and no time had passed.

I am sitting in the living room where memories were made. The thing is, nothing has changed. Some important people are now gone, but it feels like they are here. It feels like small me is still here, while a larger, older me looks on. I am loved. 

I know, because as my Memaw counted grandchildren yesterday, she counted me. Because and in spite of being "steps", my sister and I count. As do my sisters step children. I know, because she counted four greats without a second thought. The south is a different place. Time slows down, and sometimes you just sit. The hugs last longer and squeeze tighter. I'm so glad for this place, and so glad I made it back. This time, with no other plans except to completely accept that it is good. Good for me, and the best thing I'll probably ever know.

It doesn't feel like a new year. It feels like all of the old years rolled up into a sameness that is home. Truly, because for the most part everything looks like it did when I was seven years old. The foggy old mirror over the fireplace, the yellow, stained wallpaper in the kitchen, and the nicotine-stained drapes on the windows. At first, I wondered if the smell of years of second-hand smoke would bother me. Would bother J, who doesn't smoke anymore. It doesn't. It can't. Because I am seven years old when I smell it, and it's not yet bad for me, and I don't yet know any different. 

I don't make resolutions anymore. I don't see the need, since waking up every day is a reason to make my life the kind of life I enjoy living. The kind of life that I hope influences the people I love in a way that will make them happier, too. If I could bottle up what I find here, I would take it to them so they, too could feel counted. So they could feel what unconditional really means. It's kind of a big thing, unconditional. I guess that could depend on how often one has been subject to conditions, but for me, it's huge. Larger than me, many times. 

No, I think my every day decisions are based on a basic question. "Is this a good decision, or is this a bad decision?" It's rare that there is no definitive answer. If I am sitting down with my coffee and smoking one more cigarette will make me late for work, the answer is easy. If I think about quitting my job because I am tired of being bumped around and treated like a non-entity, I think about my mortgage. Still easy. There are only a few times lately that it has been too complicated to apply such a simple question. Or that it seems too complicated. Because in the end none of it is very difficult, unless you make it so. Sometimes you just have to say, should I spend this money on some plane tickets and fly thousands of miles to feel seven again? And you just have to answer, shit yes. Yes, financial consequences be damned, yes. 

AmIright?

successful women.

I woke up unusually (some would argue this) bitchy today. This is the way I'd like to document my morning for future reference. I think it's fair to say that I'm not really bitchy, because that's a word we use when women don't fall into line, or more specifically, allow themselves to be criticized, ridiculed, or ostracized. But in this moment, I'm not thinking about how men perceive women and keep them "under control." This is the moment I realized we are victims of our own gender's view of how women should behave. It's not pretty, and we don't even realize we're doing it to ourselves.

I caught myself doing it yesterday, when I learned that an old school mate, whom I now work with, though very much from a distance, was being moved into a new office. With her new title. She was one of the "mean girls" when we were in school, but that's of little consequence today. When I overheard the man helping her say, "If there's anything you need, (Ms. Person), just let me know." 


And I rolled my eyes. 

After hearing too much as of late about what I can or can't do in the future, and how I am supposed to do things, and when am I getting married and so forth, I can't believe what I thought: I said in my head, "How does she keep getting promoted--who is she sleeping with?"

But I am smart enough to 1. not say this out loud, and 2. think more about what would make me have such a thought in the first place. One reason is simply that I haven't been as successful. The gaping difference between she and I is that she has a degree. I am still working on mine, which means the both of us are on an entirely different professional playing field, especially in our line of work. She also seems to be lacking the one thing that most women possess. Self-doubt. This could be surface deep, and I realize that I am in no position to judge what she feels. But what she appears to be is a confident, well-dressed, well-organized person. This makes me incredibly jealous, as I typically fail in all three of those categories. I'm much better fitted into the hole that is self-doubt. I'm pretty sure that's the square hole into which we square pegs do fit. 

Now I'm going to delve into the even more uncomfortable, because I think it needs to be said. A few months ago I had a spontaneous abortion, which not so loosely translates into "miscarriage." This isn't something we are supposed to talk about, so if you think you're shocked, you should know that I'm shocking myself by even writing this down. But I think it's important. For me and for women. 

The night of said miscarriage, I was filled with self-doubt. I questioned whether it really happened, or if I was just "freaking out." I called my step-mother at 11 p.m. and she, the anti-sexist, was supportive, comforting and really listened to me. Maybe she could handle this because she gave up having children of her own, just so my sister and I wouldn't have to deal with the thing known as the blended family. She is a fucking saint. But anyway.

The next day, I called my primary care doctor and told her what I felt and what I saw. She said that it sounded like I was right, and that it seemed unnecessary to go to the emergency room because my body was doing what it was supposed to do. She asked if I was o.k. This is another person whom I rely on heavily--and she always comes through for me. She is not alarmist, and she doesn't treat a woman's body like a thing that needs tests and medication and excessive visits when something doesn't go quite the way we expect. She knows that our bodies are complex things that often are doing what they should even if we don't like it. But I digress. 

I called three of my closest friends that morning. Two that have experienced pregnancy, and one who hasn't. Two were sympathetic, and one was downright wrong. I'll ask that you guess which one of them said, "You didn't have a miscarriage. If you had a miscarriage, you would know it." 

It was the one who successfully did everything in order. Got married to the love of her life, had two kids, and bought a bigger and more beautiful house in which to raise the two kids. The same one that wants the best for me, and therefore refuses to see my point of view when I venture too deep into uncharted or unconventional ways of thinking. She continued the conversation by telling me that my doctor was just "telling me what I want to hear." Which makes no sense whatsoever. Because I'm quite sure that I didn't want to hear that an embryo that would have been my child fell out of my body and got flushed down the toilet. 
 
She even took it one step further and said that if I did have a miscarriage my doctor would have told me to go to the emergency room, so she was of course, lying.

After a few days of unexpected and inexplicable sadness and a general feeling of malaise, I was fine. I was surprised by just how strong that feeling of loss is, regardless of whether I even knew this would have been baby was on the way. And the way women cope with the loss of another woman is, one out of three times, by making them feel like a failure. I felt as though I was just having delusions and wished I had saved the tissue so I could take it somewhere and be certain it was what I thought it was. I also experienced moments of blaming myself. Did I drink in the couple of weeks prior? I did take those four ibuprofen that day...and so on. A smart person knows that this happens for reasons we can't begin to comprehend. It is natural and in many cases quite possibly for the best. 

As I go forward with my life, I'm hoping to break a few molds, as I so often have. My lifestyle choices are most comfortable for me. I don't concern myself often with what will make my friends and family feel more at ease with my life choices. I don't think that would be fair, and I would have so much less to offer them. Don't get me wrong, I do have many friends who know what it's like to be a weirdo in a strange place. God, I love them dearly. They are the least sexist people I know, too. They don't have that thing that makes them say, "who did she sleep with," when I experience successes. I didn't even realize that was a thing that makes me want to talk to them more than anyone else. They are not mean girls. 

And I am successful. In so many fucking ways. Primarily because I'm doing things my way, and in my world there is no can't or should. There is did and done.

If this isn't suitable for anyone, I'm gonna have to go all bitchy on your ass.

too much, or too little? Or just right?

I've been thinking a lot about writing, reading, and music. Scholarly life has me down on the idea that only scholars can be truly good at their craft. I know this not to be true, as life has led me down many a path whereby the "good" comes from the depths of places many scholars can never--will never--experience. And in the end, isn't experience the thing that we are trying to convey?

Anyone can be a writer. Anyone can be a musician. The only real way to do either is to write, or play, respectively. Or not necessarily respectively. But there's a gap between us/me the uneducated, and them, the miseducated. And as I go through this process of becoming educated, I'm finding that career scholars have a leg up on me and us. The scholar is indeed receiving grants and sabbaticals and other awards to pursue his or her "passion." The rewards for simply being a scholar are enormous. And these are the people that the big people see as either a. established, or b. up-and-coming. What a shallow pool from which to draw.

One thing I've realized over the course of my not-so-successful career in writing (if we're measuring success by its ability to bring me money or fame) is that accessibility may be one of the most important things you can bring to the table. If I have a message, and I provide it in such a way that is over the head of my audience--something some artists take pride in doing--then where is the message? It's lost on so many, and so many are lost. In simple terms, it's the old he/she just doesn't "get it." And that's in large part because the artist/writer/musician isn't giving it, or just putting out bits and pieces of what they want people to see. Or perhaps that they're trying to give it half-heartedly to everyone, when really they should just stick to the tiny circle that does and leave the rest of us the fuck alone. 

All this leads me down a rocky path. I enjoy my new role as student. There are some important lessons there that will help me in the long-term. Just not in the way that some career scholars might suggest. And I don't want to become that. 

Because of this, I was busy remembering things from before I pursued the news writer thing so many years ago now. I realized that so much of what I was doing wrong at the beginning stemmed from my interpretation of what a news article is made of, vs. what it really is. Everything I can write is only really important from the perspective of the reader. I think. First lesson. A broad vocabulary is almost useless. This is lucky, because mine is fairly limited. Write at an eighth-grade reading level. Use fewer words. Space costs money. Money doesn't come easy. Second lesson. The least interesting subject can, in fact, still make for an interesting story. The day I had to write about a button collectors' club was the day I realized that everything anybody does is the most interesting thing in the world. There are layers everywhere just dying to be uncovered. Cover them. Third, most important lesson. Don't imitate what you think you're reading. People are naturally interpreting everything at the level they are comfortable interpreting it. I wrote a story about a guy that was behaving in a horribly sexist manner toward a female manager during a public meeting. Both parties were pleased with the article (though the woman was very, very thankful). But with any luck, I'd educated a few people who were capable of reading what was really there. 

All that said, my first stories were really ugly. I was writing the way I hear Scott Pelley speaking on the nightly news. Oh, how wrong I was! Yet lucky to have such a forthright editor, who put me on the right track with nothing less than a painful jolt of reality. She said my writing was shallow. Another influence was just one random person, who said one random thing about my blog. He said, "It's so vague." 

What I've done since is learn to be less of both of those things. I work to dig deep and share deep. The effect, I hope is that my message is received, interpreted, and etched in time somewhere. The New Yorker may not be interested, but then again, I'm not so sure anymore that I'm interested by it. 

Why spend one's time in a puddle when there's a whole ocean out there that's gonna swallow us whole?

you've changed.

As I approach 40, I'm finding that some things will be better left to my 30s and not revisited. In particular, I haven't the time for gossip and don't really care to hash out petty little problems that have no business seeming large when they are really small. I'm sure there are many other things I'll leave behind. I think I'm o.k. with this. Instead, I fill the space with activities that really are important, either to me or to the world at large. Things like encouraging my friends, making music (I actually lowered my blood pressure today while listening to music on the way to the doctor), writing whatever and whenever I can, work (on which I should focus more diligently), and school. Oh, and keeping the house from falling down. But really, that's just a series of chores that will likely never end.

I've changed, and mostly by my own volition. I'm interested right now in whether it's really that I've changed, or instead more or less evolved. But you never hear that about a person, coming from another person. You hear, "So and so has changed." Typically, this offering is of the negative (and equally gossip-y) sort...or perhaps that's just my own translation--though I think not. I don't really like hearing it this way. It's nonspecific and lazy. Perhaps we could say, "Wow, I never expected him/her to do that," or "I wonder what's making her so happy lately." A simple, "She used to do this, but she seems happier doing this." As for "He's/She's changed," I hate it. Especially when it's said with the implication that perhaps someone else has dictated your, my, his transformation.

What I know, or what I think I know by now is that change is hard for many, if not most people. It's uncomfortable. I get it. I really do. But what I do see in my own life is a lot of positive transformation occurring, both within me and around me. My significant is experiencing the same, perhaps in different ways, but we are growing together. We are also growing separately. What concerns me right now about this are the few times I've overheard (or when it's been shared with either one of us directly) that we are not celebrating our individuality. Apparently if say, we decline a drink one night or choose to stay home rather than run around on a cold night or whathaveyou, it must mean that we are experiencing a departure from our(true)selves.

All I can really think to say to this is that transformation sometimes means leaving one thing you are behind so that you can be the next thing you are supposed to be. Sometimes you can't be two things at the same time. I can't watch a movie and read a book at the same time. And doing one or the other more lately doesn't make me a movie buff or a bookworm. But hey, people like to label things--that's how they keep us all sorted. Some changes are temporary, of course. I may find when I'm 60 that I enjoy a good buzz every weekend. Right now I'm too busy for the ensuing hangovers. Also, my liver is very happy these days.

Anyway, if you're in it for the long haul, I'm happy to work with anyone having difficulty adjusting to the many transformations I and we and he are planning to experience. I look around me, and things look promising. I'm writing, my "other" is playing the guitar in the corner, and the house is otherwise peaceful and shut down for the night. If this isn't me, and it isn't him, I don't know what else we could be right now. And aren't we all subject to change?

not gonna not knock things down

From here on out, I'd like to refer to "my anxiety" as the "The Worry." The Worry is temporary, and often enough, unwarranted. It is not productive, nor is it a friendly face. It makes my friendly face ugly, from my mouth to my furrowed brow. The Worry makes me sit around counting blades of grass, tallying the numbers, and taking names. I realize that this is not the best I can do. I don't expect everyone who has anxiety to follow suit. Sometimes labeling something is comforting, but I'd like to label this in a way that says it isn't mine.

I am changing my face and anxiety's name so that I can take The Worry and hurl it into the woods--or the trash, whichever is closer.This may seem silly, but if I don't change its name, my anxiety is a piece of me. It's like my own arm, only it keeps hitting me. And I can't very well cut off my arm, now can I?

I don't have a lot in me today. I have cleaning to do. Because The Worry says I'd better do it so I don't come home to a messy house when we come back from a weekend away. It's Thursday, and The Fucking Worry is thinking about Sunday afternoon.

And I'm about to kick it's ass. By cleaning. Hmph.

The Profile Essay

Over the summer, my writing course gave me several prompts as fodder for short stories. This one is a profile of someone in my life that has changed me. I could have chosen anyone. At the time, I chose someone whom I hadn't spoken with in years, right up until our recent reconnect. It has been awesome to see our friendship bloom again. In fact, so much more has happened since, and now it seems unnecessary to write about it, because we're living it. 

Julie and I met in 1988 at the beginning of our freshman year in high school. This many years later, there are still so many things I don’t understand about our friendship, but of one thing I’m sure: we are in it for life.

I was in my second year at a private school for grades seven through 12. Eighth grade there had been terrible for me--I grew too fast and I was awkward looking. With my thick glasses, a very thin physique and hurtling toward six feet tall, I became the butt of most jokes. I say most, because there was only one person lower than me in the pecking order. I’ve heard that he never recovered. Back then, no one thought much about the bully. In fact, I’d venture to say their behavior was largely ignored, if not condoned. If you didn’t have the right hair, the right shoes, and a pair of socks to match every shirt, you were doomed. I was lucky to find a pair of pants that didn’t make me look as though I was waiting for a flood. One other thing about the 80s everyone should know: appearance was everything.

Determined to make a new start the next year, I’d convinced my parents to get me my first pair of contacts. When we went school shopping, I chose everything I wanted to wear very carefully. Some were just clothing patterns, which my step-mother spent the summer sewing. The first outfit I wore was a short, fitted black and white plaid skirt, with a white shirt, both of which were homemade. On my first day back to school no one sat at my table in the cafeteria before class and no one spoke to me. As it turns out, they didn’t recognize me; I was prepared to take advantage of this oversight. I sat with the new kids, and didn’t acknowledge the old kids. By the time they figured it out, it didn’t matter. I’d climbed up the ladder. A little.

When Julie walked into our homeroom on the first day of school, she immediately caught everyone’s eye. The boys turned and stared, and one in particular looked at her from a few desks away for the entire twenty-three minutes. She was wearing a matching sweater skirt and top, green and black. Her hair and makeup were done like a woman who’s been doing it for years. She wore heels. She was curvy for her age, but only looked older in body and dress. She also had an angry face. If ever you’ve heard of “bitchface,” she’s the one who first suffered of it. Basically, it means that you’re a girl whose face always looks like she’s pissed off about something, even when she’s not. Explaining this to potential dance partners at the clubs many years later was a challenge. Now it’s a thing. Go figure.

That first day at lunch, I made sure to get in line behind Julie at the soda machine. I had in my mind constructed the perfect ice breaker:

“That guy Matt was staring at you in homeroom,” I said.

“Really,” she said, turning around.

I wasn’t sure if it was disbelief or modesty. Either way, I’d hooked her. We talked all through lunch, and I learned that she had a job. I thought, “Wow, this girl has it together. I want a job, too.” She said she cleaned rooms at one of the local motels on Saturdays and Sundays. Everything she said made her seem so…adult. I learned that she had a little brother 13 years younger than her. And that she liked Def Leppard, too. I’m pretty sure toward the end of lunch I admitted that I was a nerd, and that hanging around with me wasn’t going to make her any friends, but she didn’t care.

We talked often on the phone after that, and she didn’t live far from me. I found out that her best friend Wendy was already in her 20s. Julie loved her dearly, and there were times I wondered if Julie would ever consider me as good a friend as she did Wendy. At this point, both Wendy and I have both had our fair share of ups and downs with her, and I’m pretty sure we’ve made her equally angry at different times over the course of the 20 some odd years I’ve known her.

Flashback to 1988. On my birthday—September 29th—Julie called. She invited me to go with her and her mom to see, yes, Def Leppard. I had never been to a concert and even now, I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun on my birthday. Julie and I danced and sang along, while her mom sat a few rows back and kept an eye on us. I’d look at her mom every now and then and she would laugh and make fun of the boys who were playing air guitar a few seats over from Julie and me. Julie’s mom was a rocker, too. She liked her music, though often enough Julie hated what her mother liked: Pink Floyd, The Moody Blues, Blue Oyster Cult, The Police… So much great music—and she had it all on eight track. But the one band Julie really hated that her mother liked is Rush. I loved their music, too. Julie’s mom and I planned later that she and I would go to a Rush concert together. I would do anything for that chance, even today.

For the next four years, in spite of us changing schools and my parents moving our family a town over, we were inseparable. I got a job with her at the motel and got to know Wendy, as she worked there, too. I can’t say we ever liked each other. There, Julie and I tried our first cigarettes. We met our first crushes. We drank for the first time. We also saw a lot of things young, teenage girls probably shouldn’t see. But I got to know her parents. I fought with my parents, and therefore became a fixture at Julie’s house. They fed me, they housed me, and they let me smoke cigarettes in the house. But mostly they listened to me. Especially her mother. I, in turn, would scratch her back which she loved. I learned a lot of things about Julie this way, not because her mother told me, but because I saw all of it close up and personal. Some of it wasn’t pretty.

I didn’t know that Julie’s curves were the product of a self-perceived weight problem she had in middle school. I saw pictures, and her face was chubby, but if it was baby fat before, she’d turned it into something that made her feel much more confident. Julie resented the fact that her mother had a baby so late in life, and that it interfered with Julie’s expectation that she would continue to be an only child through her teen years. The most important time of her life! She also resented me sometimes. In fact, it was she who ratted me out to her parents for smoking. What made it worse was that they didn’t much care. Her dad and I sat at the bar overlooking the open dining room and living room regularly, drinking coffee, smoking butts and talking about our lives. Julie and I fought like sisters. But she cared. She thought I threw away a perfectly good life by leaving home. My parents had money. We had a nice house. And I didn’t have a three year-old brother.

At the end of our sophomore year, Julie’s mother was diagnosed with Leukemia. I wasn’t living there at the time, and only a year passed before she died. It seemed like a day. She made it into remission for a few months, but that nasty sickness got her. I didn’t see her in the week before she died. Julie did, and she was so very angry. With me, with her mom and dad…with cancer. My father and I attended the funeral. She asked me to stand with her in the receiving line, so I did. We cried, we lamented, and sometimes we were filled with regret. Other times we joked along with her grandmother that Julie’s mom might just sit up in her coffin and flip us all off. But the same as Julie did years later when our friend Christian committed suicide, she cried for me. For the world of hurt I was experiencing. I remember her saying as she and I stood over Christian’s closed casket, “Look what you did to my friend.”

None of this is to say we didn’t have our trials and tribulations. Sometimes I’d get so wrapped up with a boy that I’d abandon her for months. Sometimes I didn’t like her boyfriends (rightfully so) so she’d disappear for a year. When we argued, it most times ended with us not speaking for long stints. But our history always brings us home. Not to her old house—it’s since been purchased by a bus company and levelled for parking. Her father started a career in drinking and hasn’t been seen for at least ten years. Her brother is a lazy, out of work couch surfer. No, home is wherever we are together.

Our most recent separation lasted five years, over something trivial. Almost a misunderstanding, but I hurt her feelings. This time was one too many times. In my defense, she is very sensitive, though you wouldn’t always see it through the anger. She doesn’t always say much, and less often tells you what she needs. I try to guess but I’m not a mind reader—man alive. At the end of the five years, I’d found that my life was missing something without her. As much as I also felt hurt by her constant judging, I thought she must have been trying to protect me. Sometimes from others, and more often than not from myself and any number of my own questionable decisions. For all of her faults, she’s never steered me wrong. Except maybe that one time when she set me up with her boyfriend’s 21 year old friend. I was 15.

This time, it’s taken several months for us to regain our faith and trust in each other. She’s had two babies, one 18 months before we reunited, and another about a month after we began talking. She let me meet them both almost immediately after we had reconnected. We laughed and I made her cry. The biggest difference between us is that I do talk about my feelings. Sometimes to the extreme. One thing she said that made me know that we are exactly in the right place at the right time, and that she truly loved who I’ve become is that she’s never felt overcome by how intensely I tackle a problem. When things get crazy, I take them on in a big way. My sister runs, and my mother and father tell me to calm down. I’ve terrified more than one potential suitor in my 39 years. But Julie isn’t like that. She takes it all in, without flinching.

I couldn’t be more proud of Julie for daring to have children later in life. Her pregnancies weren’t easy, but she took it in stride. Her kids, though, are perfect in every way. They are wonderful and smart, and they bring out the very best in their mother. I’ve never seen Julie feel so loved, and love so much in return. I’ve never seen from her the level of patience she exhibits when her children cry or whine, or when Mikey, her oldest misbehaves. He’s two now, and the thing I love to hear more than anything is his little voice saying my name. I’ve never felt so much affection for a friend’s children as I do now. I love that her heart is so full, and that every time she hugs them her face softens a little.

the glorification of a job well done.

Well, sometimes mistakes repeat themselves. As in, think for a while, have an idea, pursue idea, and reap the wrath of presenting said idea. I don't think this is how it's supposed to work. I guess I've never had to explain in quite so much minutia what it means to feel creative. There...I said it. I don't think creative. I feel it. In my gut, like I need it to survive. 

The same as I require food, a roof over my head that doesn't subject me or my loved ones to negativity and strife, and therefore a job. School is something I do on the side, because again I need to learn. I need to feel what it's like to learn from people who have been there, on the other side. I have some respect for my professors. Lifelong learning is for me. Lifelong schooling, probably not. But at this stage, continued education will help me in my job, and as I'm learning, in my life's work. It's taught me that I know very little, and yet I've learned so very much. It's a conundrum of sorts, as I think for me, recognizing my weaknesses helps me locate my strengths. And this leads to a whole lot of self-doubt, which can be crippling. But only if I let it. 

I can say I'm wise, but this doesn't make it so. Not even if I say it one hundred more times. Wisdom, I think is something we obtain quietly, without much fuss. It typically comes on gracefully, but often enough it arrives painfully followed by a sort of sadness. Sadness that it took you so long to figure it out, sadness that the time in your life that was easy going and breezy has passed--even sadness that you don't even see it coming. It just eases its way into your bones; into the farthest reaches of your heart. It's acceptance and it is all of the things you've ever fought. Win or lose. 

It may be easier to judge another person's plight. This kettle's been called out too many times not to recognize that it's easy to hate what you can't understand. Most of the time we spend looking at someone else and judging is simply a way to avoid introspection. I know this because I do it more regularly than I'd like. It's this fault in my process that makes me the most unhappy with myself. What I've learned to do is turn it around as often as I can and look at what I can do to make me the person I know I can be. As in the best version of me that I'm capable of becoming at the time. Because I can't "fix" someone else. 

That's not to say I'm broken. Just bruised and tired. Still--a little self-awareness goes a long way.