Category: recovery

aspiration · community · fear · healing · health · recovery · self-care · self-love

I think I might be…healthy.

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It’s been surprising to notice how nice I’ve been to myself
this week as I crawl out of the hopeless, “what am I doing with my life,”
place.
Without real conscious intention about it, while I’ve been
wading through the mire of job postings and life meaning, I also allowed myself
to buy a silly book, read it in the sun, and then go see a funny movie. I went
to a community party, even though I still don’t feel “cool” enough to be a
member of that community. Surprise! I know people who were there, so I guess I
must be. I mean, I knew several people, wasn’t lonely, had many conversations,
so I guess I belonged, right?
I made another nice meal for myself after therapy last
night. I painted my nails for my job interview, and I’m awake again early to go
to the gym to feel strong and proud and accomplished. 
I participated in a staged reading Tuesday night, my first. And I had the
insight and perspective, as I sat in that empty stagehouse, to notice that I
was doing what I told myself I wanted to do while going through my chemo. I
could realize I was accomplishing my
dreams. Following them. They sure don’t feel accomplishy (yet) in the dim lighting of a poor cast
and poor audience. But, it’s a case of feelings aren’t facts.
I’ve had several long phone calls with good girl friends.
Went out to coffee with a co-worker and sat in the community garden nearby,
plucking a strawberry off its vine. I stood on a dock swaying in the Berkeley marina one day after work.
I showered.
Despite going through what feels like a dark time, a lost
time, I realize that I have an impulse toward self-care I didn’t know I
had.
Two friends texted me yesterday to reach out for support in
their own journeys. To ask me to remind them that life is abundant and fear is
an asshole. Which I gladly did. And it reminds me to remind myself of these
things too, but moreso, it reminds me that those are core pieces of myself,
pieces that friends see in me, and reach out to me for: I’m an uplifter. Not
always, I’m not Pollyanna or inhuman. But, I am someone who more often than not
is there to remind my friends that what we’re doing is not impotent. That life
is worth living.
I’ve been prefacing my sentences this week with, “Despite
the fact that the planet is dying…”! Despite the fact that the planet is dying,
I want to leave an imprint in it; I want my life to count; I want to move the needle of human progress forward. Despite the fact
that the planet is dying, we continue to bring children into this world because
every generation has had its reasons not
to. Despite the fact that the planet is dying, I will go to the gym today; meet
with a former theater collaborator to who reached out to me about a book she
wants to write; I will go to the farmer’s market and eat a plum off a tiny
toothpick.
My habit toward self-care, toward health, has become
something so natural in me that it’s unnatural. And if such things as this can
make seismic shifts, I guess I can remember that life is abundant and fear is
an asshole. 

connection · healing · love · recovery · synchronicity · trauma

How I met my best friend from Long Island in South Korea

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It’s 10 years this Fall since we met. I’d come
off a 14-hour flight from JFK into Seoul. I seem to recall I was actually
picked up by the Assistant Principal of the pre-school where I’d be teaching who drove me the 45 minutes back to the Samsung Apartments. The LG Apartments
were over the hill. 
I arrived to a large 4-bedroom apartment with heated floors,
one Texan, and a Canadian, the two other “native English speakers” who taught
at the school just up the road – or over a fence if you were late and feeling
adventurous. I tore my favorite pants that way.
Further up that road was a mountain spring, where my
Canadian roommate, the one who showed me the short-cut, would refill his water,
in line with agimas, old hunched Korean women with no front teeth who would
cut in front of you no matter how long you, young white person, had been
standing there waiting to fill up at the fresh, cool water tap.
The Texan insisted that I come “into town” that very
first night, before jetlag and culture shock set in. Beer. The great equalizer.
It was halfway through the school year, so the Texan had met some of the other
ESL teachers in the area, one from South Africa, one from Ireland, all in our early to
mid-twenties, all young enough to be stupid and adventurous, but old enough to
have consequences. We celebrated on the first of many nights to come over uncountable
pitchers of piss-water beer, bad games of darts, and laughter
that always got too loud, and if you were me, too sloppy.
About a month into my new life there, culture shock,
homesickness, alcoholism running like a hotshot through my veins, I found
myself hailing a cab in a dark corner of Seoul. Well, I was attempting to hail
a cab. But wherever we’d ended up wasn’t the typical wei-gook (white person)
hang-out, and fading, wasted, and tired, there weren’t any cabs.
This is where we flash forward through the two Indian men
offering to give me a ride home, me saying no thanks; long minutes passing without a cab,
and them coming back; me agreeing to the ride. This is where we flash forward
through them pulling the car over on a lonely stretch of highway, and taking
turns raping me, too drunk and immobilized to fight.
This is where we flash to them actually driving me home, and where I collapse inside my apartment’s front door and begin to wail.
And, by the grace of something I will never quite call
coincidence, this is where Jess walks out of her boyfriend, the Texan’s room,
and comforts me.
She picks me up, I tell her what happened; she offers to
stay in my bed with me, I tell her it’s alright. But the darkness of my bed
is too large, and I pad across the heated wooden floor to their room, knock on
the door and ask her to stay with me after all.
Jess insisted the next day that I go to the hospital. I
wouldn’t have. Never would have even crossed my mind. She came with me to all 4 of
them, because at each we were turned away, because “rape is not an emergency.”
To flash forward over the harrowing and humiliating events
of that day that only compounded the isolation and violation I’d suffered, I’ll
tell you it’s over. And the rest will have to remain the content of therapy
sessions and the slow course of healing, which over the years since I’ve
considered turning toward volunteering at a crisis hotline. But honestly, it’s not over. I’m not over it enough to help others. 10 years later.
Two years later, I lived in San Francisco. Jess lived in upstate New York in a
partially-converted garage next to a washing machine while earning her
Teaching Certificate. 5 years later, she met an old high school-mate at a New
Year’s Eve party. 9 years later, I watched them get married. And three weeks ago,
she had a baby girl. Who I’ll get to meet, and hold, and smell next week on Long Island.
My friendship with Jess is inextricably linked to one of the
hardest events in my life. I’d barely known her before that night, met her
sure, another East Coaster, great. But friends? As dramatic as it is to say,
but real enough anyway, it was while holding the hand they’d botched the IV into
that Jess and I became friends.
It’s accrued and built and become many more colors and
tenors and experiences over the decade, mainly on the basis of a shit-talking,
wise-cracking, overly honest relationship. (Yes, the nurse stuck her hand up
Jess’s vag to pull out the rest of the placenta.) And although it started as it
did, and though I would eagerly and instantly give that experience back–despite how it might
“benefit others”–our friendship is easily one of the great and unexpected treasures of my life. 

dis-ease · doubt · recovery · serenity · service

"What’s the Point?"

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I intended to buy this book I heard about on NPR: Data: A
Love Story. It’s about how this Jewish woman my age, a statistician and
analyst, decided to create her own algorithm to “crack” online dating. In the
end, so it seems, she did. For herself at least.
So, with a wry smile, I went in to ask for it. They showed
me the general area, I didn’t see it, but perused with rare time to kill in the
early evening. I ended up with a book of essays by Ray Bradbury, and this funny
little set of them by another Jewish woman my age called I was told there’d be
cake.
I am usually loathe to buy books in general, thinking that
the library is one of god’s safest havens. And am especially averse to buying
something I’ll read once for entertainment value and then never pick up again.
But, my entertainment budget for the month hasn’t been touched at all, and I
figure I can pass it along to others, like the sisterhood of the traveling
satire. – After its purchase I actually sat outside reading in the fading sunlight
laughing out loud. What a
rare treat!
There’s one essay in which she reports that she and her
cohort are lost in the first-job abyss, each sector of her friends languishing
underslept, underpaid, underappreciated. And it occurs to her that she should
volunteer. Instead of focusing on herself, despite being the world’s great self-indulger, she decides to volunteer at the butterfly exhibit at the Museum
of Natural History.
Hilarity ensues.
But it struck a chord with me. I’ve been feeling languishy lately, too.
I’ve been feeling, What’s the purpose of it all. Why even try to strive for
anything, what’s the point anyway? Why am I feeding myself farmer’s market
food; buying organic food for my cat; going to the gym; meditating; reading; acting? Why
am I passing my time this way anyway? We’re all just passing time to an inevitable erasure. Why do anything at all?
Reading Cake girl’s
revelation, it occurred to me yesterday that I haven’t helped someone
one-on-one in a long time. I’ve been in a limbo of my own work, and until
completed, I’ve been instructed to wait before I help someone else in this area.
In the meantime, I could be looking to help someone in the field I already
know, but that hasn’t happened.
I hypothesize my own languishing could be offset my a dose of
selflessness and help of another person in the unique way that people with our
set of experiences can help another person.
Enter: Email this morning from a woman asking me to help her
out one-on-one. In the area I’m not supposed to be working in yet.
Hrm.
I’m going to talk with my own mentor about it. I think the
anchor of helping someone else would get me out of my own head, but I also
don’t want to pass along my diseased thinking in this arena if I really haven’t had the kind
of psychic shift that could help.
But. I may lobby for it anyway. Things are
all weird with me and my own mentor, which could also account for some
of this languish. I did ask someone else if they could help me one-on-one, but
I have yet to follow-up to set the actual coffee date to discuss.
Whether I end up helping this girl out or not, it reminds me
that some people actually look to me for help. That there’s something I do
have to offer that is unique in this world, and isn’t that the point in living? Could it be the point?
Not to live for
service, but sort of. Otherwise, I find myself questioning whether I really am
a Zoloft candidate after all. 

action · debt · deprivation · health · perseverance · recovery · self-care · theater

Work It.

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I’m up at what I would
call atrociously early, if I hadn’t just signed up to be the desk person at my
gym at 5:30 am on Mondays starting June. That will be hellaciously early. This is only moderate.
I do a work-trade at my workout studio so I can get free
unlimited classes. Last time I was on the trade staff, I barely took advantage
of it; since I could go whenever I wanted for free, there didn’t feel like any
urgency. Now. … Well, I started back on staff just before my Boston trip, so I felt
a bit urgent in “lifting my seat”! And in hoping not to wheeze like a rhino during
any strenuous activity!
Now that the trip is well over, and schedules are back on
track, I’m trying to get back a few times a week again. It’s good for me. Mentally, mostly. Though, yes, when I go
regularly, I see and feel changes that I like. It’s nice to feel strong, capable. It’s nice to push myself
because sometimes the class is peopled with 60 year olds (along with the 20, 30
and 40 somethings who are straight out of a Marina postcard) – and if they, a
sexagenarian, if you will, can do it, can hang for an hour, then so can I.
Moderately!
I also asked a friend to meet up and do our writing together
yesterday evening, since we’re both in the study group that’s doing all this together. It
was good to see her, and we got a lot accomplished. I can already see that this
work is a lot deeper and more meaningful than the last time I did this, so I
can hope for change because of it.
It has already shown, in just the 15 timered-minute increments,
that there are some messed up ideas
around self-worth, what I can expect in this world, and what I think I deserve.
So… it’ll be nice to get them out of my reflexes and onto the page.
Also, I did show up
to an audition for a staged reading this past weekend, and in fact, actually got the
part. Like, in writing. In an email saying, “I’d like to offer you the role
of…” and then the follow-up email entitled, “Welcome to the cast.”
So, I’m now Various Roles! Ha! Yay for me. Goes on my resume.
Speaking of, I did a little more work last night – or action,
rather, and sent something out. I still have loads to wade through following my
info interview with my former boss last week, which was awesome, but I can try to take a small action every day.
In fact, I took that action last night after all that writing during which my
fears and beliefs tell me that no matter what I do or accrue or amass, it’ll be
taken from me because I can’t handle it properly, because I don’t deserve it.
SO, I told that thought and belief to screw itself and got
online to follow-up on something I’d seen earlier last week.
I also replied to the Volunteer Usher group I belong to who’d put
out feelers to see who’d be interested in ushering the Sir Paul show at Candlestick in
August. UH. ME. We won’t find out if we’re “chosen” until August, but I’m throwing my hat in the ring.
I continue to throw my hat in the ring. It’s kinda one of
the things about me. I can have all these creeping, sodden beliefs and habits
and reflexes that undermine what I do and want to do in this life, and I seem to continue to do this stuff anyway. I don’t
know what or where that came from, that same impulse that told cancer to fuck
itself, that knows this work is worth it, that isn’t satisfied accepting less than I deserve because of
reasons I learned long ago about only deserving a second rate life, job,
relationship, since it’ll be taken from me anyway or I’ll screw it up anyway.
I seem to have some bloody impulse that impels me to keep
trying. I squawk a lot about dilly-dallying at the cross-roads of my life, and
that’s true in many regards, and makes sense if I believe the above is true. But
despite my procrastination, my self-sabotage, and my self-judgment, I’m awake
at 5:30 this morning to do something that’s good for me. And my ass. 

commitment · community · courage · defeat · despair · faith · hope · hopeless · recovery · resilience

"This is the way to a faith that works."

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I heard yesterday that another definition for resilience is
to move ourselves out of harm’s way, to get ourselves out of dangerous
circumstances. That resilience means to move toward health, wholeness and
joy.
…There are plenty of “definitions” I hear around, some more
Webster’s than others. But I get that part of resilience means to get out of
circumstances and situations that cause us to need to be resilient. – If you are the inflatable clown,
resilience means to step out of the way of the punch. You know, if you had
legs. Which I do. Long ones.
I didn’t actually intend to get healthy when I walked into a
room 8 years ago. I just wanted to stop getting punched. I listened, bawled,
accepted help, and getting healthy was the byproduct.
If it wasn’t my intention to get healthy, but by listening
to the voices in my head that told me to go somewhere I thought would help, I
got healthy anyway… is it possible that the same voices that feed me lines like, “It’s
worth it; You can heal; You are important; What you offer is important,” can
get me healthier almost without my willing it?
I mean, that’s the point, wasn’t it? It wasn’t me that
implanted that thought 8 years ago – the thought I had was, “Have another beer,
it will solve this moment, and nothing after that matters.” But the thought
that wasn’t mine was, “Go to a meeting.” Who the f*ck thought that?!
Wasn’t me. So that means there’s something inside me, beside
and under the voices that usually crowd out the cheerleaders and the still calm
being, that is there, speaking, helping, wanting for me things I can’t seem to
accept I want for myself.
There is something else inside me (not like a scene from Alien, though it feels as alien sometimes) that wants me
to be healthy, whether I like it or not. And most significantly, whether
I know how to or not.
I don’t know how. But
the undergirding and buttresses of my soul do. And if that now long-ago experience was any
indication, they’re there, talking, waiting for me to listen, to follow, to
accept.
I was also at a point that I’ve later come to define as
surrender. All my best ideas gave me were the same thing, day after day. A Groundhog’s
Day existence. An eeking by, scraping at
the dregs of my self-esteem, morality, energy. I was running on fumes by then,
and in short supply they were. I feel so much the same these days. So wan and worn and tired and unknowing and
lost.
I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that read, When you’re
lost, you can always follow your dreams.
Platitudes, sure. But it was a kind of wink to someone like
me who right now feels lost. It means
there’s always something to hope for. Without dreams, without hope, there’s
nothing.
If what you can expect for your life is the same thing
you’ve always done, and the same experiences you’ve always had – if all you can
see for yourself is a life as an inflatable clown, … well, for me, there’s a
point at which I’m so exhausted of being it, that I simply don’t stand back up into
the firing line. And in that moment of surrender, of giving up the fight, …
well, that’s when it seems to me the change comes.
I’m not the first nor last to write about surrender as a
gateway to freedom. I’m not the first to terribly despise that that is so, or
to attempt lipservice to it in an effort to bypass the deflation. It’s not the
first time I’ve felt eviscerated by life and my efforts in it.
But, if I can recognize, remember, maybe even take comfort
in the fact that my evisceration led me to a place of light, friendship, joy,
health… I can try to let this time not feel as bleak. Doesn’t mean I don’t feel
like my butt has been kicked by life these past few years. Doesn’t mean I don’t
get to feel voraciously and vehemently angry. Doesn’t mean that I’m not going
to drag my fingernails down the face of “god.”
But the voices, the good ones, permit me all these feelings,
and gently – sometimes not so gently – whisper in my ear the directions toward
getting my heart inflated again.

community · death · faith · god · health · order · reality · recovery · spirituality

In Vain.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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God? G-d? Him, Her, It, We, They?
The Great What Is?
The tendency of all things toward progress, perhaps. Toward
health and order.
Cut your hand, and assuming all other things are right with
your body, it will heal itself. In a week or two, it will be good as new.
Sometimes scarred, but altogether, well.
In parallel, cut your spirit, your psyche, and the tendency
of them are toward healing and health. If we don’t hide away the wound, or habitually fiddle with it, we’re sort of compelled to heal. It’s the natural state of ourselves,
and it’s my experience and observation that the order of life will lead us
there.
In this, I can believe.
In benevolence, I have a harder time, these days.
I’m at the part in my personal work where I’m supposed to
think about “god” and my relationship to it, whatever I choose to define it as.
I’m at the part where I come to believe that it wants the best outcome for me
and all creatures. The part where I’m supposed to take a deep breath, open my
arms, and fall into the caring embrace of this power.
Balls.
Because here’s the part that snags my shirttail: sometimes
“god’s” plan includes the death of babies. Sometimes it includes the overdose of
a friend, the death of a parent before you’re old enough to know them. Sometimes “god’s plan” includes rape. And of course, sometimes it includes
cancer in a healthy 30 year old.
I will not stand with those who say it’s part of a plan. I
don’t think it is. I think you can take those experiences, and choose to
integrate them into a theology and a world-view that helps you get through
them. Mostly, you can choose to tell yourself, perhaps truthfully, that their
or your experience will benefit those around you. That others get to witness
how you struggled, railed, and got through it anyway. I do believe that we can
choose to turn our experiences into something valuable.

(Though I do have unresolved issues with being or using anyone as a goddamned touchstone on how to life your life more fully. “I could go at any time, just like him — I think I’ll learn from his pain & in homage and reverence, I’ll paint that portrait; become a doctor; take a trip.” Balls. F’ you, man. My life is not your feeding ground. — … unless of course, it is.)

But I will not say
that I believe that “god” puts these obstacles before us on purpose. I just don’t think it’s
that intelligent.

The intelligence in focusing all flowers toward the sun (or
moon, depending), the intelligence that makes all those little newborn turtles
scurry toward the ocean, the intelligence that turns felled trees into
compost: it’s order, it’s incredible, it’s inspiring, but it’s not benevolent,
necessarily, and it’s not because a force underlies all and declares some of those
turtles will be scooped up by predators in their first moments of life – that’s simply part of the order of
it.
Because here’s another side to the whole “God as
benevolence” thing: it means (or can mean) that we believe we have an ace in the hole. It means
wishful and fantastic thinking that “god didn’t take us this far to drop us on our ass” or “god is
slow but never late,” which translates to, if I hold out long enough, if I pray
hard enough, if I act well enough, I’ll be alright. And buddy, that just ain’t
true.
It’s not really about god at all. Being or becoming
“alright” has more to do with how we chose to interpret and incorporate out
life experiences. God isn’t gonna rescue me, reward me, or punish me. It just
doesn’t care like that. But I do. And you do. And together we can form a lattice of support
that feels bigger than ourselves, that carries us through and over those hard
times. Together, we are aimed toward health, and we connect to improve our
chances of getting there.
In that, I can
believe. I can believe in our collective desire toward joy. I can believe in my
desire to clear out the junk in my heart, so that I can help you
toward joy, too.
Is that “god”? Not really. Is it good? You bet. 

abundance · addiction · alcoholism · balance · community · compassion · deprivation · equanimity · finances · humility · recovery · scarcity · the middle way

The B Word.

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Balance. Without it, I tend to become the other B word.
Someone asked me how the whole, “I need friends who don’t live hand-to-mouth,” blog
went over, if there was any push-back from it. I said, not that I know of, but
that I’d spoken to some other folks over the weekend, and was reminded of
something very important in life: Things are not black and white.
When I stopped drinking, it was because I was an alcoholic.
I put the bottle down, looked around, and declared everyone close to me
alcoholic, too. Whether they were or not, I was on a crusade of reform, and
they all were alcoholics who needed to
stop as I did.
Well… two things: a) yes, most of the people I was
associated with “at the end” were in fact drinking alcoholically, but b) that
didn’t mean they or anyone who drank were alcoholics. In the beginning, I
needed that kind of black and white thinking, because being close-ish to people
who were drinking was too difficult a gray line when my line had to be
crystal clear.
But, just because that was the way for me, I came to realize
that wasn’t the way for everyone. And after some time passed, and indeed the
folks who were hopeless sops like me faded from the foreground of my life, I got to see that some people (god bless them) can drink normally.
There’s one friend who stuck through my own transition. She described this “normal” drinking to me: she
literally says to herself, “Hmm, I’m beginning to feel buzzed, I should switch
to water.” Uh… I didn’t get that memo. “I’m beginning to feel buzzed,” was always followed by, “A few more will get it done right,” or if I was feeling temperate, “I should switch to beer.”
So, my friend does not react to alcohol how I do. And I have to come to see that there is a world between sauced and tight-ass.
In the same way, I recognize that as I begin to assess my
behavior and extremism around money, scarcity, and deprivation, I am being
called to allow others their own experience, even as I diagnose and address my
own.
Just because a friend opened a new credit card, doesn’t mean I have
to stop hanging out with them. Just because a friend is earning less than I
think they deserve in the world, doesn’t mean they’re addicted to deprivation.
Just because other people behave differently than me, doesn’t mean my way is
the right way, and most importantly, doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to learn from them. 
As with getting sober, I do have to admit that some
of the folks around me may indeed have trouble in this area – water seeks its
own level, after all. But, that doesn’t mean I have to be an asshole about it.
And, that’s what I’ve gotten to see these past few days I’ve
been declaring myself needing to “move on” from friends and communities who have
what I’d declared a “faulty, diseased, and only rectifiable by a spiritual
solution” relationship to money, and thereby the world.
It’s a good thing people don’t take me that seriously!
And it’s a good thing I can remember to not take myself too
seriously, too. If I’d stuck to every declaration about myself… by this point I
would have been:
Vegetarian
Israeli
A prostitute
A suicide victim
A daily exerciser
T.V.-less
Caffeine-less
An organic farmer
and a truck driver.
The thing is, I can’t make blanket declarations for myself
or anyone else. I have no idea what my
path contains or eliminates, thereby no idea what others’ do.
There is some truth to wanting to learn from and be around
people whose relationship to money can model my own. But that’s because I have
a problem with it. Not everyone does, and if they do, it’s really none of my
business.
It comes to equanimity, and allowing others and myself our
experience without judgment. It means having openness, compassion, and respect toward all people on all paths. It does certainly include me getting help for a
pattern of beliefs and behaviors that have led me to despair and insanity, but
it also includes me being more generous in my assessments of life. Allowing for
the gray, for the middle-ground, for difference, for balance.
Because, solvent or not, nobody likes
a bitch. 

abundance · change · clarity · deprivation · despair · family · finances · hope · recovery

Cleaning House.

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There’s a phrase in Al-Anon: Let it begin with me.
I’m in the process (or supposed to be) of looking back
through my life and writing down where underearning/underbeing/debting has
affected my life, and eventually caused it to be unmanageable.
I’ve often and easily thought about my dad’s parents and his
half-brother when I think about the history of this “disease” in my family.
It’s easy to do. They are the ones who hoarded, let the dog go to
the bathroom in the house, and despite brains that cognitively thought at high
levels, lived like people who were under a crushing weight of despair, which
looked on the outside like the crushing weight of filth.
These folks, my kin, would have been the people who Hoarders would have descended upon, who would have reluctantly
and silently allowed their belongings to be sorted, sifted, and discarded. And
after the cameras left, would have as quickly as possible returned their home
to the state of dishevelment and insurmountable disarray. The familiar state of
it. The state in which they felt most comfortable, even if not comfortable at
all.
After my parents’ divorce when I was 20, my dad let our
childhood home fall into much the same state, with the dead bugs on the hood of
the oven, the flies belly-up on the window sill, and the tree that shaded our
home, that stood sentry in our front yard, so long-neglected it had to
come down. And though it’s easy to see these patterns of neglect, hopelessness,
resignation, and simple denial in that side of the family, through my inventory work, I’m also getting to see a different strain of ideas around money,
belongings, worthiness crops up from my mom, too.
I spent some time with my brother last year in his apartment
he rented alone. The same silt of neglect, of using half-broken items, of
allowing the home you live in to be in a state of disrepair lay over his home,
too. But, from the same familial miasma, his attitude toward money became very different than mine.
At some point, I brought up money and my not knowing how to manage it, to save it, to “make
it work for me” (whatever that means!), and he admitted, surprising me, that he
is a miser with it. He hoards and saves his money, and is virulently opposed to being indebted to anyone.
He hoards money. I hemorrhage it.
In the end, though, the result for us both is the same (and
I recognize that my assessment and diagnosis is unfair to him, simply in that I
am not him, so please forgive my
hubris). But the result is that neither of us have money to spend on fun
things, nice things, things that make our lives fun and easy and worth living.
If he’s loathe to spend anything, even if he has it, then life becomes smaller
than it needs to be. If I simply spend whatever I make without thought to
long-term or significant goals, my bank balance becomes zero, and my life shrinks
with it.
I may not do my dishes as regularly as I should (though I am better now!), and my
fridge may house food that is unidentifiable with mold, but my home is
neat, clean, organized. It feels light, despite its size, and I endeavor to make it so. But there’s an article I read recently on home
decoration that said, “Do it: Clean, organize, make pretty, and then GET OUT.” Get out and into and on with your life. There’s more to life than decoration.
So, as I tally my numbers each month, calculate my income & expenditures, as I put money into a savings account and a vacation account, I
have to remember it’s not just so that I can have a neat and orderly
spreadsheet. That, in fact, even if there were a million dollars in my account,
I’d have to remember, like my brother, that it’s there for me to enjoy thoughtfully. That
it’s there for me to live, to support a life worth living. I have to remember that I do all this work so that I
can go out in the world as my family was unable to do.
I let it begin with me. 

abundance · aspiration · change · clarity · community · debt · despair · finances · loneliness · love · recovery · stability

Risky Business

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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There’s a funny little book I picked up a few years ago
entitled, Steal Like An Artist. One of
the tips in the book is, If you find yourself to be the smartest person in the
room, go to another room.
I’ve been considering this sentiment as applied to
satisfaction, success, self-love, financial security. At the risk of sounding
like a self-aggrandizing schmuck, I think I’ve been heading to another room for
a good little while.
But, I’m hesitant. I’m hesitant to leave those who I’ve met
in this room, and all the rooms before it. I’m hesitant to let those friendships go, when I notice that how I’ve been ordering and focusing my life is not
really aligned with how they are anymore. I don’t want to leave, but I kinda
already have, simply by the efforts I’ve been making in the past few years.
It sounds like an asshole thing to say. It “sounds” judgey
and materialistic and conceited. But, I don’t think it is. I think it’s one of the
most honest things I’ve said about where and who I am in my
life now.
To find a parallel that is perhaps less alienating, let’s
look at alcohol. In two weeks, it’ll be 8 years since my last drink. Since that
time, the folks who are in my life tend to also be people who don’t drink, or simply people who don’t drink alcoholically. I began to hang out with
people who behaved in ways I did or I wanted to, and in the process, those who I
used to spend time with began to fade. This wasn’t a judgment on them; it was
simply an acknowledgment of what we now had or didn’t have in common. I’d
simply moved to another room.
If you can hang with the non-judgment of that move, nearly 3
years ago, I began to spend time with people who didn’t accrue unsecured debt,
who tracked their income and expenses, who were attempting to live a full life
without bouncing along the disheartening bottom of “paycheck to paycheck,” “I can’t hang out
because I’m broke,” “I eat popcorn for dinner,” and “I have holes in my socks.” (Each something I’d said…repeatedly, for years.)
As with alcohol, I had simply come to the end
of my rope by how small and anxious and exhausting my life was. And, since
then, I’ve been endeavoring to live differently.
In that difference, I’ve begun to notice that many of the
folks whose room I’ve shared are still, in some manner, living a pinching,
struggling life. And I’ve begun to notice that we don’t talk as much, that I
have less to share about, that I don’t really relate or want to relate anymore.
Just like I don’t really have much to say if you share about your drunken
escapades, I don’t really have much to say about how you don’t know how you’ll
pay rent next month.
All I really do have to say about that is, I GET IT. I have completely been there. I have, many times in
my “adulthood,” had less than $3 in my bank account, and NO JOB. I KNOW what it
feels like to have a life so small because you can’t afford the bus to see friends, or the $8 for the movie they’re seeing, or just the $2 coffee chat. I
know what it’s like to despair that you’ll never get out of the hole. What
it’s like to assume that you’ll eek out a living … and then die. I know what
it’s like to think about killing yourself because you can’t see any other end
to the horrible cycle of constriction.
I know what it’s like to live small and afraid. And I know, now, what
it’s like to find a way out.
I can talk to you about that. I can tell you I’ve found a
way that works for me, and I can help or hope you find it, too. But,
ultimately, that’s all that I can do.
And in that knowledge and acceptance of where and who I’ve
become, a non-drinker who is attempting to live a larger life, it should only
make sense that I would want to be among others who are living the same. Simply
so I can learn. So I can hear, model, get hope, get help for myself. Because I am that person who was begging for help before, and now
I want to be around those who can help me. Who have moved into a different room
and found help themselves.
It feels so fucking lonely, right now. It feels judgmental
and abandoning and selfish and crass. It feels like I’m waving a hand over a
community that has loved me, and I’m declaring that world, “Not enough.”
But, in truth, it isn’t. For me.
I want to live larger, freer, more boldly. In the end, it’s not actually about money at all. I simply want financial stability because it allows me to dream bigger, or dream at all, since I’m not agonizing over how I’ll feed my cat this month. Stability leads me to ease, and ease leads me to dream.
Today’s sentiments may sour in the mouths of someone reading
this. I may have backs turned to me. There is a loneliness that happens when
you’re transitioning to a new phase of yourself. But, perhaps in my
acknowledgment that I want to be in that next room, I can help myself to get
there. Perhaps in simply stating I love you and I have to leave you, I am
offering more love than I had. I don’t want to be lonely; it’s part of why I do
all this work, man. I don’t want to leave you, but our conversation has flagged. And it is/I am worth the risk of saying, Thank you, and maybe I’ll see you over there.

abundance · adulthood · determination · fear · intimacy · perseverance · recovery · relationships · self-love · self-support

Manic Panic.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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It’s what the junior high and high school kids
were using to dye bright streaks of their hair in the 90s. There was one store in the
mall that sold it (Nature Works? – The Nature Company! that’s it.),
and if you said you were going there, you meant that you were going to dye your
hair a brilliant shade of rebellious.
I never bought Manic Panic. I was as straight an arrow as
they come until the end of high school. There was too much order to maintain,
and too many rules to follow, for me to diverge any bit off the path I was
expected to walk.
And so, as I am very apt to do, once I hit college, the
pendulum swung so desperately and frenetically in the direction of “off the path,” that it
swung right around and hit me in the now-pierced face, like a rogue tetherball.
Obviously, this wasn’t the “way” either. This wasn’t
my authentic way, at least.
I had a therapist tell me a long time ago that if my mother
had killed herself when I was young, as her behavior threatened she’d do, that
I would have probably gone down with that ship. I’d spent so much time and
energy attending to the needs and expectations of someone else, there wasn’t
room to explore or attend to my own.
Years later, I had another therapist tell me that this life
was my own, that I didn’t have to make
choices anymore based on whether I thought my dad would approve, or disapprove
and retaliate anymore. That this life was my own was such a novel concept, I’d
rejected it for years. That I could choose now to dye my hair, pierce my face,
be alone, reject the world, participate in it, smoke, not smoke, date, not date – is still a
concept I’m adjusting to, but the marination of this understanding and
awakening has been long underway.
The idea that I am a master of my own fate … well, it seems
just as rogue! That I can choose the kind of toilet paper I want; toothpaste I
like; friends I call. That I can choose how I want to dress in the world; what hobbies to pursue; … job to have … partner to love.
Fulfillment, is the end game, or the suspicion of the end
game. Am I happy in my path? Note, Molly: this is your path. There is no mother to care for, no father to
obey. What is it you want in
life? And do you feel free and brave enough to pursue those desires?
Do you feel free and brave enough to apply for a new job? Do
you feel free and brave enough to wear clothing without stains? Do you feel
free and brave enough to accept that you want a partner whose clothes are also
without stains?
Do you feel free and brave enough to accept that you want a
good life? A job you respect? A partner
you admire?
Do I feel … stable enough, secure enough, self-supporting
and self-worthy enough to not only admit these “taboo” desires, but also to
express them to the world, through action?
Do I feel ready to tell you, world, that I want in? That I
want in on the goods, on the joy, on the self-respect, on the intellectual
stimulation, on the bed-rocking sex, on the critical, yet specious-seeming ease?
Well, I guess I’m telling you. I guess it’s been long enough
that the tetherball has hung limp and impotent, and it’s time to begin playing
again. I no longer am… tethered to ideas of being and living that aren’t my
own. The cord is cut, the apron strings untied. The life, really, is my own. 
And though today that may not mean dying my hair
green or copper, as I wish I’d been able to do a dozen years ago, it means I now know that I could. And that I would be awesome besides.