Category: love

anger · disconnection · equanimity · family · love · self-abandonment · self-care

There always had to be a fly…

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…in the ointment.
If things were going well, there was always the knowledge
that my father’s parents were shut-ins and deleterious hoarders. Or that my mom
was manic-depressive. Or that my brother had a horrible stutter.
There was always the reminder that my clothing was bought at
discount stores, that my father had an awful temper, or that my mom’s parents
had died under circumstances that ripped her family apart and isolated us against them.
If things were going well, there was always a skeleton or two
to whisper in your ear about not believing good things were for you, about
being dragged down, about not being allowed to be happy.
Today, those long-quieted skeletons, imagined they’ve been
exorcised for years, have begun their murmurous palaver again.
Yesterday, I had a phone call with my mother. She is sick.
Again. It’s the same or similar cold/sinus infection she’s been struggling
against for over a year. And when it came up last year, when she didn’t know
why she kept getting sick, when doctors didn’t immediately know why either, I
called my psychic.
Because at the time, all roads led to cancer. Did she have
it? What was going on? What can I do?
No, said the woman on the phone. It’s not cancer, but
whatever it is, if she doesn’t deal with this, with what’s underlying it, it could be the beginning of a long road to the
end. This could be the thing that takes her out.
Whatever your thoughts about intuitives aside, I’d worked
with her enough that she knew of what she spoke. And from all indications since
that phone call over a year ago, it’s proving pretty accurate. My mom is still
sick. Healthier, Sick, Healthier Sick.
And I’m dragged immediately back into a curtain-drawn
bedroom where she’d curled up against the light, fighting another one of her
chronic migraines. I’m dragged immediately back into being a child taking care
of her mother, telling her to get out of bed. Leaving her there, and getting my
brother and I out the door for school.
My mother is a woman of chronic ailments. And this newest
one, whatever its cause, reason, purpose, is dragging me down again with her.
What is love, comes the question? What is equanimity? What
is detachment, enlightenment? Fate? What is the caustic, oxidizing rust that
others’ baggage leaches onto you and your own path?
And what is my responsibility in helping them through their
pain?
Especially if they don’t recognize it as such.
So much has come up lately about codependence versus
interdependence. About leaving others to their experiences and feelings, and
letting that not affect what I’m doing and how I’m feeling. Even something as
simple as the play, and trying to not let the audiences’ reactions sway my
mood.
I feel angry. I feel angry this feels like it’s happening
again. I feel angry that I’m powerless about how she cares for and treats her
body, about how she schedules her work in the 12-hour days without lunch
breaks. About how she spends her off days flattened, recuperating from her over-working.
I’ve had to do so much work on letting her have her
experiences, despite my opinions, and
yet. And yet. I’m human. And I love her, and I don’t want her to be in pain.
And I don’t want her to deteriorate.
And moreso, I don’t want her life to affect mine.
When does a child grow up? What is the role of a loved one?
How can you, and can you, let someone crawl along the bottom of their own
experience, while you make strides in the direction of your own fulfillment?
Because that’s what’s at stake here. Callous as it may sound, it doesn’t matter,
ultimately, what happens with my mom. What matters is what I take on about it. How
I allow it to affect me. And mostly, can I continue to make my life what I want
it to be when there are still murmuring
skeletons?
My whole life, I’ve been distracted by the flies. I’ve
allowed my attention to be derailed in fishing them out, or I’ve simply allowed
them to decree that I cannot be happy because they exist. That I cannot find
success because there are flaws in the tapestry of my surroundings.
Obviously, I write about it today because I’m upset and I
don’t have the answer to these
questions. Because I don’t know how
to move forward when there are tendrils threatening to draw you back.
So, for today, I’ll leave it both as an open question, and
as evidence of a success. Because, today, I get to tell you about it. And
darkness can’t live in the light. 

community · expansion · growth · love · theater · trying

B’reishit: In the Beginning…

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This week in the Jewish calendar, having unscrolled and read
the whole Torah throughout the year, we come again to rewrap it all the way back to
the beginning to read the very first word: B’reishit, “In the
beginning.”
We’ve come to the end of something, and we wind it back to the beginning to start again.
I can’t think of a more appropriate coincidence and parallel
for my own life.
Yesterday afternoon, Addams Family The Musical closed to a
full house, once again. We said our final jokes, we emphasized things a little
more. We cried at that one “Happy/Sad” song that reminds us that most things in
life are a little of both. And when the final bows were over and the final
patrons thanked, we came back to the dressing room for the last time, finally
and pleasingly and thank god-ingly taking off our sweat-soaked costumes. The
last time getting someone to help me un-pin the dress, the last time taking off
the long and elaborate and hot wig, the
last time returning my mic pack to the sound designer.
And when this was all done, and most of the makeup had been
removed from our faces…
We began tearing down the set. The set that only a handful
of weeks ago we’d built, and painted, and staged, and seen evolve right before
our eyes. The same stage that only a few weeks before that, we’d all stood on
for auditions in the remnants of the set from the previous show.
And now, here we were, making this, our set “the remnants of a previous show.”
Because To Kill a Mockingbird opens in 4 weeks.
I asked some of the old-timers if they got a little wistful
breaking down something that was like another character in the show, if it was
sad to have put it all up, just to take it all down? And each of them said, No.
It’s part of the gig. They’re used to it. To the turn-over, to the letting go.
I’m not, yet! It was happy/sad for sure. It will be strange
tonight to come to the theater for Mockingbird rehearsal and see the bones of our Addams set on the stage, picked clean of the character we’d
built. And yet, if this isn’t a great lesson in the constant ebb and flow,
creation and destruction, then I don’t know what is.
In the beginning, we were tentative and perhaps shy,
getting used to one another’s personalities, contributions, moods.
In the beginning, we created something out of nothing, out
of a few words and notes on a page, sitting in a small room with a piano,
laughing a little, tense a little.
In the beginning, we didn’t know about the tech problems or
the extra rehearsals. We didn’t know the petty arguments we’d have, or the
number of times we’d have to control rolling our eyes.
In the beginning, we didn’t know the kind of joy and
laughter we’d create on-stage or back-stage. We didn’t know the relationships
we’d form, and the singular role each member of the cast and crew would take.
We didn’t know that we’d come to love each other.
And now that we’ve unscrolled to the end, and we’re about to
bring it all back to the beginning again, I am sure that we have learned
something, something critical to the nature of life and love and joy and
experience, that we didn’t know we would and that will carry us forward as we
start once more with new words and notes and castmates.
In the beginning, we were strangers. We’ll never be that way
again. 

abundance · contentment · family · joy · laughter · love

Pumpktoberfest

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I’m sure I write about it every year, but as the wafts of
pumpkin spice glide out of my coffee mug, I’m moved to write about it again.
Fall. Fall on the East Coast. Growing up where Fall means a
certain smell of chill and decaying leaves. Kind of wet, sometimes, the piles
you’ve helped stuff into enormous black plastic bags that I’m sure are illegal in
California by now. And heaping them into the street, spilling off the curb, where you
and your little brother will take a bounding head-start and leap into the
center of the pile, the slightly moth-eaten leaves enveloping you up to your
shoulders, softening your fall and bathing you and your senses in its musty,
alive scent.
I noticed the leaves blowing last night, and here, they
sound different as they tumble across the pavement; they sound dry and tired,
each one brown and curled up on itself. Back East, they’re still half-alive
when they fall, some of them. So they lilt and are soft, and … colored. How
many people must write about the color of the leaves, the ombre fade of red and
orange and gold. There’s something about their display that radiates joy and
change and marks something miraculous, something that we, as humans, have the
unique privilege to recognize and admire.
Pumpkins start popping up on doorsteps. We hang Indian corn,
the same set of three tied to our front door for as long as memory serves, and three small palm-sized
pumpkins decorate our own stoop, before squirrels begin to bite chunks out of them, and a jack-o-lantern we’ve spent all day carving.
Fall begins the part of the year when I felt and feel most
loved and normal and inviting and, again, loved. It begins with
Halloween, and follows through Christmas (celebrated at my dad’s folks
house, who are/were vaguely Christian). The time of year when we feel swept up
in something, in something communal, town-wide, Jersey-wide.
We celebrated, we decorated, we invited, and we lit fires in
the fireplace, and ate my dad’s pumpkin pie. Our one time of year when my
family could gather together in a semblance of normality, and put on the most
average and happy face we could, and it was all decadent. The feeling of
it was.
The change of the season with its scent and sights, and the
length of the days, the incoming dusk approaching like a secret to encase you.
Creeping slowly closer and closer, but welcoming, the cool still amenable, coaxing and
gliding you home in the dim light, toward a mug of hot apple cider perhaps. Maybe
one of the gallons we’d picked up from our annual apple-picking trip, harvesting hoards of
apples, plucked in those wire basket poles that my brother and I would wave
menacingly at each other, slipping on fallen rotting apples in the
orchard, filling up woven wooden baskets we could barely carry out.
It’s the change of the light and the scent that’s been my
indicator these California days. It’s not the same as Back East, but there’s still the
aroma of crispness and an excitement.
I will begin to buy all things pumpkin, like the rest of
America. Like the pumpkin pancakes my friend treated me to yesterday, and the abomination
of flavored coffee that I’m drinking right now.
I will use the pumpkin ganache cookie recipe that was given
to me by a college roommate and make the pumpkin pie that my dad’s passed down
through trial and error – a recipe that would never, ever, include “Pumpkin Pie
Spice,” but itself includes about 8 individual spices, which I own expressly
for the pie’s creation.
Fall is a time of coming back to center, of reigning in the
resources. Of whittling down excess and getting the necessities done in the
light of day. It’s a time that rings with good memories, full, warm, joyous
memories. Fall reminds me of the earth, of how the natural world has shaped my
experience. And it tastes like the release of a constriction you’ve held the whole year, the exhale and inhale of a breath you haven’t dared relax to take. 
To me, Autumn tastes like love.

change · friendship · grief · love

Can I get a Witness?

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You want it to be done. You want to stop referencing cancer,
or marking time as “before I got sick,” “when I was sick.” You wanna stop the pang of knowing that “sick” was more than a bad cold. You wanna stop remembering
what it felt like. And you want it to stop being dramatic, and making you feel
dramatic.
You want the, “Oh, you cut your hair” comments to not sting as much, since no, you didn’t cut it, it fell out. You wanna feel neutral
when you see a t.v. show where someone’s diagnosed with it, and stop silently commenting, No that’s not at all what it’s like. You want to stop gagging every time you smell Kaiser hand soap. You want to stop
feeling the fear and the grief and the heartbreak you’d felt when you were
sick.
The feelings you couldn’t really feel then because you had
to just soldier up. When you were told, You could be a poster child for cancer.
When you had to be braver than you wanted because you needed to not scare your
friends.
And, there were the few friends you knew you didn’t have to be
brave with, or braver than you’d felt. There were the few who let you cry the
Ugly Cries, and the one who laid in your narrow hospital bed with you while you
napped, all wiped out from chemo. The one who went to three health food stores
to get the right kind of protein drink, since you couldn’t eat solids. The one
who bought your own bejeweled reusable cup in which she brought you green
shakes, and who packed and unpacked your hospital room with you every single
chemo round, and stayed overnight at home with you the first night after your first
release.
You want to remember the witness, and you want to forget
why you needed one. You want to offer the deepest gratitude and you want to stop feeling
gnawed by the uncertainty of that time.
You want to love the witness, and you want to stop being
reminded of what it was they held you through.
There is no forgetting, there’s only fading. And I don’t
want to forget it really; I just don’t know how to process it all still. Though it seems I am nonetheless.
I was on the phone with my mentor yesterday, talking about this one friend who showed up for me then and how, post-cancer, our relationship hasn’t
been as strong or connected. That somehow it’s almost like cancer, or acute
trauma, was the foundation of our friendship, and now that it’s passed, it
feels like there’s not much more to go on.
I told her how sad I am that we’re not like we were,
but that I don’t know that I can or if I want to be otherwise.
It reminds me of a quote from a movie that will make you
groan. But. In Speed, Sandra Bullock
tells Keanu Reeves that relationships based on intense experiences never work. (She later jokes, they’ll have to base it on sex, then. And that’s not really
an option with my friend, cute as she is!)
So, what do you do? I told my mentor that my friend was a witness
to that hardship, and about my pattern of how difficult it is for me to let go of certain things
because I’m afraid people won’t believe me. That my experience of something
will be called into question, without someone else to verify it. My friend is
my verifier and my witness. Without a current relationship, who will remember?
Without the reminder, who will believe me?
So, it’s about more than her, isn’t it? It’s about more than
needing her continued friendship as a point of reference of truth in my life.
It’s about my own ability to hold truth and facts for myself without outside
validation.
And that, is a lifetime process.
But it brought up a lot of grief yesterday on the phone (which is why there was no daily blog). The
star-pupil cancer patient. Who wore bright colored socks and leopard print
chemo caps. Who had her own stash of organic herbal teas and would walk into
the hall to fill her own ceramic mug from home. The star cancer patient who
worked so hard not to be one, now processing what it actually felt like
underneath all that “Chin Up” posturing that was half-posturing, half-I’m
totally awesome, and cancer can fuck itself.
But the friendship has suffered since I’ve been healthy. And
I don’t know how or what to do on that. I think releasing the attachment of my
friend as witness, of needing a witness
is a good place to start.
I don’t want to remember and I don’t want to forget. And
until I find a place of peace with “what went down,” that division will always
cause me unrest. 

career · community · death · friendship · fulfillment · life · love

Blood Brothers

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Yesterday morning I had coffee with a cancer friend, for
lack of a better term.
He’s someone who reached out to me when I returned to work last Spring,
who was 15 years out from his own similar cancer diagnosis, and said if I ever
wanted to talk, he was available.
Since then, we’ve had coffee about once every 6 months or
so, and we get to talk about walking back into a life that sort of looks the
same on the outside, but has completely changed. We exchange the requisite,
“Everything’s okay with your health?” question early in the conversation so we
can continue on.
We speak mostly about work and fulfillment.
At the time we first met up, he was in a transition of his
own, and now, about 18 months later, is again. And so we spoke about
meaningfulness, about intention, about the often tipped balance between the
checkbook and joy.
I love talking with him. Because he is my cancer friend. Because, it’s different than the
first coffee date I had even earlier yesterday morning (a Jewish holiday and
therefore a day off work), when I met with the home stager about potentially
working and apprenticing with her.
With her, I only said things like, I’m just looking for a
change and to instill more creativity into my every day life, to engage more of
my heart in my work. With him, the whole conversation is built on the
understanding of why that’s so. It’s not
just because I’m a flighty 30something; It’s because I’m a fighting 30something
(if you will).
I left the first coffee date with the home stager feeling
mildly despairing and depressed. And I left the conversation with my cancer
friend feeling uplifted, supported, and understood.
I know what he’s talking about when he says how it wrecks
him that he has been so wrapped up in work again that he hasn’t had time for
his outdoor hobbies. He knows what I’m talking about when I say that we have
the privilege and curse of not being able to run on the hamster wheel of life
without questioning what we’re doing.
I never wanted a cancer friend. I never wanted to be part of
a cancer support group, and tried a few times without going back. Therapy isn’t
the same thing either, though that helped. But talking with someone who also
had their next breath marched up to the guillotine… it’s different.
It’s not “all cancer all the time.” Our conversation wasn’t even about
grief or anger. It was barely about cancer at all, except that of course it
was. It is the reason we met, became friends, and can share with one another
on a different level what our life paths are looking like and what we want them
to look like and the struggle between just going along as planned and taking
the time to question it all.
I imagine in some ways, it’s like war veterans’ ability to
have an instant understanding of one another: You’ve both seen life and death;
you’ve both fought bravely and been terrified; you’ve both come back to
civilian life and are attempting to make sense of it all, while still paying
your cable bill and buying groceries alongside every other citizen.
But you also know that, conscious or not, you both make
every decision in reaction to and on top of your experience at war. You can’t
not. It’s part of your DNA, now. You’re blood brothers.
I never knew I needed a cancer friend. And I sit here
writing with tears of gratitude that I have one. 

abundance · adulthood · community · joy · life · love

Having My Cake and Eating It Too.

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(Yes, I’m gonna go there. Bear with me!)
In 12-step recovery it is custom to acknowledge lengths of
sobriety or abstinence. Within the first year, we often acknowledge monthly
mile-markers, and after a year, we acknowledge annual “birthdays” or “anniversaries.”
Why do this? Why stand up in front of others and say that
you’ve accomplished something? Isn’t that selfish and self-seeking? Why does it matter?
Well, the conventional wisdom is that it shows others that
it’s possible. You’re not actually doing it for yourself, although that’s quite
nice; you’re helping others to see that “one day at a time” adds up to months,
and even years. You’re offering hope to others.
In our “belly-button birthday” world, why acknowledge our
birthdays either? I have friends who eschew celebrating their birthdays. Why
celebrate? It’s not like you *did* anything. You just lived another day.
And, just as with recovery, to me, that’s the point these
days.
It’s to celebrate and share the fact that you made it. That you are alive. You did do something: You lived.
A former mentor of mine used to call this our “precious
human life.” A Buddhist, her meaning is how rare it is to inhabit a human form this lifetime. We
could have been a tree or a toad or a fruit fly, alive for 24 hours, unconscious.
But we’re not.
We’re animated, active, Fate-affecting. And Fate-affected.
We’re constantly learning and changing and fighting and
hoping and loving and hating and struggling and triumphing. We’re constantly
forming ideas of who we are and who the world is; where we are and where we
want to be.
We’re creating our lives with every breath we have the
privilege to draw.
So when a co-worker the other day shushed everyone as we wished her a happy birthday, saying she doesn’t do birthdays, I did whisper to her, But imagine the
alternative.
We do fight to be here, conscious or not; every day, we are
making a decision to try. No matter what that looks like, even if it looks like
stagnation or the mundane. Even if we are
the tired, poor huddled masses. We try.
The celebration of a birthday is an acknowledgement of a
year of living. A year of something precious and rare and teeming with
uncertainty and, hopefully, love.
Today, I turn 33 years old. I have survived alcoholism,
dysfunction, gang rape, and cancer.
I have formed and smashed relationships. I have melted and
embraced. I have survived my own machinations. And become a metallurgist.
I, my friends, am an alchemist. And I honor us all today by
showing you:
We live.

And how!

With love,m.

community · fear · joy · love · performance · self-doubt · self-esteem · theater · trying

So, How’s the play?

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Oh, you mean that surprise piece of happenstance that’s underscored how unhappy I was at work by how happy I am in rehearsal and
performance?
That sudden flurry of activity that challenges me to quiet my inner
critic and do what I’ve written here I’ve always wanted to do: perform and
sing?
This universe of actor grumbling and sweaty mic packs and not
enough room at the backstage table and no air conditioning and that railing
that was never put in right and voice cracking and line flubbing and lighting failures?
Well, it’s fantastic!!
The buoyant aura of hard work and camaraderie, laughter and
support. Even when we’re elbowing for room at the table, or need to ask someone
for the hundredth time to hold your wig while you comb the bejeezus out of it –
you know you’re doing it in the service of something larger than you.
To be in performance
is so much more fueling than in rehearsal – like when they described Sex
and the City, they said “the City” was the 5th main
character. In a live performance, the audience is also a character, a member of
the staged community. “It’s a great audience tonight.” “They’re not really
laughing.” “They’re so into it.” You measure your performance not necessarily
by how much they laugh or applaud, but by what they give you and what you give
them back. And sometimes what you get is bolstering, and sometimes it’s not, but it’s always present. Creating something that never was and will never be again.
Flubbed it tonight? Live theater! Try it again tomorrow. Got your ridiculously long
wig stuck on a screw during an entrance? Have your co-actor unhook you and get
on with it. Didn’t get a laugh on that line tonight? Do it again tomorrow
anyway, because you think it’s
funny. Try it differently. “Let’s get crazy,” to quote a line from the show.
In addition to all this, I’ve loved the backstage buzz.
People are talking about auditions and other musicals, and arguing about their
favorite. People are going over their next audition monologues and kibitzing
about where they’ll audition next and who the casting director is and if you
saw that one last play, and Boy Howdy what a success/disaster.
It’s thrilling to me!
Someone so new to this world, it’s like drinking from an oasis. People are
actually talking about theater,
about acting, about what they’ll do next. And it’s inspiring me to continue
trying.
I know it would be very easy for me to not do anything for a
while, because of my upcoming job transition.
But, this play is part of the reason why
I’m changing career avenues. And much of the point of the changing avenue is to
change my schedule to accommodate being in productions.
Hearing all the dressing room chatter about upcoming
auditions, I find I want to do more. And, like I wrote yesterday, it could be
easy for me to let this thread drop when it’s over – I know how to have a
flurry of activity followed by inaction. But being in the belly of the action,
hearing words fly back and forth and the encouragement and the excitement
shared by the other actors… I’m demanding from myself that I make these
outreach emails and audition calls now, before the play is through.
So, how’s the play? It’s changed and is changing my life.
It’s hard, and I feel inadequate, and I judge myself against
more experienced singers. I dread these two lyrics in the whole show and
challenge myself to not dread them, to be present and let it be what it’ll be
because it’s not the all of who I am or what I’m giving.
The show is fun and takes effort and requires me to be
present and accommodating and kind.
In short, the show requires me to live. And live bravely.
Amen. 

abundance · career · change · community · courage · friendship · hope · love · scarcity · work

Yes, We Can.

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  • emailed
    landlord to ask to use 4th floor abandoned room as art room
  • emailed
    vocal coach to inquire about lounge singing, how to start
  • emailed
    friend to ask about going up in a small engine plane again. (flew one myself this year, and as always predicted, loved it. eventual vision of napa valley tour pilot.)
  • have interview on monday for two teaching positions with a jewish
    organization
  • have interview set up for another teaching gig
  • have modeling/portraiture session set for next weekend
  • replied
    yes to get minimum wage to usher at a Cake concert in two weeks
  • will
    be reading tarot cards at good friend’s Halloween party on donation basis
  • called friend’s mom who’s a professional home stager about being her assistant
  • have
    coffee info interviews set up with a few high-ballers in the community
  • have
    action items from previous info interviews to follow up on
  • emailed
    work-out studio to inquire about becoming an instructor and was told it’s
    possible (with a lot of work)
  • have a
    solid lead on fine dining waitress work if comes to that
  • registered as a model with a “real person” modeling agency
  • updated
    my profile on modelmayhem website
  • got
    exact amount of pto i’ll be paid out when I leave my job at end of month
  • inquired about health insurance exchange
  • got
    flu shot and all blood tests up to date (all negative – which is
    positive!)
  • made
    appointment for teeth cleaning
  • ordered
    new shipment of contact lenses before these fall apart in my eyeballs
  • replied
    to private tutoring gig from tutoring website I’m registered with (which…
    i’d completely forgotten about until I started getting these emails
    two weeks ago… coincidence?)
  • emailed
    yesterday’s blog about t’shuvah to a jewish publication (a little late,
    obviously, but still.)
…to name a few of the actions I’ve taken in support of my work transition!
I am nervous about leaving the safety of my
40houraweekdeskjob. Yes.
But, I am taking a lot of action. Even as I drag my
feet in some places, and have certainly
been watching more Netflix than is good for any one person.
But I have a phone call with a mentor today and we’ll talk
about smallness and scarcity and healing and changing. We’ll talk about, “Do not
go back to sleep.” We’ll talk about the beguiling and insincere safety of being
quiet and small. We’ll talk about the pain and bravery of stepping out of the cage
and the tenacity and audacity it takes to stay out of it.
It’s not that I haven’t taken or thought to take any of the
above actions before. It’s not my first time at this rodeo. But I just feel
different. To quote Elisabeth Gilbert quoting a Balinese healer: “Even in my
underpants, I feel different.”
But I also know my habit and pattern of swift work followed
by years of inaction. I know what it’s like for me to engage in a flurry of
activity and then allow it to languish by my lack of follow-up. I know what
it’s like to abandon myself.
Which is why I’m telling everyone and their mother
(literally) about my impending transition.
I cannot do this alone. I am a creature of habit, and I need
you to be like my wagon train – I need you to lead me away from the ruts. If I
let you know I’m on this path, you can help me stay on it. If I let you know
it’s terribly painful for me to work toward something new, you can hold my hand
and tell me you believe in me.
I know the source of all this change must come from within –
I know it’s up to my own inner work to be the foundation for a new life. But I
also believe in you, who believes in me, and we cycle one another into our best
selves and our best lives.
Yes, I am the one who needs to actually look up that
professional development course. And I’m the one who needs to continue
looking at alternative work websites – and actually reply – but without you to
cheer me on, without you to help me hold the lantern of faith, this change wouldn’t work.
That’s what feels so different this time – I feel supported
internally and externally in a way these transitions have never felt. I feel
optimistic and hopeful, giddy and aware.
Yes, the future is uncertain. But one action at a time, with
your help and your heart, I am clarifying the vision of a
future (and present) me who is freer than I’ve ever allowed myself to be. 

gratitude · loss · love · relationships

Conclusion.

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The Cousin, of teenage fame and love unquenched, is getting
married.
The Cousin (cousin of my brother’s best friend) and I had a
long-running on-again-across-oceans-again relationship begun when we were teenagers.
I found his photo recently when I was clearing out my “g-d box” of items taken care of by time and fate, and those still remaining in an
unresolved stasis. I didn’t put his photo back in the box, unresolved though I felt it to be — For the last month
or so, it’s sat by my jewelry box, the image of 16-year-old innocence and a complexity masked by his easy grin. I’ve spoken to it, asked it where he was,
if he was happy, what he was doing, if he thought of me, if we were through.
Last we’d truly spoken, I’d confessed that his moving to
California to join me was likely not a solution to the untethered life he was
looking to escape. California didn’t save me, I told him on the phone the night
of our last conversation. I had to do a lot of work for that to happen.
Our previous dreams of running away together, of his coming
to California with me when I initially moved, that painting of the white picket
fence that was more fantasy than reality, the painting of a life I wanted to
fall into with him, but knew was not supported by truth… All this was crushed
when I told him, No, you can’t move here to escape your life.
Years passed. There was one phone call, miraculously
coincidentally when I was home in New Jersey in 2011, clearing out my childhood
home before the house was sold. A fitting time to call, as I packed up a
childhood, and all its experiences. It was where we met, in fact — in my living
room, with my brother, his best friend, and his cousin, visiting from Ohio.
The brevity of that initial visit, a summer of love, to be
sure, meant that there wasn’t a foundation of reality to build upon, a life to support
our connection. And in that house, a few years ago, I packed up the life of the
person who’d fallen so passionately and deeply in love — as well and as messily
as a 19-year-old can do.
Our phone call wasn’t long. It was more a confirmation that we’d
allowed the strains of time and place corrode the thread that connected us.
But, I’ve never felt complete with that ending.
And so, his photo remained in the “to be resolved” pile in
my mental hopper, and for the last month, on my dressing table: his cheeky grin,
dark mess of hair, lips that rival a female porn star’s.
And that’s how I recognized him when I saw his photo put up
on Facebook yesterday by his aunt.
Time had changed him. His hair receded, cut short long ago
for a military life he chose when he couldn’t move here.
But his lips are the same. That pouting lower lip I
clung onto for hours. That framed his eager smile, formed his caressing
words, and confessed his inner demons.
And he looks happy. On a hilltop in Hawaii with another
woman. Someone who is available to make him happy, who can be there on his
journey when I can’t be, since I can’t be.
That’s our conclusion, then. It’s not the final phone
call I make to congratulate, to plant another seed or water a long-dead one. I
am not saint or enlightened enough to not want to love him still, but I am wise
enough to know we can’t – in the present, in reality.
So, I can put it here. I can write my gratitude for his
finding happiness, what I’ve really wanted for him, no matter my personal
desires. I can put here that I am glad to see him alive, well, experiencing
life. That this conclusion is fitting, acceptable, and perhaps a happy one.
But I can also put here this conclusion ends a chapter that has
spanned nearly half my life, has fed me great happiness, and has let me
experience a connection with another human that I thought eluded me – I can put
here that as I turn the page on “us,” I pack up that painting of the white
picket fence with a mournful finality.

change · connection · fear · growth · love · self-abandonment · self-support

Doctor of Philosophy

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If you have read my blog for any period of time, you may be
aware by now that I seem to have a knack for interpreting the human species and
their actions. I observe, report, make conclusions, and sometimes adjust my own
behavior to meet the findings of what “healthy” or “happy” people seem to be
doing.
Philosophically speaking, in all my deep-cover research on
human behavior, I may well have earned myself a doctorate in human behavior.
However for every inner tube of polymer, there is a flat of
pavement, and it is where the rubber meets the road that I become hesitant.
It is all well and good to observe, predict, and theorize,
to take note of actions of others and even of myself as a predictor and indicator
of action’s next steps. However, there is also the parable about the monk who
spent 20 years in a cave becoming enlightened, and upon emerging decked the
first guy he had a disagreement with.
It is only in practice that we actually learn. (Though, I do
submit that research and reflection help.)
When my mom came to visit a few weeks ago, we began to discuss my romantic life. (Unworried, as she said she was, that I would have any trouble when I was finally ready. She’s not the “where are my grandchildren” type, she said.) I told her a
little about my extra layer of protection around my castle wall metaphor. I
told her that my work currently is about coming to trust myself and my boundaries
enough to let people close enough to know me.
I told her my doubts about feeling capable of a) letting
those guards down, and b) evaluating approachers in a level-headed way. I told
her that I am scared to learn to trust myself, because I’m scared that I can’t.
She responded with a story of her own. She’d taken issue,
herself, with the word “trust.” The airy and elusive nature of that word. And
she’s replaced it with the word, “rely.”
Several years ago, she signed up to be a part of a tour
group that would travel to Scotland to see the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her
friend asked her if she was nervous to go by herself, with no-one she knew? My
mom replied, No. She knew that she could rely on her own effusive and collegial
personality, and that she’d make friends.
She didn’t say that she could trust herself to do this; she
said that she knew she could rely on
herself. That she had her own back, basically.
And she invited me to think about it this way instead: Can I
rely on myself? Do I have my own back?
… Well, judging by a very long history of self-abandoning
actions, it’s hard to answer that with a complete affirmative. But, when
pressed, I know that it is true—that it is true now: I am here for myself, even when things are hard…
and even when things are great.
My own pattern of looking the other way, of procrastinating,
of dismissing myself has begun to lessen. If I look at it honestly.
And so, can I rely on myself? Well, I think I can.
And, here’s the rubber/road test: If I do think I can rely on myself, support myself, be
compassionate and encouraging and honest with myself… Then… it means I’m going
to have to allow the sentries around my castle to stand down, and let
my natural boundaries do their job.
I’m going to have to trust myself (word disparity aside) and
take actions that are indicative of a woman who trusts herself, inviting in
those who are supportive but also challenge me to be my best self, and inviting to leave those who
are not.
I’m going to have to have my back.
And I’m going to have to let go of the reigns. My reigns
have become most like bonds, and not the fun kind.
I am scared to try this new way of being out “in the field.”
But I am also scared to continue limiting my connections with people. (And
again, if you’ve read me for any length of time, you know that, mostly, I’m
addressing the case of chronic single-hood I’ve managed to carry for as long as
I’ve been of dating age. Chronic single-hood is most like being Typhoid Mary.
You feel fine, but no one wants to be near you.)
I know that I can’t (and don’t want to) go on the way I have. I’m too young to
be a spinster, and too old to be a bachelorette.
In the observational reality of modern relationships, I may
be deft at cataloguing and quantifying. But my absence of field research also
means that all of my assumptions about my own viability, accessibility, and
health are purely theoretical.