A Full Life

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  • This Above All

    On the micro level I would consider myself prone to existentialism in that my daily life is often wrought with anxiety, a struggle to reconcile the suffering of humanity – the apparent meaninglessness of such suffering and the proceeding determination that there may be no divine order – and that it is my responsibility alone to discover meaning for myself through my waking existence. To follow my very human heart. On the larger level, though, the aerial view, I might be a believer. Though prone to doubt and skepticism, the undeniable comfort of faith and believing that there is a purpose to all of this, no matter how difficult to discern or make sense of, that I am a child of God living in this earthly realm that is inevitably plagued by evil, an earthly realm that can never be made wholly good, and that the belief in the transcendent the way. Wiser people than I have stated that sometimes acting as if you believe – a leap of faith if you will – creates miracles. And I would say too, that trusting yourself despite the chatter of others and the personal moments of unbelief, creates miracles as well.

    In smaller ways I have attempted to trust my shaky gut when making important decisions throughout my short time on this earth. I often had an insecure identity growing up, prone to the influence of others opinions or simply caring too much what I perceived others to think. Sometimes people were thinking no such thing at all. But other times I was told that choices I made were foolish or impulsive or strange or dangerous, and though their opinions caused me pause and nervousness, after a time of integrating internally and learning to trust myself even in the midst of paralyzing anxiety, I chose anyway.

    At twenty-five I quit drinking completely, as well as got off a dependence on painkillers and other substances. I was only fourteen when I began experimenting quite heavily with drugs and alcohol, and it was certainly an activity that drifted more into self-medicating than having fun. By eighteen I knew that there was a problem, that my susceptibility to depression wasn’t being supplanted by getting black-out drunk night after night. I knew that my life would be better if I cut it out completely. I landed, like young and people do, in the realm of rehabs and sober livings and twelve step meetings, and for a very long while, that realm became the center of my life. I’d get sober for six months or so, sometimes a year, then drink again, get back into drugs, grow miserable, and decide to stop again, sitting my butt in a metal chair in a church basement to begin the sober process once more. This went on until I found myself ingesting up to thirty Norcos a day just to feel well, drinking cheap wine and expensive gin, and pondering suicide. At that time I believed all the AA rhetoric that I was a hopeless alcoholic, selfish and self-centered in the extreme, who had no other choice but to commit to a lifetime of meetings and sponsorship and have a spiritual experience. And at the time, hopeless and desperate and deeply depressed as I was, that was alright to me.

    Getting and staying sober wasn’t so hard – coping with my internal garbage was the real work, as is often the case for anyone in their mid twenties just trying to muddle through. But many old friends along the way, since I started that twisted recovery journey at eighteen, thought I was overreacting, that I was weird, dramatic, and need not take it all so seriously. Perhaps a less sensitive person than I could have done so. I do believe a better path for me at eighteen to get out of the trouble I was in shouldn’t have consisted of high doses of SSRI and chain-smoking cigarettes with the rehab gang. But whatever depths of suffering could have been avoided with a more lighthearted spirit and a different approach to alcohol, being someone who doesn’t drink is by far one of my favorite choices, something that continues to impact my life in positive ways.

    Some friends warned me that going to Chicago after knowing someone for less than three months to move in with him and likely marry him was far too risky. But I just completely and wholeheartedly knew, and even though I was frightened and didn’t have much of a plan, off I went. We got married and now have two children together. We are more in love today than the night we met. He’s the stable rock to my neurotic what ifs. And I have softened his midwestern stoic sensibility. I was judged my many for choosing to be a stay at home mom instead of returning to teaching or some other career. It was my choice from the beginning, and one that ended up being imperative for our family and the dynamics of my son, who has needed extra support throughout his developing years. It was my choice not to force my son to wear a mask at school or anywhere we went, despite the ongoing shame and fear-mongering of society. It was my choice to carefully discern who would evaluate him for his delays and what the diagnoses and treatment plans would be and that we would be both proactive and patient. All of this in the midst of lockdowns, morning sickness, crippling doubt and fear and days of hopelessness. Was this all meaningless? Why are we suffering? Why is this so hard? I could no longer weave a sense of meaning into my daily life, through my will alone. Fall back on the aerial view. Life is hard for everyone, here we are, act as if you believe in God. Staying single in Los Angeles would have taken less effort. Meaningfulness requires determination.

    Much of learning to discern my intuition from the noise of the world came in fact from leaving the twelve-step world behind. I had had my troubles with it over the years, but I was usually committed. As Einstein stated, blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth, and when it began to feel like a loathsome burden, I wrote and I wrote, and I saw what it had become to me. After years within those rooms, I had been taught not to trust myself, that I had to rely on the opinions of others who had stopped drinking longer than I had even if we had nothing or common beyond that, that I was doomed for a quite a fall if I strayed. It was a fraudulent bully in my head that I had to get out. It created more anxiety and pressure than was necessary. I felt I had been slightly brainwashed. So I left. And nearly four years later, here I am, still deciding I’d rather not drink, free to explore religion, philosophy, and spirituality all the same, far more open. God is not so small. But it is an ideology that warns against critical thinking and questioning, implying such observation and introspection is the very reason one drinks to excess. The existentialists would have much to rebut against twelve step dogma. If we are inherently free, we are inherently responsible, and that we means we get to make our own responsible choices – to drink, not to drink, to trust that not complying with flawed ideas is not a crime or a death sentence. To imply that one suffers only because one does follow some arbitrary system is manipulative. Even the religions don’t say such a thing. We are not promised utopia or any kind of permanent freedom from negative emotion, even if we do believe in God. We can hide and shield and distract and we can take care of ourselves and hunt for the joy, but loneliness, fear, the awareness that there may be something missing is part of being human.

    And believers understand that – this is a fallen world. There is something missing that is difficult to make whole. We are flawed creatures. Do I take the leap of faith? As much as I can.

  • Floorboards, Clinging

    Floorboards

    There are faces and images in all of the
    floorboards near the door of my bedroom.
    A witch, grinning, a dog,
    a wise old man, pairs of long legs
    a nose, too. And I watch them while
    I meditate, and think about everything,
    and pray to not want to die.
    Because lately, I’ve wanted to die.
    My whole life, at times, I have wanted to die.

    But now, there’s a baby, growing and daring
    me to love louder than I ever could.
    A creature from beyond the realms of knowing,
    sprung from my body, not understood.
    He tests my patience, I’m often impatient
    I’m often a baby myself.
    His job is not to love me,
    but I want him to love me,
    I want him all to myself, myself.

    Enough of the wretched time spent inside
    even though it is freezing, I want to go by
    all the shops and go dancing,
    eat steak and pomme frites,
    curled up with the menu
    curled up with what we used to do.
    But still forever, I’ll live inside this body
    that I could never reconcile.
    it often feels broken, often feels old
    and misused and aching,
    Not beautiful. Not whole.

    We all see the world now, through reflective rectangles,
    and nothing means anything
    and people aren’t fun.
    And the news tells it’s stories, like a twelve year old girl
    who is drawn to the drama and hates the whole world.
    But never pauses to understand why people
    do both good and bad things, why we all are the same.
    And I wish that we could get back to the
    faces inside hardwood floors, by the door
    that you watch while breathing,
    and let that be enough to entertain you
    While you sit and try to be still.

    Clinging

    At seventeen, I wore a long skirt, and he told me that 
    it was the ugliest thing he’d ever seen
    So I went home and changed 
    Took 2 Ritalin,
    and met you back here at your house
    For a drink,
    coke and cabernet 
    Chardonnay, Marvin Gaye 
    Russian card games and dancing on the lawn 
    Used to smoke menthols, cut off the filter, tapped in a bump
    We would go driving, listen to rap and I hated the words
    This isn’t music
    This isn’t pretty
    Stared our the window, the Sunset scenery 
    I was a child of the moon,
    born of eyes that didn’t see,
    I never belonged inside my family, so
    I went in disguise 
    Clinging to anyone, even if he said
    that my skirt was ugly
    my attitude, old 
    Old soul doesn’t get you understood or laid
    When you’re just teenaged
    when the world is a stage
    Now we are here
    21st century information overload 
    I want to escape,
    but I have a child 
    He loves me so,
    he is the reason to cling.
    And to still write things down.
    I forgot for so long that I could still write.
    doesn’t matter what any of it means,
    Just to say something – Are you out there can you hear this
    I played that song on repeat
    at seventeen,
    at seventeen I did everything.

  • Imperfect Places

    Becoming a parent (or maybe just getting older) makes you reevaluate what matters, the values and philosophies that inform a cultivated life. It can also cause you to reflect and then attempt to chase back the youthful past, forever slipping through your fingers as you slink toward middle age and discover an entire generation exists beneath you with their own experiences and culture (that is to them, the only way.) And you see clearly, if you’re careful; how you really once had not a care in the world and all the time in the world. Obligations yes. Life or death? Not so, though it seemed so. Not to disparage those times before parenthood or the suffering all sentient beings experience. They and all their inherent difficulties, insecurities, and frailties are valid. But you do reflect. You can’t not. I imagine it takes a good five to ten years to accept you’ve had children and there’s no going back. So you start going back in your mind, all the time, and it is easy to notice that your mind goes to the places you didn’t appreciate or that you deemed ugly for being messy.

    You start going back through the catalog the formative years the teenage years. Wild, reckless, miserable and maudlin or maybe free and euphoric with all the possibility. Maybe you were loved well and so it hurt a little less. Or maybe, like most of us, you were terrified. And you scrutinize all of it because you’re trying to chase it back and you wish you had savored it because you can’t get it back. It was all so imperfect. Do you wish it had been perfect instead? You probably wouldn’t remember it, if it was. And what would that have done? Would it have gotten you to this same place? Holden Caulfield started missing everybody. I sometimes miss that I didn’t realize I was going to miss it, so eager I was to get beyond being a kid.

    Everything is photographed and filmed now, thoroughly filtered, polished and shined up, captioned, explained, Liked and Loved. If it’s not up to contemporary standards, it can be Cancelled. And because we know it will be captured, we are tempted to try harder to achieve a sort of flawless beauty and flawless morality. You see that today and think, was it supposed to be that perfect, being fifteen? Was I supposed to know how to dress and speak and get along with others? How to apply eyeliner and pose for a picture? Weren’t we more concerned with finding a way to get cigarettes and new thirty dollars jeans and not blow our brains out from the emotions we could not reconcile? Weren’t we supposed to be young and reckless? Aren’t we still encouraged to drop our defenses and laugh at our humanity?

    Because otherwise it hurts too much, the shame of imperfection. When you compare yourself to what the world has deemed appropriate, meaningful, decent – looking the part and playing the part of a liar – you will always fail, and you will be criticized for trying to find value in what is, frankly, actually valuable. Forgiveness, compassion, nuance, inevitable failure that inspires the human spirit to triumph once more – this is no longer revered. So tricky, so sneaky, that shame, for how can you savor and appreciate and revel in anything if you deem any other way unworthy? To just want to get it over with until you are finally perfect and the world says so? It cannot happen. It will not happen.

    For a while in my twenties, I thought beauty was a problem, some socially constructed measurement device that created inevitable lack and therefore would drive one to purchase that which will always be elusive to human beings. It was only as I matured and then understood that essence sometimes does proceed existence that I realized beauty is inherent, sacred, special, and that I had been taught to hold a grievance against the sacred, because our culture is resentful and problem-oriented – our culture doesn’t understand or believe in human nature – and doesn’t know they are. But we don’t need to bemoan that which is unobtainable. It is all always a little out of reach. We all feel a little maladjusted to this earth. It doesn’t have to be perfect. But it can be truthful – isn’t that all ye need to know? A beautiful subject or object can matter, just as an abstract internal experience can be beautiful, and can exist inside something ugly, off, misunderstood. I began to believe beautiful things were simply snake oil, because it’s wrong to worship things. I rejected the materialism of my parents and culture, but I didn’t understand that I was rejecting the wrong idea. Materialism is thoughtless consumption without appreciation and care, and it is believing that nothing exists outside the material world. The sacred exists between the beautiful objects and what they make us feel, this energetic landscape that is mysterious and precious – the spiritual and earthbound joined.

    We have both thrown away beauty and exalted it to such a high standard that we have lost appreciation for the ordinary, the mundane, the gaps and spaces, the artfulness of a well-lived life. As Frances Ha said, I like things that look like mistakes. Everything now must be strong and powerful, full of achievement, making a statement, changing the world! but what excites me the most these days is the delicious cup of coffee, the neutral toned cozy sweater, the skin of my son’s cheek, the made bed. Homemade burgers and a game of Backgammon. Washed and combed hair. Sun and light. The kindness and forgiveness of others. The ones who say, I get it, and mean it. The person who changes her mind, isn’t so sure. Gentleness.

    I didn’t understand this before. I had a fierce determination to improve, and I wore myself out. I thought it had to look like something, like what it looks liked for others, or what I thought others expected. I didn’t let myself be comfortable and enjoy the morning light. I didn’t let myself take it less seriously, because I thought taking it seriously meant profundity. What a boon to discover that relaxing into everything, celebrating everything, making everything a thing of beauty, even the scrub brush at the sink, is when it all becomes the absolute most meaningful.

    And as a parent (or maybe just an older soul) you do sometimes wish you could be seventeen again, just for a moment, but the kind of seventeen that existed long ago, or maybe still exists, though we don’t see it, where you could feel, believe, say the wrong thing, look ugly in a photograph, get too high, that you could go back and feel all that again, how important it felt, how much you imagined it would last forever.

  • Old Haunt

    We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.

     Once, it was quite important to me to talk about myself as a woman tossed about and striving for calmer seas or even better, dry land. I suppose we all identify with that while we’re young. There is a sense that, this shouldn’t be happening to me, and this has only happened to me, and this is significant to me, and I must make sense of it. (Strange how the very young identify with nihilism while all the while making a great big fuss about themselves.) Once, it was important to study the piercing nature of my memory and the sinking heartsickness that came over me if I had too full a schedule, or the air was cold while the sun too bright, or there was coffee with a friend I didn’t much care for, an obligation to participate in a world that felt hostile, a beige shade pulled over the clear-eyed optimism my mother failed to stitch consistently into my being. There were countless attempts to not only make sense of this, but to root this out and rip this out. I think back sometimes to that young lady at twenty-four and twenty-six and twenty-eight, at the shallow philosophies I held so dear, thought so profound, at the bland sense of self shaped by a recovery-oriented culture, as if I were a blown apart soldier delivered at the doorstep to a fledging small town medical center, and shudder, almost have to audibly shout away the memory, and then I remember: that was the best sense I could make at the time, and I’ve carried myself further down the road from out of there, and though I am not at all there any longer, will not go back, and barely hold it in reverence, it does no good to snub her. I nod.


    The shadowy edges of eighteen, perhaps could require a curl up with a blanket and sip coffee kind of tenderness. Who at such a fragile age can bear any kind of responsibility other than simply admitting, I didn’t know? How was I to know that 200mg of Zoloft would destroy my capacity to lift my head out of soups and cause me to seek to feel something through desperate searching soulless sex? Numbness became a feeling. I didn’t know that getting better could be found in higher places other than church basements and packs of Marlboros and too much coffee and a terribly dull part-time job. How could I know that, morally, as if I had imbued my parents mid-century cowboy consciousnesses into my skull, I was far too hard on myself and there were different ways to be reckless? I did not know the hand I was playing. I didn’t know how to play. I can do more than nod politely at her. When life is somewhat supposed to start at eighteen, and floors collapsed beneath me, and I was both too smart and too stupid to make sense of any of it, it all went inside, swirled with the sertraline and razor scars and out of body pain that even my melancholic friends shrunk away from. How could I think that self-destruction was meaningful since it was wrapped in the romanticized ideal of recovering from addiction? I didn’t know. I can embrace her, but I can’t for very long. Her, at eighteen was so internal, so vacuumed into darkness like an almost-out candle; and besides I spent a decade with my hand held tight to hers, believing that could break the spell and it would all no longer hurt, but it does in fact still hurt if the very act of going to her, and sometimes we have to leave people behind. Mostly, we have to leave people behind. Maybe always we do. You ask the ghost to leave for good, and expect only the occasional visit.

     And isn’t that the point. To leave things behind. To not think so very much. Who couldn’t dwell on an abuse, a loss, a moment of violence, for a lifetime. A scene in a film of a child dying erases whatever smile might later appears on screen. One cannot think of much else. But the memory only lingers for several days, like a cold, or a mild sprain, or a bad meal. A childhood of suffering leaves little room for moving on, but a few years of joy do help. A healthy marriage, a beautiful boy birthed with ease, a stack of novels beside the bed. All of that is part of who I am now, so far removed from the ghosts of the past.

     But people tell me, perhaps I would not appreciate and enjoy it all so much, had I not had selves that I sometimes look back upon with a wince, selves that loathed themselves and wanted so deeply to not, selves that were working so hard to get better.  They say, perhaps those selves prepared me for this, fulfillment in the ease and simplicity of motherhood. Was any of that really necessary? Would I have landed here anyway, had once I not been so high-mindedly self-involved, perpetually concerned with excavating badness and and grasping desperately for meaning and connected dots, so nobly, long-sufferingly paying attention? I guess that doesn’t matter, considering the point is not to know what might have happened had I ever at any point been different, but that all those selves were just fine, even in their frustrating ignorance and stubbornness and contracting rings.

     I believed for a long time that the periods of heavy drinking and drug use, the periods of starvation and bingeing, the periods of suicidal ideation and struggling to get out of bed were all connected and all mattered. I believe they were all the same horse, just regularly changing color, and that they meant a switch had been flipped in me either at birth or somewhere in the young years that proved I was defective and doomed to aimlessly wander. I can understand now that some of it was the inherited soup of genes, and some of it was the memory of my father and the ceaseless buzzing to be not here, and some of it was a cascade of untruths that came hurling at me via the well-meaning and the unwise. It can be quite seductive to build an identity on being broken. I suppose the allure is that it gives us a story, it’s a signal to others of mattering, at least enough to feel pity; most of all it’s the rough edge. A broken person has been through something. She has a dark tales. She is not like you. She doesn’t have to be tattooed and dyed and sick-looking; listen to her heart beating and wait.

     It took me until my 34th year to understand that it was all a lie. I think I was put together just fine, but I felt it all, every goddamned miserable and pleasurable sensation, and to intuit so sharply draws you inward. When you go inward too much, you forget to lift your head. I lost the the outside world a while. I forgot I was apart of it. I was always too smart and too stupid for my own good, a great collector and denier of remembering. I kept myself close to myself and in rooms and in beds and in cars and in spaces where the jittery aliveness and brightness could not get me, and I studied the lies and I grew to believe in the specialness of brokenness and the nature of diseased, and I stayed still for years.

     There is never an encouragement to hate that old person, but there is also no need to love her so. I think we only affirm ourselves loved when we know we’re kidding ourselves. Today, I’m content with whatever organized mess of a human I am, and I let it be. I am much more interested in the nature of things than insuring that I like myself. Oh, how that once used to matter. Funny how we feel better when such a concern disappears.

  • West Lands

    When I sit down to write fictional stories, the setting is always the same, and the setting is way out west in California. I don’t know other places well enough, and even if I grow to, which I might now that I live in the Midwest, my bones quite literally grew to their capacity in Los Angeles, and nothing can compete in terms of a visceral knowing than the place that created us.

    But this isn’t a fictional story. It’s a a truth laid out against the map of my days. When you find yourself in other lands you see yourself both changed and fundamentally the same, and the reflection and ownership of that is essential.

    1.

    In Chicago in the middle of spring, I am reminded of a feeling of subtle appreciation. The experience of biting into a perfect burger or drinking coffee first thing in the morning; these aren’t serious matters, but they are no less warming to the spirit. 

    We endure a brutal winter; taking the dog out or grabbing the mail can’t be done without a proper coat. There are moments when the wind hits you as you round the corner and you audibly call out to God, whether you believe in God or not. You have to know certain things, like how to drive in the snow and how to tend to the plumbing when the temperature dips below zero. When that bitter cold begins to subside and the sun hits your face through the windshield and you take a walk with only a light sweater, you feel appreciation. Eagerness. Such forward momentum and optimism for the days to come. Everyone will soon live outside. We will all take supreme advantage of sturdy stretches of warm winds. We won’t even bemoan the humidity. And when it turns once more to a beckoning chill of late fall, we’ll gear up for that, too, reverent for a turning tide.

    Not so in Los Angeles, to which I am (almost) a native and is the city that owns my memory. There is a place hugged by the Pacific, a sprawling desert, that houses the richest of the rich and quite a few poor and some of the most beautiful people in the world. Beauty is among the highest value in California, second to the sunshine. Why else would one spend exorbitant amounts of money for a studio apartment in Santa Monica were it not for paradiscal weather? People come for the weather and stay for it. People fall in love with it and can never really leave. You’ll be jogging in a dry eighty degrees in the middle of January while the rest of the country is staving off Seasonal Affective Disorder and a round of the flu. The closer you are to the ocean, the better it smells. Clean and fresh, a forest of palms, and just to the east a haunting sceptre of glamorous old Hollywood, long dead but permeated into the essence. People are healthy. They do yoga. They hike and eat organic. They do drugs and then they stop doing drugs. They get sober out there and they find Higher Powers, they get gurus and healing crystals and tribes. They stay young and pretty, sometimes a bit too long. Peter Pans are a dime a dozen. 

    It will always be my home. I will always know the feeling of rolling down the window in the cab (Uber) when it hits PCH and the salty ocean breeze cools the nausea of travel. But underneath all that beauty and warmth, it is a lonely place. Because when you can go outside in shorts and a t-shirt three hundred days out of the year without a care, I think you go outside less. And you forget to appreciate. And you don’t have quite the same permission to wallow in the winter. And one day bleeds into another. Nothing is so lonely as having to pretend you’re always happy. 

    When I moved to Chicago to be with my husband, I noticed one stand out feature of the midwestern ilk: loyalty. I would not call Midwesterners warm per se, in the way that us flighty New Agey types from California are. In L.A. we hug tightly and clap loudly and shriek wildly when we see each other. The Valley Girl thing bears weight. It’s warmer, so we’re warmer, and we’re open-minded to the dipped in hippie crunchy kind of life. But we flake. We drift. We go with the flow. In Chicago, loyalty prevails. It’s not showy or even demonstrably kind, but it is steadfast and hearty. To those bones. My husband’s very best friend is his childhood neighbor from across the street. They met in first grade. He has known his other closest friends since they were teens. Their tight knit group hasn’t let anyone else in much, but they also haven’t kicked anyone out. And they all love each other. There is no faking it. Loyalty forces you to search for the good. If you’re in it for the long haul, you have to practice that. 

    Loyalty is something I never pondered much until I got married and had a child. Because it isn’t just about love or romance or even good faith. And it certainly isn’t just about your feelings. I have learned so much from my stoic, even-tempered husband. He has, like many of his ilk, that contained, self-possessing quality, the sort that comes across to us emotionally messy west coasters as aloof, but that is buoyed by the absolute certainty that he would never abandon me or my children no matter how rocky the road. That means something in today’s world that is often governed by the spontaneous urge to Tweet snark and unfollow, cancel, quit and start over, follow that bliss all the way out of a marriage and into a broken home. 

    I assume no moral high ground. I am not casting damning judgment. But in a world of instant and immediate and reactionary, I dare to take the risk and discern that sometimes loyalty does prevail over always doing what just feels personally best. Difficulty is not always “toxic.” I went through that phase of trying to block out all the bad, moving toward what feels good, dipping my toes into the instant gratification that is moral relativism. It’s a fruitless walk, an emperor without clothes. It is valueless, a center not holding. We are a misguided culture, and the reasons for that already fill countless books.

    I am a child of divorce. I suppose I will always have a longing for what might have been, a father who stayed and a mother who dared to let go of new (and better) love for the heartiness of stability for her three young children. I have no memory of them together at the dinner table, only one flickering loop of my father at breakfast, loose-knotted tie, grapefruit and granola, a dozen pills and vitamins to tide him through rheumatoid arthritis and eighty hour workweeks. 

    I am a child of Texans, even though my life was lived and formed in California. My mother and father grew up in Austin and we were all born in Houston, moving in the late eighties to Los Angeles and never returning to what was clearly their homeland. Their childhoods were that supreme mid-century Americana, quarterback meets cheerleader, wild nights of beer and Marlboros and nothing more. Football and Jesus, going steady. And marrying that high school sweetheart, yes. 

    Such obvious irony that soon after moving to the loneliest city, they separated and divorced. Goodbye Texas Columbus, hello west coast moral relativism. Just do what feels good, oh well whatever, nevermind. I believe California breaks everyone’s heart. It is an exceedingly difficult place to remain loyal. The beauty alone seduces like the Sirens. It was Joan Didion who said it is a state that remains impenetrable; no matter how long one lives there and explores its vertiginous sprawl, it remains at a teasing distance. It is a transitory land. A place full of so many not from there, never belonging there, never remaining there. L.A. in particular did not revere the Homecoming Queen and thus remained a mystery and a disappointment to my mother. It is a city so much like what it breeds: gorgeous, modern, void of a center. 

    2.

    Belief will anchor you with purpose and meaning. The death of God did usher in, now going on century two, such loss and aching emptiness. A religion as profound as Christianity is not some accident. The comfort of knowing that no matter what you are loved and the urge to continuously strive to improve your character, to courageously carry that weight, to remain loyal to a through-line of values actually is a recipe for a joyful life full of grace. We have forgotten that. We have the part about loving ourselves down, but to do so without the subsequent conviction to adhere to common values, to remain loyal in spite of adversity and suffering, to sacrifice when things fall apart, is equally as important as tempering the hateful inner critic and feeling better. We love ourselves at the root, yes, and then we go forth and serve. Where has this gone? What are we here to do if not to grow and change and serve? Revel endlessly in fleeting pleasures?

    My life in Los Angeles seemed to think so. I came from faith in Texas and lost it in California. I suppose I am returning to my roots here in Illinois, where it still remains a trend to deny many versions of God, but God is everywhere. Even when I don’t believe it. 

    Ineffable as it mostly is, I have fallen in love with my child and cannot remember well who I was before him. I remember edges of selfishness and expanses of free time, idling away afternoons without a crawling baby grabbing at my hair, my feet, glimpsing me from his area of toys to remind himself that his safest person is still with him. I remember inevitable immaturity and smoking menthols when it got dark. I remember the zippy stress of teaching and the joy for my students, anxiously dating while always knowing, this isn’t going anywhere meaningful. I remember a lot of anxiety in general actually, I think because I felt so ungrounded, a drifter, unmoored to a home, to a city, to a marriage and family. I wanted those trappings. Something vague had convinced me at a point in my mid-twenties that I didn’t, or at least tried to convince me, but it was clear as glass when I hit thirty years old what I most valued. My career was ultimately empty. It owed me nothing. My clinging to my family of origin was gently codependent and kind, but it was not my family. My peculiar interest in dating those who were less intelligent, less kind, less available was growing weary. The endless sunshine of Los Angeles made no difference. It didn’t warm me. I only felt I was missing out. 

    Recovery-oriented person that I am, slightly superstitious – not really a believer in manifesting but keeping that somewhere on the periphery – I set about making some changes. I left my stable teaching career and began freelancing as a tutor, starting my own little business as well as working for a couple of agencies; this really only heightened my anxiety but restored my energy reserves, which had been chronically in the red zone for the past five years. 

    I made many excuses for why I loved working a 7:30 to 5 job as a sixth grade English teacher at a prominent private school, and I did love it – I have memories etched into my soul of that time – but chunks of my body rejected it. I could not catch my breath. I could not overcome my fear that I was an absolute failure, that I was unlovable, that I was destined to be alone. I was tired, too, of what felt like a culture of constant complaint and never enough; teachers often feel victimized, and perhaps rightly so, but I felt my years of claiming such a status had run their course. I was also a drunk and a drug addict trying to stay sober, and I felt unlike the other teachers, who eased into marriage and family and exercise classes and glasses of wine after a hard day’s work. I crumpled into myself and slept, read, wrote. I hid away, a meaningful retreat, pondering what mattered to me. I knew so very much of the logistics of the teaching world were a waste of time. The relationships weren’t. I am here to make meaningful relationships. At the start of my last year, we had an extensive two-day meeting about how to have meetings, and my mind was made up: I am out of here.

    As a tutor, I had to hustle and pay quarterly taxes and drive to Hancock Park every day and homeschool the gorgeous children of celebrities. They all had incredible skin and clothes and an air of respectful superiority. What a riot. People sometimes give me grief about my wealthy father and growing up in Pacific Palisades, but they didn’t know what it felt like to be one of the help to America’s royalty and the true humility of that. Wealth has many tiers. 

    In that time, I began working with a friend and made her my mentor, and we embarked upon the spiritual process as outlined in twelve-step literature. I had known her since my first weeks sober. We were always just fair friends. But I admired her, now, five years later, for she had what I was searching for, a family, and she had discarded her idiot ex-boyfriends and her bummer job and was doing what she loved creatively and staying sober through all of it. I wanted another transformation. I looked up at her through my stoic visage on her couch in Santa Monica and started crying. 

    I feel I’ve been taught it is wrong to want this, but I want to be married and I want a family.

    And she laughed – she has this hearty North Carolina laugh – and said, of course you want that, who wouldn’t? But first we have to do the work. 

    I untangled a web of old ideas, in essence, and I came to some very painful ones that still plague me when I haven’t slept well. People who don’t know me closely, and most people don’t, are surprised when they hear I have an aching melancholy and an unshakeable feeling of ugliness. To the world, I can force a smile, remark that everything is going well. I fear making mistakes, because if I make mistakes I won’t be lovable. I undeniably understand the mess of life, but I still rail against the mess. I still feel such embarrassing self-pity. I don’t know why some of us carry this burden of shame more than others. I see it often in my fellow alcoholics. I also see it in the supremely well-adjusted. My son, it seems, may carry such sensitivity. 

    My husband has the gift of utter self-acceptance and self-respect, and it doesn’t seem to come from any one thing. He is not cocky, nor is he modest. He is fundamentally friendly with his own being, as if to say, why be any other way? I wonder if they, those blessed children of married parents, maintain internal trust in the benevolence of the world that we of divorce lose. When your parents stop loving each other, the world turns grey. It might be as simple as that. Or it might have no explanation other than, there are various types of people. He lost his father at twenty-eight. Wouldn’t that make you question God? 

    I have often wondered what wounds someone more – a broken mother or father? The mother is protection. But the father is how you make sense of yourself. The mother is home, the father direction. The most notable feature of my students who had loving fathers was a buoyant comfort with themselves, even in the midst of teenage insecurity. Boy or girl, did not matter. I could spot the ones with absent fathers, selfish fathers, fathers who broke into terrifying rage. Like I did myself in middle and high school, they tried too hard, their eyes quite sad. 

     My husband is confident but he is not pushy, he is strong but reserved, and in him I found myself centered and stabilized. But with the arrogant and the pushy, I am often turned off. One of my most common misperceptions is that when face to face with someone who possesses boisterous confidence, I shrink and assume I am the mistaken one. I am quick to believe I am wrong, and I am quick to assume malevolence in others. This sleight of hand mindtrick is a recipe for hell on earth. If I am guilty and you are evil, where is the hope? Luckily, I can correct this misperception fairly quickly. Somehow or another, with my husband, my first thought was, I am beautiful and so are you. 

     3.

    I would live through a thousand frigid winters in Chicago to be with him. I only miss LA when we’re approaching June and chilly days seem endless and the sun is eclipsed by the clouds, lowering my energy. I find myself wanting to get rid of my phone, to retreat from social media and the endless world of hateful politics, from the people I meet but continuously fail to connect with on the grounds of my sensitivity and high expectations. I am not of the monolith. To declare so, is a lonely enterprise, let alone to live so. Chicago is like LA in that manner. Everyone is gravely concerned with appearing on the correct side of viewpoint, according to the ever-changing corporate dictates of trendy morality. Like with teaching, I always come back to the same defensive idea: all that we are discussing in this meeting does not matter. The relationship with the child is what carries weight. And so it is with those who continuously posture online and over the bar table just how good they are. I’m not interested in the beliefs you hold that you assume make you moral. I’m interested in your stories, removed from all of that, the hate you carry, the contradictions you live with, the inner demons that you combat with your chosen vices. I want to know who you are divorced from the latest New York Times op-ed and what you learned in graduate school. 

    But of course we have to live in the world, and I can’t expect others to play by my rules, even if I do think it makes the game more fun. Like my mother is earthbound, conversely I can float to the clouds. We have to take care of the logistics. But I want loyalty to a value system that transcends the earthbound. As Chuck Palaniuk recently said, our job is not to participate and follow. It is certainly to at least observe and ponder first. And then freely criticize and mess with. Why are we not allowed to joyfully opt out but still be of this world? I am at heart a believer in meaning, and I like believing in meaning, I am comforted by believing in meaning, but my nihilism pokes through when I can’t make sense of every prickly edge. Sometimes it is just hard.

    The older I get, the more I understand that no matter how much we try to be good or cling to ideals or align with the tribe du jour, we are all deeply flawed, prone to resentment and arrogance and self-loathing and selfishness, even in the midst of our decency. We are prone to despair, great and small. And I learned in my twenties that I was doomed to live out my days in that fashion unless I connected to a benevolent force that loved me and helped me to transcend my human frailties. Clinging to money or fashion or politics or fitness or family or motherhood or friendship would not cut it, for all of that, though sometimes nourishing, comforting, and inspiring, also promotes hatred and suffering. But we seem to have lost that idea as a culture, and everywhere I turn, we are all clinging to anything else. The louder we deny a Source and Force, the harder we cling. The more we shame others as simpletons for believing, the more we cling. The more we think the transcendent a waste, the more imprisoned we are right here, right now, feet of clay dried hard to earth. 

    I like to set my default to belief and meaning, but that doesn’t mean the postmodernists were completely wrong. It is only my own selfishness and need for comfort that chooses faith and connection. I cannot live too long in the gloom of revelatory transgression, where the world smells like a molding ashtray, a heart-pounding withdrawal of a lost weekend. 

    I used to like it, the cheap darkness, though I think I only thought I liked it: films that ended in tragedy, books that reveleved in lying, cheating, manipulation, and murder, music that lulled me to melancholy. Today I cannot get past the first chapter of a book if there is even a hint of child abuse. I cannot parse it out. I asked my step-father when I was pregnant, what is it like to live with the anxiety of knowing your children could be harmed and die? You can’t think about it too much, he said, or you will go crazy. You learn to block it out, at all the different stages of their lives. Falling into a pool. Car accident. Drug overdose. School shooting. And so it is with my sweet boy; I let those terrifying fears dance on the periphery, literally shaking my head as if to shake the thought out of my skull, and I hold him tightly when I can, and I cry occasionally if I do accidentally think too hard about it all. And I don’t read books about dead kids. 

    4.

    I live in Chicago now, but I miss my old home. The air is different here. The smell. I miss the ocean. I miss knowing it was mine. I miss the place that broke me and then put me back together in my teens and twenties, but I don’t have interest in permanently returning. It did its job. It is anchored in the bones. Here, in Chicago, I am coming to the table with my coffee, unbroken, merely telling old tales, making sense of them fresh, lifted out of the muck.

    Though I married a loyal, stable partner, and I wouldn’t change that, in fact I needed that, drunks are my people. Sensitive, thoughtful, warm, self-absorbed, neurotic, introverted, aware, weird, self-conscious and temperamental, artists, lost, ill-equipped or else overly responsible, we are the ones who often lose ourselves, even in sobriety, to suicide, to a promise of relief, to an unflinching drive to find a way out. 

    I like the sort of people who struggle desperately to get through life, steeped in melodrama. If you didn’t exist too, then I’d really feel alone, no matter the city, no matter the weather, no matter those around me who promised never to leave.

  • Mother Shower

    I had a dream the other night about a brand-new mother in some nebulous ancient culture being showered with immense love, affection, celebration, and tender care. Flowered garlands and feet massaged in oil abounded. Certainly, attention was also paid to the small child, but much of the community in this dream was tending to the mama, for she had just endured a life-changing (blessed) upheaval but was now focused solely, not on herself, but on tending to her little one.

    The mother, lest we forget, upon becoming so, has just undertaken something that even the most scientific and even the most spiritual among us cannot fully grasp. The creation and delivery of a new life. Something so significant and yes, also ubiquitous and ordinary, but no less awe-inspiring and altering. She has just brought life into the world through her body; has just endured a pain so searing and excruciating that it would eventually be blocked from her psyche so that she might choose to do it again; has just been flooded and emptied and flooded once more with hormones that would swing her moods from soaring highs to guttural lows; has possibly had her belly sliced open and organs set aside or her vagina cut with a scalpel and re-stitched; has been given Pitocin, epidurals, antibiotics oh my!; has gone through hours of stalled labor; has had a baby with jaundice, high heart-rate, low birthweight, or any number of frightening scenarios to add to the already intense experience of labor and delivery. Has, after nine months of waiting and knowing so little, abruptly, startlingly, become a mother. The mother has been through a lot. 

    And in my dream, the family, the community, tends to her and takes care of her, meets her needs to the best of their ability, whatever that means for her, so that she can then take care of her child.

    This doesn’t always happen, well-meaning as most of us are. I was guilty of this myself before I became pregnant. We ask, how is the baby? What’s the news with the baby? Can we hold your baby? We want to visit you in the hospital and engage in small talk for a couple hours about the baby! Let’s hear more about the baby!

    But what about the mother? People don’t want to hear that you are struggling with hormonal shifts and baby blues and a wrecked body and complete and utter exhaustion. People almost don’t seem to care or at least are very put off by the whole thing. Perhaps it is because we remain, culturally, terrified of vulnerability and the murky shadow side.

    After getting to know many fellow new moms over the past few months and sharing our stories with each other, this seems all too common. It is completely understandable that friends and family are going to be eager to meet and greet the new child, but the mother is often forgotten, and left in the corner of her messy house feeling guilty that she’s not more up or excited or eager to have visitors or take a walk around the block or grab a bite at the nearby restaurant. She’s not sleeping, and I mean truly absolutely not sleeping. She’s stressed over breastfeeding. She’s tending to her swollen, torn, bleeding body. And she’s already wondering, how will I get my figure back? All the while, still, trying to please you.

    The answer to this is not, well yeah, that’s how it is in the beginning. Deal with it.

    The answer is, I totally get it. You’re doing great. We’re here for you. Keep going.

    I had lunch with a fellow new mom recently, and we both agreed, while chuckling of course and understanding that none of us is perfect and people really do mean well, that this is what new moms want in those early weeks: warm food dropped off and twenty minute visits (we know you want to meet and get to know our little one, but there’s plenty of time for that; let us catch our breaths), but if you do plan to overstay, why not clean those dishes and maybe throw in a load of laundry? We want a shower or a nap while you hold the baby and a new pair of (cheap) leggings to fit our post-partum body, not another onesie that our newborn will never wear and that will subsequently be re-gifted or donated or shoved into the back of the closet to add to the rest of the new-mom life clutter. We’d gladly take a case of water bottles and some snacks to keep at our bedside table. Hey, we’d appreciate some accolades or words or encouragement – you’re doing a great job! and we’re proud of you! – can go a long way. Or we want to be asked, how are you feeling?, and if we answer, I’m struggling, this is hard, I’m exhausted, to be treated with compassion, and if you’ve been through it, deep knowing. Or, we just want to be left alone. That is its own peaceful showing of love.

    Struggling in the beginning, or at any time really, doesn’t mean we don’t love our child or we’re not grateful or we can’t wait to traipse down this new path with our kid, wide-eyed and in wonder. We just want some understanding that pregnancy, labor, delivery, and the fourth trimester are incredibly, overwhelmingly volatile and anyone who says otherwise is lying, zero percent neurotic, or blessed with some unicorn angel baby who doesn’t cry, breastfeeds like a pro, and sleeps at least five hours in a row from day one.

    The way I love my son is somewhat ineffable; alas, I will try – it is a deep in the belly, transcendent, almost terrifying sort of love. It is the sweetest, sweetest thing. And I also really enjoy being a mom. I like the responsibility and the domesticity and the closeness. I like the tiny clothes and the reading of ridiculous books and taking a shared bath and pumping breast milk. I like experimenting with what might help him sleep better or all through the night or make him laugh or soothe him when he’s crying. I like cradling him and rubbing his head and making up songs and taking stroll after stroll. I don’t really mind the laundry or the bottle cleaning. I can (usually) get by on five hours of sleep. I look forward to being tuned in to my child and supporting him as much as I can in becoming the best version of himself. I feel lucky that I like all of this and am all in.

    But the first two weeks were brutal. The next two weeks were somewhat less brutal, but still so hard. And on it goes, a jagged line of good days and great days and super difficult days. Joining a new mom’s group and being in a couple of different group texts with fellow new moms and fellow sober moms gave me a place to take my summoned courage and tell the truth, and in return, be told the truth. I learn everyday from these women – how to share the joy and the challenge.

    I appreciate the lessons that come as life continues along it’s cyclical course. When we become parents, oh how we begin to have more forgiveness and understanding for our own parents. I remember once when I was young, I asked my mom around Mother’s Day, how come there is no Kids Day? She smiled and replied, every day is Kid’s Day. And so true, and even more so for the lucky children who grow up in functional and deeply loving homes. Children, when parented well and blessed with good health, get to be blissfully, unapologetically irresponsible and carefree. Mothers? Fathers? The responsibilities and concerns are endless, and yet deeply rewarding. But in the beginning – teetering on too big.

    So throw that friend of yours who has just had a baby, a mother shower, whether that looks like delivering flowers and kind words or sweeping her kitchen floor and bedroom or leaving her the hell alone and understanding she’ll return your text in a few weeks. Tend to her. She is sacred. And someday she might be you.

  • And I Will Tell About It

    What do we share when we stop hiding ourselves away? This is, of course, the internet, social media, the shame over guilt culture of appearance and perfection, and in these realms we skirt the truth, muddy it up, maybe forgo it all together. What happens when we decide, I’m going to share it? We’re free. We jump, we fly. Maybe some will knock the wind out of us, scoff or judge or shudder or feel embarrassed or pity on our behalf. No bother. Let them be. I’ll take the risk. I’ll just take it today.

    I have suffered from what the doctors call depressive disorder since I was ten years old. I imagine it could be called a great many things – humanness, hyper-sensitivity, being an empath, being an addict, being a French painter or Russian novelist… but for the sake of clarity, let’s call it what it often gets diagnosed as – depression and mental illness.  Throw in alcoholism and eating disorders and you’ve got what is a fairly common recipe. The rooms of twelve-step programs are bursting at the seams in every major city across the world. Because we do suffer. It is human. As my favorite poet Sharon Olds wrote, do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it. 

    Experiencing depression doesn’t mean we’re ungrateful or perpetually wallowing – most of us would love to feel better forever, to never have to feel the haunting scepter of mental illness again – we don’t choose it or cause it and we can’t cure it. But we can tend to it and work with it and and let it be a regular catalyst for growth, empathy, service, transformation.

    I don’t know why the black wave starting falling down on me when it did. Perhaps puberty, perhaps my parents divorce and my difficult relationship with my father. Maybe it was something genetic passed down through the generations, or maybe it was just my little state of being that formed in the womb. For whatever reason, possibly all of the above, at a very young age I started to feel afraid, anxious and deeply sad. I was and still am highly affected by the emotion and pain of others. I would watch sports games with my family and feel too heartbroken for the losing team. I remember my mom taking me to see The Phantom of the Opera when I was in fifth grade, and I simply could not handle the suffering of the phantom and the overall tragic atmosphere of the play. I felt sick with sadness for weeks.

    Like many of us who are suddenly afflicted with feelings beyond our control, I started attempting to control my environment, to keep my friendships solid and static and ward off threats and surprises at every turn. This in fact backfired and caused me to push others away through neediness and subsequent defenses. And as I got older, it became about drinking and drugs. Changing my outsides. Seeking validation. Anything that could possibly shift the way I felt within, especially if it was expedient, I ran toward. There was no “inside job” yet. The saddest part of those of us who suffer like this is that on our quest to attempt to take care of ourselves and feel better, we self-destruct with faulty coping mechanisms and draw toward us deeper traumas. Whether through addiction, isolation, or poor relationships, we betray ourselves and hurt more. And you better believe that eventually we get angry. Second arrows, thirds and fourths.

    I haven’t always been depressed. It has lifted for me at many intervals, sometimes for years at a time. I have functioned well without therapy and medication (though I do tend to return to therapy, as it helps to have someone to pour my heart out to.) What tends to remain, though, even when I’m free from the black soup, is a fear-based perception of the world and a tendency toward addiction. Those factors don’t go away, they cannot be “cured,” though they can be ameliorated. I have always had a great capacity for joy and hope and loving deeply, for thawing out others with my warmth and care, but it can ice over fairly often with the debris of suffering. Recovery thus becomes about regularly squeegee-ing off that ice.

    Since I was fifteen or sixteen, when I first became aware that living life the way I thought I was “supposed” to wasn’t cutting the mustard, I have tended to myself with a variety of healing modalities: therapy, medication, twelve-step programs, yoga and meditation, long walks, tending to animals, music, dance, reading and writing. Certain periods of living in service have been of great benefit and catalyzed constant revolution: being an older sister and teaching middle and high school students. Such love and fond memory comes from that work. Yes, these are the practices that helps me clear the way. The trick is that I have to keep doing it. There’s no third act where it all comes together. You don’t pray once. Life keeps going.

    The struggle of life has always deepened my capacity to love and connect with others, so long as I don’t let it shut me down. But I do often forget how to tend to myself. I want to say, no, how are you? and I thus forget how to tell my stories. That is part of why writing is such a precious and sacred form; it will always remain easier to tell the truth here. The move of a pen and click of a keyboard brings clarity and sensibility. Face to face – what if you do not understand this ocean of feeling? The risk of vulnerability is frightening. Even with a therapist, we can sugar coat it, can’t we? It’s not surprising that those who struggle with depression and mental illness often feel immense guilt for not being “easy” and light-hearted. We can be a heavy lot.

    And thus we grow codependent and people-pleasing, for we just want to create connection and feel understood, and we fear that if others see the darkness, we’ll be left alone. Lost. And the walls build. The defenses, ever firmer. I sometimes liken the whole shebang of recovery, whatever that means to you, as the continuous softening and opening of the heart. Buddhist psychologist Jack Kornfield, one of my favorite spiritual teachers and writers, always says that we are not here to self-improve, only to perfect our love. And the opposite of love, hate and resentment, is the nasty by-product of living with depression and addiction, the walls of sharp steel that keep people away and corrode connection. We are here to dissolve resentment and perfect our love. It is a beautiful order, but it’s tall.

    I recently became a mother, and here’s the cliche: I have never felt this kind of love before. My son is, well, a great beam of Light. And I deeply enjoy being a mom. The trauma of birth, however, and those early weeks of tending to a crying infant did catapult me back into a stretch of depression. Some of it is hormones. Exhaustion, sure. (Oh, how I fantasize about a weekend to myself at the Four Seasons, getting room service and sleeping for fourteen hours straight.) Some of it is the grief over shedding old skins; I will never be single and on my own again, which is a blessed thing and of course, a great responsibility. Bearing a burden creates both strength and weariness. Some of it is me still adapting to living in a new city away from my family and adjusting to a beautiful, but still fresh relationship with my husband. Change is its own sort of trauma, even when it’s gorgeous.

    I don’t know why some of us struggle more than others with our minds. Why some of us live with mean minds that tell us mean stories of worthlessness and being unlovable. In recovery you sometimes hear this type of thinking jokingly referred to as kFUCK radio, or a bad neighborhood we shouldn’t go into alone. For those of us with these strange mental twists, it really is not our fault. Remember what Robin Williams said over and over to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting? There’s a reason for that. (And yet the movies make it simple. Will Hunting learns it’s not his fault and flees Boston to go see about a girl. There’s far more work to do than that.) I thought for so long, and still sometimes think it is my fault, that I am maudlin and morose, self-indulgent. That I just need to get up, toughen up, lighten up, rise up!, but it’s not so straightforward, and it certainly isn’t ever a matter of being stronger. You want to meet someone tough? Ask a sober and striving alcoholic about her life. If it were so simple, then it would be simple. It is not our faults, this mental illness business, and yet it does become clear that no one else can fundamentally fix it – no human power can remove it. So we tend to it with healthy tools, and we learn to do it for a lifetime. We bear the burden and practice gratitude.

    This is why the twelve steps are rooted in developing faith and awakening the spirit. We need something larger, something transcendent to rescue us, whether you call it God or Higher Power, whether you’re religious or agnostic, whether you’re praying or, as the woo-woo Angelenos like to say, “manifesting.” Faith, man. It’s something else. What else is there? I had a friend who always said to me, faith will move your stubborn mountains. Just as there is eventually nothing left to do but sleep, what else is there but faith, hope? Nihilism I suppose, but that is one dark sinking ship. A life devoid of meaning is not a life.

    I speak with my mom sometimes about feeling overwhelmed by my new life in a new city as a new wife and new mother with new friends and new weather (winter weather) and just everything new, and how I sometimes feel those sad feelings sneaking up on me. With newness we tend to think we can outrun the old. There is no outrunning, only confronting and tending. My mom, if you don’t know her, is not one prone to depression or addiction. She is by far one of the most positive, easy-going, light-hearted people I have ever known. She’s nothing close to an addict – she has two glasses of wine and calls it a night. She was Head Cheerleader, voted Most Popular, Homecoming Queen Patty Simcox, and I mean that as a compliment. She takes it all in stride, cheery and bright.

    For a long time it seemed that she would never understand me. But she has grown to see the suffering in her children, in many of her students and fellows of her large community in West Los Angeles, and she has cultivated a stronger semblance of knowing. She reminds me that there is nothing to feel ashamed about and that to seek help and support is brave. No bootstraps plucking here anymore, no rugged individualism. And such a reminder from her reminds me that we have both opened up more from me telling the truth. She has developed a stronger capacity to understand those who suffer more deeply, even if that hasn’t been her direct experience. She has become a better helper through my asking for help. And the world goes round.

    When I was teaching middle school, which was both an enjoyable and terribly difficult job for me, I wrote an entire novel, one hundred thousand words, and I worked hard at it. It was the only way I could keep showing up to my career – I had to dive into that creative world. I even shared it with a couple of people. If I were to stop being afraid, there’d be writings about this world of pain, addiction, recovery, God, far more often. I’d be living to tell. I remain somewhat codependent in that I am more concerned with how others might feel than doing what feels right to me. I care what others think. I worry about offending someone or receiving negative feedback. I worry about the stigma still attached to mental illness, that if only those who suffer were stronger, they would feel better. What a lie. Le sigh, I  remain a highly sensitive soul. Maybe even cowardly at times. Today, I’ll be brave, and I will tell about it.

  • Sacred

    The little baby boy still growing strong in my belly is due to greet the world in exactly eleven days. He’s kicking me in the ribs as we speak. He might come tonight. Or next weekend. Or in two weeks. (I’m predicting June 8th.) I conceived this child in the middle of September 2017, found out I was pregnant in October with a tried and true EPT test purchased at Walgreens, and began embarking on the most transformative journey of my almost thirty-three years on this earth. We can leave aside the fact that I also moved to a brand new city mere days before said conception, got engaged in December and married in February, and moved with my husband to a new house in a new neighborhood (in a still new Chicago for me.) We’ve been busy. All that aside, I want to explore the process of pregnancy. The rest is really just icing on the little cake in my uterus.

    If you’re looking to go through a lengthy process of waiting and staring the unknown square in its frustrating face, I recommend this pregnancy thing. It will be a great teacher. It remains my greatest teacher.

    I have learned a thousand things throughout the past nine months. Not only about the endless biological, medical, scientific pieces of growing a human in the womb, trimesters and weeks and endless pregnancy lingo, or which maternity clothes are affordable and flattering, or how kind people will be to you at the market (or how indifferent and unkind people sometimes remain), or how there’s a rather intense somewhat ideological world of breastfeeding militants out there, or how some people will show up for you in ways you feel too modest to embrace, or about bassinets vs. cribs and au natural vs. epidural and earth mamas vs. mainstream, and how to swaddle a newborn and your breasts changing and feet changing and walk changing (to a bit of a waddle) – all of this I have learned, yet to even birth a baby.

    But I have learned a world of lessons far more valuable than all of the above, or at least, more lasting and transcendent. I have learned about endless self-compassion. I have learned unbelievable patience. I have learned how to breathe and have faith in the the midst of the terrifying, bewildering, frustrating, enraging, and lonely. I have learned to jeez, just breathe through the dullest and scariest of moments, for what else can you really do. I have learned to embrace feeling both special and completely ordinary (for pregnancy is both special and ordinary.) Mostly, I have learned that my judgment of myself and others is a tired old ball and chain that I am still untangling myself from, but I keep vowing over and over that I will never judge another woman or parent again (OK, I might, I’m human, and I mean, there are some bad choices), for there are a million ways to do this, and I doubt anyone feels they’re ever getting it just right.

    Because in addition to the thousand things you might learn along the the pregnancy path, there are also a thousand things you get to feel bad about and judged for. There are a thousand ways to do it wrong. There are a thousand ways to not measure up. And again, this is before the baby has even seen planet earth. There is the weight to watch, the countless food items that are off-limits (many of which there is literally zero scientific data to back up why they’re banned), the questioning of your diet and exercise regime in general, your choice to breast feed or not, for how long, with a pump or exclusive breast, the going back to work vs. staying home (and the shame and “wrongness” that resides in both) and what is your plan to get your body back after you deliver, and are you still being a good wife, sister, friend, daughter to those around you? And don’t you feel beautiful and magical being pregnant? You don’t? Why not? Do you have a healthy support system? Have you thought about what to do if you get postpartum depression? Have you even attended any baby classes or prenatal exercise classes or looked into mommy groups? You haven’t??

    Ok, look, I’m compressing it all into one big dramatic thing that seems like it happens all at once, and maybe we are blessed with our nine month span because we get a stretch of time to experience an entire range of emotions; but it does start to wear on you. The endless ways we are judged in society and not measuring up wear on you. The extremely personal questions from others. The how-to and what to expect blogs. The doctor appointments where you get weighed and measured and poked and prodded as if you’re sick or something. If you’re lucky, you don’t stay resentful, but you allow yourself some room to get angry and say, fuck this. That room is gold.

    And then, hopefully, you grant yourself compassion, gentleness, sweetness, and love, no matter who you are, how healthy you are, what kind of pregnancy and birth you are having, what your relationship status is or your work status or what you plan to do three six and nine months postpartum. Nothing has taught me more about the importance of this kind of tender relationship with myself. And nothing has taught me more about granting that same acceptance to others, not only other pregnant women, but everyone. (But especially pregnant women and moms.) Because this. business. is. hard. They aren’t kidding. They aren’t lying.

    My estimation is that the amount of love you end up having for your child cancels out or at least dramatically assuages the fact that you say goodbye to a sort of autonomous individual freedom that comes from having no one to really look after except yourself (and no one growing inside you as they see fit, pretty much regardless of your attempt to control it.)

    —

    And then you have the baby. You feel proud that you labored at home until nearly six centimeters dilated (and good heavens do you get why one would get an epidural at three and mad props to those who make it the whole way, drug free) and you push one hour, and your son comes along to change your life forever. To continuously teach you to cease the judgments and the attempts at control and the meanness you grew up throwing at your sweetest self and the endless ways you’re too much and not enough – whatever you are, whatever your son is, you are his a mother, you are a mother now, and he is your child, and there is nothing more sacred and blessed than that.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Eighteen

    fiction short

    The other girls are smarter. Did you hear that one go on and on about Prufrock? You didn’t get any of that from reading the poem. (You set it down every other line to take a hit, yes, but you still read it, and you still turned in a fine essay. The professor gave you a B+. She doesn’t get you yet.) The other girls might be lesbians. They all have short hair. They all talk in that pretentious drone, and they don’t smile back. They make literature out to be this grand cosmic force that, well, you think it’s that, too, but you don’t say it out loud because the cost of alienating people via intellectual snobbery far outweighs loving words by yourself. You learned a long time ago to mostly keep your feelings to yourself.

    The other girls are prettier. Creamy skin and flowing hair – why do you keep cutting yours? The Hawaii twins down the hall and Emily and Shannon next door, who are so so nice but take it all in stride. How is it so easy? Is no one else anxious? Does no one else feel this tremendous loss and impending doom? You tried to articulate it to your friends in high school – even the more depressed ones just shrugged and pulled on the joint.

    The Other Girls. They could drive you mad if you’re not careful.

    Captain Morgans, that’s what Ashley and Liv always want to buy. They’ve got the credit cards courtesy of their rich midwest parents – your father is richer, but he doesn’t give you much spending money, just tuition. You keep overdrawing your account. You don’t get how it works. This is 2003. The internet isn’t yet what it one day becomes. So – Captain Morgans it is. Disgusting. Like syrup. Chased with Coke and Dr. Pepper. You’re getting fatter, your jeans are pinching, your face is bloated. You aren’t nice to yourself. Ashley teaches you to online shop. Bulimia never really worked in high school, but maybe it’ll work here.

    Something strange happened to your body. Your left leg is hurting. You went to the gym here and it wasn’t the same. You tried a yoga class, and it felt like you were damaging your leg. You had that hamstring injury a few months back? Is that what it relates to? Did it hurt all summer? You can’t remember, you were drunk all the time. You can’t remember, you were drunk, and starting to sleep around, and you’d finally gotten skinny, size 4, new clothes, Ron Herman splurges and so proud of you parents and everything was clean and fresh and promising and this is it, your hard work paid off, you yoga queen and straight-A writer and every time you drink you black out and wake up next to some strange guy. You miss days at your summer camp job, you, who was so almost perfect. You who the children voted best senior counselor, we want her in our group! You let them all down, because you always do. A beast on your back. But you went to the orientation at Boulder – you’re going to college. You’ll get sober at 21.

    It isn’t what you thought because you thought right away you’d find someone to love. You, always searching, to love and be loved. In a school of 30,000 these boys aren’t looking for that. Silly girl.

    Math class. Hieroglyphics. Introduction to Russian history – what a bore. Linguistics 101. The professor is a bitch. You have lost yourself, you have flown away. And laundry? Impossible.

    —

    There was absolutely nothing pretty about any of it. What is an eighteen year old girl supposed to look like? Feel like? Some sort of pretty, but that was lost on me. I was plugged up and numb with too much Zoloft, dragging Bic razors across the insides of my forearms, wearing the same black velour sweatpants and Boulder sweatshirt day after day. Sober or not sober, it was all ugly. My heart was gone. Where did it go?

    It was a time in my life that only by looking back upon can I barely believe. Can I barely breathe or feel again or write about without it making me squint and look away from my own life. A time when all I needed was a little love and innocence and for someone for once to quit lying to me and pretending I was OK, just because it was too vulnerable to say otherwise. but to tell me, it isn’t OK, and this must hurt real bad, but this isn’t your fault, and we love you. You can change. But no one said that. People either pretended it was all fine or else withdrew from me in judgment and scorn. My own father, ashamed of me. And why? Because for a little while, it was all so ugly? If I ever have a daughter, and she ever suffers the way my eighteen year old unfolded before me, I hope to God I can hold her and weep with her and rock her to sleep and not try to fix her but just let her know that I love her even more when it’s ugly and numb and infected and toxic and broken and bleeding and messy and compulsive and if she’s overeating or bingeing and purging or cutting her arms or letting men fuck her or blacking out drunk or chain-smoking Marlboros or wearing terrible clothes or throwing her life away, I will love her and weep with her and hold her even tighter. It is when it’s so ugly that we must hold on so tight.
    I don’t know what lifted me out of it. Leaving home. Reducing the meds. Losing ten pounds. Making some friends. Some numbness left me and some was shoved way down beneath. When you get a chance to take a deep breath and not feel so trapped, you’ll gladly ignore the suffering that will one day still bang on your door and demand that you come out and fight.

  • How to move to a new city, get pregnant, get married, and not take Valium

    Imagine you meet a man (or woman) who you know you’re supposed to spend the rest of your life with, (and how do you know this? Well, you don’t entirely, but you just sort of feel it, you know you can tell this person the truth and look ugly in front of him and even get kind of mean and they’ll hang in) but he lives in another city, and it’s a hell of lot easier for you to lift out of your part-time freelance working splendor and relocate to where he’s got the 9 to 5 plus benefits and the great apartment and dog. What do you do? You go. Because, you can’t not. Even though some of your (single) friends seem dubious about it or warn you about rushing, and say, “you know, alcoholics are impulsive,” but you know, so are regular people, and you’ve never been much of a risk taker so you go. It’s fate, or at least it’s a grand opportunity, and Shonda Rhimes wrote a whole book on saying yes, so you’re not going to not go out fear or what might happen. You can’t wait to find out what might happen. Los Angeles has not exactly been kind to you the past few years in terms of meeting great loves, and Chicago sounds great. Deep dish pizza. Baseball. Midwestern values. Plus, you’re like, a 10 in Illinois!

    So you go, and it’s pretty magical, he’s got lilies for you at the airport, though you’re also terrified and unsure and uncertain and alone and here is what lies before you as you know you must adjust to a new city: find regular meetings, make new friends, get some kind of job, purchase official winter coat and clothing, explore the city and surrounding neighborhoods, nurture your new relationship, find a therapist, get support for chronic pain issues, get exercise, grocery shop, manage your tendency to get overwhelmed – et ceterugh. It’s a lot for you. You’re sensitive. You’re sometimes shy. It takes a lot for you to venture out. You’re going with two suitcases and a wallet. Plus, it’s getting cold soon. Like real cold. But you can do this. You’re brave, you’re tough. You can be a risk taker, too. You’ve withdrawn cold-turkey from opiates before (well, on Ativan and gin), and you’ve been a long-suffering/overcoming/mental illness confronting/defensive warrior since you were twelve, so you can do this. Of course you can! One foot in front of the other. What an adventure!

    /Then, you get pregnant. No, it is not planned. No, you cannot believe it. No, you don’t want to be pregnant. Yes, you are keeping it.

    You’re 32. You know you’re with the man you want to marry. Amen to that, truly. It could have happened with one of those idiots you dated with alcoholism or narcissism or zero money in the bank. But you had a whole other plan, didn’t you my friend. You thought, courtship for six months, engagement for a year, plan and execute the dream wedding, plan and execute the dream honeymoon and the possibility of extending travel for a few months, maybe move cities, maybe buy a new place, find meaningful work – THEN PLAN A PREGNANCY.

    But the goddamn best laid plans, damn it. They often go astray. Not seldom. Pay attention in school.

    Ok, you can do this. You have always wanted to have children. You love children. You’re a natural. You’re 32, not 22. Perfectly perfect time to have a baby. And how lucky, to not be 39 and struggling to try and conceive! You know those stories. They’re heartbreaking – and expensive. You’re sober, you’re not on medication, you’re somewhat stable and sane (TBD). So you know, maybe you can really do this. You can totally do this!

    /Fuck this. You are nauseous all the live long day. You wake up nauseous. You remain nauseous. Not mildly nauseous – want to die nauseous. Like the worst seasickness you’ve ever felt for roughly eighteen hours of the day nauseous. You are grossed out by all foods. You are obsessed with and craving weird foods. You spend a fortune at the market trying to find food you’ll enjoy – mmmm potato chips – only to never want to set your eyes on a bag of potato chips ever again. You can’t get that taste and feeling out of your mind, of that horrible lunch you had the other day. Luckily, you mostly keep food down. You keep water down. You’re still drinking coffee (only a small cup) because you’re not a martyr. Oh, and prenatal vitamins? Forget it. You cannot fathom having sex, but you still have a little sex. You feel extremely guilty. Like it’s your fault. Like you lost your youth and stole his. Like you’re damaged goods. Like you’re a knocked-up floozy. You can barely write or think. You cry a lot. You get so afraid and nervous. You read things on Google that terrify you. Spina Bifida? Christ! You stop. There are a thousand ways to make a pregnant woman feel guilty and bad.

    You feel like such an idiot for not being on birth control and thinking the rhythm method works. You are quite sure you got pregnant your second day in Chicago, which is quite hysterical. Ironic? You can’t believe you are pregnant. You! Pregnancy is what happens to other women right now, but not you. You’re not even engaged. You still feel seventeen! You’re still highly emotional and volatile and moody. You’re still not fixed. Fuck! Fuck this. Alright, breathe. This too.

    You try to take care of yourself. You tell your mom and two close friends, all who have had children, and they are supportive and sympathetic. This brings tremendous relief. One in particular understands morning sickness even better than you and the whole crying every single day thing. You go on long walks with your precious pup. You try to write, even a little. You watch dozens of movies. You try to get to one or two AA meetings a week. Therapy. A solid work out here and there. What you really want to do though is binge watch shows and sleep. You could sleep until 2pm if you aren’t careful. Is this depression? Or hormones? You feel completely overwhelmed. Life just doesn’t make sense. It has always been so hard. You have always felt and thought too much. You were such a qualified alcoholic. A-plus alcoholic! And it really worked. I mean, at least it shut the voices up for a while. Ok, breathe. Meditate? Maybe five minutes. You hate it. You have always hated it. You pray sporadically. You have lost your foundation. You miss your friends in Los Angeles. Chicago women just aren’t the same. They’re fine, but they’re aloof and reserved and sort of… uptight. Just so midwest. Different kind of friendly. Not your kind of friendly. No one gets excited here.

    You remind yourself, you’re doing fine. You’ll be fine, really darling. Depression is common in the first trimester, and that also applies to women who planned their pregnancy and didn’t just move across the country. It’s just a lot to adjust to – even without the pregnancy, the change would be hard. You feel really depressed, though, and then you feel ashamed of these feelings. Second arrow, thirds and fourths. You still have chronic pain, and you don’t know what is wrong with you. It’s a nightmare. Your life is a nightmare. You don’t want kids. You don’t want anything. You feel trapped, lost. You feel so tired. Constant nausea is the tenth circle of hell. They never told you it would be like this.

    You get outside and take walks, though, and you listen to music, and it’s getting cold, but you have the best coat, so you sort of like it. The walks lift your spirits and calm your tummy. He is being as supportive as possible. He’s not going to run. He’ll go to each appointment. There are blessings inlaid inside of this. You feel hopeful. You feel like it’s possible, whatever it is. Living? You can do this. Of course you can. This, too.

    Ahhhh – RELIEF! You are no longer sick! It sings like a miracle, you feel alive again. You have energy and optimism and you want to eat what you always liked eating. You can keep the vitamins down and jog on the treadmill! You’re cooking. You’re writing. You can do this. A baby. 

    /Holy Shit. You’re a genetic carrier for Cystic Fibrosis. You cry all day when the midwife hangs up. If he’s a carrier, too, you have a 1 in 4 chance of birthing a baby with CF. He’ll have to get tested, and that will take weeks. OK. Your childhood best friend has CF and she is doing well. The life expectancy is still much younger but – NO! You do not want a baby with a horrible life-threatening illness! But he is sure he’s not a carrier. He’s so optimistic. He keeps you afloat. Women have gone through far worse. All humans have. You’ll be fine. But what if?

    He’s not a carrier! You sob with joy. You go back to the doctor and share in the good news. You hear the heartbeat and get an ultrasound and you are starting to get excited about all of this. It feels sort of magical, even though it’s the most natural thing in the world. You can’t wait to be a mom. A mom! You’re both sure it’s a girl. You’ve got names picked out. A precious baby girl. You’ll teach her what matters, you’ll love her like mad.

    He asks you to marry him, and of course you say yes. You would have said yes the day you met him. You knew all day he was going to propose, and the proposal made you giggle, and you love him so much. Christmas in in two days, and it’s snowing, like the movies. You can’t believe your luck, this incredible man you found. He is every bit of decent that you pictured as a child. You feel proud that you’re with him and you know he loves you. You enjoy each other immensely. Life is beautiful.

    You get the twenty week ultra sound and it’s … a … BOY! You can’t believe it! You’re both so excited. New list of names. All the family members know, and now you can announce publicly. You made it through the storm!

    /Wait. They found something. An echogenic what on the heart? You almost throw up and yell at the midwife. Why was the ultra sound specialist so cold and rude anyway. What is wrong with people? The midwife explains, it’s not necessarily a big deal. You want to scream, why the hell did you tell me then? You Google the holy hell out of it, and it’s really not a big deal. You have to wait a week for the blood work to confirm. Pregnancy is just a bunch of anxious waiting.

    Also, you’re getting chubby. You’ve gained eleven pounds. Your breasts look like monsters, your jeans don’t fit. You feel like a frump in everything you wear. You’re mostly past all that body image stuff, but it still comes back, of course it does. You cry and feel ugly and he hugs you and tells you you’re beautiful. It’s also freezing cold, so there’s nothing cute to wear. Try as you might, winter clothes aren’t sexy. You confide in your mommy friends and they remind you to relax. Embrace the weight gain, embrace the bump, spend a little extra on cute maternity clothes. Be kind to yourself, you’re making a baby! And, wait, NONE of this matters as long as the baby boy is healthy. And he is! The blood work came back and everything is normal! He’s going to be fine. He could be an athlete or a playwright or a math whiz or a musical genius! He could be anything. The future is male, too, alright! Your precious baby boy. So much wonder.

    You announce it on social media, finally, and everyone is happy for you. You feel pretty glowy and special. You’re starting to like the bump. You’re planning a small immediate family-only wedding, and it will be lovely, but – it wasn’t what you wanted. You were going to be skinny for it in a dazzling couture dress on the grass in Malibu with a live band! You had to go and get knocked up and miss out on it all. But jeez – planning a wedding, even for thirty people, is stressful. You hate asking your parents to pay for it. It all just feels like so so much. To do this again, for one hundred and fifty? Bridesmaids (never) and picking the china and ten grand just for flowers? No thank you. Raise your baby and take some grand vacations.

    Your small family only shindig will be just fine. I mean… but you wanted to dance, though. You two have a song. Elvis. It’s yours. You both can cut a rug! You were going to do a duet, too, guitar and a little singing. You were going to invite all your friends, hire a band and dance until morning. Oh, so what, the baby is healthy. So what, you’re with him, and you truly truly love him. You cry over how much you love him, you big emo nerd. You know you found the best. Some women settle and negotiate. You didn’t.

    You’ve adapted to the cold, and your whole family is flying in next week to watch you marry the love of your life. You’re babysitting babies and you just can’t wait. You’re proud of yourself. You made hard choices, and you didn’t chicken out. If people aren’t happy for you, forget it. You’re happy. Your life has meaning. You’re seven years sober. You transformed.

    You love each other and you’re having a child and you’re looking at houses and your life/ completely/ changed. Sometimes, it feels heavy. Your step-mom’s perfect toast – “she loves deeply and she feels deeply -” nothing is more accurate than that. It’s gotten you in trouble, but now you just embrace it. And he lets you cry and feel it all, deeply. And your dog! God, do you love her. So much love. So much before you, so much behind. You weigh it all and decide to be grateful. The human spirit is flawed and broken, but the human spirit is triumphant and large. You can’t wait to teach your son that. To lift him up. To set him on the path. To tell him this story.