Karma Chameleon

Pay back is a bitch. My parents used to tell me this would happen, “just wait until you have children of your own, then you’ll know what we’re going through.” I didn’t believe them. If I had, or if I’d had any real clue as to how difficult I was to raise, I would have had my lady parts discarded as soon as I turned 18.

But I didn’t and so now I am reaping my karma. I am raising a child just like me. It’s a wonder my parents didn’t kill me. Again, my elementary principal, whose name I can’t remember but who must have been a very astute man, told my parents I needed to see a psychiatrist. Apparently he knew I was not right in the head. He’d also had my manic-depressive sister before me and she had struggled in school as well. She struggled with academics. Academics were the only thing I was good at.

I’m not sure how normal my insides were while growing up. How much of the chaos and confusion was due to being a child, an adolescent, a young adult and how much was being bi-polar. I know I felt anchorless. I was desperate for some way to stop my ever-changing and intense emotions. But no one talked about these things then and my parents, out of shame or pride or fear, never did take me to a psychiatrist. Instead they sent me off to a distant relative the summer before I started high school to “babysit.”

I was in a deep, deep depression that summer having coming off two wildly unsuccessful junior high years. Those years were absolute torture. I had no friends, boys made fun of me constantly, we moved from my childhood home to a snotty neighborhood and Tom Stratico shot himself.

Tom Stratico had his locker right below mine –since my name then was Servies – otherwise I would have never known him. He was also in my homeroom but we ran in very different East Whittier Jr. high circles. Tom was tall, the cutest boy in school, captain of the basketball team, dating the cutest girl in school (she later became homecoming queen in High School) and had friends, followers and worshippers. I was in the last category. He deigned to tease me but it was mild teasing and I’ve come to think we had more in common than I ever thought. Certainly it takes some deep psychological problem for a 7^th grade boy to take a shotgun, lie down in his bathtub and shoot half his head off. 

I’d never known that kids could die. I had been lucky and no one I knew had died except my grandfather. It was acceptable to me that my grandfather died. He was old and I never really liked him much. Although he was my mother’s father he was an older version of my own father; critical, perfectionistic, and alcoholic. He may have even been worse but that’s another blog.

When Tom killed himself, the rumors swirled. He had been heartbroken because his girlfriend had dumped him, he was being sent to military school, his parents were getting a divorce, he was dared to do it. But no one really knew. Just as no one knows what goes on inside most people’s inner world. Tom looked good on the outside but he wasn’t. No one takes their life if they are mentally well, it is the instinct of our species to survive, after all. 

I think we were all affected by the tragedy, though I remember my mother talking about how shameful it was that one girl wore a purple dress to his funeral. I remember clearly thinking that was the absolute most evil thing I’d ever heard. What I don’t remember was any counseling. No one talked to us –well, not to me –about how we were feeling, what we were thinking, what were we going to do with this new information. The information that children not only die but take their own lives. My Dad had a gun. I knew where it was. No one talked to me.

I’ve taught at three High Schools in my short teaching career and in each one a teen took their life. Not only were the kids given extensive counseling, we teachers were too. There was a lot of concern about copycat’s and how we as teachers should handle each incident. How we were to model sane behavior to our students. We’ve come a long way and for that I am grateful.

If I had to guess what Tom and I had in common was that we were both bi-polar. I remember his ups clearly and obviously his downs were above the average adolescent angst. What made it even worse, if that is possible, he had spent the day telling everyone he was going to do it. Only one girl and our homeroom teacher believed him enough to contact his parents. Apparently they didn’t believe him. Still, the rest of us wrestled with the guilt that we had done nothing, some had even laughed at him. I’ve never forgotten it, obviously.

Now my son is struggling, really, deeply struggling with his disease. He’s off his meds and spinning out of control. I know bipolars are more likely to commit suicide and he’s talked about it several times. I’ve taken him to hospital emergency rooms, psychiatrists and counselors but in the end I’m not in charge of whether he lives or dies. He’s 22 and it is his decision. He can stay on the meds, but he doesn’t like how they make him feel. Like a lot of creatives he likes the mania. It feels like he gets a lot done then and he is inspired. But then, an abnormal amount of creatives die young. Read . Darkness Visible by William Styron about his lifelong struggle with mental illness. He wrote the brilliant Sophie’s Choice, won the Pulitzer for The Confessions of Nat Turner and then committed himself to a mental hospital for electro-shock. He chronicles, in this slim volume, the heavy weight that mental illness has on writers especially. He speaks the names of all those he lost to the struggle. It is a daunting loss.

 Still, I get it. I really do. Art is the most important thing in my life after him and I have had to learn other ways to become inspired but I sure do miss those manic days sometimes.  My medication makes me a little sluggish and lazy and is a great excuse for my poor housekeeping. I want to clean but my meds say I don’t have to today.

But just like I did after Tom Stratico’s suicide, I keep wondering and searching for things I can do to stop another person’s slide into madness. For that’s what it is. I lived with the madness in my head my whole life. I clung to anything or anyone I thought would stabilize the vertigo. I made bad decisions because I didn’t know of any good ones.

So, I wonder – did my parents suffer watching me? Did they feel helpless and hopeless like I do now? Did they ship me off to relatives because they thought it would do me good or because they couldn’t stand having me around anymore, making them feel inadequate as parents? Have I been horribly unfair to them?

God knows I wasn’t easy. Neither was my sister. God knows it was hard to like me let alone love me, I’m just getting around to it at 60. But if they suffered then they must have loved me because it is only the deep love I have for my child that causes the kind of pain I am feeling.

I called my oldest Al-Anon friend last night. I told her I just needed to talk to someone who loved me and she does. She was honest though, telling me I needed to prepare for my son’s slide into the darkness because it is happening and the only one who can help him – isn’t me.

She also reminded me that he has his own Higher Power and that he is on his own journey. True. All he has to do is ask and his God will come through for him.

Just… what if he doesn’t want to ask?

I Want To Fly Away

I’m doing better than the last time. The last time I was broke, out of work and facing the abyss. The last time I was filled with angsty angst and crawling out of my skin. I had panic anxiety, shivers and shakes and more negative thoughts than a bird watching a cat slowly climb the tree. Neither of us think we’re getting out of this but the stupid bird can at least fly. My wings were clipped a while ago.

Truly, I have forgotten what it feels like to fly. I used to know and my memory of the memory is that it was spectacular. I was watching a YouTube video of Justin Timberlake with Jimmy Fallon doing some stupid rap thing and by the time they finished tears were rolling down my cheeks. ‘Cause here’s the thing, no matter what you think of JT, that boy knows how to fly. He intensely loves to do what he does. The joy radiating off those feet, that face, is palpable. And enviable. I once felt that way. I once, a long time ago, loved my life that much. 

Then I “got real” and started making all these grown-up choices, like getting a real job that paid enough to actually live. My parent’s vision of the world came true. It was either joy or food. Freedom or a roof. Self-love or love for others. No one taught me how to have it all. And now I want it. Desperately. Before I die sort of thing.

There’s a line in the movie Gravity (spoiler alert) where one of the characters muses that everyone will die but she is going to die that day. The amazement on her face at the knowledge that what, for most of us, seems a future event can become reality in an instant. Just one thing that goes awry. One car that leaps a barrier, a cell that mutates inside us, one moment of despair and it’s our time to go.

I’m not sure I’m up to it, ya know. Dying seems like an awfully big event to attend unprepared. What if I’m over-dressed? What if I under-achieved? What if I never really lived my life? I lived A life, sure but did I live MY life? 

And if the answer to that question is no, then when will I? Is it too late? Am I fucking delusional?

I’m bi-polar, we know that, but am I out of mind as well? Do other people feel this way –that their life was never intentional? 

I’ve been doing a lot of studying as I plan to open my life coaching practice. I have named my practice TruePath because that’s what I (hope) I’m finally on and what I want others to find. Who were we meant to be when we showed up? What was to be our special contribution to this life, this community, this planet?

Here’s what I’m thinking – hey, it’s my blog – I do believe we all came here with a passion and perhaps a purpose for that passion. The passion –and the innate skills we arrived with –were supposed to lead us. And some people were led. Like JT. Or Einstein or Oppenheimer. They are rooted in the joy of their particular ability to do a particular thing that gives them a sense of completeness. Of destiny.

Some of you know my sister, right? I always thought she was born too late, into the wrong century, because her skills and her passions are all about home-making. She has the ability to take a shitty little space and make it perfect. She can cook eight courses with her eyes closed. She can –and has –sewn gorgeous dresses, including a friend’s wedding gown that looked straight out of a magazine. For a while she found a place that used these skills. But it was a degrading sort of existence and not very feminist. Her skills were appreciated but they were also “bought”. Where does she fit in today’s world? We can’t all be Martha Stewart. Or JT for that matter. Is it just a sadistic twist of fate to have a passion and no way to use it?

I’d like to hear from you readers –really I would, it would help me out a lot on my journey here. What are your passions? What was/is your destiny? Could you die tomorrow? Today?

Maybe I should just start dancing and singing again. Maybe then my mind would shut the fuck up.

 I believe more will be revealed.

I believe I will blog about it.

‘Cause this feels like destiny to me.

I Ego, Therefore I Am

I went out for a lovely dinner last night.  It was lovely for many reasons; the food was good, we sat outside on a clear summer evening and my friend was paying. Now anyone with any sense of propriety knows you don’t argue with the person paying the bill. This is standard etiquette, right? But having grown up in a barn, fallen off a turnip truck and been absent when God handed out sense (all things I have been accused of over the years) I proceeded to take my patron for a jolly ride into Nancyland.

She’d been sharing her love for The Law of Attraction and telling me about how she prayed every day to have calm clients and a wonderful, peaceful day. My inner-contrarian wanted to shout “but that’s all bull-shit” in that tactful and sensitive way I have about me.  Instead I asked if it had worked, had all her client’s been calm that day? What about the next day? ‘Cause if all I had to do was pray to get what I want, if it actually works, then whoo-hoo, I’ll be rolling in millions and having sex with Ewan McGregor tonight!

Wouldn’t we all love to have the magic formula for controlling our outcomes? Wouldn’t it be great if we got exactly what we asked for? Uh, no. My two year old longed to play in the street. He thought it was absolutely the Best place for him. Did I listen to his pleas and prayers? Uh, No. The streets are a dangerous place to play in and so is life.

I believe that in the cosmic scheme of things I am two years old. I long to play in the street, have my cake and eat it too and have sex with Ewan McGregor (I am a sexually precocious two-year-old.) Luckily, I have a Higher Parent who says no (let’s call her Mimi) and if I am smart I listen to Mimi. If not –giant trucks roll over my life.

But Nancy, you say, you’re a 12 stepper, doesn’t your 11^th step tell you to pray and meditate to a higher power? Why yes it does, you clever person you. But finish the step –it tells me to “pray for knowledge of Mimi’s will for me and the power to carry that out.” (Not all the signs say Mimi, but you get the drift.)

My job is to put aside my Ego, my “want-a-nator” and ask what Mimi wants for me and power to do that shit. But, you ask again because you weren’t born yesterday, on a turnip truck or in a barn and so have the natural skepticism of the discerning mature adult, what if Mimi wants you to do something you find boring? That would be a problem, I agree. 

But Mimi wants what’s BEST for me, not what’s easy. I trust Mimi and not out of “faith” but because of the cold, hard facts. The life my ego chose for me was not so good. My ego still wants to lead me a merry dance and it never ends well. When I listen to Mimi I cruise the Wu Wei with Pooh on my way to happiness. (For those not getting the last reference please read “The Tao of Pooh” it will clear a lot of things up.)

In Taoisn the Wu Wei means “without doing, causing or making”. It means, to me, flowing With the river instead of Pushing the river. I have a black belt in river pushing, making things go MY WAY!! I want it so I will MAKE it happen.  And though as a member of the human race it is very difficult to admit this, I am usually wrong. Not that I didn’t learn something from my three failed marriages, my bankruptcy’s, losing my house, my car and my shit (literal and figurative). I did learn valuable lessons. The biggest one; don’t listen to Nancy, she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

 Does it mean I no longer make ego mistakes? Au contraire mon ami, it just means I recognize it a little earlier than I used to. It now takes 4 days to recognize my ego at play rather than 4 years. In other words, I no longer marry the mistake.

Recent example; the web series. I pushed that river right around the bend. Did it work? Nope. Not even close. I’ve been down about it, can’t lie, but then I realized I didn’t really like shooting film stuff. I love the thrill of an audience. I want to make people laugh, cry, think and be there while they do it. So why did I push so hard to make the web series happen? Ego. Pure and simple. I thought more people would see it, I would be discovered, ink a 3 picture development deal, move to LA and have sex with Ewan McGregor. 

In other words, I had no Good reason to do it. I didn’t like filming it. I didn’t like writing it in choppy segments. It wasn’t giving me joy.

That’s how I can tell if my Ego is running things or if Mimi is. Mimi is a lot of fun. She gives me joy and passion. My Ego gives me hurt feelings, massive fuck-ups and bruised –well –egos. When I’m cruising the Wu Wei things fall into place. It’s like magic and we all love magic, right?

Recent example; I’ve been thinking, seriously, about becoming a Life Coach so I started asking Mimi for some sign about what was next for me. I’m pretty demanding of Mimi but she doesn’t seem to care, she indulges my little whims, my need to have proof of her existence.  So I do my 11^th step prayer work, ask for knowledge and let it go.

So I’m looking for some sign about the coaching thing but instead on Sunday, one of the guys I work with tells me he wants to stake me in putting together a dinner theater here in Wilsonville. He wants to know if $20,000 would be enough. He’s serious. Now Mimi (and Boyce) could just be yanking my chain but hey, if that ain’t a sign, I don’t know what is. And as I told my friend last night I could not have planned to start a theater company this way. Can you imagine if I had told any of you that my plan was to start a theater company but working at a Toyota dealership where I would meet a guy who loved the theater and wanted to give me money. You would have rolled your eyes. Am I right? I’m right. I would too.

So he wants to do something for Christmas. Anybody got some good ideas? Bonus points if it includes me having sex with Ewan McGregor.