Category: intimacy

commitment · fear · intimacy · love

The Lionhearted

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I didn’t want a cat. I sat for a friend’s once, and their
constant up-in-my-grillness was off-putting to my isolatory nature.
My aunt had cats; was/is the stereotypical cat lady,
unmarried, living alone, 3 cats of circulation when one dies.
They’re nice and sweet sometimes, and good for petting. But all
that fur! Forget it.
My ex had a cat. It was good enough, companionable enough,
but there were so many things in his apartment that identified him as a cat-lover/owner: the framed New Yorker cover
with a cat; a magazine about cats (that he swears his brother bought him as a
gag-gift); the industrial vacuum meant for all that fur.
It took me almost a year to put up curtains in my last
apartment, because to do so would mean that I couldn’t abscond in the middle of
the night. I would have to unscrew it slowly, with meaning and intention; I was
committed to something.
Commitment was the largest reason I didn’t want a cat. Not the commitment of keeping it fed and littered, but the commitment of
caring.
My brain would go immediately to, “I don’t know how I could
deal with its death.” The hypothetical death of a hypothetical cat. The
consequences of feeling that deeply for anything frightened me.
And yet. During the time I was with that ex, I moved to
Oakland from San Francisco for grad school, and I was living a bridge away from
anyone I knew, and things were a little lonely here in my studio apartment.
After a side-track story I won’t tell now, I ended up adopting Stella from the SPCA. A green-eyed (no freaky yellow-eyed cats please!), silken, mottled
brown/black two-year old cat.
She has been one of the best things that’s ever happened to
me.
She’s not an in-your-face’r. She’ll hang when she wants to,
and over the 3 years we’ve lived together now, she began to sit more and
more in my lap as I meditate in the morning or nap on the couch. Over time,
we’ve grown more accustomed to one another; and over time I’ve gotten to see
how much my love wants to express itself.
I say things that only my mother must have said to me in
endearment. They come naturally and without thought, these names and phrases
that I whisper to her, or chide at her. The sweetened names of love that were
hanging out inside me until there was a vessel in which to pour them.
I didn’t want a cat.
I didn’t want the responsibility of love.
But it’s opened rooms in me where there were only walls. 

community · intimacy · joy · love · relationships · respect · San Francisco · school

Going to the Chapel.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

In an effort to hold myself accountable, I’ll here announce
that I have an art project to complete by this Saturday, for my friend’s
wedding. And… in an effort to be honest, I mean start and complete by Saturday. It’s all good – I’ve
already sketched it out, but theory and practice are disastrously different
things.
This will be the first wedding I’ve ever attended. Somehow,
it’s just never happened that I’ve been around people who get married, or been
in the same state or country to attend. I did work with a catering company at a
few weddings last summer, but that’s not the same. Although, it did give me
some great perspective and insight into the whole rigamarole.
The first wedding I did was between two women, which was
pretty cool. But, I got to learn that you shouldn’t have speeches during
serving time at dinner, as people are really confused as to whether they should
eat or listen, and then the courses get backed up, and you’re removing plates
while people are speaking, which is hella awkward and earns more than a few pointed
glances.
I learned that if you’re having a sunset wedding in the
Sonoma hills that bugs will flock to and then drown in your water, champagne,
and wine glasses. I learned that before you blink, the whole thing is over.
This is not meant to be a diatribe on marriage or weddings, it’s just
observations – and a reminder to really be present for things like this – they
really are fleeting.
I decided that, personally, a set of anonymous towels was
not what I wanted to give this couple. I met the bride within the first year, I
think, of being in San Francisco. We met out front of a building where folks
like us gather for an hour, and I asked her for a light or a cigarette, or we
just both happened to be smoking out front, me feeling socially awkward as
hell.
We talked. And somehow, stars aligned, and we knew that we’d become really good friends. Nothing
momentous was said. No raw secrets were shared, or raucous joke exchanged. We
were just ourselves, nervous, anxious companions in the semi-dark on the
concrete steps to a massive warehouse-like building by the San Francisco Marina.
When I left, we exchanged a hug. We reflected later that
neither of us were a huggy bunch. We were, or at least I was, still much too guarded then, and hugging was restricted for the very few people I now was
beginning to consider friends. But, hug we did. And it was almost that
spontaneous act of mutual affection, an act neither of us typically allowed ourselves,
that sealed that something different was here. A friendship had been
formed in the 5 minutes it takes from lighting to filter.
More than 5 years ago now.
She’s part of the reason I went back to school. I watched
her quit her lucrative job as a store manager in a touristy spot in San
Francisco, and go back to school full time in an unusual major – or at least
completely unrelated to anything she’d been doing previously. I watched her
walk, even painfully, through the process, and in the middle of winter in 2010,
I sat on her couch – maybe it was our Christmas or New Years, or something
gathering. She cooked, we talked. I asked her why this major, how come, out of
everything in the world, she chose this?
She told me that it was a thread throughout her life. All
through her life, she noticed that she’d gravitated toward information around
this subject, she sort of watched herself nurture and feed this interest. That
phrase, a thread through my life, stuck
with me.
It was hard to imagine that someone with a lucrative and
stable job (with all the attendant mishigas of a lucrative and stable job)
would quit all that to go to school, and start nearly at the beginning of a
career. But she did. I admired her dearly for it.
And so, when, two months later, I found myself at a
crossroads in my own job world, I asked myself, What is my thread? It was
writing. I have poems that date to 2nd grade. It
was her conviction that she was insisting something to herself almost
unconsciously through her choices of hobby and interest and book perusal that
underlined that this was her arena. And so, I followed my own thread.
Because of the nature of life and distance, and full-time
schooling for us both, we don’t get to see one another often at all. It is her
I blame, full disclosure, for having hooked me on the horrifyingly ridiculous
and addictive Twilight book series –
that very night, actually back in 2010. Walking out toward the end of the
night, I glanced at her bookshelf – and there it is, the entire series. I
guffawed. I was stunned – attractive, intelligent, funny, generous, achingly cool, and reads Twilight??
This couldn’t be right.
She asked me if I’d read it – I looked at her as if she’d
asked me if I enjoyed stepping in dog shit. No, I had not read them. Scoff,
scoff. (!) Then she gave me the first volume, and told me to try it.
And so I did. And damn her, if she hasn’t turned me into one
whom others scoff at. And I thank her for it. Cheesey, and melodramatic, and
angsty, she helped me to learn to not take myself too seriously, and to let
myself have uninhibited, puffy fun.
I am honored to be attending her wedding this weekend. I
have watched her and shared with her over the course of years, and the deep
affection that was tapped on that lonely concrete outcropping has murmured like
a brook under the surface of my life every day since. 
adulthood · dating · integrity · intimacy · Jewish · progress · recovery · relationships · responsibility · romance · sexuality

Progress, Not Perfection.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So, I did not sleep with my okJew on the second date. We did
however come back to my place, and have a rather heated make-out session.
It was lovely. But. I feel today no better. I realize today
that even though we didn’t sleep together, which was something I didn’t want to
do, knowing him so briefly, that I still feel a sense of sadness around it. And
in writing some about it, I realize that it’s sad because I still don’t fully
believe in my own inherent worth – that I’m more than my body.
Even when we were making out, however fun it was – and it
was, and I’m sure that if we ever do have sex, there will be no problem in that regard – but I felt not fully
present. I felt a little disconnected – and, really, I was. I was disconnected
from the emotions that can come when you are making out with someone you know,
like, and maybe even more than like. I was only acting from one part of myself,
not all of me.
And, knowing that, I notice the desire to pack “Beauty” back
up behind her glass terarrium, and say, see, you can’t be trusted. But really,
it’s not her fault. I didn’t have to come back to my place – it could have been
a short date. I didn’t have to have the extended make-out session – I could
have ended it earlier. But, I did. And this is where “progress, not perfection”
comes in. Because I really could beat myself up here, and retreat back into
isolation, and a position of “See, you really don’t know how to hold intimacy
and sexuality, so you better pack it in.”
Yes, I could do that, but I don’t think that’s the point
here. The point is that I realize that heavy teenage-like petting is a little
more than I want to do on a second date. I realize that I still want to feel
known more than that, and have more of a connection before getting so physical.
I have so much f’ing evidence of how much sex before emotional intimacy is the
cart before the horse, and so, yes, I can beat myself up for not having learned
that “well enough,” or I can be glad that I didn’t have sex when I didn’t
really want to, and be glad that I let him know it was time to go, and didn’t
interpret his erection as an obligation, as I wrote yesterday. (But, … Whoo-ee! …
anyway…) 😉
So, there’s that. Of course, I begin to go all the way to,
now I better let him know what I’m looking for before there’s a
third date, and another round of, okay thanks, bye! That I need to explain what
I’m available for, and to ask if that’s what he’s available for.
Some of this sounds valid, some of it sounds unnecessary. I tend
to be an oversharer. I don’t think I need to do that, or at least, I don’t need
to do that today. I won’t see him again, likely, for another week or so, as
he’s busy during the week, and I’m camping this weekend, so I have time to let
some of this dust settle and ask some women, and see what happens.
We did have a good date, overall. In fact, it was a great
date. But I feel overshadowed by my remorse.
Again, it comes back to choice. I can choose to see this as
a failure, and head down to self-flagellation, and I’ll never get it, and how
come you don’t get that you’re worth it – that makes you so not worth it. (A
lovely circle of reasoning, that one.) Or. Or I can choose to see this as an
opportunity, as I spoke so much of yesterday. An opportunity to notice my
growth and change, and also to be happy (or at least contented) that I do notice how I’m feeling, and how I was feeling last night. I wasn’t
feeling present, and that I wasn’t feeling present is a good thing. That I noticed it. Noticing it is the first step, I think. Then I
can work on doing something about it.
I’ve written a lot of poetry about not feeling present
during sex. Now, I know that that can extend to making out if I’m not properly
known by someone, and they’re not known by me. This person is nearly an entirely unknown
entity – of course I don’t feel
intimate.
So, I can choose to take this as information for next time –
whether that’s with this person, or someone down the line. I can choose to
allow myself a little bit of affirmation over keeping my pants on. I can choose
to acknowledge that I’ve come a long way to be so present with myself to notice
these even slightly off-kilter parts of me.
Forgive the reference… but, in the final Twilight book
(spoiler alert?), the main character, Bella, throws an invisible defensive
bubble out around herself and her family during the cumulative battle. Imagine
it almost like a Bio-Dome, to mix pop-culture metaphors. In the book, Bella can
feel as one of the opponents pokes into the various places of her bubble,
looking for a weak spot – testing the defenses, and seeing how strong it is. I
feel very similarly about this work with dating/physicality. I feel that my
bubble is being poked and prodded, and I’m getting to see where I still have
spots of weakness, or places that can be firmed up.
I am sad that I don’t yet feel that I’m worth more than my body, or that I could be wanted or
acknowledged or “seen” for more than my physical self. But, this is simply a
place of “weakness,” a place where I could use more care and strength and
affirmation, and behavior that will support the idea that I am more than that. So, I am glad for the opportunity.
I’ve been shown where there’s work to do – and if that’s not what relationships
are for, then I’ve got the wrong game. 
adulthood · change · dating · fear · intimacy · Jewish · love · progress · relationships · sex · sobriety

Mind your own music stand.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Several years ago, about 5 or so, I was dating a wonderful
man. I was also in therapy. These things were and were not related 😉
One day, my therapist and I stumbled across a metaphor that I’m reminded of
today – when I get into relationships, it’s as if I’ve been the conductor of my
own orchestra, and ultimately, the highest ideal and intention is that my
partner, boyfriend in this case, have his own orchestra, and that the two sounds mix
and meld in a way that increases the beauty of both, without losing the
integrity of either.
Surely, you may have your own metaphor for this, as there
are many, but that’s what came to me then.
The “problem,” as it were, is that I was noticing my
tendency to want to begin to conduct his orchestra. That if his oboe were a
little more resonant, or his triangle more tingy, we’d sound better together.
The result of this peeking over onto his side, was that I began to neglect my
own. In beginning to mind someone else’s business, I forgot to mind my own.
When this happens, things like self-care, integrity, and reason
begin to go out the window. I become more interested in making sure you’re
doing things “right,” and that we “sound good together,” that my whole balance
of living gets thrown off.
That was then. This is now. Will it be the same?
When, before I began dating that man, I asked a trusted
friend if she thought I were ready to date – as he would become the first
person I’d date while sober – she said that if I was ready to handle the
emotional twists of a relationship without drinking, then go for it.
And so I did. I learned a lot, and ultimately, it didn’t
work out, but I learned so fucking much.
I learned how to try to love, how to try to be loved. I learned how to be
honest with another person. I learned to look at the clouds and see shapes and
animals again. I learned how to relax a little.
Yes, these are things I can learn “on my own,” they are. And
I get more of that now than I did then. But, too, there are some things that
can only be learned in communion with
someone else.
I notice that that big hunk of manic-depressive wild-haired
meat that I call my inner manifestation of Love is “up” right now. As when I
met her on one of my shamanic journeys, and she threw herself on me after I
gave her one bit of kindness, she is not yet one who knows balance. When I
pushed her off of me, she got rageful and went Neanderthal.
This is part of my pattern. Show me some kindness, and
suddenly, I light up like Times Square and drape myself on you, my needs,
expectations. Show me that you can’t possibly meet those demands, and I will
turn to ice quicker than an eskimo’s piss.
There’s more to this. As there usually is. If you’re not
meeting my demands, and I’ve turned cold, you won’t really know it. It’s subtle
closing off and shutting down, this Elvis leaving the building. We’ll have sex,
but I won’t be present. I’ll still try to use it as a way, the main way, to
connect, but it doesn’t really work when I’m not there.
Also, as I recognized last night on my surprise-last-minute okJewpid date, before I know more or better or have a peg on the situation,
sure I’ll be outwardly as gregarious and charming as always, but… I felt it – I
felt my shell.
Perhaps this is “normal.” You’re meeting someone for the
first time – you of course have some guards, maybe. But, I’m just so much more
acutely aware of how scared I am. How scared I am to allow that shell to melt,
because inevitably, in my past, it has meant a descent right into that enormous sigh of relief that you are here, that I can now
relax, depend on you – and make a few adjustments to you while we’re at it.
When I let go of this shell, I start a pattern that leaves
me alone, sad, and feeling pretty childlike. Not womanly. Not adult.
So, I keep the shell. I’ve kept it for years now. Better to
avoid the whole game than to try to play it differently, acknowledging and
using the new skills for living and being that I have. I could have garnered a
whole fleet of new tools and attitudes, but fuck if I let them out of the gate.
They’re like a trained – well, I was going to write “army,” but I’d rather
leave the military out of my love life, thank you – they’re like a well-trained
dance company. Having rehearsed for years, perfected, practiced, fallen, and
learned – but … me, their manager, I will never and have never let them perform. They
are a lost art. They are a lost gift, because I’m too scared of how they’ll be
received, or of if they’re really ready for the big show.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but with the Cousin, I
said at one point (not to him) that I felt like I wanted to put him up on a
shelf, and “fix” myself, or get better, and then, only then, when I were
better, then I could take him down, and we could have a wonderful life
together. Life.Does.Not.Work.In.Darkness. It does not work in absence, and it
does not work without my active participation.
I may be the world’s best anything, but I’d never know it.
And so, it’s time to see if my conductor skills, my dance
company, my emotions have learned things that I may not know they’ve learned.
Because my date was awesome. And, likely, I may want to date
again. 

adulthood · change · family · honesty · intimacy · life · love · relationships · willingness

A Fair and Balanced View

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

There are a few things that are hard to reconcile. For
example, prefacing your poem to your family by saying it’s mediocre as you did
not have time to edit the first draft – and after reading it in public at the ceremony at school, having people come up to you afterward praising the poem
and asking how they can get a copy. I gave a woman my card.
It’s hard to reconcile my view of where and how I am in my
life with the clouds of pride and support that beamed from my family and
classmates on Saturday, graduation day.
It’s also hard to maintain a stoic, stark, medieval view of
myself when I have women around me who “want what I have,” and a woman to call
who reminds me of the length and breadth of this process of school, and indeed the last 6
years.
A fair and balanced view. How to achieve that around
ourselves, whom we hold to such impossible standards that we’re always falling
short. Or at least I do.
Because I’m not
falling short. My measuring stick is broken and outdated and subjective.
Not much has “changed” outwardly over the last few weeks as
graduation occurred, and it’s hard to know if much has changed inwardly, but, I
think it is, slowly. I think my awareness of my rigid and flagellating stance
with myself will begin to bring change with it.
I also decided to change my workshop to sliding scale,
instead of a set fee. I had the thoughts to either cancel the whole thing (as I
had/have only one registered/paid participant), or to host at my house the few
who said they wanted to come, or do it in the city anyway.
I chose the latter, partly because I want the experience of doing it in a more “formal”
or official setting. I still want to share these tools, and help others
to learn whatever they need to learn from this. And also… I’m worried if I just
cancelled it, people might show up at the event the day-of, and be disappointed 😉
So, we’ll see what happens with that. It still may just be
me and my one registered participant. And if that’s the case, and I eat the
rental fee, so be it. Not ideal, but my ideas about how the workshop should be
are obviously not working, so instead of edging toward “fuck it” and not do it,
or toward “you MUST” and do it for the set fee, I’m finding a middle way. – That feels
like progress.
Also, I got to talk with my mom yesterday at the ass-crack
of dawn when we’d dropped my brother at his flight at SFO, and had a few hours
to kill before her flight. So, we grabbed some coffee and sat in Terminal 2 in
those Ikea-looking tangerine-colored winged chairs, and we talked.
I decided somewhere mid-conversation to tell her why I’d
stopped talking to her on the phone for almost a year. I didn’t “owe” her the
explanation, but I did want to share why. I reminded her of that last
conversation we had, and how she “hi-jacked” the conversation (a term she used
about her behavior when I’d finished). How suddenly a light and fun and mutual
conversation jumped the tracks, the shark, the point, and careened head-long
into “My Mom’s Issues.” I told her that I don’t feel able to hold the space for
that stuff for her anymore, that it feels inappropriate, but that I didn’t have
the words or wherewithal to tell her that in the moment. And so, instead of putting up a boundary, I put up a wall.
And it’s held. She said she had to just accept that we’d communicate
via email and text, and that that had to be enough. And for this year it was.
Seeing her, however, I really was reminded of how much I miss her. And she said
to me after I’d shared what went on with me, that if I felt able, and it sounds
like I feel more able now, to tell her that she’s hijacked the conversation to
let her know. And we’ll see if I can.
We both know we’re still in new territory. Our relationship
has swung the gamut from oversharing, overly enmeshed, over identification all
the way over to not talking for months and months, several times. We’re still
finding our center in our relationship, as I suppose we’re each finding our
center within ourselves. Back to the fair and balanced view. The Middle Way.
How can I hold the contradictions? How can I allow for
myself to be vulnerable without a hard shield of protection? How can I see
myself as a simple, or simply complex, human, with assets and liabilities? And, how can I allow others that same
generosity?
Dunno.  😉  But I think I’m trying. 

acceptance · adulthood · change · courage · discovery · forgiveness · gratitude · grief · honesty · intimacy · kindness · love · meditation · progress · recovery · sex · sexuality · sobwebs · spirituality

Somewhere New.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

For several months now, I’ve been working on a particular
area of healing. For those of you who have read the “Savage Love,” then “Savage Beauty” blogs, you know that I’ve been working on healing my relationship with
my sexuality, and my past behavior and experience in this area.
This is likely going to be a little heavy – for which I’m
not thrilled, but I’m honest – so if that’s not what you want today, I’m sure Cyanide
& Happiness will provide some levity
today.
On my way back from the sweat lodge this Sunday, I was riding
with my friend who was running the lodge. I told her that earlier this year,
and late last year, each time I’d “go in” via meditation or shamanic journey
work to ask what I need to do next to move forward, I was presented with the information
that I needed to work on this stuff – sexual trauma and other murky stuff. I have been. Working
with my therapist on EMDR for a little bit (though I’m not seeing her
currently, due to finances), and in these other more alternative ways.
And most of all, through my thesis.
Basically what my thesis trails is a path through my sexual
history. That story parallels my mental breakdown, and my parents’ divorce, but really,
what is being excavated and brought into the light is all of that. The
“highlights” or representative incidents.
Over ages 16 through 24 (a little earlier than 16, but
that’s when it really took off with a very chicken-or-egg tag team with my drinking), is a napalm blanket of sorrow, shame, and
dissociation. When riding in the car with my friend on Sunday, I said to her
that I hadn’t “been in” to ask for a while if I’m “done” with this particular
set of work or not, and wondered if maybe I was, but/and as I found out a little this morning, there are still
some corners left to sweep.
I am grateful that I had the courage to put all of what I
needed to onto paper in my thesis. But, I’m also aware that it goes much deeper
and further than the stark, strobe-like glimpses that I give you, the reader.
And this morning, in meditation, I began to psychicly clear out some of the
cobwebs. (I just accidentally wrote “sobwebs,” which I suppose is pretty accurate
for this morning.)
In fact, I did something pretty literal to sweeping out – in my mind’s
eye, I walked through and into all those situations I remember, and
unfortunately or not, I remember quite a lot quite vividly apparently — more
than I thought I did. I walked through these times and places, into these
couplings and actions, and burned sage there. I carried this sage through all
the circumstances I could remember, and asked them to be cleared of any energy
which is no longer needed.
There are the few where there was kindness,
and the kindness will remain, but there are the many that were out of a sense of obligation, or resignation, or force; or just wanting to feel better; or just wanting to feel anything other than what
I felt. There are those that are truly tragic, and require some extra doses of
compassion and witness, instead of repression.
I don’t know what may or not come of this work this morning.
It was sort of “unbidden;” I didn’t have the intention as I closed my eyes for
meditation this morning to do any of that – but I guess the Powers That Be had
that intention for me, anyway.
One thing I asked for aloud in the prayer circle in Sunday’s
sweat lodge during the final prayer round – the one where we get to pray for
ourselves, out loud so others know what we need – I prayed for healing around
physical intimacy. And that’s where the majority of my tears came on Sunday. My
relationship with my body, my femininity, sexuality, sex, intimacy, being
present in my body when being intimate – all of this needs healing. I’d still
rather hide within my body – offer you it, but not what’s inside it; assume
it’s really all you want from me anyway, so I might as well just give you only
that out of spite – even if you in fact want more. But, hiding within myself doesn’t work
anymore. Beating myself out of my body – or having someone do it for me – doesn’t work anymore. Not being present
is painful now. And not voicing my physical needs to a partner is another way of hiding.
I don’t really know what to do about it yet. I know that I
don’t do what I used to. But I feel like I’ve swung to the opposite side of the
spectrum – from the vixen to Betty Crocker, as I’ve put it. But I know opening
these doors, clearing these wounds, being willing to treat my flesh with care,
and being willing to meet all of you with all of me are mile-markers of
progress.
I’d like to be done with this work. I’d like to declare
myself fit for duty. Maybe it’ll always be an ongoing process, maybe it’ll come
to a place of plateau. I don’t know. But apparently I’m ready to clear the
sobwebs, and arrive at somewhere new. 
family · growth · intimacy · love · school

The climb

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

A friend said recently that perhaps I’m on the part of the
ride where you’re going up the roller coaster. That all the work that we’re
both doing, as she’s too doing A LOT, that this is the cranking up of the ride.
That it’s hard because we are fighting
against gravity, and we are scared because you can’t see over the crest of the ride – but even though
it’s a mildly alarming metaphor, it’s nice to know that I’m at least on a track
of some sort.
My brother asked me recently what I was planning to do after
graduation. If I was planning on coming back to the East Coast now, or not. I told him a few sort
of vague deflective-y things, and then finally, in the end, I said, I have no
idea.
Likely, as graduation is in a month – holy lord, have
christy mercy. It literally is a month away…! May 12th … isn’t that
the Mayan Doomsday? Maybe I won’t have to worry about any of this then in the
end anyway!! HA! as in, please lord, let the universe not explode or implode on
that day – I have a roller coaster ride to attend to.
But, as that is only a month away, and I’m still in the
formative throes of trying to cobble together a sustainable living and habits
and patterns that support that living, likely not. Not immediately at least. My
brother said that others were asking him, which is normal – and I don’t have to
take on their pressure, as it’s not pressure, it’s curiosity, normal and kind.
But, not yet. When? I don’t know.
My brother’s girlfriend just got placed in a post-graduate
internship at Johns Hopkins in Delaware – and my brother said his company has
another branch he could easily transfer to in Baltimore, MD, so, they’ll
likely do that sometime not too
distant. (She’s wonderful, by the way – I hope and think it’s a long haul kind
of relationship) 🙂 Point being, Mom in Manhattan. Brother on the mid-seaboard.
Dad in Florida. Seems like if I want to be anywhere near my family, I’ll have
to go back to that coast at some point.
And the truth is, I want to. I don’t want to live with any of them(!), but, within 3 hours driving distance
is what I’ve labeled as close enough, but not too close. I’d especially like to
live nearby to my brother.
It took a long time for us to come to the place in our
evolving relationship that we are. There were the awful, physically and emotionally
violent toward each other years of our early childhood. Then there were the
let’s get messed up together years. Then there have been the reparation years
from the fallout of all of that as we’ve both gotten older and more sane by
degrees.
We’re somewhere on that part of our journey now, and the
truth is that we are closer now than ever, even though that just looks like a
phone call every month or so, and random texts to each other with quotes from Bill
& Ted or Back to the Future. This is our bonding. And I/we dig it.
So, I’d like to be able to be near to him, to continue
forming a relationship with the people who we are today. Trauma and addiction
don’t really allow for intimacy, and we’re just getting there, slowly, over
these few years. Reaching out, being honest. Laughing. I care more for him than
I’d ever let myself admit before, and the older we get, and the closer we are – even
though we’re not butt buddies, and I don’t know if or think we need to be –
well, I just get teary sometimes thinking about how much I love him. Which is
something I couldn’t have predicted, and am beyond grateful for.
It’s another way in which I’m shown that I have no idea
what’s over the rise of the ride. But the clinking and clunking sound as the
cart hoists itself up the hill is the sound of the work we’ve each done to get
to this place of commonality and connection.
So, not today, but soon perhaps, I’ll be in driving distance
of my brother, his wife, and their children. 

healing · intimacy · school · vulnerability

The Gaze.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So, despite my declaration (or desire to adhere) to a cozy,
yummy 9 pm bedtime, there will of course be exceptions.

Like, every Tuesday night. My new poetry workshop ends at
9:15 on Tuesday nights, and my painting class begins at 9 am on Wednesday
mornings, so these are going to be quick turn around days, and I’ll have to
learn how to work within these parameters. Mainly, sleep enough within them!
Also, despite my saying yesterday, “Theater, I lay you down,” … my
poetry course is mainly, almost entirely focused on performance. Not just
poetry, but, performance art. I’m SO
freaking excited. Like I said, this teacher is a pretty big deal (Guillermo
Gomez Pena, look him up, you’ll get what I mean), and his methods are NOT your
typical poetry workshop, where everyone brings in a poem, reads it, murmurs
comments of assent or dissent and move on.
This, will be much different. And I can’t wait. Last night,
we did all kinds of spontaneous verbal exercises, then some pretty awkward and
intense physical interactions with each other, the other students. It was a
series of looking into another student’s eyes for minutes on end, with
different attendant variations – to explore the gaze and being fully present
with another human being. It, as you can imagine, could get a little awkward.
These were not the ice-breaker activities we did in summer camp! It was weird,
and telling, and opening, and closing, and awkward, and just interesting to
notice the experience.
Further, I had training for the artist’s modeling yesterday
for about 2 hours in the city, and the facilitator said that there are two
reasons that people get out of the business. 1) it’s too physically demanding.
(and after actually running through some 1 minute, 5 minute, and then a 20
minute pose, I assure you, I completely
agree – my muscles are going to be learning a thing or two about what works
with my anatomy… and blood flow – yes, my fingers are numb if I hold them
over my head for 5 minutes…!)
The 2nd reason he said people get out of the
business is because they can’t take “the gaze” anymore. That although, in
reality, the artist and students drawing the model are really only seeing what
they want to see, that mainly they’re interested in form and shadow and
contour, the model can begin to get hyper-sensitive to the gaze, and feel too
vulnerable underneath it.
He said to remember that what they’re seeing is only what
you’re giving them. That still, we’re in control, even if we’re nude, and eyes
open, we still, like most people walking around fully clothed all day, get the
chance to allow people to see only what we want them to see.
In one of the exercises last night, the 3rd woman
I “stared” at, well, I’ll tell you, she was pretty powerful. And after so much
outflow, which is my natural setting (“She’s gone from SUCK to BLOW!” … Spaceballs reference), it was interesting to feel that
actually, she was going to be the one with the outflow, and I could choose
whether to let her in or not. (And if you’re rolling your eyes right now, and
being like, “Molly, you are sooo Woo-woo hippie shit,” meh, c’est la vie.)
So, I did let her, and several minutes into the exercise, I actually began to cry. Not
on purpose! But because, I could feel that as exhausted and raw as I’ve felt over
the last month or so, I’ve still been outwardly focused.
Like with the 2nd girl, I could feel her pain and
loneliness, and she actually said afterward that she realized how little
physical contact she gets these days (we were holding hands as well as eye
contact in this one). And I was sending her all kinds of love and healing.
But with the 3rd girl, I tried to send it out,
but it was like, no buddy, This Bud’s for You. And she sent that healing, and
that love, and that gaze into me. And I felt myself seen, and held by it. And
just let go, into her power, and saw my own vulnerability and raw places by riding into myself through her gaze. I told her afterward, to explain why I’d cried, that my energy had been so
outwardly focused and I’ve felt so raw lately, that to let someone else in, to
allow the energy to go the other way ‘round was really powerful for me, and a
relief to let myself sit in it.
So, yeah. Although I’m not trolling the casting call website
at the moment or going on auditions, I’m pretty sure the HP is arranging for
me to engage in my body, my emotions, and my performance in a variety of new
ways. Even woo-woo hippie ones.
acting · courage · intimacy · letting go · maturity · modeling · poetry · sex

The Hero’s Journey

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

See, perhaps it’s not that San Francisco is actually cold.
Perhaps it is the proliferation of single-paned windows and inadequate heating.
The wonderful high ceilings don’t do much to trap in the heat either. So,
solution? Munchkin houses. Winterized. lol. See, there’s even a word,
“Winterized.” I’m not sure that the Bay Area has much acquaintance with this
notion, as we all sort of seem to believe that it doesn’t actually get that
cold, or that we’re more like Southern California. Perhaps this is what they
meant when they said “California Dreamin’.”
In any case, drafty as my home is. Grateful for it.
Especially on what are Bay Area winter days.
There is a big part of me that wants to write an addendum to
yesterday’s blog. To somehow mitigate and soften the “I haven’t had a great sex
life” theme. Most of that is because I want you to see me “better,” some of
that is that I don’t want to insult anyone I’ve slept with who might be reading
this and tell them of course there are occasions when it’s been marvelous.
But, that’s only wanting them to like me too, another way of “seeing me
better.” So, I will leave the truth as the half-truth it is, because, for
certain, there are the good experiences, and there is the truth that it’s less
about them, and more about my inability to ask for what I need (in most areas
of my life).
And, I will hold the truth that, still, I feel naïve and
unexperienced or uneducated in this way, and am holding that with compassion,
and an intention to head in that direction. There’s a fair amount on one of my
collages that’s the phrase, The Joy of Kissing, and I wonder if perhaps part of
that is a call to start again at the beginning, you know? To start with one of
the most tender places, and just meditate there, pause there, let myself savor
it, and not skip to the main course.
Also, I want to soften the “this is not an invitation” line,
because although it’s not a plea for you, reader, to initiate me into the
softened world of pleasure, I actually DO
want to offer an invitation into the world/Universe. This IS an invitation from
me to the machinations of the world to head there, to gentleness, and intimacy,
and … well, whatever else I feel I’ve been missing in this area. So, Universe,
this is an invitation, written in velvet, in loopy script, and something less
intimidating than red for experiences of physical intimacy on a softer plane.
Speaking of physicality, I had my orientation for the art
modeling guild yesterday, and 12 year old girl that I still am, it was hard to
not giggle when the facilitator said, “And men? No Erections! Ever.” Lol. “Any
man who tells you he can’t control it is lying. And if he really can’t, then he
shouldn’t be a model.” It’s nice the systems of protection and comfort that
they have set up, which is why I’m really glad to be doing it this way, rather
than freelance, which can be ICKY (see
former blog about older man with vagina skulls).
After the orientation, I went directly to my audition for a
Shakespeare company, and guess what? Not that bad. 🙂 THIS TIME, I didn’t blank out in the middle of the monologue.
I futzed a few things, but, if you didn’t have a script in front of you, you’d
never know. Point being, I actually did better than my last spoken word
audition, and really, “Better than last time” is all I’m lookin’ for. I also,
miraculously, ran into a girl I have just been beginning to see around lately
over here in Oakland with some of the financial healing folks. She’s been doing
this circuit for a long time, it seems, and knew nearly everyone who walked in
and out of the building, and chatted with another girl about, “Are you working
with David? No, with Bobby.” and other such insider speak that I am totally
novice of. But… now, we both have an ally. Someone showing up and letting go of
the results, and also some who’s willing to sit with me and initiate me in some
of these lingos, and people, and classes, and companies. She even suggested a
company she thought I’d do well with. 🙂 Go G-d.
Finally, for today’s blog. I had a very vivid dream last night about an older friend of mine
who I found out – in the dream – had killed herself suddenly. I was shocked and
devastated, and went out from where I was directly into her funeral. It was
packed. And yet, even her husband, who was shocked was actually not as shaken
as you’d expect.
Part of Saturday’s spirituality workshop included a story about Minos
and the Minotaur, using the myth as a frame for us to see perhaps what part of
the story, what part of our own hero’s journey we are in. Minos made a deal
with Poseiden. Poseiden said that Minos would become king if he sacrificed this
gorgeous white bull. Minos said sure. Became king. … And then decided the bull
was too special and meant too much to him, and so he sacrificed 50 goats
instead. (This did not go well in the end.)
I said that I feel like this is the part of the journey I’m on. In order to ascend to the next
level, the next stage, the next iteration of myself and my life, I have to
sacrifice my attachment to what it had been, aka my bull (dying we awaken to a
new life, kind of stuff). Instead, I’ve been hemming and hawing, and saying,
well, what if I give you this
instead, what if I sort of dance around the issue, and lop off my foot in the
process – won’t that give me the result that I ultimately need?
No dice.
I also said, that I also felt like the part of the story
when they kill the Minotaur, when this beast that cannot be a part of society,
but it’s really not his fault, is killed. With this spirit of sadness and also
with relief do I … intend? to kill my bull.
I think that part of my dream was about that, the death of
these attachments to my past. I put up a whole host of new (to the blog) poems,
and as I was editing what work I had, I felt like all the family stuff, all the
blamey stuff and most of the trauma stuff didn’t need to be up anymore.
Which leads me to wonder: if what I wanted my thesis to be was an excavation of old stuff, a laying to rest of it, haven’t I already done
that? In the very writing of it, and even in the sharing of it with my
professors and classmates, haven’t I given voice to this? Is this actually what
I need to say anymore? Is this anymore where the charge is for me?
I’m not sure. Well, no. Actually, the answer is no. But I’m
not sure what that will mean for this specific piece of writing I have to hand
in.
But, I also said in the workshop on Saturday that despite my
reluctancy to sacrifice the bull, my reluctancy to grieve for what was lost and
misplaced in my youth, the fact is, I’m already in it. It’s no use saying, I don’t
want to. Or I won’t. Or I can’t. Because, baby, I already am. 
intimacy · kindness · recovery · sex

All Except One (or Two)

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

A few years ago, I wrote a series of bitter break-up poems –
everyone loves those 😛 – and then wrote another poem that said something like,
should I now write something nice? something fluffy? and do tricks like a
wind-up toy?
And at the moment, I sort of feel like that.
So much stuff is stirred up at the moment, that although
alongside of it and indeed deeper than it, I have a center of joy that I’m
glad to finally be exposing, the rest of the “up” material is rather dark. Old
ideas, old traumas, old patterns that I’m seeing differently. And, truly, I
don’t want to subject you to it, and also, it’s not necessary that I do.
You get it. We all work through stuff. Well, most of the
people who are reading this are likely working through stuff. And it is like being
forged in fire. Or tearing off scabs. Or, as I once wrote, like stone tumbling
– the process by which a raw stone is tumbled about in this large drum and when
it comes out, it’s become smooth and shiny.
Will I be smooth and shiny? I don’t know. I also said in
that stone tumbling poem that it was like G-d’s savage grater going at me. (I
like the double meaning of “savage” – in our slang, it’s akin to beyond
awesome, as well as the definition of unfeeling carnage.)
I don’t think that G-d doesn’t have feelings about this. I
just think I only have a very tiny portion of the map, and G-d’s got an atlas
the size of Jupiter. Plus, I’m coming more and more over to the side of
thinking, or knowing rather, that all this grating is actually intended for my
highest good. That scraping away these caustic, rusted elements is actually an
act of love and compassion.
Speaking of, it occurred to me last night, that there’s one
aspect of Love that I didn’t address in yesterday’s “In All Its Forms” blog — by which I meant Love In All Its Forms. And that’s romantic love, and physical love.
(Insert Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical” music video here.)
This doesn’t surprise me, and is part of the swirling
ickiness I don’t really want to talk to you about. But, let’s suffice it to say
that my relationship with sexuality is actually very, very naïve. 
The truth is, for all of my midnight sweating with another
person, the heart of sex is still actually very elusive to me. And I won’t go
in to the whole line of “the intertwining of souls” stuff here. Cuz,
truthfully, I have absolutely no idea if that’s true or not. I don’t have
information about sex as tenderness. As respect and awe of … my body. I’ve
had experience of treating yours with a care and sometimes speechless
admiration. To me, the human body is – well, as has been said… a wonderland
😛 Or, further, it’s just such a novel thing to me each time I get to really
see it – and that wasn’t a common thing for me in my past. It was get in, get off,
get out. No, like, leave.
This does not set up a system of appreciation or intimacy
with sex. To be intimate with sex. Sounds pretty novel. I haven’t sat still
long enough to let you show me how you see me. (And this is not an invitation,
just an observation/admission.) And on a few rare occasions when I have finally spoken up and asked for
what I needed, I have experience being dismissed. How disappointing is that.
But that word brings me to another realization. Which is
that I have a post-it in my kitchen which reads, “I can be disappointed and
still follow my dreams.” And, it is occurring to me more and more that this
whole plane of human experience has been lost to me. That I have cut off hope
for it, and therefore don’t try very hard, or am “happy” with what I get.
This is another place where I’m being shown a need for
change. Because on a cellular (and soul) level, my body is thirsty for something sweet. My
body is thirsty for kindness. And, after years of
telling it to get over it, I’m realizing this tender care is very much
something I want too.