I’m supposed to be

My life works

I am not my income

I am not my debts

I am lovable exactly as I am.

At various times since I’ve sat with this group, different phrases have appealed to me. Some don’t, sometimes I make my own up. Lately, I really like this line from another part of the literature which reads, We will come to recognize a power greater than ourselves as the source of our abundance.

I like this, because it means I’m not the source, I don’t have to wrench or squeeze or wrest things out of life. I also like it because abundance can mean so many things, and affect so many areas: The Source of my abundance of: The physical, financial, emotional, locational, material, spiritual, comedic, familial, romantic. Of my thought life, my priorities, my perseverance, travel, prosperity, boundaries, action. Abundance of my vulnerability, intimacy, sexuality, authenticity. My focus. My laughter, my joy, my health, my vitality.

A power greater than myself is the source of all these and more, because surely, I am not the one who makes my heart beat, the trees flower, or puts those two new kitchen chairs out on the street just when I was thinking of needing new ones. Something else, just the anima of life itself, or simply gravity that causes the moon to phase, is greater than me, doing things without my hand, and offering me more than I've begun to know. 

But. God as Love?????

Ick.

And yet, it happened. The sheet with the affirmations passed around to me, it was my turn, and as I scanned the list, none of them spoke to me, and I was in the act of passing the sheet to the next person when those three little words escaped my lips.

I was taken aback. I was shocked at what had happened, what must have transpired in almost 8 years. I said something I thought I would never, ever say. Didn’t ever want to be like those saps who say things like God is Love.

And yet. M’ F’er. I did.