Nature vs. Nurture.

March 23, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Being raised by a psychoanalyst, I grew up believing pretty
strongly in Nurture vs. Nature. I believed adamantly in Tabula Rasa, and that
every aspect of my personality was developed in reaction to my environment.

Eventually, even through a Psychology Major (that switched
to Minor), I began to admit that perhaps there were a few inborn traits that one
has out of the womb, but the majority of a human’s personality was forged out
of their experiences before the age of 3.

But, I have to admit that the aggregate of my own lifetime
experiences, up to and including a Leukemia diagnosis, has begun to make me
admit that perhaps there is something more to the Gattaca within us. Perhaps
something like perseverance, courage, and visceral insistence on life has more
to do with my wiring as “human” and as “Molly,” in particular.

I would never peg myself as someone brave or bold. I don’t
charge into the fray, or head corporations, or tie myself to a tree before a bulldozer. I have few
of the outward markings I would associate with leader or change-maker.

But I am compelled to admit that my undertakings as an adult
do, in sum, mark me as someone willing to rage, to rail, to fight, to excavate all in the
service of healing.

Though perhaps if my formative years hadn’t been what they
were, I wouldn’t find the need to heal from much. Perhaps.

I had a therapist a few years ago who said something novel
to me: Your dad is not a courageous man. This struck me as apocryphal. My father, the one so quick to temper and anger and
rule of iron fist was not brave? Isn’t that what violence is—bravery? Isn’t
that what power is—anger?

Yet, her words rang so unbelievably true. Like seeing the Wizard behind
the curtain in Oz. I know now that that kind of anger does usually hide and
house one who is critically afraid. I mean, I usually wear my black leather
jacket when I’m feeling more insecure, as if its made of chainmail instead of
leather.

But, I was on the phone with a friend yesterday, answering
her question about why I was in Victoria’s Secret the other day. I told her
about my upcoming trip to meet my consummate penpal—and she squealed. She
thought it was so bold and brave, and adventurous, and ALIVE. She rattled on
that this experience is going to help so many other people down the line, help
women to see that life is meant to be
lived.

It sounded so epic when she mirrored it back like that! And
maybe it is. And maybe it’s not.

But, I do know that with every meditation, every alternative
healer, every inventory, every striving, every goddamn picking myself up, that
I am taking something back. That I am reclaiming something. And if that impulse
to charge onward, in light of all that is, is called courage, then I guess the
Wizard granted me a heart on the day that I was born.

anger · fear · growth · recovery · sex · sexuality · the middle way · vulnerability

Discovering The Third Thing

March 14, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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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.)

anger · fear · performance

Brain Dump.

February 28, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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i could write about how beautiful winter is here

that right now the rain is dripping over the green and flowering
back garden and tree-hidden houses behind my building.

i could write about how i feel stuck on this writing/
self-inventory i’m supposed to be doing, and haven’t been able

to work on because we’re not doing it the way

it was designed, and i feel lost and unsupported

and conflicted about telling the person I’m working

with because i have before and things haven’t

changed, and I don’t know if it’s just me being

stubborn or avoidant or if this is really just

too precarious to attempt by myself, when

the work was designed to be done in person

with another person.

i could write about how i cancelled my audition

in san jose last night because a) i didn’t realize

how far san jose was, and b) i think i might get

the role I auditioned for on wednesday in Marin

and the plays run concurrently.

i could write about coming home last night, instead,

and “resting,” actually lying on the couch after cutting

up some beets and turnips and putting them in the oven

and putting a blanket over me and my heating pad and

shutting my eyes. and just letting myself and my eyes,
especially,

rest while the vegetables roasted. how luxurious it felt

to simply do nothing – not nothing, aka watch netflix,

not nothing aka clean my house, just nothing, and not

nothing aka meditate, which could be similar but wasn’t

as my mind wandered and i let it, and i let it get a little
fuzzy

and out of focus as my cat balled up in my lap to rest, too.

i could write about my friend texting me his friend’s dad is

about to die from cancer, and texting him my sympathy, but

that i wasn’t available to process around grief of that
kind.

I could tell you, it’s because it’s too activating for me
because

it reminds me that my cancer is only a year past, that last
year

at this time i was preparing for my fifth and final round of
chemo

and hearing about someone else’s cancer just reminds me how

close i am to mine.

but
that’s not why i didn’t want to hear

about it. i don’t want to hear about your friend’s cancer because i

don’t care. because i realized when i got his text that i am
still

so viciously angry about what happened that i don’t have
room

to be compassionate, really. because i only have room to
think

about my own cancer, and to especially not think about it.
to

not touch into the feelings I still have about it.

and then we’re back

to the work that i’m not writing about right now that’s
supposed to

exorcise and alchemize resentment and trauma and pain.

i could tell you that i don’t give a shit that other people
have cancer

and you’re having feelings of finality and loss and grief,
because

i sat in the sodden, rotten trench of it for a year, and i’m
pretending

right now that i hadn’t. that i hadn’t had to think about
mortality

every single day. that the finality of life wasn’t consistently licking

at my ear, whispering about carpe diem and fatal rules about forgiveness

as health. and boo-fucking-hoo that any of you now are called to
process such things with such naive surprise as if none of this existed
before it happened to someone you have a glancing acquaintance with.

i could tell you i looked into the woman who’s profession is

helping others heal from trauma. and that my tax return
might go

toward sessions with her, or someone she recommends in the
east bay.

i could tell you that my eyes hurt from looking at computers
all the time

and that i’m also grateful that my job doesn’t include
working outside

in the rain or food service or pest removal or any other thing unpleasant.

i could write about any of these things. but
i guess i just did.

anger · change · laughter · life

What’s My Age Again?

January 11, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I stopped by the optometry office on my way out of the
medical lab. It was the last week of December and I thought it would be a good day to
get my labs drawn, test my blood, get some confirming news for the new year,
good or bad, at least it’s truth.

At the eye sales desk, he told me that my glasses order was last filled in 2011, that I’d had the glasses I’m wearing for nearly 3 years.
That people usually reorder every year or two.

And it reminds me that I lost a year.

I was diagnosed with leukemia a week before my 31st
birthday. I don’t
remember it much, who was there, if we sang — I think we did — except that in my threadbare
hospital gown, I opined, Next year, instead of cancer, can we get brunch
instead? – And we did.

But in many ways, I feel like I didn’t actually live my 31st
year (or 32nd if you’re being technical). Suddenly I find myself reminding
myself, Yes, I’m 32 now. 31 sort of did and didn’t happen.

I
know that a few years from now, these missing months won’t seem as missing, won’t feel as
real, except sometimes it strikes me that I spent half a year in a hospital. That when I
consider, “last year at this time,” I was bald and packing for my 4th round of chemo.
And now it’s done. And it’s weird.

When I try to express this weirdness in a way that might make
sense to other people, I say that it’s like my life took this enormous detour, but
now I’m suddenly back to where I parted with the road, and that side road doesn’t
even exist.

How do you go back to “normal” after that? It’s not to give the event credence it doesn’t deserve, or to use my cancer as a talisman of pain
or suffering, or even of validation – it’s just to say, Yes, it actually
happened, and yet, so what?

So what. It’s a hard thing to say about cancer, without
sounding callous. But, really, what does it mean now?

What has it meant this past year? That’s easy to answer –
everything. Everything I do is in response to it, even though “nothing has
changed.” That’s the weirdness of it. I work at the same job. I sleep in the
same apartment. I watch the same t.v. shows.

Many things I’ve done differently, many things I’ve started,
tried, done, seen, been. But, when does its relevance fade – does its relevance
fade? If everything I do, which I assure you I measure against my cancer stick,
is in response to it, when do I stop mentioning it, when does it stop being a
significant part of who I express myself to be. When I stop mentioning it out loud,
which sometimes I note I do, and sometimes I pointedly don’t, … what does that
mean, if anything?

I text a cute guy, after actually asking aloud, “if today was my last day on Earth…” I drink a badly mis-measured version of turmeric tea, because it’s listed in
Kicking Cancer in the Kitchen. I’m
stewing marrow bones in a crock pot right now because I’ve read they have immune
boosting properties.

I flew a plane, got into a band, went to Hawaii, because I
had cancer.

I bought a car, had sex with that cute guy, built my
first bedframe because I had cancer.

I saw Book of Mormon because I had cancer, and stopped
talking to my dad because of it, too.

I measure how much time I waste or spend on Netflix against
cancer. I measure how much sleep I get against cancer. I won’t read bad books, but
I’ll read damnyouautocorrect until it hurts to laugh any more.

What does it mean, though? Is it relevant? To you. To you,
man on the street, do you care what makes me laugh a little freer? Do you care
why I eat organic eggs, or buy gold boots, or notice the moon? Does it matter to you that everything has changed and nothing is different?

Probably not.

So, what about the missing year – if it wrought all of these
changes, it wasn’t missing, right? That’s the point, right?

Sure. Maybe.

Still, I wish I could have gotten new glasses,
and gone without the eviscerating fear.

Thanks.

acceptance · adulthood · anger · art · faith · frustration · gratitude · progress · recovery

Cancer.

October 27, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

About a month ago, I was diagnosed with Leukemia. And my
whole life changed.

I don’t know what this change is, was, will be, but I know
that I am in several ways entirely different than I was. The way, at least
right now, that I see things are entirely new. And profoundly grateful. I
almost died. And yet, I didn’t.

We each get this each day – I got this each day, prior to this happening. I got the chance to
understand that life was precious, but I didn’t, really. I understood it,
but to really feel it? Well, it’s
different now,

and it brings up a host of other questions. Am I allowed to still watch Ben Stiller movies? Am I allowed to spend a day on the couch? Will
I now stop stopping myself short on all my varied art projects, and allow
myself to follow through on anything
that I’ve started? I have no idea.

I’d like to think that part of this “change” – for lack of a
better term for “life altering sudden tragic happening” – will indeed move me
toward being more in my art, more in my life. I’d like to believe that part of
this whole thing is a very nasty kick-upside-the-head lesson in not living for
tomorrow. That I’m being given the chance to very acutely see that life is
short and tenuous, and so I ought to embrace the talents that I have, and finally
let myself explore them fully so that I might share them with you.

I’d like to believe that there are lessons here. Otherwise,
what the fuck.

I’d like to believe that the Universe or my Higher Power
couldn’t — for some reason completely unknown to me – send me a postcard, or a
dream, or a message on Facebook. That for some reason this lesson had to be learned hard, and fast, and
therefore more gentle methods of smoothing a rock down to its shiny parts were
not available to this massive Power.

I’ve been out of the hospital for a week now, and I will go
back in next Monday for another round of chemo. This will be the 2^nd
in a series of, likely, 5 treatments. The words that I’ve had to learn over
this month scare the crap out of me. I don’t want to use words like chemo,
nausea, pain meds, pneumonia. I don’t want to hear “How bad is the pain on a
scale of 1 to 10,” or, “It’s time for your shot,” or “Well, we expect this.”

I’ve oscillated since I’ve been out of the hospital between
those few stages of grief – anger, grief, acceptance. Often within the same
minute. When I was in the hospital, there wasn’t time for anything except acceptance. This is happening. Period. Go with it. And, despite
what you may think, it’s really f’ing busy in the hospital with people coming
in and out at all hours of the day and night, throwing information or
medication at you. There’s not really time to process, space to absorb and
consolidate what has been happening to me.

And so, being home now, I’m getting the chance to experience
what I couldn’t while basically holding my breath for 3 weeks. I’m getting to
realize the enormity of what happened. The slow, marinating, seeping
reality – I almost died. The nurse told me that I had 49% leukemic cells in my
blood when I came into the hospital – WITH STREP THROAT – and that if I hadn’t
come in, I would have died within two weeks. I would have gotten a bleed,
likely in my brain, and I would have just died. No one would have known – no one would have known why. Relapse?
Suicide? Understanding this fact has begun to lead me to know that I need help
in holding the space for all this – and yesterday I contacted a cancer support
group.

AND, I have to tell you, I don’t want to be someone who needs a cancer support group – I shouldn’t have
motherfucking cancer in order to need such a group. A month ago, this was unfathomable.

This morning, I read my last Morning Pages entry from the week
before I went into the hospital. I haven’t written morning pages since then, I
was too sick, and then too hospitalized. And so I read them, and I see myself
talking about how my throat really is starting to hurt. About how I went to the
art store Flax and got new pens and a notebook and talked to the woman in the
back about different types of pressed paper – hot press versus cold, what would
be good for the art I want to do. About the café I’d emailed with the month
before about putting up a show in their space, and how he wanted to do
November, but I simply wasn’t ready, as it was the end of September at the
time.

I’d written about the clothing I’d bought for cheap at good
thrift shops, and the flying lesson I was scheduled for, which ended up being
the day I went into the ER. I wrote about being excited, about art that I would
make. About missing my family, and wanting to go home for Thanksgiving to see
them.

In some ways, it feels like reading a journal from junior
high, it feels so long ago. And yet, it’s all still me. And that’s something
that I want to take away from this too. This process is going to be HARD, challenging, painful, difficult, and yet, I’m still
me. As I was writing my first Morning Pages this morning since that last entry,
I was inwardly elated to see my handwriting hadn’t changed. That major facts of
who I am have not changed. That things that were important to me then, “before
cancer,” are still things that are important to me now. – art, family,
adventure.

I’ve been blasted with some of the nastiest chemicals, shorn down
to the barest slices of my body … but my handwriting is still the same.

I could go into the ways in which gratitude has become this
sort of well of tears behind my eyes at all times. I could talk about how just
waking up this morning feels like a gift. But I don’t want to today, really. I could
list the thanks and the inundation of love and support and care, but that’s not
what this blog is about this morning, at least. It’s not a love fest, it’s just
a truth fest. About where I am this very day, at this very time, arguing and
stamping and shaking a fist at the sky with WHY in the m’f’in hell couldn’t you
have made this a little bit of a gentler lesson? About how I feel like I’m some
sort of icon now, with people telling me all the time what an inspiration
you are, when I’ve had diarrhea for 3 out
of the last 4 weeks. I’ve asked people what on earth that even means, an inspiration to what? What have I inspired in
you? What am I inspiring you to do? I haven’t done anything except lived.

I get to be bitter about it. And I get to be amazingly
thankful to get to be bitter about it –
to be alive enough to have emotions enough to get to scorn about it.

It is surely true, the love and support I’ve gotten. And
yet, there’s a part of me that feels angry that I even have a situation in
which to receive such love and support.
I know people love me. Couldn’t I have had my 31^st birthday at a
restaurant with them, instead of in a hospital bed? Couldn’t I have learned to
get out of the way of my own creativity and drive and lust for life in a
different, gentler way? Couldn’t I have gotten to see my family by flying East
for Thanksgiving, instead of them flying West to hold my hand while my hair
falls out?

I’m grateful for this blog – this tempestuous blog that
gives me the chance to be honest in every way. Which I want to use to
springboard to something else, to write in another venue, maybe one that’s
paid. I’m glad that I get to write here, as someone told me, as I speak – that if I
write the way I talk, they said, I’m surely a great writer. I don’t know how much that is
true, but somehow the cancer lets me see it a little more clearly. And perhaps begin to accept it. I want to explore my talent more – because there simply is
more there. I want to push into it, and I want to share it.

I swear I would have gotten there without this whole cancer
thing, but I guess I really didn’t have a choice in this one.

anger · change · childhood · discovery · freedom · love · maturity · progress · recovery · sex · sexuality

Rage Against the Whatever’s Handy.

June 11, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Last summer, before I started getting help around money, I
was in a bad way. I answered an ad for a company/house looking for dominatrixes
(dominatri?). I was desperate for money, and was almost willing to do anything
to make it.

So, I answered the ad, spoke with a woman on the phone,
looked at their website, and scheduled an interview.

Then, I emailed a friend of mine who’d been a dominatrix
once upon a time, and I asked her what her thoughts were around it. She replied
with an interesting thought. She said that it was a very low and base level
of energetic exchange.

Even though it sounds “woo-woo,” I knew what she meant. She
didn’t tell me yes or no, she just said, basically, that it felt icky. And that
she was heavily using drugs at the time.

A few days later, and before my interview, I called to let
them know I wouldn’t be coming in for my interview, that I’d like to cancel.
And that was the end of that.

However. I’m reminded of this now, about a “low” source of
energy, or power, because I’ve been experiencing the most wonderful (<–
sarcasm) feeling of free floating anger lately.

For those of you who know me, “angry” is likely the last
thing you’d associate with me – quirky, awkward, loving are most likely the top
layers, and indeed, the most core layers. But, in the middle of those is
everything that I’ve tried to put in between me and you. That includes sex, and
that includes anger.

Now that I’m in the process of extricating myself from any
sexual entanglements, grey areas, … dating sites…, I’m noticing that anger has
arisen where “sex” used to be.

When I was in junior high, and I came into school that one
Monday with contact lenses and makeup and suddenly I was visible, I rode that
high, and my anger that “you” only now noticed me, I rode that well into my
twenties.

I fed off of that energetic exchange. The power that a woman
(or man) holds via sexuality is more than palpable, it’s addictive. It’s
enlivening. It becomes what I’d come to believe was my only source of strength.

This was a “low” form of strength, and a false form. But oh
the many heads of it. I feel powerful (or visible, or valid) when you pay
attention to me. When you’re giving me what I think I need, when you’re eying
me, or flirting with me, or seeing what I know (or think I know) you’re seeing
when you see me.

So, now, I’m removing this source – I’m calling this well
toxic, and trying to walk away from it. Sex isn’t bad – but it can be a natural outcropping of feelings rather than
hormones.

I said yesterday to a friend that I feel like someone has pulled my
covers. That my defense mechanisms are being shorn away one by one, and so,
now, here I am with anger.

I am very aware that anger is just the other side of
vulnerability. I don’t want you to see how vulnerable I am, so I will put on my
angry armor and tell you to fuck off.

But, being aware of it doesn’t cancel it out.

I was reflecting this morning about the power of anger. I
realized that before there was the Power of Sex, there was the Power of Anger
in my life. It was modeled to me that if you were angry, you were powerful. If
you were angry, you were paid attention to (and left alone). I learned that
anger was an appropriate way to feel visible.

This, is a poor lesson. As frightened as I was when I was
younger, I began to learn to fight fire with fire. I learned this young too. I
was not really a pleasant kid, behind my shy exterior. The shy came after.
After I learned how to be angry, to yell back, to provoke, to antagonize, and
to defy. I learned that not everyone, especially in school, was going to put up
with that, and it sank inward, enclosed by the layer of “demure” and “shy.”
I’ll just disappear then. If I can’t have power via anger, then I apparently
don’t have any at all.

When I found sexuality, I found a “more acceptable” pathway
to visibility. And now, again, as that one’s being taken away from me – the
abuse of that power, rather – now, I’m falling backwards through my timeline
into anger.

Rage, really. I learned a lot about rage growing up – surely,
not as much as some, but more than Mr. Rogers would have wanted in his
neighborhood.

So, here I am at rage. One of my last defenses. I am sorry
to be here at it. And I also know that freedom from it will bring untold gifts.
But… I like it. And that’s the problem. The problem is that these sources of
power are still salivating. I still feed off them. I still feel powerful from
them, even “knowing” that they’re false.

I made someone angry yesterday, and I liked it. I felt
validated. If I’m able to make you mad, then that means that I’m alive, around,
meaningful. If I’m able to cause a reaction in you (previously, a sexual one;
now an angry one), then I have a purpose.

Yes, I “get” that these are totally fucked up thoughts. I
get that this has to be “gotten through” or it will continue to cause me pain.
And isolation.

But I felt that “low source of energy” when I was the
recipient of that anger yesterday. It’s like a “HA! See, you do care.”

It’s so Psych 101, it’s stupid – better negative attention
than no attention. But, it’s recorded in textbooks for a reason. It must be
prevalent enough and common enough to fall asleep to at your freshman college
desk.

So, that’s my thoughts for the day. Thoughts on feeling
vulnerable, and what I do to hide that. Thoughts on my reluctance to let go of
sex and rage as sources of “power” and validation. My thoughts on compassion
for myself, as I know this is hard. And a modicum of hope and self-validation
for choosing to move through this anyway.

anger · relationships · romance · sex · sexuality · vulnerability

Sex Type Thing: Poems.

June 9, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Can you fix me from inside the slickness?

Will callouses and scabs be rent off by our friction?

Will the explosion of your cum inside me tremble into the
core of every cell

and paint them newly red?

No?

Then get the fuck off me.

* * *

my foot cramps in the closed position monkeys

must still be able to make but i can’t

my hip bone pops in its socket and i’m

unsure whether that’s into or out of it

the lightest swing of my body against the mattress

mimics an old playset and i’m suspended

* * *

everything switches off, except your breath

against my hip bone

* * *

everyone i know has an o.c.d. mom

and an absent father

will this fix it?

does it need to be fixed?

how the fuck do you do that?

* * *

i want her to stop claiming “broken,”

as if it’s a setting on the dishwasher

and when its turned all culpability and

engagement in the world is paused

indefinitely

* * *

the tiniest fibers of hair

freshly shaved this morning

no matter how new the razor

they vibrate like frankenstein’s

monster and map
everything:

my skin against yours

us in this town

the triangles of string that

connect where i’ve been

connect other lovers

not comparing, enhancing this one

touch

how his tongue felt against the densely

moisture

tentative

sloppy

the lightest grazing and

sickly sudden entrance

of manicured or not

fingertips

strapping my attention

chaining it to the bed.

* * *

how does this alchemy work?

it hasn’t so far.

lead returns to lead as

i bolt the door behind you

the moment gimped

by an awkward exchange of

see yous

what tangle the sheets are in,

still warm,

i climb back into them as if

i could coax them into being

you

and you were something else

* * *

i only ever imagine the weight of you

when i’m alone with myself at night

i can find folds that you can’t

and pace myself as you won’t

but alone, i can never press myself into the

evaporating softness

or
grip the muscles of your back

as if you were my life preserver

6.9.12.

abundance · action · anger · change · faith · freedom · frustration · growth · progress · relationships · romance · self-care · spirituality · work

The Masculine Mystique

April 22, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Firstly, I would like to quote an acquaintance of mine as
they responded once to my tirade on SF’s chilly weather – “Then Move.” Touche,
quite right. And I will, just not today.

Secondly, my morning pages were like something out of a
schizo’s notebook this morning, and I’m rather heartened than alarmed by it.

As I began to, again, write that I could paint, a sentence which was followed immediately in my head by the thought, “Yeah, right,” … my morning pages turned
on me, and began a near-two page rejoinder along the lines of Stop Fucking
Saying Yeah Right, and GO DO IT! I channeled the very pissed off and frustrated
voice/part inside me that is exceedingly
tired of the self-defeating, Eeyore-like part of me that crosses all my
interests with a “Yeah, but,” or a “How will I make any money?”

I was happy to see that this activated part was so adamant,
and demanded that I Just Fucking Do It, rather than what I’ve been doing for a
very long time, question, debate, lolly-gag, despair. This voice is the fuck despair
voice. It is the voice, one might say, of my inner masculine.

I’m a little hesitant to draw the dividing line between
feminine and masculine in this way; feminine as pondering and questioning;
masculine as action and fortitude. But, it sort of feels like that to me, and
it’s only my interpretation. There are
plenty of other ways to categorize, or not, these disparate voices and parts of
ourselves. But, for the sake of the argument, I’ll call it my masculine side.

And the truth is, it’s right. Whatever it is, or I call it.
Because this is the point in the job search where I get frustrated and think,
well, nothing will come of it anyway, so phooey, here’s another admin job. My
internal beings of all sorts are having a coup. Nuh, Uh. Time’s up. Off the
pity pot, lady. Get on it.

And further more, Yes, You Can. Furthermore,

to segue,

you/I have very recent experience in NOT behaving as you
would have in the past. You very
recently responded to a situation MUCH differently than factual evidence
had it before. This means … you’re different. You’ve changed. You can do things
now that you couldn’t before, and your mental register aligns with a much
healthier set of behavior and thinking now.

The case in point, is that I was asked to go to the theater
by a boy…man. There is nothing wrong with this person, except that a) I
accepted the extra ticket thinking he has a girlfriend, so I thought it was a friend thing (I found out later he does not), and b) he is new to
the not-drinking world.

Over the last 3 days, I have felt icky – like the princess
and the pea. I know from my own experience that the first few months of not
drinking and trying a whole new way of life – no, not first few months, first
few years (or year, AT LEAST), are so incredibly
formative, that I would be damned to throw a wrench into the wheel works of
someone else’s critical development. I know people who have gotten involved, and it’s
worked out marvelously, but I, surprisingly, was feeling way too uncomfortable
about it.

Sobriety, mine or someone else’s, was way more important to
me than a fucking non-date date. No matter how long it’s been, how intriguing
it is, how fun it could be. Not doing it.

So, through a series of phone calls to friends, and a
confirmation that it’s the respectful thing for us both, yesterday, I texted
the dude and said I’d rather stick to seeing him “around,” than go for coffee.
That I felt “murky” around it.

You know what he said?

“Okay. No worries!”

???!!!

All my f’ing belly aching, and heming and hawing, and “Okay,
No Worries”?? Wow, this honesty thing really f’ing works.

Through a series of circumstances, the timing was different
than he thought, so I get to go see the play by myself and also get to have a
clean, peer-like relationship with this dude. I don’t have to feel weird, or
avoid, or future-trip about it. The play is the bonus prize – the actual prize
is the relief of doing the right and honest thing for myself, and sticking to a
new way of being.

I know from direct experience that I haven’t always
responded that way to someone who was new to not drinking, and I experienced
the fallout of that, however brief it was. I, apparently, have learned from my
experience. And my internal alarm system is calibrated to this new way of
being.

I say all this to say, that my masculine side has a point.
All that writing this morning about Just Do It has a point. The point is that I’m not the person I used to be. I don’t have the same
reactions I used to, and so I don’t have to follow the same actions I used to.
This whole “new way of living” has made itself quite apparent in my life, and I
can allow the boon of that to propel me forward.

I don’t have to be afraid anymore. Afraid there isn’t
enough, or I’m not good enough, or I’ll never make it anyway, or that a
creative life is a stupid one.

In fact, I don’t have these fears anymore, really. They’re
just echoes. There’s nothing real to scare me. There’s no one stopping me, or
chiding me, or making fun of me.

And if there ever is, I apparently have a massive bully to
yell affirmations at them.

anger · family · integrity · letting go · self-care

Gaslight

March 13, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

*spoiler alert*

Gaslight is an old black and white suspense movie in which a
wife is tricked into thinking she is mad. Things disappear from her dressing
table. The lamp lights in her room dim and brighten without her touching them.
And her husband tells her she’s crazy, and says here’s your purse, you left it
x, even though she could have sworn she left it y. She is basically told that
the things she thinks are happening, which we as the viewer see happening, are not, in fact, happening. This, one can
imagine, produced fear, worry, self-doubt, and eventually a crack-up. This is gaslighting.

It’s funny that I’d been telling someone else about that
term yesterday morning, which made itself into regular parlance (like
“catch-22” from the book title) or at least made itself into my mom’s parlance
from whom I learned it, because later that day, I was gaslit.

On the phone with my dad, who’s wanting to coordinate about
my graduation, etc., as you may recall, I’d been anxious about him and my mom
being at the same place at the same time. So, I let him know this. I told him
that I know that he and my mom don’t have the most communicative relationship,
but that I hope we can all show up with a spirit of celebration. I told him
that I was anxious about them being here together, and that I hope they can get
along in a civil way.

He said, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

He said their relationship is fine; there’s no hard
feelings; that I must have gotten the wrong idea, and that, in essence, I was
wrong and there’s nothing wrong.

I reminded him of asking me to tell my mom about his
mother’s passing because they “aren’t talking,” and he had no recollection of
saying this. I said that he asked me to tell her, but I said I didn’t feel
comfortable doing so, and he said okay, Ben can tell her.

He has no recollection of this.

So, I got defensive, feeling like I was being told that what
really happened hadn’t happened. And he got defensive feeling, I imagine, that
I was attacking him for behavior that he doesn’t recall. I got a little
offensive in my “lightly insistent” reminder of his recent behavior, and he got a little offensive
accusing me of making things up.

And, so we got off the phone after reverting to the
“everything’s fine here” light, fake, cover-it-up tone.

I’ve never been divorced. And it became, now, less about my
parents’ interaction than about my interaction with my dad. This is usually how
it goes – it’s either, Everything’s fine, or it’s antagonistic. It’s either,
Gee my life’s swell, or it’s Oh wait, I’m not in control, I better use my vast
resources of rage and anger to intimidate it back into order.

This is the way it’s always been. To varying degrees of
each. He can barely ask a waiter for more water without it sounding like a
threat.

But, I’m also hyper-attuned to it, as his daughter.

So, moral? I told him what I hoped could happen at
graduation, he said things will be fine. So, needs voiced, needs heard.

I know what my experience has been,
and I know the truth of things as I see them. And I have to have enough value
in my own experience that it doesn’t matter whether it’s verified by him, or
anyone else. It is not my job to break through someone else’s denial; to
instill in them proper manners of communication that do not swing from hot to
cold; it is not my job to change my dad. It’s just my job to not be gaslit by
him; to allow the conversation to hold contradiction, not have to “be right,”
and to let it go.

Not sure I have all of the “moral” here yet today, but I’m
pretty sure this is a lifetime process.

Next, it’ll be time to tell the same thing to my mom. … I
may need to do some work before I take that phone call on! … Or maybe I don’t need to call her on this at all. ?

acceptance · anger · faith

Anima

February 27, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Yesterday,
during meditation, I began to notice that I’m alive. Now, before you
scoff, it was more I sort of sensed whatever it was, that spark of life within
me, that is not in a fire hydrant or end table. That mystical, magical thing
that happens only for us, that rides on our blood cells and sends messages to
synapses and invents thought, hormones, and waste.

Anima, is
what this is. The life property of us living things.

It wasn’t
as if I sensed my soul in that sense of the meaning, but more, that simply I
was aware that –hot dog!- this is being “alive.” I found this interesting, this unique “blessing,” perhaps. To just notice that there is something in me, as in you,
that is not in everything.

Later
that day, I found out that a friend of mine overdosed on drugs, and died this
weekend.

At the
moment, it felt simply like shock, indignation, and anger. I am believer in a
Higher Power, and an order to the Universe, or something like that – although
my understanding and relationship to that power changes and evolves, like most
relationships. However, this this felt abnormally cruel.

He was my
age, 30ish. Tall, blue eyes, light hair. Handsome. I had a crush on him.

Granted
it was a from-a-distance crush, because I knew the struggle he was having with
staying sober for the year plus that I’ve known him.

When I
got sober, I was told to buy something black – the men told to buy a suit – as
we were going to be attending a lot of funerals. (That’s not “recovery”’s
position on the matter; it’s just the half joke/half not of some people in it.)

When I
was a few months sober, someone I’d been peripherally running around with being
wild and crazy and ISN’T LIFE GREAT WHEN YOU’RE NOT PUKING AND BLACKING OUT
ANYMORE?!, well, I found out that he’d walked off a cliff one night on purpose.

A girl I
know died last year, and a lot of folks I know were affected by her death.

But, for
me, this one has come the closest to home. I sat in the same room with this kid
almost weekly for over a year. I heard his dry humor, and his despair, his
attempts, his hope, and his … anima. I heard his life. We all did. And now,
he’s dead.

My
emotions of shock were sent in a sentence up to G-d: What The Fuck.

Sure, I
do believe in the order of things, and that “things happen for a reason,” but
I’ll tell you, believe that though I do and may, this happened to be a great
way to shake that conviction. But moreso, I feel indignant and righteously
angry and my
firm belief in a kind Universe. I know it sounds antithetical, but really, I
have no other choice.

I, like
many people I know, have no other choice than but to believe in some cosmic
goodness – to me it is a goodness. And, sure, I can choose not to believe. I
can choose to say that this world is fucked, and aimless, and sometimes you win
and sometimes you lose, and there’s no reason or order or lesson or anything.
Cold, inanimate life.

But. I
don’t believe that. And, really, it’s not because I must, it’s because I
do. I simply do.

And, so
then, how to “reconcile” at all the tragedy of the loss of a … how can you
describe a person in a word?

I cannot
reconcile the loss and my worldview. And often my worldview is replete with
paradox, and for now, today, I will hold them both. I will be furious and
mystified at the shortened life of my friend. And, I will continue to scrape
the residue of that which covers my own anima – because I do also believe that
whenever the light is turned on in one person, the whole world is lightened
because of it.

And
though I still don’t feel that this is now some cosmic balance of we now all
get to improve ourselves and not take life for granted and all that bullshit, …
well, what else can we do?

Dear Aaron, I’m sorry I didn’t offer to lend you the two dollars you needed when you were on line behind me at the grocery store last week. I wish I had.