adulthood · commitment · growth · honesty · integrity · progress · recovery · responsibility · work

Bollocks.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Through a series of work I’m doing right now, I sent out a
stack of three letters to former employers yesterday, each with a variation on the theme – I was an
unprofessional employee, I am sorry for how I behaved, and I aim to be more responsible in my
jobs now and going forward.
The messed up, fucked up, I-don’t-want-to-do-this part of all
that is… that now I have to stick to my word – the word about being a better
employee going forward. This means, fewer endless hours on facebook while at
work (if any at all); it means taking my breaks so I’m refreshed to actually do
work instead of sit and stare at whatever I’m doing; it means being efficient in
my work. I means, basically, doing what I’m paid to be doing.
I don’t like that. And, yet, I know how completely necessary
it is. I’ve been talking here about responsibility lately, how I don’t want it, but that I do want the things that come to people who are responsible – in their
work, extracurricular, and home lives. So, if I want what they have, then I
must do what they do.
I don’t have to.
Sure, I can say one thing and do another, but in truth, that feels, obviously,
worse. Better to not say anything at all, and continue to slide along on
half-steam, than to say that I’m making changes so that I don’t slide along on
half-steam and then not do it.
Most recently, having the (rated G) dalliance with the
married man, I got to see very acutely where I was either going to stick to the
letter of my word or not. I’ve had to make many an amends to women whose
boyfriends, and, once, a fiancé, with whom I’ve dallied. I told them each,
specifically, that I was making changes in my life so that I don’t act like
that anymore – that I was sorry for how I behaved, and that I wouldn’t do it
again.

So, when I began talking in the flirtatious way with this man about a month
ago, I knew – I felt – how off this was.
How against everything that I’d set up over the last few years this was. How,
basically, I was breaking my promise to each of them, and indeed to myself –
having promised myself that I wouldn’t behave in ways around men
that would make me feel bad about myself, or guilty, or ashamed.
And so, I stopped the dalliance with the man, and am now newly engaged in a body of work to help extricate and sever and lay to rest the last
of the beliefs and behaviors that influence me to believe that this is all that
is available to me, or what I deserve.
So, here I am, now, about work. About telling these folks
that I fucked up in the past, and I’m trying to do better. That, specifically,
I will be more responsible and work with more integrity. And, I know, now, that
I’ll have to stick to it. I know how it feels from that recent experience to
come right up against something I said I wouldn’t do – I know how icky it
feels, and against my morals. And so, now, I must take that same self-line into the professional world.
And I hate it.
I know it’s good for me. I know it’ll open doors for me, and
duh, it’s the right thing to do. But, Oh! My Beautiful Wickedness!, I don’t “want” to. Luckily, it doesn’t quite matter
whether I want to or not. Pain will always push me in the direction forward. I
don’t want to feel the pain of being a hypocrite, so I will work better. I
don’t want to feel ashamed that I’m not living to my word, so I’ll stop
accepting jobs that I know I’ll work half-steam at.
I don’t like it. It feels like an entirely new level of
adulthood to go toward this direction of integrity. But it’s necessary, and
it’s time.
I have no doubt that the opening up of this line of vision
will amount to something more in my professional life. I have no doubt that by working to a better standard of duty that I’ll feel better about myself and
less like a fraud. I know that this will take me somewhere different internally
and externally. But, still, it sucks.
It’s like this is what teenagers experience when they get
into their 20s maybe. Or, these days, 20somethings into their 30s. I’d love to learn this
now. It’s late, but it is certainly a better late than never.
I also wrote an email last night to a recent former employer to
apologize for how I ended my employment there, and to ask for clarity around
some money they gave me to pay off the last of my braces when I had them a
few years ago. He said that they had dental, so it was covered, and no
liability to me. He said that he did think I “handled the separation badly.”
And he said that if I ever needed a reference that he has “[my] back.” I’m glad
to know that the money is clear. I agree that I could have handled things
differently. And for fuck’s sake, I promise that I will handle them differently
in the future.
Change sucks. Especially when it’s good for me. 

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

Going to the Chapel.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

In an effort to hold myself accountable, I’ll here announce
that I have an art project to complete by this Saturday, for my friend’s
wedding. And… in an effort to be honest, I mean start and complete by Saturday. It’s all good – I’ve
already sketched it out, but theory and practice are disastrously different
things.
This will be the first wedding I’ve ever attended. Somehow,
it’s just never happened that I’ve been around people who get married, or been
in the same state or country to attend. I did work with a catering company at a
few weddings last summer, but that’s not the same. Although, it did give me
some great perspective and insight into the whole rigamarole.
The first wedding I did was between two women, which was
pretty cool. But, I got to learn that you shouldn’t have speeches during
serving time at dinner, as people are really confused as to whether they should
eat or listen, and then the courses get backed up, and you’re removing plates
while people are speaking, which is hella awkward and earns more than a few pointed
glances.
I learned that if you’re having a sunset wedding in the
Sonoma hills that bugs will flock to and then drown in your water, champagne,
and wine glasses. I learned that before you blink, the whole thing is over.
This is not meant to be a diatribe on marriage or weddings, it’s just
observations – and a reminder to really be present for things like this – they
really are fleeting.
I decided that, personally, a set of anonymous towels was
not what I wanted to give this couple. I met the bride within the first year, I
think, of being in San Francisco. We met out front of a building where folks
like us gather for an hour, and I asked her for a light or a cigarette, or we
just both happened to be smoking out front, me feeling socially awkward as
hell.
We talked. And somehow, stars aligned, and we knew that we’d become really good friends. Nothing
momentous was said. No raw secrets were shared, or raucous joke exchanged. We
were just ourselves, nervous, anxious companions in the semi-dark on the
concrete steps to a massive warehouse-like building by the San Francisco Marina.
When I left, we exchanged a hug. We reflected later that
neither of us were a huggy bunch. We were, or at least I was, still much too guarded then, and hugging was restricted for the very few people I now was
beginning to consider friends. But, hug we did. And it was almost that
spontaneous act of mutual affection, an act neither of us typically allowed ourselves,
that sealed that something different was here. A friendship had been
formed in the 5 minutes it takes from lighting to filter.
More than 5 years ago now.
She’s part of the reason I went back to school. I watched
her quit her lucrative job as a store manager in a touristy spot in San
Francisco, and go back to school full time in an unusual major – or at least
completely unrelated to anything she’d been doing previously. I watched her
walk, even painfully, through the process, and in the middle of winter in 2010,
I sat on her couch – maybe it was our Christmas or New Years, or something
gathering. She cooked, we talked. I asked her why this major, how come, out of
everything in the world, she chose this?
She told me that it was a thread throughout her life. All
through her life, she noticed that she’d gravitated toward information around
this subject, she sort of watched herself nurture and feed this interest. That
phrase, a thread through my life, stuck
with me.
It was hard to imagine that someone with a lucrative and
stable job (with all the attendant mishigas of a lucrative and stable job)
would quit all that to go to school, and start nearly at the beginning of a
career. But she did. I admired her dearly for it.
And so, when, two months later, I found myself at a
crossroads in my own job world, I asked myself, What is my thread? It was
writing. I have poems that date to 2nd grade. It
was her conviction that she was insisting something to herself almost
unconsciously through her choices of hobby and interest and book perusal that
underlined that this was her arena. And so, I followed my own thread.
Because of the nature of life and distance, and full-time
schooling for us both, we don’t get to see one another often at all. It is her
I blame, full disclosure, for having hooked me on the horrifyingly ridiculous
and addictive Twilight book series –
that very night, actually back in 2010. Walking out toward the end of the
night, I glanced at her bookshelf – and there it is, the entire series. I
guffawed. I was stunned – attractive, intelligent, funny, generous, achingly cool, and reads Twilight??
This couldn’t be right.
She asked me if I’d read it – I looked at her as if she’d
asked me if I enjoyed stepping in dog shit. No, I had not read them. Scoff,
scoff. (!) Then she gave me the first volume, and told me to try it.
And so I did. And damn her, if she hasn’t turned me into one
whom others scoff at. And I thank her for it. Cheesey, and melodramatic, and
angsty, she helped me to learn to not take myself too seriously, and to let
myself have uninhibited, puffy fun.
I am honored to be attending her wedding this weekend. I
have watched her and shared with her over the course of years, and the deep
affection that was tapped on that lonely concrete outcropping has murmured like
a brook under the surface of my life every day since. 
authenticity · camping · community · confidence · hobby · honesty · laughter · music · responsibility · self-support

Chop Wood, Carry Water.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Two weeks ago, I wrote this in the Grownupness blog:
“I grasp at things I think I want, but I’m not willing to
firm the foundation to get there – to mix the mortar, lay the bricks. Chop
wood, carry sticks. That’s where I need to be at. Very simply, I need to lay
hold of qualities and actions that I have tried to avoid.”
And so, this weekend, I carried sticks.
The simplicity of camping, even in the complexity of “car
camping” the bastardized cousin of “real” camping, was so easy. It’s so easy
for me. What needs to be done next? Well, we’re heading out down the river for
the afternoon while others go river rafting (a luxury expense I couldn’t
afford), so what did I need to bring? Sunscreen, towel, book I didn’t crack,
hat, water. That’s it.
It’s turning darker, what do we need to do? Get more
firewood, build a fire, refill the water, not at the mercury-laden river’s
edge.
There are things that I know how to do, and this weekend, I
got to see that very clearly. I know how to build a fire, I know you need something
like paper or brush to catch under the kindling to catch under the wood blocks
that were neatly chopped for us in a bundle wrapped with plastic. I know that I
need to slather sunscreen on myself and wear a hat because I’m paranoid of skin
cancer since my encounter with the Australian sun – the sun won.
I know how to make coffee, and put up a tent and roll my
sleeping bag and to remember to bring earplugs and tarot cards 😉
I know how to camp. At least, I know how to car camp.
When I unfurled my sleeping bag, in it was a long-sleeved
shirt I hadn’t seen in two years, since I was in that tent, with someone else.
I played Ghosts of Camping Trips Past this weekend.
Remembering acutely who I’d been with and when. Each and every one of the even
mildly significant and more significant relationships I’ve been in over the last six
years, I’ve been camping with that person. I haven’t slept in that tent alone
in a long time.
This particular camp grounds, I’d been to maybe 3 or 4 years
ago, when I’d been newly dating someone. It’s a beautiful spot on the American
River, up past Sacramento, and almost to Tahoe. It’s amenitied out the
yin-yang, but that’s alright. I remember the photo of me and that person in
that very landscape, I remember the release I feel when I’m out there. Not with
the person, but out there, knowing and feeling confident that I know even that
little bit.
I haven’t roughed it. I haven’t hiked out into the woods and
set up camp since I was 19 and leading a camp group overnight with our packs
into the Appalachian Mountains. And even then, it wasn’t roughing it – That’s
alright. I know it’s something I still want to do.
I wondered why it was, as I went through my previous
camping trips over the last few years, that each had included a man I’ve been
involved with. Was this my test for them? For “us”? Was I only able to be there
with someone else?
No. The reason, I realized, is because I love camping. And I
happen to go and be invited, and then I happen to invite the guy I’m with.
That’s all. Turns out, camping is a hobby, I suppose. It’s likely the only same thing that has occurred with each relationship I’ve had over the last few
years. The only “adventure” or “event” or excursion that has happened in each involvement. It just points out to me
that this is an important thing for me. Something I love.
A way that I don’t feel I need to be any different than I
actually am.
I feel confident out there (yes, even with the general store
and port-o-potties nearby). But I feel like myself. I usually look like a
wreck, and I don’t care. My hair matted and loved by the sweat and dust and
river mist. Caked in various layers of SPF lotions and supportive sneakers. I don’t
look like Xena, I look like me. Like the me I am in private, with no one to
impress or stun or mesmerize. Like the me I am when it’s just me. Whole, and
unabashed, and unprotected. And capable. I usually feel like a leader, or at least like a competent
person when I’m out there. Something those of you who read this blog with
any consistency can attest is not my normal M.O. out in the “real world.”
I needed that. I needed to feel worthy and valuable simply
for who I was/am. Not for how I looked. Or for how much money I had. Or for what kind of job I worked. Or what cell phone I carried. Or degree I had. I could be valuable for my
contributions to the group, be it building a fire, or fetching the water, or
going off to sit and do my Morning Pages out on a rock in the middle of the
rushing river so that I could be more present and emptied of my junk when I
returned to the group. I could be valuable by bringing Madlibs to do by the
fire at night – which led to so much hilarity, and stupid good fun. I could
be valuable by making coffee the first morning when everyone was still asleep
or grumpy. I could be valuable by breaking out the guitar one of us brought for
a little while, and later, sing along harmonies with her, and remember that I
have a voice.
I felt purposeful. I didn’t question who I was or where I
was going or what I was doing with my life. I didn’t have any profound
judgments or insights. I simply “chopped wood, carried water” (no chopping this
trip, but you know what I mean). If I can take that simplicity, and that
confidence, and that sense of pleasure from being precisely who I was/am into
the world, I think I’ll be alright.
If I can dress nicely and put on makeup, and remember
that it’s just a lens through which to see the whole that I am.
If I can breathe in the fire smoke scent of my balled-up clothing and
recall what it feels like when I’m just me, then I think I’ll be alright. 
change · fear · friends · fun · money · work

Oh, My Beautiful Wickedness!

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

This is one of the last lines delivered by the Wicked Witch
of the West in Wizard of Oz as she’s
melting from the bucket of water that Dorothy just doused her with.
It occurs to me this morning. The dying gasps. Really, I’m not
sure what more I have to say on that.
Last night, I got to babysit for the one family I work with,
up in the hills of Montclair – a quite posh neighborhood of Oakland, if you can
still call it Oakland. I was picked up from work by the mom in downtown SF, and
delivered straight to the ease and comfort of children.
There are two girls, one 7, one almost 3. The older one is mildly manipulative, so I like the little “teaching moments” I get to instill in
her – like, it’s okay to be disappointed (when you land on a chute instead of a
ladder, and are sent backward through the board); like, you can be honest with
me (are you really hungry, or are you trying to stay up later). Some of these,
I recognize are “corrective experiences,” as I once heard it put – places where
we get to “go back” and make minor adjustments to experiences we might have had
in the past, and put some new memories, positive memories there.
I heard this about places, mostly, – i.e. this awful thing
happened at that park one time, now I can go to that park in the light of day
with new eyes and a picnic, or something.
The woman I babysit for said yesterday that the French don’t picnic.
She’d lived there and visited several times, and whenever they went to a lake
or something, completely un-American-like, they didn’t pack a thing to eat or
drink, whereas with us, it’s the first thing that we do.
I recognize this blog is a little discombobulated, but I’m
feeling somewhat worn out from the week of highs and lows, and sleep deprivation. I was on the phone with a friend yesterday, and she said that if I
wanted to get together to do something fun, she was available for that. I said,
in essence, I’m not really available for fun right now.
What kind of a thing is that to say?! Or believe? With the money/job stuff, I am feeling depleted,
but that’s almost more of a
reason to refill the well. I’m reading this book on money stuff, and one of the
signposts toward “not so hot” questions the guy asks is if we feel relief when the calendar switches
to a new month, when the money quotient refills. Absolutely. And yet, with the calendar switch, for me now, also comes fear –
okay, June is covered, What about July. I feel like I’m ticking the days off to
refilling the pot, but also just crossing off the days through the year when there
is so much more joy to be had.
I’m debating whether canceling camping was the “right” thing
to do – but really, I think it is. A friend of mine is an expert at free and low-cost fun. It’s like her sixth sense
– like her super power is finding a way to get to do the things she loves to do
without paying – not like a handout, but like trade, volunteer, etc. For
example, if there’s a musician she likes that’s coming into town, she’ll email
them and ask if she can sell merch for them at the show. This is how I
discovered Ari Hest when he came through San Francisco a few years ago – my
friend was going to sell merch for him, and asked if I could assist. And so, we
got into the show for free, and I fell in love with some new music. Love.
P.s., speaking of, I realized that the title of yesterday’s
blog should have been “Love, and Other Drugs,” while I was on my way walking to
work. D’ah well.
The fun thing is another way of saying I can’t have where
I’m at or not good enough where I’m at – when you’re financially secure, you
can have fun. When you know what you’re doing in your life, you can laugh. Til
then, head down, grindstone needs nosing.
Meh – that’s faulty logic and backwards thinking, and just
plain sucky. There’s too much fun to be had. It’s back to my “quitting hiding”
thing that I’m trying to do. The isolating doesn’t feed me. There’s plenty to
do if I ask for help. Sure, my friend has a sixth sense, but talent for that
can develop. I’d like to learn.
I’d also like to sleep. 😉 So, this weekend, with my
non-camping self, in and amongst my job applicationing (there’s one job I’m
actually really hoping for – cross your fingers), I can get out, and be fun, have fun. Do something
FUN.
Fun is not for people who want it, it’s for people who do
it.
Word. 
acceptance · dating · fantasy · fear · finances · growth · maturity · progress · relationships · romance · sobriety

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

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Grateful to my friends who gave me feedback, I texted the okJew yesterday morning
that I was a fan of getting to know someone before getting physical (I couldn’t
help but hear Olivia Newton-John as I typed it), and if that was something he
was interested in, then I’d love to continue getting to know him, and if not,
no hard feelings. He texted back to say that, in fact, he was looking for
something else, and didn’t know how that fit in with me or not.
So, I got to sit with that. Tall, attractive, well-built
Jew? What’s not to like? Oh, unavailable.
And, I did sit, I questioned, I turned inward for a few minutes to test that
option, and ultimately, gratefully, I said I was looking for something less
tenuous, and good luck.
Then …
I sat and stared at a wall of books.
I was shocked, honestly, at how “air out of a balloon” I
felt, without all that funny noise it makes. It made me realize that I still do
have some work to do. I identified very clearly the feeling of a crash after a
high. I could almost smell the cigarette smog and late 90s radio.
Hm. Love as Drug. Huey Lewis has a song about it. And, duh,
it’s not “love” as in Love. It was intrigue. Oh, Intrigue!! – when’s the next
text, what do I wear, how flirty do I be, funny do I be, do I invite him in,
scheduling plans, etc…etc…etc… Something to think about, and then the plug was
pulled yesterday mid morning, and I sat deflated and comatose for a few minutes
on and off till lunchtime.
When I went and bought a burrito. My friend texted me to say
that it’s normal to feel feelings, and we get to let them pass. I said my feelings now
feel like a burrito in my belly ~ Real feelings TBA. And that much was true. How
much easier it is to feel full, or to
buy something to feel better – not better, to just feel different. My burrito
accomplished both of those. Better to eat, feel full (and mildly grossed out
that I ate a pound of tofu and salsa flesh), and to get the thrill that I spent
money on lunch when I had a perfectly decent one in the fridge at work.
Cuz, what do I feel when I’m not caught up in the nonsense?
Fear. I feel fear about money and work and job applications and
directionlessness. Who the hell wants to feel that?? No one. But, better to feel those feelings, and
thereby get into action around
them, than to stuff them with something else, and continue avoiding the
elephant in my psyche.
There’s another okJew who I’ve been talking to – and I’m not
entirely sure that I want to pursue it at the moment. I met up with some of my
new “relationship/emotional intimacy” folks last night after work, which was a
very good use of my time. I’m so glad
I’ve chosen to fall in with them – and they were talking about dating, and
showing up, and boundaries, and desires, and how to be honest. These are things
I want. I want to have desires –
I have no … desire… to be celibate, or nunnish. I am a hot-blooded woman with
hot-blooded needs, and a great big bag of tools that don’t work.
That said, I obviously do have more tools than I used to (burrito
coma aside) – because I did let this dude know what I was available for, and he
said he was glad we got that worked out early – and it’s true. I know plenty of
times when I’ve let my “fear of looking needy” keep me from speaking up about
my discomfort at the level of murk in a relationship or sexytime companionship.
Once, it took me almost a month, and when I finally broached the subject with
the dude, he said he wasn’t available or looking for more. So, I said, great,
and was glad to know, and left his house feeling better and confident in my
ability to state my needs, and let go of the results.
Sure, I didn’t “get what I want” in that situation – who doesn’t want the person to say, of course, I’d love to
continue to get to know you and see if there’s something substantial that can
come from this. But … as my “sugar crash” yesterday proved to me, there’s more
work to be done. It’s not at all fair to place that amount of expectation on
anyone – because they’re not really being asked to be themselves, they’re being
asked to fill something in me, or distract something in me, or fix something in
me. And, that, my dears, is an inside job.
When I said a few days ago, that if relationships are
Miracle-Gro for your character defects, then surely they are/must be for your
spiritual growth – this is why. My defect here being the desire to run away
from the reality of my professional and financial situation – and when someone
says they can’t be that for me, I’m left simply with my situation all over again, like
the ugly step-sister you lock in the attic. Still here.
So what do I do? Well, firstly, I meet up with folks and I
ask for help. Done, and will continue to do. Secondly, I continue to work on
the job front. I was invited to go camping this weekend, and had accepted, as I
love to camp, and getting out of dodge sounded so very nice. But last night, as
I was compiling job listings into an email draft so I could take a look at them
in my spare moments at work… it occurred to me that perhaps going camping was
not the best use of my time at the moment.
This temp job will likely end in the next week or two, and
after that is a blank horizon. It’s time for me to assist in coloring it in.
Lastly, I offer myself kudos. I made my intentions known,
quickly. I listened honestly to what another person was telling me about their
intentions. Which I didn’t take personally at all (a thought, I recognize, is
also huge progress, but seems so “of course” now). I can try to treat myself
kindly with how I treat my body and not go food coma on myself.
I showed up. I got in the ring. I made out. And, I can be
confident that what’s available for me is “This, or something better.”

adulthood · dating · integrity · intimacy · Jewish · progress · recovery · relationships · responsibility · romance · sexuality

Progress, Not Perfection.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So, I did not sleep with my okJew on the second date. We did
however come back to my place, and have a rather heated make-out session.
It was lovely. But. I feel today no better. I realize today
that even though we didn’t sleep together, which was something I didn’t want to
do, knowing him so briefly, that I still feel a sense of sadness around it. And
in writing some about it, I realize that it’s sad because I still don’t fully
believe in my own inherent worth – that I’m more than my body.
Even when we were making out, however fun it was – and it
was, and I’m sure that if we ever do have sex, there will be no problem in that regard – but I felt not fully
present. I felt a little disconnected – and, really, I was. I was disconnected
from the emotions that can come when you are making out with someone you know,
like, and maybe even more than like. I was only acting from one part of myself,
not all of me.
And, knowing that, I notice the desire to pack “Beauty” back
up behind her glass terarrium, and say, see, you can’t be trusted. But really,
it’s not her fault. I didn’t have to come back to my place – it could have been
a short date. I didn’t have to have the extended make-out session – I could
have ended it earlier. But, I did. And this is where “progress, not perfection”
comes in. Because I really could beat myself up here, and retreat back into
isolation, and a position of “See, you really don’t know how to hold intimacy
and sexuality, so you better pack it in.”
Yes, I could do that, but I don’t think that’s the point
here. The point is that I realize that heavy teenage-like petting is a little
more than I want to do on a second date. I realize that I still want to feel
known more than that, and have more of a connection before getting so physical.
I have so much f’ing evidence of how much sex before emotional intimacy is the
cart before the horse, and so, yes, I can beat myself up for not having learned
that “well enough,” or I can be glad that I didn’t have sex when I didn’t
really want to, and be glad that I let him know it was time to go, and didn’t
interpret his erection as an obligation, as I wrote yesterday. (But, … Whoo-ee! …
anyway…) 😉
So, there’s that. Of course, I begin to go all the way to,
now I better let him know what I’m looking for before there’s a
third date, and another round of, okay thanks, bye! That I need to explain what
I’m available for, and to ask if that’s what he’s available for.
Some of this sounds valid, some of it sounds unnecessary. I tend
to be an oversharer. I don’t think I need to do that, or at least, I don’t need
to do that today. I won’t see him again, likely, for another week or so, as
he’s busy during the week, and I’m camping this weekend, so I have time to let
some of this dust settle and ask some women, and see what happens.
We did have a good date, overall. In fact, it was a great
date. But I feel overshadowed by my remorse.
Again, it comes back to choice. I can choose to see this as
a failure, and head down to self-flagellation, and I’ll never get it, and how
come you don’t get that you’re worth it – that makes you so not worth it. (A
lovely circle of reasoning, that one.) Or. Or I can choose to see this as an
opportunity, as I spoke so much of yesterday. An opportunity to notice my
growth and change, and also to be happy (or at least contented) that I do notice how I’m feeling, and how I was feeling last night. I wasn’t
feeling present, and that I wasn’t feeling present is a good thing. That I noticed it. Noticing it is the first step, I think. Then I
can work on doing something about it.
I’ve written a lot of poetry about not feeling present
during sex. Now, I know that that can extend to making out if I’m not properly
known by someone, and they’re not known by me. This person is nearly an entirely unknown
entity – of course I don’t feel
intimate.
So, I can choose to take this as information for next time –
whether that’s with this person, or someone down the line. I can choose to
allow myself a little bit of affirmation over keeping my pants on. I can choose
to acknowledge that I’ve come a long way to be so present with myself to notice
these even slightly off-kilter parts of me.
Forgive the reference… but, in the final Twilight book
(spoiler alert?), the main character, Bella, throws an invisible defensive
bubble out around herself and her family during the cumulative battle. Imagine
it almost like a Bio-Dome, to mix pop-culture metaphors. In the book, Bella can
feel as one of the opponents pokes into the various places of her bubble,
looking for a weak spot – testing the defenses, and seeing how strong it is. I
feel very similarly about this work with dating/physicality. I feel that my
bubble is being poked and prodded, and I’m getting to see where I still have
spots of weakness, or places that can be firmed up.
I am sad that I don’t yet feel that I’m worth more than my body, or that I could be wanted or
acknowledged or “seen” for more than my physical self. But, this is simply a
place of “weakness,” a place where I could use more care and strength and
affirmation, and behavior that will support the idea that I am more than that. So, I am glad for the opportunity.
I’ve been shown where there’s work to do – and if that’s not what relationships
are for, then I’ve got the wrong game. 
adulthood · balance · dating · integrity · love · progress · relationships · romance · self-care

Opportunity Knocks

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So, first, some news – Remember the “SOLD” blog when I asked
all y’all to pray for my childhood home to sell so my dad and his fiancé could
move to Florida and retire? Well, 10 days after that blog, the house sold :)!!
Thank you ALL for your prayers and kind wishes! I’m really happy for them, even
though my dad is still shocked he didn’t get the price he wanted… Oh dad, you can’t win em all.
Next on the horizon, date # 2 happens tonight (this is the first 2nd date I’ve had in almost 2 years), and lord have
mercy, I’m trying to ground myself in every way possible. Stop tripping out.
Remember that I’m worthy of love and am able to give and receive love in an
appropriate way. Stop trying to script or plan. It’s not about “him.” I mean,
it’s not about wanting this person or not. It’s so much more about how do I
show up and stand in the experience of something new, trying something new. To
stand with integrity, and self-esteem, and awareness, and that fair and
balanced view thing that keeps coming up.
I don’t need a person to validate or complete me. I need to
be able to allow myself to stand without armor. I had a pretty funky
meditation/shamanic journey this morning. Unexpected, but right on track. About
my ability to receive love, and the melting of my resistance toward it.
Overbearing or absent were the ways that I learned love could show itself.
Overwhelm or rejection. I’ve carried out that pattern with my own partners, and
with myself as well. I’ve believed, and have stated in the past, that my fear
is that my needs are too great – that my needs are like a barely held back
tidal wave, and that to let them go, even in the slightest, to let them out,
would be an invitation for drowning – particularly, drowning someone else. So,
better to keep the dam contained.
It all comes back to what is the evidence for that today? Is there evidence of that today? And again, back to,
I’ve never let myself try, or others try, so really, I don’t know. Again, I
could be more capable of a thousand things, but having stopped and shunted them
all, I’d never know.
I am grateful for this “obstacle to practice on,” as is
written in a lot of the work I do with a woman one-on-one in the city. But I
said recently to someone else, that I think I’m going to begin using the word
“opportunity” rather than “obstacle.”
For a while, when I began writing that phrase with my
friend, it tasted so bitter and awful in my mouth – obstacles, fuck obstacles, I don’t need no steenkin obstacles.
I was pissed. How many more f’ing obstacles did I need in my life, I asked her.
And she told me that it wasn’t up to me. It wasn’t really my choice. These were
being presented to me, whether I wanted them or not, and it was my choice on
how I chose to use them for practice.
She was right. What do I know about my path? I want to get
from A to Z, but the “path” needs me to stop at H, J, and O on the way to
garner skills and friends and love and esteem. So, I wrote it. Thank you,
G-d, for this obstacle to practice on.
But, be it the “law of attraction”ish believing part of me,
or simply a framing shift, I don’t want to see or write them as obstacles anymore.
They’re not. They are opportunities.
These are
opportunities for me to choose – Turn Left, toward freedom and serenity, or
Turn Right, to well-worn misery. These are all mental paths, psychological
paths really. And in my phone right now, on my cover screen, I set the display
to read, “Turn Left.” It’s a reminder to me that in every given moment (what a
phrase! “given moment,” these moments are given, even gifts, if I can see it),
at any time, I can remember that I have a choice. I have the choice to obsess about tonight or not. I
have the choice to believe in my inherent worthiness or not. These are all
choices. And my choices are reflected back to me in real time.
I’d like to choose to
not obsess, to remember that I am talented and worthy, and don’t have to sleep
with people I don’t know well, and that my house can still be off limits even
though I said I was cleaning it to make it “guest appropriate.” I was told that
I am the czar of my own experience, and further, my own body. That I
don’t owe anyone anything. Repeat. I
don’t owe anyone anything. A date is not a
promise. A date is not a sexual invitation. It is an invitation to get to know
someone better. To vet each other for each subsequent date. A friend once told
me that a first date is just an interview for a second one. And so on they go.
That’s all.
So many years of believing I was promising something I
didn’t want to deliver, or was obligated to do because he was hard. Not my problem.
Sure, don’t be a tease on purpose, but he’ll live. An erection is not an
obligation. 
This is an opportunity for me to hear that and feel that in
a way that I haven’t. For me to try to see that I have assets beyond my
physical self. And for me to allow those assets to be shared and seen. Dating
can start so physically, and that part is critically important, but physical
attraction is a dime a dozen, really. (I mean it’s not exactly that easy, as
I’ve realized that too) – but sex itself is a dime a dozen. I don’t want that.
– as in hell yes, I want to get laid, like every other hot blooded person on
this planet, but I don’t want only that,
and my experience has taught me for sure that when I go to that part too quickly, I undermine myself every time, and I quash any ability for me to learn
that I am worthy for more than my looks and my pussy.
So, here’s to an opportunity to try something different. To
try to believe something different. And I am excited for tonight, and that’s
all well and good, but I’m also going to pay attention to my own music stand,
and Turn Left toward the tasks I have ahead of me right now.
Wish me luck. 
community · compassion · family · generosity · laughter · life · love · relationships · San Francisco · willingness

Modern Family

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Yesterday could not have been more marvelous. Oh, San
Francisco friends ~ How I miss you!!! And how I don’t realize it until I see
you.
Having lived in SF for almost 5 years before moving here to
Oakland, I had the (I can’t even think of the proper word – I don’t think I
know it) intensely fulfilling and soul-affirming opportunity to meet and grow with a pack of women. Many of my
desperately favorites were at my friend’s Memorial Day bbq event yesterday.
The feeling of guts relaxing, smiles expanding, hearts sighing, that’s how it was. I can’t stand it.
But I could, and I did. I was there, and present, and
helped, and talked, and listened, and laughed, and sun-baked (beneath a
generous layer of SPF), and hammocked, and cherry picked, and peach picked, and
dribbled little lines of peach juice down my chin, and made children laugh, and
they made me laugh, and caught up, and shared, and understood, and was
understood. Oh, this family gathering. This is my family, part of it anyway.
And how good it was to be back with them.
So many things have changed. The children are bigger. One is
moving to Japan. One got braces. One got certified. How many things change when
we aren’t looking – or in communication.
The phone works, sure. The bridge works, sure. But how me
and this particular group of women met, and shared, and grew, it was in person.
It was by witnessing monumental and incremental growth over weeks and weeks
which became years and years.
Yes, I’m feeling a little sappy. But I can’t help it. I love
them. And, they love me. This is a section of people who know me in a way few
do, who have witnessed my own growth and change, and who like me, accept me,
are fond of me. As I do them. What a miraculous gift. What a fucking gift.
I don’t know quite the solution. Does there need to be one?
The ache that I realize was there? I felt the same way when I went to a
workshop run by the same woman who hosted this barbeque – the workshop was in
January, and I arrived and saw two women I hadn’t seen in likely a year or
more, and again, my guts sank down from somewhere behind my ribs, where they’d been benignly pinching my
lungs and inhibiting my breathing, they sunk, phoom, back down to where they belong in the
grounding, rooted, centered calm.
It was at that workshop that I realized how much I missed them
all. This won’t be another diatribe on how I don’t feel connected to the East Bay as in the
“Exile” blog. I do feel connected, more
connected, than I had, with more women than I had. I feel friendships, and
activity partners, and women to share with. But. … I’ve only been here a year
and a half, almost two. That’s not 5. That’s not in the same way.
Things change. They must, and they have to. Can I change
with them? How do I balance? How do I maintain – or if change is necessary, not
“maintain,” then, but evolve? How do I evolve with the reality of distance?
Because I won’t always be here in the Bay. That much is
likely true. And what happens then? I have a dear friend who moved to Brooklyn
last year, and we speak on the phone maybe once every two months, with some smatterings
of texts, but we’re not nearly as close – this woman who was once as close as
my heart.
How do we do this?
I’m not sure. I know that I obviously missed these women
more than I knew. I missed the way I feel
when I’m around them – known and loved, exactly as I am, for who I am. Women
who know me well enough to jibe at me, laugh with me at myself, and poke into parts of me that need to
be poked for movement to happen. These are women… for christ’s sake, I can’t
stop gushing.
What now? If I’m aiming to be responsible and adult in my
life, to take action where I’ve taken none, to believe that no one is coming to
change or live or make my life for me – then, how do I incorporate this
knowledge? The knowledge that I want more of that – that I want those
connections kindled, or renewed?
I love my new friends – they are buoying me in ways they
don’t even know. But I miss my old friends. I miss so much of what’s happening.
Life is so damn short and quick, and things move so suddenly. Someone moves to
a new town. Someone to a new country. Someone is engaged, or married, or
pregnant. Someone is in a break-up or new relationship. Someone is changing
careers, or expanding a business, or taking a new class, or forming a girl’s
band (yes, that’s me and my friend with plans to jam with her drums and my bass,
here in the east bay).
I want. Terrible words. But, I do. I want – I want what I
had, but in the present. I want what I had yesterday – the gut-release, the
warm bath, the mild pleasant smirking at the familiarity of us all.
I want. In the present. And how. 

adulthood · balance · dating · faith · growth · integrity · maturity · spirituality

Miracle-Gro

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I have heard it said that Relationships are like Miracle-Gro
for your character defects.
If this is true, I realize this morning, then Relationships
are also Miracle-Gro for our spiritual development. One must lead us to the other if we aren’t to fall into a pit of fire or stagnation.
A few years ago, I was engaged in a clandestine dalliance
with a man. I was titillated by our connection and conversation, but “nothing”
had happened so far. So I did what I do in circumstances like that – I went to
G-d, or Higher Power, or Magical Sky Faerie, or Inner Wisdom -, obviously “G-d”
is just a great shorthand, so please read it as such.
I wrote one of my “G-d letters,” a letter to my HP with all
my questions and fears and excitement, etc. about this man. And then I turned
the page, and wrote a letter back, in theory from G-d, or from my higher wisdom.
In this letter, I was informed that, great, have fun, be titillated, but
whatever you do, Molly, don’t forget Me.
Don’t forget my HP, and like yesterday’s blog, don’t forget to do those
practices which help to keep me on balance and on my side of the street.
Relationships are like Miracle-Gro for my spiritual
development. I have not always used them as such. Or viewed them as such, but I
believe I’m really understanding that more now.
The more involved I may become with someone else, the even
more firmly and strongly I need to involve myself with “myself,” or those wise,
calm, serenity-producing, others’ welfare-focused parts of myself.
I’m not in a relationship – but I have a second date with
the okJew on Tuesday. We confirmed this yesterday, and so it is. But, today is
not Tuesday. Today is Sunday, when I’m heading with my girffriend and her bf
all the way out to Discovery Bay for some sunshine, barbeque, potential pool
and hot tub, but mainly, to fellowship, camaraderie, catching up with friends I
don’t see nearly that much now that I’m in Oakland, not SF. Today will be a day
for me to be present with who I’m with and where I am, as well as a day, potentially, to
rest by the pool, and do some of the writing I need to have done for tomorrow.
Today, is not the day to obsess. I will not obsess on what I
will wear on Tuesday. I will not obsess about wanting to text this guy and let
him know that I won’t be having sex with him on Tuesday, so he can back out if
he wants – because obviously, says my story (see above character defect
reference), men only see what’s on the outside, and that’s all they want. Today
I will not obsess about planning to get STD tested, or whether I have
up-to-date condoms, or if my feminine lady time is coming right now and will preclude
sexual encounters anyway.
Today, I will not obsess that I should have been paying more
attention to working out, or to a lack of firmness in any part of my body.
Today, I will not obsess that my home isn’t clean enough, or
decorated enough. Today, I will not obsess about what will happen on Tuesday,
about whether I’ll be able to stand firm at my boundaries and decline the
obvious sexual attraction from being consummated.
Today, I’ll get ready for my friend to pick me up (in 30
minutes!!). Today, I’ll pack a beach towel, and some sunscreen, and sunglasses.
Today, I’ll put on shorts, and sip the last of my decaf. And that’s really as
far as I need to see today. There are plans to go cherry picking, there’s
likely going to be barbeque and food. There may be time to catch up. There may
be social awkwardness. It may not all be about me.
As far as I can see today is the next 30 minutes. Those are
pretty easy.
Oh, and I can recall to not forget G-d.