"Forget Your Troubles, Come On, Get Happy"

March 11, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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So you’ll have to bear with me – I haven’t totally got this
one down.

I was on the phone with a trusted friend Sunday morning. I
was giving her the update about this potential Cupcake Situation, the pros and
cons, the merits and demerits. The gnawing maw of my brain.

I fully expected her to say something like, That sounds
reasonable. It makes sense to not do something that has potential negative
consequences. Yes, continuing on the path of solitude sounds like the right one
toward health.

Instead, she surprised me by saying, Life is meant to be
lived.

Instead, I surprised myself by beginning to cry.

Somehow, hearing her “permission” enabled me to feel what
was actually happening in my heart. The joy, the longing, the contentment, just
in the idea and fancy of anticipating being with this Cupcake.

And I said something to her, actually I sobbed something to
her, that I’m not sure I ever admitted or understood – “I don’t know how to be
happy.” And I cried some more.

I don’t know how to let myself be happy. To admit good
things. To trust that I’m able to face good things – that I even think I have
to “face” them is evidence that I still think happiness is something to be
battled.

In my early experience, happiness wasn’t reliable, and so
you mistrusted it. You forced away the “temptation” of happiness because if you
allowed it in, it would corrode. Better to be mildly miserable than submit to
betrayal.

It’s astonishing to me that I’m still facing this same
demon. This same old pattern of beliefs and behavior. But then, I must be at a
place where I’m ready and able to uproot it in a new way.

I read an email from the Cupcake (the person I’ll potentially spend a few days with next month) telling me that he welcomes the chance to
melt with me, open his heart, sit in lazy contentment. That the idea of doing
so stirs something in him, emotionally and physically.

When I read this (for like the 8th time), I was walking
outside my work, trying to get away from the gnawing Pro/Con-ing catalogue
inside me. I reread it on my phone on a side street in Berkeley. I had to stop walking. I crouched
down in the sunny afternoon, held the screen toward my face, and felt the same feeling I would have on Sunday when my friend said, Life was meant to be lived.
Something moved, something heard this. Something within me allowed the
possibility for even a moment to trust that someone was honestly saying, Let’s
be happy. I offered myself the possibility that I could be happy.

And on that sidewalk, my eyes filled with salt water, my brain
temporarily ceased arguing, and I felt in my heart.

I just felt in my heart, being in it. hearing it, feeling
it. I was moved.

I don’t know how to be happy. It’s not something I know how
to do. Like a learned skill, this will be something I will have to try my hand
at, and be inexperienced at, but try anyway.

I’ve been amazingly dexterous at learning all kinds of new
things–grad student, performance poet, bassist, actor, painter–physically at
least. Emotionally, I’ve learned how to be more honest, how to have more
feelings than anger, depression, and mania, how to be more visible and trust I
won’t be shot.

I don’t know how to be happy. But if my emotional responses
are any indication (whether this whole Cupcake thing comes to fruition or not),
I am apparently, on some level, ready to see if I can be.

And I hereby give myself
permission to try.

acting · dating · honesty · relationships · self-care

State of the Union

February 9, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Yesterday, I sat with a group of folks, and admitted that
continuing to participate in activities that I’m not 100% invested in (or even
85%) is dishonest. That I was not being honest with my intentions or
priorities—and was thereby wasting time. (You finite commodity, you.)

There was a meditation/writing portion of this meeting, and
so I wrote a series of questions for myself:

How is being dishonest with others serving me?
How is prioritizing others’ needs serving me?
How is NOT prioritizing my own needs serving me?
What need am I
fulfilling by not prioritizing and owning my needs?
How is dismissing my desires serving me?
How is devaluing myself serving me?

Heavy, huh?

But, for me, that’s what pushing important things off to
“tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” is. It’s devaluing myself, what I have
deemed important to myself.

Because I’ve been hemming and hawing a little on letting
those folks know that I can’t come out and play anymore. Even though I am clear
that my priorities and intentions have shifted.

So… Yesterday, I committed to those folks that I would make
two phone calls. One was to the 25 y.o.

He asked, adorably, if he were in trouble, when I said I
wanted to chat when he wasn’t in a café. I said no, but that it was sort of a
“State of the Union” conversation, so to give me a call back.

He did. And we did.

I’d been feeling throughout this week that this couple-dom
wasn’t on course for relationship-land. It’s a pretty appropriate assessment
after a half-dozen dates. We’ve kept it PG-13, so there isn’t any animal-brain
“must keep orgasm giver” going on.

But, I have simply felt like I’ve crystallized that I don’t
want to date this person long-term. It’s just a feeling, not a fear, not a
defense mechanism. Just a fact.

The big however is, I
don’t want to stop seeing him. And thus, my hesitation.

I really enjoy spending time with this person, getting to
know him, getting to know myself in relation to him. And I thoroughly enjoy our
frisky make-out sessions.

So, that’s what I told him. Pretty much all of the above. I
don’t see this heading toward relationship track, but I enjoy spending time
with him, and I enjoy making out with him.

That the outcomes I saw were we transition to
friends, or do that and try to keep with the sexy-time, or do neither. So, he
asked me, then, what I wanted? If I knew what I wanted? And I said, no. I
didn’t know, but perhaps in talking it out, and hearing his thoughts, we might find
some solution.

He admitted and agreed that he was “along for the ride,” but
not in a place to invest in a relationship. So that pretty much leaves us two
options: continue seeing one another with the frequency we have been, or stop
seeing one another.

I replied, honestly, that the idea of seeing him less was
unappealing to me.

(And I have to admit here, that part of my hesitation in
letting go of this couple-dom is that this person is the first I’ve met who is
really in the theater world, has insights, and knowledge, and can point me
toward plays and monologues and acting worksheets and websites—which he has—and if
I let this go, I won’t have that access anymore.

And that, my dear friends, is scarcity mind. That this is
the first person with those bodies of
knowledge does not mean that he’s
the last person, and to continue a relationship based on a selfish need and
fear of loss is the definition of crappy. Doomed. Dishonest.)

So, at the end of this conversation, we agreed to continue
to see one another on the semi-regular, as we have been, and that if the
ambiguity “gets to” either of us, we can talk about that then.

I did say that I am a person who is wanting a relationship,
and that he deserves someone who thinks he’s the sunandmoonandstars, but, for
right now, no one is blowing down our doors, so… here we are.

I don’t think it’s “settling for less.” I think it’s being
perfectly honest with my desires, honest with my intentions, and my continued
task is to show up in the single world and be available.

That might mean a week more of the hot make-out sessions, it
might mean a month. I don’t know. It is
ambiguous. And we know how I LOVE that. But, I am not willing to let go of this
connection yet, because of what it does for me on multiple levels, nor am I willing
to let go of my intention to have a true partnership with another human being.

In the meantime, I have that list of questions to answer for
and about myself, and some theater websites to explore.

love · relationships · self-love · vulnerability

The Corollary

January 13, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

The thing about yesterday’s blog is there is a corollary
between how I have felt about money and debt and how I feel about love and
relationships.

I’ve surely written about “Romance and Finance” before, but
it’s worth repeating, for my own sake.

If, as I stated yesterday, the belief has been, If I have
debt, I can’t enjoy nice things, the (my) logic continues, If I have “work” to
do on myself, I can’t enjoy relationships. The belief in both cases is that if
I am not “fixed,” then I am not allowed to engage in the world. Or, another
way, if I am not perfect, or my vision of what that ever-moving target of
perfection is, then I am not allowed to receive or have good things.

Because, to the logic brain, it makes sense, doesn’t it? You
have debt, you can’t buy the nicer shampoo that doesn’t fry your curly hair. If
you have … let’s call it “intimacy issues,” you can’t be in relationship. BUT,
as we saw yesterday, and I’ve seen in these last months, I’ve been eroding that
belief around money, and allowing myself to enjoy things, even though I have debt. So… shouldn’t the corollary continue,
that even though I have work to
do on letting myself trust others, I can still allow myself to exist with them?

Eek. As a serially single person, I can’t tell you how hard that is to even hold on my
tongue for a minute. Because it brings a challenge, a “put your money where
your mouth is.” It means, that if I really am trying to believe that I can be
imperfect and still enjoy life… it means I have to start … trying. Trying to be
in relationship, not dating, not sex, not flirting, relationship. The kind where you say, You know what, I’ll commit
to you for an undetermined period of time. I’ll commit that I will attempt to
be as transparent as necessary, and as soft toward you as I can be. To me, to
be in relationship means that I will not duck out at 2 in the morning, I’ll be present during sex, I won’t
throw barbs or use sarcasm to keep you away. To be in relationship means
sitting through the discomfort of softening into another person — and HELL if
that’s not the scariest thing!!

I have and continue to do work that is helping me to soften into
myself, and surprisingly, I’m actually
having a good time of it – this “loving myself” thing. I’m actually getting the
hang of it, and becoming habitualized to it. So, it follows, that I am situated
to extend that love, that softness, that vulnerability outward. To someone else. Who I don’t know.

And trust that they won’t use this access they’ve been
granted to my heart as a pass to do damage, to infiltrate me and plant a bomb,
to establish trust and then usurp it, tragically.

Because it’s always been tragically. That’s the story,
that’s the history, but it doesn’t have to be.

That’s the same with the money. I’ve always earned less than I’m probably worth. I’ve always worked in jobs that don’t fire my faculties. But,
it’s meaning less and less to me; it’s goading less and less of me into
self-flagellation.

So, just because my love story has always been one where I am
left kicking myself for trusting someone… well, it doesn’t have to be. It
doesn’t have to mean as much.

Letting go of the story doesn’t invalidate my past experience; but it
doesn’t have to determine my future
anymore either.

I am sure I’ve said it here – that with the pattern of
awaiting perfection, which perhaps here may have meant perfect immunity to
hurt, to betrayed trust, to love– Ha! I’ve been waiting for immunity to love in
order to actually let someone love me and vice versa. Nooot sure how that logic
works!

But, if I have been waiting for some illusive “fixed,” and
an ever-changing target of it, then I will never be “ready” for a relationship. (Strangely, most people [I hear] look for a relationship to fix them, whereas I look to be fixed before I get into a relationship.)

So, the idea, then, is to change the goal. The goal, now, is
to not be fixed, but to be human. To allow myself to try to trust someone else
with the soft content of my heart, and believe one millisecond at a time that
they’re not a suicide bomber.

authenticity · dating · finances · frustration · grief · relationships · romance · work

Bus Stop Boy

September 17, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Well now.

So, I guess I should tell you about Bus Stop Boy, now that
I’ve finally broken down and updated one of the people I have in my life whose
main relationship with me is about helping me work on relationships.

Over the summer, I began to see Bus Stop Boy, as you might
imagine… at the bus stop. I was temping in the city, and was sometimes taking
this bus, sometimes that. I’d just begun to pay attention to how I interact with
men, trying to focus less on if they’re noticing me or not, how I’m interpreting
or internalizing that information. And Bus Stop Boy was one of these people. I
was aware of him, and he was aware of me. There was nothing more or less than
that, but a definite vibe. Not even flirty, just aware.

One morning, a few months ago, I had come from meeting with
the aforementioned woman the previous day, highly aware now of how I was walking in the world, and I saw him at the bus
stop. Suddenly, I had no idea how to behave. I didn’t want to be all coy, I
didn’t know how to just stand there. I felt a wave of panic wash over me, and
as some of you may remember, I had to leave work as soon as I got there and come home and crawl into a fetal position. Everyone
on BART was standing too close. Whatever it was that my being aware of who and
how you were reacting to me – it had acted as a buffer somehow between us. And
suddenly, seeing Bus Stop Boy, … it was like seeing the Matrix. Suddenly I
could see that everywhere I looked and every move that I made, I was hyper
aware of it, and I was aware if you were aware of it. I felt stripped of some
defense mechanism – I felt utterly exposed, and completely unsure of how to
act.

A rather large reaction to simply seeing a dude at the bus
stop. But, that’s what happened. It took me days to get back to feeling right.
And, in fact, I stopped taking the bus, and opted to take carpool with a friend
of mine during the rest of my temp gig.

I’m still aware of how others react to me, and, duh, that’s
going to continue to happen. People interact. However, I am trying to pay less attention to if “he,” whoever “he”
is, saw me. Noticed. If you’re noticing how I’m holding myself or not. I’m
trying to keep myself to myself when I’m out and about. Not closing myself off,
but simply focusing more on me, and what I’m doing, not on you.

This said, things have progressed.

I ran into Bus Stop Boy when I was on the bus going into the
city for an interview about a month or more ago. I was aware, he was aware. We
both went for the one seat that was open, and he let me have it. When getting
off the bus, I got off in front of him, and turned around and thanked him for
the seat, held out my hand, and said I’m Molly, by the way. He took my hand, said his name, said he hadn’t
seen me on the bus for a while. I replied I hadn’t been on the bus for a while, we both smiled, said see you around.

In reporting this later to my friend, I talked about
“getting a hit” off it. I was nervous about this job interview, and I knew I
could get a little hit from talking to this guy. Sure, there’s the normality of
introducing yourself to someone you see nearly daily just for the sake of that,
and I could file this under that, but I know my underlying reasoning – I wanted
to feel better, and talking to an attractive guy who seems to think I’m
attractive too is a reliable way to do that. (I was about to write it’s a “good
way” to do that, but, this is where I run into trouble.) I felt more spring in my step on my way to my interview, now that I had gotten that burst of acknowledgment from this stranger.

A little while later, I am on my way to another interview,
and I see him on the street in plain clothes with a girl, walking a small dog. Girlfriend, I think, and keep walking. Well, I say to myself,
there’s that taken off the table. He’s got a girlfriend.

A little while later, about 3 weeks ago, I’m on my way home
finally for the evening, having had an awful day at work – feeling my feelings
of despair around administrative work, around having worked so hard for months
to get something so menial, I’d come home from work bawling on the phone with a friend, before I went back out to meet up with some folks for an hour. Suffice it to say that I was drained of
all emotional guile. Of all resistance. Of all pretense.

Funny, then, that I should walk into Peet’s coffee, and
there he is. Bus Stop Boy at 8pm on a Wednesday evening. My eye make-up long
cried off. My incognito hat. Glasses. This is not the look of a temptress. He’s on line
ahead of me, and so I say hello. We chat a bit; we’ve both started new jobs. We small talk, laugh a bit. I
say see you around.

And now, suddenly, we are seeing each other around a lot. I
next run into him unexpectedly on the shuttle from BART – again on a day when I’d sat at the bus stop from work in near-tears. Waiting – FORTY FIVE MINUTES – for a
bus from Berkeley. Taking me nearly two hours to get home from ONE TOWN AWAY.

And there he is. The second time in a row when I’d felt
depleted, and, perhaps, open.

It hasn’t eluded me that these unusual times that I’ve seen him are at times when I could most use a nod from the universe, some semblance of, Molly – you’re not a worthless, aimless, trundling-along broke spinster. It has not escaped me that during my new days of data entry, receptionist calls, arguments with xerox machines, I’d begun to think of that morning’s conversation with Bus Stop Boy, and it takes me out of my vile existence. It reminds me that I am more than my job. It reminds me that I am something more than that. Simply by recalling the smile of a near stranger, my chest feels less constricted – I feel less trapped. Is this “meaningful”? Is a nudge from “THE UNIVERSE”? Is it just a coincidence? Is it simply pointing out to me the pleasure I take in fantasy rather than reality?

I moved my bags, and he sat down next to me.
After some chit chat, I said, I think I saw you with your girlfriend walking
your dog a few weeks ago (she says leadingly). He got a sudden look, and said, “Ex…” That was their goodbye. She
came to visit for two weeks. She’s been living in D.C. for the past year,
looking for work there and here, and she got a job there, and, as he told to
me, he wasn’t ready to move back East.

He seemed pretty bummed. Secretly, I thought two things.
One: emotionally unavailable. Two: Single. …

So, finally, friends, here’s the kicker. What I admitted to my girl friend earlier today: I have invited him to
come with me to a party my friend is having this Saturday. “As friends,” I
said. But as I spoke to my friend earlier today, … I have no interest,
really, in being this guy’s friend. Nor do I know that I want to be in a
relationship with him. I barely know anything about him. Do I want to get to
know him better? Yes. Am I dating right now? No. Is he? I should hope not! Long-term relationship break-up does not really equal available for a new one any
time soon.

So, what to do? Well, my friend and I spoke earlier about
some “bottom lines” I could set around this. The only thing I could come up
with, which she suggested, was not hanging out one-on-one.

She asked me at the end of our meeting how I felt. I said Stubborn. (She laughed.) I said, Disappointed. The addict part of me wants those hits. Those doses of feeling
something other than overwhelmed with money or lack thereof. With feeling lost
as to my life’s direction or purpose. With feeling lonely, mainly.

As I begin to get some “recovery” or sense of what is
healthy behavior around relationships, I realize that the majority of my recent women
friends are actively engaged in behavior that I just don’t
identify with anymore. I just don’t have anything to say to my friend who’s
texting an unavailable dude daily. Or who just bought sex toys for a threesome. Or who is in and out
of her relationship with the phases of the moon. Which means, and has meant
for me, that several close friendships I’ve had are being let go of — are fading.

Further to the “lonely” part, as I said to my friend this morning, I haven’t been
dating for a year. I haven’t had sex in a year. I am only human. And there’s only so much I can take.

She said she gets it. She felt the same when she was going
through this work. The truth is that I’m doing inventory on my relationship
past, and I don’t want to be involved with anyone while I’m going through this
emotionally raw stuff. I don’t (really) want to use someone else to band-aid the work that I’m doing. The truth is also that I’ve finally gotten paid, and much of my financial crisis is averted, so I finally have the chance to feel a
little less stressed out.

Yes, there is only so much I can take. Luckily, I feel a
modicum more freedom right now, yes, due to money, what-the-fuck-ever to people
who say it won’t make you happy – sorry, food in my fridge makes me fucking
happy, assholes. But that release from imminent worry creates a little more
ease. That little more ease means I won’t have to reach out to false idols for
solace, false idols like the green-fade-to-brown eyes of the Bus Stop Boy.

I can do things to help me bolster and support myself, now
that I’m not as “man the battleships!” Things which will provide more
sustainable relief and support – I can reconnect with friends who aren’t stuck
in unhealthy patterns. I can finally feel the room to write and paint again.

Do I still absolutely want to just rest my head on his
shoulder and relax to the marrow of every organ in my body? YES.

acting · action · change · commitment · confidence · kindness · laughter · life · performance · persistence · progress · recovery · relationships · self-support · sobriety · time

For those of you playing along at home. . .

June 14, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

For those of you playing along at home, below are a few
updates on things I have here written about:

The
caffeine-reduction experiment has been a near-fail since beginning the
temp job, but continues to remind me to feel guilty.

I realized this morning that the free bus I sometimes catch to BART can take me all the
way to the city, instead of transferring to BART (thank you to my school’s
student bus pass, making bus transit in the East Bay free).

I put
back up the series of my paintings that I’d taken down during Calling in
the One, at which time I’d realized that women
not looking at their lovers was something I wanted to move away from. I
put them back up when the okJew was potentially going to come over, and I
didn’t want a blank expanse of wall over my bed. I’m not sure if I’ll take it back down.

I have
not yet finished, but I have begun, the art project for my friend’s
wedding. It sits on my desk, accusing me.

I
bought cat food.

I graduated with a Master’s degree a month ago. And I was offered a weekend job at said pet food store. Generously offered (not the compensation), but no thank you. Not yet, at least.

I have
art that I need to make for the September art show my friend invited me to
join. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but it’s been backstroking through my
psyche for a month or so.

I must
follow-up with the boss at where I’m temping to ask her precisely what she
meant when she said she would be happy to give me “a recommendation” for
auction houses here and in the city (um, I meant NY city – I guess that habit still dies hard).

My dad
will be closing on the sale of my childhood NJ home in the next month or
so, and is planning to move with his fiancé to their new Florida home
toward the fall.

I am
eagerly awaiting June 20^th, when the results of the daily
sweepstakes I’ve been entering for a trip for two to Italy will be
announced. You may be the lucky winner.

My
writing style is influenced by who I’m reading currently.

At the
moment, I just finished Nora Ephron’s new book, and began a collection of
essays by David Foster Wallace, whom I’ve never read, but seen the
author’s name so many times on my BART rides that I thought to give him a
whirl. I’m not sure I will continue.

I will
be art modeling this Sunday for the artist who I first worked for, and two
of her friends. I’m not sure I will continue.

I have
9 new voicemails I haven’t checked.

I went
on the walk I’d planned to take on Tuesday evening yesterday evening, and
it was glorious. I ate what must have been a small, cherry-sized peach,
unless it was of course, a cherry, from a nearby tree which I jumped to
pluck from the low hanging branch. I’m not dead, so it was not poisonous.

As
soon as I get paid this cycle, I’m going to register for the summer acting
classes at A.C.T., and I can’t f’ing wait. I looked up all manner of
electronics yesterday that I could hypothetically use my more regular
income of the next 6 weeks to purchase, and yet, I realized that what I
really want are those lessons. And new shoes.

I’m
now working one-on-one with a woman who’s found recovery around negative
patterns of behavior with sex and men, and I’m infinitely looking forward
to freedom around some of this.

I’m
continuing to work with a woman one-on-one around financial recovery
stuff, and am looking forward to being “placed in a position of
neutrality” around money.

I love
Patsy.

I haven’t
yet played my bass with my friend with the drums up in Berkeley, and it
too stares at me, not gently weeping, but with silent mewling.

I
realized that most of the writers I’m reading right now have written as freelance
writers, and it occurs to me, that I might be able to do that, if I look
into it.

I
haven’t applied to any jobs since last week.

I used
my 3 lb weights yesterday after my walk for about 3 minutes. And began to dread the 3 hour posing/drawing session on Sunday.

Dr.
Palm Reader’s office wrote to ask after me, and so I looked up my
soon-to-end chiropractic benefits “in network,” so that I can get back to
that kind of thing, without breaking my bank, or participating in a
somewhat murky flirtatiousness.

This
is the end of my list.

acceptance · adulthood · family · fear · generosity · recovery · relationships · the middle way · truth

People are Not Projects.

June 13, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Damnit. There goes my favorite hobby. What will I do with my
afternoons, now?

I’ve heard the phrase before, and it recurred to me this
morning. My mom sent me an email back on Monday, qualifying why she’d replied
so “vehemently” on Friday that she wanted me under NO circumstances to tell her
whether I had the genome for Alzheimer’s, if I were to get the genetic mapping
thing I said I was maybe possibly going to do someday.

Even before she emailed me on Monday, I got the chance to
work through some of my anger at her refusal for clarity, her refusal to do things the
way I’d do them, or the way I’d want her to do them.

I even got to see that there is perhaps a part of me that is
in fear that she will have it. Watching what she went through with her mom, I can’t imagine it. Though I know I’d have the resources internal and external to do the best I could, if she does.

On Monday, she wrote me back and said, as I knew, that her mom was
around the same age my mom is now when she began to show signs of it, and that
she’s “very frightened.” I was amazed that my mother could let herself admit
that.

I wrote her back that, of course, I understand, and will respect
her feelings and wishes around this. Obviously.

And so, I’m reminded that people are not projects. She is
not on this earth, this lifetime, for me to fix her. As I’m also reminded
often, people are not broken, and I don’t need to fix them. She isn’t broken.
She is human, like me, like you. I have faults and assets, she has faults and
assets. Mainly, those faults are just calcified fears and defense mechanisms.
And it’s not up to me to fix them. They
are not “problems.” They just are. They are part of the map that is my mom.
They are part of the challenges and opportunities she has in this lifetime. And
it is part of my own challenge this lifetime to leave her be.

This is new behavior. Not alien, but new. We, I, grew up
enmeshed with her, her feelings were my own, and I tended to and acquiesced to
and modified myself in order to attend to her feelings. It was my own defense
mechanism. And, it was also in some ways what was needed. She was an
undiagnosed manic depressive, self-medicating with prescription and non-prescription tranquilizers
and uppers. Her feelings and mood swings were uncontainable, palpable, and able to wash a small
child overboard the ship of normalcy. So, I learned how to stand by the
rigging. I learned how to read the waves, to anticipate them, to ensure that
things were precisely as they needed to be. I learned to ensure life was easier
for her when she was in her clinical depression by not having or voicing or
owning my needs. I learned to ensure that she not retreat into that state by
allowing her manic times free reign, and stand tensely in the wings of her
life, egging her on – because mania meant some more of her, but not really. It
just meant she moved more quickly in her neuroses. And was hard to be around
then.

That was probably harder. It was like a live wire. Every
vibrantly theatrical gesture and every squeal of delight was like a hammer to my heart, knowing
that it was inauthentic, fleeting, and often, embarrassing. More than the
typical teen angsty, my parents are lame kind. More like, this person isn’t aware of herself and how big she can be, and I’m sorry she’s hijacked your conversation/this movie theather/…our vacation.

I went on a trip with her a few years ago to Sedona. I’d
begun to heal some of my own self-destructive patterns, and this was one of the
first times she and I were getting to spend any significant time together. It
didn’t go well.

Diagnosed, and newly (doctor prescribed) medicated as she
now was, she is/was still my mom. Even today, even though the swings have
lessened, the grooves in the thought patterns and behaviors are still there,
engrained over a lifetime, and I’ll suddenly find myself talking to a weepy child where a minute before stood a fierce New Yorker. But, in Sedona, we decided to do one of those Pink
Jeep tours, where they take you out in a jeep into the gorgeous red rock
landscape.

My mom had to be the entertainment. There were maybe 6 of us
in the back of the jeep, and as my mom continued to make herself more and more
“heard” and “seen” by this group of strangers, as she put on her mask of entertainer
– witty, loud, invasive – I began to feel myself shrinking in her wake. I began
to notice that I was doing what I’d always done, and detach from the dramatic
entrance of my mom’s persona. I didn’t like it.

I didn’t like that I was reacting that way, and so instead,
I began to get sullen and angry. She
picked up on the anger. And she couldn’t understand why – she’d been being who
she’d always been, acting (double meaning intended) as she always had, why was
I mad with her? I didn’t answer her. I didn’t know what was the “right” way to
answer that in my new recovery language – I simply said that it had more to do
with me than with her, and that was about it. She didn’t like this answer; I
knew it was true, but I didn’t like it either. We’re a “processy” – or we had
been – kind of pair. (She is a shrink, after all…) And I wasn’t going to or able to process this with her.

What is there to process? You’re not being the mom I want
you to be? You’re behaving so falsely, and invading these folks’ space? THIS
JEEP TOUR IS NOT ABOUT YOU?

No, I couldn’t say those things. There is and was the truth
that it does have more to do with me
than with her. How able I am to accept and love my mom as and who she is
without trying to change her. Without needing to be right. And without pitying her.

There is the truth that people are not projects, and that
she is not broken. There is also the magnanimous truth that my mother is also
brilliant, witty, stylish, and bold. Yes, she is also desperately scared of
everything, self-defeatest, and paralytically despairing. She is all of these
things. (She’s also a Gemini, if that helps.)

My mother is a human, with places she falls short of the
ideal, like me, like you; places where she excels, like me, like you. And, in
the end, just wants to feel loved, and at peace. Like me. And like you.

anger · relationships · romance · sex · sexuality · vulnerability

Sex Type Thing: Poems.

June 9, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Can you fix me from inside the slickness?

Will callouses and scabs be rent off by our friction?

Will the explosion of your cum inside me tremble into the
core of every cell

and paint them newly red?

No?

Then get the fuck off me.

* * *

my foot cramps in the closed position monkeys

must still be able to make but i can’t

my hip bone pops in its socket and i’m

unsure whether that’s into or out of it

the lightest swing of my body against the mattress

mimics an old playset and i’m suspended

* * *

everything switches off, except your breath

against my hip bone

* * *

everyone i know has an o.c.d. mom

and an absent father

will this fix it?

does it need to be fixed?

how the fuck do you do that?

* * *

i want her to stop claiming “broken,”

as if it’s a setting on the dishwasher

and when its turned all culpability and

engagement in the world is paused

indefinitely

* * *

the tiniest fibers of hair

freshly shaved this morning

no matter how new the razor

they vibrate like frankenstein’s

monster and map
everything:

my skin against yours

us in this town

the triangles of string that

connect where i’ve been

connect other lovers

not comparing, enhancing this one

touch

how his tongue felt against the densely

moisture

tentative

sloppy

the lightest grazing and

sickly sudden entrance

of manicured or not

fingertips

strapping my attention

chaining it to the bed.

* * *

how does this alchemy work?

it hasn’t so far.

lead returns to lead as

i bolt the door behind you

the moment gimped

by an awkward exchange of

see yous

what tangle the sheets are in,

still warm,

i climb back into them as if

i could coax them into being

you

and you were something else

* * *

i only ever imagine the weight of you

when i’m alone with myself at night

i can find folds that you can’t

and pace myself as you won’t

but alone, i can never press myself into the

evaporating softness

or
grip the muscles of your back

as if you were my life preserver

6.9.12.

authenticity · community · creativity · friendship · frustration · kindness · maturity · recovery · relationships · San Francisco · writing

Literati

June 7, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Yesterday was a day off from work, as they needed the room
I’ve been stationed in, the library, so I got to experience a lot of loll and
gag. Less gag, more loll.

I still did spend
time in a library, peeling myself from my couch to go sit in the local library
and email and submit applications for higher education jobs. Here, Southern
California, New York City … Northern Florida. Throwing out the seeds and seeing
what sprouts.

I also got another book out of the library, and began to
notice a trend of mine over the last few months. The latest books I’ve read
have been:

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

I’ll Never Be French (No Matter What I Do) by Mark Greenside

Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine by Eric Weiner

Seriously, I’m Kidding…
by Ellen Degeneres

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

and now

Bossypants by Tina
Fey

As I was checking Tina Fey’s book out, I was able to connect
a few dots through the above list. Firstly, there are the books that are
about redemption – about people searching, seeking, going insane, going sane.
Mark Greenside’s book is more of a bridge to the other category, not being a
redemption, but certainly a “coming of age” (at 40) kind of an adventure. The other
category, of course, being the comedienne’s books.

Something about this strikes the right balance with me.
That, yes, I want to read about your harrowing walks through dark nights of the
soul and wilderness and Vegas (see : Man Seeks God), but I also want to read the levity, candor, and
strength of women in showbiz who are being pioneers in a
different way.

I’d never been one for non-fiction, and all the above are.
They’re all “memoirs.” I was raised picking up the library copies of my mom’s
Stephen King novels, and for most of my junior high and high school years, I’d
sit on the couch in the downstairs living room, engrossed in the psychological
and physical mystery of King’s characters and plot. Everyone would eventually
go up to bed, but I was too page-turned, and soon, it was late. And I was by
myself, reading Stephen King in the middle of the night.

This, was not an altogether pleasant experience, so I’d read
further, because if I closed the book, I’d have to turn off all the downstairs
lights, and walk upstairs in the dark with visions of deranged clowns lurking
in my peripheries. So, I read on, and then it’d be 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning,
and my eyes scratchy from being open so long, and I’d finally give up, too
exhausted to care if there were a rabid dog perched somewhere in the stairwell.
I’d climb up to bed, and fall in, too tired to be awake enough to contemplate
the darkness.

There were the years when I didn’t read anything at all,
really. I call these college.

No, (!) just kidding. But after college, I read nothing much
at all, or nothing that stands out. And I don’t really remember what I picked
up next, but it wasn’t that many years ago.

I remember when I first got sober, within the first year, I
went to see a movie at an indie theater in San Francisco. I had befriended a
group of people who were wonderful and hilarious and lovely, but none of whom wanted to see anything like what I was seeing that day. I enjoyed
the movie immensely, and when I walked out, I began to panic.

I’ll never have the kind of friends who’ll want to see
anything like this with me. No one has the kind of taste I have. I’ll be
destined to watch things and do things that interest me alone forever.

Fatalism is not just a river in Egypt. Melodrama, the same.

I began to cry. Honestly.

I called the one woman I trusted, and sobbed to her on the
phone how alone I was, and that no one “got” me, and that I was too weird to
have friends.

She told me to come over to her house right then. I sobbed even
more that I didn’t know the San Francisco bus system, and I’d be stuck in Polk
Gulch forever.

So, she told me how to catch the Geary or the California
bus, and picked me up at a mutual spot, and fed me tea and calmed me down.

A few months later, I was outside my car with a group of
people. One of them I’d just met, and she looked into my backseat and saw a
book I had there (I honestly can’t remember what it was). She exclaimed with delight – she had been meaning to read
that book! How did I like it, what did I think? And I told her she could borrow
it when I was done.

It felt like a revelation, even though it was such a “small”
thing. I leant her the book. She leant me one. I began to form friendships with
people who had similar tastes and interests, and who would undoubtedly today
come with me to an indie movie theater.

It took time. It took
a lot of time. I have a friend now who is going through similar transitions and
longing for those kinds of connections, having been immersed in a relationship
involvement so that it’s been hard to make the kind of friends she wants. So, I
told her that story of the movie theater breakdown and the book-in-the-car new
friend.

At some point, I turned from the sci-fi, novel genre (though
The Illustrated Man sits on my shelf – moment of silence for Ray Bradbury, and his children’s room/lion story
that has never left my consciousness). Today, the books I read are not paths
into the mystery of the mind and the world, but out of them. (Though, someone once gave
me a copy of The Power of Now,
and each time I tried to read it, I a) threw up a little in my mouth, and b) twice —TWICE– simply threw the damn thing sputtering across the room – this
last time, just a few months ago. I’ve since given it away. Self-righteousness
in a “spiritual” teacher is an ugly characteristic.)

It’s just interesting to me to notice what I’ve been
attracted to lately. That it points to a change in course. I yoked a friend
of mine to driving up to Jeanette’s reading when she was in town a few months ago, and that
friend now has my copy – a friend of mine, wants to read something I’m
interested in too. A friend of mine is interested in the things I am too. And she’s not the only one. I’m
no longer bereft and alone on a street corner drowning in the electric whine of
MUNI wires and the stench of human misery.

Thank you, Brandie, for asking me about that book in my
car.

community · intimacy · joy · love · relationships · respect · San Francisco · school

Going to the Chapel.

June 5, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

In an effort to hold myself accountable, I’ll here announce
that I have an art project to complete by this Saturday, for my friend’s
wedding. And… in an effort to be honest, I mean start and complete by Saturday. It’s all good – I’ve
already sketched it out, but theory and practice are disastrously different
things.

This will be the first wedding I’ve ever attended. Somehow,
it’s just never happened that I’ve been around people who get married, or been
in the same state or country to attend. I did work with a catering company at a
few weddings last summer, but that’s not the same. Although, it did give me
some great perspective and insight into the whole rigamarole.

The first wedding I did was between two women, which was
pretty cool. But, I got to learn that you shouldn’t have speeches during
serving time at dinner, as people are really confused as to whether they should
eat or listen, and then the courses get backed up, and you’re removing plates
while people are speaking, which is hella awkward and earns more than a few pointed
glances.

I learned that if you’re having a sunset wedding in the
Sonoma hills that bugs will flock to and then drown in your water, champagne,
and wine glasses. I learned that before you blink, the whole thing is over.
This is not meant to be a diatribe on marriage or weddings, it’s just
observations – and a reminder to really be present for things like this – they
really are fleeting.

I decided that, personally, a set of anonymous towels was
not what I wanted to give this couple. I met the bride within the first year, I
think, of being in San Francisco. We met out front of a building where folks
like us gather for an hour, and I asked her for a light or a cigarette, or we
just both happened to be smoking out front, me feeling socially awkward as
hell.

We talked. And somehow, stars aligned, and we knew that we’d become really good friends. Nothing
momentous was said. No raw secrets were shared, or raucous joke exchanged. We
were just ourselves, nervous, anxious companions in the semi-dark on the
concrete steps to a massive warehouse-like building by the San Francisco Marina.

When I left, we exchanged a hug. We reflected later that
neither of us were a huggy bunch. We were, or at least I was, still much too guarded then, and hugging was restricted for the very few people I now was
beginning to consider friends. But, hug we did. And it was almost that
spontaneous act of mutual affection, an act neither of us typically allowed ourselves,
that sealed that something different was here. A friendship had been
formed in the 5 minutes it takes from lighting to filter.

More than 5 years ago now.

She’s part of the reason I went back to school. I watched
her quit her lucrative job as a store manager in a touristy spot in San
Francisco, and go back to school full time in an unusual major – or at least
completely unrelated to anything she’d been doing previously. I watched her
walk, even painfully, through the process, and in the middle of winter in 2010,
I sat on her couch – maybe it was our Christmas or New Years, or something
gathering. She cooked, we talked. I asked her why this major, how come, out of
everything in the world, she chose this?

She told me that it was a thread throughout her life. All
through her life, she noticed that she’d gravitated toward information around
this subject, she sort of watched herself nurture and feed this interest. That
phrase, a thread through my life, stuck
with me.

It was hard to imagine that someone with a lucrative and
stable job (with all the attendant mishigas of a lucrative and stable job)
would quit all that to go to school, and start nearly at the beginning of a
career. But she did. I admired her dearly for it.

And so, when, two months later, I found myself at a
crossroads in my own job world, I asked myself, What is my thread? It was
writing. I have poems that date to 2^nd grade. It
was her conviction that she was insisting something to herself almost
unconsciously through her choices of hobby and interest and book perusal that
underlined that this was her arena. And so, I followed my own thread.

Because of the nature of life and distance, and full-time
schooling for us both, we don’t get to see one another often at all. It is her
I blame, full disclosure, for having hooked me on the horrifyingly ridiculous
and addictive Twilight book series –
that very night, actually back in 2010. Walking out toward the end of the
night, I glanced at her bookshelf – and there it is, the entire series. I
guffawed. I was stunned – attractive, intelligent, funny, generous, achingly cool, and reads Twilight??
This couldn’t be right.

She asked me if I’d read it – I looked at her as if she’d
asked me if I enjoyed stepping in dog shit. No, I had not read them. Scoff,
scoff. (!) Then she gave me the first volume, and told me to try it.

And so I did. And damn her, if she hasn’t turned me into one
whom others scoff at. And I thank her for it. Cheesey, and melodramatic, and
angsty, she helped me to learn to not take myself too seriously, and to let
myself have uninhibited, puffy fun.

I am honored to be attending her wedding this weekend. I
have watched her and shared with her over the course of years, and the deep
affection that was tapped on that lonely concrete outcropping has murmured like
a brook under the surface of my life every day since.

acceptance · dating · fantasy · fear · finances · growth · maturity · progress · relationships · romance · sobriety

"Love as Burrito" or "This, or Something Better"

May 31, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Grateful to my friends who gave me feedback, I texted the okJew yesterday morning
that I was a fan of getting to know someone before getting physical (I couldn’t
help but hear Olivia Newton-John as I typed it), and if that was something he
was interested in, then I’d love to continue getting to know him, and if not,
no hard feelings. He texted back to say that, in fact, he was looking for
something else, and didn’t know how that fit in with me or not.

So, I got to sit with that. Tall, attractive, well-built
Jew? What’s not to like? Oh, unavailable.
And, I did sit, I questioned, I turned inward for a few minutes to test that
option, and ultimately, gratefully, I said I was looking for something less
tenuous, and good luck.

Then …

I sat and stared at a wall of books.

I was shocked, honestly, at how “air out of a balloon” I
felt, without all that funny noise it makes. It made me realize that I still do
have some work to do. I identified very clearly the feeling of a crash after a
high. I could almost smell the cigarette smog and late 90s radio.

Hm. Love as Drug. Huey Lewis has a song about it. And, duh,
it’s not “love” as in Love. It was intrigue. Oh, Intrigue!! – when’s the next
text, what do I wear, how flirty do I be, funny do I be, do I invite him in,
scheduling plans, etc…etc…etc… Something to think about, and then the plug was
pulled yesterday mid morning, and I sat deflated and comatose for a few minutes
on and off till lunchtime.

When I went and bought a burrito. My friend texted me to say
that it’s normal to feel feelings, and we get to let them pass. I said my feelings now
feel like a burrito in my belly ~ Real feelings TBA. And that much was true. How
much easier it is to feel full, or to
buy something to feel better – not better, to just feel different. My burrito
accomplished both of those. Better to eat, feel full (and mildly grossed out
that I ate a pound of tofu and salsa flesh), and to get the thrill that I spent
money on lunch when I had a perfectly decent one in the fridge at work.

Cuz, what do I feel when I’m not caught up in the nonsense?
Fear. I feel fear about money and work and job applications and
directionlessness. Who the hell wants to feel that?? No one. But, better to feel those feelings, and
thereby get into action around
them, than to stuff them with something else, and continue avoiding the
elephant in my psyche.

There’s another okJew who I’ve been talking to – and I’m not
entirely sure that I want to pursue it at the moment. I met up with some of my
new “relationship/emotional intimacy” folks last night after work, which was a
very good use of my time. I’m so glad
I’ve chosen to fall in with them – and they were talking about dating, and
showing up, and boundaries, and desires, and how to be honest. These are things
I want. I want to have desires –
I have no … desire… to be celibate, or nunnish. I am a hot-blooded woman with
hot-blooded needs, and a great big bag of tools that don’t work.

That said, I obviously do have more tools than I used to (burrito
coma aside) – because I did let this dude know what I was available for, and he
said he was glad we got that worked out early – and it’s true. I know plenty of
times when I’ve let my “fear of looking needy” keep me from speaking up about
my discomfort at the level of murk in a relationship or sexytime companionship.
Once, it took me almost a month, and when I finally broached the subject with
the dude, he said he wasn’t available or looking for more. So, I said, great,
and was glad to know, and left his house feeling better and confident in my
ability to state my needs, and let go of the results.

Sure, I didn’t “get what I want” in that situation – who doesn’t want the person to say, of course, I’d love to
continue to get to know you and see if there’s something substantial that can
come from this. But … as my “sugar crash” yesterday proved to me, there’s more
work to be done. It’s not at all fair to place that amount of expectation on
anyone – because they’re not really being asked to be themselves, they’re being
asked to fill something in me, or distract something in me, or fix something in
me. And, that, my dears, is an inside job.

When I said a few days ago, that if relationships are
Miracle-Gro for your character defects, then surely they are/must be for your
spiritual growth – this is why. My defect here being the desire to run away
from the reality of my professional and financial situation – and when someone
says they can’t be that for me, I’m left simply with my situation all over again, like
the ugly step-sister you lock in the attic. Still here.

So what do I do? Well, firstly, I meet up with folks and I
ask for help. Done, and will continue to do. Secondly, I continue to work on
the job front. I was invited to go camping this weekend, and had accepted, as I
love to camp, and getting out of dodge sounded so very nice. But last night, as
I was compiling job listings into an email draft so I could take a look at them
in my spare moments at work… it occurred to me that perhaps going camping was
not the best use of my time at the moment.

This temp job will likely end in the next week or two, and
after that is a blank horizon. It’s time for me to assist in coloring it in.

Lastly, I offer myself kudos. I made my intentions known,
quickly. I listened honestly to what another person was telling me about their
intentions. Which I didn’t take personally at all (a thought, I recognize, is
also huge progress, but seems so “of course” now). I can try to treat myself
kindly with how I treat my body and not go food coma on myself.

I showed up. I got in the ring. I made out. And, I can be
confident that what’s available for me is “This, or something better.”