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. 

Maybe Baby 2

I have been looking at porn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is big business. This mommy stuff. 

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

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

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

… 

She’s very astute. 

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

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

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

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

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

So, I guess it’s update time?

I have barely written since my retail job, since it sucked the life out through my hobbled feet and beat me with its fluorescent lighting. 

But, for the last 3 weeks, I have been working in a fluorescently-lit office environment. In my own office with a door. And a window that looks over the East Bay with a view of the Bay and Golden Gate bridges (on a clear day). 

It’s office work. It’s not Nobel Prize work. I’m not saving rainforests or unicorns. But my feet do not hurt. I know what a bypass tray is. And I can futz with the margins of a document until it’s pretty. 

This I know how to do. I’ve been doing it since I was 16. 

It’s simple enough. It’s a maternity leave temp assignment through mid-June. And most importantly to me, it's a stable pay check. I’m concurrently looking at summer work I can take on after that, perhaps leaving something available to teach in the Fall, but unlikely. 

I’ve taken the CBEST test (oh, and passed!), which means I can register to be a substitute teacher, and I am working through my “Painless Algebra” book — which, though it began with the simplicity of negative numbers, works its way up to quadratic equations… so I’m not getting cocky yet. 

Yesterday, I finally looked into a community college class in Physics, so that I can bone up to be prepared for the more specialized teacher training tests (the CSETs), which, upon passing, will make me eligible to apply for a teacher credentialing program. 

It’s been strange to follow this avenue (teaching middle- /high-school math and science) and watch as I get a little low about not being able to follow other avenues. About a month ago, I was offered a role in the chorus of a very well-esteemed community theater company, and I turned it down because the time commitment was more than I have to offer with trying to study and look for more work. 

But I’m auditioning on Sunday for a short-rehearsal, short-run production that I would gladly take a chorus role in just to be a part of it. 

I’d also, in these last few weeks as I opened up from the shell of retail, reached out to friends by air and by sea. Namely, my friend who flies planes and my friend who sails boats. I’ll be going up and out within the near future. 

I have also been reconnecting with my friends and community. Seeing my preggers friend. Going to those fellowship places. I feel like I’m unconstricting. 

And. I’m still of course nervous and uncertain about the future — my employment, namely. 

That said, I guess I’m doing what I can. I’m going to the Farmer’s markets I missed so much when I was working weekends, and going to the gym a teeny bit more occasionally than I had been. I am cooking again. 

So, things are uncertain. But I feel better. And that’s a win for today. 

Everybody.

The flowers from my landlord. 

The offer from an old coworker of a place to live if I needed a bone marrow transplant. 

The flight miles for my mom from the synagogue family. 

The money from my brother’s high school friends so he could afford to visit. 

Socks from a dearest friend. 

Soap from another, because hospital soap smells like sick people. 

A fuzzy blanket from an acquaintance to hide the threadbare ones. 

A bejeweled travel cup with home-made green smoothies. 

The pumpkin bread almost daily from a hospital worker who met my mom in the elevator and let her cry. 

The stuffed duck from one of the rabbis. 

The prayer my two friends read over my bed. 

The lovingly worn book by my favorite poet, read by the Australian nurse to me and my friend who gifted it. 

The laundry. Oh the laundry. From a friend who was more like a mom, and helped me with my self-injections when I was too chicken. 

Pumpkin muffins from the friend going through a divorce, and I was happy to hear about someone else’s drama for a while. 

The woman who read a guided meditation to me, and held my hand while I got blood. 

The one who gave me Reiki and slipped me one of his favorite crystals when his guy friends weren't watching. 

The games of Words with Friends that kept me connected when I wasn’t — and the trash talk because 'xoj' really shouldn’t be a word. 

There was the un-signed gift of chemo caps from an Etsy vendor with a card that simply read, “Someone wants you to keep warm.”

The strand of dried flowers I could hang in my room, since I wasn’t allowed to keep real ones, from a friend I’d only just met. 

The box of skin care from an old coworker, since she’d heard your skin dries out. 

The nearly-free trip to Hawaii with a dear friend’s flight pass. 

The home to stay there with strangers — complete strangers who welcomed me in the dark of winter when I needed a vacation from cancer. 

The nurse I met who took my cat in for a week while I was inpatient. And sent me funny videos of her.

The old friend who brought me a lucky bamboo, that’s still alive today. 

The donation from my fellowship they’d collected anonymously. 

The Trader Joes gift cards. 

The DVDs.

Home-cooked chicken with two old friends we all ate together like an almost-normal meal. 

The website set up by a friend, as I listed in my daze all the people I wanted included on my updates. 

The friend who sat with my mom while I slept, and the other one who walked with her to the paperwork office so she didn't have to navigate alone. 

My brother, who sat at my bedside with a guitar and a camp songbook and we sang. And sang. 

My mom, who brought me coffee every morning she was there because I wanted it nearby even if I couldn’t drink it. My mom, who answered a long-beleaguered, 4-months-of-this-shit tired phone call by showing up in near-minutes. With an old coworker’s flight miles. 

My dad, who tried. Not well. But tried. And loves me, no matter the look or feel of it. 

Everybody. 

Everybody showed up for me. 

There were cards posted all over my room, it looked like a Hallmark store. 

There was art made because one of the nurse’s daughters bought me stickers and a stamp kit I still use. 

There was the mini-USB keyboard from my ex so I could get some of that emotion out differently. 

Everything. 

Brownies, and soups, and protein drinks, and sparking water (since regular water tasted like ash). Chocolates. And puzzle books. And texts and calls. 

The friend who sat on the phone with each of my bill companies and explained my situation. The same one who reminded me monthly to pay those bills. The same one who lay with me in my hospital bed and napped with me. And helped me pack up on the joy of release day every single time.

Everybody. Showed. Up. 

I had everything I needed. The rest was up to Fate, Science, and a grand thing called Luck. 

But, with only Fate Science and Luck, it’s a bleak proposition. I didn’t do this alone. 

It’s two years since I sat in a hospital bed with a tube in my chest and a cap on my bald head. 

Without all of them. ... And those I can’t even name, I … 

I don't think they've made words for this yet. 

Actually, no. They have: It's Love. 

The hidden ingredient of life and survival and health is Love. 

Thank. You. For. It. 

The Day of Magical Thinking

When bad things happen, some people of faith tend to say, “Well, that wasn’t God; that was just a bad thing happening.”

Holocaust, dead babies, friends overdosing: Not God. Just happenstance. 

To try to integrate trauma into a worldview that includes a benevolent power underlying all, one must, according to some, reject the trauma as a part of the benevolent power’s purview. 

Now, granted, one might imagine that an all-powerful being would probably have the authority to have a hand in such things. But for the case of some arguments, we’re told, Shit happens. 

Awakened in me, or at least uncovered in me, recently is a boatload of anger. A feeling of betrayal by some power in the Universe that just as I was beginning to come out of the trauma of a history dotted with: abuse, neglect, rape, alcoholism, pauperism and solitude: that it would be then that my blood would suddenly turn to cancer inside me. 

However, in order to feel a betrayal, I must believe that it was personal. Or, if not personal, that there was somehow a fairness or order in the Universe that was reversing on me. 

And, I can’t. I can’t anymore believe that I’ve been betrayed because it is upsetting the fabric of my nature. 

To think, Okay, now I have to go through trauma recovery around cancer on top of all the rest I was dealing with, makes me feel hideously resentful and angry and frustrated, and in the end, hopeless. 

Because if things are going to abruptly turn to a pit of fire at any given moment, what’s the point? What’s the point in healing, helping, creating, being?

And I can’t have that. I can’t be someone who carries around the question, What’s the point?

It’s very bad for me. 

So, what if I try something different, for even a day? Car won’t start? Shit happens. Find a penny on the sidewalk: Good shit happens. Cancer recurs and I have to transplant my bone marrow by shearing away the essence of my body? Well, Shit Happens. 

I dunno. Doesn’t sound realistic to me. But, then again, what does?

Do I just assume good things will happen to and for me, and wash aside the traumas? I am someone who believes that repression and white-washing doesn’t actually work, so what if you just reject it, instead of repress it?

If I begin to believe that I’m someone who can have stability, joy, purpose, fulfillment, connection and ease… well, anything that doesn’t fit with that worldview just file under “Not God”?

And here’s the rub with the whole “God,” Higher Power, Benevolent Force, Life Itself, Universe shit:

I happen to belong to -- and had my life saved by -- a group of people who say that in order to not drink yourself into oblivion and become a tornado in the lives of others … you need a “spiritual solution.”

Uh. Hmmm….

So, what if. What if just for a day (because hey, it’s a day I fought the fuck hard for anyway), I just assume and walk about and believe that good shit happens? That I have good luck. That I am destined to fulfillment in my work and romantic life. 

What if I let my anger and betrayal and hurt and aghastness rest… not shoved away or down, but just set into an open box called, “Shit Happens”? 

Meh. It's worth a shot. 

“Then that happened…”

This is what I said to my friend after I broke down on Friday night with the truth of how lost I’d been feeling. 

She said to me, You can’t do that. You can’t say something like what you shared, and then cover it up with a joke like it wasn’t important or true. 

And that’s what I want to do with today’s blog. I want to try to stem some of whatever reactions I believe you might have had to yesterday’s blog of anger and fear and isolation. Because no matter how I feel in a moment, I do need you greatly, and I want you to still like me and not to think that I’m a whiny, privileged person who’s lost perspective on the world. 

So, I’m going to try not to do that, to reverse any effects of what I said yesterday. And simply let it lie. 

I do know that my job is not scooping animal carcasses off the highway, or cleaning toilets, or any other job that many people have. I have friends who've lost children, husbands, gone bankrupt. I mean, I work at a high-end retailer in Union Square, not on a chain gang. And I'm going through cancer survivorship stuff, like I imagine and hope those of us who have to, do. 

I know, too, that in times like these, we all seem to lose some perspective, and I allow myself to have that for now, because I do know it will change. 

But, I guess I did need (or want) to put how I've been feeling out there, even in this impersonal forum, because it is the truth, and that’s what I tell here — with or without back-peddling. 

So, whatever reactions you might have had (because I can see from the stats page that many people did read that blog), I hope … well, I hope it’s okay I put the truth there. And I'm trying to let myself be okay with it, too.

"You can't save your face and your ass at the same time."

The Look-Good.

I was with a group of close friends on Friday night, celebrating one of their “not getting drunk and sleeping with strangers” anniversaries. These are women I’ve known for nearly my whole 8 years of not doing the same, and who know me and have seen me through my best and worst. 

And I couldn’t tell them the truth. 

It wasn’t until the assembled group was about to close that I got up, walked to the podium at the front of the room and said, “This is the place you’re supposed to tell the hard things. And, things are really bad.”

I began to sob. I eeked out that 5 months ago, I burned my life down, and I’m exhausted and isolated. I told the group that I realized I had to say something when, tonight, I couldn’t hold eye contact with my friends over our dinner. That the closest women I have in my life, I couldn’t look at for too long, because if I did… they would see… and I would break down crying. 

And I didn’t want to do that. 

Because it doesn’t feel like there’s anything to do. So, why talk about it?

I told them about being an expert at looking good on the outside, and feeling like dog shit on the inside. Now, the thing about the “look good” is that, sure, who doesn’t want to look good? Especially when you are feeling crappy, sometimes it’s nice to say, Well, at least I can still pull myself together. At least I can assemble an outfit, put on a little makeup, and … look good. 

However, the other thing about the “look good” is that generally, if you look good, people assume you feel good. And that’s part of the guise of it, of course; that’s part of its purpose… is to fool people. Because if no one asks, you don’t have to tell. 

It’s a pretty little prison we wrap ourselves up in, in an effort to try to do it alone. Because, again, what else is there to do?

In my case, I’m going on interviews, auditions, tours of school, taking tests, ordering physics books. I’m going about the wildest flurry of activity, the other day, I called it a blizzard. 

All this manic pushing to get out of my current situation that I feel ashamed I got into again. Molly, quitting another job without a plan. Molly, struggling to find work, again. Molly looking into a hundred different career paths, and feeling like a strung-out shell of a person through it all. 

Because, as I said earlier: Things are really bad. 

There’s a lot of crying, a lot of hopelessness, a lot of just trying to make it through these extended, exhausting retail days. 

A co-worker I’ve been sharing some of my, “Someone get me out of here” activities with said yesterday that shouldn’t this (the retail job) feel laughable in comparison to what I’ve been through? (She knows about the cancer.) And I said, No. 

Instead, it feels like, “Haven’t I been through enough that I shouldn’t have to deal with this fucking bullshit?” That’s how it feels. 

It feels like I push and try and explore and push and try and explore, and nothing moves. 

I feel like the hamster on the wheel, working so fucking hard, and getting no where. 

I will say that this new idea to pursue teaching feels like the first thing that makes real and doable sense in all my career lily-pad hopping. So, that feels like a win, and progress, and hope. 

And in the center of that remains the fact that my feet and legs ache, right now, I’m earning half what I did when I was at my office job, I have a dwindling savings account that was really fucking hard-earned, and I have no back-up.

So. What? Why do you talk to anyone about that anyway? No one really has anything to tell you of use, except, “We love you and you’ll get through this.” … And take that to the bank. 

But, no. It’s fabulous that I have people around me, and I know there’s something to telling the truth, and so I did. When I realized I couldn’t look my best friends in the eye for fear they might see the truth of what’s happening beyond the “look good,” it was time to say something. (Though, perhaps earlier could have been better, too.)

Did they particularly have anything that shorn through the bleakness in which I find myself, again? Not really. No magic bullets. No words of enlightenment. Just simple suggestions like, Go to a meeting everyday with people who actually know you, and share about this. 

And so, I am. 

I hate it. I feel vulnerable, and I want everybody to not talk to me about it afterward — but there’s no controlling people. 

Because here’s the undercurrent of all this surface nonsense, all this struggle to stay and get afloat and to try to believe that things will change and get better if I keep doing "the next right thing," that life will even out, that I'll be okay...: 

The undercurrent is: I. Don't. Know. That. (None of us do, surely.)

But, specifically, I'm talking cancer. I have a lot of cancer grief to go through, and I don’t know how. 

Partly I don't talk about it because I feel it's so dramatic to talk about, because I'm scared people will roll their eyes, and think, "Sheesh, enough with the cancer already; you lived, didn't you? Move on!" 

I don’t know how to share with people about how angry, betrayed, and every day still terrified -- with every cough, or sleepless night, or strange headache -- about a recurrence I feel. 

I don’t know how to begin to put faith back into a universe and a universal law that arbitrarily may decide to kill you "just cuz." How to “come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to wholeness” when everything solid was ripped from under me in an instant. 

And that’s what I’m being asked to do. I’m at the point, again, where I’m supposed to contemplate my idea of a “higher power,” and I want everybody to take their, “It’s the cycle of life and death,” it’s love, it’s community, and shove it with red hot poker down their own throats. 

Because: Fuck. You. (non-cancer having people, she mumbles mentally.)

I am going at all this activity pretty much on my own, without the guidance and space of meditation, without a wisp of a belief in the goodness of the world, or in the belief that efforts bring results. 

And it’s really hurting me. 

There’s a lot of work I’m going to have to do on this, and I feel SO TIRED. I’m so tired. Have you fought cancer and then had to go about the daily business of living, getting parking tickets and paying bills you can’t afford? And are you now being asked to reconcile that traumatizing experience with a belief in goodness or constancy in the universe in order to stay sober and not kill yourself?

Few of us have. And I don’t know how to do it, because I don’t know who to turn to. 

And so, I’m doing this -- or have been trying to do this -- all alone, in many ways. Sure, I’m reaching out, and the shell of isolation is cracking, and I imagine “good” things will come of it. But for now, I’m just so tired. 

So that’s what’s beyond the “Look-Good,” friends. It’s not pretty, or happy, or palatable for many, including myself. It’s sad and raw and real and really fucking painful to be where I am right now. 

And… if one of you tells me “this too shall pass” or "everybody dies sometime," i’ll shove an iron through your cranium.

(Because it is small comfort, even though it’s true.)