Category: recovery

abundance · balance · decision · healing · holidays · recovery · school · self-care · work

While the going’s good

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Hey folks – how you been? I’m currently sitting at the desk shift at the dailey method – yes at 7:15am. I traded my shift from last Friday with this Saturday, as I knew I needed the morning free last week, as I was getting ready for my teaching demo etc.

What I did do this Friday, yesterday, was my classical song for voice class – in Italian. Surprisingly, that song went much better than “Have yourself a merry little christmas,” which was the holiday song I chose to sing. My teacher emailed me earlier this week to say another student was going to sing that for our “Holiday Performance” class, and I could do it, but I might want to choose a different song.

So, I paused, and thought about it. And the next morning, Wednesday, my mom texted me to say that Meet Me in St. Louis would be on TV that night. … For those of you who don’t know, Judy Garland sings the above song in that movie – and it’s really sad and beautiful. It’s at this moment after a little girl has just slain the snowmen she made of her family in the backyard because they’re moving from that house, and Judy come fetches her and comforts her (all while in this gorgeous fur coat and bright red dress), rocking her and singing that, “We’ll all be together, if the Fates allow, Until then, We’ll have to muddle through somehow.”

The song always gets me, I cry like a little girl.

So, when my mom texted me that the movie would be on, I decided to sing Have yourself a merry little christmas anyway. And when I sang it yesterday, all drama and all aside, I dedicated the song to my mom. And I totally teared up then too. Now, granted, it was not the performance of my life. I was really nervous, and all full of jiggling emotions, and I was all dressed up in heels and a really hot pencil skirt I’ve worn once because it was a class party, and we’re supposed to dress up for classes when we perform – which is all to say I was also a little …embarrassed? about looking so nice.

But, I sang it, and as is almost always the (genuine) feedback, the class and the instructor said that I have such emotion and presentation and stage-presence. So, maybe my voice is not Judy today, but I showed up with my whole heart & body anyway. And sometimes that’s enough. I’ve heard the “stage-presence” thing often enough to maybe stop dismissing it. My teacher actually said That’s something you cannot learn. So, that felt good. And next it’ll be time for me to leap again and show up for another audition, or rather, email back to some casting calls.

I had an interesting moment this week. I was offered a temp gig over my winter break from school at the awful, Office Space-esque company I worked for before. I’d hemmed and hawed on it, trying to see if I could stay with the interior design firm instead, but they couldn’t guarantee that they would need me in January, or for how long. So, I accepted the job.

Then, on Wednesday, I’m being driven home from class by a school-mate and she’s telling me how she’ll be using the break to really begin thinking about jobs after graduation (in MAY!), and I tell her, well, I’m going to be working full-time in the city, and I’m not going to have one day of holiday the entire break, and I’m actually looking forward to when classes will begin again (in over a month!), because then I can finally breathe again.

Anybody else sense a *warning* in the above? Any tinge of resentment against the job I haven’t even started yet? A large bout of self-pity for not having any time off at all? An intense feeling of overwhelm? Well, yeah, I finally got that too. And on Thursday, the next morning, I met with a girlfriend at lunch to talk about NOT working AT ALL over my winter break from school.

It hadn’t even occurred to me that I would be able to afford not working over winter break. But, it did in my morning pages on Thursday morning, What if I don’t work over break? Can I?

So, that morning, I crunch the numbers. If I don’t work over break (3 weeks – as I’m with the interior design firm til Christmas), I will be entirely covered – entirely covered – through the whole month of January. And what happens mid-January? My student loan replenishes, and I will have enough. I do have enough. I *don’t* have to work over break.

But… being the mind-f*king woman that I am to myself, I work the numbers as to how much I’d earn if I did work (despite ALL self-care information to the contrary). How much would I earn? Enough.for.a.car. A used car, but enough for a car.

What could I use that car for? AUDITIONS!!! Holla!! …. What else? The live modeling gig – they require you have your own transportation as many of the gigs are all over the Bay, at various schools, universities, studios. So… I need a car, right? I need a car to help follow my dreams right? I need a car to be more available for auditions & for gigs, right? … I need a car under these circumstances when I would be working myself so hard that I nearly cried talking about it with my girl friend at lunch on Thursday, right? …

Luckily, my friend is wise, compassionate, and has a mountain of faith in all of our dreams. She said that she doubts that the Universe would make it this hard – that she doesn’t believe in the kind of Higher Power, if you will, who would make us grind ourselves to the bone for our dreams. If it’s meant to be, it usually is simple. That does not mean easy – we have to do work on our end – but look at so many of the things that have just “fallen into place” in my life (See “Wordless but Effective Chant” blog). In each situation when I’ve given up forcing myself into a situation which did not fit, I was led to something which was immensely better.

That continues to happen. So, … my friend and I made an action plan for me. First was to call my temp agency and to decline the job in cubicle purgatory. Also along those lines was to affirm that I would be more conscious next time I was offered a job before I accepted it. I actually hadn’t really asked myself whether I wanted it (I knew/know I didn’t; I was just focusing on having continuous work, as I thought that’s what I needed). So, that’s my action of reparation for the future – to do things differently. Hopefully.

I did call the temp agency, and she said, So you can’t work even a little? And, I said, No. (with all the attendant thank yous and I apologize, etc). And she said, Okay, Thanks for letting me know. And that was that. Cuz, despite the fact that the woman at the new job asked for me specifically (I’d worked there last year and she and I got along really well), and that she rejected other applicants, and that “she only seems to want you,” … (some ego may be mixed in here too, huh). Despite all that – I AM NOT the only woman able to adjust the margins of a 300 page Word document. I am not the only woman able to recalibrate your Table of Contents. Yes, it’s hard, because the whole document is fucked and it’s mind numbing to highlight and tag and adjust and readjust – it’s time consuming and takes patience and diligence – but guess what, I’m NOT the only woman, or person, able to do this job. I appreciate your faith in me, and your appreciation of work I have done in the past but,

Anty needs a recharge. ;P

The other action items were to look into getting away over break. Getting somewhere out of the city, somewhere warm. So, I’m looking into that. Reaching out to my network of elves, I mean friends. If it doesn’t work out, my girl friend will be out of town between Xmas and New Year’s and offered me her place in the city. So, that would sort of be vacationy, and also would mean I wouldn’t have to commute in if I’m doing city related friend things. It’s just an offer, a generous and sweet one.

But, just to know that I will have OPEN TIME. FREE TIME. Time that isn’t filled with dubious stains on BART seats; institutional recycled air; or resentful exhaustion – that’s my Christmas gift (or Chanuka rather!) to myself.

My part of this whole bargain is also to *do* some of my thesis. To email the theater companies. To check out an open mic (that’s one of my self-assignments lately).

But, also, Super Molly, part of my assignment is to take a long walk in some semblance of outdoors, even a park in the midst of a city. To paint my toenails. To see friends. To see new friends. This is a vacation after all.

If the Universe wants me to have a car, it’ll be easier. If the Universe wants me to get an audition, I’ll go “buy a ticket” and apply. If the Universe wants me to feel calm, useful, and available, I’ll let it.

adulthood · courage · direction · maturity · recovery · sex

Undoing Betty Crocker

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Almost finished with week one of the end of school insanity
shuffle. Tomorrow i do my friend’s fashion show. Sunday I have my audition in
SF. and today I did my teaching demo for my Creativity and Spirituality
workshop.
It went really well – my professor almost cried as another
girl was sharing – and this all about a 20 minute collage. I felt really
grateful to be able to share that work with these women. It was good – I did a collage too –
and this one also had someone at a microphone. (In the spring when I
co-facilitated this workshop, I pasted a rockband mick jagger
cartoon yell/singing into a microphone).
But, to get heavy for a minute, that’s not really what’s on
my mind at all. If you’re not in the mood for heavy, read yesterday’s or check back tomorrow – I’m
sure I’ll regale you with something fun about the fashion soiree.
But, for now. This Calling in the One thing. An exercise of a few days ago was about
making peace with our bodies, the next was about peace with our sexuality.
I’ve used the terms before “Betty Crocker” and “Vixen” – I
vacillate between one and the other. Most of my Vixen happened when I was drinking.
It was like the side of fries. The cigarette with a drink. It was just known
that if I drank, I was going to sleep with someone – or at least make out – and
likely in public, to everyone else’s discomfort.
It was a continuation of “just fucking make me feel better.”
The more anonymous, the better, because then I never had to face the shame I
actually felt, or the reason I was running with scissors in the first place.
When I stopped drinking, it was like – well, not to be
crude, but if you put a plug in the jug, I sort of put a plug in me otherwise.
I had a friend around that time who used to be a male prostitute and he told me
that he didn’t have sex for a year after he got sober because it was just
associated with all kinds of other things. So, I became Betty Crocker again.
Here’s the heavy – add in to this damage and abuse I’m
already doing to myself the fact that like one out of six American women I’ve been raped and sexually assaulted, you can imagine the chiasma of all this creates a rather dark
misshapen understanding of what sexuality is, or what sexuality can be.
In CITO, she does say
that for people who have particular trauma to seek help around this as we move
forward, and I’ve been back with my SF therapist for about two months now,
since I started keeping track of my money and knew I needed it, and could now
afford it.
So, yesterday, I’m in her office, and loathe as I may be to
bring this up, I start talking about my feelings of ambivalence around sex – how I dissociate, or how my sexuality, locked in a box, comes striking
out in a ravenous bolt of acting out, and then quickly retreats before I can …
stop it? question why it…I…need to treat my sexuality like a, well, sin, i
suppose. Something you indulge in secretly, silently, shamefully.
We’d been talking about other things, my audition, my new
headshots, and then as soon as we begin on this, my body tenses, I stop
breathing (or breathe so shallowly, it’s like I’m not), and she says, well,
Molly, you have sexual trauma.  —
My brain goes SO WHAT. So do most people walking around. So What?? They don’t all suddenly go all fight or flight.
Therefore, today, when thinking about singing this song I
haven’t rehearsed for class – to prepare to perform in one of the most
vulnerable ways there is – to sing – there’s no hiding in that. It’s just your voice, your breath, what you are able
to pull out from your soul, and sorry lady, my soul is just a little too
rattled for that today.
I asked her if I could sing next week – and lovely woman,
she said yes. (She asked if I were well, and I said, “Physically” – she
understood immediately.) I’ve been a mess all day, the dragon at the head of the cave having been poked wide awake and sensing impending approach. So, yes, I rented a zipcar to
get to class (and to get, finally, to the grocery store and get much
yummy food) – but I needed the cocoon. I needed to not feel more jostled by the
world today. 
So, why tell you? Why “reveal” all this? All this hard, and
yucky, and “nobody wants to hear about this stuff” – Because that voice is the
voice of my pain and fear, and it has kept me a wounded antelope for years. Repression,
denial, they’re our natural responses, but this has outlived its usefulness. So
I’m seeking help; I’m giving voice.
I don’t want to be Betty Crocker, nun of the knitted socks
and rom-coms. I don’t want to be the Vixen, fly-by-night assassin of self-esteem.
I want to be Molly – human – with scar-tissue – but
preeminently, whole. And available for the wonderful thing sex can be.
acting · action · courage · faith · gratitude · joy · performance · persistence · poetry · recovery · school · spirituality · synchronicity · time

Alright Sports Fans

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

You know those montage-y frenetic moments in movies or,
well, Looney Tunes, where they play “Flight of the Bumble Bee” and everything
starts moving insanely quickly?
Well, it’s sorta like that. I feel like saying, Drivers!
Start Your Engines!
This morning, Monday of the beginning two weeks of
school/work insanity, I emailed my boss at my temp gig and asked her if I could
have Wednesday off. I also asked her to get a little more clear with me on when
this assignment ends, as it’s really vague, and I don’t like my income hanging
on “really vague.” So she said, Yes to Wednesday off, and that she’d love to
keep me into January, so let her get back to me on Thursday. So, Okay.
PHEW on Wednesday off – my crazy long day with evening
class, and now I can meet with my professor to talk about my final project –
due next Thursday. I emailed him this morning too and suggested what I think I
might do for my project – it might be a script involving the two heckler muppet
dudes. Yep. He wanted creative! I’m thinking of having them, as images of the
upper class, watch several scenes from the Shakespeare plays we’ve read this
semester – scenes where Shakespeare seems to be calling out the upper class.
He’s got a lot of commentary on
classism, and I found myself drawn to those pieces in all the works. So, we’ll
see. That does not seem like an “easy” thing to do. But, it could be fun – they
get all ruffled and heckle-y, and then maybe that bald eagle guy comes in at
the end (You can tell I’ve been influenced by the Muppet Movie advertisement at
bus stops…)
After I emailed him, I packed up my shit and went to school.
I knew that hanging out here would only mean distraction – facebook, cat, tea,
nibbling, general procrastinating. Luckily, both the girls I was supposed to
meet with this morning cancelled – which was totally HP doing for me what I
couldn’t do for myself, as I really didn’t have the time to meet with them, and
would likely have been distracted.
So, I went to school, and plunked down in the English
Department with my tea, my laptop, and my homework. I got pretty far. (Poem for
evening class, two singing critiques for Friday, printed thesis draft.) There’s
still a lot to do, but I am feeling better about it.
I have to do a teaching demo on Friday of the workshop I’m
piloting in the Spring – “Creativity and Spirituality”. I co-facilitated this
workshop last semester with the Director of Spiritual and Religious Life at
school, and it went pretty well. So on Friday, I have to demo a portion of the workshop
to my professor and my classmates. I’m not too worried about it – but I do need
to get my own script down a little more. Leading people through spiritual
processes – well, you have to have a degree of confidence in yourself and the
work, to come from a calm position, or else people who may already be nervous
about WTF is going to happen – am I going to speak in tongues? is there going
to be “G-d” stuff? – feel like they are being led by a knowledgeable guide.
Luckily for me, this is all work that I’ve done. Some of the
pieces for the full workshop next semester (3 times, 3 hours, for 3 different
groups of women) I haven’t done, I’ve created from my own imagination, but I
believe in them. The whole workshop is about helping the participants to see that
they can access creativity in a variety of modes, and to call that pathway by
which they access it “spirituality.” To begin (or continue) to understand that
we always have something to say, to give, to create, to invent, because we have
the un-tap-out-able well of creativity inside us already – we don’t have to
“hunt” for it, “work” for it, we just need to access it.
And sure, it sounds “woo woo” hippie shit, but, I believe
it. I don’t always remember it – and try to create from a place of desperation
or scarcity – but the real juice is always there.
So, that’s my workshop. I also have 4 reading responses and
a final paper to do for this class. … And a final paper and an end of semester
portfolio for my poetry workshop.
BUT, on top, next to, in spite of all this – the Universe
works without me – often.
I get an email this afternoon while writing with frenzied
fingers that a slot opened up in the auditions…and I can get in Sunday at
8:30pm, if I want it.
I want it.
Of course, this week of ALL weeks (cue “Bumble Bee”), I now
have to memorize 2 one minute monologues, get my headshots printed, and read up
on this Strindberg fellow. But … it’s general auditions for a bonafide theater
company in SF for their upcoming season in a bonafide theater – and *I’m*
auditioning. Holy Crow.
The very next email I get? From another theater company (no
lie) I emailed in my diligent action moment of a few weeks ago. They can’t fit
me in this time, but will keep my info on file. Fabulous.
Just when I was beginning to feel like I was watching myself
retract from the whole acting thing again, the Universe throws me a bone. I was
watching myself follow the pattern of “flurry of action, then nothing, flurry
of action, then nothing” – but, this time, with my small little actions, these
self care little moments of listening to myself, this comes along. It is just an audition, I have to keep reminding myself, because I get easily scared the f
out.
To counter the crazy “I have no idea what I’m doing,” I
called in help. I called Lorraine, my acting friend I called a few weeks ago.
We just spoke, and she gave me some good tips on the monologues I’m choosing, a
classic and a contemporary: Gertrude from Hamlet cuz I just read it– and The Flood from Vagina Monologues cuz I know it, as I’m cast in it at school in the
Spring! Plus she gave me head’s up on a place to get my headshots printed in
the city, precisely where I will be on Thursday at noon.
So, yeah, I’m alright. A little dazed. But, I did a lot of
work today (and some action a few weeks ago) and some unexpected bounty
happened. Fancy that. 

action · growth · joy · painting · persistence · recovery

I love Mondays. & A Return to Art.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

It’s my least busy day of the week, and I get to see some of
my favorite people. My friend came by this morning and saw my holiday cards
pinned up on a string of ribbon and said, you painted those? or maybe it was you painted those? 😉 in any case, yes. it’s strange, i
still get pretty thrilled when my paintings turn out well – it’s something I’ve
had to cozy up to, work at, come back to.

a few years ago, I’d stopped drawing completely. i had too
long associated doing art with drinking a 40oz – well, whatever the Korean measuring equivalent was (they had 3 types of beer: piss, pisser, and pissest, but, they
worked). It’s funny cuz art was really the one thing my roommates there knew
about me, about my hobbies – besides the drinking – and so each gave me some
kind of drawing or painting set for Christmas.
I lived with two guys, one a Canadian, one a Texan, that
first contract year. Their contracts run February to February because of the
whole Chinese New Year thing; it was October when I got there in 04, and
February of 06 when I left. But that first 4 months, I spent in this smaller
more agricultural town – there was a pig slaughterhouse not far, and the lunch
lady at the school would go into the hills/mountains to get some sprouts and
things for the lunch … the always popular hot dog soup.
My Canadian roommate was the adventurous type, he found the
well of fresh mountain water where you could stand with your jug and some
ancient Korean woman. He also once reported a troop of Korean soldiers passing
by him in the pitch dark one night when he was up the mountains alone.
In any case, when I stopped drinking, I stopped drawing. I
used to sit with my 40 and draw or paint (infrequently) until I couldn’t really
see the lines so clearly anymore, then stop – drawing that is. So I didn’t
know, for a while, how to draw sober.
When I finally did take my things out (the end of my sketch
book is pretty hilarious, lots of fucked up looking women – i’ve always drawn
women, bodies, faces, i don’t know why – maybe cuz it’s what I see most often,
or because there were fashion magazines around when I was little –
but also, women are beautiful. just beautiful, i love drawing them, still). So,
i took my things out about a year and a half after I’d gotten sober and tried to
sketch one of these magazine women. – Utter Fail.
Well, at least, I thought it was at the time. I spent the
longest time trying to get the lines just right, and got so frustrated over and over till i just quit the whole thing
and shoved the sketch pad and pencils back into some drawer. Done.
Then, I started to host parties.
Somehow hosting became the thing that brought out my
creativity again. The first party was a holiday one (Star of David Christmas
Cookie party), and I didn’t do any “actual” art, but I rearranged everything
(moved my bed onto it’s end up against the wall!) and I went to the party
supply store and got some fancy looking sheets of scrap-booking paper and
arranged them on my bedroom wall in a diamond like pattern, and I took all my variously
received holiday cards and taped them in a pattern on the living room wall.
Come to think of it – when I moved into that one bedroom
apartment from the room I was renting in some (very nice) lady’s house in the
outer Sunset is when it all started again. I had all sorts of creative ideas
for the apartment – i got to choose the paint colors, the flooring, and I had a
semi-disaster when I decided to paint half my bedroom a crimson, bordello red,
and left the other half white, as I intended to do a stencil of a damask
pattern in black and white all over the other side … this never came to
fruition, and finally my house painter friend came and painted the rest of the
room red!
The next party was a “Pre-Val Hearts&Stars” and I
created a whole tableau of mushy words in a crossword pattern and cut out each
letter and pasted them on my wall (among sex, lust, and other words, “conceive”
got a few eye-brow raises) ;P But still no painting.
HollerWeen! 2009, I painted. Well, I started with oil
pastels. I did a version of Munch’s Scream
with a jack-o-lantern head instead, and I was thrilled with it. I loved to get
my fingers dirty again, smushing the colors around, messing up, going over, and
just getting in there. It was
wonderful. I did a few other riffs on some famous paintings (“Cece n’est pas
une pumpkin”, and Warhol’s Marilyn with jack-o faces instead. And one in the
kitchen I wasn’t sure was “okay” of Jesus on the cross with a jack-o head…!)
I loved it – and so I intended to do Valentine’s again the following
Spring and I wanted to do something big – really big. I began these enormous
sexy lips with a white flower in between them in oil pastels and colored
pencil. It was daunting, I was frustrated, but I had a party to finish it for.
This was why I had been doing all this
art – I had a party to throw – my party was my muse. And it worked. I didn’t
feel satisfied with that one for some time, it didn’t feel “done” till I got
some good suggestions on it (drawing a flower on a 5 foot piece of paper is
really hard!). But finally, I signed my name on that paper, and it was done
too.
So, then, here I am now (this blog is getting long, and
maybe you don’t care), but it’s wonderful for me to remember how tentative I
was, how frustrated and upset and worried that I’d never be able to draw again.
And now? Over my bed hang 7 sexy paintings of people, body parts, attached to a
garden trellis like a headboard – and like I said, it’s not perfect, there are
things I see that I know others don’t. But I love it. It makes me happy, and
it’s hot.
And now here are my holiday cards, beginning to line my
wall, and they’re silly and fun, and somewhat impressive even to me.
That’s what I love about this work – I continue to amaze
myself especially when I come with a spirit of fun. Creating paintings for a
purpose (a head board, a holiday card, a party) gives me the juice, the north
on my creative compass – and even though, sure, I’m in school for writing, and
I’ve been trying to get in to acting, watching one branch of my creative tree flower
is actually pretty encouraging.
Though, now I drink tea, not Hite.

oil pastel on posterboard 2009
integrity · letting go · love · recovery

The Cousin.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

When I was 19, my brother’s best friend’s cousin (got that?)
came to visit NJ from Ohio. His name was Ben, like my brother, so we just
called him “The Cousin” for clarification.
And, oh, how we fell. I wrote a poem about that too. (pasted
an excerpt below). The cousin and I have been each other’s… well, he’s been my
“if we’re single and 40” contingency plan. I said to him once that if I were
willing to let myself fall into the painting of the white picket fence
with him, I would. We were very good painters.
He was the first (and only) guy to send me flowers on
Valentine’s Day. He sent me a poem about my hair (that it was “everywhere” ~
not like that! ~ like it’s so unruly) and it had little hand-drawn cartoony
pictures of me with my unruly hair. Enclosed was a “self-portrait” he’d done in
Microsoft Paint or something, with a backwards cap, because that’s what 16 year
old boys did back then.
Yes, 16. He was 16; I was 19. Be grossed out – but that’s
how it happened. My best friend dated my brother’s best friend that summer
– of course it was summer – and the 4 of us were a raucus ball of Summer
Lovin’. We had a blast. I was his first. And although it sorta sucks to say, I
think part of what has kept our link for so long is that the fiery kindling of
that summer romance never had time to extinguish. The summer ended, he went
back to Ohio. But for the next five or more years, we kept up semi-regular
correspondence, lots of meandering, poetic, off-kilter emails. Jokes, and
references, and randomness – a randomness that almost, well, it made sense
between us. Our individual off-kilter-ness made sense to each other. We felt
understood; I felt understood. (I’m sure you understand) 😉
Last I visited him was on my drive out to San Francisco in
2006; we had another lovey weekend together – sensitive, understood, silly –
and drunken. Last we were both in New Jersey, I was no longer drunken, and he
couldn’t remember the mildly offensive things he’d said the night before. Then
it’s 2009 and he says maybe he should come out to California … and I tell him
that California didn’t fix me – I had to do a lot of work to get out of the
mess(es) I’d been in. And he says, Oh, and we hang up.
And I hadn’t heard from him in two years … till a month ago.
I was in New Jersey and I get a text from him. He hadn’t
heard that I was in town, he just decided then (cosmic Universe oo-ee-oo sound)
to text me. Remarkably, a “Calling in the One” exercise of that very week was
“Renegotiating Old Agreements.” 
(“Marry you when we’re certain we won’t find anyone else & are done
doing everything else” Agreement ring any bells? ~ cue music again.)
So we talk on the phone the next day, and I play “friendly”
catch-up because, really, what is there to say? … What is there to say when I’m
standing at the threshold of letting go of a promise written in gossamer? How
can I say, I’m getting “over” you. Because that’s not the truth either. I will
always be that 19 year old in NJ August heat in my best friend’s bed with my
hair strewn across his vibrating body. I will always be her, but I will also
always be the every-other-age-woman that I’ve been, including today’s ~ and
that woman is very desperately sorry to disappoint her 19 year old, and to
disappoint The Cousin ~ but I am available for a different kind of love now.
One that isn’t a painting of a picket fence, but one that breathes, is adult,
is still random and off-kilter, but, frankly, is no longer available for “if I
can’t find anything better” ~ because everyone is worth more love than that.
I still have a renegotiating letter to write and likely
burn, ceremony-like. And a potential conversation to have. Or maybe, as has
been suggested to me, a promise written in gossamer will simply fade when I
stop re-writing it.
***
(from “Love Poems”)
There’s a
voicemail I’ve pressed 9 to save for two years—it’s a joke, without preface, 
and he just hangs up when it’s done—and there’s a text poem about a porch and twilight
and hands I can’t yet erase, and there’s him, 16, in August heat, on the bench seat
of my dad’s cutlass.
***
family · growth · poetry · recovery

Excavation: Chapter 3

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So, it’s been bothering me that I have recently been writing about all this fucked up shit about my family and childhood, particularly now when I feel that I’ve been “doing so much better” and “moving beyond it.” Or rather, truly feeling that it (the past) doesn’t have the same power to inform my behavior and interpretation of the world that it used to have.

And so, I’ve been curious then to see that it’s been coming out so much in my poetry. Then, I had a realization. I had begun a serial poem a few years ago titled “Excavation”, and it has a few “chapters”, Curiosity, and Betrayal, and a 2.5 that I can’t find, But I’d always been curious as to when the next chapters would show up, and, I believe they are. I believe this is the work that is happening right now.

It occurs to me now that “excavation” is not just, dig stuff up and get rid of it. It’s dig stuff up, examine it, and then get rid of it (or lay it aside, or hold it differently, etc.). And so, writing all these poems, I’ve recognized, is the examination. This is what these ancient pieces have to say; there’s a reason they don’t feel current, and that’s because they’re not. They’re like fossils of an ancient emotion or experience, and my work now is just recording them. Acknowledging they exist, validating the experience, and setting them aside with honor, but without the power of tyranny.

I find comfort in this realization; that I am “moving beyond” these old wounds and experiences. But, I actually have to process them (record them) as I excavate them, or else they still have a hold on me, they’re still unexamined, and therefore like the ghosts of souls who still have work left to do on this plane. By writing about them, I am finalizing the work of these experiences. By recording what was written in and on these fossils, I am laying them to a final rest. And so, “Excavation Chapter 3: Examination”, so that eventually, I may come to the next chapter, Freedom.