“Just about the time you’re rotting with seriousness or serious boredom, something happens or else you’d die.” ~ Lorine Niedecker, poet

May 5, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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“The thing about grief,” she told me, “is that something is
broken, but you’re not – and you’ve got to keep going.”

Years ago she told me this, and I reflect on it in so many
situations.

Yesterday, after writing that blog that tore me up a bit, I
had to go assist at a work event, and then head to an audition for a play. I
really wasn’t feeling it.

It’s been two months now since I’ve auditioned, as I’d been cast in a play (yay!), and then turned down for other parts that allowed me the
time to go on vacation. In the meantime, I did go on vacation, and had
elaborate experience and processing about relationships, values, love. I also
got clearer about my career goals, and implemented some action around them at work,
which not surprisingly, I was told last week were great ideas but probably
aren’t going to happen “within the next year,” if at all. So, there’s been
processing around that, too.

In all, it’s been kinda heavy around here. Making
check-points of where I am, where I want to be personally and professionally.
And so I showed up to that audition, late and lost in the hills of Berkeley, with
little more than the feet I was standing on.

But, most times, that’s enough.

God, it was fun. I
really had forgotten that I love this stuff. I’d forgotten the titillation and
excitement, and the nervous sizing-up from the other auditioners, and the
frantic reading of sides before your name is called, wondering if you’re
supposed to do an accent or not.

It was great. It’s less than 20 minutes of life, but it
pulled me back to center, away from the future-gazing, away from the
grief-feeling. I still feel off today, and that’s alright, but for a few
minutes yesterday, I got to do something I love doing, simply for the effort of
trying it. I got to meet other women trying it too, and have a coffee date to
pick one’s brain on the whole “Bay Area Theater Biz.”

It’s strange to get back to this again, this thing that I
just want to do because it’s fun and not because my life or income or goals
depend on it. It’s strange to just have the fun thing simply because it’s
fun. There’s no stepping stone here, no ladder, no life plan founded on it.
It’s an extraneous, avocational, extra-curricular dalliance, and isn’t that so needed right now?

I told you I’ve been thinking about getting back into
band-ing again, playing bass again. Simply for the same reason. I forgot what
it’s like to have fun. To do the things I find fun.

In this time that I’ve been “figuring out” my life and my
strategies and my goals, it’s been satisfying and reinforcing and relieving,
but it hasn’t been fun. In fact, it’s been hella lonely in some ways I don’t
get.

All work and no play, and all that.

But, without really intending to, every single day this past week, I spent time with women friends, mostly
long-established, report-having friends. It, too, reinforced something – that
combination of history and laughter and understanding and ease. It, too, brought me back to a sense of myself, a
little lost in the myopia of “life planning.”

I saw a friend’s post this morning that read, “There’s got
to be more to life than this.”

I replied aloud, “There is.”

camping · community · confidence · courage · doubt · grace · insecurity · laughter · love · self-esteem · self-love · serenity

Confidence: How To.

April 30, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Think of something you know you know how to do. Something
you enjoy knowing how to do. Maybe it’s making the lightest quiche, or playing
the drums, or changing a bicycle inner tube. Maybe you know that you know how
to plant seeds that germinate, or fix this computer bug, or mix the perfect vermillion. Maybe it’s as simple
as knowing you know how to hug a child, or tell a good joke. Find something that makes
you feel competent and confident.

Experience that feeling. The surge of blood through you, a
sense of guidance, purpose, direction. A sense of being the right person for
the job, in the right place at the right time. A feeling of ease and tension
release, of certainty and even exuberance. I know how to do this – I love
doing this.

For me, about 2 years ago, I realized it was (car) camping.
I know how to do that. I knew when we
needed wood, when we should start the fire, how to put it out. I knew how to
set up my tent, how to walk in the woods, how to avoid poison oak. I knew how
to brush my teeth at the tap, and use my headlamp to find my missing sock. I
knew how to have fun, how to do what needed to be done, how to help others
because I knew how to do these things.

What if… we allowed for the possibility that we could have
that feeling in more places in our lives. If we could recognize the mastery we have in some areas, and allow that
sense of confidence and competence support our less certain attempts. Maybe, it’s just knowing that I know how to
put on liquid eyeliner with deft precision. Can I allow that to fill up my tank
a little? – Come to think of it, can I recognize that I know how to fill my gas
tank! (If you grew up in NJ, you might not!) 😉

But the point, today, is that although there are many areas
in which I am not an expert, and that will always be so, and there will always
be something to learn in the places I want to become more adept… there are also
a host of places that I haven’t recognized I’m doing pretty well.

I think this is what they call, “building self-esteem.” What
a concept.

But, it’s true. People in general, and people like me, tend
to dismiss what we think is easy for us. For me, I have tended to dismiss my
writing when its complimented, since it can be so easy for me. What’s the value
of something that is wickedly simple for me?

Somehow the idea that valuable things are hard things came
into our zeitgeist. This is not to say that you or I needn’t work for what we
want, but it’s about recognizing what we have, and sometimes what we’ve been
given, that we take for granted.

I take for granted that I know how to put on crisp eyeliner.
I learned it, I do it, it’s a part of me. So, I forget it’s not something everyone else knows. I take for
granted that I can write this every day, for better or worse! I take for
granted that I can talk to the children at work and make us both smile. – Well,
that one I don’t. I don’t take the smiling for granted, just the knowing that I
know how to do it.

If I were to go through a given day or week, and take note
of the things that I seem to “instinctively” and “intuitively” know how to do,
how many things would pile onto that list?

Sure, there are blank spots, there are gaps, there are wide
berths of where I want to know and learn and be more. But they’re gaps. They’re
not the whole.

If I tried to recognize that I could feel the same
self-esteem while cooking eggs in the morning as I do when making a teepee out
of wood in a fire-pit; if I could remember to feel adept and facile when I
parallel park my car; if I could allow a sense of ease and confidence for the
simple act of knowing to pause in today’s heavy sunshine,

I imagine that delightful, intrepid poise can offer a
foundation for my less assured endeavors.

community · connection · faith · grace · healing · isolation · laughter · spirituality

Too Hot to Handle

April 4, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

There’s a maxim around here that goes: G-d will never give
you more than you can handle.

To echo Wednesday, bullshit.

I think this phrase is missing a key point at the end of it: G-d will never
give you more than you can handle with the help of others.

I think G-d or the Universe or life will always give us more than we can handle *alone.* I think, in
fact, that’s the point. In order to be able to handle that which is handed us,
we must reach out for help from
others, or help from “god,” which often comes in the form of help from others
anyway.

I think it’s important that we are given more than we can
handle alone, otherwise, surely, we all would. If we could live like Sandra Bullock in “The Net,” ordering
pizza via the internet, watching a yule log screen saver, and never knowing our
neighbors, we would. But I still think about that movie every time I nod or say
a passing hello to my neighbors: I am not anonymous; I am not alone.

In that movie (sorry, y’all!), Sandra’s character gets
accused of something or other, but no one can identify her, and her identity
gets stolen. No one except one character (her shrink) actually knows who she
is, actually recognizes her. The neighbor says, no she doesn’t think that’s her, even though they’ve
lived in proximity for a dozen years.

What kind of challenge of growth is there in that? If we
were intended to live in isolation, there wouldn’t be all this talk about
connection and community, mehta and helping one another, and my understanding of tikkun
olam (repairing the world) has a lot to do with
eliminating disconnect.

I opined to my coworker, who was listening to Pandora the
other day when one of these new modern radio songs came on (I don’t remember
which one). But it was one that eventually has a chorus of voices yell, Yeah!,
or Hey!. And I theorized that the proliferation of “modern” songs that feature a chorus of voices at some point is a call for
connection, to refill and replace the actual being with others—if we hear a
chorus of voices yell, Hey!, on the radio, we want to yell along with it, too. For a
moment, we are also connected to those voices, even though they be
computer over-layed with one another.

This “new” sound I hear has a lot of that, and my opinion is
that they’re also trying to create community in the best way they know how, to
create a moment of connection and a feeling of being a part of a crowd…even
when you’re just driving alone in your car, and the person next to you is as
well.

I do think “G-d” gives us more than we can handle. In the utter inability to handle things on our own, I think
we’re intended to reach out to one another or to a “power greater than
ourselves” for help, for guidance, for support, and mostly, for laughter.

The amount of laughter you can have alone is much less than
what you can have in interaction with each other – like I’ve been saying about
random connections with store clerks or bus passengers: You never know what
will be said by the other, and it creates something totally unique.

This morning, with all of this on my mind, in my notebook is
a printed quote by Anais Nin:

Each friend represents a world in
us,

a world possibly not born until
they arrive,

and it is only by this meeting that

a new world is born.

I make it a point to say hi, or at least nod to or acknowledge
my neighbors, to let them see my face, and I theirs, as I rush in and out of the building at
the ends of a long day. I want to be able to recognize, and possibly say hi,
when I see them on the street, and, mostly, I want them to be able to pick me
out of a line-up.

authenticity · balance · community · connection · family · happiness · joy · laughter · love

Yo’ Mama.

March 30, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Apologies, reader, for the rain delay (lack of blog)
yesterday. It was this wonderful Spring rain in the morning, and instead of
sitting at my stoic kitchen table, and peering out the window while writing
morning pages, meditating, and composing a blog, I took my mug of
coffee into my studio’s bedroom/living room, tucked myself into the corner of my couch
against the window, and sat next to my cat on the arm of the couch watching the rain make everything greener.

It was warm and cozy, and I just couldn’t bring myself to
break the calm of the spell. The sound of the rain, the steam from the mug,
watching my cat’s chest expand and contract with each breath. Oh, calm! How I
miss you! Oh, rest, you ineffable minx!

I let my thoughts roam over the landscape, and thought how I
missed my mom, when she was here last, and sat on this very couch with this
very cat. And so, I called her. – Strange and funny thing to do, eh? Think of
someone, and actually call them? Not
text or poke or email – but make a phone call – God, it’s luxury and connection
incarnate.

I knew she’d just returned from her annual trip with her
beau to some Caribbean island (Back, Envy, BACK!), and even with only a half hour (barely enough
time for us to scratch the surface of a conversation), I called to find out how
it went.

I love talking to her. Sure, there are times when it’s
grating, and I have to remind myself she’s human with flaws and working on
them. But, on the whole, especially these past several years, talking with her
is more refueling than it is draining – which is a gift.

She’s just hilarious. Our conversations meander, and
side-track, and disambiguate, and non-sequiter, yet always find their way back,
like six degrees of separation. It’s these things that I know I’ll miss most
when she’s gone. And why I’m trying to get what I can now, to call, and make
plans to visit, and email when I can.

Call it morbid, call it realistic. I just want to store it
all. Engage in it all.

Coincidentally, one of the anecdotes from her trip was about
interacting with the armed guard at the airport, the process of going through
customs and homeland security, and the stark seriousness of it all. And, so, as
she is wont to do, she planted a funny sentence into the bleak and rote
exchange with the check-point guard.

He cracked a smile and then cracked wise. Suddenly, it was
an exchange between people instead of
objects.

I told her how synchronistic it was that just this very week
I wrote a blog about learning from her to talk with strangers, to make our interactions
with one another just that much more engaged and alive.

I shared with her my own story about being in Port Authority
around the Bush Iraq invasion, and bantering briefly with a guard walking
through the orange-tiled halls about exchanging his gun for some flowers.

I love that she does this, and that I do it, as I wrote the
other day. It’s part of what makes this life worth living and engaging in, part
of the surprise of being alive. When you engage, you don’t know what will
happen, you’re rolling the ball onto the Roulette wheel. Maybe the person won’t
want to play, maybe they’ll look at you with a “look, I just want to clock out,
please stop talking to me” impatience. But, perhaps, both of your days will be
lightened just that little bit. Maybe, in fact, it’s the only time you talk to
someone all day, as can happen in our disconnected world of modern
conveniences.

I asked my “intuitive” once what she thought about my moving
back to New York-ish to be closer to her, since sometimes it really is painful
to live so far away, to not get to pick up the phone and say, hey that movie’s
playing on 72nd tonight, wanna go? Or, I just saw this exhibit is opening at
the FIT Fashion Museum, meet up this week? Or, can you come with me to Sephora,
I need to find a new blush?

Honestly, it pains my heart to not get to do that with her.

But, my intuitive, whenever this was, a year or so ago, had
a pretty logical answer: If you go, you’ll be her caretaker, and that will not
be good for you.

It’s true. There’s a fine line from being involved to
being too involved, and there’s a
pattern of being her caretaker that I don’t want to repeat from my childhood.
And it’s a role I know I can easily fall into, without strong enough
boundaries: Love as Caretaking, instead of Love as Equanimity.

The jury has been out indefinitely on my move back to the
East coast. It doesn’t have to be New
York. It doesn’t have to look
like moving into caretaking distance. It can look like, “I’m coming down or up
for the weekend, let’s do stuff,” which is easier than “I’m taking a
cross-country flight.”

Luckily, I am not in charge of my destination, I’m only in
charge of doing the work. Perhaps my boundaries become stronger, perhaps I am
better able to stay out of the grooved rut of caretaker. And perhaps they
don’t, and I allow myself to say, That’s okay, Mol.

But, on a rainy Saturday morning, I can still give her a
call, and we can laugh, meander, and enhance one of the cherished relationships I will ever have.

authenticity · community · confidence · courage · encouragement · intimacy · laughter · vulnerability · writing

But We’ve Got The Biggest Balls of Them All!

March 21, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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When I was living and teaching ESL in South Korea, I earned
a nickname: Ballsy Mollsy.

It was not uncommon for me to approach a stranger in a bar
and ask inappropriate questions. Or, maybe I was with a group of friends, and
wanted to steer the conversation in a more exciting direction, and would pose a candid question to a group that would earn laughs, but few answers. Maybe I would just stumble out to the next bar in search of new conversation without
telling anyone, but that was more stupid than ballsy, fyi.

As chance would have it, one day last month, I attended a
play my friend was performing in, and I ended up sitting next to the 25 y.o.’s
mother. “How did it even come up?,” he answered via text. When I told him, he
replied, “That’s right, I forgot you talk to strangers.” (Indeed, how we met.)

I do. I talk to strangers. I mean, how are we ever to meet
anyone new if we don’t talk to them? Like the other day, waiting for my
burrito, I ended up waiting on the bench next to this guy I see
around my neighborhood a lot, who I’ve seen working at the café on the corner. We
struck up a conversation, turns out he’s a nice guy, we had a pleasant chat about movies,
and he went off with his burritos for himself and his girlfriend.

It’s not always about “meeting dudes;” in fact, it’s more
than often not about that. I just like to find out about people, not walk around like
the Ants that they talk about in A Waking Life who, unseeing, run into one another and then walk around and continue
on their way, antennae down. I mean, that’s what New York is for. 😉

I suppose I learned this from my mom. My mother is
notoriously gregarious. To the point, growing up where it was embarrassing, and
not a little evidence of her manic tendencies. But, still. We’d be in a store,
she’d exchange more than a cursory Thank You with the cashier or salesperson. We’d be on a
bus, and she’d ask the woman next to her about the museum she’d just
visited, based on that metal entry pin tacked to her lapel.

Sometimes, she’d flirt with the cashier or waiter or
whomever. There was a base note to her conversation that wasn’t just cordial or conversational. Pre-divorce, this was a little unnerving.

But. A few years ago, she recounted a story to me that she
held as an exemplar of growth and self-aware change.

She was in Zabar’s (Manhattanites will know), and was in an
aisle next to a couple. She could overhear them debating which of the cream
cheeses they should get. If the tofu spread really tasted like cream cheese, if
the chive was better than the dill?

My mom. Had an opinion. She always does.

The success came when she didn’t offer it. She reported to me that she realized they were not
asking for her help, they didn’t need her help, and she picked up the chive tofu cream cheese she loves, and
went on her way.

Trust me. This is a big success. To “mind your own business,
and have business to mind” is a very important boundary to learn. I was amused
at how proud she was of herself, too, like she knew that she was learning
something, that she was changing something.

I mean, it’s part of the reason our relationship has been
able to grow where the one with my dad has faltered: she really is trying to
change. And it shows.

Like all of us, change and growth takes time, isn’t simple,
and sometimes means taking contrary actions.

But sometimes, how we behave in the world influences others,
too. How she interacted in the world helped to inform how I do. Now, sure, I’m
not Holly Go Lightly everywhere I go. Sometimes I wish I had a burka. But
sometimes, the purchase of a burrito is transformed by the simple act of
connecting with another human being.

I leave you with this: I received a card in the mail this
week from a friend. In it, she thanks me for what I write here and on my
Facebook; that reading “me” helps to buttress her flagging spirits.

I told her how much that meant to me. How much it means to
me that my interactions with the world are making a difference; that I’m not
telegraphing into deep space for purely selfish and masturbatory reasons. I
never really know if how I’m choosing to express myself here is “too much” or “too honest,” and
I have to trust that those of you who choose to click on the link to read me
do so because you find something here, even if it be self-congratulations for
not being as bipolar 😉

To hear that how I behave in the world influences and
affects people for the better is one of the greatest gifts of having big balls.

abundance · community · fun · laughter

The X Factor

February 23, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Yesterday morning, after I left you with my maudlin, mildly
self-pitying blog, I went to meet up with some folks, and I was able to
identify the word for how I was feeling: deprived.

Usually in those groups, we talk about deprivation around
things like clothing (wearing your boots even though they’re falling apart), or
entertainment (not seeing live music for months in a row), or food (not going
food shopping). I use these as examples because I’ve “used” deprivation in just
these ways. I’ve been in deprivation around all of these things, and am working
my best to walk away from those ways of being and treating myself, through
recognizing that there is enough in&of the world to get my needs met, too.

So, as I sat down with them, I was thinking about how, precisely, I was feeling about my lack of group interaction, and I identified the term
deprivation.

In talking with them about it, I came a little bit further
into it: I realized that what I’m missing is being “on.”

About a year ago, I walked past a restaurant where a good
friend of mine was finishing up brunch with her husband and a friend of theirs.
They waved me in to sit down, and I spent a few minutes talking with them—not
catching up, just making conversation.

The same friend later told me that she’d never seen me like
that. That, in fact, she’d never seen me with other people. That I lit up, that I was funny, and charming, and
conversant, and “on.”

I was “on,” because being with other people like that, in
that way, a small group that isn’t there to listen to music or poetry or go to
a movie, in a small group where I can turn “on” my charisma—man, that’s what I’m missing.

I took one of those Meyers-Briggs personality tests, once as
a fun, short version, and once where an actual trained woman interpreted my
zillion answers to the zillion questions.

What she came out with was pretty telling to this new awareness: I
fall so directly between being an introvert and an extrovert, that I’m neither
an “I” or an “E”—I’m an “X.” (An XNFP, if you care to know.)

I need both. I am fueled and fed by both. I need the kind of
quiet, introspective time with myself, and the quiet, one-on-one interactions
where we can get really intimate and honest. AND. I need the loud, boisterous,
active hilarity of being with other people, where I don’t know what conversation
we’ll have, and I jump from topic to topic, volleying back and forth with
others.

I miss that. I miss that part of myself, and I think that
part of what I was recognizing yesterday was an atrophying of that side of
personality. It really only comes out in those situations, and I’m simply not in
many of those situations these days. (Although, flirting has a very similar timbre to it.)

I love feeling “on.”
I love the rush of feeling expressive and funny and bold and intelligent. I
love the rush of feeling the charm that pulses from me when I’m in that state
of being. I love feeling charming. Here meaning, engaging, self-possessed,
active, social, humorous, with levity. Oh levity. Donde esta levity?

That’s another longed-for part of that style of interaction—the levity.
We’re not going to get deep here, those are the rules of engagement. We may not chat about Karl Lagerfeld’s new collection (necessarily) or what
mascara we’re using (though we could), but we certainly won’t talk about deep self-work
or spiritual progress. We’ll talk at that mid-level of fluff that happens when
you’re engaged with friends and acquaintances in a social setting.

I’ve had plenty of opportunity, and continue to, to talk
about the heavy. And although people say they hate small talk, I guess that’s
sort of what I’m talking about – the chit chat and conversations that happen
over a bowl of punch, as you float from one corner of a party to another, or… at a dinner party.

I’m glad that I have been able to pin-point what it is that
I feel has been missing, because it makes it much easier to invite it into my
life, and find and create opportunities for that kind of Upness to happen. More
importantly, I’ve gotten to see why
these kinds of interactions are important, and indeed critical, to my level of
contentment and happiness. And just like the other places of deprivation I’d
identified, I first had to admit that those things were important to me, that
they were “needs,” not wants, not brush-aways.

However, I am sorry we both had to read through yesterday’s navel-gazing blog to get here. 😉

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.

adventure · fear · friends · laughter · sobriety

Both/And.

November 4, 2012 Molly Daniels Hayes1 Comment

Tonight I go back into Kaiser hospital for my second round
of chemo. According to my current understanding, this is round 2 of 5.

However, I don’t really know. I went to Stanford on Friday
for what the Kaiser folks had told me (I have it in writing!) was a
“consultation” about bone marrow transplant (Can we all pass a moment of
silence for my even having to use the phrase “bone marrow transplant?). But,
when I arrived at Stanford, they seemed raring to go – ready, set, destroy your
immune system & hope the new one takes!

I was not so prepared for that. The doctor spoke for about
an hour and a half about what’s involved, and used the term “mortality rate”
much too often for me to feel at all like this was something I want to do. Then, they want you to talk to a social worker about
relocating down into the Stanford area for anywhere from 3-6 months. That
conversation, they said, would take another hour and a half.

At that point, I was too emotional – I mean, come on, doctors, this isn’t a theory – This is MY
LIFE, and I told them that I wasn’t able to
speak to the social worker then. They seemed all shocked and surprised that
someone couldn’t sit through 3 hours of people telling them how they may die,
and even if they don’t here are all these lovely other side effects, then also sit through someone
telling them how they need to up-end their entire lives to live somewhere alone
and foreign and away from all the trappings of normalcy they’re trying so
desperately to hold on to.

Really? You don’t get
that I need to leave now?

But, leave I did. And have had a few days of overwhelming,
What the Fuck – Now What?

I spoke with my friend who’s an oncology nurse at Kaiser –
actually we met when she started taking care of me last round, and is coming
this afternoon to pick up and foster my cat while I’m inpatient – so, we’re, like, friends
now. 🙂 But, she also knows about all this stuff.

Not all the facts are in, and I emailed my doctor last night
to say, Um, so, Stanford seems to think I need a transplant NOW, and you have
told me that we can wait to see if I have a recurrence of the cancer, and then
do a transplant THEN – so, Uh, what’s the story here? However, my nurse friend
said that with Leukemia, it can simply be a waiting game if you don’t go the
transplant route.

As I was talking to her yesterday, I was waiting for my
friend to come pick me up so we could go to Ocean Beach in SF. I said to her, yes, I have a good chance IF I make it through. She said, Well,
have a good time at Ocean Beach, IF you make it through. …

I got some info in the mail from a cancer society, and they
have a pamphlet about coping. In the back, they have a sort of daily inventory
– how did you feel today, did you laugh today.

With all of this hyper serious stuff happening, it’s hard to
find balance. I hadn’t laughed in days – certainly not after the Stanford
“You’re gonna live if you don’t die” visit.

But, yesterday, I did laugh. My nurse friend ended up coming
with us too. And off we were to Ocean Beach, laughing, silly, poking fun at
ourselves and each other.

And, oh, the beach. I’ve been wanting to go to the beach
since I got out of the hospital. Something about that massive body of water,
this uncontained thing, this thing that is totally out of my control, but is
working anyway – I wanted to witness it. I wanted to splash in it and squish my
toes in the sand of it. To breathe in it. And I did. We did.

We were there for a few hours, walking, sitting on a
towel, poking at things with our toes, crumbling sand in our fists. Laughing at children and dogs; admiring some very Ryan Gosling-esque abs on the surfers. It was a gorgeous day.

There was some cancer talk, but not too much. We went to
Java Beach for coffee re-ups, and I ran into a friend there. I remembered how I
used to spend my Saturday midnights there with a group of people who came to be friends –
What else do you do on a Saturday night at midnight when you’re young and not
at the bar? You drink coffee and eat left-over pastries by candelight and talk
about how awesome it is we’re alive and getting better. And sometimes how hard it is to be alive and getting better.

We went down to the Bayview where a friend of mine was
having an open studios art show. The whole warehouse was sculpture. Each artist
a sculptor. It’s rare that I see so much sculpture – usually the museums I’m at
are paintings or photographs. To see all this metalwork. It was amazing. So creative, and alive. And my
friend’s marble sculptures, as if melted out of the unhewn block.

We walked around out back and took in the Bay from that
angle. We saw the city from West to East, and we came home tiredly satisfied.

I sat for a few minutes, emboldened from my day of levity,
sunshine, the taste of salt on my teeth, and read some of the binder Stanford
gave me the day before. But I didn’t sit long with it.

I went to go meet up with some fellows for an hour, spoke a
little of what’s going on with me, and then had burgers and a movie with a
friend from SF. We saw that Seven Psychopaths movie, and it was really great – startling, gruesome in the
over-the-top meant-to-be-funny way, and just creative tongue-in-cheek
storytelling. For those hours, I didn’t think about myself or my cancer at all.

I laughed, gasped, sat in the dark with strangers doing the
same normal thing on a Saturday night.

I guess it’s going to be like this for now. The pendulum
from normal to not taking some very quick strokes. But last night, I got to note
that I did laugh that day. The reality of my situation was just the same
as the day before, but yesterday, I got to laugh, and reality became just an iota different.

acting · action · change · commitment · confidence · kindness · laughter · life · performance · persistence · progress · recovery · relationships · self-support · sobriety · time

For those of you playing along at home. . .

June 14, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

For those of you playing along at home, below are a few
updates on things I have here written about:

The
caffeine-reduction experiment has been a near-fail since beginning the
temp job, but continues to remind me to feel guilty.

I realized this morning that the free bus I sometimes catch to BART can take me all the
way to the city, instead of transferring to BART (thank you to my school’s
student bus pass, making bus transit in the East Bay free).

I put
back up the series of my paintings that I’d taken down during Calling in
the One, at which time I’d realized that women
not looking at their lovers was something I wanted to move away from. I
put them back up when the okJew was potentially going to come over, and I
didn’t want a blank expanse of wall over my bed. I’m not sure if I’ll take it back down.

I have
not yet finished, but I have begun, the art project for my friend’s
wedding. It sits on my desk, accusing me.

I
bought cat food.

I graduated with a Master’s degree a month ago. And I was offered a weekend job at said pet food store. Generously offered (not the compensation), but no thank you. Not yet, at least.

I have
art that I need to make for the September art show my friend invited me to
join. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but it’s been backstroking through my
psyche for a month or so.

I must
follow-up with the boss at where I’m temping to ask her precisely what she
meant when she said she would be happy to give me “a recommendation” for
auction houses here and in the city (um, I meant NY city – I guess that habit still dies hard).

My dad
will be closing on the sale of my childhood NJ home in the next month or
so, and is planning to move with his fiancé to their new Florida home
toward the fall.

I am
eagerly awaiting June 20^th, when the results of the daily
sweepstakes I’ve been entering for a trip for two to Italy will be
announced. You may be the lucky winner.

My
writing style is influenced by who I’m reading currently.

At the
moment, I just finished Nora Ephron’s new book, and began a collection of
essays by David Foster Wallace, whom I’ve never read, but seen the
author’s name so many times on my BART rides that I thought to give him a
whirl. I’m not sure I will continue.

I will
be art modeling this Sunday for the artist who I first worked for, and two
of her friends. I’m not sure I will continue.

I have
9 new voicemails I haven’t checked.

I went
on the walk I’d planned to take on Tuesday evening yesterday evening, and
it was glorious. I ate what must have been a small, cherry-sized peach,
unless it was of course, a cherry, from a nearby tree which I jumped to
pluck from the low hanging branch. I’m not dead, so it was not poisonous.

As
soon as I get paid this cycle, I’m going to register for the summer acting
classes at A.C.T., and I can’t f’ing wait. I looked up all manner of
electronics yesterday that I could hypothetically use my more regular
income of the next 6 weeks to purchase, and yet, I realized that what I
really want are those lessons. And new shoes.

I’m
now working one-on-one with a woman who’s found recovery around negative
patterns of behavior with sex and men, and I’m infinitely looking forward
to freedom around some of this.

I’m
continuing to work with a woman one-on-one around financial recovery
stuff, and am looking forward to being “placed in a position of
neutrality” around money.

I love
Patsy.

I haven’t
yet played my bass with my friend with the drums up in Berkeley, and it
too stares at me, not gently weeping, but with silent mewling.

I
realized that most of the writers I’m reading right now have written as freelance
writers, and it occurs to me, that I might be able to do that, if I look
into it.

I
haven’t applied to any jobs since last week.

I used
my 3 lb weights yesterday after my walk for about 3 minutes. And began to dread the 3 hour posing/drawing session on Sunday.

Dr.
Palm Reader’s office wrote to ask after me, and so I looked up my
soon-to-end chiropractic benefits “in network,” so that I can get back to
that kind of thing, without breaking my bank, or participating in a
somewhat murky flirtatiousness.

This
is the end of my list.

authenticity · camping · community · confidence · hobby · honesty · laughter · music · responsibility · self-support

Chop Wood, Carry Water.

June 4, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Two weeks ago, I wrote this in the Grownupness blog:

“I grasp at things I think I want, but I’m not willing to
firm the foundation to get there – to mix the mortar, lay the bricks. Chop
wood, carry sticks. That’s where I need to be at. Very simply, I need to lay
hold of qualities and actions that I have tried to avoid.”

And so, this weekend, I carried sticks.

The simplicity of camping, even in the complexity of “car
camping” the bastardized cousin of “real” camping, was so easy. It’s so easy
for me. What needs to be done next? Well, we’re heading out down the river for
the afternoon while others go river rafting (a luxury expense I couldn’t
afford), so what did I need to bring? Sunscreen, towel, book I didn’t crack,
hat, water. That’s it.

It’s turning darker, what do we need to do? Get more
firewood, build a fire, refill the water, not at the mercury-laden river’s
edge.

There are things that I know how to do, and this weekend, I
got to see that very clearly. I know how to build a fire, I know you need something
like paper or brush to catch under the kindling to catch under the wood blocks
that were neatly chopped for us in a bundle wrapped with plastic. I know that I
need to slather sunscreen on myself and wear a hat because I’m paranoid of skin
cancer since my encounter with the Australian sun – the sun won.

I know how to make coffee, and put up a tent and roll my
sleeping bag and to remember to bring earplugs and tarot cards 😉

I know how to camp. At least, I know how to car camp.

When I unfurled my sleeping bag, in it was a long-sleeved
shirt I hadn’t seen in two years, since I was in that tent, with someone else.

I played Ghosts of Camping Trips Past this weekend.
Remembering acutely who I’d been with and when. Each and every one of the even
mildly significant and more significant relationships I’ve been in over the last six
years, I’ve been camping with that person. I haven’t slept in that tent alone
in a long time.

This particular camp grounds, I’d been to maybe 3 or 4 years
ago, when I’d been newly dating someone. It’s a beautiful spot on the American
River, up past Sacramento, and almost to Tahoe. It’s amenitied out the
yin-yang, but that’s alright. I remember the photo of me and that person in
that very landscape, I remember the release I feel when I’m out there. Not with
the person, but out there, knowing and feeling confident that I know even that
little bit.

I haven’t roughed it. I haven’t hiked out into the woods and
set up camp since I was 19 and leading a camp group overnight with our packs
into the Appalachian Mountains. And even then, it wasn’t roughing it – That’s
alright. I know it’s something I still want to do.

I wondered why it was, as I went through my previous
camping trips over the last few years, that each had included a man I’ve been
involved with. Was this my test for them? For “us”? Was I only able to be there
with someone else?

No. The reason, I realized, is because I love camping. And I
happen to go and be invited, and then I happen to invite the guy I’m with.
That’s all. Turns out, camping is a hobby, I suppose. It’s likely the only same thing that has occurred with each relationship I’ve had over the last few
years. The only “adventure” or “event” or excursion that has happened in each involvement. It just points out to me
that this is an important thing for me. Something I love.

A way that I don’t feel I need to be any different than I
actually am.

I feel confident out there (yes, even with the general store
and port-o-potties nearby). But I feel like myself. I usually look like a
wreck, and I don’t care. My hair matted and loved by the sweat and dust and
river mist. Caked in various layers of SPF lotions and supportive sneakers. I don’t
look like Xena, I look like me. Like the me I am in private, with no one to
impress or stun or mesmerize. Like the me I am when it’s just me. Whole, and
unabashed, and unprotected. And capable. I usually feel like a leader, or at least like a competent
person when I’m out there. Something those of you who read this blog with
any consistency can attest is not my normal M.O. out in the “real world.”

I needed that. I needed to feel worthy and valuable simply
for who I was/am. Not for how I looked. Or for how much money I had. Or for what kind of job I worked. Or what cell phone I carried. Or degree I had. I could be valuable for my
contributions to the group, be it building a fire, or fetching the water, or
going off to sit and do my Morning Pages out on a rock in the middle of the
rushing river so that I could be more present and emptied of my junk when I
returned to the group. I could be valuable by bringing Madlibs to do by the
fire at night – which led to so much hilarity, and stupid good fun. I could
be valuable by making coffee the first morning when everyone was still asleep
or grumpy. I could be valuable by breaking out the guitar one of us brought for
a little while, and later, sing along harmonies with her, and remember that I
have a voice.

I felt purposeful. I didn’t question who I was or where I
was going or what I was doing with my life. I didn’t have any profound
judgments or insights. I simply “chopped wood, carried water” (no chopping this
trip, but you know what I mean). If I can take that simplicity, and that
confidence, and that sense of pleasure from being precisely who I was/am into
the world, I think I’ll be alright.

If I can dress nicely and put on makeup, and remember
that it’s just a lens through which to see the whole that I am.

If I can breathe in the fire smoke scent of my balled-up clothing and
recall what it feels like when I’m just me, then I think I’ll be alright.