compassion · dating · fear · isolation · love · self-love

Cookie Monster

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Otherwise, who would eat the blackened one?
This single line is the first poem of my first chapbook, back in 2010.
The essence of its meaning is the idea that I must eat the blackened cookie in
order to save others from having to eat it. In fact, it meant that I would choose that cookie above others on the savory plate just so
no one else would have to touch it. I would throw myself on that sword before
you even had to see it was there. I would do this for you.
That was 2010. I revisited this question a little while ago,
and asked myself, if not me, then who would? No one, came the answer. No one had to eat the rotten,
blackened thing. No one had to throw themselves on a sword. There is
enough that we can all have a chewy,
chocolate chipity experience. There is enough that none of us have to be
a martyr and I can let others choose around the thing (or choose the thing) if they want.
Today, in my new dating world, I find myself, per metaphor,
rushing to knock others over on my way to the hearty cookies. I am not patient
to wait for the tray to be passed around the table—if there’s a way to get the
good cookie, I will elbow your ribs to find one. In the process, I will annoy
or anger you, or I will eventually upset the whole tray, and no one, including
myself will get a cookie.
Because this way, too, the belief is there is not enough.
Call it cancer, age, healing, I am
not willing to eat the blackened one anymore. I am not willing to drink the
dregs, settle for less, diminish my worth, stand silently… or, apparently, be
patient. In an effort to reverse years of sour cookies, I am finding myself
clawing my way to the better ones. But only here, in this dating world. Only
here, am I getting to see where I have long-harbored ideas of lack, and so
perhaps one could call me “grateful” (gag,
sputter, gasp) to have the experience now
and the perspective on myself to see what is happening.
I WANT CONTROL. I am so attached to an outcome (the good cookie), I think
that I can poke or wink or smile or demure or hearty laugh or intellectual
conversation or sex or heavy or shared interest my way toward that outcome. Yet, see above: upset
tray.
In many ways, it’s the same as
diving for the blackened one. It’s a manipulation of the results. The belief
follows that if I eat the blackened one, you are saved, and you are able to
love me. The belief was that if I ate the sour cookie, I am the silent, steady
rube whom you will reward for my sacrifice with accolades.
Both manners of being are born out
of the fear of lack of love. Fear that I will not be taken care of.
It does not surprise me that a
monolith of emotions and emotional backlash and predatory fear have arisen as I
step into the dating world. It simply confirms why I’ve stayed away as long as
I have. I know there is work to be done here, and avoidance is a great way to
not have to feel those feelings. To not have to look at the monster and,
perhaps, Hulk-like, calm it down until it reverts back to a normal, California
girl.
If you stay out of the dining
room, you neither have to eat the blackened one nor cut a path through to
the full ones.
But, eventually you get hungry. 
My object now is to whisper in
that girl’s terrified ear, There is enough (love).
If you wait and allow the tray to be brought to you, you can have one. If you allow yourself to focus on the rest of the meal, the chicken and potatoes and brussel
sprouts (cuz you know you love em), the tray will come to you. If, instead you focus jealously on
GETTING A FUCKING COOKIE you will miss the bounty that’s in front of you.
Which is another way to say that
my being so singularly focused on the outcome I want around this (or any) situation, I’m actually making myself miserable. I notice that calculating all the angles to
my end-goal (through poking and winking and sexing and making you see
me) is taking me out of the joy of the
experience. It’s removing me from my center, my self, and from the fucking
thing I wanted in the first place: to date.
I certainly am learning things!
And I am going to try to eat my potatoes, and TRUST that I can be present in the
moment, and let all the other moments follow in their own order and time. I
will try to trust that I can relax into the moment, into the joy, into the newness and the awkwardness and the hilarity and the growth, because there is enough. 
And, who knows, if
the cookies do run out, maybe there’s a Junior’s Cheesecake in the kitchen. 

acceptance · change · dating · internet dating · trying

Let.The.Horse.Pull.The.Cart.Molly.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

One guy’s profile on Tinder read, “Let’s just tell people we met in line at a coffee
shop, and I said something charming.”
Because (forgive me if you did) who wants to say, We met
online.
My dad met his fiancé online. My mom met her boyfriend
online. My coworker is happily married to a man she met online. To name a few. 
So, what’s the big deal? Will this stigma end? Is it a
stigma, or is it just me and my highfalutin ideas of how people should act and
meet and love?…
So, how did me and the 25-year old meet? Well, according to
my highfalutin idea that I would “meet someone on the way to meeting
myself,” in fact. Amazingly.
We met at the Theater Bay Area auditions last Sunday. He was an auditor (i.e. some kind of representative of a theater company who watched all the auditions–casting director, director, who knew), I was a volunteer.
We repeatedly caught one another’s eye during the day, but the day passed without a word and was ending. I didn’t want to let the opportunity to meet him pass by, because either he’s
someone in the theater world I’d like to meet, or he’s just a cute boy I’d like
to meet.
Everyone milled in the lobby at day’s end, and I simply
walked up to him and said, “Hi, We’ve been glancing at one another all day, and
I just wanted to introduce myself.” He replied that it was the red I was
wearing that caught his eye. And, that I was very beautiful.
We chatted, we laughed a little, and in the end, I gave him
my card, utterly ambiguous to either of us whether our intentions were personal or professional.
Then, his email later in the week, and the ambiguous Saturday afternoon meeting
that turned into half a date. And last night into a full one. 
His beard hid the fact he’s 7 years younger than me, could have been anywhere around 30, til I asked on Saturday outright.
The agony I poured into my friends’ text messages yesterday
morning about the age gap! “He was in diapers when the Challenger blew up.” “He
doesn’t know Corey Feldman before rehab.” “He didn’t suffer neon like the rest of
us.” Though born in the 80s, his earliest memories begin in the 90s. This is a Millenial. 
My friends’ resounding response was: Just go on a second date,
doofus.
You don’t even know if you like one another yet; stop
manufacturing reasons to make this a no.
One friend in particular had good insight about the
generational gap. About the desire for aligned frames of childhood reference. Her husband is from
Germany, arrived in the States in 1995. His American pop-culture references
only go back that far, even though he’s of similar age. She said she walks down
memory lane with her friends. And that’s enough.
What are the need to haves; what are the nice to haves?
What about the “He’s employed, attractive, intelligent, ambitious,
Jewish, tall” part of the equation?
Then again. Your 20s are so much different than your 30s or
any other years (that I’ve lived so far). There is a certainty about the world
and your place in it that you have in your 20s that completely shifts by your
30s. There is a hubris about your knowledge. The development of those few years
is drastic. I know. I’ve lived it, and
watch others live it. I know that people who are 40 look at me and how I think
I fit in the world, and smile good-naturedly at my naïveté.
Though, perhaps it’s my own hubris that I can know where
another person is on their developmental path.
There is no definite here, there’s only exploration. More
opening, more meeting, more laughing and softening. The part where you (I) feel
comfortable enough to be silly–if that part even comes to pass. You
can’t even know yet if you like one another, and so all the questions about how
you met, about generational alignment, about maturity and Back to the
Future references AREN’T EVEN RELEVANT yet.
For now, I, said doofus, went on the second date. And this
one was unambiguous. 

change · dating · opening · truth · vulnerability · writing

Dance of the Cerebellum.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I usually don’t friend on the first date.
There’s still too much of the game to be played before you
get to see my trivialities, my lols, my 8,000 vanity shots.
There needs to be order about the thing, this dating thing,
this ‘I wasn’t even sure if it was a date until I asked you mid-non date about
it’ thing. And you told me that you hoped it would be. And so it was.
I write everything here. I write about love and sex and
alcoholism and family dysfunction and self -exploration and -derision and
-love. I write about healing and change and acceptance. I write about
banalities and wrap them in a coat of revelation.
I only just began writing again, and I won’t censor because
you’re here now. Even though, that’s what the game is. That’s what the
beginning is. It’s an opening, always by degrees. Here are my cards, the ones
okay to be seen. Next hand, here are a few more—are you folding yet? Am I?
Here, one by one, is the rest of the deck, a little coffee-stained and edge-frayed.
I had a dream about you the night you asked me to
dinner. I dreamt you told me you were 18. And we kissed. And I pressed mine to
your soft, full lips.
And yesterday, when it happened in real time, you told
me you were 25. And we kissed. And you pressed your soft, full lips to mine. …
I usually don’t friend on the first date.
There’s too much to be known and unknown, to be veiled, and
slowly opened. Too much trust to be laid down before I am willing to open
myself and what I offer here. And too much I want to say here in this writing–to myself and my friends–about that process of
opening. This is my platform, my cauldron of community, where we all get to dive in and find the pearl at the
bottom.
And I need to dive, explore, create, and parse. I need to
tease and relate and recall and make sense.
I am a Libra, after all. Communication is our oxygen.
If I friend on the first date, you’ll see
that I know what a Libra is and does. That I talk to trees and ‘heart the 80s.’
That I argue with myself about every last particle of myself.

“Respond to Friend Request.”

I usually don’t friend on the first date.

“Accept.”

But I guess there’s an exception to everything. 

acting · change · expansion · meditation · truth

S/he had so much potential.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I want you to imagine yourself doing something you’ve always wanted
to do, but you haven’t.
This could be play Frisbee golf, visit a foreign country,
learn piano, plant a sapling. Anything.
I want you to picture yourself engaged in this activity,
noticing your movements, your self, how you’re feeling, what energy you’re
carrying.
Now, I want you to remove yourself, and in your stead,
imagine your inner most power–the very greatest power you have thumping in your
heart–doing that activity. See if you can sense or see or imagine the unmasked
self, the soul part, your unharmed self engaged in your dream activity. Again, notice their movements, their feelings, what energy they carry.
Is it different?
Is there a difference between how you imagine yourself to
engage in the world, and how, well, the world wants you to engage in it? Are
you freer, larger, glowy? Are you lighter, uninhibited, unafraid?
Maybe, or not. Maybe you won’t do the above. But, this
morning, I did. Just sort of made up the meditation, “thought exercise,” as I sat in my morning meditation, and I
did see myself differently. I was envisioning today’s audition, envisioning
myself onstage in the dress I’ve chosen, giving my monologue. And I felt the
urge to see what would happen if it weren’t me, but the me that lives under all
my cages. I will tell you, it was very different. The second one confident,
unafraid to fill the space, to be big. Not hiding.
I’m going to try to remember that part of me, because it is
always with me, when I go out into the world, and onto the stage today. That
there is only a trap door of fear that prevents me from being her. And what if,
for a few moments, I can pry it open, and let myself be and let you see what I’ve always wanted
you to see: I am more than who I’ve been.
And greater than my obfuscation.

auditioning · change · growth · singing · theater

Owning Voice

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Last Thursday, I began a class at Berkeley Rep School of
Theater entitled, “Voice for Performance.” A short-term class of 5 sessions,
lasting three hours each, I am getting a taste of the Linklater method (which I
hadn’t heard of ’til recently, but apparently should know), vocal warm-up exercises, and where my
own challenges are.
At the first class, we all introduced ourselves while our
sprightly, mildly Cockney professor got up in our grill. She watched how our jaw
moved, how we held our body, listened if we grated words in our throat or
didn’t support our breath, and chided the modern world epidemic of ending
declarative sentences with a lilting question at the end. Last night, she
called me out again for it. It’s not, Hi, I’m Molly?, she laughed good-naturedly;
It’s, Hi, I’m Molly. Of course you are, she said.
At the first class, she spoke a little about the messages
some of us receive that cause blocks in how we speak. Were you told to keep it
down, that your voice was too loud? Did you sit at a dinner table with loud
people, and so learned to speak out the side of your mouth? 
There is a reason no one knows I sing. There is a reason
this whole blog is called Owning Voice.
There are messages I received, and internalized, whether
someone actually said something to me or not. I learned I had to be quiet to be
safe, that a loud voice was the tool of the abominable. I have clear memories
of “voice quelling.” When I was singing a poem at my Bat Mitzvah at age 13, there is this lovely harmony at the end that really makes the whole song, and
changes it to something powerful. I got to the end of that song, and I made the
choice, in my blue velour dress with puffy sleeves, to not go for it, to not try
for the notes that would make the song whole because I wasn’t sure I could reach them, and so I sang through it with the banal repetitive melody, sad for myself for not trying, and filing that experience away in,
“I’m not good enough.”
I remember auditioning for a high school musical, practicing
upstairs in my room, and coming down to ask my parents what they thought, if
that note was too high. They told me that I better not go for it. So I
didn’t.
I remember auditioning in college for the a cappella group
on campus, Orphan Sporks, and not making it; for the college plays, and not
making it.
And this is when I stopped. I believed that I learned that I
wasn’t good enough, and to stop trying.
But, part of the reason I haven’t made the progress I could,
is because I have those beliefs that I need to be quiet, that I need to not
make noise, that I need to be something better than I am to do it, and so, I don’t sing, I don’t share from the heart of who I am, and
therefore, I get to continue feeding the story that singing isn’t for me. And
when I do actually sing, because it’s such a rarely used instrument, it’s not
as well oiled as I know it could be, and again, I get to file this passion away in the “Not
for you” category, or dismiss my voice as Not Good Enough, or tell others, Oh,
it’s not really, I’m not really, …
I’ve taken singing lessons before, sporadically; I know I have a 4 octave range, I know the voice is in there. I know I’m not delusional & I feel like magic when I own it; I also know I hide it. Like a boy on a date once said to me about my eyes, that they are beautiful, but I am shy with them. Same same.

The class I’m taking right now isn’t about singing directly;
it’s about voice, about your whole body—your ribs, your toes, your earlobes—vibrating
to create sound. To drop the internal chatter and drop into your body,
zen-like, drop into your power which is there whether you obscure it with
rancid messages or not. The class is certain to help in the practicality of
singing, but for now, it’s just about owning breath, owning voice, and owning
truth.

Hi, I’m Molly.
Of course I am. 

adventure · dating · internet dating · love

Love in an Elevator – of Zeros and Ones

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Long have I harbored, and still do, the idea that I will
“meet the person on the way to meeting myself.” Meaning, that if I am engaged
in doing things that ignite and enliven me, and I happen to meet a dude on the way,
great – if I don’t meet a dude there, well, I went for me anyway. The other
thing about that method is that you already know that you have something in
common, wherever it is you are or what you’re doing – more than what you’ll know
by internet dating, which the only thing you know for sure you have in common
is that you both internet date. Or seek to.
So, that’s all well and good to “meet the person…yadda yadda
yadda,” but, well, what if you haven’t, and it’s time to grease the wheels a
little? Enter the internet. And, for me, most recently (as in Sunday) Tinder.
Ah yes, the new fangled, smart-phone app, where you swipe a
photo left to reject and swipe right to approve. If you both “swipe right” on
one another, you get the chance to chat. I like the idea of this better than my
previous forees into internet dating, because there’s none of
this “so and so winked at you” or
“looked at your profile,” or even so-and-so messaged you and his photos are of
him in a sports bar with five of his best bros swilling pints. In those situations,
the most fun part is the polite decline. How to answer, if to answer the, “Hey hows it goin”?
Once, I politely declined a guy’s “advances,” and got a
lovely diatribe on how all women were superficial bitches. That was fun. So,
Tinder – you can only communicate if you’ve both agreed you pass the first gate.
Last night, I was supposed to have a coffee date with
someone who passed the gate, but he got sick and texted to cancel and
reschedule. About an hour later, I just took down my profile.
I’ve done it before. My second stint on OkCupid lasted 12
hours—from when I put the profile up at night, to when I woke up horrified in
the morning, and took it down!
I was talking to a friend last night before my date was
cancelled about my amalgam of feelings around the whole “internet dating thing”: That I felt glad to get out there; that I felt loser-ish to “have to”
date that way; that I was excited for the date, but also trepidatious about
meeting a stranger who all I know is from two photos and a witty sentence.
And then the date was cancelled, and I was relieved.
It’s not to say that I won’t restart again, but I usually do internet dating only so long as I can stomach the concept. And
it’s hard (for me) to quiet the nausea long enough to “get out there.” That’s
okay. As Alanis Morissette says in her song “21 Things I Want In A Lover”
(which may as well be my WSM Craigslist ad), I’m in no rush, ‘cause I like
being solo…In the meantime I’ll live like there’s no tomorrow.
And though I agree with the second part, and will continue
to go out to meet myself and potentially meet you too, my desire for dinner for
two may bring me back to 140-character witticisms and culling my most
swipe-rightable photos.

community · fear · nature · spirituality · truth

Remember What the Redwoods Told You

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Two weekends ago, I attended the annual women’s spirituality
retreat I’ve been going to every January for the last 6 years, since the group
was formed. Last year, I asked my doctors to move my chemo treatment so that I could
attend it. It’s a pretty important milemarker for me, and every year, I sit in
the circle of twenty or so women, and I get to see where my levels are that
year. I get to remember the crises or issues I was working on in previous
years, and how they’ve fallen away, or if they’re still present. It’s my annual
stock-check.
I still remember the first year when my big issue was around
the food they were serving. Everything was homemade, delicious… and in buffet
style. I found myself eating beyond capacity at each meal, and by the end of
the retreat, I shared what I learned was why: I had no food at home. I was
trying to gorge myself, as if that would satiate me beyond the 24 hours, and I
could bring some of that fullness home with me to my empty fridge.
This was in the days long before I got a handle on money or
my relationship with it, and I didn’t buy food. Sure, I ate, and it wasn’t an
anorexia thing; I just felt that I didn’t have enough money, or enough care for
myself to buy anything, so I’d eat popcorn for dinner, or cook up the 55 cent
packages of asian noodles I could buy near my work. It wasn’t abundant for
sure.
I shared this with the group, I cried about not treating
myself well, about not prioritizing my needs. And, several years later, I can
report that that behavior around food, though occasionally rearing, is pretty
long past.
This year, however, I was eager to “get to the root” of
several things—one thing in particular—and it was the last day of the retreat.
We had our morning meditation session, we’d shared, and the closing meditation
always took place after a walking meditation through the forest path and down
to a lower outdoor chapel of sorts, with wooden slats for benches, right
next to a trickling stream, in the center of a wooded bonanza of nature.
I didn’t want to do the walking meditation. We’d walked down
the path silently yesterday, though not with intention, and I just wanted to
GET there, so I could have more insights. I wanted to get to the real meditation. I even voted that we skip it.
But, I was overruled, and found myself walking about 15
feet behind another retreatant, with slow, purportedly meaningful steps. So, I
walked slowly, and a little past the wooden bridge over the stream, I began to
relax, to notice, to breathe, to see where I was, to be where I was – exactly where I’d been one year
before, when I was chemo-bald, in the middle of treatments, and so very unsure
of what was going to happen to me.
I felt that duality,
the nature of being in two worlds, one in the present, one in the past, walking
with my past self and experience, knowing that a very frightened but very brave
woman had worn these very shoes on this very path one year before.
And I recalled something else.
After my first round of chemo and month-long hospital
stay last October. After my esophagus melted in reaction, and I was told I
would probably be infertile after treatment. After my doctors told me that even with
treatment, my best statistics were a 40% five-year survival rate, I went for a
walk.
I am lucky enough to live in a neighborhood where I can walk
pretty close to trees, and I was taking a much needed walk, albeit slowly.
Coincidentally, it was on this walk when I got a phone call from Stanford,
looking to plan our intake interview for bone-marrow transplant. I hadn’t yet
made my decision to pass on the transplant and go with straight chemo,
believing that to be enough. I hadn’t yet heard all about the pre-transplant radiation that zaps
you to smitherines, that I would have to relocate for 9 months to the
Peninsula for 24-hour care, that even with the abominable treatments, I would only be given a
60% chance to live instead of 40. And this woman was calling to talk to me
about it.
I told her I needed to call her back. I was taking a
walk.
I walked up near a house where a large redwood grows next to
the sidewalk, pushing the concrete out of its way, slowly and surely. I walked
up to that redwood and I put my palm
flat against its umber, striated flank.
And I silently asked the tree: Am I going to live?

(Did I lose you yet?)

And in my body, in my poor shop-worn blood, in the center of where we listen, I felt and heard
the answer: Yes.
Yes.
I am going to live.
I get emotional writing about it. And, walking down that forest path in Napa
just two weeks ago, I got emotional, too. It was
there I remembered all that had happened, all the fear, and the relief, and the anger, and the
certainty I felt (even though who can be certain) that I was going to live
through my cancer. The trees had told me so, and I believed them.
I may have lost you with the tree-talking thing, but, meh,
c’est la vie.
The point is, I lived. ‘Til today. I am healthy, besides
this damn cold; my blood is normal and cancer-free, and I am alive.
Every single day is a relief, a question, an imperative
question and invitation. I heard on NPR last night about a woman whose mother
went into full remission for a year and a half, and then the cancer returned
with vengeance and she died. But how important that year of life was, to her
and to her family. It’s been a year and two months since mine went into
remission, and stories like that turn my insides to ice.
Luckily, I was on my way driving to band practice. The band
I didn’t belong to a year ago, couldn’t have conceived of, in a car I didn’t
have or conceive of a year ago. I reminded myself that I, too, have made this
year important.
And—for whatever it might mean to you, it means the world to
me—I remind myself that the redwoods said Yes. 

acting · change · confidence · dreams

Hunger Games

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I attended the Theater Bay Area General Auditions on Sunday
as a volunteer, which meant I got to see a lot of headshots, a lot of nervous
milling actors, and some of the auditions.
What I got to observe was that I probably fit somewhere in the
middle of that pack – I’m not worse than the worst person, and certainly not as
good as the best, so that means… I have a shot, right?
The General Auditions bring together all of the casting companies from around the Bay in one
room, like a cattle-call. There are about 5 auditions every 15 minutes, and it
goes on for 3 days. I can only imagine what that must be like for the auditors!
But, you never know – they can’t blink, because they might miss something, and
if you falter, you’ve just faltered in front of everyone you’ll ever audition for.
(all hail hyperbole!)
The other thing I got to see was how hungry all the actors were. It didn’t matter the age, or
experience, there was a rabid manic energy about the whole place. The guy
sitting in the lobby mouthing the words to his monologue, the slight look of
lamb at slaughter of a few, and the general awkwardness of the others standing
around their competition, sizing one another up, if even glancingly.
Because there isn’t enough. That’s the grand and great mantra
of things like this. It reminded me of the day laborers who stand outside of
Home Depot, waiting for someone to pick them. All they want to do is work. That’s
it – just give these people an opportunity to do what they know how to do best.
Just let them work. It’s a very different idea about the hungry artist, to me
at least. The idea that the hunger isn’t necessarily about pride, prestige,
fame, but just about getting the chance to do that which you’ve been trained to
do – Let Me Work. That’s what these
actors are saying, in their fidgeting, their primping, their priming.
And this Saturday, I will do the same. I will say the same
thing: Dear CCSF Director, Please let me work.
It’s a strange interview process; so much more intense than
“regular” office interviews, where it’s a dialogue (hopefully). This is just
you, presenting what you have to offer, sans feedback. There’s no riffing, no
improv, no charming self-depreciation or affable witticism. There’s just what
you can give in 1 minute – what you can bottle and nutshell in one minute of
the macrocosm of who you are and what you can do.
It is a lot of
pressure!
But. I’m up for it. I have to be. I don’t really have the
option to shirk my dreams anymore, or shrink from that which enlivens me. I mean…
I do, but, “all things considered,” I don’t. Life is short, dearies.
I also am getting to observe my lovely monkey mind as it
compared my list of acting credits to those on the resumes I was handing to the
auditors. I don’t have an MFA in Acting.
I don’t have a BA in Theater
Arts. Hell, I don’t even have one legitimate credit at all. And, yet, (I’m
talking to you, monkey mind) So, the, fuck, what. ? So what?!
Do you not make a new recipe because it might fail, and
therefore never eat again? Do you not refuel your gastank because it’s empty
and futile to continue refilling it? Do you stop talking to people you’ve never
met before because your name hasn’t been in lights, on a program, on Buzzfeed?
Well, I hope not.
Essentially, Life would be pretty awful if it meant only
doing the things you knew how to do. Where is the joi de vivre in that?
So, I’ll own the joi. I’ll de vivre. I’ll feed my monkey
mind banana chips and positive affirmations. I’ll practice the shit out of my
monologue, and I’ll mouth words silently, and I’ll appraise my competition, and
I’ll remind myself there is enough and I am worthy, and I’ll believe it and I
won’t believe it, and I’ll try again next time.
Because, I woke up with Lose Yourself in my head this morning — Eminem wants me to work, too. 

love · relationships · self-love · vulnerability

The Corollary

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. 

abundance · change · debt · family · self-support

Wanted: Nice Things

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

There is a Tarot card, a Pentacle, can’t remember which one,
that depicts a gentleman standing with two figures crouched on either side of
him. To one of these figures, he’s handing gold coins, to the other, nothing.
One interpretation in my book on the cards is to see which one of these two
crouching figures we identify with: do we think we’re the one who gets or the
one who gets passed over? But lately, I’ve been looking at the third figure in
the card: the one who has enough, that he gets to choose where he gives it.
A woman once told me that I needed to start “identifying
with the ‘haves’ instead of with the ‘have-nots.’” I didn’t understand what she
was saying, and our relationship as mentor and mentee didn’t last very long.
But over the past year, several months, I’ve been beginning to absorb and even
adopt that idea.
I earn what I earned last year; in fact, it’s the same as I was
paid 6 years ago and far less than I was paid 4 years ago. But I said it to some friends yesterday, “My income has not
changed, but I feel more abundant.” You can stop reading if that makes you mad,
or vomit in your mouth, or roll your eyes – but if you’ve read me before, you
know I say plenty of sweeping statements you may not roll with!
But, the statement feels true, today. Yesterday, I went to a
stand-up comedy show at Cobb’s Comedy in S.F. I’d never been to see live comedy
before, and I loved the comics who were performing. My coworker mentioned that
the event was happening, and within minutes, I had a ticket. I bought myself a
ticket.
I bought a car I actually can afford payments on; I’m
planning a trip to the North Carolina shore with my mom and our two cousins
this summer; I’m saving for the trip my mom and I are taking to Paris next
summer.
That I can even conceive of these things, these trips, these
“haves” is astonishing to me.
When my current mentor told me in the early months of last
year that she saw me having my own car, that I would need one, that I had to
get to band practice, I thought she was bananas – wishful thinking; for you not
for me; there’s no way I can have…”nice things,” is the end of that sentence.
“There is no way I can have nice things.” Sound familiar? To
me it does.
But she said it was true, and though I didn’t believe it AT
ALL, I trusted her.
To drive my car now isn’t a sign to me of affluence or
status, it’s a symbol of doing what I’ve imagined impossible for me – of
attaining things that I had previously imagined, no, believed myself incapable of having, doing, being.
But, my income did not change. I have 80 thousand dollars in
student loan debt, 4 grand in back rent from when I was sick and not working,
and a few outstanding others. And yet….. here’s the joy part – I’m still having
fun. I’m still enjoying my life.
I didn’t think that was allowed, or possible. If you have debt,
you aren’t allowed to enjoy life. If you have debt, you can’t afford to buy
comedy tickets, or the pedicure I shared with my friend this week, or acting
classes at an actual acting school. If you have debt, you should sit in the
dark under a blanket and wait for your soul to eat itself.
😛
Right?
But it sounds true,
doesn’t it? It did to me.
I have payment plans for all of the above debts, and I have
no idea how I’ll pay it all off. But I am no longer willing to deny myself nice
things under a lash of shame and punishment and longing.
To watch this shift within me, the shift from No f*cking
way to maybe, even just maybe, has been radical. I really didn’t
believe my friend when she said about the car, and now it exists, in my hands,
I drive it, it works, it’s not a jalopy, it runs, it’s safe.
If this can happen around that, surely the same shift can
apply elsewhere. Hence the cousin reunion; hence the Paris trip (though really,
it’s just my way to get to Barcelona, where I really want to go!). Actually,
the Paris trip is way more than that, to me. It’s to be with my mom, assuming
“all works out,” and I have to tell you how very much more aware, and…
frightened… sort of, I am of the limited time she and I have left together.
She’s not old, she’s 65, but there are only a few more years
of her and I being able to run around and do things together.
And part of my “Yes”ness shift is trying to believe that I
can spend time with her without actually moving back there. That I was able to fly home to New York over Christmas, that I’ll be able to do it again this summer.
Because here’s my other landing realization: I want to stay
in California.
The agony this decision has caused me has been massive.
Particularly because I want to be with my mom, and my brother, and his
girlfriend, and their probably-to-be-had kids, and my best friend and her new
baby and watch all of them, all of us, grow up. I want to be there and witness
it. I don’t want to parachute in every year and see that things are so
different, and only have limited time to run around, and inject all the joy and
events and activity we can into a few days. It’s horrible living so far from
people who feed your soul.
And yet.
Coming home, coming back to the Bay, after that trip, taking
the train out of SFO, and seeing the green green landscape—who could leave this
either?
Compost versus Styrofoam. Mild weather versus Polar
vortices.
California versus New York is Me versus My family and
friends.
So, what about the abundant thinking, what about the shift
in doing and being able to do that which I’d previously thought impossible?
Well, my “you will have a car” mentor asks me if it wouldn’t be possible that I
would earn enough to be able to get home twice a year. Radical thinking, I
know.
And although it is viciously hard for me to stand in my
decision to stay in California, and I may waffle and weave and dodge and balk over it, what I can do
in the meantime, until I actually allow myself permission to be where I love,
is to make those occasional plans to visit–because I can afford to identify with
the haves. And haves go on vacation.