Twelve Years, Give or Take.

Twelve years ago or so, I winked at a guy on Match.com. Sure, winking's kind of a wimpy way of getting a guy's attention. But for me, I was practically throwing myself at him. I'm subtle that way. My flirting capabilities have barely evolved from running up and punching the boys I liked on the playground.

Despite the fact that I had no photo on my profile (amateur), this incredibly dashing and intelligent lawyer responded to me. He said it was my wit that attracted him. I had written a rather insane profile, in which I listed all my likes in dislikes in the most absurd fashion.

"You're a smart ass," he wrote. "I like that."

He also added that he shared my various likes and dislikes, including a seething distrust of old ladies.

"In fact," he wrote. "I just splayed an old blue hair across the sidewalk this morning on my way into the office."

The man called me a smart ass in his opening remarks and then used the word "splayed." I think we can all agree I was pretty much toast.

We crashed into each other for a year and a half. Our relationship was intense and joyous. I don't think either one of us had experienced that kind of connection. Over-the-top. Hilarious. Adventurous. Easy. And oh-so-very chatty. Sitting with Fred was like sitting with my long-lost best friend. We talked for hours over dinner. For hours late into the night and early morning, our legs tangled together, with me pounding my fist into the mattress from laughing so hard. Ridiculous and passionate and somehow we each felt we'd met our match.

Until we broke up.

*Record scratch*

I know. That's not how this story was supposed to go. What can I tell you other than when we first met, we were both fresh out of relationships that had left us reeling? Our lives were complicated and we were still disentangling ourselves from the wreckage. It's not an unfamiliar story and it's often the story of the rebound relationship.

But this didn't feel like a rebound.

"Sometimes the best love stories don't have happy endings," my sister told me. And it rang true. It continued to ring in my ears for almost a year while we were apart. Until I decided to get him back, of course.

So I chased after that boy and punched him in the arm again.

Wouldn't you know, the sucker came back.

We're coming up on the twelfth anniversary of meeting each other. If you want to get complicated, you can't really say it's our twelfth anniversary because there's that whole ten months where we both dated other people.

*Awkward*

But twelve years ago, I winked at a guy on Match.com and he was funny and lovely and he set my world back to shining again. I felt smart and witty and wonderful and strong. He propped me back up, put a spit shine on me, and set me back out into the world. Not quite a new woman, but back to the woman I was before a bad relationship had stripped me down to nothing.

And isn't that something?



Happy Not-Anniversary, Fred. I love you a lot.

I Ain't Done Yet.

The manuscript in its present, unfinished state. 

Still working on my memoir. Still working on the edits and revisions. It was one thing to write the damn thing, to steep myself in pain so black and thick I never thought I'd get out of it the first time around, let alone willingly revisit it. Sticky tar memories clasp at my ankles and feet, sink me to my knees and pull me down, down, down.

What madness drives me to put any of this down?

What madness is this?

I've reworked and plumbed these memories for so long and so deep there shouldn't be any pain left. Saw my first therapist at 14, and at 45 I'm still tilling those fields. Fields that should be barren and dry by now, but heartbreak blooms anew like the most stubborn weed. Leave one bit of root and it starts to spread and grow again.

People tell me to let it go. People tell me not to live in the past. What's a memoir but living in the past? Re-submerging. Putting on that child skin. Looking through those child eyes. 

What madness is this?

Maybe if I tell it once and tell it right, it'll all be right. I'll make it right. Fix it. Exhume it. Exorcize it. But first I've gotta get inside and understand it. Relive it. Saturate myself in it. Baptize myself in it. Put it back on this one last time (I swear to god) and cast it out into the atmosphere. Let the gods and devils take it up from there. I don't want this to be mine anymore.

But it's not your place to tell me when I'm done.

I ain't done yet.

Not the manuscript and not the pain. I ain't done yet. I ain't done yet and you don't get a say. None of you. Not one. Not you who left me. Left me to deal with the mess you left behind. Not you who drank yourself into oblivion and left me to fend for myself in a house filled with trash. Not you who tied me to a chair and left me there to call for help that never came. Not you who held me down and took something from me that was not given. Not you who looked in my eyes and lied and called me crazy. None of you. Not you.

I ain't done yet.

It's so hard for me to access any of this pain. Most of the time I run on neutral if not apathetic. I can't cry in therapy. I analyze and shrug my shoulders. But my hands tremble at night.

If I'm angry, I get to be.

If my anger took 40 years to rise to the surface, you don't get a say.

That's right.

I ain't done yet.

This memoir is going to take as long as it takes. This anger is going to take as long as it takes. This pain is going to rebloom until I feel through the dirt and find each root and pick it out with my fingers. Fingers raw and bloody from digging. 

But I ain't done yet.

And you don't get to tell me when it's over. Because for me, it ain't over yet.

The First Week of New Year's Resolutions

Goodbye Alcohol, my old friend. 

I have been trying to come up with something to write about that isn't about a) writing b) dieting and/or c) not drinking. Those three subjects could get really boring for you to read over and over again.

But then my mind just draws a blank.

I got nothing! Nothing but nothing. I can write about the inability to write until my fingers bleed, which seems mildly ironic.

Nobody wants to hear how great I'm doing on my Pseudo Paleo diet. If you're on a diet, okay, maybe it would be interesting to you. But if you're not, you're just like, "OMG SHUT UP ALREADY." It's like exercise that way. Just ask a vegan or someone who does CrossFit* and you'll quickly wish you hadn't.

And nobody wants to hear about how I'm not drinking for the month of January over and over again, all month long. See CrossFit.*

I'm decidedly disappointed in myself that I have nothing else to talk about other than those three things. But the truth is, they're currently preoccupying me. They are major life changes and I'm really hyped about how well it's going so far.

Of course I haven't lost a single pound.

I did finally step on the scale on Friday morning after six days of dietary purity. I figured that would give me a little bit of a head start before I shocked myself with the reality of the number on the scale. Unfortunately six days wasn't enough and the number that confronted me was the highest number I've ever weighed in my entire life.

SIGH.

I'm going to blame the election. I've been comfort eating since November 8.

What are you gonna do? Just pick yourself up and eat another Brussels sprout, I suppose. I'm in this for the long haul, not the quick fix.

Oh look. Another salad. 

On the other hand, the not drinking thing is going really well. I'm always surprised by how easy it is to quit drinking. I like to have a glass of wine after work to take the edge off. To unwind. Calm down. Mellow into the evening hours. It's become such a habit, that the need to have a glass of wine felt like just that ... a need. That's why I like the idea of Dry January so much. It puts you back in touch with your relationship with alcohol.

As the child of an alcoholic, I like to quit drinking every so often just to remind myself that I can. It nags at me not unlike the way a cut or a canker sore in your mouth nags at you. You keep touching it with your tongue over and over again, thinking, "Yep, still there. Yep, still there. Yep, still there."

Every once in a while I like to quit drinking just to remind myself, "Yep, still not an alcoholic. Yep, still not an alcoholic." I don't think children of alcoholics can ever have a simple relationship with alcohol. Seems like lots of them either don't drink, are alcoholics themselves, or worry about it in the backs of their minds all the time.

I do believe some of us are wired to be alcoholics and others aren't. I mean, I should be an alcoholic. I've got half my DNA just begging me to drink myself into oblivion every night. And yet I'm able to drink a single glass of wine and call it a night. And here I am, 9 days into not drinking and pleasantly surprised once again by how easy it was to completely stop. I brew myself a cup of hot mint tea and I'm completely satisfied. I don't think it feels that way to an alcoholic.

Another benefit to not drinking (aside from rediscovering that I'm not an alcoholic), is that I have a lot more energy in the evenings. It's surprising how one glass of wine can slow you down enough to not want to fold laundry or edit manuscripts. Now I'm writing, editing and doing the laundry midweek.

Who am I?

ALL THE ENERGY!!!

I even worked out over the weekend. (Uh oh, we're getting into CrossFit* territory again...) I tried a new circuit training class with my niece on Saturday and then dragged her to a spinning class on Sunday.

Welcome to the gun show, motherfuckers.

ALL THE EXERCISE!!!

Maybe the endorphins are like a drug? Maybe once you start working out all the time it's like you've joined a cult. You feel so amazing! You feel so alive! You want everyone to feel so awesomely fit and energetic and alive so you tell everyone about it and try to talk them into it too!

Then next thing you know, people are avoiding you on Facebook and in public.

"Oh Jesus," they say. "Ever since she joined CrossFit* it's all she talks about."

P.S. I'm not doing CrossFit*. I think I'm more in danger of becoming addicted to it rather than the alcohol. So you're safe for now.

*NOTE: Pronunciation of CrossFit—Every time I say or think the word "CrossFit," I say it like they do on the radio show Dave and Chuck The Freak. You have to bug your eyes out and drag it out into almost a scream-whisper, "CROSSSSSSSSFIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!"

Writing Is Contagious. Like An Infectious Disease From Which You Will Never Recover.

My six year old is proud of her writing. So innocent! So naive!

My friend John is blogging now. He's been blogging every day. And each time I read his short quips, it makes me want to write in my blog. But then I have nothing focused to say and I don't really write "short" anything. I back my way into stories, books and blogs and it takes a bit of meandering before I find my way.

Perfectionism is hurting my ability to write. If I don't have something profound and tidy to say here, I don't say anything.

If I can't make each chapter of the memoir I wrote perfect, I don't edit. I have a completed memoir. A 300-page finished book that just needs me to make some minor tweaks and edits. But right now every time I open that giant file, I feel exhausted and weighed down by all of the ways it's not perfect.

I submitted a short short story to a number of literary journals recently. And I also submitted a longer nonfiction piece (one of the chapters from my memoir) to some as well. Overall, I submitted to about 30 journals. I've gotten about three or four rejections so far. One rejection wasn't "quite" a total rejection. They offered to publish my story if I changed the ending.

But I don't want to change the ending.

The ending is the one thing that's perfect.

Unlike everything else I'm not writing and not editing and not doing.

I had a point with all of this but I can't quite find it. Everything related to writing feels oppressive and heavy. Each rejection pulls me a bit deeper. I try to laugh it off, but it doesn't feel good. Maybe I'm not editing my manuscript because I fear rejection? If I never finish the edits, the memoir can never be rejected.

And if I never write in this blog, I'll never have to be rejected here either. No comments? No problem! No likes, who cares!

Why do we write anyway? Is it navel gazing and egocentric? Is it to connect to others? I suppose if it were the former, the lack of comments or likes wouldn't matter. If it's the latter, the inability to publish or to have a conversation about it, that would feel like failure. But still the ego's in there, I'm sure.

LIKE ME LIKE ME LIKE ME!

Is everything about a fear of rejection or failure? Is that why we fall off the wagon? Cheat on our diets? Don't exercise? Don't do our homework? Procrastinate at work? I feel like there's some wisdom at my fingertips, but it eludes me.

It's probably something quippy like, "What would you do if you couldn't fail?"

Maybe I'd write a self-help book. Maybe I'd go on the motivational speaker circuit. Or maybe I'd just sit here writing shitty blogs and collecting rejection letters like lost loves and missed opportunities.

Okay. Time to rethink that motivational speaker career.

Slices of Happiness and Non-Attachment

Last week I read about the concept of "Slices of Joy" by the former Happiness Ambassador at Google, Chade-Meng Tan. I also went to temple on Sunday, where the guiding teacher explained the concept of "Detachment," which always seems to be problematic for people. What could these two things have to do with each other, you ask? Lots.

I like the concept of "Slices of Joy." Tan, a former mindfulness instructor at Google, teaches us that our attachment to our own thoughts and slights keep us from noticing all of the "Slices of Joy" that the world offers to us. A golden burst of color on the fall trees. A sudden text from an old friend. A moment of sheer delight on our children's faces. All of these moments can be missed if we're too wrapped up in our own thoughts.

On Sunday the guiding teacher of my temple, Koho, spoke about the Buddhist concept of Detachment or Non-Attachment. This almost always freaks people out. They think it means Buddhism makes you not give a damn about anyone or anything. As though transcending into some unfeeling, unruffled saint is the whole object. Which it's not.

The concept of Non-Attachment is the concept of not attaching ourselves to the stuff that's not important. The stuff that robs us of our happiness. If we were to live fully present in each moment, we would find bliss. It is bliss to breathe in and out. It is bliss to feel a breeze flowing carelessly across your cheek. It is bliss to watch children laughing in the park. And bliss to see the sun play across the grass and light each blade with fire.

But alas, we let all those thousands of moments slip by as though they were nothing. Instead, we spend the majority of our time lost in thought. Thoughts about other people. What they said or did. Thoughts about what we said or did. Thoughts about what we might say or do. Things we might have done wrong in the past or may do in the future. Money we might save or spend. Chores we might get done. Chores we might blow off. Micro aggressions hurled at us from other drivers on the road or from our spouses. Children. Friends. Family. Such a litany of suffering. Such a litany of irritation.

If you attach yourself to all that, you're missing out on all the slices of joy.

Not big joy.

Not overwhelming euphoria.

The majority of life does not offer us that.

What it does offer us is tiny moments of happiness. Tiny pleasures. Pay attention. Seek them out. Smile. Recognize them. For they slip past so quickly, it will be as though they never happened.

But if you pay attention, my god. You may suddenly realize that your life is chock full.