International Sex Symbol

I began this post last night as titled "That One Time In Milan," and it commenced:

 

"No, I'm not talking about that time I almost got pregnant and fled the country post haste, or how I didn't pay metro fare for an entire weekend in Vienna. Not that either of those ever happened. Or maybe. WHICH ONE IS IT."

 

...and then I realized that the story I had intended to tell about the one day I got a head- and foot-ache walking around town and went home to avail it with a nice hot bath and other modicum of relaxation techniques that did not work, only to sit down and draw and become magically cured, thus proving my philosophy on bodily cues, is waaaaay less interesting and scintillating and potentially heartbreakingly inappropriate for certain member of my family that may be reading, than the time that I actually did almost get pregnant in Milan and flee the country mere days later. Plus I have something equally scintillating and potentially heartbreaking to make the point I was previously discussing. It will have to wait for our less pressing conversations.

 

I took myself to Europe three years ago to gain the kind of culture an early-twenties, midwestern Suburbianite can only fantasize about in dreams of international fame and artsy boys with Italian accents. I was staying in the foothills of the Alps on the Italian side, just outside of Milan. I ate a lot. I slept a lot. I traveled to Paris for a week and Vienna for a weekend to fall in love with my idols all over again. I also didn't talk much, seeing as Europeans can be just as big of assholes as we Americans are to our Southern continental neighbors.

 

(On a side note, I did meet that artsy guy with the Italian accent. Well, not so much an accent per se, as an entire language. One whose comprehension of English went so far as "forest." No I mean it, that was the only English word he knew. I learned a lot of Italian from him. Also later that he had a girlfriend and was "Jesus' age when he died," as he put it. It didn't end well.)

 

A friend of mine and I met in Paris to explore the city for the week. Upon our departing day I had the chance to meet one of his bunkmates at the hostel where we last stayed. He was a pipsqueek of a kid with ambition and too big a fancy for Jack Kerouac. I employ the word "fancy" because he was also British.

 

The three of us, traveling the Metro at the same time soon discover that LO AND BEHOLD, FancyPants and I are both headed to Milan. Me for my return and he to get all "On The Road" with some literary reference to the city that only a pretentious 19-year old can conjure (ok, YES, I went to Vienna to walk the same glorious streets that Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele once trod and tattoo their philosophy on my arm. I know what you're thinking. IT'S NOT THE SAME).

 

I told him the lake I was staying on was pretty shnazzy. He made some literary "aha!" over the lake. I told him to come hang out. A few days later, we were eating pizza and drinking a liter of wine. Ok, maybe two liters. Ok, maybe two liters, a gin and tonic, and a bar-bought bottle of wine from the B&B where he was staying, just for safe measure. There was a couple asking us to breakfast the next morning, ok? We had to keep talking and drinking! It's the Italian way!

 

So, anyways, I suppose by now you can see where this is going. By the next morning I was slightly less drunk and increasingly more concerned of what the gentle village folk might think of a trollop like me staggering home at 7 o'clock in the morning. But I had to get out of there. Ladies, you know why I had to get out of there.

 

By far and away, this is the stupidest thing I will ever admit to having taken part. I do not recommend this brand of behavior to anyone. Maybe in Florida on Spring Break or something. NOT in a foreign country, contact-less, and without proper understanding of the native tongue. Just, don't do it, promise?

 

Several fevered google-searches, an eternally long Easter weekend (do you know that fucking everything is closed in Italy on Easter weekend? Including Monday? That means no Walgreens, ladies. Talk about Jesus freaks) and one pitiful head-shake from a Farmacia tech later, I found myself in a south-bound spiral of OHMYGODHOLYSHIT-ness.

 



I did return fairly shortly after this incident. I'd like to say it was not altogether out of shame or sheer terror, but it largely was. That and the fact that I was out of money. Like, two weeks prior out of money. So to my flight attendant friend did I run and Chicago via JFK did I land. It was a great trip; a more enlightening and soul-stirring trip than any I could have conjured in my artsy-boy dreams. But to this end it did, well, end.

 

I don't tell you this story to regale you with my bad-assitude or to inspire pity or, possibly, revulsion. I tell it because even today, some three years and far worse heartbreaks later, it is one of the greatest lessons I have yet to let sink into my life-hardened skull.

 

I'm not talking about the blatantly obvious "don't-do-stupid-shit-you-stupid-shit" lesson. Because we'll all do stupid shit sometimes. We'll all hook up with underage strangers in our slutty years because they tell us we're pretty. We'll all get ourselves into situations we'd tell our Grandchildren not to get into. But what I learned in the short week and a half I spent in Nebbiuno following this great lapse in judgement, is the value of acceptance.

 

Acceptance for me, at that time, meant acknowledging that I was in a potentially horrifying situation. Acceptance for me meant that while said situation could pan out in several different ways at some abstract point in the future, there was literally nothing I could do at that particular moment about it. All I could do was enjoy the beautiful country surrounding me, soak in as much as I could in my remaining time, and hope for the end most in line with my life's path.

 

BUT. This is my life's greatest lesson thus far because, as I've mentioned so subtlely before, I tend toward the anxious temperament. It is very easy for me to run through the "what if's" over and over again until the hamster in my skull's wheel dies of dehydration. But in that moment, with nothing else on my side except my own self-awareness, I chose to accept and move on. And you know what? Things turned out pretty dandy. Even if it took me a while to get rid of my pizza cheeks.

 

 

 

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Massive Scarves and The End Of The World

Two things have been on my mind:

 

Today is the end of the world,

 

and;

 

Sometimes scarves make me nervous.

 

The other day after work as I was running Christmas- and Redbox-related errands, I could feel this ball of tension winding around my gut like a mouse on crack chasing cheese with legs...also on crack. Everything's on crack.

 

The thought of simply parking my car in the dark seemed to bring this feeling of imminent doom. To drive through parking lots strewn with the shells of humans as they frantically ran errands similar to mine conjured a thrill of panic. So I parked in one spot and walked through the lots so as to return Wanderlust and simultaneously rent Ruby Sparks from the Jewel (can you tell I don't have internet or cable yet?). All to avoid having to get out and drive in and around the masses on a cold, dark, windy night.

 

As I'm walking back to my car and contemplating why I feel so fevered to just be HOME already and not be wearing this godforsaken SHOES and be done DRIVING for fucks sake, it strikes me that a portion of the anxiety is rising straight up from my throat and all twisty through my head and body. And around my throat I'm wearing a scarf.

 

TO CLARIFY: I don't just mean "a scarf." Winter scarves to me are more like half-blankets that somehow sit on the shoulders and need to be constantly adjusted and manipulated so as to stay on the shoulders. They tend to cover half my face and a large portion of torso. This scarf in particular could hide a small child with room to spare. I'm obsessed with it, but it is also my downfall as it brings about the aforementioned stress response when I'm anywhere save for the safety of my couch. With wine.

 

So I'm still considering why winter scarves have this effect on me -- I'm pretty sure it goes all the way back to grade school when I could never figure out how to make a scarf simultaneously warm and functional as it constantly came untied and/or slipped off my face rendering it seemingly pointless -- as I drive home trying to swivel my head this way in lieu of the Massive Scarf so as to actually get home, alive, in one piece, and not miss an oncoming manic shopper en route.

 

I live like 5 minutes from the Jewel, by the way.

 

But I think I realized during the brief pondering and subsequent days of it since that the Massive Scarves that I love so much stress me out in this way because there's something physically constricting about them. On one hand they are preventing me from inevitable Face Burn and Throat Chill, but on the other they inhibit my natural movement. Like if I had to whip my head around real fast to see the old lady headed my way with a shopping cart full of Dr. Pepper at an intersection. Massive Scarves are unnatural, to a point. Plus sometimes I feel like my shoulders are at constant attention trying to hold the damn thing up. Hence the physical reaction of stress sans-stressor. Sigh. What a world.

 

Speaking of, today is that whole Mayan calendar where's-the-rapture-you-zelouts thing. I actually stayed up last night (not entirely intentionally, but there you go) and watched the first winter lightning I have ever seen flash the sky bright blue repeatedly. Around midnight a little piece of me thought, "maybe?"

 

Alas, I haven't seen much Armageddon today. Aerosmith will still be waiting. I have felt exhausted for staying up so late but not so much as to regret spending that time with someone I would gladly greet the End Of The World with. I have thought a lot about scarves, though.

 

Because look, here's the thing:

 

I understand that because the Mayan calendar never accounted for leap years this day has come and gone by a few months already. And I hear that it's all a bunch of hoo-ha or maybe you take it quite seriously. Or maybe you didn't even know.

 

But what I'm looking at, and especially granted the winter solstice that today marks, is what such a time as now might mean for all of us. For me, it's a time of change. In my cobbled-together-don't-ask-because-I-might-make-a-fool-of-myself spirituality, this is a time of great expansion and evolution for each and every person on this planet. Read: live this time what you want it to be and watch it unfold.

 

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, MOLLY? Have the aliens come and fried your brain? Scarves and now this mumbo-jumbo?

 

Possibly. What I'm trying to sort through in my brain is what I was thinking about as realized what wearing Massive Scarves does to me and why it's been on my mind so much, as today approached and now quickly moves past us. I'm thinking about all the things that I do in my day-to-day that seem entirely unpractical but are essential to my survival, and all that seems entirely necessary but eat up far too much of my time. And how the hell to marry the two.

 

Kind of like my entire life is a Massive Scarf. Things that I do that are uncomfortable but necessary; practical and simultaneously ridiculous. And what I can weed out and what I can transform into that practicality. Basically, I'm wondering what this time means for those that have dreams they want to make reality. And realities that need to be put to sleep.

 

It would take a lot more woo-woo for me to go into what I really think this time on our planet means. To be short, I think this is the time when we start making things happen. I think Dec. 21, 2012 was not a date marking the end of the physical world -- but a signifier that the end of the world you don't want to a part of anymore is here. So stop fighting with the things you don't want anymore and just let them go. And begin chasing everything that's waiting for you.

 

 

 

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Circuitry

Don't worry.

 

I'm not dead.

 

I don't have Zombie virus.

 

I haven't run off to join a Mormon cult. And I wouldn't drink the kool-aid.

 

I've just been moving.

 

To be honest, I've been having the hardest time beginning this post because I feel like I've been away for so long. But when I think about it, it's been less than a week since we spoke last. In that week (reality: 5 days) I found the apartment of my dreams back in my favorite midwestern town, received the keys a mere day later, packed up every last bobby pin I own in one Sunday morning, painted a shitload of closet space and had it all moved in by Monday evening. I also drank a lot of celebratory beer.

 

(AHEM. Before I get in trouble, let me take a moment to thank those that actually painted the closet space, assisted me in packing, and donated their time to at a dime's notice moving all my crap on a Sunday afternoon: thank you Buddy Holly (painter extraordinaire), The Mother (moving dictator and master coordinator), brosef (stop drawing on my furniture and just put it together already) and the entire Kotecki family (no, Emma, you cannot hang your Big Time Rush posters in my room). You're the Rotel to my Velveeta.)

 

Tell me you're still with me.

 

Most of you -- most of my favorite people in existence -- don't even know that I've moved. Here's my announcement:

 

COME OVER RIGHT NOW. And bring me a couch, because there's nothing to sit on right now.

 

I've had a hard time believing I would get back to this point. When my apartment was foreclosed in August due to lackluster landlord performance (read: asshole hadn't paid his mortgage in 4 years), I thought my time as a Real Adult was coming to a soul-shattering end. I thought I was being squeezed back into the hole of my adolescence by some force of God or whatever brand you want to slap on it; stripped of the only space I'd ever let be truly "mine" and "solitary" and "quiet;" regressing back into some state of what-the-fuck-edness that only losing everything you've accumulated as your own can bring. You've been reading. You know that it messed with my head.

 

But I remember how I found the previous place. I had envisioned myself as never having the capacity to leave home, lest some Career Breakthrough stumbled my way or I sold my soul to the corporate takeover (I still don't think they'd take a college-dropout CEO-wannabe). But then when The Mother told me "get out of my house. You're miserable and you know it. It's annoying," and I actually listened, it took me a total of 7 days to make the decision and move out. I did my budget on a Tuesday and had gotten the keys on a Friday. That's how fast it goes, sometimes.

 

I'm a firm believer that when you admit to yourself what you want (and sometimes even when you don't), it will come to you. When I moved into my first place, it was very small but entirely mine. The moment I let myself believe I could have it, I did. And it was the first home I built all on my own (not literally. How awesome do you think I am?). But when I was forcibly moved, I still had not admitted to myself how unhappy I had become with it. It was too small. I'd outgrown it. My energy and my life were becoming stifled because I had moved on without admitting it to myself. And though I was devastated when I left, a tiny part of me was relieved.

 

A few things wouldn't have happened if I had not left that place:

 

1) I doubt I would have started writing. My creativity was so stifled by the discomfort I felt with my surroundings that I couldn't get myself to look outside of any kind of box. And though I didn't know why or how, I could feel it.

2) I would not have gotten that money I used to pay off my car and buy too many clothes in the interim, which made it possible for me to;

3) Find the apartment I had long known was waiting for me but took some stumbling to walk across.

 

So it goes.

 

From all of this I find myself back at one of my favorite conclusions; the one that I keep as true as anything but as hard to hold as a snake swimming in jello. The one that says that everything happens for a reason, simply because it happens. You have no choice but to go with it and hope for the light around the corner.

 

Our lives are not linear. They do not follow a cookie cutter or a play-doh mold. They are circular. And sometimes it takes working your way all the way around that circle to find where you begin again.

 

First meal in the new digs, circa last night. Jealous of my table setting?

 

 

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Patience Is A FuckYou

 

This phrase litters my notebooks and journals. I'd hazard to guess it begins about half of those pages and can be found scattered in margins, in blocks in the middle, and as concluding sentences. I began writing it to myself when I was in Europe a few years ago. I think it was on the first day, when I missed the second of four modes of transportation I needed to reach my final destination -- in the foothills of the Swiss Alps, so getting to and fro is a hazardous experience -- and spent four hours at a coffee shop where no one spoke English and the toilet was a hole in the ground. The reason I even missed that train in the first place was because a) the ancient Italian guy who sold me my ticket didn't understand a word I was saying and b) because I had no idea how to navigate the platforms both marked and spoken on the loudspeakers in Italian (I got an Italian phrasebook and cd months before I left but didn't touch either until the plane departed New York for Milan. I didn't retain much over the screaming baby). Not to mention the fact that while they are marked and I eventually learned how to read which arrived where, the trains tended to change tracks at the last minute with the only indication being the previously mention loudspeaker announcement, unfortunately in rapid Italian. I missed a lot of trains that spring. I also peed on my legs a lot.

 

The thing about being in a foreign country, alone, with little to no understanding of how it operates or its proffered language is that when you get yourself in a bind, there's literally nothing you can do about it. You have to wait in a coffee shop, ignore your bowels because you can't figure out how to navigate the toilet situation and are simultaneously afraid of leaving your luggage unattended for more than 30 seconds and sit until you've developed a new plan. You have to risk making an ass of yourself running for a bus in a dress with a giant backpack and suitcase rolling after you, sometimes while frantically taking puffs on a cigarette or shoving a brioche down your gullet. But then again, I've never been good at simplifying a process.

 

Those two months were a strange cocktail of the slowest, most boring days I've ever experienced and the greatest, dizzying adrenaline rushes of my life. I tended to sleep an average of ten hours a night in the foothills, but then spent a week on less than 5 in Paris. The common denominator was that I never knew what would happen next. I got lost every single time I went to Milan, and once spectacularly in Turin -- YOU try going to a city that doesn't operate on a grid and tell me how you fair. Google maps, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Several times I would stop people on the train, point to or mime their cell phone, pull out the one contact phone number I had and somehow ask them to dial for me while I concocted a plan for if there was no answer, and pray to God she would -- because I really never created a new plan anyways.

 

In all of the confusion and uncertainty that I experienced in my time there, I learned two things that I will never forget:

 

1) That I am capable of a hell of a lot more than I ever thought possible, given situations that I could never have anticipated and the sheer need to just make it work, SOMEHOW, and;

2) Sometimes there is literally nothing you can do. Sometimes your only recourse is to just sit, feed the barista espresso money, doodle aimlessly, and be fucking patient.

Now, the first one I'm ok with. The first one I love -- that I found strength in myself when everything looked like it was hellbent against me. That one is bitchin. The second one? FUCK YOU, PATIENCE! You don't even have to ask The Mother and she'll tell you that my greatest fault is my lack of patience. She'll also probably tack on the story about how when I was three years old I hounded her for a month to take me to the Ice House Mall to get my ears pierced. And then how when she did, I screamed bloody murder and let them close up days later. I was a fun kid.

 

This phrase has been creeping back up on me lately, though. I've been wound so tight over everything I can't control and feel like I'm drowning in, that I've forgotten what I learned while I was getting fat on pizza and gelato. That was a brief and poignant moment in my life that I truly learned and understood the value of patience -- not because it's a virtue or other such phraseology -- but because literally, sometimes there is absolutely nothing you can do but sit down, watch things unfold and wait for the right moment to jump back in. To push anything just pushes it past where it's supposed to go at that point, and you're probably going to break it (just ask my stomach circa The Pizza Era). There is a fine line between laziness and patience, and I know that I am indefinitely skewed towards the latter. It's my tendency.

 

And right now there is a lot I'm uncertain of. I'm having a hard time getting grounded in much and I'm beginning to push both myself and others around because of it. I've lost sight of what at one time I had gotten really good at. Which is why I'm trying to let that nugget of past learning work its way back into my life.

Breathe. Inhale. Exhale.

 

 

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Hooray?

I paid off my car loan yesterday. I didn't even plan to -- I was assuming I'd continue my let's-just-squeak-by-unnoticed plan until the middle of next year, at which point I'd probably just keep the payments rolling with way over due car repairs and ten missed oil changes. But as I was driving to work yesterday morning and I began my daily ritual panic attack about all the things I'm unsure of currently, I started thinking about the money I have sitting in my account after the bank made me unceremoniously chuck my own ass out. And then I started thinking about all the money I owe, outside of those student loans that will haunt me of my failed scholarly attempts until the day I trip over a toe and die in a puddle of ice cream or something. Assuming my diet is purely mechanical soft, at that point.

 

Mid-Taylor Swift radio repeat I realized: money + debt = NOTHING. Or broke, whichever one is still Not Bill Gates (does Bill Gates have debt? If so, is that like the United States having debt? Like, we have debt, but we really have a shit ton of money in all the wrong places? Do I even know what I'm talking about here? Should I just stop making myself look like an easy target for telemarketers and door-to-door campaigners?).

 

Money is a big hot button for me. Growing up we were dirt poor, living around a bunch of people who were absolutely not dirt poor. Although I did learn that garbage picking furniture in a town whose welcome sign should read Welcome To White Upper-Middle Class really shows you the value of the curb. And dry couch cushions.

 

Growing up broke around people who vomit Jeep Grand Cherokees on their children's sixteenth birthdays makes for a pretty twisted material complex in a child. I always lusted after the best of everything but grew up believing I would never have it. Though I never wanted for anything, none of it was ever enough. And I never thought anything would ever be enough.

 

When I began making my own money, I started developing this love/terror relationship with it. The more I had, the harder to it I clung. The emptier my account, the more consumed I became with something I ABSOLUTELY NEEDED but could not afford. And the more elaborate the schemes I would come up with to just make enough money to afford ONE MORE Tamagotchi (to clarify...this was allowance money. I was not working at Dairy Queen at 15 just to buy Tamagotchi. Enter: Fall Out Boy).

 

Even today this come-closer-go-away relationship I have with the dolla dolla bills, y'all, persists. I had all this money just sitting there, for two months, knowing it was an opportunity to clear a large obstacle from my way. But I chose to just let it sit there, so I could obsess over whether or not to blow it on new tattoos or completely clear my debt slate as a Responsible Adult should.

 

Truth is that money came completely out of the blue. But as soon as I knew it was mine, I all of a sudden couldn't have survived without it. So I guess the cycle comes full circle, in a way: the money that I didn't know existed became imperative to pay for things I didn't know were possible until that point. Which leads me to wonder, what am I clinging to now that may not be necessary in my life, but seems so just because it's here? What about you? When was the last time you took stock of what you have -- things, experiences, people, etc. -- that you may not need anymore? Does anyone else have such a dysfunctional relationship with their wallet as me?

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I'm Coming Out or; (Channeling D.F.W.)

I'm coming out. No, not like that, guys. I still like me a nice side of man m--wait, no, I can't finish that sentence. My grandmother might be reading, and I need to maintain my perfect first-born status within the family. For the record, I NEVER have anything to do with man-ANYTHING. EVER.



No, I'm not coming out of the closet to answer all the chicks that have been hitting on me lately (if that were true, can you imagine the self confidence I'd be floating on right now?). But I bet you're all wondering what spurred my uncharacteristic, sappy and altogether BORING (come on admit it, I know everything you're thinking before you've even thought it) post yesterday. Truth is, I had my first ever verbal (I reiterate: what the hell do you say when it's a written-verbal; as in, via-the-interwebs-but-it's-like-I'm-talking, verbal? Someone educate me. Or make up a word) fistfight on facebook yesterday. And not just any old fisticuffs, no -- it was with a family member. Pause for your stunned silence.



(Can one have enough parenthesized sentences in a single paragraph? David Foster Wallace, come save me.)



This is how it went down: so I'm perusing the interwebs late Tuesday night -- early Thursday morning depending upon your affinity for cocaine -- and I come across something that gets my granny panties all in a twist. Something that I just find personally offensive, internationally prejudiced, and globally trivial. This facebook missile just happened to belong to a family member. And the longer I stared at it, the less I could convince my self of its overall unimportance to my well-being. I knew I should just look away and take my dignity with me, as if "taking the high road" ever helped anybody expel a little sexual frustration-based rage (sorry, Grandma). To wit: it really pissed me the fuck off.



So -- in the most tactful manner I could summon and using my largest big-girl words so as to appear "intelligent" -- I drafted a response. That then turned into two responses. And then three. And then I went to bed feeling a little less frustrated and a whole lot more SUCK IT.



But here's the thing, and the reason for my coming out party: I have never spoken any sort of self-truth to this side of my family. I've always been pretty mum about who I am as a person, aside from the shallow surface that I bring to Thanksgiving dinner. I keep the peace by avoiding controversial topics, my opinions regarding my belief system, or anything that even skims the surface of "who I really am." Maybe that's the reason I haven't been around to watch anybody fry a turkey, lately.



I have always known there was a rift between us -- as soon as I developed enough brain cells to form my own thoughts and ideas, I could feel the strain between "me" and "them" pulling more taught. I don't think it's a malicious thing, it's just that we're different. We all know that I'm different and that we don't really understand each other, though no one cares to say it out loud. And this is why I'm choosing to jump out of the closet. I MADE YOU A PAINTING. IT'S SEXUAL AND VIOLENT (please, someone call the reference so I don't look like a total whackadoo).



The first part of acceptance in any relationship is accepting yourself, first. It has taken me a long time to accept who I am. The second part is sharing it and coming to peace with the fact that even if the receiving party does not reciprocate the love you have for yourself, that's ok. Even if they don't agree or want any part in it, that acceptance you have of yourself is all that matters. You can still be cordial. You can still interact. You can understand that you are different but still spun from the sheep's wool. And you can move on.



Just like it has taken me a long time to come to terms with myself, it has taken me even longer to bring that out into the world. And for some reason, families make this trek even slipperier. That need to be accepted by your family will always be there (there's that tribe thing again). But the more I can learn to love myself, the less it matters in the long run.



I look forward to sharing more of myself to them. At least now when we feel the discomfort, we will know where it comes from. Maybe we can talk about it. And maybe -- just maybe -- someday it'll make things a little bit more interesting. One can only hope, right?

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Detachment Is Not Just For Retinas

A random find-but worth checking out at this guy's snarky blog.

Look, Here's The Thing:


I've never been very good at the idea of "detachment." I am part of the world, and the world has problems. So that means the world's problems are my problems, right? When Lindsay Lohan gets sent to rehab for the gagillionth time, shouldn't I feel her angst? When my best friend can't figure out how to deal with her mother's crazy, I should be there for every step of her own madness and forget about sleeping for a month, don't you agree?



NO. I SHOULDN'T.



It's the thing about personality types like me and those that would be labeled "nurturers" (someday, my children will pay someone to help them get away from my invasive parenting). We feel so much for those around us it's hard not to get sucked in like a tampon illegally flushed down a public toilet (not that I'd ever do that, of course. I clog my own sewer ways). For anyone that's ever been in a relationship that reaches below the surface, it can get very difficult to distinguish between your dysfunction and theirs.



Enter the handy practice of detachment.



Detachment says that I am me, and here is my shit. Detachment says that I have these problems: trouble saying "no," difficulty articulating my feelings, chronic diarrhea. Detachment also says that your relationship woes, failure to pass chemistry and chronic yeast infections are NOT MY PROBLEM. I am dealing with my own dysfunction, and I hear your pain and I feel bad about it. But I can't take it for you.



Please understand me when I say that this doesn't mean a loss of empathy. To be empathetic means you are human -- that you feel for someone whose struggles could be your own at a different place and time. Of course you will lend advice. Of course you will comfort. Of course -- if you were me -- you would suggest a healthy round of probiotics and some cranberry juice for your troubles down under. We will always want to be there for those we care about when they are at a loss, because connection = tribe = survival.



But there's a different kind of survival that plays its part here. Detachment is all about recognizing what is yours and what is another's; because if we attempt to take it all on at once it's likely we won't be able to see out of the sea of problems crashing around us. The only person you can ever fully take care of is yourself. The only person you can act for is yourself. The only person you can see one hundred percent of the time is -- you guessed it -- yourself.



I have a tendency of getting lost in other people's toilet bowls. I want so badly for everyone around me to be happy and healthy that I lose sight of when that desire is affecting my own happiness and health. I love people unendingly so that they might love me back.



The problem is that when you take on someone's responsibility for taking care of themselves you take their power, too. Spiderman's uncle was totally not kidding: with great strength comes great responsibility. They work hand in hand, and when you take on anyone else's problems by talking about them over and over again -- by feeling for them at any given time -- you also take on their power to do something about it. When you obsess over how your partner feels inadequate at tennis, you are forgetting your own lopsided serve. And just like you can never coach anyone's atheltic prowess before you've gotten your own handle on the game, you will never help anyone with their emotional shortcomings before you've established your own.



So detachment is not about being jaded, cynical or unfeeling. It's about allowing others to feel and being a shoulder to lean on when it becomes too much to bear. And then it's about parting in order to deal with your own stuff on your own time, so that when you come together it is with the strength needed to create something even better.

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El Fin.

Look, Here's The Thing:

I FOUND A DOLLAR TODAY.

Not quite the million I'd be skipping town with, but it DID give me exact change with which to purchase this delicious soup I am currently noshing on. Life just has that funny way of giving you exactly what you need -- though I'd prefer to find a deluxe yacht cruise vacation voucher for the next oh, never-coming-back amount of time, waiting on my doorstep.

Also what I need right now is like ten solid hours in a movie theatre with which to expel all feelings of sorrow I have built up over the last few weeks (I told you I'd get back to it -- and you thought I'd forget). That's right guys, we've reached El Fin. I never thought it would take an entire month to end a relationship, but here I am spilling all my dirty laundry as if you were asking for it. As they say: you win some, you lose some. And sometimes you kick "some" in the balls.

But I'm not here to ruminate. Wait, no...that's exactly what I'm here to do. What I'm really not here to do is wallow. That's what the movies are for.

Every time I get the hankering to go see a movie by myself, I know I'm in for a great big sob session. I usually don't even have anything in particular to cry about, I just know I need some time alone in a dark theatre, surrounded by strangers and a bunch of really powerful emotions slapping me in the face. It always does the trick. And don't even talk to me about previews -- those things are so saturated with feeling (obviously, they are intended to suck you in so fast you never saw it coming. Which is why my life's dream is to become a professional trailer-watcher. Also massage-receiver.) that I usually don't even get to the feature presentation without soaking my sleeve.

A few weeks ago I spent an evening across the row from a happy couple enjoying "The Master." NOT ONLY were they obnoxiously oblivious to the black hole of despair seated mere paces from them, but they proceeded to mock the very serious and dramatically brilliant film throughout. Though I did learn the usefulness of giant scarves in muffling choking sobs and/or pathetically wet faces.  

This is why I stress the importance of feeling your feelings, though. Sometimes we store them up for so long that it takes longer to let them go -- the only way of which is to move through. I was surprised by a work acquaintance on the phone this morning who told me, after I confessed what I was going through (seriously, I have no filter) and that I'd probably be spending the weekend knitting by saying, "ah, well, we all have different ways of grieving."

Amen, brother. Grief is a constant in life, because we are always changing. It can come up for any reason -- the loss of a friend, relationship, living situation, favorite past time. To let go of that change in life takes a certain amount of courage and wherewithal, as well as the strength to admit it and let go. Crying is actually one of the most healing properties the human body experiences (trust the research -- though you'll have to find it on your own). My therapist told me yesterday that to adequately grieve an experience sometimes takes moving through each individual memory – and J.H.C. is she right. So give yourself some time and a box of tissues for the ride.

So that's why I go to the movies. That's why I knit through hours of Law & Order. That's why I call my friends and drink too much wine (er, don't do that last part). It's why I think about the future after the clouds part a bit. And that’s why I cry.

Boundaries Part 3 or; Are We Fucking There Yet?

I'm thinking it's time to put on pants today. I've spent the last 36-odd hours wearing the same grubby leggings and old t-shirt and I think my self respect deserves a hot shower, some makeup and a nice dress. And maybe a bra, for old time's sake.

 

As I'm sitting here absentmindedly rifling through old posts and random computer-y things that need checking up on, I decide to check Pinterest; an exercise in time-wasting I haven't done in weeks. And of course, what is the bulk of my feed made up of? Engagement rings.

 

Pinterest: can you not see that I'm in the process of a probable break-up, here? WHY MUST YOU TAUNT ME, MOCKING DEVIL OF PRETTY THINGS?

 

But let's not get into dramatics. Let's take this nice little opening to segue into what I had been trying to dive right into at the beginning, before getting lost in the vast depths of the interwebs.

 

You know you've been dying to go over it again, right? You know you've waited for the clincher, for the final act of a never-ending story. You know what I'm talking about. BOUNDARIES, guys. Or as I'd like to scream to the rooftops right now, ARE WE FUCKING THERE YET?!

 

Here's the thing about boundaries: once you've admitted to yourself what they are, it's damn near impossible to comfortably proceed in any direction without their adherence. Hence the connection to the above, and the ever-present level of drama in my life over relationships and the difficulties thereof.

 

The easy part is deciding what makes you feel good and would like to keep; or what makes you uncomfortable and would prefer to change. The hard part is sticking to your guns. Once you've established what you want out of any interaction and have experienced the resistance (aka: change-back signals) that accompanies the change, the natural inclination is to run screaming from your boundary in search of the ease that once was a boundary-less existence. It may have felt shitty, but it was better than all this yelling and screaming, right?

 

But here's the truth: your boundaries are about no one but you. How you choose your life to look has nothing to do with anyone else. So the pot of gold at the end of the shit-rainbow is that no matter what happens with those putting up the big fight, when you stick and hold to your boundaries, you always win. Always. You may lose some people in the process, but that just means they didn't want to play your game. And that's ok. Better to live a life based in your personal truth then bend it for the sake of harmony. Denying yourself never did anyone any good -- that's why we have that handy thing called "mid-life crisis."

 

Don't wait until that moment to be true to yourself. Those that want to come with you, will. And those that don't will move on a different path. No one is any better than the other for that. It's just a difference of opinion.

 

So now as I exercise my puny boundary-setting muscles, I can feel them growing. I can feel my understanding of self getting clearer. I may not end up with the one I wanted to end up with. I may have to shift my life a little. But I may end up moving closer to who I am, too. And that is beautiful.

 

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Mile Marker

Look, Here's The Thing:

I just happened to overhear a group of older gentlemen seated next to me refer to Mitt Romney as a "whore." I'm not here to delve into politics or my opinions considering, but I'd just like to note that that was...well...EPIC.

 

In other news, this little blog thing I'm barfing all my thoughts on hit a record of 1,000 page views yesterday. To clarify: that means total page views. Not daily, like the hundreds of other fashion bloggers that get like, 15,000 hits every two hours. Do I need to start showing you my failed attempts at doing my hair without burning several fingers in the process? Or how I hang all my clothes in the shower and leave it running all morning (I'm not even in the shower usually at this point -- because who needs to go through all that wet-hair-blow-drying shit at 7 AM anyways) in leu of the tedious process that is ironing?

 

BUT HEY, it's a milestone for me. I've been tenuously waiting for that moment so I could look at it and say, "YES, someone IS reading. I'm NOT just a crazy person living in her parent's basement talking to herself!" And in honor of it, I'd like to share something I wrote before the shit hit the fan and my life got turned upside down -- before I began hibernating in the bowels of my adolescent home:

 

Here's what we all know but no one wants to admit:

We're all searching. We're all grasping at straws, trying to find the one whose length matches that of our soul.

But what happens when they all seem to come back short? When we keep wading through the mud, looking for that platform to rescue us from the muck that keeps us stuck? When is the moment that we find that Oasis? How do we get out of our own way to stumble upon the thing that brings us peace, that pulls us along its path into the great plane where all things are possible?

It's that feeling, that feeling like flies circling, pinching at your skin, the feeling that with all the peace and joy and wonder at your fingertips, there is something entirely else clawing you from beneath to be set free.

I feel it, so much more often than not. This need to tear off layers of my skin because the subsequent material is so much more than what is at the fore.

Isn't that what art is supposed to do? Does this mean I am not an artist, that I can't tap into all that shit to bring it into the world? I guess I wouldn't be a very good mother.

But I'm drowning, choking on these things I use to keep myself busy, to appear useful. To appear together. To appear human and sane and worth it. There is so much more here, but I don't yet have the vocabulary for it. I don't have the tools-

The skills-

The courage-

To let out whatever animal is scratching at this cage of ribs.

When is it all released?

I could run for days.

 

...A little melodramatic, I admit. But I think this was the moment that I became totally honest with myself about how I was feeling at that time. There was just so much stuff I could feel within and around me, and I didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground in how to deal with it.

 

So then I lost my apartment, my studio, and a portion of my drive to paint. Those pieces I was clinging to were systematically removed from my life. But like I've said before, that emptiness is where you find what has substance. In the vacuum I found writing. And for now, that's what I'll keep doing. Because the clawing from inside has subsided a bit. Because I'm moving in a different direction. Because we are always changing, always evolving, and always finding different paths to move along. And isn't that supposed to be the fun part?

 

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