anxiety · courage · disappointment · equanimity · family · love · relationships · resentment · trying

Not the Buddha.

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Yesterday was Father’s Day. As evidenced by the insane photobombing bonanza that was Facebook yesterday. (Yes, I’m modifying the meaning of photo-bomb in this context.)

I was unsurprised to notice an amalgam of feelings arise as I scrolled down, and down… and down, through the newsfeed. Yes. Everyone has a dad. Yes. I get it. Yes. I even have my own. Do I have to see yours, too?

In the end. I posted my own photo of myself with my dad. I must be about 5 years old, climbing over the guard rail into the brush. We’re probably on vacation in Cape Cod, the ocean visible in the background. He’s looking out through binoculars, the front fender of his red 1970 Cutlass in the corner of the image. The majority of the photos I have of us together when I’m little are from the Brownies/Girl Scouts Father/Daughter dances — staged photos on cubes of packed hay. I’m sitting on my dad’s lap, looking highly uncomfortable.

This annual awkwardness was the closest my dad and I ever got, and the call to look normal at it was a difficult one to answer.

But, still. Yesterday, I too wanted to feel a shred of familial nostalgia, true or un. I wanted to add to our communal photobook my own pixelated, sugar-coated memory.

In the afternoon, I attended a seminar being hosted at my work. I was on hand as a staff member but got to participate too. The subject under discussion was “Having Difficult Conversations.” … It was the most requested topic, and the least attended. We all want to know how to do this, but we’re also hesitant to do so.

With about a dozen other folks, I was asked to turn to my neighbor and share “the story” of a conversation I’d been avoiding having. It was about 3pm on Father’s Day, and I’d already mailed my dad a generic, but nice enough card. I’d emailed him yesterday with that photo attached. And the conversation I was anxious to have or not have was whether or not to also call him.

Had I done my due diligence as a daughter? Was a card and an email enough?

One of the questions asked of us was: What is their side of the story?

I thought about this, wrote about it. Thought about my dad wondering what he’d done to be punished with silence. Thought about him getting angry with me for disappointing him again. Thought about him contemplating his martrydom, that all he’d done was love me, and I can’t show up for him.

But. True or not, these are only what I think he’s thinking.

In reality, what he’s probably thinking is that he loves me and misses me and would like to hear from me.

Period.

Because as time and experience have proved, he has little ability to contemplate much below the surface.

Once the workshop was over, I’d concluded that I’d probably done enough. That I didn’t need to call him, to subject myself to being open to attack or discomfort, as previous conversations have only proved to be. That’s what the story is, too: If I call, I open myself up to disappointment. Again.

But, once I arrived to my friend’s house for dinner, I’d had a few more minutes to think, and as I parked, what occurred to me was a phrase a friend told me long ago: “The Buddha says hello first.”

I thought as I put it into reverse, What kind of person do I want to be in this world?

Surely, I don’t want to be someone who allows themselves to be whipped over and over, but I forget that I’m also someone these days who when I see that coming or happening, I have the esteem and wherewithall to stop them or to end the conversation.

I want to be the kind of person who sends love, even to those who are unable to receive it. Not as “The Giving Tree” would do, but with conscious decision. I know I’m taking a risk reaching out to you, but I care … not really about you, sorry, but about how I feel — and how I feel is that I want to send you a … not an olive branch, but perhaps just a message of peace, not truce.

In the end, I just wanted to act toward my father how I would want him to behave toward me, with awareness, with boundaries, and with empathy toward us both.

So, I called. And mercifully, I got his voicemail. I left one, short and sweet. Which he reciprocated while I was out to dinner and left me one.

He just wants to know what’s going on in my life. He has lost this right. He has proved himself untrustworthy to know more than the most sweeping generalizations about my life. And I will have to decide once again if this is a conversation I want to have.

The Buddha may say hello first, but how many times do you say hello to someone you don’t trust?

authenticity · awareness · career · dating · deprivation · faith · fear · integrity · internet dating · jobs · perseverance · self-abandonment · self-esteem

Broken Algorithms

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Someone asks you out.
You’re pretty sure it’s not a match, but “you never know” and you have nothing better to do, so you
say sure. The date is uneventful, confirms that you’re not a match, and ends
with a nice awkward hug, and one of those vague promises to meet up again soon.
Perhaps there are follow-up texts, that you politely reply
to, but are vague and friendly. Perhaps there are then more follow-up texts
that you begin to ignore in an attempt to give a hint as to your lack of
interest and intention. And, finally, perhaps there’s the passive-aggressive
texts you begin to receive that a) reconfirm this wasn’t a match, and b) lead you
to hide them from your newsfeed!
What’s wrong with this picture? – as the back of the Highlights magazine asked you to spot.
Well, first and foremost is the fact that you abandoned your
own good judgment, values, and integrity by agreeing to go out in the first
place. “Pretty sure it’s not a match” is usually good enough. Enough of these
situations have proved that your gut is usually correct.
This self-abandonment is the seed of the whole problem.
It’s not the dude; it’s not his persistence; it’s not his disappointment masked
as passive-aggression. – It’s you.
I’ve finished reading the history of online dating/how-to
memoir entitled Data, A Love Story: How I Cracked the Online Dating Code to
Meet My Match. In it, the author describes
that the problem with online dating is not the sites; it’s us. It’s us answering questions as our aspirational
self, instead of as we are. It’s us, chatting with people we only have vague
interest in. It’s us, abandoning our integrity in order to have crappy
connections with people.
I’ve been thinking about this process in relation to my job
search. I’ve realized that I do the same thing in dating that I do in job
searching: I lie. I let jobs that hold little to no interest for me get a bulk
of my attention, and then when I get the interview, I find that,
indeed, I’m not interested, but in order to be “nice” or liked or wanted or
hired, I will feign that interest. I will more often than not land that job,
and then I will become resentful that I have it. This suitor that I didn’t
want, I’m now trying to delete from my Facebook, or in this case, my LinkedIn.
Again, what’s broken here is not these jobs – it’s my
willingness to abandon my values. It’s my willingness to say to myself,
Something is better than nothing; what else have you got to do? It’s my
willingness to waste my time and theirs, so that I can put off and deny what it
is I really want.
My willingness to waste my own time … my threshold for the pain that causes is astronomically high.
But because I have a belief that this is easier than the
pain of making truer statements, of sticking close to my integrity, my
intentions, my values, and my wants, I choose the rockier path every time.
Because the alternative is to stick with myself. To be the
friend I want to be to myself. To be my
own cheerleader and ally, and to let myself know that I’m here to support
myself on the unknown path of self-esteem.
I said on the phone to a friend two weeks ago: “I’m having
trouble mustering the low self-esteem required to apply for jobs I don’t want.” Ha!
I think we call that progress; insight; growth. (Although, I am still finding myself browsing those job descriptions.)
I have to muster a whole silo filled with negative beliefs
in order to go toward jobs I don’t want. These include: I don’t know what I
want, so I don’t deserve anything better. I will only abandon myself
eventually, so I may as well do it now. There’re no happy endings in this world,
so what makes you think you deserve one.
To name a few.
And I have to bombard and drown myself in these beliefs
(false beliefs) in order to “muster the low self-esteem” necessary to undersell
myself.
The same, I’m sure, is true for me in the dating world.
So, again, what is the solution, here?
I know that it’s to not abandon myself, to continue working
on my self-esteem, to wipe away the corroded mirror I use to judge myself so
that I can get a clearer view, one that reflects esteem, joy, confidence, and
courage. One that reflects someone fun, engaged, lively, warm, and worthy. I
know that the work is to trust that if I walk away from that silo of low
self-esteem, I will be led toward a healthier source of sustenance.
And that trust… That is the hard part. That tiny sapling of
faith that I will have to hold onto as the storm of negativity swirls around
me, raging only harder the longer I resist. I will have to hold on to that sapling,
until it becomes a redwood, until the storm recedes into memory. I will have to
have faith that if I hold on long enough to my self-worth and my self-esteem,
the clouds will give way to the sun. 
Here’s hoping. 

ambition · band · choice · commitment · community · fulfillment · fun · gratitude · happiness · joy · music · opportunity · synchronicity · theater

Band Aid.

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You know, it was right around a year ago last June that I
stood up with a group of 4 other people and played bass with a band in front of
actual people in an actual venue. – I’d started playing in May.
This month, I’m being invited to do so again.
I’ve picked up my bass literally once in the last 6 months,
since our final show on New Year’s Eve, or the final show I played with them
before I left the band to pursue theater.
This switch, this focus of my energies in one creative
direction (one that I’ve always wanted to pursue, but never let myself try or
admit or commit to) has turned out pretty darn well in these last few months: I
got real headshots, auditioned about a dozen times, performed in one play, one
staged reading, and am preparing as the lead in a play at the end of the
summer.
These are all great things.
But I miss the band.
I miss the immediate gratification of playing with people. I
miss the noise, the movement, the sound, the collaboration. I miss the
laughter.
Theater is performance; being a musician is a performance;
but there’s a difference. The former is literally more staged. It’s not like I
have acres of experience in either, and maybe I simply fell in with a great
group of people for my first band – which I did. But whatever the formula is
for happiness, I felt that when I played.
A friend once asked me what it was like to play with the
band. What it felt like. And I took her question with me to band practice that
week, and noticed how I felt as we fiddled and fixed and went over and over and
moved into a rhythm, and went totally off the reservation with funny lyrics and
made-up progressions: I was smiling. I was bouncing on the balls of my bare
feet – the only way I could practice – and I noticed that I felt content, engaged,
in the moment, fun, funny, “on.” That’s what “happy” felt like.
Next Sunday, I’ll get to practice with a new group of folks,
a friend and his friend, to prepare for a potential show in July, before my
theater rehearsal gets going. I’m feeling nervous and jittery – wanting to get
the music charts NOW so I can practice, be perfect, be better – because if you haven’t followed along,
I’ve only been playing a year, and not that consistently at that!
I want to build my calluses back up. I want to remember
where C is on the fret board. I want to bounce on the carpet in my bare feet.
I love this theater stuff, … but I love the band better.
(P.S. I’m just reminded to reflect that it was only a little
while ago that I wrote here that I wanted to “band” again … and here it is. Word.)

awareness · career · childhood · clarity · despair · faith · fear · healing · isolation · jobs · recovery · work

The Runaways

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I sent out a mass text on Wednesday to several women I know
who’d understand. I asked them to help me not quit my job that day; that for me
quitting without a safety net is equivalent to drinking; that I was at the end
of my rope.
I got several texts back, including from a woman I am only
acquainted with but who I admire, and she offered that if I called her, we
could pray together. Sure, what else have I got?
When I called, I imagined we’d just say some rote prayer that
is common around, but instead, she launched into a several-minute long prayer
personal to and about me. In it she said, to me and to the ether, that this job
is just a recreation of my childhood trauma and neglect, and to help me see
that and heal that. She said many other loving things, but this is the part that
has been sending shock-waves through me the last few days.
I’ve “gotten” that my relationships in the world tend to be
mirrors or recreations of older, historical relationships. It’s been clear that
my acceptance and pursuit of jobs that make me want to cry with frustration
over the hemorrhaging of my time is a pattern of low self-worth and despair.
However, there was and is a new level of understanding – an
“aha” moment if you will (not gag) – as I listened to my friend’s prayer. How
is my job a recreation of my home life
growing up?
Well, at home, I was a runaway.
When I was little, I only did it twice. I got as far as our
public library, with a small backpack filled with maybe an apple and a
sweatshirt. But at 7 or 8 years old, I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t have a
place to go, there was no where to go. And so I defeatedly walked back home,
and slipped into my house, where no one noticed I’d been gone anyway, just like
the time before.
In my home, my gifts were not encouraged or noticed; there
was an unstable force that expected perfection, meekness, and to be obeyed; and
finally, all of my most basic needs were met. I was fed, clothed, and housed —
anything else was bonus, not to be asked for and not to be expected.
(It wasn’t prison life, I know; but this is the
interpretation and internalization of a small person with a brain that analyzes
and makes judgment.)
So. How have my work environments been a reflection, a
recreation of this initial home environment?
Perfectly. Perfectly parallel:
Basic needs met. Check.
Gifts not seen or utilized. Check.
Perfection and meekness expected. Check.
Unstable authoritarian. Check.
And finally,
Somewhere I run away from. Check. Check, the whole of my life, check.
I have held 6 jobs in the past 8 years.
Each year and a half or so, I become so frustrated with the
confines of my environment and the yearnings of my soul, that I quit. I quit
without a safety net. I quit with nowhere to go.
And so I do what I did when I was young: I go back home. I
find another underearning, underbeing, dissatisfying, deadening, useless position
that also meets my very basic needs and has a few coworkers to be my allies.
I keep this job until I end up crying in my car for an hour (See: this Tuesday). And then I quit again.
Rinse. Repeat.
So, today, I am attempting with every fucking fiber of my
being not to quit. Not to start the cycle again without a plan – without
someplace to go. Without someplace to go that is “right,” that is safe, that is
not running from the frying pan into the fire.
For me, to quit a job without a safety net – meaning,
another job or enough savings to carry me through to another job – is tantamount to drinking. And as a sober alcoholic,
that’s a pretty serious parallel. It is deadly for me to do this again: I eventually begin to think about driving into oncoming traffic. It is insane for me to do this again and expect that in any way
it would be different than before.
So, what is my solution?
I have tried every mode of visioning, job window-shopping,
informational interviewing, praying, meditating, and begging known to me to try to “conjure” or land on or decide or realize or discover
what the job, the career, for my life should be. And I have landed on nothing.
I am absolutely blocked in this area of dreaming.
A therapist once told me that I don’t let myself dream.
And this is true. Why dream, when it’ll be taken away or
I’ll fuck it up anyway, which amounts to the same thing?
I had a moment last night when I heard someone say that “we”
are the kind of people who try to get away with doing the least work.
I thought about that. Why is that? Because I completely identify with that.
I leaned to my friend on the left, who identifies with that
way of being, and asked, Well, what about workaholics?
I leaned to my friend on the right, who is a workaholic and would no more do the least amount
of work necessary than eat sand, and asked her about it.
Later, in talking with her, I’ve come to see that although
the routes are very opposite, the motivation and the fear is the same for both
“underearners/under-be-ers” and for workaholics: Things are not going to work
out; I’m not going to be okay.
For the set that does the minimum, the fear (for me at
least) is that whatever it is is not going to work out anyway, so why try? Why
give the world the satisfaction of seeing me put effort in, if it’s only going
to turn to shit?
For the workaholic set, the fear is that unless I have my hand in everything, it’s not going to work
out. I must make sure that I’m doing everything possible, or it will turn to
shit.
In both these scenarios, the fear is that the result will
not be favorable to us. On the one hand, why try to make it work – on the other hand, make
it.
In both cases, there is a lack of faith in the positive
outcome of things, or in an outcome that is unfavorable but doesn’t demoralize
and crush us into smitherines. Because,
for me, that’s the final stage of the fear – I will be so demoralized, I will be
annihilated.
But aren’t I there anyway?
So, again, what is the solution here?
It seems to me, that I needed a safe place to go when I was
running away. And although I cannot conjure or envision for myself a job or
career that I want, I do think that I
can try to envision for myself a safe home.
Though, even in my home life now, I’ve recreated what it was like when I was
a kid: My own small room that was safe, filled with things I’ve made and pretty
things, a place I could hide, be myself, and a place where I was mostly alone.
What is a real safe
place, not like this isolation? Where would I want to run away to?
I believe that as I try to answer this question, to envision
what an ideal safe home looks like, I will begin to have movement on the job
front. I will begin to create that environment I crave in the external world. And though that might not mean a lightning bolt in terms of a career
choice, it may help to make whatever my next transition is one that I don’t
have to run away from.

balance · change · direction · happiness · life · love · purpose · success · vision

MyHead Revisited

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I can’t even remember who it was now, but recently a friend
told me that she is consistently revisiting and reevaluating her goals. What
seemed like the best and truest goal two years ago may no longer hold the sway,
and so, daily almost, but certainly every while or so, we must revisit what
we’d thought we were heading toward – like recalibrating our compass.
I’d come up with this vision a few years ago, maybe 2 or 3
now, of my ideal daily schedule. The early morning, of course, is inner work
like I already do (journaling, meditating, blogging); the rest of the
morning hours would be spent in working on my craft, in a detached studio in
the backyard that would be half an art studio and half a music studio.
Couches, light, friends to jam or visit.
In the afternoon, I would go out “into the world,” and do
*something* of which I’m still unsure having to do with the community — being
involved, helping others, maybe working after school with kids, or facilitating
my workshop, or some kind of public speaking. Unknown task, but known purpose:
to help, to connect, to be in community.
The evening would be play time. Either I’d be in theater
productions, performing with my band, out at art shows or readings. That would
be my friend, fun, out, “On” time.
And that’s my day. All seen from a white kitchen, where I
stand, maybe 50 years old, chopping something at the island block, the art studio visible from a
door to the backyard.
Not a bad vision, eh?!
But. It’s also time to revisit it. And my thoughts and goals
in general. Are these intentions still relevant, powered, intended? Are these
my values? Dunno. I’ll have to sit with them for a while.
What I surprised me this morning, however, is that several
of my intentions have become realized. Though I know I am unfulfilled in my
employment, as I remember where I was when I discovered the above vision a few
years ago (also unfulfilled in my employment), I recognize I am no longer looking at this vision from a place of Yeah Sure,
Right. As a completely foreign land.
I guess I’m being vague.
To drill down: This morning, I’m boarding a bus, to a train,
to a plane that will carry me across the land to visit a girl friend and her
new baby. Three years ago, this would be impossible.
And that’s what I’m trying to get at here: Something that
was impossible, is now utterly completely possible, and it’s happening. In 4 hours. It is. There is no waiting, no longing, no hemming, no
envy. I am doing what I’ve wanted
to be able to do because I am
able to do it.
Perhaps this all sounds quite bent this morning, perhaps
having not packed yet is making me anxious to put all this down and get onto
that plane.
But, I hope you get my meaning.
Because even as few as 2 weeks ago, I was as depressed and
lost-feeling as Tom Hanks without Wilson. Despite the mantra of my friend that,
This too shall pass, it didn’t feel that way, and I had no idea how that could
happen. Nothing can really change, can it? It’s all the same Groundhog Day,
isn’t it?
But, Bill Murray wakes up in the end to a new future,
doesn’t he?
What looks like the continuation of a road going nowhere,
long and desperate and desolate… well, this morning at least, I see that it’s
not.
It doesn’t solve my
life. It doesn’t offer clarity or freedom or a path lit up like the exit lines
in a plane. But, in some ways, my recognition of my being here does fucking solve it.
The fact that this is
enough. That I am happy – that I
allowed myself to take a vacation, to visit a friend, to take action toward
something that was valuable to me. … Actually, that does solve my life.
To look up from my navel-gazing and my despair and my
coordinate-less destination, to remember (oh forgive me) that the journey is
happening right now, and that I am
(FINALLY) participating in it and NOTICE that I am participating in it:
Well, it feels like Alice in the ‘50s cartoon version of her
story, walking along a path through the woods when a dog with a push-broom nose
comes along behind her, and erases the path from which she came, cuts around in
front of her, and continues to sweep away the path toward which she’s going, so
that finally, all she’s left with is one illuminated square.
But for me, I’m seeing today (and this all may change tomorrow!) that this is pretty good
square. 

career · compassion · fear · friendship · health · old ideas · recovery · self-love

Smalls tasks. One thing. Little pieces. Eventual mountains.

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The thing about “eventual mountains” is that we actually
have to have the presence of mind to turn around and acknowledge we’ve reached
the top of a mountain. Otherwise, small tasks never seem to add up to anything significant, because
we’re always striving without appreciating our own efforts.
I’ve noticed this week that my patience with people I come
into daily contact with is … thin. That I envelop the small irks with a
candy-coating of relish. (Not like real relish, that’d be gross.) From the
first work email I replied to yesterday morning, back from the long weekend, to the
impatience I had toward someone else, I knew that I was taking on more emotional attachment to these interactions than I truly had to.
None of this was personal. “I didn’t cause, can’t control and
can’t cure” you or your behavior. It is not my fault or responsibility that you,
woman, are a tight-ass, type-A, micro-managing, self-righteous, impervious,
judgmental bitch.
IN THIS inner maelstrom of judgment toward others, I remembered
something significant: We are only a percent as judgmental of others as we are toward ourselves. It’s something
I’ve heard again and again. If you hear someone being judgmental of others,
just know that they treat themselves with a spiked lash of self-derision
infinitely more rigid than they use on others.
And so, I’m brought back to myself. Where the only chance
for change, love, release, is ever possible.
If I’m so mean to others, so angry, and rigid, and
correcting, and impatient and punitive toward them… how on earth am I to
myself?
And, I’m reminded of something else: Every single person
who’s ever told me that I’m too hard on myself.
I never actually take this in. I brush this comment aside
like so much hippie, free-love nonsense. I don’t treat myself harshly. I’m fine to myself. Fuck you.
But. I’ve begun to see the veracity of this opinion. That
it’s not actually opinion, when I really listen to the thoughts I fling at
myself. I am very exacting and punitive
toward myself, though I’m very good enough to hide it, or to brush it under the
rug.
I’m coming to see that I have internalized a pattern of
self-deflation. Having experienced enough external feedback in response to
being authentic, I’ve become habitualized to doing it to myself. Better not to
show who you really are, what you really want to do, what talent you really
have, because it will be taken away from you. Trouble is, I’m the one doing the
taking these days.
Better to stop myself early from doing anything worth doing,
because I “know” I’ll just fuck it up, it will be taken away, it will be flawed
eventually.
It’s the reason I continue to hold on to second-rate things
(and ideas, and jobs): No use in having something really nice, because you,
Molly, will fuck it up anyway. OR, it will be taken from you, and you will be
heart-broken. Better to have or do something only half-assed, because then you
won’t be disappointed.
Nor will I actually be fulfilled.
And, by the way, did you happen to catch all that
self-derisive talk up there? It’s not actually that explicit when it’s
happening. Instead it’s a mercurial thread of poison in my water supply.
A friend told me last night that I haven’t caught a break in
a while. That no wonder I’m tired and frustrated and feverish with the “Divine
unrest.” The Universe owes me a break.
But as we spoke about self-flagellation, I replied to her, I haven’t given myself a break in a while. To which
she replied, Well, you are the
Universe.
Tis pity, tis true.
I believe we, in some ways, create our own reality. And if
there is a constant badgering of myself, a constant deflation, and a “cosmic”
interception of my touchdown passes, born of an (old) idea that I can’t have
nice things, do good things, have success, and ease and partnership and
fulfillment and joy … then of course that’s what will be reflected back to me.
Last night, I re-posted a 2012 blog of “What ifs” in the style of
Shel Silverstein. As I read it, I began to rephrase the questions in terms of
affirmations. Instead of “What if I believed I were safe,” I read to myself, “I
am safe.” “What if I allowed myself to
laugh,” becomes, “I allow myself to laugh.”
I see that how I am behaving toward others is a reflection
of how I behave toward myself. And that awareness is one of those tiny steps I
need to be conscious — and appreciative — of as I climb this mountain toward health. 

authenticity · children · deprivation · friends · fun · laughter · self-love

Dive In

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I never actually go in
the pool. For years, 6 of them, my friend and her family and our friends’
families go out to the east East Bay for Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day
weekend. 

There is a pool there. I attend by the side. Perhaps I’ve gone in the
hottub, but I can’t even remember doing that. I lay on my towel or a pool
chair, slathering in sunblock, catching up, chatting, sharing with these women
I see only occasionally, and it’s wonderful, this catching up chatting and sharing, but I never go in the
pool.
On Saturday, before I left for the weekend, I made a
commitment to a friend that I would actually go in the pool. I made a
commitment to let myself have fun. To enjoy what was being presented to me, to
not literally be on the sidelines of my own life.
It’s hard – or it has
been – to let myself take part. I’ve been so reserved, analytical, watching,
the consummate wall-flower, when in fact I feel anything but.
And so, at some point soon after the sun had soaked far
enough into my skin to want relief, I walked into the water.
I’m a slow pool-acclimator, as I am a slow band-aid puller.
Later that night, the women-folk stayed up to play a board game, and my
strategy was to move slowly but eventually around the board. I admitted, laughingly,
that it’s the same way I play chess with my brother: I move pawn after pawn.
One little square at a time.
After my first timid entrance into the water, and a few laps
across the pool, my heart rate up, the water refreshing, my second entré was
different. I was inspired by my friend’s daughter, who lay over an inner
tube, head back, dousing her hair in the water. Only nine, I watched her
luxuriate in the tactile and sensory pleasure, the instinctual joy of just
letting the water carry her hair out into the water. Of soaking the top of her
head, running her fingers into her scalp to get each follicle up and satisfied,
eyes closed, in the moment, in the sensation, in the freedom of doing what felt
wonderful just for its own sake.
My second time in, all the others were under the shade by
the house, and I waded in. About half-way wet, I just dove in. I let my body be
strong and carry me to the bottom. I borrowed some goggles, and played the same
game of fetch I’d watched the kids play, throwing plastic sharks to the bottom,
and diving down to retrieve them. Seeing under water, holding my breath in that
suspended moment, moving quickly and gauging the time I had left before I had
to surface. Running my hands along the bottom, and pushing against it with my feet to
shoot up through the clear water. I laughed.
It was invigorating. It was fun. It was entertaining and
special and out of my ordinary. And on my way out of the water, I lay back into
it, soaked the top of my head, however briefly, and luxuriated too. 

authenticity · community · growth · hope · singing · theater · vulnerability

LiveStrong.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Yesterday, I was given the cosmic and delightful (sarcasm)
opportunity to put that day’s blog message into action: I was asked if I was
coming out to spend time with folks. … But I really had to go home and watch Netflix, you know. Not that
I have anything I’m particularly watching at the moment, not that you can put
that on my tombstone (“Excellent t.v. watcher, Achiever of many
episodes”). But the alternative was to spend an hour with people. Blech.
But, health won out. (Damned health.) I went, I smiled, I listened, I shared, I had conversations with people. Netflix won’t really converse with me. It’s selfish
that way.
I got the chance to hear what was going on with a
friend and offer some suggestions, and she got to hear me share what’s going
on with me and offered me some help, too.
Again, Netflix is really loathe to help me out. The bastard.
I also got to notice that I’ve gained a few readers in the
past week who’ve gotten to read things about me that some of my closest friends
don’t know about, and that … well, that’s okay. It’s what this, the blog, is
here for. Not to “connect” with people in a complete way, but to offer
something. To offer a catharsis, a container, a mirror into their own
experience. To hear someone say – or read someone write – about what have been issues
or concerns or triumphs in your own life is to get to feel you’re/we’re
not alone. Our experience as humans is not isolated; we’re not as different as
we think we are when trapped alone in our heads.
I’m grateful for that, for this opportunity. And I know it can be intense. For anyone who’s joined us
this week, it’s not always so dark. But, it is likely always as honest. Don’t
worry, I don’t tell you everything. You don’t in fact get the all of me by
reading me, and we both know that. But it’s a good thread between us. And I get
to feel cathartized, too. Not that this is therapy or anything, but that I’m
putting my voice out there in a way that feels relatively safe, but also authentic.
On voice, I emailed an old voice teacher yesterday to ask if
she still gives private lessons. I was in her voice class when I was at Mills, and
earlier in the week, I got the message from Theater Bay Area that applications
for the General Auditions for the South Bay are open. And, you have to note on the application if
you think you might sing. You don’t have
to sing if you check that box, but you have to indicate if you might so they can group you with the other
singers in that day.
I applied to the Generals last year, and didn’t get in. But
I have real headshots this time, and two more credits, and possibly a third
that I can add before I send off my resume. I certainly have enough gumption and
the substance to try this time, especially if I had even less to my name last
year!
I was talking yesterday with a friend about singing. About
how I know the voice is there, but I hide it all the time. Even when I was in the band, I hid it. I didn’t
sing to the best and fullest of my ability, and I also don’t even know what the
limits of my ability are. I want to sing. I’ve always said it. Or thought it,
so most of you didn’t know anyway.
It’s secret. Private. It’s tender, is what it is. It’s the
most tender dream I have, honestly. And I think that’s what makes it the most
protected and least acknowledged one. For me, singing has no place to hide, and
it’s an outpouring of your soul – or it can be. As I know well, it can not be that very easily, and no one would know the
difference but me. They’ll just think that’s what I’ve got.
It’s like when I work at 80% most of the time at my job. They don’t know. They just think that’s what I have to
offer, but the reality is that I hold back, in that case because I’m resentful,
entitled and begrudging. But I digress!
Or I don’t. It’s the same side of the coin of not participating
in life fully, of not offering myself fully. They’re different angles toward
that, but they’re both about self-protection and -preservation.
Tender shoots of hope always need a little more room and
space and care. For me, they’ve needed to be hidden so as not to be trampled by
the onslaught of life. But by keeping this thing small, myself small, by
harboring it and mentally reinforcing it as a tender and sensitive and fragile
thing, it will always remain that way.
A redwood starts out the same way, you know. As tender as a
sprig. But if you take the cage off of the plant, allow it air and sunshine and
nourishment. Soon it won’t be a small and tender, fragile thing anymore. Soon
it will be able to weather the strokes of life. By letting what I’ve carried as
a secret and a calling out of its confinement … I can allow it to become what
it’s always needed to be: Strong. 

change · community · connection · courage · fear · isolation · persistence · recovery

Nasty Jenga Partners.

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I wanted to be a botanist. In 8th grade, I decided that if I
were a botanist, I could live in a tree, far away from people. It had little to
do with botany.
It’s funny to see that what I wanted most, isolation, is
what I’ve actually been fighting against most of my life, into the present. For
someone who purports the necessity of community, and told my interviewers that
what underlines all of the work I want
to do in my life is a passion for bringing people together – they sure do scare
the crap out of me most of the time.
Not surprising. Not unique. But funny to have a primary
motivation in my life be the thing that is also hardest for me to let in, let
percolate. I suppose it’s that way for most people. Or not.
I told my therapist the other day that I want to strive
without questioning/battering myself at every step. I asked her if that was
possible, if “normal” people can actually do this? She said, Yes.
I told her that I’d once admitted to a mentor that I was
scared I was too analytical to be happy. I told her I still have that fear. If
at every turn in your life, you hound yourself, where is there room for
happiness, satisfaction, self-acceptance?
Where is there time?
Because time continues to be a mindfuck for me too. I’ve
been typing up this woman’s life stories she’s compiling at a workshop where I
work. The one that’s sticking with me is entitled, “Turning
80.” At 60, her family brought all her old friends from her home town whom she
hadn’t seen in years, and had a big party. At 70, she got together with the
close friends she’d met while living here in the “new” iteration of her life.
What will she do at 80? How will she celebrate? What’s
important?
I was driving my boss’s dad to and from dialysis in San
Francisco several years ago a few days a week for a few months. He was probably
about 80, too, and I asked him the key to life, as he seemed happy and
satisfied enough. He answered, Do what you love, and Travel.
Simple enough… if you’re not also standing at your own heel
questioning the importance and wisdom of all your moves, like a crappy Jenga
partner.
But, my therapist seems to think it’s possible. No. She knows it’s possible for people to go through their lives,
interesting, interested, engaged, without the “itty bitty shitty committee.”
I’ve said that I don’t think that committee ever actually
“goes away;” I just think the volume gets turned down. On good days, it does.
And certainly, I can admit with fervor
that my own self-doubt is light-years (light-decibels?) quieter than it had been.
Because it is those voices – those nagging thoughts to be
better, wiser, travel more, act more, play music more, paint more, engage more,
be friends more, be available more – that serve to do the exact opposite. Leave
me the fuck alone, voices! And the lie is
that being alone is the antidote, is the cure, for those voices. That isolation is the cure for
loneliness.
The lie is that isolation is the cure for loneliness.
Of course I’m not meant to live in a tree, or observe the
apes, or tick away hours in a lab, or in front of Netflix. My primary
motivation for living is to engage with
people, connect with them and help them connect with each other. I am the diplomat incarnate.
“Did you meet so and so? They make jewelry, and you make hand puppets, maybe
you should talk.” “I know someone who just did what you’re looking to do, I’ll
give you their number.” “You’re both writers, bakers, candle-stick makers, let
me help you connect.”
Bringing people together means that I have to be willing to get together with them. I know
my hesitations, I know my underlying reasons and history, I know all the “justifiable” reasons not to. And I know how that looks like me abandoning
relationships, abandoning hobbies, abandoning myself.
But this path has become boring. Not to mention lonely. And
if I’m such an intrepid world/life traveler, then (my breathing becomes shallow as I
even contemplate this) I will have to allow myself to try this other
route, this one called Sustained Human Connection and hope the voices get bored
of me not listening, and fade out.

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

I think I might be…healthy.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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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.