Be in a Love Period Right Now

Another old blog from MySpace.  Written for a bosom friend, but hopefully it will speak to someone out there who needs to hear it now...

Recently, someone near and dear to me had a douchbag break up with her, telling her that he was in his "selfish period" and maybe in a few years, he'd be in his "relationship period'.

Like this guy's Picasso or something with all of these "periods" of life.

I digress

Years ago ago I attended a benefit dinner for Gilda's Club of West Michigan.  They had cancer survivors and family members present talking about how Gilda's Club provided them with a safe haven during their battles with cancer.  I will never forget one speaker in particular.  She was probably in her 60's.  She had beaten cancer--in her second remission.  She was a frequent visitor to the Gilda's Club along with her husband Art.  Art sat onstage beside his wife, wearing a red button up shirt, in a proud display of Gilda's signature color.  In a soft but cracking voice he explained how the classes he attended at the Club helped him be a better husband to his wife.  While he might never know what it was like to battle cancer, he did everything in his power to be by her side and give her the kind of support and love that helped get her through.  He sat up onstage beaming looking at his wife.

So listen up all my single friends out there...

Never settle for less than Art.  He exists.  She exists in female form.  Art's are all over the place, but most of the time we're too proud to give them our attention.  We're too oblivious to their shy smiles and their soft but cracking voices.  Like moths attracted to an out of control forest fire, we suffer for love, we fly into the fire because love is supposed to hurt right?  It's supposed to be some crazy roller coaster right?  Surely love can't be this old man sitting up on that stage in his best red shirt.  And why do we dismiss the Arts of the world?  Because it just seems too easy.  Love that comes that easy just doesn't make sense to our jaded hearts.com.  We have to work and sweat and toil for love right?  How wrong we are to think that.  How wrong I was to think that for so long.

Do you really want to create children with someone who could ever utter the words, "I'm in a selfish period right now".  I sure fucking don't.

Do yourselves and your future offspring a favor.  The next time you want to pick up the phone and call that ex-asshole whoever he/she is--think about your future children or your future spouse or your future lovers (the good ones) or your future goldfish and don't pick up the phone.  Vow to them that you won't waste a second more in your pursuit to find out who they are by wasting time on the past.

And always remember Art.  Don't be too quick to think that love = work.  Love = maintenance and care to be sure, but it's not work for me.  Coming home to my husbandand having him kiss the top of my head and ask how my day was isn't work.  Will I feel this way when I'm 60?  I sure hope so.  I found my "Art".  Reformed drama queens of the world unite!  

Cheers and best wishes as you find yours!

Halfway between 15 and 45

One day you wake up and you're 30 and reality comes flooding in from nowhere.

And I mean--nowhere.

You have mortgage payments and insurance bills and a 401K with a company match.  Will your tires make it through the winter?  You work in a cubicle; you have a corporate American Express card with no limit. You have a Masters degree which means that people expect you to be a Master of something.  Are you getting enough calcium?  What is enough calcium exactly?  In 5 years and 4 months you will be 35.  The age when childbearing becomes riskier.  In 15 years and 4 months you will be 45.  15 years ago you were 15 and the thing that concerned you more than anything was whether or not the boy who sits next to you in math class had any interest in you beyond your understanding of the term "as the crow flies" as it relates to elementary geometry.  You wonder what happened to him.  He used to wear a red Champion sweatshirt and a tiny diamond stud earring in whichever ear meant you weren't gay.  You are halfway between 15 and 45.  Halfway between "will these awkward years never end" and "holy shit, where did all of these fine lines around my eyes come from?"

Halfway in between 15 and 45 is a strange place to be.  In the airport of your life you stopped walking on the solid marble tile and hopped onto the moving sidewalks.  Why is everything going so fast?

So you put in REM Automatic for the People which you owned on tape when you were 15.  You listen to the words for the hundredth time but also the first time.  You remember sitting by the window of your house on Mayapple Lane in the beginning of October when you first heard it all the way through.  Those dinky little poplar trees were sprouting orange leaves in the same way you, at 30, are now noticing those sneaky little lines around your eyes when you're tired.  You skip through track 4, "Everybody Hurts".  When you're halfway between 15 and 45, life has taught you plenty that everybody hurts sometimes and you don't need Michael Stipe to remind you anymore.  Eventually you land on track 11, "Nightswimming" which was always your favorite. 

The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago, turned around backwards so the windshield shows, every street light reveals the picture in reverse, still it's so much clearer...

When you were 15 you liked that lyric because you always said when you have a car someday, you'll put pictures on your dashboard.  When you're halfway between 15 and 45 the lyric means something so much more.  You begin to picture memories as that car driving under a million streetlights reflecting what once was.  But everything is in reverse, you're looking backwards.  At 30, the world is pushing and pulling you forward, always forward.  All of those questions that came flooding earlier are keeping you from remembering what was important~poplar trees and dual cassette decks and early autumn.  At 15, it was fine that winter was on the way, you didn't have tires to worry about surviving on the icy streets of Ivywood Estates.

The last song on the CD is "Find the River", which was one you always skipped...

Me, my thoughts are flower strewn, ocean storm, bayberry moon.  I have got to leave to find my way, watch the road and memorize this life that pass before my eyes...

Halfway between 15 and 45, life does seem to pass before your eyes.  It's never that way when you’re 15, life crawls at a snail's pace.  How things have changed.

There’s no one left to take the lead, but I tell you and you can see, we’re closer now than light years to go.  Pick up here and chase the ride, the river empties to the tide...

And when Michael Stipe sings those words you believe it and you know it's true.  At 30, there's no one left to take the lead, it's up to you little fish.  So stay in the pond or ride the river to the tide. 

As the last track comes to an end, your brain tries to wrap itself around all the memories and questions that it’s been attempting to process this evening, so you decide to throw it out to the universe for awhile.

Sometimes it’s not about staying in the pond or riding the river.  Sometimes it’s just about floating for awhile to enjoy the moon.

I'm "in" it

I have been going through my old MySpace blogs and found some that I really liked.  Sort of like my mid-twenties diary.  Here's one I wrote shortly after Trevor and I started dating.  I remember very vividly writing it...


I got an call from an old boyfriend the other day and he asked me if I was "in" a relationship right now and if I was "in" love. Don't you think it's kind of funny that we use the term "in" when talking about love? For any of us to be "in" something implies that it's bigger than ourselves--unless we're in a Lycra bodysuit, I suppose love can be that constricting sometimes. We even say that we have fallen "out" of love with people when it's over. So I started thinking of things you can be "in":
You can be in…
Despair
Denial
Charge
Awe
Trouble
Agreement
Need
Control
Pain
Love
Are all of these things as big as love when we're "in" them? And do we "fall" into these things like we "fall" in or out of love? To me, in order to say that I am "in" something, I need to come to the hard realization that it is bigger than myself and that as in charge as I want to be, there is usually little to no control. The fact is, we can't control our feelings, only our actions, but the tricky part is that our feelings usually dictate our actions.
So am I "in" something right now-yes. What I'm in feels like your favorite sweater that you take out of the closet around the end of October. It's the right combination of roomy and snug. You feel that you have some breathing room, but in just the right places you feel warm and tucked in. If the sweater is too big you just don't feel the same kind of warmth and if it's too snug you become like that kid on a Christmas Story who can't move his arms. Yes, roomy and snug are things I like to be in. So to answer his question--yes and yes. Funny, it's getting to be around the end of October now...sweater season.

Busby Berkeley & the Art of Living

Wanna hear something comforting?  Life is just like a Busby Berkeley dance routine.  If you are at all familiar with his work, he choreographed elaborate dance numbers that from the ground look incredibly chaotic and frenzied.  It was only when the camera shot from a bird's eye view that we saw that the entire dance was perfect and that each person was moving in harmony with the next.  Life is like that sometimes.  Down here on the ground we can't always see the big picture, but suddenly when we step out of the mess and get a different perspective, it all becomes beautiful.  Thank my mom for this one, that's why she's my hero...

Of Sickness and Shel Silverstein

Nancy, Nancy laid in bed
Aching, pounding was her head
Kleenex, Kleenex everywhere
Fussed up sheets and mussed up hair
Missing work just isn't that neat
When you're so tired and feel so beat
I have the flu and the flu has me
I hate the flu but the flu loves me
Good bye fun and hello tea.
Days are better if you can write
A Shel Silverstein poem about your life.