addiction · detachment · faith · family · fear · love

On Witnessing the Inevitability of Life

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My mom and I spoke yesterday for the first time in a while. As in, really talked, not a quick check-in, how are you, okay, gotta go. She and I can speak for hours, on subjects ranging from all manner of depth to superficiality. 
Yesterday, she wanted to ask me my advice about a situation she and her long-time boyfriend (for lack of a better term for a live-in adult partner) were facing. His son, my age, was having consequences (severed tendons) that seemed to refer to alcohol (after an altercation with a guy at a bar).
This apparently wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, and despite the stories he told about it (he slipped and fell on the sidewalk after the altercation), my mom and her boyfriend were concerned that this pattern of incidents pointed toward alcoholism.
So, she called me to find out what they should do.
I gave the best advice I know for the families and loved ones of someone in an addiction: Get the help for yourself that you wish the person had. I suggested Al-Anon, or CoDA (Co-Dependents Anonymous), which are geared toward the families of folks facing addiction.
Because, I told her simply: There is nothing you can do.
Apparently, the son had texted to cancel a brunch with his dad yesterday morning, claiming he’d not been able to sleep well, and would be a zombie. His dad texted back, Okay, but we need to talk.
I suggested to my mom that her boyfriend change his tactics. If the son is really in the grips of a disease and an addiction, then he needs to know he has allies. And, really, what would another conversation do about it, as they’d brought up A.A. already and talked about their concern? Play the tape: What do you hope to accomplish from a talk with him that hadn’t already been said? So, the son will say (again), you’re right, I’m sorry, I’ll do better, different. The dad will sit back in his chair with relief and triumph. – And then the son will do whatever he was going to do anyway.
I told my mom some things that sound harsh and even crass when speaking about a loved one in a hard place: That ultimately, the intention of a conversation like that is to get the result that the son’s dad wants, that my mom wants: relief and reassurance that the son be happy, be healthy. And if he is happy and healthy, then they two can be as well. Ultimately, these desires are selfish: I want to feel better; I want to feel relief. (And I know that’s a hard thing to hear when speaking about a parent’s love for a son.)
Furthermore, though, their desires for his changed behavior proclaim that they know the best course for the son. And they don’t. We spoke about “not robbing someone of their bottom;” that getting sober isn’t the way for everyone; and that the person very very much needs to come to the conclusion themselves that they need or want help.
You cannot tell someone to get sober. They have to want it themselves, or it won’t stick; and if you demand it from them, they’ll feel pit against you and your expectations, instead of aligned with you against the terrifying proposition of giving up the one thing in the world they know how to do.
To let go of the results of someone else’s addiction is a grave assignment; that’s why there are support programs for the people who are in that circumstance. It isn’t easy for the people on either side of the bottle.
I told her too, that the thing she does have control over is how she chooses to engage the situation. I talked about Loving Detachment, which I haven’t mastered at all, but have less antipathy toward. I told her she could “pray” for him, in whatever way that meant for her (the agnostic Jew), even if that meant sending thoughts of hippie rainbows toward him. I suggested using the phrase, “I pray that he gets the same peace love and happiness that I want for myself.”
Because it may not be this kid’s path to get sober, to stop drinking, to stop getting in bar fights. It may not be his path to live past 35, is the ultimate truth of it. And that’s where the enormous task of Loving Detachment becomes so painful. And, that’s where help for the loved one’s comes in handy. There are people who have been where they are, and some of them are not there anymore.
The thing about 12 step support, I told her, is that you hear others’ “experience, strength, and hope;” you hear them telling the same stories, not from 3rd person hearsay, or generalization: you hear your own story coming from someone else’s mouth, your own feelings being mirrored back at you, and you realize you are not alone in your struggle. That these folks were where you are, and they aren’t (hopefully) there any more. How did they do it? Stick around and listen. There is hope here.
The last thing I suggested was that the boyfriend amend his text to his son about “needing to talk,” and simply say, “You know what, I’m here when you need me, if you ever want to talk. Otherwise, I’ll just see you on Thursday for the game.” (or whatever.)
It’s not that people in their addiction need to be coddled or allowed to behave inappropriately toward their loved ones. They simply need to be given enough rope to hang themselves. To come to their own desperate conclusions in their own time.
And if you have the strength, or the exhaustion, to let someone you love do that – you all have a better chance to be helped.

* Disclaimer: Opinion and interpretation is only that of the person who gave it, and by no means representative of any other group or entity. 

confidence · courage · fear · love · self-esteem

You Must Be This Tall…

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I still haven’t submitted my photos to the “real people”
modeling agencies that my friend suggested to me after seeing some of my photos
from my October photo shoot with a friend. Or sent the hard copy photos to the
modeling scout who saw me while I was busking in Union Square on Black Friday.
This morning, I was querying why I haven’t done these
simple, low risk tasks, though they’ve been on my internal and external to-do
lists for months. The answer was simple: I’m afraid I’m not good enough.
When I first stopped drinking, I read this memoir by a guy
who’d also stopped drinking. In explaining why he drank the way he did, he writes,
and in explaining why I drank the way I did, I quote: “I always felt one
drink behind—One drink behind being funny enough; one drink behind being smart
enough, cool enough, attractive enough.” One drink behind being good enough, in
essence. So there always had to be one more drink, then; and after that,
oblivion.
It’s ridiculous, however, to think that I’m not “good enough”
somehow to submit photos to professional agencies of myself, I wrote to myself
this morning, because that’s like saying, I’m not tall enough to ride a roller
coaster. That I walk up to the measuring stick in front of the ride, and the
sign with the painted finger points to five feet tall. … I am 6 feet tall. But I tell myself, I
convince myself, that I’m not tall enough. I’m not yet enough to ride this
ride.
It’s absurd. But it’s the truth of how I (sometimes) interpret myself in
the world.
Many years ago, I wrote a poem that included the line: [Fear],
you Nancy Kerrigan my knees before I even stand up. (Or something like that.)
That fear takes me out before I even have a chance to try. I wrote that so many
years ago. And fear continues to pull a Tanya Harding on me.
I am pretty sure that the only cure for this, let’s
call it, personality dysmorphia (like anorexics have body dysmorphia – seeing
flaws and fat that aren’t at all there) – the only cure for this is
self-esteem, self-care, and just walking through the fears anyway.
To walk up to the measuring stick at the roller coaster, see
that this ride is actually accepting me,
and walk onto it. – The ride is Life, if you haven’t figured that out.
I am enough. I am healed enough, sane enough, funny enough, smart
enough, pretty enough, engaging enough, lovable enough to participate in life,
to have relationships, to have valuable friendships, to throw my photos into
the hat, to show up to auditions, to even show up to musical auditions. I am
enough to have this, to be this.
Because, I am six feet tall, by god! – And I want to ride. 

encouragement · joy · life · theater

Reading Tea Leaves

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“If one advances confidently in the
direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he
will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things
behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws
will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be
expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will
live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he
simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and
solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.
If you have built castles in the
air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the
foundations under them.”
~ Henry David Thoreau
This passage is torn off the side of a Celestial Seasonings
box of tea. They used to have a ton of quotes and passages, but in the last 10
years or so, changed their packaging.
In fact, I wrote to them once, when I noticed that the once-inspirational packaging was gone, to state my preference for the old, and also
to make a case for the flavor Cranberry Cove, which had dropped out of
production. I even searched Amazon and eBay for boxes people might have hoarded.
Growing up, I only drank Cranberry Cove tea when I was home
sick. I would hold a mug bigger than my hands under my face, inhaling the steam
and scent. My mom would stir in some honey, and it was comfort incarnate. When
I went home to NJ to pack up my childhood home in 2011 when my dad was selling
the house, I scoured the tea cabinet for any straggling remains of the boxes that had likely been there since the 90s. I found a much-bedraggled box about a third full, and
brought it back to Oakland with me. I have 3 bags left now, and I only drink that
tea under special circumstances, when I need my version of ultimate comfort.
I have in my kitchen cabinet a collection of passages torn
off tea boxes, and a few fortune cookie messages. I found them again about a
month or more ago, and going through them, I found the Thoreau one.
This was about the time that I was making my decision to
focus entirely on acting and theater as my artistic and impassioned outlet (and
source). I pinned the cardboard quote to my fridge with the San Antonio magnet
I bought in 2010 when I attended a conference, and in fact, performed in a play
with my friends.
I have a very specific style of the magnets I buy from
airports. They’re these 3-dimensional, near-cartoonish representations of the
city where I am. I don’t know why, but I love these best. There’s Singapore
pinning up my “time plan” for the week. There’s New Orleans, pinning up a page
from a magazine, a photo of a home with the word “yes” dotted all around it,
on everything in sight. YES. There’s Sydney, holding up a small note to myself
about how I want to manifest my gifts in the world, probably as a result of
some “What Color is your Parachute” exercise: create, organize, implement, get
messy, entice/encourage/invite.
There’s Maui and New York, and a magnet made of petrified
wood that I bought at the Petrified Forest in Arizona while driving/moving
cross-country in 2006.
Finally, there’s a magnet of the Serenity Prayer, and one
with a Hebrew prayer that was a gift, and I don’t know what it means, but it’s
pretty, and “spiritual.”
Under that magnet are cut-out words from the back of an
Ashby Stage program: “Oh my dear; Who’s ever ready?”
Who is ever ready to endeavor in the direction of their
dreams? Who is ever sure and confident that now is the time to begin? There is
no starting pistol or cosmic alarm signal to tell me, Yes, Molly, Now is the time.
There are only these small messages, these scraps of
encouragement and camaraderie culled from the pages of life.

anger · fear · performance

Brain Dump.

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i could write about how beautiful winter is here
that right now the rain is dripping over the green and flowering
back garden and tree-hidden houses behind my building.
i could write about how i feel stuck on this writing/
self-inventory i’m supposed to be doing, and haven’t been able
to work on because we’re not doing it the way
it was designed, and i feel lost and unsupported
and conflicted about telling the person I’m working
with because i have before and things haven’t
changed, and I don’t know if it’s just me being
stubborn or avoidant or if this is really just
too precarious to attempt by myself, when
the work was designed to be done in person
with another person.
i could write about how i cancelled my audition
in san jose last night because a) i didn’t realize
how far san jose was, and b) i think i might get
the role I auditioned for on wednesday in Marin
and the plays run concurrently.
i could write about coming home last night, instead,
and “resting,” actually lying on the couch after cutting
up some beets and turnips and putting them in the oven
and putting a blanket over me and my heating pad and
shutting my eyes. and just letting myself and my eyes,
especially,
rest while the vegetables roasted. how luxurious it felt
to simply do nothing – not nothing, aka watch netflix,
not nothing aka clean my house, just nothing, and not
nothing aka meditate, which could be similar but wasn’t
as my mind wandered and i let it, and i let it get a little
fuzzy
and out of focus as my cat balled up in my lap to rest, too.
i could write about my friend texting me his friend’s dad is
about to die from cancer, and texting him my sympathy, but
that i wasn’t available to process around grief of that
kind.
I could tell you, it’s because it’s too activating for me
because
it reminds me that my cancer is only a year past, that last
year
at this time i was preparing for my fifth and final round of
chemo
and hearing about someone else’s cancer just reminds me how
close i am to mine.
                               but
that’s not why i didn’t want to hear
about it. i don’t want to hear about your friend’s cancer because i
don’t care. because i realized when i got his text that i am
still
so viciously angry about what happened that i don’t have
room
to be compassionate, really. because i only have room to
think
about my own cancer, and to especially not think about it.
to
not touch into the feelings I still have about it.
                                                                          and then we’re back
to the work that i’m not writing about right now that’s
supposed to
exorcise and alchemize resentment and trauma and pain.
i could tell you that i don’t give a shit that other people
have cancer
and you’re having feelings of finality and loss and grief,
because
i sat in the sodden, rotten trench of it for a year, and i’m
pretending
right now that i hadn’t. that i hadn’t had to think about
mortality
every single day. that the finality of life wasn’t consistently licking
at my ear, whispering about carpe diem and fatal rules about forgiveness 
as health. and boo-fucking-hoo that any of you now are called to
process such things with such naive surprise as if none of this existed
before it happened to someone you have a glancing acquaintance with. 
i could tell you i looked into the woman who’s profession is
helping others heal from trauma. and that my tax return
might go
toward sessions with her, or someone she recommends in the
east bay.
i could tell you that my eyes hurt from looking at computers
all the time
and that i’m also grateful that my job doesn’t include
working outside
in the rain or food service or pest removal or any other thing unpleasant.
i could write about any of these things. but
                                                                  i guess i just did.

adulthood · growth · service

Be of … service?

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When I first started to hear this phrase, and became
conscious enough to hear it and its message, I said: No.
I feared that if I “gave of myself,” if I “give to others
what was freely given to me,” I would have none left. I feared that if I gave
to you what I had, there wouldn’t be any left for me.
Imagine a channel, a tube, a pipe, and into it is being
poured all the light in the world. For the first time ever, the owner of that
pipe feels what it’s like to feel grace, held, helped, hope. The owner of this
pipe, however, has blocked off the bottom. Pinched it off like a garden
hose—No, I will not let it spill out the other side. If I do, I can’t be sure
that the water will fill my portion, I can’t be sure that my side of the
channel will be full. I can’t risk not having what I have now. No.
Something happens, however, when you block up a hose like
this—what’s inside the hose begins to turn and spoil, it loses some of its
luster and charm. In the end, what you sought so hard to save and keep has
rotted because you sought so hard to
save and keep it.
I still fear that if I give of my time or attention or love, that I won’t have enough for me. Even despite all the evidence I’ve gathered as I slowly loosened my grip on the nozzle and let some of what I was receiving
open toward others. I have plenty of evidence for the benefits of giving, and yet I still get
scared.
I could also point to the outpouring of love and help I received when I was sick—and I
don’t think that depleted my friends… Well, actually some it did, and one was
able to say as much and I respected her need to back off from helping so much;
and one was unable to say she was
being depleted, and instead our relationship turned to one of resentment, and
eventual distance.
I mean, I guess there is a way where giving can be
depleting, and I think that’s where my sense-memory barges in to tell me to give
of myself means to give away myself.
But, I think this is a different manner of giving than the one intended by the
“be of service” mantra. The kind of depleting giving is one where there is ego
involved, and an expectation of something in return—approval, appreciation,
reciprocity. Or, you give in a certain way because that’s the way you think will get
you the order you want, the result you want for yourself or the other person.
The kind of help that I think I’m supposed to offer is the
kind that really is “freely given,” demanding nothing in return, truly having
no expectations of how the other will receive, or even reject, what I offer.
I don’t really know why I bring this up today, why it’s on
my mind, except perhaps my review at my job happened last week, and I’ve been
thinking about some of that feedback.
Actually, that’s probably a lot of it. A mentor of mine
intones to me near constantly about my job: Just show up and be of service.
And to her, I say, F’ service.
It is hard for me to show up and be of service at my job. I
know that it is, and it comes out in resentful ways as impatience,
procrastination, neglect of detail. “I don’t know how,” is really my answer to
her advice. I don’t know how to be of service at my job. I don’t know how to
appreciate every interaction I have. My job exhausts me. Being the front face of
every phone call, every person at the door, everyone who wanders by the front office all.day.long.–and I can’t give all the time.
I just can’t, and so I protect myself and my energies by being less than
welcoming – which is the feedback I heard last week.
So, I found an image online from Elf, the Will Farrell Christmas movie. It’s of him wearing a huge, manicly excited grin, and
the words, “I just love to smile. Smiling’s my favorite.” I pasted a copy under
the receiver of my phone, and behind my computer monitor. It reminds me to
smile, but not because of service. More because of sarcasm and irony. More
because of contempt and rebellion.
I don’t know how to be of service at my job. I know I do
tasks well enough, and so, I do. But, if there is a way to unkink my hose and
allow some of the grace I know I have and have been given to even trickle a
little more throughout the day, and not just toward my favorite people or
assignments, … well, I suppose I’m open to learning how to be of service
without getting dried out. 

abundance · adventure · performance · self-esteem

Fortune cookie wisdom: Action is the key to success.

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I didn’t actually set my alarm last night, so you get an
abridged blog. I have an audition tonight in Marin, and I wanna make sure I
shower!
I spent some time last night after I got home from rehearsal
culling through the near 200 photos that the headshot photographer put in her
gallery from our shoot a few days ago –they look AMAZING. Not “me” per se,
though I don’t look half bad, but the style, the lighting, the cropping, the
angles, everything, I am SO glad I paid
for a professional shoot finally. As I’ve said, I love and appreciate how my
friends helped me with some before, but this woman shot Rainn Wilson from “The
Office,” and he got work… so…! Off to perfect my snarky, sarcasm then.
I can’t wait to write her a Yelp review, which is how I
found her anyway. She used to work in LA, then was commuting to work here and
in LA, and now is just here – to be close to her man, Aw…
Out of 200 photos, I get to chose two that I want her to “basic
retouch,” and then I get all the rest by disc. Oh, the choices! But I’ve narrowed it down to half a dozen, with one
being my stand-out – like, wow, Molly you look like someone who actually does
this.
It’s again how I felt walking out of rehearsal at SF State
last night – I said aloud in my car, “I’m so proud of you, Molly.” It’s such a nice feeling to have about yourself.
I also, last minute, a.k.a. Monday, signed up for an audition
that’s being held this Thursday, and both tonight’s and tomorrow’s have very different
needs for audition pieces.
Luckily, for tomorrow’s I’ve reached back into what I’d
done when I was auditioning while I was a student at Mills, the piece I was
using in the Winter of 2011/2012. I didn’t know if I’d still remember it, and I
fell FLAT when I used it once then (“I’m
sorry, can I start again; I’m so sorry, can I try it one more time”) – oh the
poor auditors! I didn’t have it memorized.
But, as I went over it yesterday while driving to rehearsal,
I realized, I do actually remember it mostly, and I can hope to get it by
tomorrow evening (or just admit I don’t, and use a notes) – Luckily, tonight’s is a cold-read audition, which means I
don’t have to have anything memorized, I’ve just gone over the “sides” (the
pieces of the play) that they want us to read from. It’s going to be a group
audition, since all of the scenes have multiple characters in them. If I— I
was going to say, If I get this role… 
but I won’t, not from fear of jinxing it, but simply because I want to
remain true to my intention, which is to show up for myself to the best of my
ability, and leave the results up to whatever they will be.
I’ll still be using my old headshot that I got a year ago,
when I had like an inch of hair, but, I’m already in the door, the rest is up
to the “me in person.”
Break a leg, Moll. Break a leg. (OH! And BREATHE!) 

adulthood · change · commitment · sex

The Runner

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I attended the new writer’s group on Sunday that my friend put together of East Bay folks. We
were circled in plastic chairs, old-fashioned arm chairs, and couches tucked inside
the spacious two-car garage that had been repurposed into a
library/workshop/extra living room. (Only in the East Bay!) I was one among 9
of us, the only girl, and though we spent copious amounts of time arguing
whether Stephen King was a writer or a storyteller, and if David Foster Wallace
was a genius or simply mentally masturbating onto the page, eventually, we did
actually write some.
We wrote from a prompt I’d invented that morning, “You walk
into a coffee shop and etched into the linoleum are the words:….”
In response, I came up with this story. No editing, no forethought, you
just write, and when the time’s up, it’s up, and we shared around the room. I
love that part of prompt writing in a group (not that I’ve done it much), but I
love the variety of ways people go with something. The disparate styles we had
became obvious, and also, we all visibly relaxed a little after the reading was
through, as if we’d marked one another with a nod of approval, Yes, you are a
writer, I feel comfortable having you in this group. It’s funny, but it’s also
important, I think, to have that kind of respect for one another in a group like
that.
We’ll see how often I’m able to attend. But I’m very glad I
went.
The thing that’s been occurring to me about this story I
came up with spontaneously is that I am the girl in it–the one we never meet. I am the girl who gets
up in the middle of the night and leaves her lover. And then unceremoniously
dumps him.
Fiction though that story may be, the seeds of myself are
there. I was curious to find who in the story I was, since, well, I have an
opinion that we are all or some of the characters we create. I am both the
runner, and the lover calling after myself to please stay.
I think I’ve reported this anecdote before, how in college I
was in a casual “relationship” with this guy, who was by all rights a decent
fellow. One evening after we’d been in flagrante, he was holding me in his
strong early-twenty’s arms and intoned that he’d like to take me out sometime, like, to
dinner. I gasped, Why?? And he replied, because he liked me, and wanted to get
to know me.
I never called him again.
I am the runner.
I have two songs in draft form, one that
goes
Send me somebody that I can say Yes
to.
Send me someone who I can come home
to.
Just gimme somebody  somebody to make me say
Yes Yes Yes
and the other:
Married men make it so easy
To wanna misbehave
I never have to do their dishes
Just be their    sex slave
CHORUS:
I wanna be the girl who spends the
night
And doesn’t sneak out around two
I wanna be the one who stays over
To wake up next   to you
I think my ambivalence about commitment is pretty clear! And
to clarify, “Married Men” is a song, not an autobiography. It’s an impulse, a
thought, a cop-out, a desire, a fantasy, an avoidance, a way to stay stuck and
alone, since ultimately, I won’t follow through on those impulses.
So, I’ll work it out in song, in fiction, in blog. I’ll tell
you how skittish I am, I’ll let myself be surprised at how I show up in my own
work and reflect myself back to me. I’ll warm up to the sword-wielding, 2-a.m.
sneaking, rabid runner. I’ll tell her that commitment to living in one place
has only brought me health and stability; I’ll tell her that, in owning a cat for
the first time, the love I have for her I’m happy and proud to give; I’ll tell her that in the many places I’ve used
“Stability First,” I am the better for it.
And then I’ll let her go on a run. But maybe this one will
be shorter. 

community · compassion · grief · healing · perseverance

The Tell-Tale Heart

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Written 2011:
i meet with a grad student who tells me
not to take split-level poetry because all the under-grads write about is date
rape – so i don’t tell him about the drunken carride from two strangers, later
finding an earring twisted into my shirt, or being turned away from four Korean
hospitals because rape is not an emergency.
i read an article on how to snag a
man which suggests that women think about something naughty when out because
women won’t pick up on it, but the men will – so, i imagine licking pre-cum
from a cock, which provides a lascivious revolt against public decorum and not
undamp panties.
but, in the unwalled house of my
memory, these situations sometimes mix – and the salt sours, the armor
rebuilds, and the currency of reality cripples.
In Bernie Siegel’s book, Love, Medicine, and Miracles, he reports that his research has shown that most cancer patients have suffered a
significant breach in trust at an early age.
“I will slice your face with a
razor blade/
and watch your smile fade.”
– The couplet I often recite in my head when I’m feeling
cornered, scared, and angry.
I informed you a little while ago that it seems like
repairing my relationship with intimacy, trust, and sex is probably back on the
agenda. Yesterday, after my work at my shamanic journey group, this was made
pretty apparent.
And luckily, one of my great friends in attendance told me
afterward that our mutual friend is having a hugely positive experience with a
therapist/healer around similar issues. I plan to contact her today.
In fact, I’d referred the same friend to my own “intuitive” (read:
psychic), and it’s just humorous to me that me and this group of women have
this rolodex of woo-woo witchy healer folks. And damned, if I’m not grateful
for it.
For those unfamiliar, shamanic journeying (according to my
novice understanding) is pretty much an intense meditation, but there’s a drum,
the sound of which is purported to help induce a dream-like state—it’s like a
guided meditation, where instead of listening to someone’s voice tell you to
follow down a path in the forest, you sort of follow the drum, and make your
own path through the forest. I’ve been journeying for years now, and find it to
be one of the best and quickest ways to access internal information—however
uncomfortable that information may be.
Yesterday’s overall message was that I have to repair my
relationship to trust. Yuck.
It’s like trust for me is a broken port, and until it’s repaired,
there will be glitches and sparks and melted fuses.
The thing about sexual trauma is this: you want to show
people (the right people) the wound, you want to share about it, you want to
exorcise it, you want to talk about it in order to heal from it, to release it and move on from it. You want to
expose it to fresh air so that it heals instead of festers. You want to bring
it into the sun and let the forces at work do their magic to create something
beautiful out of something horrifying.
And yet.
Because of the nature of sexual trauma as a secret, and the prevalence of people dismissing it as exaggeration… You also
don’t want to share about it. You are ashamed to bring it out, to tell anyone,
to share about it. You feel that to mention it is to invite revulsion,
rejection, dismissal. And perhaps, you have experience to back up that fear,
and so you remain locked up tight with it, and it will continue to burn a hole
in your heart.
The longer you hold onto it, the more painful it becomes,
until it becomes something so immense in your heart and head that you can’t
imagine that you can actually share it with other people, because it will
overwhelm everyone, including yourself.
This, is why god made therapists. Healers. And friends with
rolodexes.
The arrows toward healing this next came from “going in” to
my meditation with questions about my recent fatigue. Over the last month or
so, I’ve been so fucking tired, and my western and eastern doctors can’t figure
it out, except that my eastern doc said, “You’re energy center is depleted.”
Well, yeah. But why?
The information I got last night was that I have been
fighting this, this knowledge, these experiences, this anger, this sorrow, …
well, for years. I’ve been avoiding it for just as long. I’ve been fighting
dealing with it, but it’s there. Believe you me, apparently, it’s there. And
somehow my awareness has cracked open about it. Somehow, I am aware that I am
exhausted from this fight, from this constant battle to suppress, dominate, and
deny.
Some veil has lifted, some curtain shifted, and I am finally
able to experience the exhaustion.
And if I want to get healthy, then I have to heal it. And if
I want to heal it…–well, as I mentioned earlier, I’m more than a little
ambivalent about doing so.
First things first. Call my friend who’s working with
someone. Get that info.
Second thing? Ensure that I approach and treat myself with
the most radiant compassion and care that I can muster, cuz,
We’re gonna need a bigger boat. 

abundance · community · fun · laughter

The X Factor

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Yesterday morning, after I left you with my maudlin, mildly
self-pitying blog, I went to meet up with some folks, and I was able to
identify the word for how I was feeling: deprived.
Usually in those groups, we talk about deprivation around
things like clothing (wearing your boots even though they’re falling apart), or
entertainment (not seeing live music for months in a row), or food (not going
food shopping). I use these as examples because I’ve “used” deprivation in just
these ways. I’ve been in deprivation around all of these things, and am working
my best to walk away from those ways of being and treating myself, through
recognizing that there is enough in&of the world to get my needs met, too.
So, as I sat down with them, I was thinking about how, precisely, I was feeling about my lack of group interaction, and I identified the term
deprivation.
In talking with them about it, I came a little bit further
into it: I realized that what I’m missing is being “on.”
About a year ago, I walked past a restaurant where a good
friend of mine was finishing up brunch with her husband and a friend of theirs.
They waved me in to sit down, and I spent a few minutes talking with them—not
catching up, just making conversation.
The same friend later told me that she’d never seen me like
that. That, in fact, she’d never seen me with other people. That I lit up, that I was funny, and charming, and
conversant, and “on.”
I was “on,” because being with other people like that, in
that way, a small group that isn’t there to listen to music or poetry or go to
a movie, in a small group where I can turn “on” my charisma—man, that’s what I’m missing.
I took one of those Meyers-Briggs personality tests, once as
a fun, short version, and once where an actual trained woman interpreted my
zillion answers to the zillion questions.
What she came out with was pretty telling to this new awareness: I
fall so directly between being an introvert and an extrovert, that I’m neither
an “I” or an “E”—I’m an “X.” (An XNFP, if you care to know.)
I need both. I am fueled and fed by both. I need the kind of
quiet, introspective time with myself, and the quiet, one-on-one interactions
where we can get really intimate and honest. AND. I need the loud, boisterous,
active hilarity of being with other people, where I don’t know what conversation
we’ll have, and I jump from topic to topic, volleying back and forth with
others.
I miss that. I miss that part of myself, and I think that
part of what I was recognizing yesterday was an atrophying of that side of
personality. It really only comes out in those situations, and I’m simply not in
many of those situations these days. (Although, flirting has a very similar timbre to it.)
I love feeling “on.”
I love the rush of feeling expressive and funny and bold and intelligent. I
love the rush of feeling the charm that pulses from me when I’m in that state
of being. I love feeling charming. Here meaning, engaging, self-possessed,
active, social, humorous, with levity. Oh levity. Donde esta levity?
That’s another longed-for part of that style of interaction—the levity.
We’re not going to get deep here, those are the rules of engagement. We may not chat about Karl Lagerfeld’s new collection (necessarily) or what
mascara we’re using (though we could), but we certainly won’t talk about deep self-work
or spiritual progress. We’ll talk at that mid-level of fluff that happens when
you’re engaged with friends and acquaintances in a social setting.
I’ve had plenty of opportunity, and continue to, to talk
about the heavy. And although people say they hate small talk, I guess that’s
sort of what I’m talking about – the chit chat and conversations that happen
over a bowl of punch, as you float from one corner of a party to another, or… at a dinner party.
I’m glad that I have been able to pin-point what it is that
I feel has been missing, because it makes it much easier to invite it into my
life, and find and create opportunities for that kind of Upness to happen. More
importantly, I’ve gotten to see why
these kinds of interactions are important, and indeed critical, to my level of
contentment and happiness. And just like the other places of deprivation I’d
identified, I first had to admit that those things were important to me, that
they were “needs,” not wants, not brush-aways.
However, I am sorry we both had to read through yesterday’s navel-gazing blog to get here. 😉

acting · adulthood · change · community

Oh Envy, Have a cuppa tea & be off with yourself.

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A coworker asked me what my plans were this weekend, and
along with my regular commitments, I am also going to my friend’s poetry reading, the
first meeting of a new writing group, and a shamanic journey group I
attend monthly.
She said, Wow, I wish my plans included things like writing
groups and journey groups.
I asked what her weekend plans were, and she said, they were
having some friends over for dinner. That’s about it.
I said, Wow, I wish my plans included things like having
friends over for dinner.
I live in the strange time/place between apartment- and
house-dweller; between the young able-bodied, go-into-the-city-at-10:30pm-er (as I was invited to last night) and the slightly more cautious, actually-10:30-is-my-bedtimer. I live between the single person world, and the time of
coupledom.
And in this place, though there is a ton to “do,” I feel a
little lonely. Not for the partner, per se, but for the friendships that begin
to fall away as a single person in a paired up world. Nostalgic for the times when
a gathered group of women would carve pumpkins together on a Thursday night,
for the time when there was occasion to take photos of a gaggle of folks, and a
little longing for the camaraderie, simplicity, and elegance that “having some
friends over for dinner” could offer.
I know life has different phases, and the majority of
the things I’m doing right now (though they are communal, simply aren’t
friend-inclusive) are in support of a grander plan and dream: acting classes,
auditioning, rehearsals, practicing my lines and reading scripts. I know that
this is an exciting part of my path, and, believe me, I am *stoked* to get to
do these things, but I also recognize that a shift is occurring. I am on the
blank page after one chapter has ended, and before the other has begun.
My friends will be at the writing group, the poetry reading,
and the shamanic journey group. These are people who I can have hours’ long
conversations with, and last week, did have coffee with one of them, but, I
don’t know – there’s a zest of communal living that I haven’t replaced from the
days of late-night group dancing and diner-ing.
Perhaps all things in order and in time, but I’m just
noticing. I notice that I’d like to be someone who goes to dinner at friends’
houses. Maybe I just want to be able to invite people over to dinner, like I had been able to in my 1-bedroom in the city, but not in my studio in Oakland. I know that’s a part of it too. 
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the grass is always
greener?
I have plenty of people I consider friends—I’d just
like to see them more often. And apparently, in groups. (I also recognize that I
don’t want to be your token single friend in that group to whom you say things like, “Have you tried internet dating?” For more on this, see this article my
friend sent me!)
That said, there’s a viewing party for ONCE upon a time I’m
attending in a few Sundays at a friend’s; there’s a birthday party at my
friend’s house in Discovery Bay next month that will bring out some of my most
cherished friends and their families;
and, anyway, this navel-gazing blog is boring me. 😉
I have some people to go see, followed by shopping for a
jewel-toned top for Monday’s new headshots, and a facial to help those
photos come out awesome. Then line-learning, vegetable roasting, and poetry
attending. My life is certainly full—now if it could also be a little more
stocked with you.