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.

For What It’s Worth

“Something’s happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear…”

With all due respect to Steven Stills, I know exactly what’s happening here. I am unemployed! Arghhh. I took the leap into the abyss. I am free fallin’.  Swinging without a net. What other clichés are there? Oh yeah - I am up shit creek without a paddle.

Who in their right mind, at 60, would quit their job? Just because someone was abusive and bossy?  Thus begins the committee in my head that speaks to me in my father’s voice. Work isn’t supposed to be fun. Who told you you were supposed to be happy? Life is shit and then you die.

But Daddy-o, I try to tell him, I am not in my right mind, never have been, never will be. Oh, yeah, I faked it for a good 40- 50 years but it exhausted me. Exhausted. When is it okay to be myself? When is it okay to say No to crapola? When is it time to say

I am worth MORE!

Taking my 22 year old sophisticatedly cynical son to work this morning I heard my dead father speaking. “Why aren’t you looking for a job?” Aside from the fact that he doesn’t know shit about what I do with my time, I have been looking. Not applying, but looking. No, not true, I did have an interview to be a vet assistant for $9.15 an hour. Uhhh, no. Surely, I am with more than $9.15? $10? $20? What exactly am I worth?

I told him I was waiting for the next right thing.

I know on the “open market” I have very few sought-after skills. I don’t type well. I don’t know how to do any math past Algebra. (Hey, before you judge remember the last time I took a math class was 1967!) I am not “eager, money-driven, competitive with an edge.” This is what they are looking for. I’m telling you it’s like The Hunger Games out here.  Who would you kill for a chance to make mega-commissions selling insurance, gadgets, clothing , cars, yourself?

There is an ad on Craigslist for a “Telephone Entertainer.” Hmmmm, I wonder what that entails? I’ve been told I’m very entertaining on the phone. That was my secret to car deal success, make ‘em laugh. Somehow I’m not sure they would be willing to pay me the big bucks just for making folks laugh. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it’s a little more … creative than that. Know what I mean, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Still, it is a “stay-at-home” job and I could tell people I’m in show biz.. Maybe I should consider it.

Back to cynical Joe in the car. I told him I was waiting for my Higher Power to show me what’s next. Talk about making someone laugh! He told me religion and spirituality are STUPID! I nodded and didn’t argue. How you going to argue that? Religion is stupid and evil and well, not a good thing for people or the planet. But I know I have a Higher Power, otherwise I’d be dead by now. Or married to that dentist in Ft. Wayne. Someone’s been steering the ship. Well, sometimes. I do tend to take over the pilot seat a little too much. I like to be involved. That’s what I tell myself. But the truth is I am very uncomfortable being still. And it’s not just my ADD, it’s my POSS (piece of shit syndrome.)

When I’m still it’s not the loving embrace of serenity that caresses me, it’s the certainty that doom is imminent and it will all be my fault. I’m not sure what I did wrong (being born with a vagina?) but I know it’s something to do with my epic, intrinsic, undeniable crappiness. I’m just not worth any better. Bottom line. I’m not worth it.

I went to a meeting last week. The topic was solutions but it devolved into a discussion of fear. How to deal with fear. Seems like everyone has a heap and some to spare. We’re scare of other people, poverty, death, bad movies and most of all, the still small voice that tells us we are getting only what we’re worth. And that ain’t much, baby! 

. What struck me about all the fear talk is that we were all sitting in a 12 Step meeting. With the steps plastered everywhere. Don’t we profess –in Step 2 –that we Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.  And then we turn our will and our life over to the CARE of that power.

The CARE, not the derision. Not the sadistic tendencies of lesser gods. And certainly not our well-meaning but broken parents. They didn’t know any better but you know, I sometimes think they should have. Didn’t they see it in our faces? The shame, the fear, the disgust? 

It ultimately doesn’t matter except like Alien they are implanted deep in our bodies. Their words are said in OUR voices now. Their thoughts are my core belief’s; about the world, about other people and especially about my worth.

You may not know this but I was a pretty good actress in High School. I won awards. I did. Oh, I know it’s not the same as winning awards for sports or anything but it wasn’t nothing. A greater God would have spurred me to the next step. My father gave me two incredible pieces of wisdom; 1. Don’t declare a major in college, it will make it easier for you to slip into whatever your husband likes and 2. Become a “gal Friday.” 

I’m not even going to comment on that. I don’t need to, right? The Absolute absurdity is painfully obvious. 

My point –oh, there is one, just wait for it – is that I now have the choice of who I let into my mind. Will it be the old, sabotaging, belittling voice of smallness or the whispers of a Higher Power who CARES for me. Cares enough to say I’m worth more than the wage I am paid. More than the men who have left me. More than the wrinkles on my face. I am worth … well … I’m worth whatever I want. I am worth my heart’s desire.

 I am worth the wait.

The Lonely Heart is a Hunter

I’ve been having trouble writing the last couple of days. Not because my mind wasn’t filled with words but because I did not think the words would be pleasing to whoever reads this blog. My mission when I started writing this blog was to be fearlessly honest and look, I’m already back-sliding into people-pleasing.  Then I received a message from a long-ago high school friend who encouraged me to write from my heart and not take the readers into consideration. She’s right and I thank her for the words.

You all know by now that I suffer from bi-polar whatever (is it a disease?  A condition? A curse from hell?) And I can give both myself and my friends whip-lash by how fast I can plunge from happiness to miserable. It’s almost a magic trick. It almost never fails to catch me off-guard. 

I’ve been thinking this morning that I might know a little about why people commit suicide. Not that I would. I’m too afraid of sharp objects and tall buildings, but I might have a tiny insight into the emotional condition that prompts such a desperate move.

First of all, depression not only makes you sad, it makes you feel hopeless. And alone. And unlovable. It’s a mind-fucker, for sure. It also convinces you that you will ALWAYS feel this way. You forget that just yesterday you were smiling, laughing and planning a new theater company. 

Last night as I was flipping through my glossy Oprah magazine wondering on what planet $200 jeans are considered “budget finds” when I found myself gazing at an ad for diamonds. I do not wear jewelry or like fancy do-dads but diamonds are my thing. I love them. Maybe because they are beautiful little darlings or maybe because of what they symbolize. To me, they symbolize that someone chose me. Out of the billions of people on the planet, I was singled out and chosen. They liked it, so they put a ring on it.

I remember feeling the same way about St. Christopher medals. Remember all ye old folks? That was what boys gave girls to “go steady” in elementary school back when God was a boy. 

I got one once from a boy. His name was Dan. It was orange and ugly and not as pretty as the white one I had secretly bought for myself, but it instantly made me loveable. Someone chose me to go steady with. For a day. The next day as I was showing it off to all my friends on the playground he marched up and demanded it back. Apparently this was to be a “secret” 6^th grade love affair and he just hadn’t told me. The humiliation was pretty extreme. I went from popular to leper in a mere 20 seconds.

In High School I went through a similar scenario but by this time I had learned to keep my good fortune of being chosen to myself so as not to embarrass the boy who liked me. We drove to school every day together and he would hold my hand until we hit campus. Then he dropped it. By the second week I would drop my hand from his so as not to feel the extreme rejection. He told me later he felt like a bastard for doing it because he really did like me. But he was a “Soch”, president of the Statesmen and a good looking guy and I was a drama nerd, an outcast. He was afraid of what his friends would say.

He eventually got up the courage to take my hand back once I pulled it away, symbolizing his courage under scrutiny. I was happy and we stayed together through that year and into college. Happy ending, right?

I never forgot what he’d done. I never forgave. I started to hate him. And eventually I broke his heart.

He had proven to me what I already knew, that I was somehow “less than” others. That it took a great leap of courage, not to mention humanity, for him to deign to date me. To love me. Me. The leper.

So, back to the ring ad. It’s not like I’ve never gotten an engagement ring, heck I’ve had four. (One of them ended up being too crazy for even me to marry.) So I can get men to marry me. This was an ad for an anniversary diamond collection. “Tell her you’d marry her all over again” kind of thing. I think the word that sprung my water works was “cherish.”

I know some husbands who seem to cherish their wives. Their children.  The thesaurus says that to cherish is to “treasure, value, prize, appreciate, esteem and take pleasure in.” I’ve never felt that. Have you?

I made my mother cry once. No, I didn’t hit her, or wear the wrong color to the prom. I asked her several years ago, about two years into recovery when I was delving into my fearless and personal inventory, if she had a clue as to why I was so independent and so fucking needy all at the same time. It made her cry. She told me that no one bothered with me the first two years of my life. Yup. Those years we now know to be the most important in creating self-love. She told me my sister, who is two years older than me, was very ill when I was born and then her mother began dying of cancer. So for about two years they fed me, played with me for about five minutes and put me in a crib. Alone. 

In “The Drama of the Gifted Child” by Alice Miller she talks about “narcissistic deprivation.” This is when parents are too busy to mirror for a child their own lovability. It happens in the first two years of life. When a baby looks into their parent’s face they see their self-esteem mirrored back. If the parent’s look is one of love, of joy then a child feels treasured, admired, wanted. A baby thinks “now, I am the bomb!” 

What happens when a baby doesn’t get that look? Instead gets a look of annoyance, as though it’s cry to be feed and changed is just a little too needy? You get me. A person who spends their life trying to find that look in others. In shiny objects. In diamonds.

That is no way to live. That is a deep and endless hole.

But as the song goes “I’m tired of living and scared of dying.” So I’m here. 

Thank God I have a cat.