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 B Word.

Balance. Without it, I tend to become the other B word.

Someone asked me how the whole, "I need friends who don't live hand-to-mouth," blog went over, if there was any push-back from it. I said, not that I know of, but that I’d spoken to some other folks over the weekend, and was reminded of something very important in life: Things are not black and white.

When I stopped drinking, it was because I was an alcoholic. I put the bottle down, looked around, and declared everyone close to me alcoholic, too. Whether they were or not, I was on a crusade of reform, and they all were alcoholics who needed to stop as I did.

Well… two things: a) yes, most of the people I was associated with “at the end” were in fact drinking alcoholically, but b) that didn’t mean they or anyone who drank were alcoholics. In the beginning, I needed that kind of black and white thinking, because being close-ish to people who were drinking was too difficult a gray line when my line had to be crystal clear.

But, just because that was the way for me, I came to realize that wasn’t the way for everyone. And after some time passed, and indeed the folks who were hopeless sops like me faded from the foreground of my life, I got to see that some people (god bless them) can drink normally.

There’s one friend who stuck through my own transition. She described this "normal" drinking to me: she literally says to herself, “Hmm, I’m beginning to feel buzzed, I should switch to water.” Uh… I didn’t get that memo. “I’m beginning to feel buzzed,” was always followed by, “A few more will get it done right,” or if I was feeling temperate, “I should switch to beer.”

So, my friend does not react to alcohol how I do. And I have to come to see that there is a world between sauced and tight-ass.

In the same way, I recognize that as I begin to assess my behavior and extremism around money, scarcity, and deprivation, I am being called to allow others their own experience, even as I diagnose and address my own.

Just because a friend opened a new credit card, doesn’t mean I have to stop hanging out with them. Just because a friend is earning less than I think they deserve in the world, doesn’t mean they’re addicted to deprivation. Just because other people behave differently than me, doesn’t mean my way is the right way, and most importantly, doesn't mean I don't have anything to learn from them. 

As with getting sober, I do have to admit that some of the folks around me may indeed have trouble in this area – water seeks its own level, after all. But, that doesn’t mean I have to be an asshole about it.

And, that’s what I’ve gotten to see these past few days I’ve been declaring myself needing to “move on” from friends and communities who have what I’d declared a “faulty, diseased, and only rectifiable by a spiritual solution” relationship to money, and thereby the world.

It’s a good thing people don’t take me that seriously!

And it’s a good thing I can remember to not take myself too seriously, too. If I’d stuck to every declaration about myself… by this point I would have been:

Vegetarian

Israeli

A prostitute

A suicide victim

A daily exerciser

T.V.-less

Caffeine-less

An organic farmer

and a truck driver.

The thing is, I can’t make blanket declarations for myself or anyone else. I have no idea what my path contains or eliminates, thereby no idea what others’ do.

There is some truth to wanting to learn from and be around people whose relationship to money can model my own. But that’s because I have a problem with it. Not everyone does, and if they do, it’s really none of my business.

It comes to equanimity, and allowing others and myself our experience without judgment. It means having openness, compassion, and respect toward all people on all paths. It does certainly include me getting help for a pattern of beliefs and behaviors that have led me to despair and insanity, but it also includes me being more generous in my assessments of life. Allowing for the gray, for the middle-ground, for difference, for balance.

Because, solvent or not, nobody likes a bitch. 

Discovering The Third Thing

A or B, Molly? Your life depends on it. Is it black or white, Molly? Your life depends on it. Is Dad coming home right now, your life depends on it. Is he in a temper-FIGURE IT OUT-your life depends on it. Is Mom crying? Is she still alive-LISTEN HARD-your life depends on it. Is it black or is it white, Molly, YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.

A woman I met once and have never seen or sought out again asked me, What if there's a “third thing?”

Much of what I hear is about how we break things into black and white, but that life is not that way. There is an indoctrination, as above italicized, that makes us learn and perceive that life is and must be black and white as a way of survival. And in adulthood, that must be unlearned.

What folks have suggested as remedy to this, however, is “life is gray,” shades of grey (no allusion intended). That it’s somewhere in the middle.

Years ago, I decided that “grey” didn’t work for me in this metaphor, too bland; that instead, “not black and white” could be interpreted as “in color.” Life isn’t “black and white;” it’s in color.

But, this woman told me something else entirely. That it’s something I haven’t even conceived of before.

We were not talking about life. We were talking about sex.

I was telling her how I've vacillated in my life between the icons I have named Betty Crocker and The Vixen. How I swing the pendulum of myself from one to the other; bored by the first, burned by the second.

I was emailing with a friend yesterday about how some of situations I find myself in at the moment are reminiscent of something that happened in my early twenties, a situation I got myself in as a result of swinging from Betty Crocker to the Vixen, to disastrous results. She pointed out a few places where things are different now, that I’m sober, older, and it was just plain different.

But there is a rubber band that pulls this circumstance back to then, a sense memory that lashes out, OH! UH-UH we’ve done this, lady! Remember!! Remember the outcome, the consequences, the disaster! Warning, warning!

She tells me it’s not the same. I remind myself of the year; I look around myself at who and where I am. And it’s very freaking hard to separate the past from the present.

Which brings us back to the trust I’ve been working on. To trust that I am different, that I am safe, that I can allow myself to experience life in a different way today. That I am able to be the third thing.

It only occurred to me today that perhaps the person I’m becoming as I sort all this out is the third thing, neither the puritanical Betty Crocker (who avoids all human contact in search of the unicorn idea of a risk-less relationship), nor The Vixen (who overrides all hesitance toward prurient wantonness).

I had my first initial phone call yesterday with a woman who works somatically with trauma. We’re scheduled to meet next Wednesday, the one day I have off rehearsal during “tech week.” As helpful and warm and not really "getting into anything" as our conversation went, my body closed up tighter than an asshole over a flame. And, this is why I want to see her! (duh.)

I used the words “ingress” and “egress” a lot in my morning pages today, the allowance of things to enter and to exit. Currently, I allow some of myself out, but I refuse anything entry. Or, if I allow entry of someone or some emotion, then I refuse them anything in return.

The two-way mirror of my skin. One side can look in, the other cannot look out.

The third thing, here, would be a window, instead. (Don’t even suggest something without a pane; I might deck you.)

Lumps & Bumps

Show of hands: Those eager to exchange brains with me.

Anyone? Bueler?

Yesterday afternoon, I called my cousin Leah. She’s a doctor, an ally, and a friend. I gave her all the information I’d gathered at Kaiser yesterday, and asked her if I should be concerned or if I should, as all the doctors advised, not be concerned?

What they told me is that, no, it’s not adult acne that a ProActiv commercial would fix; and, yes, this strange lump is indeed a swollen lymph node, another part of our immune system. They told me this likely has nothing to do with cancer, that it’s just something to note, and that it would go away in a few weeks, tops. That swollen glands happen. They told me I likely accidentally cut myself while shaving under my arm, and got a minor infection that’s causing this swelling (“but I didn’t cut myself.” "it would be smaller than you could see. this is normal.").

They told me we could do imaging on it, and then biopsy it if I insisted. And so that remains to be scheduled. But after all of yesterday being told it’s likely nothing, and my insisting that you prove to me it’s actually nothing… I called my cousin.

She said, “Normal life is full of lumps and bumps.” That "someone with your history" is bound to go to the far side of fear, but she was not concerned.

In fact, no one really seemed concerned except me. But then, I'm the one with the history.

If I could dampen or soften the reaches and depths of my emotional swings…

Well, I don’t think I would. I’m not bipolar, I’m just me. Fully feeling, fully emoting.

However, I think the Ship of Emotional Life fell off the edge of the ocean yesterday, and I am tired from that.

I left the hospital, several hours later, parting with my dear and kind friend who spoke of shoes and ships and sealing wax, not to distract me, but just be normal with me. To listen to me say from my plastic hospital waiting room chair, I hate this. I just want you to know I hate this. And for her to say, Yep. That sounds about right.

I left, and I went to the hot tubs. I live near a place that has saunas and hot tubs, and I soaked for a half hour. My head was with me, so it wasn’t “relaxing” per se, but it was nice, sort of. The hospital called to tell me the Radiology department would call to schedule a CT scan to see what this is, if anything.

And on the way home, I called my cousin. Because my poor exhausted brain, my hyperactive adrenals, and my weary fucking heart needed to hear from a doctor who loved me.

She said, she’s not here, she can’t see what’s going on, but if it were her—and she knows my reactions are different—she wouldn’t be worried.

Life is full of lumps and bumps.

I came home, watched about 5 hours of Netflix, and finally said aloud, Alright, that’s enough, got up, made tea, and read through the play for the audition I have tonight. I’m not secure in this monologue, but I’m doing it.

I had a moment of, Remember who you are. Remember what you do. Remember what you can do, and I showed up for an hour for my dream and my vision.

Then I went back to Netflix.

Because, that’s what this process is like for me right now. It’s remembering who and what I am, what I’m capable of, and it’s numbing the fuck out because who I am and what I can do can run me into the ground.

In meditation the other day, my advice to myself (or my “intuitive thought” or “intuition”) reminded me to Rest: “As to your fatigue, my only instruction is to rest,” it said. To rest and play with ease.

The taught high-wire act of my emotional life is not easeful.

So, I need to come back down, touch the ground again, fill up with images of trees and covens and auras and love. And remember who I am can be easeful, too.

Ha. I, Molly Louise, can be an easeful human being! Who can walk with equanimity in this world. I can have highs and lows, and dash myself upon the craggy shores. And, I can bend my head into the silken lap of Divine Calm, and let her stroke my hair for a while as I take a long-forgotten full & present breath.

Life is full of lumps and bumps. Life can be normal. Not devastating. Not harrowing. Life can be okay. Have both trip-lines and benches overlooking a sunset. Life, my life, is going to be okay. 

People are Not Projects.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day Jobs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martyrdom is so Passe

I'm going camping. HA!

Applied for that job I want...

Had an info interview with my acting teacher that gave me some food for thought, but, for right now...

With my new copy of GQ with Michael *drool* Fassbender on the cover to keep me company by the lakeside...

I'M OUTTA HERE!

Fun: 1  Over-thinking: 0

See you on Monday, folks!

Romance & Finance

The Third Thing. That’s what a woman told me yesterday, after I met up with this new group of folks who, apparently, talk about intimacy, relationships, and habitual avoidance of (or indulgence in) such things.

I was telling her that for years, I’ve been trying to find a balance between Betty Crocker and the Vixen, to find the middle way between them. And she said something I’d never heard before – that likely, whatever it or I turn out to be, it’s probably neither of these – it’s a Third Thing.

I’ve said sometimes, that I don’t like the analogy of “living in the gray,” you know, the balance between black and white – between black and white thinking, all or nothing. Some people call this middle, attempting to live in the gray area. But to me, that sounds pretty awful, like living in a fog bank (looking at you, San Francsico!). And so, I’ve said that instead of the middle of black and white being gray, I call it color. That something other than black, or white, is color. And so, “the third thing” thing makes sense to me (she said it’s a Bill Clinton quote, and g-d love Bill – I’ll have to look it up).

Romance and Finance. I hear so often that these are the things which so often plague, worry, or motivate all of humanity. I’m reading this book on the art and history of Europe (“for the traveler”), trying to get some more info, things I slept through or didn’t care about or was too worried about the aforementioned “ance”s to listen. I have a few books on European travel on my desk, and this one is giving me the history, the why and wherefore of how come art and architecture look like they do. And here’s what I’ve learned: people, throughout history, have fought and been motivated by romance and finance. Kings marriages, new religions, revolutions. Many have been about who has what, who doesn’t have what, and how they can get more.

So, I’m not alone, apparently, in the grand scheme of these issues. Of working on them, and my own grating relationship with each.

This is good. And there is a solution, but as Jung said, (I think I’ve mis/quoted him here recently!), You can’t solve a problem on the level of the problem. And the problem here is that I have only my well-worn resources, patterns, and behavior to help me "solve" these problems of romance and finance. So it’s time to look for help.

My romantic life as having fallen in either Betty Crocker or Vixen territory is very much like my relationship with money. I’m either restricting, meagerly existing, and isolating – or I’m burning money to quench and balm the pain of all that restriction. Binge, remorse, restrict. Repeat. Many people can notice these traits in anorexics or bulimics, and so far in my life, knock on every piece of wood and mock-wood in the vicinity, that has not been an issue for me in that particular way. My binge and restrict is with emotions, money, and sexuality.

And if the middle way is not indeed the “middle,” then I have to keep coming back to those who know a different way, and can help me to get there.

This morning, I queried in my Morning Pages about this desert I go to in meditation. How was that desert, I asked. I hadn’t been there in a long time, and it was a place that I’ve gone to occasionally in my meditations for years, and one which I was encouraged to solidify in myself and my brain while I was doing some EMDR work with my therapist earlier this year.

She said it was interesting that I chose a desert as my “safe place,” that many people choose cozy small place, places where they feel protected. But, no, for me, I want a wide wide field of vision. There are no surprises, no sneak attacks, I have full view of every single thing for miles and miles. It’s a desert like those you see in the southwest, with ocher colored mesas in the distance. And the flat, flat, cracked earth expanse of dirt and dust and a hawk flying lazy circles in the bright, expertly clear sunlight.

This, is safe to me.

I suppose I’m reminded of it today, as I am going to be needing to touch into places like this – safe, calm, where I feel almost in charge. There is nothing hidden, nothing freaky, nothing to shake me or scare me or surprise me. I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of surprises and shakes and scares as I begin to dive into this romance stuff. This emotional intimacy, undoing this very deep pattern of all or nothing. And so, it’s time for me to strengthen my base, root within my safe places, and get the hell out of the way.

This is like a geyser, this work. Or maybe it’s not, what do I know. What I do know is that I am grateful for the help I have available to me, internally and externally. I was asked in my meditation from my Feminine, as I reported the other day, if I was ready – I guess I was being asked if I was ready to work on this stuff – because she/I have reawakened, and is powerful as fuck. It is no wonder to me, then, that it’s taken me as long as it has to come to this place of beginning to integrate and work on my sex/relationship/intimacy stuff – I’m going to need all the resources I’ve acquired, and many I have yet to discover.

Here’s to an assault on old ideas, however that looks as it is coupled with a cosmic cease-fire. 

The 11th Hour

So, to get to the important info first, of course. The internet-met coffee date was a bust. Not an ounce of chemistry on my end, so, after about a half hour of waiting on the slowest coffee drinker in the world, I declined the invitation to go to eat or to the park, and went on my way.

I’m glad I felt comfortable enough to do that, despite the CREST FALLEN face when I replied, Actually I think I’m going to go. That man is not a poker player.

But, on my way I went. I caught a bus up to see a girl friend of mine, and we had a sojourn to Ocean Beach. It was more than lovely.

Regarding the title of this blog however, I feel like I’m here again. I’ve said in the past that usually what happens around money and jobs is that “something comes through” in the 11^th hour. This has always been true, and despite my dire, apocalyptic belly-aching about the sodium-laden brick, I haven’t eaten any Top Ramen in the last several years.

Part of what I’ve recognized though is that I come to a point at some time during my “what am I going to do next”ness where I “go rag-doll on G-d,” as my friend puts it. You know when you’re in a grocery store, and a parent is holding hands with a child, and the child is cranky or tired and doesn’t want to go or walk anymore, and the kid just goes limp. And has to be dragged by the parent a few steps.

Yeah, that’s going ragdoll on G-d. It’s like, I’m not sure what the fuck to do, so I’ll just let you pull me. That feeds back into the whole “lack of self-esteem around jobs” though when I throw up my hands, and just wait for the 11^th hour – when I know inevitably something will have to happen. I really haven’t been dropped, ever.

But, I’m not comfortable doing that anymore. It makes me feel young, and childish, and like a recipient, rather than an active participant in my own life.

So, I guess I’m at the point of finding some sort of balance between trying to “figure it out” and throwing up my hands in frustration and impertinent surrender. “Alright, Universe, Fate, G-d, whatever you are, you obviously have some better idea about my life than I do, so HERE. Go ahead. It’s all yours. Fuck it.”

The former makes me crazy, and the latter lacks integrity & a fair balanced view.

So, what’s the middle way?

…*crickets*…

Perhaps it starts with the recognition that I don’t want to do either. I am still taking action. Applying to jobs, looking at websites around the country, trying not to be too limited, but not too focused, because I really still have no f’ing idea where or when or why. It IS the 11^th hour. June approaches, and my bank account approaches zero.

So, how, in what sense-memory tells me is the "same place," do I stand on my two feet, and let myself be guided rather than dragged? How do I stand with integrity and surrender?

Well, yesterday I did make a phone date with a girl friend bassist for this afternoon. I also did ask my theater instructor for an informational interview coffee date. And, I did show up to that date yesterday, not knowing what would happen, but being willing to try something new - and hideously uncomfortable (somehow, "we met on the internet" doesn't make a great retelling...)

And, to be honest, I still have the hope that in the 11^th hour, there will be a miracle – because there always is – but I don’t want to stand around waiting for it. I want to meet it. That feels more “adult,” or humble, or something. More of value.

But, what do I know, I just work here.

Here’s to the middle way – letting go, but walking forward – it may be into the dark, but my eyes will adjust.