Day 29 – All my friends are imaginary

Who is your closest or most special friend that you’ve never met and what do they mean to you? How did you cross paths? Talk about how you “met” them: Facebook, Twitter, an online support group, etc.

Well isn’t that a pip? It took me a while on this one. Is it a typo? Is it my best friend or is this a build-a-best-friend workshop where I can stuff him with rainbow fluff, hug him and squeeze him and name him George? Given how “Met” is in quotations I’m guessing I can make up anyone I please. Do I wanna be besties with the Joker? Sheldon Cooper? Emily Bronte? Did I meet them in a bar, at Gotham’s diviest bar? At a physics symposium or run across Wolverine while renting a horror flick at Blockbuster? The mind reels with possibilities.

I’ve decided to do a bit of a split between the two on this occasion. Actually, it’s a stretch but go with me on this one and then see if it works for you.

I met her on a cold night in the dark back alley of one of my stories. She’s always there, lurking behind the sharp German expressionist corners of the more dramatic passages. She’s a hard one to pin down and I’m not sure I actually have yet. I only get snippets through the fog banks but what I see of her is both aloof from the world and longing for it at the same time. She has the loneliness of an outsider forever watching through the windows into the happier stories in this world. She comes to see me when I’m at my breaking point. offering me her companionship when there is no other and reassuring me when I need a reflective opinion. Sometimes she’s unruly and says horrible things. She says things I would never let anyone else get away with but she’s just trying to protect me. She wants me to remember danger and to tread lightly which I’m grateful for but sometimes I’d like her to shut up about it already.

She is beautiful but doesn’t know it. She’s talented at a number of things but denies it. On occasion though, she shows me that I can do what she cannot. She roots me forward and energizes my dreams. She’s there when I need to vent frustration. She’s there to cry with. She’s there when I’m angry and need a voice. She’s everything to me and all at once nothing to me. I try to get past her and then try to find her. She’s the only one who will walk with me until the end and I need to cherish her more, compliment her more, giver her more time and affection. She deserves my love as much as everyone else in my life and more. She deserves recognition and remembrance. She may be flawed, but she’s the only one I’ve got to keep me company when I’m alone.

What is that song? I’ve been to Paradise but I’ve never been to me? Horrible song, agreed, but there is a point in there somewhere. If I need to make up an imaginary friend, I may as well get to know the little me that’s in there that goes ignored and chastised most of the time. Not a horrible idea I think. Sure I’d rather hang with Wolverine eating popcorn, but maybe I’m not such bad company in the long run.

Day 28 – To Boldly Go

Describe a moment when you made a big, bold move. In any area of life: Career, Love, etc. A few years ago, well now, several years ago I was in a rotten position. I’d been left alone with a child to raise, recently lost my job, and found myself without a place to live. It was a rough time to be sure. I was riding a long streak of low spirits and lower hope. I had spent a good year applying for jobs and while I had interviews, I was always left the bridesmaid hoping to catch the bouquet when the final decisions came down. It was frustrating.

I’d come from doing trade show graphics work and in relocating to a new county to stay with family, found all of those prospects nearly dried up. I applied everywhere I could. I tried for assistant positions, clerical positions, anything I could find. I had a son to raise after all. I interviewed at a few sign shops and decided to go for broke and try random things that always interested me. I had two interviews in the same week which I sort of phoned in by that point and gave up the results to fate. I ended up with two job offers on the same day. There was a world of difference between the two careers. I had a decision to make.

The first position was with a graphics supply company. I was familiar with the products and the place was nice and small. I would work with two other women taking orders and talking about graphics products. It was something I could do and the pay, though half of what I was used to making in my graphics shop, was enough to get things started on the right track. On the other hand, I had a random interview with a mortuary, which I had no previous experience with, but which I’d been drawn to for ages. I managed somehow to get that job at the same pay rate as the other. There were no clear incentives either way.

I don’t know what got into me. My sensible self told me to go with graphics. It was safe. I had experience. I could parlay that into maybe a similar position to my old job which was way more creative. There was something eating at me though. If I never went with my other interest, I would never know what it was like or of I could do it. I read somewhere that when faced with two possibilities, you should always take the bolder path.

So I did.

The next day after I’d turned down the job at the graphics company, the president of the company called me to ask me personally to reconsider. I remember telling him that I felt the need to go down a new road. I’ll never forget his stunned silence when he asked me what type of work I chose to do. Since then, everyone else has told me how perfect I am for the work I do, which I’m both flattered by and a bit taken aback by. I just know it would have eaten at me, taking the safe road.

I should really take my advice now since it feels like another one of those crossroads moments. Hopefully I’ll have a clear sign and something I love to move on to. In the meantime I’m quite fine being the quiet mortuary girl with the calming voice. If people only knew!

Day 27 – I Heart…

Talk about something that you really, really, really love about yourself.  I hate having to come up with positive things about myself. It’s so uncomfortable, probably because we’re so conditioned to see flaws all the time in ourselves and others. Usually those negatives are physical and I’ve yet to find something about my body I love, except maybe the fact that my eyes can look pretty cool if I wear the right colors. OK, my legs are pretty fabulous, but that’s not the kind of answer I need.

It’s taken a few laps around the building to get my ideas going but I actually came up with more than one. I like my loyalty and my unique aesthetic, my dry humor and my patience. I really like my resilience and my strength which I have depended on a lot lately. Since the question asks what I really, really, really love, I’d better get out of “like-land”. That was a lot of “really”s. I suppose that means I should gather up all of my valley girl enthusiasm and like totally really think about this one.

Self love is something that just keeps coming up to slap me in the face. It’s the one thing I always try to avoid working on and I’m not sure why. Again, discomfort. Have you ever done those exercises where you have to look in the mirror and profess your love to yourself out loud? Well, I always feel weird doing that. I can come up with a thousand flaws in about a millisecond. It takes a lot more effort to flip the coin and that’s a clear sign that I need to take steps to answer this question seriously. In fact, maybe I should make myself answer this question every day and every day require a different answer. Good idea, Renee. Thank You. High Five!

I suppose I like my conversations with myself too which leads me to thinking about the fact that there really is something about myself that I really appreciate and yes, even love. I love my imagination. I love that I can close my eyes and be in a different world where I can make up people, things and circumstances and have them feel real. I love that I can escape into my mind to get away from the million mundane and awful things that can happen on any given day. I love that it’s so vivid and I love the fact that it’s all mine when I want it to be. I love turning tiny images into stories. I love my characters and their style. I love the surprises and the strong plot twists I didn’t see coming. I love that there are no limits and that I can change things whenever I feel a change in myself. I love that I can work things out that way, through images and other people’s stories. I love the cleanliness of it. It’s the sweetest gift I have been blessed with and that maybe I can share.

It has its dark side and it can definitely drive me crazy leading me down dark paths of thought. I definitely can spend too much time there. I can definitely over think things that are probably figments of it. Even with the drawbacks, though, I think I prize it above all other parts of myself.  It doesn’t take crunches at the gym or endless therapy or self-help books to maintain. It just requires that I keep using it which I hope I can until the end of my days. I still sort of wish I had been able to say I really love my butt in these jeans but I can just pretend that too…

Day 26 – Misty

Name a song that makes you cry every time you hear it and why? Ok, the title is a fake out. I actually can’t stand Misty as a song, maybe because I equate it with knife wielding crazy girlfriends and Clint Eastwood. Neither of those things make me tear up on a regular basis unless it involves talking to empty chairs.

I’ve had several songs over the years turn me into a mush pile. As I’ve said before, I’m sentimental and tear up at the drop of a hat, but there’s one that never fails to turn me into a mess. My grandmother loved Nat King Cole. She used to listen to him every holiday season and sometimes in between. Hearing him sing usually brings back memories of her in our old house while I was growing up and sends me to missing her. The one particular song that gets me though, and it can only be sung by him, is Stardust.

I don’t know what it is. It feels like the saddest song that ever was. It’s romantic and tragic and beautiful, but if I listen to it in the car I have to pull over. If it comes on in the market, I stop dead with the shopping cart in the middle of the aisle. There’s a forlorn quality to his voice and to the arrangement that, despite hearing it more times than can be counted, still brings on instant melancholy. Perhaps it’s the feeling of loss that’s so pervasive, of love,  of someone I miss, of happiness long gone.

I’ve gone and put it on and sure enough, the tears are welling up. It’s a gorgeous song and an unforgettable one for the memories it brings.

Day 23 – Smile and Nod

Talk about a moment when you got annoyed with a married friend, a person in a relationship, or a person with kids (Be honest! No judgment!).

To be honest, I don’t get annoyed much anymore. For the longest time just the sight of a happy couple or the mention of someone’s boyfriend in a conversation would send my eye to twitching. Over the past months as I’ve realized that I can really be happy alone, it doesn’t phase me much anymore. I’ve actually caught myself watching My Fair Wedding a few times with no negative effects. Progress I think. There was, however, one recent time when the whole subject irked me. Getting advice on ending your single life from a happy couple is always so much fun, isn’t it?

It was a random weekend and my relatives were going on about a trip they were taking and one of them seemed less enthused about it. I asked him why he agreed to go since it wasn’t his thing at all. Well, it it became a big discussion about how relationships were a compromise and how I’d never get everything I wanted, that I should be less picky. At that point it was brought up that I should try this new online dating site. When I pointed out that I didn’t subscribe to the religion it was based around, I actually heard these words of advice,  “Who cares? You can fake it. You’re getting older and you need a man around the house.”

So the happy couple was giving me the message that faking my most deeply held beliefs was better than being alone. Somehow neither of them batted a lash at this. It made me wonder just how fake their relationship was, how much each of them was lying to the other, and if either of them realized that implication for themselves when they’d said it. According to that advice, being dishonest about myself was preferable.  Somehow being in a relationship is supposed to trump being true to myself because, you know, compromise. At that point it was more stories about how each of them did things for the other that they didn’t enjoy because you have to.  Compromise is all well and good, and it’s not that I’m incapable of it, but I’d much rather be alone and real than fake and in a relationship that won’t last the second a little tremor reveals it’s shaky foundation.

I’m over hearing about it. I’m over couples’ advice, I just smile and nod and wait for them to stop. That was the last time I got the eye twitch and the last time I argued on the point. I’ve decided no matter what the examples are in front of me, I’m going to follow my heart on this one. What the heck is the point of a relationship if you’re not allowed to be yourself? Now that I think about it, I wonder if that present they got me was really from where they said it was from…hmmm.

Day 22 – Sweet Villainy

What fictional character in a movie, tv show, or book do you identify with and why? On to a juicy one. As every one of my friends knows, I have always had a thing for the villains.  It seems odd, I know, to go straight to baddies when asked who you identify with, but there really is a good reason, besides I never think of villains as bad per se. A villain is simply someone who’s had their happy ending taken away, and who grows increasingly desperate in their means to reacquire it. We all want the hero to win to make the world better but we rarely identify with him. Everyone loves a good villain because they’ve been damaged, hurt, and forever changed by it. Everyone can relate to someone else’s pain, can’t they?

As usual, I’m torn between two answers. The first is Queen Regina from Once Upon a Time, aka the Evil Queen. Since my son started calling me Regina, and my ex-husband jumped on that bandwagon, I’ve been paying attention to her story. She’s lonely, wounded and trying so hard to be better for her son. That does strike a chord, plus she can actually shoot fireballs from her hands and keeps boxes of hearts, who wouldn’t love that? Ok, maybe it’s only me… Something about getting older as a woman also makes that character resonate in the classical Snow White sense and really, I wouldn’t mind keeping specimen hearts in jars somewhere. Yes, I do watch Oddities now that you ask.

However, like Highlander, there can be only one and the character closest to my heart (was that a bad pun?) has to be my beloved Captain Hook. In this case, it is NOT the Once Upon a Time version, nor the Disney. Everyone who knows me is familiar with my Hook obsession. I gave a good amount of my arm for a tattoo of him so that should say something. Given the way he’s usually portrayed, that may seem like a bizarre choice but when I read the original book to my son. I found a character I didn’t entirely recognize or expect. 

Firstly, I love his style. I grew up in a house that was all about the velvet drapes and gold scroll work. That ornate classical style reminds me of something I lost when I left my childhood home for my father’s more minimalist style. My place now, with a little more work, could be Hook’s captain’s quarters. If I could explain how much velvety drapery and gold is going on in my apartment, well, it would be obvious why I love the man’s extravagance.

Secondly, Hook has a temper to be sure, but he’s an extremely lonely character; brilliant and tormented by an immature boy who cares nothing about the damage he’s caused. He is most often described in the book as melancholy. He feels all alone, even around his crew because they don’t understand him. He talks to himself, deflated, because he’s so terribly alone. He’s been injured, lost something vital to him and is left to deal with the fallout. In that way, anyone who’s been left to pick up the pieces after being injured by someone indifferent to the injury they’ve caused can relate to him…you know like that guy who broke your heart and was out partying the next day and moved on like you never existed? You know how you were tempted to slash his tires and lay waste to his truck like Carrie Underwood sang about? You just wanted him to feel something like you felt, right? (Or kind of like how my husband left me alone with a kid to raise and flitted around like a demon sprite with no responsibilities…Yeah, like that) He simply wants recognition for his loss. Instead, he has his attacker flaunt his victory and freedom at every opportunity with no remorse and worse, a cocky pride. If you’ve ever tried to get someone who doesn’t care feel something for what he’s done to you, well, that’s all Hook is trying to do and as a reward, he’s portrayed as a villain for doing so. 

Lastly, he’s an example of duality. Here is a character who was well-educated, elegant, and well-spoken. He was an Etonian and a PIRATE! It doesn’t get more rebellious than that. In that way, he’s totally punk rock. I’ve never seen Hook as a villain. I see him as the book says, a not wholly un-heroic character who is tragic in his way. I can guarantee I’m the only one who can’t watch his demise without tears, especially with a pile of creep children cheering on the crocodile, but that’s alright with me. If no one else can relate, I have my lonesome companion in print and under my skin reminding me to let go and disengage, reminding me of what I can become if I don’t and where it leads. At the very least he reminds me that I really need some cooler coats.

Day 21 – Somebody Turn It

How would you pitch a reality show about yourself? To what network?

Well, if there was a network more boring than C-Span, I imagine that would be my target! There’s nothing particularly television worthy. There was already a television show about a funeral home, and the reality is far from Six Feet Under. Most of the time it’s too quiet to be interesting unless people want to watch me doing my chapel laps and talking to myself, which would be possibly worthy of an episode of the secret life of the stressed out single mother. I always manage to have some drama going on without trying.

Actually, if it’s about me I think I could fit something between My Strange Addiction and Honey Boo Boo on TLC. Between the struggles with anxiety and depression, the job, and the strange array of characters that wander in and out on a daily basis, I might qualify for a remake of One Day at a Time. All we need is a cheeky landlord and I’m all set. I’m sure there’s some way to make it all sound interesting. It actually can be, but not today. Today it would be something like…

See! The struggle of a single mother to get her hyperactive son to school on time when he can’t find his shoes…

See! Her try to cope with the unruly vacuum cleaner that keeps falling over before a service…

See! Her run like mad to get the phone just to find that it’s a telemarketer…

Will she sell a casket or an urn? Will she break down at the service? Will she lose her balance at the cemetery and fall in a bush? Will the priest be on time? Only one way to know! Drama like this has never been paralleled on the small screen!

Definitely the stuff of prime time…

Day 20 – Shock and Awe

Describe your most difficult breakup and what you learned from it.

This has been one I’ve avoided all day. It’s still painful to revisit even after all these years, probably because we remain in each others’ lives. We share a son, we are still friends, but the breakup itself was one of the most devastating times of my life. I’m referring here to the breakup of my marriage.

We were married five years when my husband decided to leave. We married way too young. He was 19, I was 23. We had such high hopes but as these things go, it was just too much too fast for him. I thought that everything was fine. He ended up telling me some ridiculous story to explain his decision which I tried so hard to believe because it was easier than seeing the truth. The weeks leading up to his leaving were the most painful of my life. It killed my heart in a way that I’ve never come back from. I helped him move out and cried every second of it. He finally walked away on the 4th of July, which is probably why to this day I can’t stand the holiday.

Shortly after he left, and he left as far as a person could leave, in the midst of my grief I began to get sick. I was crying all the time and couldn’t cope. I had my first serious panic attack symptoms during that time, but the nausea never quit. It wasn’t long before I realized that the man who just left was about to be a father and I had no way to tell him. It was the worst time of my life. I had done all of the divorce paperwork myself before I realized my condition. He wasn’t coming back. I was alone, pregnant and shortly to be jobless as well as our company was downsizing the department. My whole life fell apart in a few short months.

Since, of course, I managed to get in touch with my ex again.  He stayed in touch and checked on me, he was there when our son was born, he visits often still. We developed a friendship mainly because of my belief that the kid deserved parents that got along, not that hate each other. I had a lot to forgive, but my son was worth it. Still, things never felt truly over. Some days they still don’t. It took me years to get over this experience. I’m still smarting from some of the effects but I did learn a hell of a lot about myself.

One thing is that I’m stronger than I realized. We all are, every one of us. Yes, I have my anxiety and depression to contend with which adds some extra flavor to the struggle, but I managed to survive a devastating breakup and a solo pregnancy at the same time. I somehow picked myself up off the floor and rebuilt a life for my boy and I, one Lego at a time.

Another is that letting go is crucial. I can’t tell you how many years I spent waiting for him to come to his senses and come back, even after everything that happened. I stewed in my grief until I was so overcooked a cat wouldn’t touch me. If I had loved myself enough, I could have let go and moved on for me.

That last one is probably the most important. It just keeps coming up doesn’t it? Maybe I should listen! I’m still working on it. I didn’t like myself much. I didn’t treat myself well or with respect, so why on earth would anyone else? I was a squishy pink thing crying on the floor. With that departure my self-worth plummeted. I blamed myself, figured I wasn’t enough; that no one could ever love me. It’s easy to wallow and obsess in loneliness. I’ve learned, finally…finally how important it is to put yourself and your life goals first. I gave up so much of myself and stopped so much of what I loved in that relationship so in the end it was a good thing that it ended. It never feels like it at the time, but I had lost myself and if you lose you, you truly do lose everything.

Day 18- Dear Me, Love, Me

Today’s grand quest…If you could have a conversation with yourself in high school, what would you say?

Well, seeing as how I was a complete pain in the butt when I was a teenager, I probably wouldn’t listen to myself, leading to an epic slap fight which would probably bring an end to our whole timey-wimey, wibbly wobbly sort of universe. I was good like that. I was an ass. An overly dramatic ass at that. Come to think of it, I still am…

Firstly, after apologizing for giving myself the big red palm mark, I would probably gasp and face-palm myself mostly for the hair staring back at me. I would then tell myself the most important thing. It would take care of the bad hair, the bad habits, and the overt, pain-fueled drama, the people pleasing, all of it. I would tell myself that even though I didn’t have one secure place to be, that you can be your own secure place,.. To start inside first instead of looking outward for my self-worth. My dad never had anything good to say, things were unstable and scary. I felt less than all of the time and I wanted to escape. I know now that all of  my reactions to that were ok. It was ok to be scared. Who wouldn’t be? It was ok to be angry. It was ok to be me. I would have given myself a big hug and told  that younger me that no matter how bad her hair was, or what bad role models she currently had, that I loved her, and that would be the key to so many of life’s challenges.

Learning to find that small voice inside, that stable place would save her from trying to find it in lousy, untrustworthy friends, a bad marriage, kept her on track in school, given her courage to leave an unhealthy environment, and saved the world from a book full of really bad poetry. It would have saved her from the drinking and the smoking and the stupid, unhealthy eating of her feelings to fill that hole. It also would have saved her favorite frilly shirt from the torch while trying to write said bad poetry in candlelight. (Never mix ruffles, tears, and open flames kids!). Yes, I’m sure I used the word “plummeted” in there somewhere.

I would also beg myself to get counseling now so we wouldn’t have to go through it later. How much easier would it be to tackle those abandonment issues when they were fresh? Deal with my dad’s stuff and realize it wasn’t me? That no one’s behavior was me but them? Priceless. Save myself from years of spiraling anxiety, panic, and depression that really started then? It would have been a miracle if I had support back then in the midst of all the drama. It would have been life changing. It would have helped me stay my course and trust in myself enough; believe in myself enough to not give my goals up for the promise of a relationship or to please anyone else. I also wouldn’t have taken crap for my love of black.

The last thing, and it ties in as well, is to stop caring about other people’s opinions. Now, that’s not to discount criticism or disregard well-meant advice, no. If I had learned then not to value others’ opinions of me more than my own, I wouldn’t have tortured myself nearly as much as I have over the years. Kids tear themselves apart to fit in only to find later on that they’ve lost themselves and now have to rediscover what makes them unique to stand out. I made some bad decisions, and some horrible fashion choices, even for then, but to learn to be and stay authentically me no matter what the surrounding storm, that would be the main point; the only point. Love and love first from within. Be authentic. Don’t try to please everyone because you can’t. Then you can shine outwardly – even darkly. I would get that across no matter what… even if I had to say it over and over and over, with charades, photos, Pictionary, or even the odd slap fight, space-time continuum be damned.

Day 17 – Spiritual Evolution

Oh drat. I can’t put the little rainbow star in the title. That would have been rad…Just because in this case I think that the more you know, the better off you are.
I find it ironic that today’s subject is to discuss our spiritual beliefs and how they impact our relationships and/or relationship status…given that I’ve just spent two full hours sitting in a class discussing Jewish traditions with a bunch of people I didn’t know attempting to follow along. I don’t happen to be Jewish. I did it for the kid. My son has decided, for whatever reason, that he resonates with that tradition so I’m letting him explore that by going to the classes for a few weeks because I believe that inquiry is a good thing, especially in spiritual matters. In the meantime, while waiting for him, I sat in on the parents’ class. There’s a high learning curve with any religion you aren’t familiar with, but they all have wisdom to absorb and I came away with some good stuff. Mindfulness, a focus on thinking and observing your own behavior, respect, etc…

As far as my beliefs, that gets complicated. I’ve really dreaded this assignment because I don’t fall into a majority category which leaves me open to all forms of criticism, but I promised myself authenticity and I have to be intellectually and personally honest. I also came at this with the idea that I’d have to defend my point of view, but there really is no reason to spell it out. It is what it is as everyone else’s ideas are.  I’ve spent years trying to find answers to the big questions, reading, looking for evidence, looking for parallels, looking for anything that would lead me to a place of peace…in short, that same inquiry I’m encouraging the boy to pursue. What I found instead was a heck of a lot of arguments, people using their beliefs to feel better than, and ironically, not a whole lot in the way of kindness or peace.  In the end, if I have to label myself currently I’d go with Secular Humanist. I’m a person who requires evidence to back up large claims but as any evidence based human is bound to do, with new and changing proof, I change my mind. I am also of the mind that all religions point to the same thing and that we simply can’t at this stage, know what that thing is in a quantifiable way. I believe in equality, I believe in love. I believe in anything that brings people together in a positive way to make the world better.

I’m also open to mystery. I’m not foolish enough to claim I’m sure of anything or the lack thereof. It seems to me that a few hundred years ago people were pretty sure that the world was flat. Also, a few hundred years ago, people couldn’t imagine that there was an entire microscopic world of bacteria and viruses that was the main cause for their illnesses, so I’m sure that soon enough we’ll have whole new ways of viewing the world that are unimaginable to us now. I love to be surprised. I’d like to hope that there is more to us than this crude matter, as Yoda put it.  I won’t speculate or succumb to wishful thinking. I go where the evidence points but there is the chance that though we can’t prove something right now, evidence may come to light someday. I’m on the more open-minded side of agnosticism. It’s always the dreamers that make the discoveries anyway.

As to how this opinion affects my relationships or my relationship status, well, obviously I don’t have a spiritual gathering place in which to meet someone (unless I count the Jewish class – which could mean I’ll have a lot of studying to do!). There are no rational thinker dating sites that I know of… Maybe I could meet someone at a nice lecture at the Academy of Sciences. Most of the people I do meet have differing beliefs than I do and that does take some compromise or it can be a deal breaker for some. I suppose there’s always a challenge in finding someone with matching views to your own to begin with, no matter what they may be. D.G. and I have differing views, but I think (and I hope I’m right) that he respects my way of thinking and I duly consider his point of view as well. Some of my other friends more closely match me, some are the opposite. These things are always in flux and you never know what can happen to change a person’s ideas. As long as respect is present, which it should always be, there’s no reason to have issues.