I just finished watching this movie, while also dyeing my hair--get ready kids, it's way redder than intended--and I cannot recommend it enough. The movie, not the hair color. Though, I am happy with both.
Sympathy for Delicious is Mark Ruffalo's directorial debut, he also stars in it. I've been wanting to see it since I first read about it months ago somewhere I can't possibly remember. The basic premise is that Dean "Delicious" O'Dwyer, an up and coming dj, is recently disabled and seeks out the world of faith healing as a means of coping. Christopher Thornton, who plays Delicious, also wrote the screenplay, and while I had not heard of him prior, I am now completely impressed,intrigued and maybe a touch obsessed with him.
Thornton had been a working actor for some time when, at 25, he was in an accident that took the use of his legs. He was unsure of his future in acting, but six months after his accident he was cast as Estragon in a production of "Waiting for Godot." He played the role in his wheelchair and was so astounding that he won a Drama-Logue award for his performance. In 2000, he played the role of Hamlet and received incredible reviews; he is the only actor known to have played that role from a wheelchair. As a former actress and current director, I can only imagine the limitations that must have caused, but I am also fascinated by what amazing freedom that would have given an actor to rely so solely on his face, his gestures, his inflection. Imagine if all you had to communicate your rage, your terror, your love was your face and arms, your tears and hands, your voice...incredible.
It's stories like this one--Thornton's and the one at the heart of the film--that simply humble me within an inch of my life. I have been through quite a bit of personal trauma over the last few years, but it pales in comparison to the revision of life that must take place when something as fundamental as your mobility ceases to be what you had known before.
The film speaks to me on several levels--it is a story of personal failure, redemption, faith--both losing and regaining it--but it is fundamentally a story of what it means to be on the road to figuring out who you are, not always liking that person, but knowing there is no other damn road you could possibly be on. Juliette Lewis--who most recently blew me away in the film Conviction (another totally worth the price of rental)--was brilliant as a drug addled musician trying to connect to anyone who would see her, and Mark Ruffalo's priest intent on being a bright light in the lives of his Skid Row congregants was understated and powerful and sexy as always--that part's not integral to the film, but Lord is that man attractive.
I am learning to let my life unfold before me with no plans or expectations because I am learning that no amount of perceived control ever feels as good as the genuine surprise and gratitude that stems from things working out on their own. This film and the story of its writer both reminded me today of how, even after seemingly horrifying moments, our lives have a way of turning towards the sun unexpectedly, and a brightness is revealed that would never have been visible to us had we not spent so much time in the dark.
17 September 2011
16 September 2011
15 September 2011
You Can't Always Get What You Want
I have loved The Rolling Stones for years, and this song in particular has held a special resonance because I loved the idea that, if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need, but I never really believed it. I totally believed in the first part--that things we want get denied us--but it was the second part that tripped me up. How could something you need grow from NOT getting what you want? Especially when the whole not getting part is usually bloody and brutal.
Over the last couple of years I have gotten very little of what I wanted. A divorce, a heartbreak, debt, loneliness, fear, anxiety...you name it. What I wanted--my marriage to succeed, my love to evolve, and so on--were all things that required me to control something. I thought if I could control my ending marriage, if I could control where my love was headed, I could somehow reach that elusive okayness that I'd been missing for so long.
I didn't get a thing I wanted, but I'll be damned if I didn't get what I need. I didn't need to be my ex-husband's wife, I need to be his friend. We support and love one another in a way that doesn't fit in a marriage but totally fits in a friendship. I didn't need an exclusive commitment to be able to love someone as deeply and as totally as I find I still do love another. I need that man and I to be who we have always been: two souls passionately connected in a way that defies description and has no boundaries. But mainly, I didn't need relationship to define my value or my worth, but that was--all along--what I wanted. I wanted someone else to love me to prove I was okay--that I was enough--but what I needed was to love myself enough to know that I was already okay.
The process was brutal and--metaphorically--bloody, and I don't for one minute think it's over, but I am in no hurry to plan or control anymore. I'm content to live each moment as it comes, moving towards goals I hope to accomplish but recognizing that even if I never get exactly what I may think I want, God and the universe and the big beautiful hopeful world at large will see to it that I get what I need.
Hallelujah.
Over the last couple of years I have gotten very little of what I wanted. A divorce, a heartbreak, debt, loneliness, fear, anxiety...you name it. What I wanted--my marriage to succeed, my love to evolve, and so on--were all things that required me to control something. I thought if I could control my ending marriage, if I could control where my love was headed, I could somehow reach that elusive okayness that I'd been missing for so long.
I didn't get a thing I wanted, but I'll be damned if I didn't get what I need. I didn't need to be my ex-husband's wife, I need to be his friend. We support and love one another in a way that doesn't fit in a marriage but totally fits in a friendship. I didn't need an exclusive commitment to be able to love someone as deeply and as totally as I find I still do love another. I need that man and I to be who we have always been: two souls passionately connected in a way that defies description and has no boundaries. But mainly, I didn't need relationship to define my value or my worth, but that was--all along--what I wanted. I wanted someone else to love me to prove I was okay--that I was enough--but what I needed was to love myself enough to know that I was already okay.
The process was brutal and--metaphorically--bloody, and I don't for one minute think it's over, but I am in no hurry to plan or control anymore. I'm content to live each moment as it comes, moving towards goals I hope to accomplish but recognizing that even if I never get exactly what I may think I want, God and the universe and the big beautiful hopeful world at large will see to it that I get what I need.
Hallelujah.
14 September 2011
Gold
For the past six months or so, I have been swimming in a river of anxiety and uncertainty, wondering what will happen next, waiting to be happy, expecting the awaited actions of others to deliver the soothing balm of peace to my fear addled heart. It has been exhausting, and I realize now the truth of Emerson's assertion that "[N]othing can bring you peace but yourself."
For a very long time I have lived my life along the lines of what I thought the right choices were, what could I do that would attract the least attention, how could I hang back and not make a scene. I have had moments of stepping out of the shadows, but I couldn't live in that light because my gut instincts, my truest impulses and most authentic desires didn't seem to match up with what the world at large seemed to suggest was right--right for the world, maybe, but not right for me. I have been my own worst enemy, bombarding myself with negative self talk that sought to judge, to berate, and to wear my own self worth down to a fine white dust that choked me whenever I managed even the shallowest breath.
I became terribly good at pretending things were alright. I carried on jovial conversations at work and in my personal life, I made strides towards professional and personal progress, and I called on friends when I had a rough day, but never when I had a truly awful one because I harbored an irrational fear of being a burden to the very people who love me most. I know, now, that I am no burden; I am deserving of kindness and love as much--if not more--in my weakest moments as I am in my strongest ones.
And I know now that I have the right to choose my own path, to stop worrying about what others will say or think and do what is right for me. Eckhart Tolle said "Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no real purpose," and while I have given lip service to that concept many times, I have not internalized it or allowed myself to believe that my choices, my voice, were enough.
Today, I am beginning to learn that they are. Today, I am beginning to learn that it is. Today, I am beginning to learn that all of life is a river and my place in it as natural, as perfect, and as valuable as the gold that glinted up at panhandlers who flocked west for a brighter dream. And if I want to shine in that river, polished to perfection by each swirl of the curling current, I will.
For a very long time I have lived my life along the lines of what I thought the right choices were, what could I do that would attract the least attention, how could I hang back and not make a scene. I have had moments of stepping out of the shadows, but I couldn't live in that light because my gut instincts, my truest impulses and most authentic desires didn't seem to match up with what the world at large seemed to suggest was right--right for the world, maybe, but not right for me. I have been my own worst enemy, bombarding myself with negative self talk that sought to judge, to berate, and to wear my own self worth down to a fine white dust that choked me whenever I managed even the shallowest breath.
I became terribly good at pretending things were alright. I carried on jovial conversations at work and in my personal life, I made strides towards professional and personal progress, and I called on friends when I had a rough day, but never when I had a truly awful one because I harbored an irrational fear of being a burden to the very people who love me most. I know, now, that I am no burden; I am deserving of kindness and love as much--if not more--in my weakest moments as I am in my strongest ones.
And I know now that I have the right to choose my own path, to stop worrying about what others will say or think and do what is right for me. Eckhart Tolle said "Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no real purpose," and while I have given lip service to that concept many times, I have not internalized it or allowed myself to believe that my choices, my voice, were enough.
Today, I am beginning to learn that they are. Today, I am beginning to learn that it is. Today, I am beginning to learn that all of life is a river and my place in it as natural, as perfect, and as valuable as the gold that glinted up at panhandlers who flocked west for a brighter dream. And if I want to shine in that river, polished to perfection by each swirl of the curling current, I will.
13 September 2011
20 years
The other day, I dug out an old journal from my sophomore year of high school. I figured it would be a funny sort of exorcism of the demons buried in my girlhood. Imagine my total shock to discover sentences within it that are identical to ones I have written recently.
My fifteen year old self writes of being lonely, of wanting someone to love me, of feeling like I may never find that soul mate, that person willing to put everything on the line for me. In my adolescence, I was searching for a sense of belonging, for a place to fit in the world and, sadly, I still am most days.
Reading the entries, I was stunned at how often they referenced other lives, the accomplishments and dramas of my friends and family...I didn't think I was a worthy subject, so I didn't often write about myself, and when I did, it was all about which boy might like me, how I could find validation from male attention, what I needed to do to be more attractive to a potential boyfriend.
How, I wonder, does that happen? How does a young girl--smart and beautiful and kind and interesting and engaged in the world as I was--not see her own worth? And why, at 35, am I still struggling with it?
This article, Extreme Modesty: The Case of the Disappearing Self, offers some insight into why smart women, praised in childhood as smart girls, grow up feeling the need to prove their worth and ability. I feel that, and I feel the need to earn praise that comes my way rather than just accepting it, at least in love relationships.
No amount of self-reflection could have prepare me for the discovery that my central desire at 15 is the same twenty years later: I just want someone to love me. And I guess, for that to happen, I have to learn to love myself.
Why does it have to be so hard?
My fifteen year old self writes of being lonely, of wanting someone to love me, of feeling like I may never find that soul mate, that person willing to put everything on the line for me. In my adolescence, I was searching for a sense of belonging, for a place to fit in the world and, sadly, I still am most days.
Reading the entries, I was stunned at how often they referenced other lives, the accomplishments and dramas of my friends and family...I didn't think I was a worthy subject, so I didn't often write about myself, and when I did, it was all about which boy might like me, how I could find validation from male attention, what I needed to do to be more attractive to a potential boyfriend.
How, I wonder, does that happen? How does a young girl--smart and beautiful and kind and interesting and engaged in the world as I was--not see her own worth? And why, at 35, am I still struggling with it?
This article, Extreme Modesty: The Case of the Disappearing Self, offers some insight into why smart women, praised in childhood as smart girls, grow up feeling the need to prove their worth and ability. I feel that, and I feel the need to earn praise that comes my way rather than just accepting it, at least in love relationships.
No amount of self-reflection could have prepare me for the discovery that my central desire at 15 is the same twenty years later: I just want someone to love me. And I guess, for that to happen, I have to learn to love myself.
Why does it have to be so hard?
12 September 2011
Itch
My feet, bug bites strung like itchy red pearls across the arches, on the sole, and nestled into the spaces between my toes, throb with the inflammation that comes from being bitten.
Oral Benadryl, gel Benadryl, and a topical spray aren't enough to shut down the fiery burn that rises like steam from hot tea, hanging in a hazy cloud around the floor.
There are neither shoes nor sitting positions that make this any more bearable, even pricking each bite with a needle (all 37 of them) and then sealing them with ammonia did not work.
An oatmeal bath is the last resort as it will relieve the urge to claw and crack skin, to scratch until blood proves there is something inside me besides pain, but that is only a temporary fix.
The only thing to do in cases like this is to wait. To go through the motions that promise relief and believe that relief will in fact come.
Oral Benadryl, gel Benadryl, and a topical spray aren't enough to shut down the fiery burn that rises like steam from hot tea, hanging in a hazy cloud around the floor.
There are neither shoes nor sitting positions that make this any more bearable, even pricking each bite with a needle (all 37 of them) and then sealing them with ammonia did not work.
An oatmeal bath is the last resort as it will relieve the urge to claw and crack skin, to scratch until blood proves there is something inside me besides pain, but that is only a temporary fix.
The only thing to do in cases like this is to wait. To go through the motions that promise relief and believe that relief will in fact come.
11 September 2011
The Rising
Denis Leary called this song the greatest artistic contribution Bruce Springsteen has made, and I am inclined to agree.
While the events of 9/11/2001 were the inspiration for the song, the message that we can join hands and use our collective love and spirit to rise above whatever fear or sadness we are living in is one that fills me with a profound sense of hope. I believe that the psychic pain many of us are experiencing today is the beginning of a greater healing. While our minds fill beatific blue skies them with planes and people bent on rewriting the story of us, I think we can take control of the narrative and become the writer rather than the written.
I pray today for all of us, that we may find love that buoys us above our current circumstances. Love that sets us soaring through a cloudless sky towards a future of unlimited joy. Love that reminds us no amount of pain is insurmountable. Love that wants us to be fulfilled and happy. Love that seeks to give us the strength to rise, again and again, until all our fears are behind us and we are surrounded by the cool blue light of peace for ourselves and for our world. And I pray that those I love know my heart holds them in a steady, safe place, and that together we are sheltered from the storm.
I pray, as Bono does, to be a harbor in the tempest for those of you seeking light, and I pray to be that same harbor for myself. It is time to rise.
While the events of 9/11/2001 were the inspiration for the song, the message that we can join hands and use our collective love and spirit to rise above whatever fear or sadness we are living in is one that fills me with a profound sense of hope. I believe that the psychic pain many of us are experiencing today is the beginning of a greater healing. While our minds fill beatific blue skies them with planes and people bent on rewriting the story of us, I think we can take control of the narrative and become the writer rather than the written.
I pray today for all of us, that we may find love that buoys us above our current circumstances. Love that sets us soaring through a cloudless sky towards a future of unlimited joy. Love that reminds us no amount of pain is insurmountable. Love that wants us to be fulfilled and happy. Love that seeks to give us the strength to rise, again and again, until all our fears are behind us and we are surrounded by the cool blue light of peace for ourselves and for our world. And I pray that those I love know my heart holds them in a steady, safe place, and that together we are sheltered from the storm.
I pray, as Bono does, to be a harbor in the tempest for those of you seeking light, and I pray to be that same harbor for myself. It is time to rise.
Can't see nothin' in front of me
Can't see nothin' coming up behind
I make my way through this darkness
I can't feel nothing but this chain that binds me
Lost track of how far I've gone
How far I've gone, how high I've climbed
On my back's a sixty pound stone
On my shoulder a half mile of line
Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight
Left the house this morning
Bells ringing filled the air
Wearin' the cross of my calling
On wheels of fire I come rollin' down here
Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight
La,la, la,la,la,la, la,la,la
There's spirits above and behind me
Faces gone black, eyes burnin' bright
May their precious blood bind me
Lord, as I stand before your fiery light
La,la, la,la,la,la, la,la,la
I see you Mary in the garden
In the garden of a thousand sighs
There's holy pictures of our children
Dancin' in a sky filled with light
May I feel your arms around me
May I feel your blood mix with mine
A dream of life comes to me
Like a catfish dancin' on the end of my line
Sky of blackness and sorrow ( a dream of life)
Sky of love, sky of tears (a dream of life)
Sky of glory and sadness ( a dream of life)
Sky of mercy, sky of fear ( a dream of life)
Sky of memory and shadow ( a dream of life)
Your burnin' wind fills my arms tonight
Sky of longing and emptiness (a dream of life)
Sky of fullness, sky of blessed life
Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight
La,la, la,la,la,la, la,la,la
Can't see nothin' coming up behind
I make my way through this darkness
I can't feel nothing but this chain that binds me
Lost track of how far I've gone
How far I've gone, how high I've climbed
On my back's a sixty pound stone
On my shoulder a half mile of line
Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight
Left the house this morning
Bells ringing filled the air
Wearin' the cross of my calling
On wheels of fire I come rollin' down here
Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight
La,la, la,la,la,la, la,la,la
There's spirits above and behind me
Faces gone black, eyes burnin' bright
May their precious blood bind me
Lord, as I stand before your fiery light
La,la, la,la,la,la, la,la,la
I see you Mary in the garden
In the garden of a thousand sighs
There's holy pictures of our children
Dancin' in a sky filled with light
May I feel your arms around me
May I feel your blood mix with mine
A dream of life comes to me
Like a catfish dancin' on the end of my line
Sky of blackness and sorrow ( a dream of life)
Sky of love, sky of tears (a dream of life)
Sky of glory and sadness ( a dream of life)
Sky of mercy, sky of fear ( a dream of life)
Sky of memory and shadow ( a dream of life)
Your burnin' wind fills my arms tonight
Sky of longing and emptiness (a dream of life)
Sky of fullness, sky of blessed life
Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight
La,la, la,la,la,la, la,la,la
10 September 2011
Safety
There have been many eloquent articles written and films made about the impending 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 tomorrow. I do not by any means think anything I have to say will compare to what others are writing/saying, but the date has impacted me this week in a way that I never would have expected it to.
Ten years ago, on this day (the tenth), I put in my two weeks notice at a job I hated and then the following day, the world changed. I knew people living in the city at the time but thankfully no one I knew was harmed. The events there did not touch my life in the way that they did for so many others, but it occurred to me this week that the attacks that day are a touchstone in what would come to be one of the most difficult periods of my life.
My mom was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in the summer of 1998 just three weeks after I moved back from a two year stint in Florida. The serendipity of my return at that time is not lost on me. She received treatment, went in to remission, and then had a relapse in the fall of 1999. We spent January of 2000 in Wichita at a cancer treatment center where she had a stem cell transplant. At that time, I was attending Bethany College and trying to finish up my long overdue B.A. In the fall of 2000, my good friend Jason and I took a trip to NYC. Neither of us had ever been and it was a bit like walking into a fairy tale for me. I had always idolized New York, had thought for years that I would live there at some point, and so I was mesmerized while there. I even have a picture I took standing between the two towers, leaning as far back as I could to try to glimpse the tops.
My younger brother graduated on the same day as I, he went through in the traditional four years while I took a more, um, Bohemian approach. I realize now how ashamed I was to have taken so long to finish, how much I berated myself for not going through in four years, for being such a--in my terms--fuck up. No one else would have said this of me, but I said it to myself, and often. Then, just a month after graduation, mu baby brother got married and I again felt ashamed. No one was telling me I should have done those things before him, but I told myself I should have, and it led to feeling badly about myself.
What does this have to do with 9/11? Well, when Mom got sick, I never let myself get really upset because I thought if I fell apart, everyone else would, too. I held it together so others would have a strong model, or so I told myself. I think I really was just terrified of letting myself feel anything, and so I didn't. And then the shame spiral of the next year or so followed me around like a hungry dog, getting angrier and more violent until I was living in an apartment in Lawrence and working a job I hated in KC. So, I quit the job--thanks in part to a lawsuit that settled and gave me a little cash--and had pipe dreams of possibly moving to, you guessed it, NYC. But, then...9/11.
The legacy of 9/11 for me isn't monumental, it's not heartbreaking or even all that poignant, but that event signifies the end of a dream I'd had for a really long time. I sat in my apartment talking on the phone to Jason all day (after being sent home from work), and waited to hear other cities were being attacked. I kept expecting more damage to be done, and I held my breath in a perpetual state of anxiety.
And this whole week, I've been thinking that I'm still sort of in that place. All glimmers of the world as a safe place flew out the window for me when Mom got sick, when I shamed myself for my long road to education and for my even longer--and still winding--road to love, and then the final support beams were blown out when the towers came down.
A man I work with said we may not be daily effected by what happened, but we are all intimately effected, even if we don't realize exactly how, and I think he's right. It was a small piece in the puzzle of my fear-based life, and I let all of those events lead me to make decisions motivated by a need for safety, even in the most unsafe of situations.
In this next decade, I hope to move past this fear based thinking and live a life dictated by complete faith in love because where there is radical honesty and true love, there will always be safety.
Ten years ago, on this day (the tenth), I put in my two weeks notice at a job I hated and then the following day, the world changed. I knew people living in the city at the time but thankfully no one I knew was harmed. The events there did not touch my life in the way that they did for so many others, but it occurred to me this week that the attacks that day are a touchstone in what would come to be one of the most difficult periods of my life.
My mom was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in the summer of 1998 just three weeks after I moved back from a two year stint in Florida. The serendipity of my return at that time is not lost on me. She received treatment, went in to remission, and then had a relapse in the fall of 1999. We spent January of 2000 in Wichita at a cancer treatment center where she had a stem cell transplant. At that time, I was attending Bethany College and trying to finish up my long overdue B.A. In the fall of 2000, my good friend Jason and I took a trip to NYC. Neither of us had ever been and it was a bit like walking into a fairy tale for me. I had always idolized New York, had thought for years that I would live there at some point, and so I was mesmerized while there. I even have a picture I took standing between the two towers, leaning as far back as I could to try to glimpse the tops.
My younger brother graduated on the same day as I, he went through in the traditional four years while I took a more, um, Bohemian approach. I realize now how ashamed I was to have taken so long to finish, how much I berated myself for not going through in four years, for being such a--in my terms--fuck up. No one else would have said this of me, but I said it to myself, and often. Then, just a month after graduation, mu baby brother got married and I again felt ashamed. No one was telling me I should have done those things before him, but I told myself I should have, and it led to feeling badly about myself.
What does this have to do with 9/11? Well, when Mom got sick, I never let myself get really upset because I thought if I fell apart, everyone else would, too. I held it together so others would have a strong model, or so I told myself. I think I really was just terrified of letting myself feel anything, and so I didn't. And then the shame spiral of the next year or so followed me around like a hungry dog, getting angrier and more violent until I was living in an apartment in Lawrence and working a job I hated in KC. So, I quit the job--thanks in part to a lawsuit that settled and gave me a little cash--and had pipe dreams of possibly moving to, you guessed it, NYC. But, then...9/11.
The legacy of 9/11 for me isn't monumental, it's not heartbreaking or even all that poignant, but that event signifies the end of a dream I'd had for a really long time. I sat in my apartment talking on the phone to Jason all day (after being sent home from work), and waited to hear other cities were being attacked. I kept expecting more damage to be done, and I held my breath in a perpetual state of anxiety.
And this whole week, I've been thinking that I'm still sort of in that place. All glimmers of the world as a safe place flew out the window for me when Mom got sick, when I shamed myself for my long road to education and for my even longer--and still winding--road to love, and then the final support beams were blown out when the towers came down.
A man I work with said we may not be daily effected by what happened, but we are all intimately effected, even if we don't realize exactly how, and I think he's right. It was a small piece in the puzzle of my fear-based life, and I let all of those events lead me to make decisions motivated by a need for safety, even in the most unsafe of situations.
In this next decade, I hope to move past this fear based thinking and live a life dictated by complete faith in love because where there is radical honesty and true love, there will always be safety.
09 September 2011
Junior High
After teaching The Member of the Wedding over the last week and a half, and then reading this article at Rookie, I asked my students to write 500-750 words of advice to kids younger than themselves trying to survive junior high or high school. They have to be HONEST, use personal anecdotes, and above all say why they know what they know. It's an assignment they are all really interested in writing, and I'm going to learn far more about them as people than I ever would if I just gave them a test over the book.
And, since I want to be at least as brave in my own writing as I ask my students to be in theirs, this is my story:
Junior high can be a rancid fishbowl of unchanged water and scummy surfaces. My junior high experience was so awful that I barely remember parts of it. I wanted desperately to fit in, to be seen as pretty and popular, but I had this terrible affliction: integrity. If I thought someone or something was stupid, I said so. Tact was not a friend I made until much later in life, and even now I don't always answer when he calls me up.
I have always had a real problem pretending to like things when I thought they were silly or dumb or beneath my intellectual pay grade, and this lack of subterfuge--my refusal and total inability to camouflage my distaste--may make me funny to hang out with at cocktail parties, but it didn't make me any friends in the image conscious world of junior high.
I wore Palmetto jeans which--from a distance--might be seen as Guess! until you noticed the triangle patch was the wrong color and right side up as opposed to the trendy and subversive inverted triangle of Guess! I had big blue framed glasses and then, later, green colored contacts. My hair was teased and blonde and I listend to NKOTB as often as I listened to Madonna, and by eighth grade I was hard core into a hair metal phase that spoke to my intimate need for someone to pour some sugar on me. I liked what I liked and had no time for people who who were too stupid to understand me.
When student council elections rolled around in seventh grade, I was sure I could be elected president despite my total lack of popularity. In my heart, I knew these small town kids would want a motivated, hardworking, intelligent young woman to represent them, and so I made locker notes and posters and hung them up all over school announcing my run. It was an epic campaign by junior high standards and the popular kids were none too thrilled. They tore my posters down, shoved them through the slats in my locker so that all my ahrd work came pouring out at me each morning, they wrote me notes that said, "Drop out of the race, bitch." If the GOP needs a team of intimidators as we head into the next election, I recommend they transport themselves back to Salina South Junior High circa 1989 and hire CJ, Jamie, Mandi, and Kristi. Those girls did not fuck around.
On the day of the election, candidates were to give speeches in front of the entire class: 250 seventh graders chomping gum and waiting to be told why you should win their vote. My opponent, one of four popular boys named Jeremy distinct from the other three only because he had a twin sister (equally beautiful, equally popular), gave his speech--all two minutes of it--about how cool student council was and how cool he was, too. He left the podium to riotous cheers and applause. I stood in my gray acid-washed Hang Ten skirt and pink and gray button down shirt and took my place at the podium. Just before I opened my mouth to speak, the room erupted into an echoing chorus of boos that haunts me to this day. Two hundred and fifty kids channeling cruel mob energy my way because I, an unpopular smart girl who believed in making a difference through student government, had dared to infiltrate the inner sanctum of junior high coolness. The first line of speech, co-written by my dear aunt, went like this: "Hi, I'm S---- D----, and judging from that response, you all know exactly who I am."
They were supposed to have applauded.
They didn't.
I gave my speech, sat down, and managed not to cry until I was safe in a stall in the girls' bathroom. I lost the election, and hated myself for thinking I could be something different than what I was, for believing I could be whoever I wanted to be.
Now, at 35, I see that experience as pivotal to my survival in the world. Those kids weren't angry at me, they didn't hate me, I'd never even spoken to most of them, so they had no basis on which to judge. What they were reacting to was my confidence. My belief that I fit wherever I choose to fit, and my willingness to go after what I want even if everyone else is telling me I shouldn't. They were afraid of someone who knew who she was at twelve in a way that many of them would never know.
If I hadn't been booed that day, if I'd never felt so small and scared and insignificant, I may not be the teacher I am today. I can look at my students and tell them they are bright and beautiful and capable and deserving because they are and because I know how important it is to receive those messages from the world at large. And, if I'd never had that happen to me, I wouldn't know how to survive the horrible things that happen in adulthood.
It is hard to be optimistic and to believe in yourself, but--in the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald--"There are no second acts in American lives." So, if this is all the time I get, I'll stand on stage every time, boos or no, just to say I was living, just to say I tried.
And, since I want to be at least as brave in my own writing as I ask my students to be in theirs, this is my story:
Junior high can be a rancid fishbowl of unchanged water and scummy surfaces. My junior high experience was so awful that I barely remember parts of it. I wanted desperately to fit in, to be seen as pretty and popular, but I had this terrible affliction: integrity. If I thought someone or something was stupid, I said so. Tact was not a friend I made until much later in life, and even now I don't always answer when he calls me up.
I have always had a real problem pretending to like things when I thought they were silly or dumb or beneath my intellectual pay grade, and this lack of subterfuge--my refusal and total inability to camouflage my distaste--may make me funny to hang out with at cocktail parties, but it didn't make me any friends in the image conscious world of junior high.
I wore Palmetto jeans which--from a distance--might be seen as Guess! until you noticed the triangle patch was the wrong color and right side up as opposed to the trendy and subversive inverted triangle of Guess! I had big blue framed glasses and then, later, green colored contacts. My hair was teased and blonde and I listend to NKOTB as often as I listened to Madonna, and by eighth grade I was hard core into a hair metal phase that spoke to my intimate need for someone to pour some sugar on me. I liked what I liked and had no time for people who who were too stupid to understand me.
When student council elections rolled around in seventh grade, I was sure I could be elected president despite my total lack of popularity. In my heart, I knew these small town kids would want a motivated, hardworking, intelligent young woman to represent them, and so I made locker notes and posters and hung them up all over school announcing my run. It was an epic campaign by junior high standards and the popular kids were none too thrilled. They tore my posters down, shoved them through the slats in my locker so that all my ahrd work came pouring out at me each morning, they wrote me notes that said, "Drop out of the race, bitch." If the GOP needs a team of intimidators as we head into the next election, I recommend they transport themselves back to Salina South Junior High circa 1989 and hire CJ, Jamie, Mandi, and Kristi. Those girls did not fuck around.
On the day of the election, candidates were to give speeches in front of the entire class: 250 seventh graders chomping gum and waiting to be told why you should win their vote. My opponent, one of four popular boys named Jeremy distinct from the other three only because he had a twin sister (equally beautiful, equally popular), gave his speech--all two minutes of it--about how cool student council was and how cool he was, too. He left the podium to riotous cheers and applause. I stood in my gray acid-washed Hang Ten skirt and pink and gray button down shirt and took my place at the podium. Just before I opened my mouth to speak, the room erupted into an echoing chorus of boos that haunts me to this day. Two hundred and fifty kids channeling cruel mob energy my way because I, an unpopular smart girl who believed in making a difference through student government, had dared to infiltrate the inner sanctum of junior high coolness. The first line of speech, co-written by my dear aunt, went like this: "Hi, I'm S---- D----, and judging from that response, you all know exactly who I am."
They were supposed to have applauded.
They didn't.
I gave my speech, sat down, and managed not to cry until I was safe in a stall in the girls' bathroom. I lost the election, and hated myself for thinking I could be something different than what I was, for believing I could be whoever I wanted to be.
Now, at 35, I see that experience as pivotal to my survival in the world. Those kids weren't angry at me, they didn't hate me, I'd never even spoken to most of them, so they had no basis on which to judge. What they were reacting to was my confidence. My belief that I fit wherever I choose to fit, and my willingness to go after what I want even if everyone else is telling me I shouldn't. They were afraid of someone who knew who she was at twelve in a way that many of them would never know.
If I hadn't been booed that day, if I'd never felt so small and scared and insignificant, I may not be the teacher I am today. I can look at my students and tell them they are bright and beautiful and capable and deserving because they are and because I know how important it is to receive those messages from the world at large. And, if I'd never had that happen to me, I wouldn't know how to survive the horrible things that happen in adulthood.
It is hard to be optimistic and to believe in yourself, but--in the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald--"There are no second acts in American lives." So, if this is all the time I get, I'll stand on stage every time, boos or no, just to say I was living, just to say I tried.
08 September 2011
Detach from Hope
I read a phrase today that has been haunting me: "Detach from the outcome." The central premise is that if you can detach from the outcome of events as you believe they should be, then you can free yourself to live in this moment instead of living in one that may or may not come true. While I know in my heart this is a smart way to live, it's very difficult for me to do it.
This idea dovetails with something I heard on NPR this morning. A man was talking about the disappearance of his father from Libya--he was abducted and tortured and kept in Egypt and has not been heard from or seen--and the man said there is of course always hope that his father is still alive. His body has never been found and there is no way of knowing if he is or isn't. The man said that while hope is a commodity we now throw around for political purposes--and that is something that has culturally been perceived as good--the truth about hope is that it never allows to live for what you have and are certain of because it implies that there may be something else. This can lead to anxiety and a general disquiet that never leaves you.
I have always been a hopeful person. I have prided myself on it in fact, being able to believe that things would be alright, that all would be well. Now I'm questioning if that has been good for me or not. Believing that things will be better someday, believing in the idea of soon, believing in the promises of what could be--it's pretty naive, and it is unrealistic since we have no control over what could be. Even those who claim to love of us most can throw us off like we're nothing, so perhaps living any moment other than this one--living in hope--is childish. Maybe it's time to just live in this moment now, maybe it's time to grow up and accept that love and joy aren't things that everyone gets in this life.
The thing about now, though, is that it is terrible. I am sad, and I can't seem to move past it, and while the blurry face of hope materializes every once in awhile, it never quite comes all the way into focus which, I guess, means maybe it's time to stop trying to see that face.
It's going to be pretty lonely around here without it, but then again, it's been pretty lonely around here for a really long time.
This idea dovetails with something I heard on NPR this morning. A man was talking about the disappearance of his father from Libya--he was abducted and tortured and kept in Egypt and has not been heard from or seen--and the man said there is of course always hope that his father is still alive. His body has never been found and there is no way of knowing if he is or isn't. The man said that while hope is a commodity we now throw around for political purposes--and that is something that has culturally been perceived as good--the truth about hope is that it never allows to live for what you have and are certain of because it implies that there may be something else. This can lead to anxiety and a general disquiet that never leaves you.
I have always been a hopeful person. I have prided myself on it in fact, being able to believe that things would be alright, that all would be well. Now I'm questioning if that has been good for me or not. Believing that things will be better someday, believing in the idea of soon, believing in the promises of what could be--it's pretty naive, and it is unrealistic since we have no control over what could be. Even those who claim to love of us most can throw us off like we're nothing, so perhaps living any moment other than this one--living in hope--is childish. Maybe it's time to just live in this moment now, maybe it's time to grow up and accept that love and joy aren't things that everyone gets in this life.
The thing about now, though, is that it is terrible. I am sad, and I can't seem to move past it, and while the blurry face of hope materializes every once in awhile, it never quite comes all the way into focus which, I guess, means maybe it's time to stop trying to see that face.
It's going to be pretty lonely around here without it, but then again, it's been pretty lonely around here for a really long time.
07 September 2011
Alone
Someone asked me recently what it means to me to be alone. She encouraged me to write it all out, to explore where it comes from, why it is so scary.
What I've come up with is this: being alone means no one wants to be with me. It means I am unworthy of love, not enough or too much. Not enough to satisfy someone or make them feel like I'm worth the effort, or too much for them to handle--too emotional, too intense, etc.--too little or too much. Unworthy.
I know I am a good person. I know it because other people tell me so, but I'm not sure I know it for myself. I think I broadcast my faith in myself so often as a way to hide the fact that I'm not really all that together. I'm sort of a mess, actually. And when you get down to all that's left after your plans have burned away, you discover what you're really made of. For me, the language is pretty much all that's left. I am realizing slowly how broken I am, and that is really okay considering I think all of us are, though some are better at compartmentalizing than others. I don't have that skill. I can't bury my head in the sand and go numb and pretend that everything is okay when it isn't.
Even my performances each day at work--being good in the classroom, being strong for my students--are all underwritten by this weird twitch in my left eye that won't stop and these odd scratches that keep showing up on my face each morning. I think I'm wrecking myself in sleep. Lord knows the dreams I'm having don't help. Dreams of conversations with a man I love who no longer acknowledges that he loves me.
I keep looking at all my past relationships, the other men this most recent one called damn fools for not knowing how to treat me. Now that he's one of them, I'm about as heartsick as you can get. I keep thinking about this one that cheated on me or that one that told everyone I was his roommate, not his girlfriend, or the one who stopped talking to me when the girl he really wanted became available. I used to think it was my bad luck to find all these assholes, but the constant in every situation was me. It's more likely that I was being treated that way because I was broadcasting that I didn't deserve to be treated better, so if I want better, I have to believe I deserve it, and right now...well, I'm trying.
It's funny, being alone is the thing I have feared for so long, but it's also the thing that is giving me back to myself, slowly but surely.
I know I'm supposed to learn from this, to grow, to come out better on the other side, and I want to, I really do, but tonight, I wish this silence wasn't so deafening. I wish there were arms waiting to hold me, ears waiting to hear me, hands waiting to smooth my hair and tell me everything will be alright. I have to do that for myself now, and it's just not the same.
What I've come up with is this: being alone means no one wants to be with me. It means I am unworthy of love, not enough or too much. Not enough to satisfy someone or make them feel like I'm worth the effort, or too much for them to handle--too emotional, too intense, etc.--too little or too much. Unworthy.
I know I am a good person. I know it because other people tell me so, but I'm not sure I know it for myself. I think I broadcast my faith in myself so often as a way to hide the fact that I'm not really all that together. I'm sort of a mess, actually. And when you get down to all that's left after your plans have burned away, you discover what you're really made of. For me, the language is pretty much all that's left. I am realizing slowly how broken I am, and that is really okay considering I think all of us are, though some are better at compartmentalizing than others. I don't have that skill. I can't bury my head in the sand and go numb and pretend that everything is okay when it isn't.
Even my performances each day at work--being good in the classroom, being strong for my students--are all underwritten by this weird twitch in my left eye that won't stop and these odd scratches that keep showing up on my face each morning. I think I'm wrecking myself in sleep. Lord knows the dreams I'm having don't help. Dreams of conversations with a man I love who no longer acknowledges that he loves me.
I keep looking at all my past relationships, the other men this most recent one called damn fools for not knowing how to treat me. Now that he's one of them, I'm about as heartsick as you can get. I keep thinking about this one that cheated on me or that one that told everyone I was his roommate, not his girlfriend, or the one who stopped talking to me when the girl he really wanted became available. I used to think it was my bad luck to find all these assholes, but the constant in every situation was me. It's more likely that I was being treated that way because I was broadcasting that I didn't deserve to be treated better, so if I want better, I have to believe I deserve it, and right now...well, I'm trying.
It's funny, being alone is the thing I have feared for so long, but it's also the thing that is giving me back to myself, slowly but surely.
I know I'm supposed to learn from this, to grow, to come out better on the other side, and I want to, I really do, but tonight, I wish this silence wasn't so deafening. I wish there were arms waiting to hold me, ears waiting to hear me, hands waiting to smooth my hair and tell me everything will be alright. I have to do that for myself now, and it's just not the same.
06 September 2011
Information
"Play with the information you have and decide what it really means."--overheard in a meeting today
The information I have is written on my body, patterns of freckles and a birthmark that only appear when I've had sun. When read by the perfect reader, it shows where I've been and who I am on my way to becoming. My hair, graying at the temples--accelerated these last few months--a white reminder of fears ability to bleach away color, to remove what was once bright and flecked with gold and replace it with absence. The deep blue ring around my irises that corrals the other colors, a circle of green bright as any late summer field at sunset, the burnished gold of wheat, a rich brown like river soaked soil, has gotten darker. Today it is almost black in its attempt to keep the riot in, to stop all the light from seeping out.
The information I have won't do anyone any good just yet. I know what I know and cannot make anyone else know it. We, teachers, work with an unquantifiable entity everyday and are expected to assess it, nurture it, mold it, educate it, and even feel for it, but the variable no one likes to talk about is buy in. If they don't buy in to their own right to knowledge, to their own right to power, to their own right to happiness, no amount of Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, or Hurston is going to make them do it.
The information I have about you clings to the soles of my feet. I plant the truth of you with every step, precisely seeding your stories in aerated ground, each raised instep holding a hundred secrets you're not ready to part with just yet, my five toes kissing the earth with words you love, my heels grinding your hurts and sorrows into a fine white dust that blows up and around me with each new gust of early September wind. When you are ready to hear your own authentic voice again, I will have a grown a garden of you. It will sing your life in whispered rushes, each new note more graceful than the last.
The information I have means I am a lighthouse, burning in the blackness above an endless crash of ocean sorrow. Waves breaking like so many birds, silkily rustling up, flushed from their little sanctuary by a force unseen and unseeable. This water, intent on destruction, will never reach my light so long as the ladder I climb each evening holds. So, I find my footing and rise, ever vigilant, to prove the promise most of you are terrified may come true: that if you want it enough, if you are willing to brave the rocks, at the end of your journey there will always be light.
The information I have is made not of words but of water, of wind, of color, and of skin.
The information I have is written on my body, patterns of freckles and a birthmark that only appear when I've had sun. When read by the perfect reader, it shows where I've been and who I am on my way to becoming. My hair, graying at the temples--accelerated these last few months--a white reminder of fears ability to bleach away color, to remove what was once bright and flecked with gold and replace it with absence. The deep blue ring around my irises that corrals the other colors, a circle of green bright as any late summer field at sunset, the burnished gold of wheat, a rich brown like river soaked soil, has gotten darker. Today it is almost black in its attempt to keep the riot in, to stop all the light from seeping out.
The information I have won't do anyone any good just yet. I know what I know and cannot make anyone else know it. We, teachers, work with an unquantifiable entity everyday and are expected to assess it, nurture it, mold it, educate it, and even feel for it, but the variable no one likes to talk about is buy in. If they don't buy in to their own right to knowledge, to their own right to power, to their own right to happiness, no amount of Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, or Hurston is going to make them do it.
The information I have about you clings to the soles of my feet. I plant the truth of you with every step, precisely seeding your stories in aerated ground, each raised instep holding a hundred secrets you're not ready to part with just yet, my five toes kissing the earth with words you love, my heels grinding your hurts and sorrows into a fine white dust that blows up and around me with each new gust of early September wind. When you are ready to hear your own authentic voice again, I will have a grown a garden of you. It will sing your life in whispered rushes, each new note more graceful than the last.
The information I have means I am a lighthouse, burning in the blackness above an endless crash of ocean sorrow. Waves breaking like so many birds, silkily rustling up, flushed from their little sanctuary by a force unseen and unseeable. This water, intent on destruction, will never reach my light so long as the ladder I climb each evening holds. So, I find my footing and rise, ever vigilant, to prove the promise most of you are terrified may come true: that if you want it enough, if you are willing to brave the rocks, at the end of your journey there will always be light.
The information I have is made not of words but of water, of wind, of color, and of skin.
05 September 2011
Gifts
A man once told me he could walk into any store and come out with twelve things that would be perfect gifts for me. He was right. Every gift, every word he ever sent my way resonated deep in that place that lets you know you've been seen, known for who you truly are.
Sadly, he's not giving me gifts anymore, and while the gifts themselves aren't things I'll miss, I'll miss his impulse to give me things. That burning need in him to show me how he feels, to give me something tangible, something to hold in my hands, to thumb through, to admire on the wall--things that would make me think of him even in his absence. I will miss him showing me how well he knows me, how much he loves me. And I'll miss it most of all because I know he still wants to do those things for me, he still feels that way about me, but he isn't in a place where he feels he can or should.
I do not think we are at the end of our story with one another. I really don't. I've been praying and trying to figure out why this now, why this way, I have been asking God what to do, how to handle this situation, and after every prayer, another sign comes along to suggest that I shouldn't be in too big a hurry to let all of this go. A song will come on the radio, the kind of song you never hear on the radio, and it will be one he and I shared. I read a novel this morning, and in it a young woman gives a young man a gift that I gave him once. These are just two of nearly a dozen little hints that I should let my belief in love guide me through this and stop believing that what is happening now is the end of all that we are to one another.
Would some people find this kind of thinking naive? Certainly. But I don't care. My life is for me to live, and I will not have the way I feel regulated by the way others would react to this situation. I know what I know, and I know how I feel, and at the end of the day, I sleep with and wake to myself, no one else.
So, I'm not ready to let go yet. I'm not ready to say this deep, honest, passionate, easy connection between the two of us is over. I'm not going to pursue it, I'm not going to will it into anything other than what it is right now--which admittedly isn't much--but I do not believe in a world where people who love each other as we do don't end up together. It may not be today, it may not be next year, but I believe in the power of what we have, and I believe that when the time is right, we will have it again. Until then, we live our own lives, and I pray we come back to one another sooner rather than later. But above all, I have discovered that even when things don't go as planned, even when you are hurt and betrayed and feel the world crashing in on you, if there is real love at the center of what is happening, that love is still worth believing in, and learning that I still believe is the greatest gift anyone could give me.
04 September 2011
03 September 2011
Whatever Happens, I Love You
No matter how hard it gets, Morrissey always seems to have a song for the occasion.
02 September 2011
Until Now
On the television downstairs, River Phoenix is singing a song that breaks my heart, Until Now. It's from a movie called The Thing Called Love, and if you've never heard it...here it is:
The thing about this movie, about this song, is that I watched it and listened to it over and over when I was in high school, and I always believed this is how I would feel when I finally met that person that changed my life. You know the one that you feel you've known your whole life even though you've just met? The one you can talk to about anything, the ugly, scary, horrible things you never even said out loud to yourself? The one whose voice curls inside you and lights a fire, warm enough to keep you through the coldest nights?
I was right about that song, about the way I would feel when that person arrived in my life, but I was wrong about who we would be to each other. Until now, I believed in forever.
I don't know how I could have been so wrong.
01 September 2011
Perestroika
The cicadas are winding in the trees like baseball cards stuck in bike spokes, or the tired teeth of an old machine grinding tightly against each other without oil, years away from its last lubrication, too dry and too fast. Its hum, coming and going without pattern, chatters away above the air conditioner's sustained breath--this thing never seems to shut off these last few Indian summer days.
It's amazing that I can still be outside, after 8 on a school night, the sky still orange enough from the very recent sunset that typing is possible, that all things are possible...where (as Corso said) if you were a man--possible--as I am a woman--possible--all things could be possible.
But that's not who we are.
We are im-possible. Im-plausible. Im-potent. There is nothing virile or growing about us. We are a cut off stalk, the flower with no bloom, the thing that stretched toward the sky all summer and seemed sure to blossom but then, when the heat rose a little too high, snapped off near the ground and now the carcass dusts and grays the yard, to be mowed over this weekend, chaff beneath the blade, another sacrifice to the greening promise of what could have been.
I read somewhere that every rejection is an opportunity for grace, that we must take the 'no' of a person and turn it into a lesson of the universe, a momentary window into who we can will ourselves to become now that all we thought would be, won't. I want to believe in this, I want to learn from heartbreak, from pain, from the years of trying to control and plan and trust and hope, I want to, but it is so hard.
Tonight, I feel foreign in this first of September sway, the breeze enough to lift strands of hair off my neck that tickle my cheek as they twirl past. I imagine myself a Russian girl, deposited in the middle of Kansas, a landscape nothing like my own, noises in the trees I've never heard before, a heart full of dah in a country of nyet.
In my perestroika voice, I try to explain that the thing about Russians and vodka has nothing to do with being drunk--the r's clipped off against the teeth, my mouth barely opening to release the swampy words--it is not to do with the drinking, the alcohol, the want of escape from the life we know. It is about heat, the blossom that begins to open in the center of the chest as the white fire slides down your throat, the swelling bloom that makes you feel, if only for a small moment, that you are not now, and never will be again, so cold and so alone.
It's amazing that I can still be outside, after 8 on a school night, the sky still orange enough from the very recent sunset that typing is possible, that all things are possible...where (as Corso said) if you were a man--possible--as I am a woman--possible--all things could be possible.
But that's not who we are.
We are im-possible. Im-plausible. Im-potent. There is nothing virile or growing about us. We are a cut off stalk, the flower with no bloom, the thing that stretched toward the sky all summer and seemed sure to blossom but then, when the heat rose a little too high, snapped off near the ground and now the carcass dusts and grays the yard, to be mowed over this weekend, chaff beneath the blade, another sacrifice to the greening promise of what could have been.
I read somewhere that every rejection is an opportunity for grace, that we must take the 'no' of a person and turn it into a lesson of the universe, a momentary window into who we can will ourselves to become now that all we thought would be, won't. I want to believe in this, I want to learn from heartbreak, from pain, from the years of trying to control and plan and trust and hope, I want to, but it is so hard.
Tonight, I feel foreign in this first of September sway, the breeze enough to lift strands of hair off my neck that tickle my cheek as they twirl past. I imagine myself a Russian girl, deposited in the middle of Kansas, a landscape nothing like my own, noises in the trees I've never heard before, a heart full of dah in a country of nyet.
In my perestroika voice, I try to explain that the thing about Russians and vodka has nothing to do with being drunk--the r's clipped off against the teeth, my mouth barely opening to release the swampy words--it is not to do with the drinking, the alcohol, the want of escape from the life we know. It is about heat, the blossom that begins to open in the center of the chest as the white fire slides down your throat, the swelling bloom that makes you feel, if only for a small moment, that you are not now, and never will be again, so cold and so alone.
31 August 2011
Forgiveness
Forgiveness isn't something you have to earn, it's not something you can work for, it's not a commodity to be traded or exchanged. Forgiveness is what we give when we truly love ourselves and one another.
If I truly love you, no matter how much you hurt me, I must forgive your missteps and painful actions, because love isn't limited to the nice things we do for on another, it's not just about the ways we build each other up and cheer each other on. Love, real love, is about radical acceptance. It means saying, "yes, you are flawed, yes, you hurt me, and yes, you should feel remorse, but I accept you for who you are, for what you need, for your weaknesses as much as your strengths, for your shortcomings as much as for your successes, and I forgive you because to hold back forgiveness would mean denying myself the right to love you."
When we love our neighbors as ourselves--and we should all love ourselves enough to forgive our own failings--then we simply have to love those who wrong us. If we cannot extend that pure hand of forgiveness, then the love we believed we felt was never real, it was just an illusion of what we thought love had to be.
Real love sees and accepts everything. Real love forgives. This does not mean you should be a doormat for those who have hurt you, and it doesn't mean accepting violence or neglect. But, when the human beings we love turn out to be simply human, flawed and capable of failure, our own humanity must surface so that we can heal and continue to love because that is, after all, why we are here.
There is nothing more important.
If I truly love you, no matter how much you hurt me, I must forgive your missteps and painful actions, because love isn't limited to the nice things we do for on another, it's not just about the ways we build each other up and cheer each other on. Love, real love, is about radical acceptance. It means saying, "yes, you are flawed, yes, you hurt me, and yes, you should feel remorse, but I accept you for who you are, for what you need, for your weaknesses as much as your strengths, for your shortcomings as much as for your successes, and I forgive you because to hold back forgiveness would mean denying myself the right to love you."
When we love our neighbors as ourselves--and we should all love ourselves enough to forgive our own failings--then we simply have to love those who wrong us. If we cannot extend that pure hand of forgiveness, then the love we believed we felt was never real, it was just an illusion of what we thought love had to be.
Real love sees and accepts everything. Real love forgives. This does not mean you should be a doormat for those who have hurt you, and it doesn't mean accepting violence or neglect. But, when the human beings we love turn out to be simply human, flawed and capable of failure, our own humanity must surface so that we can heal and continue to love because that is, after all, why we are here.
There is nothing more important.
29 August 2011
The Low Anthem
Tonight, a good friend and the love he waited for so long, the love he deserves, the love who has become my friend and is proof that love can and will happen for those open to it, will go to a concert. We will go see The Low Anthem and fill our souls with bright music, beautiful moments, the truth of collective joy.
Jason and I have been to many shows together, but I can't think of a time we've gone with anyone else. I am so happy that Pam is the one who will be with us. Her heart is as pure as they come.
So, this is the song of the day. The red lines kill me, every time.
To Ohio
I left Louisiana on the rail line, oo oo
I left Louisiana on the rail line, oo oo
I was trying to get to Ohio
Trying to get to Ohio
Lost my love before her time, oo oo
Lost my love before her time, oo oo
On the way to Ohio
On the way to Ohio
Now every new love is just a shadow, oo oo
Every new love is just a shadow, oo oo
‘Cause once you’ve known love you don’t know how to find love, oo oo
Yeah once you’ve found love you don’t know how to find new love
All the way to Ohio
All the way to Ohio
Heard her voice come through the pines in Ohio
I heard her voice singing in the pines in Ohio
She sang bless your soul you crossed that line to Ohio
Bless your soul you crossed that line oo oo
All the way to Ohio
All the way to Ohio
28 August 2011
Acceptance
I accept the things I cannot change: other people and the weather.
I accept the only thing I can change is myself.
I accept that sometimes other people--and the weather--will disappoint me in ways I'd never imagined and cause me to reevaluate who I am and everything I had believed.
I accept that forgiveness is necessary to my own well being.
I accept myself as I am and will not settle for anyone who doesn't feel the same about me or about themselves.
I accept that no matter how much I love someone, I cannot make them love themselves.
I accept that my emotions are valid, real, and important.
I accept that for some, the truth is just too ugly or too hard to live.
I accept my role in the positive and negative events of my life.
I accept that fear exists, but I refuse to be ruled by it.
I accept the only thing I can change is myself.
I accept that sometimes other people--and the weather--will disappoint me in ways I'd never imagined and cause me to reevaluate who I am and everything I had believed.
I accept that forgiveness is necessary to my own well being.
I accept myself as I am and will not settle for anyone who doesn't feel the same about me or about themselves.
I accept that no matter how much I love someone, I cannot make them love themselves.
I accept that my emotions are valid, real, and important.
I accept that for some, the truth is just too ugly or too hard to live.
I accept my role in the positive and negative events of my life.
I accept that fear exists, but I refuse to be ruled by it.
27 August 2011
happythankyoumoreplease
Laundry and a lazy Saturday morning have afforded me the time to watch a movie I've been thinking about seeing for awhile: Josh Radnor's "happythankyoumoreplease." Without giving away plot points, I will say that the struggles of the characters were infinitely relatable, particularly Malin Ackerman's alopecia suffering Annie. The dinner scene with her and Tony Hale alone is worth the price of rental.
What struck me most is the concept that, with gratitude, the universe is abundant. If, in every circumstance, we can be happy for whatever lesson is being presented to us, say thank you, and ask for more, please, we reframe the events that happen in our lives and are able to move more gracefully through them. This concept, fundamental and good and easy enough to think about, is horribly difficult to implement, particularly when the universe keeps knocking at your door with more and more bad news.
In the past year, I've gone through a divorce, another powerful and important relationship in my life has ended, and my mom went through her third bout with cancer. Any one of those things would have been enough to send me reeling, but the trifecta has been a stunning lesson in relinquishing control and allowing God and the universe to lead me where I need to go. The end of my marriage was sad on levels I couldn't begin to articulate--how does one talk about the agony of every plan for the rest of your life falling through? In that loss, I had to confront my fears of being alone and that somehow I was the reason for all that had gone wrong between us. I wasn't, of course. Two people are in every relationship and both people are accountable for what works and what doesn't, but in the swirl of the dissolve, I felt responsible for all of it.
The relationship that ended recently is a slowly twisting dull knife in the center of my chest. The man in question is, at heart, good and kind and beautiful, but his own insecurities and fears ate away at him until the man I knew and loved, respected and trusted simply disappeared. I have no idea who he is now, and that is breathtaking.
And finally, my mother's cancer...she is fine, now, in a maintenance program designed to keep another relapse from occurring. What made this round so difficult for me is that it brought up all these unresolved feelings about her second round, ten years ago, when she had a stem cell transplant and I thought she was going to die. I was spent much of that time with her at the hospital in Wichita and overnight in a patient apartment, and while I know I was the best person at the time to do it, it messed me up in ways I never dealt with. Not because my parents did anything wrong, not because there was someone else or some other alternative, but because I imposed strict rules on myself about my right to be sad or scared. I convinced myself I couldn't get upset, that if I broke everyone else would, and that is simply not true. I did that to myself, I placed those heavy perfectionist walls around my heart, and now I am dealing with it for the first time because, as they say, if you don't deal with your shit, your shit deals with you, and boy...is it ever.
My point here is that if I can put the principle of gratitude into practice--happythankyoumoreplease--maybe I can stop trying so hard to figure out where I went wrong (marriage, relationship, etc.) and I can start being thankful for those experiences because they led me to this path, to this moment, to this place where I am now. I don't want to wallow or worry my whole life, I want to be joyful, filled with light and laughter. I want to be graceful even in the middle of searing pain.
So, today, universe, as regards the past year of struggle and heartache and fears, I say: Thank you. More, please.
What struck me most is the concept that, with gratitude, the universe is abundant. If, in every circumstance, we can be happy for whatever lesson is being presented to us, say thank you, and ask for more, please, we reframe the events that happen in our lives and are able to move more gracefully through them. This concept, fundamental and good and easy enough to think about, is horribly difficult to implement, particularly when the universe keeps knocking at your door with more and more bad news.
In the past year, I've gone through a divorce, another powerful and important relationship in my life has ended, and my mom went through her third bout with cancer. Any one of those things would have been enough to send me reeling, but the trifecta has been a stunning lesson in relinquishing control and allowing God and the universe to lead me where I need to go. The end of my marriage was sad on levels I couldn't begin to articulate--how does one talk about the agony of every plan for the rest of your life falling through? In that loss, I had to confront my fears of being alone and that somehow I was the reason for all that had gone wrong between us. I wasn't, of course. Two people are in every relationship and both people are accountable for what works and what doesn't, but in the swirl of the dissolve, I felt responsible for all of it.
The relationship that ended recently is a slowly twisting dull knife in the center of my chest. The man in question is, at heart, good and kind and beautiful, but his own insecurities and fears ate away at him until the man I knew and loved, respected and trusted simply disappeared. I have no idea who he is now, and that is breathtaking.
And finally, my mother's cancer...she is fine, now, in a maintenance program designed to keep another relapse from occurring. What made this round so difficult for me is that it brought up all these unresolved feelings about her second round, ten years ago, when she had a stem cell transplant and I thought she was going to die. I was spent much of that time with her at the hospital in Wichita and overnight in a patient apartment, and while I know I was the best person at the time to do it, it messed me up in ways I never dealt with. Not because my parents did anything wrong, not because there was someone else or some other alternative, but because I imposed strict rules on myself about my right to be sad or scared. I convinced myself I couldn't get upset, that if I broke everyone else would, and that is simply not true. I did that to myself, I placed those heavy perfectionist walls around my heart, and now I am dealing with it for the first time because, as they say, if you don't deal with your shit, your shit deals with you, and boy...is it ever.
My point here is that if I can put the principle of gratitude into practice--happythankyoumoreplease--maybe I can stop trying so hard to figure out where I went wrong (marriage, relationship, etc.) and I can start being thankful for those experiences because they led me to this path, to this moment, to this place where I am now. I don't want to wallow or worry my whole life, I want to be joyful, filled with light and laughter. I want to be graceful even in the middle of searing pain.
So, today, universe, as regards the past year of struggle and heartache and fears, I say: Thank you. More, please.
26 August 2011
The Crucible
Teaching The Crucible today, a play I love, it occurred to me that even though it's likely John never loved Abigail, he must have made her feel that he did. Whether it was their frantic clutches behind the barn, the furtive looks he threw up to her window when he was, as she says, "burning in his loneliness," or perhaps he even spoke words of love to her, he must have done something to make her believe.
I understand that she is unhinged, that her behaviors are inexcusable, that her desire to kill his wife and replace her is certifiable and that her threats to the other girls about bringing "a pointy reckoning that will shudder" them are reprehensible, but here is the piece I never thought about until today. This is a girl who is alone--orphaned--living with an uncle who has no interest in children, who is only concerned about his own daughter because if she is witched it will ruin his reputation. Abigail has seen her parents murdered, feels herself unwanted in her uncle's house, and has no real friends because the girls are all too afraid of her to have any real bond. Add to that the affair she had with John and you've got the perfect storm for some serious mental illness, especially when you consider his total denial of their time together.
He sees her in Act I, flirts with her, allows the distance between them to close, acknowledges he has stood beneath his window in want of her, and then tells her three times to put it out of mind, that they never touched, that the physical relationship--the passion and heat and real feeling--they shared had never occurred. He tells her to forget and erase the most important relationship of her life thus far, the one that opened her eyes and made her see the world for what it really was, the one that taught her who she wanted to be: passionate, engaged, wild, wanted, and--she thought--loved.
I don't think her actions are forgivable, but I do think his denial of their time together is equally cruel and inexcusable. No matter what his reasons were for choosing to reconcile with Elizabeth--and let's face it, it could just be plain old fear at having to start over again under the strict Puritanical laws that would have crippled him emotionally--his denial that he ever shared those moments with Abigail points to a character more flawed than I had ever realized. He uses his denial to absolve himself from any guilt at hurting her, and his lack of remorse is astoundingly selfish. Should he have left his wife and children to be with the seventeen year old girl? Probably not, but to tell her their relationship never occurred is to deny her the right to her story, to her truth, and so, today, I kind of get why she loses it.
No one has the right to take your story from you, and those who try--because they aren't comfortable with who they are in it--aren't comfortable with who they are at all, and who needs them?
I understand that she is unhinged, that her behaviors are inexcusable, that her desire to kill his wife and replace her is certifiable and that her threats to the other girls about bringing "a pointy reckoning that will shudder" them are reprehensible, but here is the piece I never thought about until today. This is a girl who is alone--orphaned--living with an uncle who has no interest in children, who is only concerned about his own daughter because if she is witched it will ruin his reputation. Abigail has seen her parents murdered, feels herself unwanted in her uncle's house, and has no real friends because the girls are all too afraid of her to have any real bond. Add to that the affair she had with John and you've got the perfect storm for some serious mental illness, especially when you consider his total denial of their time together.
He sees her in Act I, flirts with her, allows the distance between them to close, acknowledges he has stood beneath his window in want of her, and then tells her three times to put it out of mind, that they never touched, that the physical relationship--the passion and heat and real feeling--they shared had never occurred. He tells her to forget and erase the most important relationship of her life thus far, the one that opened her eyes and made her see the world for what it really was, the one that taught her who she wanted to be: passionate, engaged, wild, wanted, and--she thought--loved.
I don't think her actions are forgivable, but I do think his denial of their time together is equally cruel and inexcusable. No matter what his reasons were for choosing to reconcile with Elizabeth--and let's face it, it could just be plain old fear at having to start over again under the strict Puritanical laws that would have crippled him emotionally--his denial that he ever shared those moments with Abigail points to a character more flawed than I had ever realized. He uses his denial to absolve himself from any guilt at hurting her, and his lack of remorse is astoundingly selfish. Should he have left his wife and children to be with the seventeen year old girl? Probably not, but to tell her their relationship never occurred is to deny her the right to her story, to her truth, and so, today, I kind of get why she loses it.
No one has the right to take your story from you, and those who try--because they aren't comfortable with who they are in it--aren't comfortable with who they are at all, and who needs them?
Sister (in law)
My sister-in-law of the last ten years and I spent six hours talking tonight. We had dinner and played with her beautiful daughter, we laughed and gave Eva O. a bath, and through it all, we talked. I was as comfortable with her as I have ever been with anyone, and we were both honest and straightforward and held nothing back.
If my brother hadn't married her, I'd be tempted to snatch her up for myself.
Thank God for her in my life, for the strength and focus she possesses, for her utter lack of judgment, and for her complete faith in me and in my best interests. May you all have someone as lovely in your life.
If my brother hadn't married her, I'd be tempted to snatch her up for myself.
Thank God for her in my life, for the strength and focus she possesses, for her utter lack of judgment, and for her complete faith in me and in my best interests. May you all have someone as lovely in your life.
24 August 2011
Therapy
Today I am starting therapy. In about 45 minutes actually. A lot of people hide behind this fact, pretend they aren't doing it, act like they have it all together, downplay their need for attentive and objective care, but I am not one of those people.
I simply cannot handle this section of my life alone.
There are always windows and doors available to us to look out of, to walk through. I believe in answering the knock of my life when it comes calling on me, I believe in saying yes to help when it presents itself, and I believe in turning myself over to those who know better when I have hit the wall of being able to function on my own. And I am there.
I am in no risk of harming myself, I do not have fatalistic thoughts, but I am terribly sad and disappointed and disillusioned and hurt.
I have my faith in God, I have my incredible family and friends, I have my beautiful dog, I have my belief that all will be well, but I also have an overwhelming sadness that nips at my heels with sharp and jagged teeth, tearing flesh and causing me to stumble, bleeding, down the hallway to my room each night.
So...now I have therapy. Pray for me, world. I need all the help I can get.
***
Went. Talked. Cried a little. Feel better. So much better. SO much better than I ever thought I would feel after just telling my story to someone whose job it is to help me. AMAZING.
I simply cannot handle this section of my life alone.
There are always windows and doors available to us to look out of, to walk through. I believe in answering the knock of my life when it comes calling on me, I believe in saying yes to help when it presents itself, and I believe in turning myself over to those who know better when I have hit the wall of being able to function on my own. And I am there.
I am in no risk of harming myself, I do not have fatalistic thoughts, but I am terribly sad and disappointed and disillusioned and hurt.
I have my faith in God, I have my incredible family and friends, I have my beautiful dog, I have my belief that all will be well, but I also have an overwhelming sadness that nips at my heels with sharp and jagged teeth, tearing flesh and causing me to stumble, bleeding, down the hallway to my room each night.
So...now I have therapy. Pray for me, world. I need all the help I can get.
***
Went. Talked. Cried a little. Feel better. So much better. SO much better than I ever thought I would feel after just telling my story to someone whose job it is to help me. AMAZING.
23 August 2011
Un-knowing
I keep replaying that scene in Dirty Dancing in my head, the one where pre-nosejob (and much cuter) Jennifer Grey tells Patrick Swayze she's scared of all kinds of things, but mostly she's afraid of walking out of that room and never feeling ever again in her whole life how she feels when she's with him. I know that feeling. Only in my movie, Johnny doesn't take me in his arms and make love to me. In my movie, he smiles politely, says he's sorry in a way that makes it clear he has no idea the damage he's caused, and slowly pushes me out the door. Into the rain. Into the blackness. Alone.
Enlightenment is a bitch, but no matter how awful I feel--and I do, jittery anxiously angrily near tears violently pissed off heartbrokenly awful--I'd still rather be the person who says at least I was willing to get hurt for the chance at real love. At least I wasn't afraid.
Add to that the reappearance of the man I married. My ex-husband and I have been friends since our divorce because neither one of us could bare to be out of each other's lives. In the last three months, I have seen in him the man I married, the man I missed so much the last two years of our marriage when he was depressed and we weren't communicating. And, seeing him again, has made me miss every minute of our time together that was good. I miss dancing in the car with him and making up lyrics to songs we don't know and watching HGTV and cheering at KU football games and being easy with each other in all ways. I miss him so much, my teeth ache.
I've always argued that blissful ignorance wasn't something I would ever want, but tonight I'll fucking take it.
Enlightenment is a bitch, but no matter how awful I feel--and I do, jittery anxiously angrily near tears violently pissed off heartbrokenly awful--I'd still rather be the person who says at least I was willing to get hurt for the chance at real love. At least I wasn't afraid.
Add to that the reappearance of the man I married. My ex-husband and I have been friends since our divorce because neither one of us could bare to be out of each other's lives. In the last three months, I have seen in him the man I married, the man I missed so much the last two years of our marriage when he was depressed and we weren't communicating. And, seeing him again, has made me miss every minute of our time together that was good. I miss dancing in the car with him and making up lyrics to songs we don't know and watching HGTV and cheering at KU football games and being easy with each other in all ways. I miss him so much, my teeth ache.
I've always argued that blissful ignorance wasn't something I would ever want, but tonight I'll fucking take it.
20 August 2011
Swings
The feeling of swinging, hands on the iron chains, feet pumping beneath the seat, never leaves me. I inherently know that forward motion, that movement back and up, that excitement just before your jump and then the exhilaration of letting go--the closest we'll ever be to knowing what a bird feels as it dips and floats--and then the landing, usually harder than expected but never hard enough to keep us from getting back on.
Lately, I can't jump off the swing of my personal life. I want to find ground, to land and stand and feel steady, thrilled to have flown but even happier to be upright, walking, anticipating the next adventure. I want all of that, but everything I knew of the ground is gone and all I can see below the glide is pile after pile of ashes. Letting go now would mean an endless free fall and I am terrified of that senseless and solitary meander.
I don't want these chains, I don't want to keep resisting the urge to jump, and I don't want to be on this damn thing a year from now, but it is hard to take the leap of faith that leaving this behind would require.
So I stay on the swing. Moving mechanically, slicing air with exhausted legs, hands raggedly gripping the chains, eyes dry and cracking from the bitter wind that slaps my face with every upward tick. I miss the feeling of flight, the weightless moments of infinite possibility, but I am too afraid to face them today.
Lately, I can't jump off the swing of my personal life. I want to find ground, to land and stand and feel steady, thrilled to have flown but even happier to be upright, walking, anticipating the next adventure. I want all of that, but everything I knew of the ground is gone and all I can see below the glide is pile after pile of ashes. Letting go now would mean an endless free fall and I am terrified of that senseless and solitary meander.
I don't want these chains, I don't want to keep resisting the urge to jump, and I don't want to be on this damn thing a year from now, but it is hard to take the leap of faith that leaving this behind would require.
So I stay on the swing. Moving mechanically, slicing air with exhausted legs, hands raggedly gripping the chains, eyes dry and cracking from the bitter wind that slaps my face with every upward tick. I miss the feeling of flight, the weightless moments of infinite possibility, but I am too afraid to face them today.
Maybe tomorrow will be different...but maybe not.
Maybe
No matter what anyone else thinks, there are some things we need to feel like our most authentic selves, to feel strong and happy and known and seen. While there may be other people--or whole factions of other people--who think the things you want and need are ridiculous or unimportant, they don't walk around in your head, they don't live your life, they don't feel what you feel.
Maybe you need to eat McDonalds breakfast every day for a month after a good friend moves away because you used to do that together and you need the ritual to help you stop missing them so much. Maybe you need an hour alone after work to decompress--no tv, no conversation, nothing--just to let go of what happened at your job that day. Maybe you need to stop counting calories and worrying about what you eat because doing so makes you nuts, so instead you just listen to the cues your body sends you, you work out when you want, eat what you want when you want, and embrace who you are regardless of weight or size.
And maybe you need a relationship with someone that no one else understands. Maybe you need to talk to that shrew of a woman you work with whose voice makes you want to eat glass simply because she reminds you to live happy now so that you don't end up just like her. Or maybe you need to be friends with your ex-husband because he is a good man who makes you laugh and helps you through bad nights and loves you still, despite the end of your marriage.
No matter what your 'maybe' is, be brutally honest with yourself. This is your one and only life, and if you are doing something or not doing something because of what other people think you should or shouldn't do, find a quiet place or a good friend and work out what YOU want, what YOU need. In the words of George Eliot, "it's never too late to be what you might have been," and it's never too soon to start living the life you were meant to live.
Maybe you need to eat McDonalds breakfast every day for a month after a good friend moves away because you used to do that together and you need the ritual to help you stop missing them so much. Maybe you need an hour alone after work to decompress--no tv, no conversation, nothing--just to let go of what happened at your job that day. Maybe you need to stop counting calories and worrying about what you eat because doing so makes you nuts, so instead you just listen to the cues your body sends you, you work out when you want, eat what you want when you want, and embrace who you are regardless of weight or size.
And maybe you need a relationship with someone that no one else understands. Maybe you need to talk to that shrew of a woman you work with whose voice makes you want to eat glass simply because she reminds you to live happy now so that you don't end up just like her. Or maybe you need to be friends with your ex-husband because he is a good man who makes you laugh and helps you through bad nights and loves you still, despite the end of your marriage.
No matter what your 'maybe' is, be brutally honest with yourself. This is your one and only life, and if you are doing something or not doing something because of what other people think you should or shouldn't do, find a quiet place or a good friend and work out what YOU want, what YOU need. In the words of George Eliot, "it's never too late to be what you might have been," and it's never too soon to start living the life you were meant to live.
13 August 2011
Excerpt
from Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, Elizabeth Lesser
I am fascinated by what it takes to stay awake in difficult times. I marvel at what we all do in times of transition—how we resist, and how we surrender; how we stay stuck, and how we grow. Since my first major broken-open experience—my divorce—I have been an observer and a confidante of others as they engage with the forces of their own suffering. I have made note of how fiasco and failure visit each one of us, as if they were written into the job description of being human. I have seen people crumble in times of trouble, lose their spirit, and never fully recover. I have seen others protect themselves fiercely from any kind of change, until they are living a half life, safe yet stunted.
I’ve tried both ways: I have gone back to sleep in order to resist the forces of change. And I have stayed awake and been broken open. Both ways are difficult, but one way brings with it the gift of a lifetime. If we can stay awake when our lives are changing, secrets will be revealed to us—secrets about ourselves, about the nature of life, and about the eternal source of happiness and peace that is always available, always renewable, already within us.
For years I have sat in workshop rooms with people who do not want to go back to sleep. They are curious about those breezes at dawn. They hope the wind will fill their sails with courage, and with inner peace and outer purpose. Serious things, and not so serious things, are happening to these people. Some are sick and even dying; others are merely dealing with the terminal condition we call life. Some sense that an inner change is brewing, and they have been afraid to heed the storm clouds gathering in their hearts. Some have recently lost a job, or a loved one, or a fortune. Others are aware that whatever they have at this moment could be lost in the next, and they want to live as if they really know this.
In the spacious and safe atmosphere of a workshop, I have helped people grapple with questions like these: How can I stay awake even when it hurts? What might those secrets at dawn be? Why am I so afraid to slow down and listen? What will it take for my longing for wakefulness to become stronger than my fear of change? ... perhaps the most profound of the tools we have at our disposal is the simple act of telling our stories to other human travelers—in a circle around the fire, at the back fence with a neighbor, or at a kitchen table with family and friends. Since the beginning of history we human beings have gathered together, talking and crying, laughing and praising, trying to make sense of the puzzling nature of our lives. By sharing our most human traits, we begin to feel less odd, less lonely, and less pessimistic. And to our surprise, at the core of each story—each personal myth—we uncover a splendid treasure, a source of unending power and sweetness: the shining soul of each wayfarer.
12 August 2011
Funny
Tom Petty, a sage I don't channel often, once sang, "most things I worry about never happen anyway." I've spent a long time worrying about a slew of things, and recently a couple of them came to fruition in the oddest way.
It's funny, sometimes the things you worry about happen, and they don't kill you, they don't crush you, they hurt and sting and burn, you cry and cry and cry, but then you sleep long enough and find you can breathe again because the anxiety, the what if is gone and now it's just you and your life, two things you've always loved, waiting to see what's next.
It's funny, sometimes the things you worry about happen, and they don't kill you, they don't crush you, they hurt and sting and burn, you cry and cry and cry, but then you sleep long enough and find you can breathe again because the anxiety, the what if is gone and now it's just you and your life, two things you've always loved, waiting to see what's next.
09 August 2011
Essential Facts
I have following sayings taped up around my desk at work:
Be present.
Look up from your life.
What you focus on expands.
Embrace change.
You cannot control what happens, but you can control how you react to what happens.
Over the past two years, I've gotten pretty good at some of these. Change doesn't scare the living hell out of me anymore, I recognize that this moment is the one I need to live in because the past is done and the future is beyond my control, and I know that my life is small in contrast to global ills and pains.
It is my life though, and so it does matter. It matters if I am sad or hurt, if I am in need or lonely. My life, though small, is the only one I have to live and therefore it is up to me to choose what that life looks like.
That's where the other two mantras (for lack of a better word) come in. It is damn hard to remember that focusing on the negative things in life only make them expand because the negative stuff is the most insistent when it shows up in my head. I don't lie in bed at night thinking, "gosh, I was awesome today," or "how great was that sunset!". I lie awake fixating on some dumb thing I said or how someone else's decisions may effect or hurt me. How lame is that? There is no one responsible for my happiness but me, so focusing on the things that make me happy should cause those things to expand, right? I'm going to give that more of a shot.
And finally, the last one, the grandaddy of them all. I cannot control what happens, but I can control how I react to what happens. Goodnight if that's not difficult to remember. But, it occurs to me that if I don't start putting that into practice, I may go stark raving nuts. See, I believe there is a plan for my life, and I believe that plan is divinely ordained, that who I am supposed to be is written in the book already and it is my job to learn enough, be humble enough, and work hard enough to be the best version of that woman as I possibly can be, and fixating on what may or may not happen in the future isn't going to make me any better,it isn't going to teach me anything (except perhaps how to dwell & I could already teach a class on that), and it isn't going to get me any closer to being the best version of myself.
So, today I vow to love myself enough to let go of all pretense about who I would be, what should happen, and when I will figure it all out.
In the words of Henri Frederic Amiel:
“Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring...”
Be present.
Look up from your life.
What you focus on expands.
Embrace change.
You cannot control what happens, but you can control how you react to what happens.
Over the past two years, I've gotten pretty good at some of these. Change doesn't scare the living hell out of me anymore, I recognize that this moment is the one I need to live in because the past is done and the future is beyond my control, and I know that my life is small in contrast to global ills and pains.
It is my life though, and so it does matter. It matters if I am sad or hurt, if I am in need or lonely. My life, though small, is the only one I have to live and therefore it is up to me to choose what that life looks like.
That's where the other two mantras (for lack of a better word) come in. It is damn hard to remember that focusing on the negative things in life only make them expand because the negative stuff is the most insistent when it shows up in my head. I don't lie in bed at night thinking, "gosh, I was awesome today," or "how great was that sunset!". I lie awake fixating on some dumb thing I said or how someone else's decisions may effect or hurt me. How lame is that? There is no one responsible for my happiness but me, so focusing on the things that make me happy should cause those things to expand, right? I'm going to give that more of a shot.
And finally, the last one, the grandaddy of them all. I cannot control what happens, but I can control how I react to what happens. Goodnight if that's not difficult to remember. But, it occurs to me that if I don't start putting that into practice, I may go stark raving nuts. See, I believe there is a plan for my life, and I believe that plan is divinely ordained, that who I am supposed to be is written in the book already and it is my job to learn enough, be humble enough, and work hard enough to be the best version of that woman as I possibly can be, and fixating on what may or may not happen in the future isn't going to make me any better,it isn't going to teach me anything (except perhaps how to dwell & I could already teach a class on that), and it isn't going to get me any closer to being the best version of myself.
So, today I vow to love myself enough to let go of all pretense about who I would be, what should happen, and when I will figure it all out.
In the words of Henri Frederic Amiel:
“Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring...”
03 August 2011
Lesson, Someday, Learned
I've been reading a lot this summer, self-helpy type stuff that in years gone by I would have scoffed at, my nose turned up, literally thinking, "I don't need that hippy dippy, touchy feely garbage. I don't know who's worse, those who write it, or those who read it!"
I can tell you now it was a huge mistake to wait so long to start trying to do what self-help books are made for: helping myself.
When I got divorced last summer, I knew I was making the right decision. It was awful and sad and it broke my heart to hurt someone I love as much as I love my ex-husband (notice I'm saying love, not loved--there is no past tense--I still love him, just not in the way spouses love one another). I realized, long before we split, that we needed and wanted fundamentally different things from a relationship, and that we had a toxic dynamic that was making us both sick. No amount of counseling, arguing, prayer, or sheer stubborn hope was going to fix it. I knew if I wanted us to both be happy, we couldn't manage that together.
Luckily, I hit the divorce jackpot and in the last year my ex and I have developed a friendship that was at the heart of our relationship, and we know we are better off in this configuration of us.
But (you knew a big one was coming, right?) even though I was the one who said we had to end it, even though I have never regretted it, even though I have always known it was the right thing to do, there was a whole lot of self-work that needed to be done in the aftermath, and I just wouldn't do it. I pushed myself at work, I settled in to help my friends and students and family members with their own struggles, somehow believing that if I was strong enough for and helpful enough to them, my own shit would just disappear, cease to exist, my issues would deflate like so many carnival balloons.
Turns out, that's not how it works.
I had to get really quiet this summer, spend a lot of time alone, and yep, read the self-help books I have derided for years to realize that my stuff, my issues, don't make me a bad person, they're just the things I bring to the table like everyone else does. And nothing I have gone through or dealt with is my own, it's the universal experience of human struggle that ties us all together and if we talked more about what we need, what we know, and what we fear, we may actually all start to stumble out of the darkness.
A friend asked me recently how I manage to shut off my head. I am inwardly critical in a way that rivals Mommy Dearest, calling myself names and breaking myself down in ways that would make me slap someone who spoke that way to a friend. I would never allow such negativity, and yet I push it on myself again and again. But the trick I've learned, as I told my friend, is that I've taken to asking if any of the things I think--in the middle of my dark little tea-time of the soul moments--are true. Would anyone who knows me and loves me think I am bad, dumb, stupid, moronic, childish, unworthy, beyond repair? Would anyone who knows me and loves me allow anyone else to say those things about me? And the answer, overwhelmingly, is no. None of those things is true, and no one who loves and knows me would suggest that they are. Even if I did something they didn't agree with or understand, they would never say those things about me because they would never pass judgment on me. That's what loving someone means: to be free of judgment, to be supportive and even critical, but never to call names or deliberately hurt.
So, I have to learn to love myself that way. It may be the hardest lesson I'll ever learn, but I'm worth it.
I can tell you now it was a huge mistake to wait so long to start trying to do what self-help books are made for: helping myself.
When I got divorced last summer, I knew I was making the right decision. It was awful and sad and it broke my heart to hurt someone I love as much as I love my ex-husband (notice I'm saying love, not loved--there is no past tense--I still love him, just not in the way spouses love one another). I realized, long before we split, that we needed and wanted fundamentally different things from a relationship, and that we had a toxic dynamic that was making us both sick. No amount of counseling, arguing, prayer, or sheer stubborn hope was going to fix it. I knew if I wanted us to both be happy, we couldn't manage that together.
Luckily, I hit the divorce jackpot and in the last year my ex and I have developed a friendship that was at the heart of our relationship, and we know we are better off in this configuration of us.
But (you knew a big one was coming, right?) even though I was the one who said we had to end it, even though I have never regretted it, even though I have always known it was the right thing to do, there was a whole lot of self-work that needed to be done in the aftermath, and I just wouldn't do it. I pushed myself at work, I settled in to help my friends and students and family members with their own struggles, somehow believing that if I was strong enough for and helpful enough to them, my own shit would just disappear, cease to exist, my issues would deflate like so many carnival balloons.
Turns out, that's not how it works.
I had to get really quiet this summer, spend a lot of time alone, and yep, read the self-help books I have derided for years to realize that my stuff, my issues, don't make me a bad person, they're just the things I bring to the table like everyone else does. And nothing I have gone through or dealt with is my own, it's the universal experience of human struggle that ties us all together and if we talked more about what we need, what we know, and what we fear, we may actually all start to stumble out of the darkness.
A friend asked me recently how I manage to shut off my head. I am inwardly critical in a way that rivals Mommy Dearest, calling myself names and breaking myself down in ways that would make me slap someone who spoke that way to a friend. I would never allow such negativity, and yet I push it on myself again and again. But the trick I've learned, as I told my friend, is that I've taken to asking if any of the things I think--in the middle of my dark little tea-time of the soul moments--are true. Would anyone who knows me and loves me think I am bad, dumb, stupid, moronic, childish, unworthy, beyond repair? Would anyone who knows me and loves me allow anyone else to say those things about me? And the answer, overwhelmingly, is no. None of those things is true, and no one who loves and knows me would suggest that they are. Even if I did something they didn't agree with or understand, they would never say those things about me because they would never pass judgment on me. That's what loving someone means: to be free of judgment, to be supportive and even critical, but never to call names or deliberately hurt.
So, I have to learn to love myself that way. It may be the hardest lesson I'll ever learn, but I'm worth it.
22 July 2011
Patience
I have a good friend who, in times of crisis, swears by opening the nearest volume of poems and finding some form of answer or reprieve in whatever work you land on. Happenstance and fate joining hands, a union of need and serendipity.
Today two of my dearest friends began journeys, one spiritual and one physical. In my struggle to know how to give them assistance, I tried out the aforementioned technique. The book, New and Selected Poems Volume 2 of Mary Oliver. The poem: Patience. Imagine my utter shock to have wandered into those pages and come out not with a poem that is right for my friends, but one that is so utterly perfect for me.
I struggle, often, with patience, with the letting go and letting God/the universe/the angels of our better nature. I feel a deep joy when I wallow in some semblance of control, but of late I have noticed that is all it is--my control is nothing more than a charade, a glittery blue pool on the horizon of 110 degree day that, once approached, proves to be only sand. So, today's poem is fitting in that I must try to stop controlling my own life, stop thinking there is a perfect word or thought or deed to accompany the events in my life and instead to breathe, to wait, to trust that what should be will be, whether I will it or not.
Patience, Mary Oliver
What is the good life now? Why,
look here, consider
the moon's white crescent
rounding, slowly, over
the half month to still another
perfect circle-
the shining eye
that lightens the hills,
that lays down the shadows
of the branches of the trees,
that summons the flowers
to open their sleepy faces and look up
into the heavens.
I used to hurry everywhere,
and leaped over the running creeks.
There wasn't
time enough for all the wonderful things
I could think of to do
in a single day. Patience
comes to the bones
before it take root in the heart
as another good idea.
I say this
as I stand in the woods
and study the patterns
of the moon shadows,
or stroll down into the waters
that now, late summer, have also
caught the fever, and hardly move
from one eternity to another.
17 July 2011
35
This is the poem I want to live by from now on.
When Death Comes, Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
11 July 2011
Checking the Next Box
This coming Sunday, the 17th, I will turn 35. This means on every survey, magazine quiz, legal document, and medical form for the next nine years, I have to check the 35-44 box.
19-25? Fine. No qualms about that. 26-34 was cool, too. I didn't mind being anywhere in that sucker, but this new one...well...it's a lot to take in, that nine year span. It's going to include 40, and I have to tell you that 40 sounds like an unreal number, something that doesn't make any sense, isn't possible.
Inside, in my little pink heart I feel about 17. I still laugh at all the things that made me laugh then (Weird Science, Growing Pains, my parents), I still love a lot of the same music (The Smiths, James Taylor, Ani DiFranco), I still read and am blown away by the same books (Skinny Legs & All, Catcher in the Rye, the poetry of Allen Ginsberg), and I am still stunned to silence by the same miracles of nature (sunrise, late blooming flowers, starry night skies).
It is absolutely shocking to think that soon, I'm going to boxed in by a whole other set of expectations, ones that traditionally mean I should be more grown up, less engaged, more settled, less full of wonder. I am the oldest I have ever been--obviously--but each day I feel more alive, more engaged, more sure of who I am and what I want from the world.
So, here's to checking the next box, to embracing the next phase of life, to believing that getting older means getting better.
19-25? Fine. No qualms about that. 26-34 was cool, too. I didn't mind being anywhere in that sucker, but this new one...well...it's a lot to take in, that nine year span. It's going to include 40, and I have to tell you that 40 sounds like an unreal number, something that doesn't make any sense, isn't possible.
Inside, in my little pink heart I feel about 17. I still laugh at all the things that made me laugh then (Weird Science, Growing Pains, my parents), I still love a lot of the same music (The Smiths, James Taylor, Ani DiFranco), I still read and am blown away by the same books (Skinny Legs & All, Catcher in the Rye, the poetry of Allen Ginsberg), and I am still stunned to silence by the same miracles of nature (sunrise, late blooming flowers, starry night skies).
It is absolutely shocking to think that soon, I'm going to boxed in by a whole other set of expectations, ones that traditionally mean I should be more grown up, less engaged, more settled, less full of wonder. I am the oldest I have ever been--obviously--but each day I feel more alive, more engaged, more sure of who I am and what I want from the world.
So, here's to checking the next box, to embracing the next phase of life, to believing that getting older means getting better.
06 July 2011
Revelation
I figured out today that at the heart of every single thing I am anxious about, afraid of, nauseated and confused by, lies a deep, rich, three-pack a day fear of being alone.
That fear moved in a long time ago, dragging its dirty boots across my carpet, leaving thick stains that no steam or solvent can remove. It took over rooms in my heart, throwing dark curtains up, burning its foul herbs in little ashcans, smoking out the sweetness that used to live here, buying up prime real estate from the hope and joy that lived side by side for years.
I am trying, desperately, to evict that fear. I know, with no intended arrogance, that I am smart, funny, kind, and beautiful. I believe these things to be true and so they are. After all, all we have in this world are the things we believe in, so I guess I'd better stop believing in the ludicrous notion that I will be alone, right?
But where are the examples of strong, single women throughout history? I mean, where are the ladies who--without any romantic relationship to speak of--found true happiness? And, frankly, even if you find me those examples, I'm not going to be placated because I believe in the power of sharing my life with someone, I want that desperately, but I have NO control over whether or not it happens. None. And that, too, scares the living bejeezus out of me.
Okay, enough of this. It is late, and fear is trying to call up all his friends--speculation, worry, and doubt--so I'm going to turn off all the lights and shut their party down. Here's to trying, each and every day, to be a little less afraid.
That fear moved in a long time ago, dragging its dirty boots across my carpet, leaving thick stains that no steam or solvent can remove. It took over rooms in my heart, throwing dark curtains up, burning its foul herbs in little ashcans, smoking out the sweetness that used to live here, buying up prime real estate from the hope and joy that lived side by side for years.
I am trying, desperately, to evict that fear. I know, with no intended arrogance, that I am smart, funny, kind, and beautiful. I believe these things to be true and so they are. After all, all we have in this world are the things we believe in, so I guess I'd better stop believing in the ludicrous notion that I will be alone, right?
But where are the examples of strong, single women throughout history? I mean, where are the ladies who--without any romantic relationship to speak of--found true happiness? And, frankly, even if you find me those examples, I'm not going to be placated because I believe in the power of sharing my life with someone, I want that desperately, but I have NO control over whether or not it happens. None. And that, too, scares the living bejeezus out of me.
Okay, enough of this. It is late, and fear is trying to call up all his friends--speculation, worry, and doubt--so I'm going to turn off all the lights and shut their party down. Here's to trying, each and every day, to be a little less afraid.
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