Category: recovery

fear · finances · hope · recovery · relationships · romance · self-love

"There’s gotta be something better than this…" ~ Sweet Charity

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Why, didn’t every 7th grader want to become a botanist and live in a tree to be away from people? 
I am at the radically awful and hopeful place of beginning to work on relationships, and my relationship to relationships. 
Coincidentally or not, the last time I started this kind of work, I was into the deep and dredging and combing-over-my-sad-history-of-self-abandonment-and-isolation part when I was struck with a bout of Leukemia, and had to stop.
Now that I’m through a round of work on my relationship to money, scarcity, “under-being,” under-earning, me and my mentor agreed that we could work on the other side of the “romance and finance” coin.
Color me thrilled. 
In fact, I am looking forward to it, … sort of. Not the work itself, but the results of it. 
I am not meant to continue my early patterns of self-insulation through isolation or self-abandonment/-destruction. Or, rather, I’m not content to. What I’m meant to do is really only up to me, isn’t it? And a few strokes of fate, I imagine. (hello, cancer.)
But, whatever role I can have in loosening the noose of “Trust No One,” I am signing up for it. 
I do feel that I am in a better place to begin this time than I was about 2 years ago. I’m working with someone who knows me well, who’s walked this path with and before me, and whom I trust and love.
Even though our particular histories are dissimilar, their endings and the feelings they’ve evoked in us became the same. 
She’s told me that my feeling of imminence, urgency & impatience with myself and “the world” will fade: I am a 33 year old healthy smart beautiful woman. Why the fuck have I never been in a relationship that’s lasted over 6 months, and only two of them at that? Why have I been unintentionally celibate for years on end or find myself particularly attracted to taken men? My “hot” years are fading; I want to take advantage of them!
And yet. I seem to land in the same place each time I try to throw myself into the ring, or try to avoid it. And so, it’s time to try something else. Something I know will work, because it works for thousands of other people who walk a path of recovery. 
I’m not stoked. But I am. 
It’s sad stuff to riffle through. There is a Trail of Tears that’s led me here. But I feel ready for this. No, not eager to riffle; yes, eager to heal, move on, move forward. Let whoever I’m supposed to be, or whoever I’m hiding, to integrate. 
Does this look like a bright shiny pot of gold(en haired children) at the other end? Likely not. 
I finished the work on money, and I’m still in the thick of the results of patterns that brought me here. But I imagine they’ll shift over time. 
So, too, I imagine with the love and relationship stuff. I won’t buy a wedding dress at the end of it. But perhaps I’ll buy date one. 

(p.s. this missive is in no way a passive request for dating invitations. but thanks.)  😉 
acceptance · humility · recovery · self-acceptance · work

“Finding His Way”

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Today will be my first day of training for women’s clothing
sales at Neiman Marcus.
I never imagined I’d write that, but I’m not ashamed of it
either. Nervous? Yes. Worried I will have to be aggressive to make sales?
Yes. A little trepidatious at having to learn all new things about brands and
quotas and sales targets? Yes.
Grateful? You bet.
An interesting thing happened the other day. I was asking a
friend about a guy we both know, who I’d just met: What does he do for a living?
“He’s a server. He dropped out of law school. He’s finding
his way.”
Aren’t we all, I replied.
And I noticed something. Although I still believe that
pursuing our passions and earning a
livable wage are ideals for me in my own life and in the life of a potential
romantic partner, when I heard what this notably attractive man did for a
living, I accepted it.
This, is new for me. Call me a snob, and perhaps I have
been, but because of my own vicious drive to “do something” worthy in my
lifetime, because of my own aching need to “move the needle of human progress
forward” through my employment, I have been judgmental of my own jobs. And of
others’.
But I noticed that I didn’t have that same snobbery come up when
told about this guy’s job. Perhaps, I have gained – or been brought down to – a
level of humility around what people are doing in and with their lives.
Which means, perhaps I am finding that same compassion and
acceptance for myself. Perhaps. Maybe. Surprisingly.
Do I still want to do work that enlivens me and helps others
on their own path? Yes. But I am accepting where I am today for the first time
in a long time.
Partly, it’s because I’m taking action outside of my
“regular work hours” to engage in activities like acting, and singing, and
getting ready to make this video-ask to help get an art studio. Perhaps now,
for reasons unknown to me, I am beginning to call those other hours worthy,
enough, more than enough. And they begin to settle the aching gnaw of “WHAT ARE
YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE???” that dogs my every step.
Perhaps, although this new work could be considered
not “high” employment (working toward a greater good and utilizing my skills
and talents), perhaps I’ve just become grateful to have any employment at all.
Or at the very least, employment that doesn’t sit me behind a computer screen
40 hours a week.
I am delighted and surprised at this internal shift. This loosening
of the noose around myself and others’ over how they pay their rent. Obviously,
it’s none of my business what others do for work, but it’s a question we all
seem to ask nonetheless. And in its answering, we begin to categorize and label
people according to a caste system.
Maybe it’s realizing I’m part of the caste of people who are
bright, creative, and longing. I am one of those “finding his way.”
I have found a compassion and acceptance of this place.
(Though the shrewd part of me wonders if that means I’ll now move into the “found”
category because of my new “achievement/enlightenment”… And I can offer a wry smile to that “never good enough” part of myself.)
To finding our way, be we server or CEO – Humans, all. 

authenticity · community · growth · love · recovery · theater

Spiritual Echolocation

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I am not the best
judge of my progress or my abilities. But, even though I can’t rightly see myself, I’m beginning to notice that I am hearing
it from others.
And this in itself feels like progress: At least I’m hearing
it.
There was a time when I described compliments as one of those
bug zapper lamps people hang on their porch. The bugs merely get within range
of the lamp and they get zapped dead. Same with compliments for me: Anything positive that was said would get deflected before it even got close to
touching me. None of that here, pew! pew!
I’d said that you can’t receive a compliment if there’s no
complementary place within you to receive it. If there’s nowhere it fits
within your own understanding of yourself, then there’s no way that it can be
accepted. There’s no ring of truth, because you don’t believe it yourself.
Time passed, and I’ve become more able to receive positive
feedback about certain things, because I have begun to hone and cultivate the
place within me that is receptive, the place within me that believes you
because I believe it myself.
That said, there’s room for growth.
This week, I’ve had several experiences where I’ve been told
about my progress and abilities, and even though I can’t quite feel this, I’m beginning
to recognize that I believe them, I
believe others are seeing this, even if I’m not myself.
Hence, spiritual echolocation. I can’t see it myself, but I
believe in the feedback I’m receiving – so there must be something to it.
I know that feeding off external validation is not the
way to walk about the world, but what it’s doing for me is giving me hope that
one day I can see it. There is an
existence of a cave wall. Others are telling me so. If that is truth, there is
hope that I will see it, too.
On Friday night, after the first act of our opening night of
To Kill a Mockingbird, the director came
backstage. He was beaming. He was so glad and proud of the work I was doing
on-stage.
I was dubious. But I thought Wednesday’s preview night
went much better; it felt better.
He told me he was the only rightly judge of my performance,
and Friday night, I was better.
Whether I felt it or not.
On Saturday morning, I went for my semi-regular voice
lesson. And at the end of a phrase I’d sung, my teacher applauded and cheered –
he even gave me a high five.
“Did you hear that?” he asked, delighted.
No, I didn’t. I can’t hear myself.
The noise and buffer between what is and what I perceive is
loud and thick.
“We’re going to have to record you more then,” he said. “You
have to get used to hearing yourself.”
This morning, I was on the phone with my mentor, and I
reported these incidents to her, as I begin to parse out these places where I’m
being told one thing, but I’m hearing and sensing another.
She, too, had told me that I’m farther along than I can
feel. And she gave me a metaphor (because we all know I love those!):
She told me I am a tree creating deep, deep roots. A solid
foundation. And you can’t always see that growth above ground, but it’s
happening.
We were talking (again) about my questioning of where and
who I am this lifetime and where I’m going. And she said, some people have
really gorgeous foliage, and weak roots.
We’re doing the work now — early, some might say — that others
come to in mid and later life. Creating a root system, carving out the rot,
cleaning the wounds.
Like a field of asparagus, you don’t see its heroic work
until one morning you turn, and the whole field has sprouted green, fully
formed, like Athena.
I am not used to
hearing or seeing myself clearly. I’m not adequately armed with the ability to
track my own progress. And thank god for other people, then!
But I do feel the promise and the hope of their reflection.
I am beginning to hear what they’re saying instead of zapping it, because I’m beginning to uncover the place within me that believes it myself.
I’m starting to open to a truth that’s been, and is, hard
for me to swallow:
I am worthy. 

career · despair · perspective · recovery · self-destruction · self-esteem · self-worth

Vision Quest

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I was talking with an acquaintance the other day about what
I know to be true. I know that, up or down, since I left my home at the age of
23 I have always had a safe place to live. Everything else in my life — job,
money, friendships, romance — can be in upheaval, but no matter what continent,
coast or city I find myself in, I manage to find a safe and comfortable place to
live.
My acquaintance said, for him, he knows that all he
needs is a rucksack and he’s fine.
We’re at different places and have different needs for sure.
But it causes me to think about my assumptions about my
life. I have this assumption, this belief and history to back it up, that I
will always be taken care of on the home front.
I also have assumptions and belief and history to back
it up that even though I don’t know how, financially, I always do land of my
feet. But that usually it takes a long while, and the outcome of that is not
always what I want to be doing, but I am eventually safe there, too, even if a little battle-weary.
I also have other beliefs and history backing up my
assumptions: I don’t know how to live a balanced life. I don’t know how to
have a relationship. Or how to earn enough to support myself in a field I love.
I have beliefs about myself that keep me stuck. And what
I then have is entitlement.
Someone should tell me what I should do, because I don’t
know how.
I’ve been looking back at some of the writing work I’ve
been doing lately, finally moving on past the section on amending
relationships in my life, and in my prior writings and inventory work, I read that entitlement around jobs comes up virulently.
And only a few days ago was I able to see that for me,
entitlement is an outcome of hopelessness. I can’t, I don’t know how, I’ll fuck
it up – you do it for me. You make it work.
Another thing I noticed in my writing was how some of
my despairing fears have dissipated since I began that inventory work over 6
months ago. Some of the same haranguing thoughts about my own ability to speak
up for myself, to follow my dreams, to do things I don’t know how to do have
been challenged since the time I’ve written them.
Since the beginning of 2014, when I decided I was going to
make a go of this acting thing, I’ve been in 4 plays. That doubles the number
I’ve been in since 2006. I made a decision and followed it up with action. I
didn’t really know what I was doing. I took a few classes at Berkeley Rep that
I didn’t find altogether transforming; I found a proper headshot photographer;
I replied to audition calls.
I have been stalling on putting myself out there for my
essay tutoring work, because I don’t know how to do it.
And this leads to a feeling of, If it’s supposed to happen,
then it will. It’ll just happen.
A friend calls it “going rag-doll on G-d.” Okay, you want
“surrender,” you want me to let go of my plans because my ideas are limited by
my fears? Sure – here, you have it. You
drag me along into the life I want to have.
The point is, there’s a difference between surrendering and
giving up.
This blog is a little all over the place today, but so’s my
brain.
Basically, I have some beliefs about my life, like my home,
that make me feel secure. I have other beliefs about my life, like my earnings,
that make me feel uncertain and hopeless.
There’s really no reason for the difference, except I
continue to reinforce them both. I am blind to the changes that occur in and
around me when it comes to perpetuating my negative beliefs.
But looking back at my work from 6 months ago, acknowledging
the success of following a dream, I really have to acknowledge that I don’t have to do things the same way, right? I
really do have to let myself see
that I’m not as helpless as some part of me wants to believe, right? I do have
to accept that I’m not as broken as I want to believe, right?
And, so this is the work, now. To pull back from the chatter
which causes me to stagnate and become paralyzed against action. The work is to
see that positive beliefs exist within me, and to let those fuel my action
toward my next place.
I am not stuck. I am not helpless. I am not depressed,
deficient, or despairing. I am only short-sighted. 
And for that, I can get better glasses.

healing · joy · recovery · relationships · self-preservation · trauma

Recalibrating the Bar.

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Surely, normal is relative. I read some of my blogs about my
past, and I think, Jesus, this is not
what “normal” people have dealt with. I listen to some of my acquaintances
share their histories, and I think, “Thank god things weren’t that bad with
me.”
In some comparisons, my life has been saner and pretty charmed; in other comparisons, it’s been dysfunctional and tragic.
Yesterday, I came home from hearing tell of someone’s tragic
past, “worse” than mine. Then I picked up where I left off in Autobiography
of a Face, because surely the story of a
little girl’s jaw sawn off through cancer is “worse” than my own story.
And I decided then, it is time for me to recalibrate my bar for
normal and dysfunction.
I was feeling activated by the story I’d heard earlier in
the evening. I was feeling protective of the children that story was being told
to, and I was experiencing a hardening in my chest, made of anger and
self-protection against the terror of that story.
And despite the fact that things in my life have been on the
plus and minus side of well-being, I think it’s time for me to start marching
toward those people and experiences that don’t trade in trauma.
There tends to be a uniting force among those in my crowd,
knowing that we’ve, most of us, come from some kind of trauma. Wherever that
may fall on the spectrum of horror. But, we feel an understanding with one
another on the basis of a shared experience, and sometimes this unification
posits us against more “normal” folk, folks who perhaps didn’t come from that seething primordial ooze.
The problem, and I’ve contemplated it before, is that when
you trade in trauma, there’s no value in happiness. When you bond over tragedy,
how do you boast your success?
Over the last few years, my threshold for violence and gore
has lowered dramatically. Even “silly” crime t.v. shows that used to be my
favorites, I’ve had to eliminate from my visual diet. I just can’t stomach
them anymore.
As time has passed, I’ve become more aware and attuned to
when those shows or images are getting to me – when I’m cringing, or closing my
eyes – and I’ve taken note of those cues, and begun to drop them from my cue.
It feels the same to me with these stories that are around
me.
I read Autobiography
last night, despite knowing that I didn’t want to read it. The language is
beautiful, the plot is compelling; by all counts, it’s a well-crafted book. But
I don’t think I want to read any more – in fact, I know that, and I’m going to
have to decide if I heed that information or not.
The same is true with some of the stories I hear around me.
It’s going to be up to me to begin either seeking out or attracting into my
life people, not who don’t have those
stories of trauma in their past, but who don’t feel compelled to broadcast them.
Who don’t feel compelled to do so inappropriately.
I am not saying that I will only surround myself with
“normal” folks, or that the stories of our pasts are not important. I am,
however, saying that my trauma meter is full, and I need to back away from
media or people who will put it over the edge because of their own hemorrhaging boundaries.
I am, of course, an advocate for sharing of ourselves, as you’ve read over and over in my blog, but I stand behind the knowledge and hope that others click to read this on purpose, that this blog is chosen as a media source
for them, that I’m not dumping it on anyone. I also think perhaps it is time for me to begin walking farther
away from the retelling of these stories, as repetition keeps them powerful.
I don’t know what the line of balance is between honesty and
appropriateness. But I do know there is one.  

action · caree · exercise · recovery · scarcity · self-care · work

The Dailey Grind

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So, here I am, back to my Monday morning shift at The Dailey Method exercise studio! My 5:30am Monday morning shift…!

I arranged to have a sub for me during the weeks Addams Family was in performance (and then an extra one last Monday, since, hey, I was tired!). Now back to a 5am Monday morning wake-up call again. But I do think it’s worth signing people into class and folding towels for three hours in trade for the free unlimited classes I get. Granted, I’ve been so tired and busy lately, I haven’t been able to come at all. And my muscles feel it. But I’ll be back soon.

In the meantime, I get to use this time (despite the thumping music in the studio room) to do job research, … and do a little line memorization. Today will be the first run-through of Act 1. There’s a lot more for me to learn, but I’m glad I decided to take it (more) easy this weekend.

I still didn’t get done all of what I wanted, or study my lines as much as I’d have liked, but progress. I feel like I’m staving off the cold that I was about to succumb to. I got to clean some things up in the apartment, and I cancelled the non-necessity engagements.

Interestingly enough, I was approached yesterday after rehearsal with some potential work opportunities, but until there’s more conversation, it’s all ethereal. That said, it was gratifying to see that people notice what assets I can add and what skills I have. More will be revealed on that part.

It’s also time to work on the final (for now) section of amending relationships that don’t sit well with me. Third and final is, huzzah, work. Specifically my current employer.

Funny to me that I wrote this list back in the summer, and now as it’s my last week of work there, I’m getting the chance to work on this now. There’s nothing in specific that I need to necessarily “make amends” for; it’s more about attitude. It’s also about showing up on time(!), which this week will be harder, as I flit from dentist appointment to interview to… another dentist appointment.

Did you know that Covered California doesn’t cover dental? I didn’t! Until I was reclined underneath my dentist’s light last Friday afternoon, and she said, Yes, you do need these fillings — and then dropped the “not covered” bomb. Hence the several appointments this week.

So, that’s more information as I continue on my “looking” path. In fact, my dentist had a great recommendation for an alternative private school, and I just applied to them a minute ago.

I have my second interview tomorrow with the alternative private school I met with last week — whom I told I would only be available to work 30 hours per week. And that seemed to go over fine. With the wage I asked for (which I’ve been regretting I didn’t increase), I’d be able to make the same amount as I do now working 40 hours a week. I have my fingers crossed — but if it’s a good fit, it’ll happen, and if it’s not, it won’t.

The school is also located in the middle of an industrial park, office-building wasteland in Walnut Creek. Which is quite the far cry from the verdant landscape outside my current office in North Berkeley. But, sometimes you make compromises!

In the meantime, I’m going to focus on what I can do at the job I’m at now, watching my attention, (my facebook time!), and how I’m interacting with my coworkers. It’s not any of their faults that I am not fulfilled at work and therefore it’s not fair for me to seethe toward them, or show up late as a petulant rebellion.

I have no doubt that part of my amending my relationship with my current job is, a) to leave, and b) to understand what it is that got me into that relationship to begin with so I don’t end up here again with another employer.

All of those on my list are relationships I have stayed in too long, out of fear, out of scarcity, out of an idea that I can’t get what I truly need.

(I hope) I am taking action and self-inventory that will help me to move forward differently. That I’m gaining a semblance of understanding that I don’t have to sell myself short; that with work and vision, I can get where I want to, and be the person I want to. I can have the life I want to live, and I don’t have to demonize those who are not behaving how I want them to.

The only person’s behavior I can change is my own — and, well, I believe I am. (Come what may!)

action · community · faith · perseverance · recovery · self-care · spirituality · writing

Don’t Freak Out: A How-To.

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When I was sick, I became extremely diligent about my
spiritual practice.
Despite, or perhaps including, the conversations I had with
a few select friends about the nature, existence, purpose, and questionable
benevolence of a Higher Power, I knew that my safest and surest course through
all that uncertainty, fear, and buzzing activity around me was to touch base
with my center.
It really was only after the first month, though, that I was
able to write. I found my first journal entry in a notebook friends had brought
me in the hospital just days after I was diagnosed. It begins Saturday, September 29, 2012.
There’s one on the 30th, and then it stops. Until after my month of chemo and
recovery in the hospital.
But, thereafter, I made it a huge part of my practice to
journal, meditate, and eventually write my near-daily blog. I even made the
nurse put a sign on my hospital room door that read, “Meditation in progress;
Come back in 20 minutes.” (I personally loved that this meant people would
continually be turned away without a firm time listed, and I could have some
solitude in that busy and anxious place!)
But, I think about this practice now (journal, meditate, blog), one that was common
for me before I was sick, one that was essential to me during my treatments, and one that still needs to be a part of my
daily life.
Meetings, Movement, and Meditation are my recipe for sanity.
And most recently, with all the hubbub, I’m lucky to get even one in there.
But I know very specifically and with assurance that it not
only works, it also helps to light my way through.
I am in another place of uncertainty, fear, and buzzing activity. And my only way through is to have the anchors of my
practice.
There’s a phrase I’ve heard, “Most days I meditate for
thirty minutes, but on really busy days, I meditate for an hour.” Not that I’m doing that! But the intention is there; the intention to give myself even more time and space to coalesce, to touch down, to get
grounded, and to listen.
I have less trouble listening as I do heeding. It’s all well
and good to listen, and I can do that, and sometimes get answers or guidance;
but if I’m not following through or up on the information I receive, what’s the
point? Then I simply know what I’m not
doing and get to beat myself up for it!
And, I guess that’s not the point either.
I get to remember this morning that I have been in more dire
straits than the one I’m currently in: Job ending Friday; uncertain income
sources; uncertain path toward fulfillment. I get to remember that I’ve been
here before with previous job changes, and I’ve emotionally been here before
because of cancer. Nothing puts things in perspective like cancer!
And if I could have gotten through what I did, using the
recipe I know works every single time, then I am bidden to use it again. Journal,
meditate, blog. Meetings, movement, meditation. Heed the information I’m given.
Rest.
This career shift is all about buying myself time to see myself more
clearly, to see my future more clearly, and to create the space and time in
which to build toward those goals. This isn’t about busy work, or a brain
fogged with anxiety. This isn’t about despair or hopelessness.
This isn’t even about simply “getting through” this time.
This time is important; being in this
transition space is important.
It’s not simply, Batten down the hatches til the storm passes. This isn’t about
ostriching my head into the sand. It will be important for me to be aware
through all of this time, to listen through it, and to be aware.
To not hide from my own change, because then I won’t know
where I’m going or what I’m doing. I have to stay present with this change. I
have to acknowledge that I’m uncomfortable, and that I’m taking positive steps.
I have to acknowledge where I’m neglecting myself and acting out my anxiety in less than healthy ways. And in order to know any of
these things, I have to be present.
And that’s ultimately what each of these “recipes” does for
me – they help me get and stay present.
So, yesterday I did
cancel that modeling gig. I went to meet up with folks I hadn’t seen in a
while. I got my vacuum cleaner fixed, went to the farmer’s market, put that bookshelf into my closet. I
bought dish soap.
The more I engage in my recipes, the better I feel. The
better I feel, the more able I am to take care of myself and to take actions
that support me. The more I take action, the better I feel.
It’s a continuous positive feedback loop that has carried me
through the most atrocious and trying of circumstances. With grace.  


And if I can remember that — I am voraciously confident, it can carry me through this. 

change · faith · recovery · self-care · spirituality · work

A word, if you don’t mind?

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Dear Molly,
First of all, congratulations on closing the Addams Family.
I heard it was a fantastic run to packed houses nearly every night. And brava
on finally getting that one song that was giving you trouble. Fist pumping is
highly appropriate!
But, I’m moved to write to you today because I want to make
sure you realize how many irons you have blazing right now, and ensure that
you’re taking the proper time for yourself. (Although, I must say, I wouldn’t
be writing if I thought you were!)
As soon as the show closed, you began a new one the next day, yes?
Rehearsing almost daily with a dozen monologues to memorize by next Friday? You’ve been
searching for a new job or jobs, as well as having interviews or coffee dates with folks several times a week. You’ve been sitting on weekend
mornings for a portrait artist in order to make some cash, and you’ve begun
teaching on two weekday afternoons after work and before rehearsal.
Forget about your dishes, we’re way beyond them now! Have
you seen your car? Your apartment? Where is the calm space you so crave at
home? How about that outstanding parking ticket you need to dispute at the
Berkeley parking office? And the fellowship meetings you are barely attending and
the crispy, crackling nature of your office interactions right now?
Is it fair to say that you’ve got a few things on your
plate… AND that you’re not taking the normal care of yourself that’s necessary
for your health? Is it true that you’ve been feeling tired and coming down with
something?
Something’s got to give, my friend, and I don’t want it to
be you.
Yes, I know this is an uncertain and shifting time, and your
home is always a reflection of your mental state. I know it feels like there’s
no time for meetings, but doesn’t there have to be? It’s terribly uncomfortable for you and those around you when
you’re this wound up.
However, I do want to come back to say, I am writing all
this because I am in support of you. I
want you to achieve your best in all you do. I just want to remind you to set
first things first. Weekends, which have been your farmers market and cooking-for-the-week days, as well as nesting and organizing days, have been robbed by
all this new work.
Maybe — and I’m just throwing this out there — you tell the
artist you can’t sit with him until after your show opens? I mean, the worst he
can say is no, right? Maybe you ask a friend to help you with the enormous
bookcase you inherited from your upstairs neighbor that’s been standing, disassembled, in the
center of your apartment for a week? Maybe you really schedule that time to go
to the parking office, and don’t blow it off this time because you’re running
late for work?
Look, the bottom line is you’re in a huge amount of
transition right now. You’re taking a leap of faith that you’ll land somewhere
new and different than where you’ve been. You’re doing this to support your
art, and to support the idea that you have more to give to the world than a
well-crafted spreadsheet. I am in awe of you for taking the risk.
In truth, both ways are risky: to stay is a risk to sanity,
to leave is a risk to livelihood. But, I do have faith that things will turn
out well for you (Yesterday’s interview was promising & the second interview is set.). You are doing all the right things… you’re just not leaving
time for the rest of the “right things,” and that’s where I’m concerned.
So, take a minute to consider my suggestions. See if you can
come up with your own solutions, and talk to your friends to help you through
this quite chaotic but exciting time.
As a friend once said, The only difference between anxiety
and excitement is breathing.
So, breathe, Molly. And I’ll see you when you land, safely.
Yours, 

action · clarity · faith · purpose · recovery · vision

“Just What I Needed.”

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I was just telling my co-worker that nearly every item in my
apartment came off the street or handed down. What typically happens for me is
I notice a need in the apartment, say, I want a new waste-paper basket for my
bathroom. And, more often than not, within a week or so, I’ll pass the perfect
one on the street.
Most of the items in my house happened this way. Including
the new kitchen table I just acquired and am typing on today. Because as point
of fact, I’d just been saying and thinking how I want a new, less rickety
kitchen table. And lo, yesterday, I ran into an upstairs neighbor who is moving
and getting rid of things, and I asked to see what she had left, and there’s
that Ikea table I’d admired but didn’t want to buy. And now, it’s here, in my
home.
The reason I bring it up today is that I have recognized
that when I have clarity of vision, I tend to get what it is I want. The
perfect semi-matching bedside table, the pull-out couch that nestles perfectly
in the alcove, a set of new colorful bowls and plates to replace the staid gray
ones I’d bought at Goodwill.
Each of these I envisioned before they appeared. And so, I
feel, will the job.
I do know how I want to structure and spend my day. I do
know the kind of routine I want and the kind of impact I want to have.
And yet. It’s the waiting, the focusing, the action, the
getting there, the pause.
With each newly acquired piece in my home, I am reinforcing
the belief and faith and trust that if I dream it, it will come. If I am
particular and specific, it will come.
It’s time once again to write a job ideal, and perhaps a
relationship ideal while I’m at it, as I continue to release relationships that
don’t serve me.
In fact, I’ve noticed as I look at my list of relationships
to amend (people I’ve fallen out of touch with for self-preservation [but feel guilty about it], men I
intrigue with even though there’s no possibility or desire for more, and the
third category, my job that I haven’t wanted that’s been the same one dressed
in different clothes for decades), each of these categories can be boiled down
to: Molly staying in relationships she doesn’t want to be in.
Molly staying for the crumbs, the guilt, the fear of
emptiness. Molly staying because it’s the “right” and “good” thing to do. Molly
staying because she believes she can’t have what she really wants.
Each of these amends boils down to believing I’m worth
attaining what I really want.
It’s so easy to believe and reinforce this when it comes to
kitchen furniture! it’s harder to believe I can have what I want when it comes
to people.
It is a sad and lonely habit to continue to hang on to
relationships that don’t work, that aren’t fulfilling, that aren’t meeting my
needs because of a belief that something is better than nothing.
It’s funny. My voice teacher had me practice “As long as he
needs me” from Oliver the other week.
Did I know the song, he asked? Yes. Yes, I know the song. I live the song.
I will stay on as long as he, she, they, it needs me. No
matter how it’s hurting because “if you’ve been lonely, then you will know,
when someone needs you, you love them so.”
So, I guess I should correct it to say I have lived the song. But I don’t really anymore, or I don’t
want to anymore. I don’t want to settle, I don’t want to stay small, I don’t
want to be scared of what may or may not come to me.
I want to believe, that just as I knew my kitchen table
would arrive when it was supposed to, that my job and my healthy relationship
will as well.
With a little visioning, of course. And perhaps a new theme song.

authenticity · faith · fear · intimacy · letting go · recovery · sex

Icarus at the Bus Station

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There is an adage I’ve heard: A new bus can’t pull into the
station if there’s one already there.
The point being, unless you let something go, you can’t grab
hold of something new.
This often comes up when people are talking about relationships,
but it can be sagely advised around anything. Today, though, it does mean
relationships.
There’s a second category of folks that I need to amend my
relationships with, after those who I’ve fallen out of touch with for
self-preservation. This is a category entitled: Men I intrigue with but don’t
want a relationship with. (“with whom I
don’t want a relationship,” yeah, I know.)
But. This list, when written earlier this year comprised of
6 or 7 names. Now, there are only two left outstanding. The rest have fallen by
the wayside as I’ve changed the electrically charged way I interact with them or have
expressly stated I want to change the nature of our lovely, but ambiguous
flirtation.
It’s exciting to
flirt. It’s exciting to know that with a few taps on my phone, I can spark the
interest of someone. It’s a boost to the ego — and it’s totally unfair to us both. It’s a lie, really.
Sure, it’s fun, and I’m not saying that it’s wrong; it’s
just not truthful for me, when I know that these are men who I don’t want to
date or pursue a relationship with. For whatever reason.
Some, I just “don’t feel it.” We were never more than
friends, to either of us, but there’s something nice about that extra “like” on
your status update or the comment posted somewhere down your page, where you
know they’ve had to dig to find it. Yes, most of these “intrigue”
relationships (meaning, flirtatiously undertoned interactions) are acted out virtually,
and that enhances their ease, their prevalence and the reluctance to “break
them off,” since, who are we really hurting? Everyone “pokes” each other,
right?
But, for me, I know it’s not right anymore. It’s distracting
from what I really want, and using someone else as a tool to bolster my
self-esteem. Neither of which get me to the healthful relationship (with myself
or with someone else) that I’d like.
Some of the men on my list are simply fucked up and/or
unavailable, and strangely(?), the last two remaining are in this subset.
It’s not that they’re just my friends who I flirt with; it’s
not as innocent as a few extra “likes;” these two are possibilities in
relationship-land, except that they’re not. At all.
And these are so hard to let go of, because they’re the most ambiguous, the most possible, and the most delicious. Delicious Evil: the curl of the lip when you think about them,
your flirtation with them, what you’ve done with them,
because these are not Rated G acquaintanceships you have had.
You like the thrill, the quickening of the pulse, and the
slight tensing of your thighs.
Who.Wouldn’t?
But.
Here is where my current work comes in. I don’t want to stop
these flirtations/more than flirtations, but I know this bus is not going to
get me where I want to go. These are not available people. And despite the
purring coo my body radiates when I consider them, my brain and heart can’t
really take it.
I do want a relationship, with someone available to me. It’s
nice to get the milk for free, but I’m ready to invest in a cow.
I’ve spoken to a friend of mine who has similar patterns
with men and relationships, and I asked her honestly if there was the same kind
of Icarus-style pull in her marriage. If there was that same forbidden, lustful
quickening. If there was that, We’re going to blot out the sun with the heat of
our passion. 
And, she told me, Honestly, No. It’s different.
You’re not going to get a cocaine high when you’re sober.
That doesn’t mean it’s not worth being sober; it just means, No, there are some
experiences that won’t be replicated in a healthy relationship.
Sure, it’s just one woman’s opinion, but I trust her, and I
understand her analogy.
No, you won’t blot out the sun, but you won’t go down in
flames either.
It’s up to me to decide which life I’d rather live, and
which course I’d rather take. I know where this current “intriguey” bus leads –
right back here, again.
So, I’m going to have to make a choice to be brave, and let
this bus drive on without me, and trust that if I do, there will be a different
one coming. (pun intended.)