Category: love

adulthood · crazy · faith · love · recovery · responsibility · sex · sobriety · spirituality · time · vulnerability

How to Not Lose Your Car in Twelve Easy Steps:

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Six years ago today, I woke up, or came to is more like, in
a room in my shared apartment in the Sunset District on San Francisco. In my
room was everything I’d brought with me to San Francisco, so, two suitcases,
and a pillow. When I’d moved into the room, I didn’t even have a bed.
In the other rooms in the house, lived the “angriest pot
head I’ve ever met” (though I concede, I could be more than a bit techy
myself), and another lanky UCSF student who liked to talk about LOST.
That morning, I got myself together, and went out to drive
downtown to a job interview I’d gotten through a temp agency. I’d been in San
Francisco two weeks to the very day.
Outside, I realized I had no idea where I’d parked my car.
The day before, my only SF friend’s boyfriend’s band was playing at the Park
Chalet out by Ocean Beach, and I’d gone, for the first time in my memory, with
the intention that I was not going to drink that day. But, we all know a Bloody
Mary is a breakfast drink… and so, several pitchers and hours later, I come to
in the middle of a conversation with a dude I don’t know.
The band was gone. The sun was setting. And my friend was no
where to be seen. I excused myself from this stranger, and called my friend to
ask where they were, and she told me I’d said to leave me there. I asked where
they were, she said the Marina. So, I stumble to my car, … and realize I have
no idea where “The Marina” is. So I ask a passing couple if they do. And the
first thing they ask is, Are you sure you’re okay to drive? Sure… No problem.
Once in my car, I realize I need gas, so I decide to do that
first, and then, by Divine intervention realize I’m too drunk to go out, and
drive back to my apartment and pass out.
Therefore, the next morning, as I stand squinting in the rising
light, I have zero recollection of where my car is, and I begin to walk in
increasingly large circles of blocks looking for it. I call the police – Have
you towed it? I call the tow lot – Is it there? No. After nearly a half-hour of
increasedly frantic walking, I turn the corner on my way back to my apartment,
and there it is. Parked nice and neat just around the corner from my house.
I apparently was not sure if I was parked “nice and neat,”
however, as scrawled across my dashboard is a note that reads, “PLEASE DON’T
TOW MY CAR. THANK YOU.” And my phone number.
That was the last morning I woke up hungover.
For six years, I have not washed beer grime out of my
clothing. I have not managed my drinking with a steady pace of water or advil
or corona to polka dot the vodka. I have not puked in six years. I haven’t peed
while leaning against the side of a building. I haven’t woken up next to a
stranger. I haven’t slept with taken men.
I don’t have “UDI”s – a college-invented term: Unidentified
Drunken Injuries. You know, those bruises you really don’t know how you got. I
don’t have names saved in my phone as “Pinky Guy,” “Bar Nana,” or “Scary
Scott.” For six years, I’ve known where I am when I wake up.
And here’s where I am when I wake up today. Strikingly
similarly, I am heading into downtown San Francisco today to apply for a job.
I’m following up in person on an application to a gallery job I applied for
last week. I’ll be going through the rest of that building with my resume as
well, and be leafleting for my workshop next Saturday.
This morning, I wake up in my own apartment. My very own
studio. With furniture. A cat – my monument to a crumbling resistance to
commitment and love. Car stolen, I have a bus pass and many logged BART hours.
I have a bicycle, and a coffee maker, and magnetic poetry on my refrigerator.
My life is imminently different than it was six years ago. Yet, there are some details that I want to label as “the same” – single, unemployed,
financially insecure. But these are just similarities, not clones. The
difference between how I will show up to the job search today is that it began
with Morning Pages, meditation, and a blog to you, friends who I’ve met over
these last six years – people who actually, sometimes, maybe, sorta, like me! From here, I’ll go hang out with some of you
folks for an hour, and remind myself of the miracle it is that I get to walk through all this. All this human emotion and
life-strewn eventfulness.
My life is eventful – but not chaotic. My life path is vague
– but not hopeless. Most of all, my heart is warming – and my soul doesn’t house that painfully threadbare echo-chamber anymore.
I still get to practice. I’ve absolutely loved engaging in a thrilling, alluring, morally ambiguous “Drink with Two Legs” distraction this past few days – it’s been wonderful to feel
something other than uncomfortable. But in the end, my conscience (and my
exuberantly caring friend) reminded me yesterday that I’m living in a way so
that I don’t have to feel bad about myself or my behavior anymore. So that I
don’t have to clean anything up later, if I can help it (unless it’s dishes).
I’ve watched myself walk to the edge of decency, and reel myself absolutely
kicking and screaming back from the temptation to throw myself in.
See, my life is full of people who remind me that there is a better
way. That this is only a beginning, and that I can hang on to the love that
I’ve built within myself. That it’s safe to do so.
I thank you, Danger-Will-Robinson lure, for your welcome and
passionate resurrection of a part of me that has long been dormant. And I thank
YOU, reader, friend, lovers, G-d, for helping me to learn there’s
nothing wrong with my Vixen, as long as she doesn’t slice away at my self-esteem.
So, here’s to six years of learning the easy way, the hard way. To
six years of sitting in rooms with people who are learning the same. To six
years of showing up on every inch of the spectrum from megalithic tantrum to blissfully
serene. And to just one more day of this unusually verdant path. 
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. 

authenticity · healing · letting go · love · maturity · self-care

BFF

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

My best friend from the east coast is coming in tomorrow to
visit for 5 days. I’m excited and nervous – and I think I’ve written this
before! I tried to write a blog this morning about real and fancied fears (that
i’ll end up pushing a shopping cart: fancied; skin cancer: realish), but I
couldn’t get it going, so I dug around for what’s really on my mind.

So, that’s happening, and part of my nerves are that she and
I haven’t spent such significant time with one another in Years. We’d had a
pretty bad falling out at the end of both our college years, almost 10 years
ago, and didn’t talk for about the next 5 or so. We both had some growing and
changing to do, but as Fate would have it, about 3 years after I moved to
San Francisco, we began to reconnect.
Like any friendship, and especially a reconciliation, it’s
been by degrees. The warming up, getting to know you again phase. And
particularly with reconciliation, the “what’s it going to be like this time”
friendship fear. Will it be the same? Likely not; we’ve both changed our lives & ourselves dramatically. Will it be based on nostalgia? That, is something that a few
of my friendships from New Jersey have faded into, and have thence faded
completely. A friendship based on nostalgia doesn’t really work. It’s great to
reminisce, but that can’t be all there is – if there’s no current common
ground, no interest in pursuing something forward, then there’s really nothing
to bond over. The bond was made, but it’s … in the past. 
Luckily, with my
friend coming out this week, we’ve been able to learn that we have more in
common now and more to talk about and bond over than we had then. We have the
wonderful ability and common shared history to be able to talk about that
ridiculous party in the sand pit – the “pit party” – or the terrible yet funny
nicknames we used to have for people in high school (Money, Teeth, Banana –
because he looked like a monkey… go teenage girls…!). But we’re also finding
now that our lives, despite our separate courses and coasts, have miraculously
similar trajectories.
It’s been a blessing of the highest sort to have this
friendship come back together. There were a few years when I didn’t know if it
would, and I was viciously saddened by that, but it was not my business or my
plan as to whether someone wanted to be in contact with me again. So, when I
would hear a song on the radio that we’d played 10,000 times at the local
diner, I got sad, but wished her well. When that movie we’d loved as children
came on, I felt a twinge, but sent her the blessings for her life that I wanted
for myself. I hope she’s happy.
And then, as luck would have it, we came back together.
Slowly, for sure. We’re still in the slowly part. This visit is part of the
solidification, but also, I have to take my expectations out of it. I want to
make it a “great” time, so that we are friends again. I want it not to rain, so
the weather doesn’t reflect something about myself or my life. I want us to not be awkward or have tension
so that I don’t lose this again. But, none of that is anything within my
control.
All I can chose to do is to be myself. If this is a person
she wants to befriend, then she will. As with romantic relationships, if it’s
meant to be I can’t screw it up, and if it’s not meant to be, then I can’t fix
it.
I had a conversation several years ago with a girl friend of
mine about the power of female friendships. The “best” friend friendships. How,
really, in many ways they are – we said, then – more important and more
complicated than romantic relationships. I still think some of that is true.
However, part of the difference today with me is that I recognize that people
are human (duh), and cannot, simply cannot, fulfill all the things a person I
wish ought to. One person cannot be someone’s all. One person cannot be my only
friend, or my only social connection, my only vessel of personal relations.
Like seeds, you’ve got to spread it around. Part of this is
self-protection, but part of it is simply being realistic. And that is the protective part. If I am realistic about my
expectations of other people, then I won’t be hurt if they don’t live up to my
demands about them. It is simply unfair to anyone to expect them to fulfill my
needs. Firstly and foremostly, I need to ensure that I’m taking care of them
for myself to the best of my ability. Then, I can look outside myself to other
people, and form relationships where my needs are met. Where my realistic needs
are met.
Sorry for the tangent on what I think friendships and
relationships are, but this writing is also a reminder to myself of this as my friend comes to
visit. For someone who’d been labelled your best friend since the age of 3,
that carries a lot of weight – and I’ve recognized, unfair weight. Part of the
reason for the separation all those years ago was that we each had massive
expectations and need put upon one another – or, I’ll speak for myself, I did
that on her. That wasn’t fair, and the friendship burned down painfully.
So, coming to this visit in a spirit of open-mindedness. And
a loose set of expectations and desires will help us both to have a better
time. The weather isn’t a reflection of me. She’ll have a good time if she’s
meant to or wants to. And I can take care of myself, so that I don’t put the
onus on her.
However, those two hot chicks you’ll see blaring STP down the
interstate? Yeah, that’s us. 
community · faith · gratitude · humilty · love

6 x 6 and 5 x 5

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Six years ago this very morning, the Monday after Easter of
2006, I packed everything I could carry – i.e. a few suitcases and a pillow –
into my car, and headed West.
I drove from New Jersey in the rising light of a near-Spring
morning, muddy headed, giddy, nervous, and a little puffy eyed. I got on the
highway, and drove.
This was a planned trip – albeit, not very well. Having
arrived home after my 2nd completed teaching contract in South
Korea, and a few pitstops along the archepelago, I found myself to be 24,
living at home, with no thought of what to really do next. It was March.
I thought, and had the idea, that I would “break onto
Broadway.” It hadn’t really occurred to me that people often spend years of
their lives in training and working their way through auditions and classes and
various local troupes, and still don’t make that leap. I simply thought I could “make it work.”
So, I envisioned that I would get a roommate or two in
Manhattan, get a job as a waitress (cuz that’s what actresses do, right?), and
start my way up.
I did get a job as a waitress. At a lower Manhattan Italian
restaurant, and was told that I needed to wear all black as the uniform, and
start the next week. Great – perfect – falling into place.
I’m in H&M clothing store. I’m in the stall changing
room, and trying on black clothing for my new job, and I have a sudden thought
– New York will eat me alive.
I suddenly realized that I had no business being in
Manhattan the way that I was drinking and drugging. That I would die if I
stayed. I somehow knew it. I was setting myself up to fail, as I had no coping
mechanisms and almost no community or friends, having lost most of those prior to
leaving for Korea.
I walked out of H&M without buying anything. I left the
black clothing, the representation of this pipe dream, and walked outside. I
called the restaurant, and told them I wouldn’t be coming in to work … That I
was moving to California.
What made me think that? I don’t know. But I had a
friend/acquaintance who lived in San Francisco, who’d invited me to come visit.
And somehow, San Francisco – California Dreamin’ – was for me. How ’bout I come to stay?
I don’t know what sense of intuition it was that let me know
that NYC was too much for the addled and fragile sense of self I was, but I am
grateful for it. In Korea, there weren’t many drugs around – a few here and
there, spilling off the army base – but mainly, it was drinking. And for that,
I am grateful. But, in New York? It was a buffet of ways to murder myself
slowly. And I had zero capacity to turn anything down. I knew it was a ticket
to the bottom, and I really didn’t have that much further to go.
So, San Francisco. I coordinated with my friend out here.
Let the Cousin know I would come to visit him in Ohio before I hopped on to
Route 66 – the cool way to go – and got gone. I bought the Lonely Planet guide books for California, and Coastal California,
and Route 66, and simply followed that map the whole way down. I arrived in
Santa Monica on April 25th, 2006, stuck my feet in the Pacific Ocean
(on this side of it) for the first time, and headed up north to San Francisco.
I arrived that night in time to induct my friend into my
nighttime tornado as she showed me around via a few bars. Two weeks later, I
got sober.
I had no intention of this, mind you. It didn’t at all occur
to me that I was heading West to leave a life I’d known for many years in
exchange for one I knew nothing about. I didn’t know that I would eventually
fix my teeth, live alone, go to graduate school, actually audition and be in a
few plays.
I just knew that SF was better than NYC for me.
6 by 6. Six years ago. I don’t know why I chose “by 6,” not
sure what it’s “by,” – perhaps “2006” – but 5 x 5, I get.
Five by five is the catch phrase of TV’s Buffy the
Vampire Slayer’s character, Faith. Which I
suppose is an apt name here at the moment. When things are good, in answer to
how are you, when life is not filled with monsters and demons and chaos, Faith
replies that she’s “Five by Five.”
My life is no longer filled with monsters and demons and
chaos. There are bumps in the night, and scary creatures that lurk still, but 6
years have taught me how to deal with, talk about, and work through those fears
and scary patches.
Over this past weekend, I have run into, at complete
coincidence, people from communities as variant as school, Jew, and recovery.
On the street, in a taxi, on the bus, on BART. I am “a part of.” I am a member
of. I am not a lost little pigeon anymore – I have community, and several at
that. I have been surprised and humbled as I’ve realized this weekend how many
friends I now have – people I now know. I arrived knowing one woman marginally.
And I’m learning how to “break on to Broadway,” or whatever
my current vision equivalent is, with the grace, fortitude, and support that I
never would have dreamed I’d have. For a dork, lost, wild, alone, sad, chaotic,
pipe-dreamy me, well, five by five doesn’t even feel adequate. 

action · community · growth · love · maturity · self-care · work

R+D

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

The past two days, I’ve been functioning according to
my new time plan – or schedule. My friend who helped me on Tuesday morning suggested things I would never think of myself (or let myself) like
“walk,” and then insisted that I write down “piano” in capital letters.
I spend more time than I like (cough – resentment) traveling to and from school because of the
shuttle schedule (though I am grateful to have it at all). On Thursdays, for a 4pm class, I’m on campus at 2:30pm,
because the next shuttle doesn’t arrive until after 4. So, I have over an hour to “kill” on campus before class.
My friend knows that a spiritual nourishment of mine is
playing the piano in the school chapel, and suggested I use some of that time
at the piano. If it weren’t written down, I wouldn’t do it. Like, take a walk,
or… the “important” piece, R+D.
Research and Development. That’s what we’re calling actions
relating to job, career, income earning. I like it so much more than writing
down in my new little schedule, “Job hunt.” That just sucks. Makes me dread and
despise it before I begin. But “Research and Development” sounds like something
significant and helpful for me. Just research. Helping me develop. Not a whip
or a chastisement.
So, over the past two days, I’ve spent 4 hours in R+D. This
is huge. Usually, it’s looked like a few minutes glances at craigslist, a loud
harumph, a resentment, despair, and click the browser closed … and then go off
to some other mindless activity to get my mind off my despair!
So, R+D for an hour, I set my alarm clock, then I have
something in between before the next hour. Something nourishing. A reward
perhaps. Tuesday it was “art,” and I made two little acrylic painted postcards,
out of the blank postcard pad I’d bought last week. I sent one off that
afternoon. Yesterday, my nourishment was a walk. Although it also included
calling my mom and coordinating logistics for her and my brother’s visit in a
month. But, that’s alright. I got out of the house, up into the gorgeous hills
near me with houses so beautiful (and enviable).
Yesterday, I also began “development” of a newsletter to
send out to the masses, announcing my new workshop that I’ll be facilitating in SF in May (G-d willing).
Part of my “Go big and go home” movement is to really take ownership of this
workshop, and to really put it out there. I have great support around it, and
have been encouraged by numerous parties. Now, the action ball is in my court,
and with those structured moments of time, I’m picking up that ball.
So, yesterday I went into Constant Contact, that mass email newsletter site. I logged in, actually, although I couldn’t remember when had been the last
time I did – I knew that I had an account with them. Turns out, saved in the draft
section was a newsletter I was working on in November of 2010. It was a very
ambitious letter about starting an creative events company. It’s more than
overly ambitious, and I think very sweet, now that it’s two years later. But
what it tells me is that I’ve been working on stuff like this for a while. And
there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work.
I went to brown paper tickets to check out their policies,
and saw you can have free tickets too, so as to be a great way to manage RSVPs
… not via a “Yes” on Facebook. (I don’t know about you, but I tend to click yes
to all kinds of things I later have no intention of going to…!)
Then, through a girl friend, I saw her website for her
creative coaching company. And started some work on one of my own. Because really, I
know if I were going to attend a workshop, I’d want to see a website.
So, here we are. Taking action. Moving along as scheduled
(although yesterday, despite being “art” time, I took a much needed nap!). I will
allow for the changes I need as I come to know how I work best. I know 2 hours
of R+D in a row is overwhelming. Splitting it up is helpful. I know that 15
minutes on dishes and cleaning a day will save me time in the end, and also
help me to feel proud of my home I’m trying so hard to keep.
I have been building toward things like this for a long
time. I have co-run this workshop before; I have a teacher singly devoted to
helping me put on the free version later this month; and, as irony would have
it, I have a decade of administrative, secretarial experience – so I know how to organize an event.
I’m supported in my effort of self love. Which in the end is
what this is. 

gratitude · honesty · joy · love · poetry · school · time

Cacophonous Joy

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Yesterday, I finished my draft of my poetry thesis. It is
dark, and humorous, and sad, and scared, and thoughtful, and loving, and aimed
toward health. It represents a period in my life, which I’m glad to recognize
as not current, even though the feelings may arise as current.
This is a memoir of sorts. It chronicles a period of time
which, I see now, I do have a degree of distance from, in order to be able to
write about it so fully. I know too it leaves gaps and holes, but I don’t mind
– it’s show, don’t tell, right?
Yesterday, I sort of fell apart around 3pm, as I knew I
needed more time to edit it, little visual changes and some word sorting here
and there. But, I was also supposed to be at class from 4-6:30, and be at a
poetry reading/open mic at 5:30 – 9. How was I to be in so many places at once?
Well, I couldn’t. And the reality of that fell on me at
about 3pm. I made some phone calls; I was told that my main job right then was
to finish my thesis – perhaps you remember some of the craziness when I hadn’t
turned one in, and may not have been graduating in May? Yes, the thesis was my
main job – all other things were secondary.
I spoke briefly to a few friends, wrote emails of apology to
my class teacher and to the organizer of the open mic, and got back to work. I
was not to use the club of
self-flaggellation on myself, I was told. I was not to think that I’d done it
again and over-booked, and I’m a bad person, and here was this opportunity to
put my work out, and I’ve missed it.
I had one job. Thesis.
So, I left those internal critic voices at the door.
Strangely enough, when I did, something miraculous happened.
I finished my thesis. I sent it in multiple document formats
for maximum readability; I cc’d and bcc’d to ensure maximum accountability of
the documents. I sent it off. It was now out of my hands.
I called two friends, let them know that I had sent it, as
I’d told them 3 hours before that I would. And I felt relief. I felt relief as
though it were that cartoon image of someone getting hot, and the thermometer
level inside them fills up with red from the bottom all the way to the top and
bursts out their head. I felt swallowed with relief.
I told my friend, Now, I’m going to drink some water, make a
nice healthy meal, and watch a Disney movie. – That was going to be my celebration. She found that
hilarious: “I’m going to drink … some water.” How times have changed.
So, I did, but as I was cooking my chicken and broccoli and
yummy organic pasta, I had my iPod on shuffle, playing my joy into the kitchen.
And Metallica came on. And for why, who cares, it was that moment. I began to bob and jam and jump around
as I stirred that chicken. Then I abandoned the chicken to just rock out in my
kitchen to the raging flare of electric guitar and passion.
The song finished. But I wasn’t done. I placed my delicate,
hearty, thoughtful meal on a plate, and went into the main room of my studio apartment. I
proceeded to happy dance. That thermometer level radiated out of me and I
DANCED – I shimmied and kicked and ska danced and booty danced and jumped as
very high as I could. I waved my arms like a lunatic and smiled till all of my
teeth shone bright.
This was more than relief at finishing a project for school.
This was pride and gratitude incarnate. This was my joy at having released a
clog in my emotional arteries. I’d moved something. Something big. And I danced
until I couldn’t dance no mo’.
I have released something big here – truth, despair, hurt,
trauma – I’ve let it go. And I’ve opened it to you. I’ve let it have its own purpose outside of my
experience. I’ve given it, and myself, life. It feels like I’ve surrendered
something I’d been holding on to. The clogged artery metaphor feels pretty apt.
But more, it was my throat, my voice, constricted by these stories – and now
that they’re out, birthed, something new can be said, or seen, or felt.
I am humbled by the process of putting this out into the
world. I do hope people enjoy it, or get
something out of it, or find their own voice through reading it. But the
personal gift I have gotten, I could not have predicted: the grin of sheer
bliss as I tucked into my bed last night. … and woke up with again this morning. 

beauty · grief · love · recovery · self-care

Savage Beauty

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

(if you haven’t read it, you may want to glance at
yesterday’s blog for continuity)

(p.s. I have to say, I love the double meaning of “savage” as the colloquial for totally awesome)
So, guess what? I went back “down” today to find out who
that woman in the other penguin habitat was. Yesterday on my way out, I’d
assumed it was Depression, because of the scene around her.
On the lower left end of the enclosure, a woman stood, her
back to me. She stood on what looked like the dangerous rocky shore near a
nasty storm-driven sea. Above, the sky/wall dripped in large blackness. She
wore a tattered dress, and her hair, too, was wild and matted.
Yesterday, I simply backed away from this woman, partly
because it was time to leave (the drumming on the tape indicates when it’s time
to return), and partly because her anger or darkness scared the shit out of me,
and I wasn’t ready to investigate further.
But, it wasn’t sitting right with me since then that she was
Depression. It just didn’t make sense to me. I thought maybe perhaps she was
Loneliness, but I wasn’t sure; I just knew that whoever she was, she was mad as
hell, and wasn’t going to take kindly to me yet. So, I began to think that
whoever she is, perhaps she herself isn’t a “negative” emotion, maybe she’s
just surrounded by that.
Turns out, my curiosity, despite my fear to explore further,
took me back. I listened to the tape of the shamanic drumming again this morning, and
went to go check it out. And, as you might have guessed from the title, indeed,
she was not Depression – she is Beauty.
I have a lot of mixed … experience when it comes to
honoring, holding, acknowledging, or accepting my own beauty. I am not
surprised at how impersonable she is, or how raging, fuming dark and mad she
is. For me, since the (first set of) braces came off, the contacts replaced
glasses, and I got my first set of make-up near the age of 15, suddenly, I
became visible. The ugly glasses, the frizzy hair, the gawky tall figure, these
started to fade, and suddenly, people – boys – saw me.
I have used my anger at this “suddenness” for quite some
time — why didn’t you see me before? Is this all you want from me? I have had this interpretation reinforced by my own behavior, and by the behavior of
others. I have wielded my beauty as a double-edged sword, slicing those who
acknowledged it, and thus slicing myself.
I didn’t trust anyone to see me for who I was, and because
now all they saw (so I inferred) was my outside, I spent very little effort or
time discovering who I was on the inside. At the formative middle-teen years,
this was a tragic oversight.
It now meant that my beauty was a Siren song. I would lure
you in, and crash you upon the rocks. I didn’t care how you felt, or felt about
me. I wanted you to know that my visage was all you would get, and when we were
both done using it, I was done using you – on to the next.
I know this pattern of mine is not unique, but it has
dictated my behavior and thought for a long time.
When I was outside her exhibit today, I didn’t go in. Her
anger frightened me, and I still don’t know how to hold or approach her/it/my
beauty. Mostly, I hide it. Because of the pain inflicted from self and others
in reaction to how I look, I’ve decided it’s best to turn away from it – to
turn it down. It comes out occasionally, but it is rare.
And surely, there’s not much I can do to “turn it off”
altogether. I am who I am, and p.s. I am grateful for it. I know this is a gift
I’ve unrightly used. However, I can hide it, minimize it, hunch over it, and
protect it, I suppose. Which I have done, for a while now.
A few months back, I wrote about wearing this fabulous new
skirt to class, and later to a party. I wrote that I felt “embarrassed” or
something like it. I suppose, I can see now, I felt that duality of
defensive, and brazen – offensive. I don’t yet know how to just let it be. To
understand that my beauty is not to be wielded at all. It just is.
The lack of humility – of “rightsizedness” – I have around
it. It’s just another aspect of me, like my humor, or my intelligence. Which,
both, I will admit, I do much the same hiding of.
Rather you make your own inferences and be wrong about me,
than to show you who I truly am, and have you judge me.
The problem with the beauty thing is that I was/am
defensive/insecure even when you judge me positively. Because of the trauma that has come as a result of
being an attractive woman, and largely in my development, a drunken attractive
woman, the idea of showing you how I look or can look feels like a dangerous
risk.
After standing outside her “cage” for a little while, and
asking what I should be doing, I remembered a suggested question we can ask
when in meditations like these. How does she feel about you? How do you feel
about her?
I feel mistrusting of her; she feels betrayed by me. Great
relationship, eh?
So, in the end, I left. But I get it. I don’t trust my
beauty because it has brought me physical, mental, and emotional pain. She
feels betrayed by me because I haven’t used her rightly, and have then locked
her up.
She’s mad as hell – and she’s not going to take it anymore.
That said, I believe some kind of reconciliation will need
to happen – an understanding – before we can both move forward. It’s not like,
just let her out. She’s too pissed, and I’m too wary. So, what can I do? I can
slowly begin to shed my hiding. I can slowly, and safely, begin to reintegrate
those items in my wardrobe which make me uncomfortable, and attract attention.
Not like booty shorts, but like “nice” things. Pretty things. Things that make
me feel beautiful. This won’t be a
hurling of myself off a cliff into a different way of being; this will be a
slow dance toward intimacy and trust.
Which sounds like a great way to support myself as I look to
build that with others. 

compassion · love · maturity · self-care

Savage Love

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

This morning, I couldn’t get quiet in meditation, tried a
variety of different techniques and styles, and then decided, fuck it, I’ll
just do a journey. A “journey” is a shamanic journey, and how I do them at home
is via a tape of drumming on my ipod that I listen to. I’ve mentioned some
about this here before, and believe what you will or won’t, but it’s one of the
surest ways I find to get in touch with whatever’s going on, and to find
clarity and, potentially, resolution. 
NOTE: I feel that describing a journey is much like the way some people tell others about their dreams – they’re fascinating to the dreamer, not so much to the listener, so feel free to read on or not. 
I usually shy away from doing journeys at home (as opposed to when I
do them in a group), because they are so powerful for me, and usually provide a
level of information that is hard to sit with when I’m by myself.
It was none too different this morning.
Back in January, when I was on the women’s retreat up in
Napa, we were talking a bit about how people get to the various places of these
shamanic “worlds,” and I mentioned that every time I go to the “lower world,”
as I go down, I pass through this room that’s like the indoor penguin enclosure
at the zoo. I usually just walk right through to the exit door, and on down to
the lower world, but I was curious as to what that room was about, if it was
just a “silly” fluke of my brain or what.
I’d never really looked around the space, having been told early that I was
supposed to be getting to a place in nature and if we hit a man-made environment to just keep going. This space has always been there during my journeys; it’s a dark
room/hallway, with that eerie blue lighting that happens in those enclosures
as it lights up the exhibits and penguin habitats and water.
It was suggested in January that I take a look at the nature
of the space, that maybe it is trying to tell me something. And, if you’re with
me so far, your suspension of disbelief will be needed further. …
So, today, in the journey, I head down, and when I get to
this room, I stop and pause. I walk through and go out another door, but I
just walk into a whole mess of large leafy plants, and I’m pretty sure this
isn’t the “right” way. So I walk back inside.
Then I walk up to one of the two exhibits, lit behind its glass, to see what’s inside. It’s not penguins. Perched on the craggy,
bird-shit stained fake rocks that you normally see, is a woman, naked, and
hunched over herself. Her head over her bent knees.
At this point, I call up one, then two of my teachers/guides, cuz I’m starting
to get a little anxious, and I ask them who she is. This dirty, matted hair
naked woman is Love. She is the part of me that is love.
I ask what I should do, and it’s indicated that I go and
approach her, so the glass in the exhibit between me and her disappears, and I
walk through, and up onto the stained rocks, and crouch down to approach her.
She looks up at me. Her eyes are wild, fearful, non-linguistic, but meaningful
nonetheless. She ticks and jerks, like we imagine cave-people did, like savages
did. Moving without grace, and in non-self aware spurts.
I ask her what she needs. She “says” she’s cold. I put this
enormous fur coat around her I’d gotten previously (like a prize in a video
game I can now cash in). It’s warm, and filled with love and calm. I give her
some pajamas.
— She throws herself on me, supplicant with gratitude, but
this strong, muscular woman is crushing me with herself. With her love. Her
thanks are out of proportion with the gesture. And she wants to hold on to me
with such force.
She, is Savage Love.
I ply her off of me, and don’t know what to do, where to go,
if I should leave. Instead, I take her to this safe place I have, this desert –
the cave of the penguin exhibit fades and we both find ourselves in the wide,
open, dry, sunlit desert.
I don’t really know what to do with her – this force that is
too big, doesn’t know her own strength, and once is shown affection wants to
consume the giver, to keep it.
I bring in my little 5 year old self who likes to hang out
in this desert, drawing at a picnic table. I sit my primitive, wild self down with
her to draw, and she makes a whooping and hollering mess of stabbing the
crayons onto the page. The 5 year old self tries to tell her no, that she’s
doing it wrong, and messing with her space, and quickly, she has had enough, and
gets up to go to the sandbox, an elsewhere safe place.
Savage Love is furious, rampant in her rage at this
rejection, at being chastised and rejected. She is dangerous.
I call on someone else, a woman who represents adulthood to
me, who isn’t me, but surely, as these all are, is of course me.
She comes in, and holds the untamed woman. Like a mother
calming a child. The differences between a toddler and a savage aren’t much.
And that’s when I realize that’s ultimately what this woman is. She’s an adult
in form, but in her manner, reaction, and action, she’s very like a small child
– you give me something nice, I want it all and more, and I don’t care or know
if it’s crushing you or more than you can give. If you reject me or chastise
me, I’m enraged and destructive.
This part of me does not know or have boundaries. She
doesn’t have language, or common sense. She has been in a sealed glass cage for
nearly a lifetime – of course she doesn’t have “people skills.”
And, to get “real” for a moment, I resonate with these
reactions and actions she portrays as I consider my own actions in
situations of love. If you show me affection, I will drape myself over you, and
become dependent upon you. If you put up a boundary or behave in a way I
perceive as rejection, I will shove you away and cause as massive chaos as I
can doing it.
As you can imagine, today’s journey has caused a great deal of
self-reflection, but is bringing about a great deal of self-compassion. This
part of myself has not grown up and has remained in reactionary patterns of
behavior that in the end cause isolation and solitude.
When I had to leave, which, by the way, I was considering
the entire time during my interaction with her – how can I get away from her –
which is interesting… well, I left her with the adult woman comforting her,
calming her. She was calm. And she will learn.
But, on the way out, reluctantly, I took a look in the
second penguin-like exhibit, to see who or what was in that one.
It was Depression.
And I backed away, knowing that would need a whole ‘nother
day of work.  
courage · love · responsibility · self-care

Arrangement

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

One phrase a single woman should never utter: Cat, stop
eating my flowers.
I bought myself flowers this week, as I now do periodically, and the
man at the flower stand, who went off on a very long monologue about the
upcoming new year for his religion, which I believe I gathered was Russian
Orthodox, told me that he’d been thinking about me. This older gentleman, who I
didn’t believe worked at the stand the first time I saw him there, and I
waited for the woman who I normally interacted with. I thought he was some sort
of flower stand hanger-on, or the woman’s husband (which he is), but a person
who didn’t know much about flowers or flower arrangements.
That time, he began to randomly pluck flowers from their
black watery bins, and show them to me, “This? … This?” and as I shook my
head, I became more convinced that he did not in fact work there.
Turns out, he did, and he does, but that first time, I
waited for his wife anyway, and walked away with a beautiful spray of day
lilies – the kind that smelled, as many in California do not, I found out from
the woman – that the kind that do, come from places where the land does get
cold in winter – like back in New Jersey, where we grew them along the side of
my house, and every summer the whole length of the house smelled of day lilies.
So, I always hunt for the ones that smell.
This week when I went, it was just the man, and his strange
information about seven things that they put on an altar for their new year,
including hyacinth and some sort of branch, which he said is why he’d been
thinking of me – that it was all very beautiful, but not as beautiful as me. …
Now, I play along, I’m charming, and he’s very delightful to have made up this
story on the spot, or maybe it was true. But it was a strange ending to this long religious info session. And
I walked away, with my bunch of flowers.
These flowers, this arrangement, is not pretty. It’s got
some spiky, scaggy deep purple sprays of some sort. An anemone-looking orange
one that probably eats live things in its other life. A stalk of not-so-fresh
looking sunrise flowers. A few branches of pussy-willow, and one stem of day
lilies – the smelling kind.
It sort of looks, overall, like a thanksgiving/fall style
color palette, and it is not pretty in the conventional way that I usually like
my flowers to be. But, it is beautiful in its own way. It is not something I
would have chosen.
I suppose I’m moved to write about it, them, this
interaction, because it sort of speaks to a few things for me. The first is
that, when someone compliments me, I assume it’s bunk. That it’s to get
something from me, like more business in this case. The second is that I knew I
wasn’t liking the arrangement he was making, but because of his compliment and
certainty in his work, I let it go, and took what I was being given. And third, of course, not all beautiful things are pretty.
The third, I’ll accept. It’s true. Things in this world are
to be marveled at, but they’re not always attractive in conventional ways, and
you may have to squint to see its beauty. So, this is partly about letting go
of my ideas about things in general. My proscribed black-and-white, good/not
good, thinking.
To the second, I ought to have said something. Just because
I was complimented doesn’t mean I have to take
what’s being handed to me. I am glad I have the flowers, but I do wish I had
asked for something other than a handful of motley and slightly craggy plants.
This, speaks to many things in my life and how I’ve lived it up to now.
And to the first, about dismissing compliments, well, that’s
back to the accepting support thing that I’m working on currently. To believe
that I am worthy of notice, support, love, and encouragement. And that perhaps people aren’t pulling my chain, or trying to get something from me, that perhaps I have something genuine that people like and are attracted to. To believe, as it were, that not every
rose has its thorn …