Abby Rosmarin's Blog, page 12

Communion with God

The evolution of a belief system is a funny thing to watch.  For some, it shifts in details.  For others, it’s completely upended.  And who knows, really, what makes one person’s beliefs the way they are — or what makes one person’s convictions steadfast and, for another, a fluid concept.

I think about my early years.  Sunday mornings, the ritual of getting ready for church.  Jazz music playing from my dad’s truck and the smell of cold leather seats as we drove down the street.  Sunday best, with bows and ribbons, bells and whistles.  My little brother’s hair reluctantly combed to one side.  A gentle & tender father-figure of a minister, someone I’d eventually approach in tears during my teenage years when attempting to make sense of an unfathomable tragedy.  Being a Sunday School student before eventually becoming one of the teachers herself.  Prayers every single night, and that silent understanding of a force greater than myself.

Then I think about my college years.  About waking up one morning, sometime after my 20th birthday, and realizing that my belief system had fallen away from me.  Like it was something that had been dislodged from my pocket and dropped along the road, without my knowledge, and I only became aware of it when it was far too late to retrieve it.

The bewildering shock of believing in nothing.  Nada.  Nada y nada y pues nada.  Knowing it wasn’t as simple as retracing my steps, finding my trusted belief system under the shrubs or at the edge of a sidewalk.  Knowing it wasn’t ever going to be that simple ever again.

And then I think about the years that followed, how belief returned back in piecemeal format.  Slowly but surely, in its own time, on its own terms.  Like the prodigal son, only returning back now with souvenirs from his travels.  Bits and pieces gleaned and taken in to eventually make what now felt right in my heart look nothing like what I had when I was 6.

And then I finally think about the last year and a half.  I’ve been hinting for that last year and half just how much of a mess my life had become.  How much had unraveled and blown up.  How many certainties were stripped away, or dislodged & lost alongside the road, unaware that they were gone in the first place until it was far too late.  How sometimes it feels like I’m chained down to the past, with each individual fear of a different, potential future grabbing hold of a limb, slowly pulling me to shreds.

It would be easy to pin this unraveling on the passing of my father.  And I want to.  There’s a huge part of me that does.  The death of a parent is clean.  No one is going to argue the personal hell of a young woman who loses her dad.  Especially a young woman who had as complicated of a relationship with her father as I did.

But life is messy.  Undeniably messy.  And the reality is that his death is one piece in something that is far bigger, broader, and more complex — resulting in an exhausting set of crossroads.  A frightening level of uncertainty.  The fears and the chains and being pulled limb from limb.

And I think about what I did as things blew up and unraveled. Dropping tasks by the wayside as anxiety hit, just to go on a walk or dance to a song. Turning up the volume when the right song came on the radio and getting irretrievably lost in the lyrics. Finding a comedian or funny video and laughing just a little too hard & for a little too long.

I think about how I’d take in the present moment as a sharp and vivid tableau.  Moments when I’d look up to the moon and just stare until whatever ache or fear or anxiety or dread passed.  Moments when I took in a slow, deep, beautiful breath as if it were the only possession I had in the world.

And then I think about something Chuck Lorre — the creator of Big Bang Theory & practically every comedy ever on CBS — once wrote, about comedy and communion with God.  How, when we’re laughing, we have no choice but to be in the present moment.  You can’t truly laugh and scan through your to-do list. You can’t laugh and make note of what annoys you.  You can only laugh and be with what is making you laugh.  And how, through making people laugh, Lorre is helping people be closer to God.  Because, in short, what is God but the present moment.  Yahweh – “I Am”.

And I think about what my definition of God is these days.  The gentle and undeniable feeling that the unfathomably omnipresent & omniscient entity we understand as God comes into our lives through whatever avenues are going to work.  Through whatever forms and formats can meld in this corporeal, three-dimensional, time-as-a-linear-construct world.  The idea that we are spiritual beings bound by chemical makeup and societal limitations and psychological schemas and time.  The idea that it’s all predestined and planned and perfect in the grand scheme of it all and that there are few things that will guide a ship quite like those deep-seated beliefs.

The belief that the entity we call God transcends pronouns, definitions, labels, any earthly understanding.  The belief that God comes in mainstream religion, in New Age mumbo-jumbo, in quiet moments of reflection that make us go, “There’s a force higher than ourselves.”  That God comes in the form of doubt and scientific fact and the realization that we’ve been clinging to the wrong fairy tales.  That God comes in the form of that breath that is taken away when you’re at the base of a mountain, the edge of a waterfall, in the light of a full moon on a clear day.

The belief that God comes in the form of not believing in Him at all, and therefore believing that all we have is the here & now.  The belief that, even with arms filled with theological texts and a heart filled with ironclad beliefs, we feel closest to whatever it is we believe in when the rest of life is dropped and we’re in that present moment, the here & now.  That uncontrollable laughter.  That uncontrollable crying.  That moment when we take in that breath like it’s the only thing we have and temporarily sigh everything away.

And then I come back to me.  I think about those walks, those song lyrics, dancing in my kitchen until I bump into something, going on runs that force me to care about only this current step & nothing more.  Creating tableaus in lieu of an anxiety attack.  The moments I shift stress into a vivid accounting of what is around me.

These beautiful, precious, sometimes painful, present moments.

These beautiful, precious, sometimes painful, communions with God.

Yahweh.

Soham.

I am.

And then I think about what this means in my ever-evolving contact with this unfathomable entity.  What I sometimes call God, other times the Universe, other times no name at all.  I’ve long abandoned prayer as a way to communicate.  But in those high intensity moments, in those moments where all I want to do is get away or obliterate, what I do next is nothing more than an intricate and precious call to that higher up.

And it’s not a cry for help, or an angry decree.  It’s not me begging for things to change or for me to be able to predict the future, even though my ego is asking for both.

It just is.

As I am.

Who would’ve thought I would’ve evolved to this type of prayer.  That, through the trials and tribulations, I would not be escaping so much as I was entering.  A moment within the moment.  To laugh, to observe, to sink in.  A chance to be.

That, through experiencing my own hell on earth, I’d be closer to God than I ever had before.

You Gotta Smile

This was originally posted on my Facebook Page Abby Rose Yoga, which you should totally check out.  All long pieces of text are also posted on my yoga blog, which you can find here.  Best you be checking both out.  Just sayin’.

Let’s set the scene: Weekday afternoon. I’ve just rounded out my classes for the day, which always leaves me a little drained and a little energized — and A LOT emotionally raw (wahoo, yoga!). I’m in a long, long line at the post office, wanting to ship something out before I can finally call it a day and tend to the multitude of other things on my to-do list.

I’m not used to long lines anymore. Living in a small town with a small town USPS will spoil you rotten. I check my phone, space out, return an email via my phone, space out some more. I look at the pretty stamps and follow lines along the walls and space out again.

The line moves at a snail’s pace. For every person helped, two more join the line. Eventually I find myself at the front. At one register, a man is attempting to mail out 10 different packages — some domestic, some international. On the other register, a man is attempting a money order. The second register is losing its mind as it attempts to process the money order, jamming paper and giving weird messages on the screen. These are two patrons who waited in line forever like me, and are now waiting forever to just get the job done.

And as the second postal worker gets the manager about the jammed money order, I hear the first postal worker go, “Oh God, I just voided the whole thing.”

There’s an audible groan from the customer. There’s a wave of energy in the line that you can only feel when everyone gets exasperated at the very same time. The frazzled postal lady looks over at me, the next one in line.

And I’m smiling.

I’m not smiling in any sadistic, masochistic, or oblivious way. It’s the knowing smile of someone who gets it — who gets how wrong a day can go. I’m smiling to commiserate. I’m smiling to hopefully offset the wave of negative energy.

I’m smiling because sometimes you just have to smile.

I say, “You gotta laugh,” a lot. A *lot*. Because – even more so than yoga and tai chi and meditation – learning to just say, “You gotta laugh,” has done wonders for shifting me away from a ball of nerves who collapses in on herself when things go wrong. The person I used to be and have no intentions of ever going back to being.

So sometimes that means making a joke out of the situation. Sometimes that means laughing at how absurd it all is. And sometimes it means laughing because the alternative is crying.

And usually those laughs eventually ease out the tears that needed to happen in the first place.

In a similar vein: sometimes you gotta smile. Smile because someone is having a real shitty day and maybe that smile can tip the scales a bit. Smile because you gotta remind yourself of the good, the vibrant, the reasons TO smile.

Sometimes you gotta smile because the world seems stuck on the alternative: frown, complain. Groan audibly and make a show of how annoyed you are.

I eventually get the second postal worker. I’m overly sing-songy. And I know I’m toeing in on old habits: this overly-accommodating, whatever-it-takes-to-keep-the-peace behavior that has never really done me any favors other than delay whatever anger was gonna come my way anyway.

Again, echoes of a former version of me that I have no intention of ever returning to.

But I toe that line as I keep things light. Joke about my bulky package (and now, looking back, I realized I missed out on a TERRIBLE and yet HILARIOUS genitalia joke). I continue to smile.

“Just one of those days,” I remark. And maybe that’s what is needed right now more than smiles and jokes and overly-accommodating behavior: that neutral recognition that sometimes days suck.

Because they do sometimes. Some days are gonna be a wash. Some days, everything is going to go wrong. Some days are going to test you in a way that almost guarantees failure. Some days are gonna make you question everything, make you wonder if you actually got it in you to keep moving forward and not stall out.

And that’s when you gotta laugh. You gotta smile. You gotta recognize without judging and then smile/laugh for whatever reason you need to. If only because the alternative is unacceptable.

Tableaus: A Love Affair Between Anxiety and Beauty Told in 17 Snippets

Prologue: A Brief History in Anxiety

Redirect.

Redirect and direct it towards something that works in your favor.

Redirect and direct it towards something productive.

It’s the main fighting philosophy behind tai chi and aikido.  It’s the primary behavioral guidance philosophy in the early education world:

Don’t meet the obstacle head-on.  Don’t attempt to overpower it and bulldoze through.

Redirect.  Redirect what’s coming at you and see if you can – using its own forward momentum – steer it towards something that works in your favor.

I spent the last decade enmeshed in some version of that philosophy.  In some ways, I can’t believe it took me this long to use it towards something like fighting anxiety.

I know all the little tricks to stop or fight against a potential anxiety attack.  All the little breathing techniques, like I could literally blow away the encroaching storm.  The use of yoga and exercise and crafts and the great outdoors for taming the returning beast.

The tricks that always showed the most potential involved grounding in some way: label what you see, note what you hear, list off what you can touch, what you smell, what you can taste…  But in the end, I still see them as fights against an impending attack.  Sentries at the gate, attempting to ward off what’s coming with shields in hand, hoping the iron is strong enough.

The problem is, a coping device should not feel like a fighting off of what is encroaching.  To curb and stop and deal – it’s exhausting.  It’s unsustainable.  There’s a reason why boxing matches only go for twelve rounds, MMA for three.  There’s only so much fight you can offer before you simply want to tap.  Call in the ref.  Call it a day.

So, redirect.

Do not fight the oncoming energy.  Redirect it to your advantage.  Redirect it in ways that play off your strengths.

The same way it took a while to find the connection between philosophies, it took a while before I recognized the connection between these grounding techniques and the art world.

Label the things you see, the things you hear – categorize the world around you.  Illustrate a scene.  Make a snapshot.

In essence, create a tableau.

Redirect.  Redirect the grounding techniques away from sentries at the gate towards a portrait of scene and scenery.  Make it beautiful.  Stop treating it like a fight and start treating it like art. Let it just be – this awe-inspiring framework of the present moment, weightless and beautiful and surreal.  Let the weight of the past and the future slip away, even for just a moment.

Let it be.

Redirect.  Redirect what can be seen as suffering and make it art.  That’s been the philosophy behind all varieties of art since time immemorial.  The poets and the painters and the playwrights and the sculptors: take the dark and create a masterpiece from it.

Don’t fight the anxiety by attempting to find ground.  Make a tableau out of the grounding.

Redirect.

*

Tableau 1:

A gritty street.  Rain puddles.  The smell of last night’s storm and humidity.  On the top floor of an apartment building, a lady leans out onto the windowsill, speaking loudly and clearly in a language I don’t recognize.  It appears she’s speaking out to someone, but there’s no one else on the streets and there is no indication that she is even attempting to talk to me.

*

Tableau 2:

An autumn afternoon in New Hampshire.  Middle lane on a five-lane highway.  The windows are down.  The breeze is warm and interspersed with the car cabin air.  “Hotel California” on the radio at an uncomfortable decibel, the Eagles telling me, “we are all just prisoners here of our own device.”  A gust of wind is scattering leaves across the road, like confetti to celebrate the day.  I drive directly through it.  The leaves float up and away.

*

Tableau 3:

Yoga mat.  Yoga studio.  View of the ceiling.  I follow the texture, the lines, tracing my way over to the lights.  Fresh sunlight gently pouring in.

The feel of my mat, the way my back connects with the floor.  My breath.  I’m at the tale end of instructing a class.  My voice has been likened to a lullaby on multiple occasions, and today is no different.  I am soft and sing-songy as we wind down.

Some days my teaching schedule is tough, not because of the drain from darting around from studio to studio, but because yoga has a way of removing the surface level.  Whether I am the student or the teacher is irrelevant here.  Sometimes it’s surface level stress to reveal a more zen approach.  Sometimes it’s surface level calm to reveal something considerably darker.

The feel of my mat, the ground.  The sun shining.  The look of the ceiling.  Slow breath.  A feeling like I’m burning alive.

*

Tableau 4:

In the middle of my gym.  Cool textured mats beneath my feet.  A lingering chill in the air.  Outside, two men are sauntering across the street to the bar next door.  There’s an ache in my muscles and exhaustion in my body.  There’s ache and exhaustion on a considerably higher level that I dare not think about.

*

Tableau 5:

Starbucks just before noon.  The shoulder where my purse strap hangs is aching.  The baristas are darting around in a whirl of steamed milk and blenders.  A young lady and I laugh self-consciously as we try to maneuver around each other, her going one way, me going the other.

*

Tableau 6:

Early sun through the trees.  A morning mist rolling through.  Hot coffee in my hands.  My thumb rubbing over the smooth porcelain.  My breath is heavy, but subdued.  The birch trees in front of me look like they were painted on.  The world is hazy and pink and surreal.

*

Tableau 7:

Outdoor subway platform, a descending chill.  To my left, three officers are talking with a man slumped against a column.  To my right, a group of college students are dressed in elaborate Mario Brothers costumes.  The smell of soot and burnt clutch and kiosk food fill the air.  The automated voice tells me over the loudspeakers that the next train doesn’t take passengers.

*

Tableau 8:

The view of the air from Seat A, Row 20.  A darkened cabin, dotted with the flashes from monitors on the back of each seat.  From this far back, it almost looks like an LED Christmas tree.

Below me are the scattered lights of scattered cities, before they eventually give way to the Atlantic Ocean.  The skies are cloudless and a hearty full moon dances with its reflection off the water.  I feel the pressure against my forehead as I rest my head against the glass.  I feel the coldness of the glass against my skin.  I feel like bursting into tears.

*

Tableau 9:

An early morning sun you can only experience in the warmer climates.  Across from me in the restaurant is an old couple, not so much enjoying each other’s company as they are occupying space at the same table.  Outside are palm trees and parked cars and a subtle haze.  My waitress’s voice is peppy and familiar and welcoming.  I shake out a maraca beat with my sugar packets as my brain settles on a new saying:

“Pain is not weakness leaving the body.  Pain is the body attempting to be stronger than its environment.”

*

Tableau 10:

Laughter-filled kitchen.  A white table with seven women sitting around it.  There’s a subtle shift in the air from the ceiling fan in the other room.  My back is completely against the wooden chair.  The dog everyone keeps saying is mean comes up to me and puts both paws across my lap.

 *

Tableau 11:

Muggy late night.  Crickets nearly drown out the sound of traffic.  The plastic of my flip-flops digging into the space between my big toe and index.  The dull ache in my backside as I sit on the edge of the sidewalk, looking at the sky.  Half moon exceptionally bright, its light accenting the street.  Orion’s Belt in clear view, Venus shining brightly.

A shooting star passes directly underneath both.  I hold my breath.  My wish is wordless.

*

Tableau 12:

An unseasonably warm autumn afternoon.  Wisps of clouds in the sky.  The leaves scattered: half on the trees, half on the grass, collecting in random spots on the pavement.  The breeze rustles what remains on the trees and moves what has already fallen to the ground.  The sun is warm and the neighborhood is quiet.

A part of me is laughing: who gets an anxiety attack during a moment like this?

*

Tableau 13:

A downtown main street as dusk gives way to dark.  The store fronts and street lamps and Christmas lights are all lit up.  A half moon attempts to join in through the clouds.  The air is crisp and I can tell I’m one deep exhale away from shivering.

I can hear my feet hit the ground amidst the people chatting.  I’m doing my usual stride: two steps for each sidewalk square.  A guy coming out of a bar and into the passenger side of a car does a double take at me before stepping into the blue sedan.  I smile at the subtle validation.  Forever balancing the internal war between the narcissist and the insecure little girl.

*

Tableau 14:

The kitchen table. A warm Sunday light is making its way down the hall, slowly meeting with the wall opposite the front door.  Bachata music on the stereo and I’ve been procrastinating the chores I must do.  I press my feet into the floor as I’m transported back to a time that is beautiful and tragic and naïve and overwhelming.  It’s heartbreakingly beautiful outside.  There’s a taste in my mouth that transcends words.

*

Tableau 15:

The middle of a hardware store.  The pressure of my feet against the concrete through thin-soled shoes.  High ceilings with pipes and beams and banners.  A distinct lack of background music.  Vibrant colors attempting to attract me to kiosk after kiosk.

Around me are people milling about.  For a second, I am out of my head and into theirs.  What are they thinking.  What is going through their minds as they push shopping carts, browse table saws, gaze up at the ceiling?

*

Tableau 15:

Waiting room at a doctor’s office before a routine check-up.  The feeling had been rumbling in the background all morning long, like tremors before the earthquake, and now it has erupted.

A waiting room with the trimmings of a living room.  Comfy lounge chairs.  Blue curtains with tassels along the edges.  Complementing teal walls with white accents.  Easy listening streaming through the ceiling speakers.  A woman off to the side swiping across the screen of her phone.

“This won’t look good when they check my blood pressure,” I try to joke to myself. The joke doesn’t work.

An empty white leather chair sits across from me.  I imagine this feeling — this anxious, vile, venomous, nervous feeling — sitting across from me.  The throbbing in my chest and breath that refuses to even itself out is now an invisible person, sitting cross-legged, as indescribable in appearance as this feeling is in words.

I am literally sitting with and facing this feeling.  Until the nurse calls for me, I have this staring contest, hoping eventually this feeling will lose steam, lose power.  I can feel her eyes digging into the back of my neck as I get to up see my doctor.  A smug victory for her as I slink away.  Much to my surprise, my blood pressure turns out to be normal.

Tableau 16:

Yoga mat.  Yoga studio.  Eyes surreptitiously open.  Around me are fellow workshop goers, all seated like me, eyes closed, breathing.

That sensation, like I’m burning alive.  In yogic philosophy, this could be considered some variation of tapas – a burning of impurities.  I hold on to that idea.  The idea that things that had been needing to come to the surface have been brought to the surface and now they are incinerating.

In a way, it makes me feel like I’ve been reduced to ashes. But sometimes things need to be burned to the ground before they can be properly rebuilt.

These are the things I am thinking as I attempt to keep my breath steady.  I also think about how much this affects how I teach these days.  How so much has been accomplished downright because of feelings like this, not despite of it.  How much good has, in some perverse way, come from it.  Like anxiety has been something that doesn’t debilitate me so much as something that has been helping pave the way. That there is something beautiful in this moment – in all of these moments – as intense and painful as they may be.  But what is life without intensity, whatever end of the spectrum it lands on.  And the occasional forest fire is actually needed to keep a forest healthy. Reduce to ashes, rise like the Phoenix, let the remains scatter with the wind.

The breathing exercise is over.  The workshop instructor asks how we feel.  People gush about how serene they feel.  I smirk sheepishly.

 

When “No Regrets” Evolves on You

 

At 16, “No Regrets” meant never having to say sorry for your actions.  It meant shirking away from the consequences of the things you did and said with almost sociopathic glee.

“No regrets,” was said as you made out with the guy a grade above you, knowing full-well he had a girlfriend.  No Regrets meant zooming down a residential street at 60 miles per hour because one of the bumps in the road sent your clunker flying.  No Regrets meant being jackasses at the local mall and being loud at the movies and terrorizing the local playground with your antics.  “No regrets,” was unspokingly acknowledged as you verbally bashed your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend behind her back, spoke viciously about a former friend, and dove headfirst into gossip.

In your 20s, “No Regrets” was a call to arms.  It was a reminder that you were already a fifth, a quarter, perhaps even less than that into your life, and you needed to do the things you loved, and now.

No Regrets came in the form of planning that European vacation, even if it meant breaking the bank.  No Regrets meant agreeing to go skydiving, even if the idea of everything that could go wrong sent you into a panic.  No Regrets was said as you submitted your portfolio to a place that was guaranteed to turn you down.  You whispered, “No regrets,” to yourself as you finally admitted how truly, desperately, and madly in love you were with the person in front of you. No Regrets struck a passionate chord against the status quo.  No Regrets became less of an excuse and more of a precautionary element.

But as you toed away from the adolescent you, as you toed away from your 20s and into the blur of Rest of Adulthood, No Regrets took on new form.  While you still found yourself returning back to its previous definitions – during times when you were defensive about your actions or when the existential panic of it all set in – you also found that it took on this beautiful, frustrating, higher resonance.

No Regrets meant understanding that everything happens for a reason, even if you don’t believe in the Higher Power.  Every decision and mishap.  Every shitty thing you did or had done to you.  No Regrets meant having faith that everything in your past – even the things part of you would trade anything in the world to have erased – lead you to exactly where you needed to be.

No Regrets took the form of countless causes and effects, countless actions and reactions, to shape the world around you in dizzyingly complex ways.  No Regrets meant finding peace with a past that might’ve been less than kind, or with behaviors that you were less than proud of.  You whispered, “No regrets,” as you resolved to embrace every single aspect of life.

And No Regrets came in the form of pressing forward, knowing you’d stride, slip, get lost, and get banged up along the way.  Because No Regrets also came in the form of having faith that every present-day action is also part of that same order.  That your evolution is forever ongoing.  Because you’re not 16, you’re not 25, but you still carry that same fire.  And it has not been tamed; it’s simply been shaped into something a little more productive and a little more wise.

Insomnia Thoughts

1. Why does the one meat item that would always stand between me and vegetarianism come from one of the smartest, sweetest creatures on the planet?  I need to eat bacon that came purely from asshole pigs, if only to assuage my guilt.

2. “In a world of Kim Kardashians, be a Princess Diana.” Where’s the dude version of this?  In a world of Kanye Wests, be a Robert Downey Jr?  In a world of Koch Brothers, be Elon Musk?  In a world of Trumps, be Bernie Sanders?

3. 2001 was 15 years ago and that’s not okay.

4. Sometimes I look at my cats and go, “Wow, you’re an animal. And you just hang out with me. You’re this little creature with fur and I interact with you and you acknowledge my existence.”  And then I look at people and go, “Wow, you’re a person.  And you’re not me.  You’re a person with a face and I interact with you and you acknowledge my existence.”  And I wonder why social interactions don’t come easily for me.

5. Also: Existence. Yikes.

6. I’ve decided packaging in food isn’t getting smaller. We’re just steadily becoming giants.

7. Sometimes I wonder where I’d be if people actually listened to me from junior high onwards, when I said numbers get jumbled in my head like a type of numbers dyslexia. No, that’s cool, discalculia, you can totally be a thing long after I gave up on math and never looked back.  I mean, let’s be real: I still would’ve gotten a humanities degree, but maybe I would be able to actually do mental math.

8. On a related note, I’m still waiting for that moment when I start missing high school. Someone actually shoot me if I start romanticizing my teenage years.

9. People need to chill about people younger than them saying they feel “so old”.  There’s always going to be someone older who could invalidate your experience.  Perhaps people don’t recognize that the “so old” statement is essentially saying, “Holy crap: life is finite and I am mortal, and I keep inching forward with the ever-mocking presence of death by my side — and I am no longer blissfully unaware that someday I will die.  Because — shit — someday I will die, and every day past birth is a day closer to that reality.”  Or, y’know, something to that effect.

10. Just FYI to the powers that be that control sleeping: When I said I wish there were more hours in the day, I didn’t mean, “Dip into the reserve set aside for sleep.” I don’t become more productive as a result.  I just end up making blog posts.  Jackasses.

Bonus: Is it possible to Netflix & Chill with sleep?  Yo sleep, won’t you come over to my place tonight.  I did swipe right on your Tinder profile.

It’s Time to Tim Gunn the Year and Make It Work.

So as the New Year’s Resolution hooplah — the creation of resolutions, the disdain for resolutions, the defense of resolutions, etc — slowly starts to wind down, I have decided that, regardless as to where we land on the resolution spectrum, we all should Tim Gunn the year.

…Hear me out.

Tim Gunn is the wonderfully stylish and sassy mentor from Project Runway. In the show, he would check in with the stylists creating whatever masterpieces they were trying to create. He’d inspect, scrutinize, show cause for concern if an idea seemed completely off the rails — as well as give a few witty-yet-snide remarks when need be — but he’d always end the mentoring with three words:

Make it work.

So as we’re setting out for 2016 with whatever it is we have in mind, perhaps it is in everyone’s best interest to imagine we’ve got Tim Gunn periodically checking in on us. Checking in on whatever goals, resolutions, life plans & decisions, etc, that we have in mind.

A posh, sassy man with impeccable style, looking over our plans, saying something like, “This concerns me,” over our really out-there ideas (or perhaps making a stinging one-liner over the really stupid stuff we’re doing) — but never telling us to outright change our plans. Just to make it work.

Got a mile-long list of resolutions?  Make it work.

Resolving to resolve nothing?  Make it work.

Got some goals that feel a bit ambitious?  Make it work.

Refusing to make goals at all?  Make it work.

Making changes to your personal or professional life?  Make it work.

Got some circumstances you’re not changing or can’t yet change?  Make it work.

Whatever you’ve got going on, across the board: Make it work.

Then maybe throw in a sassy finger snap or hand flail for good measure.

New Year’s Goals After an Unraveling Year

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions.  But I do do New Year’s goals.

(*snort* do do.)

(Hey, I know this post is gonna get heavy, so I’m getting my humor where I can.)

It’s been a decade-long tradition: each year, I would write up a little summary of the year that had transpired, followed by a list of goals I’d hope to accomplish in the new one.  I’d then look back on what I wrote the previous year and see what I could check off from that list.

It’s a pretty harmless tradition, usually.  There were a few years in the earlier days where “lose 5 pounds” somehow made it onto the list.  One year, my write up turned into an excuse to rant about my terrible job.  But, for the most part, it’s been a way to keep focused, keep perspective, and keep going.

And then 2015 happened.

Every year has its challenges.  And there’s always going to be tough years.  But after a year like 2014, where I spent the majority of it riding my own little optimism train, it was bewildering to see how quickly things turned.  And while 2015 became a very productive year, I knew the look back — particularly at the goals made in 2014 — was not going to be pretty.

This was probably the first year where looking back on my goals — looking back on what I wrote about 2014 — hurt.  It hurt on an emotional and spiritual and downright physical level.  It hurt the way driving by a demolition site where your childhood playground once sat hurt.  It hurt in a way that is more heavy than painful, where breathing is labored because the weight on your chest is downright tangible.

It’s not that I didn’t accomplish what I set out to do.  In some ways, I wish it was as simple as not being productive enough.  It had more to do with the type of person I was as 2014 drew to an end and how starkly it contrasted to the person I became in 2015.

No one is exactly who they were a year later, but I had to actively avoid the temptation to label that earlier version of me as brutally naive.  The same way I had to actively avoid wishing I was her again.  Or the same way I had to resist wanting to jump into a time machine, meet up with that version of me, and say, “You have no idea how quickly 2015 is going to unravel on you.”

So 2015 unraveled on me.  It threw curveballs I could never have predicted.  And I spent a lot of time zeroed in on what could have been, had loose ends been properly tied.  Zeroed in on what was lost or thrown to the wind.  Zeroed in and zeroed in and zeroed in some more — until I exhausted myself.  Until eventually I surrendered to the idea that the unraveling was less like a bag tearing at the seams so much as it was like a satchel slowly unknotting at the top, revealing what’s been inside all along.  Revealing what needed to be revealed.  Forcing me to confront things I had spent a good amount of time avoiding.  Recognizing that the 2014 version of me was not in a better place just because that metaphorical bag was still intricately tied shut.

Because sometimes you have tough years.  Sometimes you have really tough years.  Sometimes you have years that make you want to pull your hair out and sometimes you have years that hit you right in the existential gut.  And you get two choices then: you can retreat and effectively run in circles, or you can charge ahead with whatever uncertainties await.  Address what you need to address.  Be bold with how far you have to veer from what had been yesterday’s normal.

I really have no interest in copying 2014’s list of goals for 2015, nor do I fancy writing up a more detailed list of 2015 events for this blog.  But I will say, when looking over the list of 2014 goals, I noticed a theme: go forward, see where this takes you.

While some goals were very specific, every branch of the list, every aspect of my life essentially had a variation of this sentiment.  From yoga teaching to writing, even my personal life:

Go forward.  See where this takes you.

The cynic in me saw that and wanted to go, “Yeah, yeah — go forward, and see it take you…right into that brick wall.”  But eventually that voice lost out, eventually replaced with a Douglas Adams quote:

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”

That naive optimism train I was riding in 2014 might’ve derailed, but that particular destination was never in the cards for me, anyway.

So what are my goals for 2016?  There’s a list of fairly concrete goals.  I’m hoping to get the chutzpah to release a collection of poetry through one of the sites I write for.  I’m hoping to polish up another manuscript and start up the literary agent hunt again.  I’m hoping to continue my training, particularly in the fields of therapeutic yoga for trauma, anxiety, and depression.  I’ve got a nice set of plans that I’m hoping to see come to full fruition in 2016.  Plans that all got their seeds planted in 2015, despite (or perhaps because of) the year it had been.

But I think my main goal for 2016 is — ironically — the reoccurring theme in the list made for 2015: Go forward.  See where this takes you.  See life as an adventure unfolding, not a set of clear-cut puzzle pieces shifting into place at designated times.

And maybe I’ll add on a paraphrasing of that Douglas Adams quote: Have faith that, even if it doesn’t take me where I’m expected to go, I’m going where I’m needed to be.

And, y’know, like lose weight and go to the gym more, or something.

Or learn not to laugh at things like “do do”.

*snort* Do do…

A Need for Christmas Spirit (Part 2)

(For Part One)

It’s 2014.  I’m in tears in my parents’ kitchen.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, there’s a part of me that can’t help but laugh: most traumatic Thanksgiving ever, and no one is even arguing.

For a few brief moments, I allow myself exactly the level of sorrow that had been building up all night.  A new and different and bewildering sadness, something that hit the core and drew out large pendulous teardrops as it retreated back.

My husband walks in and draws me in for a hug and I collapse where I’m standing.  I only half-heartedly attempt to pull it together when my mom steps into the kitchen; I’m banking on the fact that she’s notoriously unaware of her surroundings.  But even then, she picks up on what’s going on.

“It’s hard.  I know,” she says, looking over into the family room where he sits.  A figure I can’t even pretend to recognize anymore.  A sign of what’s to come.

When the night is over and I’m in my car, I sit with my eyes fixed on the windshield.

“I think that was my dad’s last Thanksgiving,” I say.

Two days later my father would be rushed to the hospital after what we first thought was a stroke.  One day later, he’d be rushed to the ICU.  He’d spend most of December in the hospital, and most of 2015 in and out of hospital rooms, nursing homes, and rehabilitation facilities.  Ten months after that Thanksgiving, my prediction would be proven accurate.

Right after last year’s New Year’s — right as 2014 rolled into 2015 and the Jingle Bell Rock gave way to the rest of winter — I took down all the Christmas decorations.  I took down the garlands and the knick-knacks and rolled up the holiday welcome mat.  The Christmas tree was chopped up for firewood and the lights were unstrung.

I tucked away the boxes of ornaments like I could just tuck away what was slowly starting to unravel around me.   I had been starved for Christmas spirit in December, but now all that remained was the ghost of what was and what could have been.  With an air of good riddance, the residual residue from the holiday season was gone and I prepared for all of the 2015 storms the meteorologists warned would be coming our way.

But the funny thing is, you can never actually prepare for what’s ahead.  Never the way you need to be, at least.  You can only react and hope for the best.

Cut to Thanksgiving of 2015.  So much has changed, so much is different, so much is uncertain that I’m bewildered in a brand new way.  My husband and I invite my mom and my little brother up to our place — over the river and through the woods and as far away from my childhood home as possible — for Thanksgiving.  My little brother and I take my mom’s dog for a walk and my husband gently converses with my mom in a way that is both heartwarming and heartbreaking.  The dinner is a calm event.  All things considered, it’s probably one of the better Thanksgivings I’ve had in a while.

The next day, the autumn decorations in the house come down.  In some ways, they’d overstayed their welcome: leaf garlands adorned practically everything in the kitchen when the trees outside had been barren for weeks.  The plastic jack-o-lanterns on our front porch were meaningless now that trick-or-treaters were no where to be seen.  But away go the jack-o-lanterns, the leaf garlands, the ceramic plates that say “Give Thanks”, and the candy dish shaped like a maple leaf.  Away go the autumnal table runners and ribbon wreaths and pumpkin-shaped candle holders.  All packed away in its concise tupperware container.

I had a feeling as to what would come next.  I could feel it in early November as two radio stations became 24-hour Christmas caroling and I became someone who automatically skipped over those stations in the car.  I could feel it when I avoided the Christmas decoration aisles, righteously proclaiming that November was for Thanksgiving only.  I could feel it as Christmas plans were being laid out and I was going through the motions, nodding along, putting in the minimum effort.

And I felt it then when the house continued to be as bare as the trees outside.  The next logical thing would have been to take out the Christmas boxes.  But November ended and December began and I was still avoiding Christmas music and lights and cheer.  I was the opposite of a ghost hunter, avoiding the Christmas spirit at all costs.  The pit in my stomach felt a lot like coal in my stocking.

I was the Grinch, I was the Scrooge — only I don’t even have it in me to say, “Bah, humbug!” in the face of the holiday season.

In fact, I was refusing to face it at all.

I knew it would happen, much like I knew I would start crying the second I forced myself to listen to Bing Crosby as he wished me a merry little Christmas.  Much like I knew I would keep crying with each instance — with each Christmas tune I let myself listen to — that this stretched far beyond, “Have a good cry and move on.”

It came from the same place that created these moments of unfiltered, unfathomable, outright primal sadness.  The kind that hits the core and draws out large, pendulous tears as it retreats.  It came from the same place that was desperate for the holiday cheer last year — and the same place that broke into hysterics when that infamous tree stand broke.  It came from the same place that was now attempting to guard me from all of it during this year’s holiday season.

I’ve never been one for guarded.  I pride myself on the opposite — on radical openness, on reckless abandon.  Even when the world tells me to get thicker skin.  Even when I know better.  But there I was, guarded, because I had spent too long starving for Christmas spirit last year and now the hunger had turned into nausea.  I had spent too long confusing hope with the desperation for a specific outcome and now I was burned out on my own optimism.  I had had my arms open for what came next for far too long and now my muscles were fatiguing.

 

But there I was, also, taking in Christmas music, knowing full well three notes in that I’d be ugly-crying during my drive back home.  Knowing full-well that that would happen each time I genuinely stopped to listen — and that it would keep happening for a while.

Because I don’t do guarded.  Because the wall that gets put up feels more foreign and bewildering than any of the sudden changes in my life.  Because you have to allow yourself to feel, even if it’s wretched and confusing.  Even if you know you’ve only scratched the surface and there’ll be plenty of ugly-cries ahead, plenty of moments where you’ll vacillate wildly between complete disinterest and a potential anxiety attack.  Because it’s as painfully simple as reminding yourself that if you don’t allow yourself to feel, you can never allow yourself to heal.  Because it’s as painfully simple as recognizing the chasmic discrepancy between what the holiday could be and what we actually get.  Because it’s as painfully simple as understanding

I still need the Christmas spirit, just like I needed it last year.  But, just like I wrote about this time last year, the Christmas spirit is not something you can just find, as if it’ll stand next to the perfect evergreen tree in the lot, waiting for you to pick it out and take it home.  And it’s certainly not something that switches on like the lights at Rockefeller Center.

However, it’s also not something you can avoid.  The spirit will linger, even if you never put up a single ornament.  You can’t decide that you’re angry that it didn’t show up in the way you wanted it to and then turn it away like carolers at the door.

And it comes in all shapes and sizes, forms and varieties.  The Christmas spirit comes in all the wonderful and complicated ways I wrote about last year — and I’m beginning to realize that it can also take the form of resilience.

Resilience, and knowing the vital difference between being resilient and being guarded.  Between refusing to feel and knowing this feeling will pass.  A bundling up against the frigid weather but still breathing in the icy air.

And the Christmas spirit can come in the form of that ugly-cry when desperate hope and primal sorrow collide, creating a perfect storm that had to happen, if only so it could eventually pass.  Allowing yourself to cry through another “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” because you understand that eventually you won’t.  Knowing it can and will get dark and not being afraid to keep the eyes open in the midst of it and having faith that there’ll be light again.

The house is still not decorated, but the box of decorations and ornaments have been brought down to the first floor.  I’ll let the Christmas spirit hang with me in whatever form I find it in, as I eventually string up lights and garlands, ornaments and tinsel.  As I linger one more time on Magic 106.7 and listening to Faith Hill ask, “Where Are You Christmas?” — and eventually, as the tears are drying, answer back:

It’s right here.  Just in a different form.

 

Symphonies and Zombies

She holds the door for me, and I speed up to catch it.

“It’s like the goddamn zombie apocalypse,” she says when I thank her. I do nothing but nod in response, wondering if I had skipped a line or two in our conversation.

“Heroin, it turns people into zombies,” she continues. “They’re not them anymore.  They’re shells of themselves. It’s not brains they’re after, but the drugs, y’know?”

“It’s an epidemic,” I respond. I go through my little countdown: at least 6 months since I last got “the news” about someone I once knew, 3 weeks since I saw a posting on Facebook about someone who had gone missing after relapsing, 1 week since I found out a friend’s sister checked herself out of rehab.  At this point, who doesn’t have a story that involves someone they know and heroin.

“He’s not Paul anymore, y’know?” she continues. “He’s mean. He’s the drug. This is the zombie apocalypse. Everyone is as good as dead.”

I don’t know Paul — I haven’t even caught her name yet — but I listen to her story. She tells me about Paul, his descent, her struggles, her desperate attempt to reclaim something in the midst of his addiction. Her unlit cigarette dances around her fingers like she’s conducting an orchestra. Her own symphony of sadness.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” she says, extending her hand to shake mine.

When I get home, I check an article I wrote for the first time since it got published. I learned a while ago to keep any comment-checking to an absolute minimum when it came to online publications, especially anything that might’ve garnered attention. Down at that bottom section, each comment has a common denominator: a chorus of, “Me too,” — which serves as a fitting encore to the conversations I’ve been having with friends since the piece went live. My part of the story a chance for others to tell theirs.

It isn’t really human nature to be vulnerable, especially vulnerable in public and unpredictable ways. But we all do it to some degree, whether it’s through commenting on something online or writing that something online. Through confiding in a good friend or unloading your woes to a group of like-minded people. Or maybe it comes in the form of blurting out what’s weighing heavily on you to the lady that was a handful of steps behind you.

At the end of the day, we’re all just desperate to have our stories told. And we’re all desperate to know our own symphonies harmonize with others. That we’re not singing solo in our own trials and tribulations.

Poeticalness and Things to Come

To put a personal update on a supposed-to-be-humor blog: Thank you to everyone who reached out after my father’s passing.  While his health had been on the decline for a while, things took a sharp turn last year just after Thanksgiving.  To say 2015 has been one of the toughest years is pretty much an understatement, but it has also been a year of tremendous growth and understanding and accomplishment.

I’ve been slowly getting back into the swing of things.  Hopefully will be back with funnier posts soon (life didn’t stop me from doing humor before; don’t really feel like letting it stop me now).  I’m also slowly in the process of collecting and editing poetry.  While nothing is set in stone, I am hoping to release a collection through Thought Catalog sometime in 2016.  It’s been a combination of combing through old poems and giving myself permission to write new ones (which sounds silly, but ask any writer who spans across multiple writing mediums: poetry leaves you vulnerable to criticism in a way other forms don’t).

So I’ll leave everyone with one of the newer poems, which will hopefully make its way into the collection (which will hopefully actually happen):

Sleepwalker

I woke up to find myself sitting up in bed

and crying

large tears spilling

down my face, with reckless abandon

like a child after a nightmare

calling for their mom

I don’t know how I got there, how it

came to pass

that I’d be sobbing in my sleep, upright

with my elbows on my knees

or how long I’d been there, or what

exactly woke me up

Even awake, I kept on crying

like a leak that refused to fix

remarking on how deep the cuts must run

if this is what happens when I dream