Abby Rosmarin's Blog, page 5

Prodigal

Sometimes the best way to define something is through the negative.

Sometimes the best way to know what something is, is to know what it isn’t. You can learn every standard definition but sometimes the only way to really understand something is to figure out exactly where the borders are and skim your fingers along the edges.

Sometimes to really know what something is, you have understand what it’s not. It’s something I’ve been using for my own self growth and have been slipping it into my classes. Receptivity is not passivity. Neutrality is not pretending your emotions don’t exist. Rewiring is not forced change.

(I wonder how many of my students know that the majority of what I pass on to them are things I had just figured out for myself. The lamp illuminating the next step forward is just an extension of my own arm.)

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Five years ago, almost exactly, we closed on the house we now own.

We could’ve had the house as early as the end of June, but the original closing date would’ve landed in the middle of our road trip.

It was the perfect time to do one, amidst a flurry of less-than-stellar timing. I was unemployed for the first time since I was 17. My husband was able to get the time off. We’d been wanting to drive coast to coast for a long time. If there was ever a time to do it, now was the time.

It was horrible timing, the rest of it. I was walking away from my teaching position right as we were applying for mortgages. It meant my income, my impeccable credit score, couldn’t be factored in. Looking back, I should’ve quit earlier. Before we applied for mortgages. Perhaps even before that. Perhaps before the day where I burned out so brightly that I took a copy of the school’s calendar and wrote numbers over the days, creating a countdown until the year was out. When a teacher has that in her possession, the game is over and no one won.

But we got our mortgage and we got our house and we spent 3 weeks driving from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It was on that trip that we fell in love with Wyoming, Salt Lake City, San Francisco. We hit San Fran in the midst of Pride Week, just days after gay marriage was legalized. Everything was electric. The whole country felt like a wild frontier we could tame. My wanderlusting spirit went wild with the possibility.

Days after returning, we got the keys to our house.

“What a perfect juxtaposition,” I remember saying. “We wander the country like nomads, right before we put down stakes.”

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I don’t recognize the girl from five years ago, who timidly slipped her boss her resignation letter, saying that she wouldn’t be renewing her contract, that she’d finish out the year and then quietly fade into the sunset. But that’s the theme as of late, isn’t it? Remark on how different things are. How different I am. To stay on civil-but-distant terms with my former self like a pen pal I hope to never see in person again. To measure the distance, to look at all the things she wasn’t, the things I am now.

Some things can only be defined by what they aren’t.

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I applied to go abroad my freshman year of college.

For the previous two years, I had been on a mission: to stop being so afraid of the world and to make up for lost time. I researched programs and found one in Northern Ireland and applied immediately.

I went the summer after what was essentially my sophomore year in a five-year program. I spent my days with our little group of nomads. In lieu of traditional classes, we met with representatives and officials, attended celebrations of the peace treaty anniversary. I worked at an integrated primary school — and it was there that I thought I had found my calling, that I was destined to teach little kids. I wound down my last days wondering if I should even return home — maybe I should stay in the UK, maybe I should transfer fully to Queens, even if it meant uprooting everything, even if it meant saying good-bye to the man who had become my world back in Boston.

These were the things I thought about on my long plane ride back to the States. Live in Europe. Step down from the five-year program. Change my major to education. Become nomadic.

My boyfriend was the only one to meet me at the airport. I ran into his arms and got my luggage and changed my pounds back into dollars.

I’d burst into tears within minutes of getting into his car, so overwhelmingly grateful to be home, to be in his car, to be by his side, not realizing that I had been holding something back until I could release it, realizing that it was his presence that effortlessly popped the cork. Two years later, we’d be engaged to be married, and we’d traverse the Atlantic again for our honeymoon.

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Three years after our adventure to San Fransisco, we’d be on a similar road trip.

This time to the Grand Canyon. This time hitting more of the southern states. This time falling in love with Austin, with New Mexico, with Arizona.

A lot had changed since we closed on the house, and now I was itching to get out of dodge. Leave New Hampshire. Leave the epicenter of my problems. Pull up stakes and start a new life somewhere else. I was relying a little too heavily on what the card reader had told me (“That woman was a fraud. She saw the state you were in and told you what you wanted to hear.” “Are you mad that I went?” “Of course not. I’m mad that she took advantage of you.”) and now I was looking at every new territory and asking, “Is this where I should be?”

Two and a half weeks. We hiked the Grand Canyon and made plans to return and make it all the way to the Colorado River. We talked about converting a van and someday just living out of that. We talked about the past couple years and what the future might bring. We talked about my father’s death, my brother’s motorcycle accident, the inevitable fate of our brother-in-law. We talked about problems and solutions. We did what we do best on car rides: we dove deep in our conversations with the road out in front of us.

I still remember how it felt when we got off the highway and started driving the roads of our town again.  We felt like we had gone through a time warp, that we had only been gone a few minutes — a trip to the grocery store, a trip to the neighboring city — and were returning home at the end of June, not mid-July.

We pulled into the driveway and I felt the ache of homecoming. It took, in part, driving through half the states in the continental US, but I understood that my time in New Hampshire wasn’t done. That maybe, just maybe, I was exactly where I needed to be. Maybe, just maybe, I was home.

“Maybe I was supposed to be told those things, so it would shape my thinking process and bring me to where I am now,” I reasoned, months later, the majority of what spurred me to leave now floundering in the rear view.

“Or maybe the card lady was a con artist.”

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“I think I figured it out.”

We were hiking through Topanga State Park — the adventure portion of what was initially a low-key, beach vacation this year. A low-key vacation that started in Vegas and included road trips across the width of California and a weekend in LA. As we descended back down to the trailhead, we were discussing exploration vacations versus relaxation vacations, and my desperate drive to be somewhere new.

“Traveling reminds me where home is,” I continued.

There’s a line I stole from Jeanette Winterson: I’m a housecat, so long as the door can stay open. Give me limitlessness, and I’ll eventually draw my own lines.  Give me limits, and I’ll find a way to rebel against them.

I wonder if I’ll always be like this — be someone who needs to periodically define home by what it’s not. I feel like I must show up on the doorstep of every house in order to affirm which one’s my home. Like I have to try a thousand beds just to remember where I prefer to rest my head.

Am I simply someone who needs to figure things out through the inverse, lest I constantly try to defy the proper definition?

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There was a joke my dad used to say, once I hit my teen years and started going out with friends, started saying “yes” to life: “The prodigal daughter has returned!” It is, oddly, one of my fonder memories.

I’m closing in on the three-year anniversary of his death, and I find myself in increasing retrospection, as if that event was ground zero and I’ve started to walk through the outer rings of the fallout to the epicenter.

Every year, the ripples are a little less intense. The summer before he died hits me with a little less force. And honestly there’s a part of me that doesn’t know what I will do when it all fades into the sunset, when memories of a time when I bruised my shoulders against the borders are just that — memories, and it’s clear that my soul has moved on.

Some things can only be defined in what they no longer are.

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My husband’s and my seats on our flight back home from Vegas are in the emergency exit row, with the flight attendant’s seat to the left of us. We chat with her briefly during takeoff, then see her sporadically as she delivers drinks and snacks and collects garbage. Meanwhile we cuddle in and watch Supernatural while sharing a set of earbuds. Eventually we switch to our books, one hand on the e-readers, our free hands intertwined with each other’s.

“Are you guys from Vegas?” she asks when she sits back down again for landing.

“No, no — Boston.”

“Oh! Did you guys go to Vegas to get married or…”

We laugh.

“We’ve been married way longer than that. Seven years, actually.”

I kiss my husband’s shoulder before resting my head on it. I decide that she’s making that assumption based on our behavior — surely only newlyweds would be so snuggly on a plane ride.

There is a part of me that relishes in the idea of just flying off to Vegas to elope. It’s the same part of me that rebels against the practical simply because it’s practical. The part of me that needs to travel the globe and won’t rest until every corner is sniffed out. The part that needs to jump out of planes just to test her own boundaries and find newfound comfort in both feet on the ground.

Perhaps it’s all a part of what I inherited from my father, the set of character traits that can be an asset when trained and a liability when left unchecked.

Left unchecked, that side of me wouldn’t end up just married in Vegas. She’d probably be dead there, eventually, too.

Asset when trained. Liability when left unchecked.

Some things can only be defined by their borders.

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Sideways

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Perhaps it’s because I grew up next to the ocean, but it’s always been something I’ve known.

In the event of a riptide, don’t fight it. Don’t try to swim against it. Swim parallel to the shore until you’re out of it, then take a diagonal path back to dry land.

Granted, my hometown is nestled in a cove within a cove — by the time the water came to us, the mighty Atlantic had been tamed into gently lapping ripples. You could get bigger waves a few towns over in Nantasket, but not by much.

But still, it was advice that I kept with me, especially once I finally got a chance to get out of New England, to see the Atlantic on a direct trek to land, to see what it really means to have a wave break on the shore:

If caught in a rip current, do not fight it. Swim sideways to it until it’s over, and don’t try to make a beeline to shore.

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Scene: I’m hanging out in the hotel room in Vegas with my husband, a few days into our vacation, a few days out from our 7-year wedding anniversary, and minutes out from grabbing dinner. I forget exactly what the conversation was — something slightly nonsensical and goofy, speaking more in Couples Shorthand than American English — but after it, my husband looks me in the eyes and says:

“You are so different than the woman I married.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I ask.

“Is there a need to put a value judgment on it? Maybe it’s neither good or bad. Just different.”

“I personally think it’s a good thing,” I say. When I eventually stand up, I look in the mirror. It’s definitely not the reflection of the girl from 7 years ago.

My husband has a point — and I can hear my therapist warning me to not berate myself, even if it’s a past self — but I can’t help but think of it as a good thing. The old me was painfully passive, quicker to hide bad news than to find a solution, even quicker still to collapse in on herself and then lash out the moment she felt safe. She was easily manipulated and gullible and had a weak sense of self. She never learned to properly put her foot down and could easily be made to feel guilty for airing any type of grievance. Her impulsivity was usually left unchecked, her compulsions never tempered. She had her positive qualities, but she carried too many things from her parents, including all the traits she swore she’d never take on. My life had to blow up in order to face that reflection squarely — and it took a lot of hard work to shift past her. Maybe I should be a little easier on myself, but, for me, it’s still something to celebrate.

She was who I had to be in order to become who I am now, but that doesn’t mean I have to mourn her passing.

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Don’t fight the riptide. Go sideways. It’s on my mind as I dip into the Pacific the day after our anniversary, catching waves in San Diego and attempting to body surf. I think it every time I feel the undercurrent tug at my ankles.

There are warning signs of riptides — weird gaps in the waves is the big one — and I don’t encounter any such thing, but it’s still on my mind. There’s a huge sign at the state reserve where the parking lot meets the paths, reminding me exactly what to do with a riptide. And it’s exactly what I’ve known since I was a kid.

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Don’t fight the riptide. Don’t swim against it. Swim sideways to it. Swim parallel to the shore. Then swim diagonally back.

I’ve learned that every riptide in life, big and small, needs to be handled like that. Don’t fight the current. Recognize the inevitability of getting pulled under. Fighting against it is pointless and will wear out what little energy you have left. Go sideways and swim until you find the endpoint — and there is an endpoint, and it’s shorter than the infinity you swear it is — and, once your head is above water, don’t try to scramble for the shore. Let your return back be a little askew.

Don’t fight it. Whether the riptide is an hour of your day or three years of your life. The waves are more powerful than you. They will win in a battle of wills.

But you also can’t just go with the waves — that’s how you get sucked in and tossed around. My body registered that every time I wasn’t deliberate with a major wave, and found the wave smacking me to the bottom, scraping my knees, my hips, my shoulders against the sand.

It’s something I’ve learned time and time again (but apparently still needed the lesson): let the forces around you take control and you’ll find yourself battered and dragged and tossed about and scraped.

But maybe I don’t need the lesson anymore. Maybe I’ve finally learned it. Maybe.

Don’t fight it but also don’t let it dictate things. Both will result in drowning. Swim alongside it, deliberate in your pursuit but also understanding your narrow parameters.

It’s solid advice, something I learned as a kid and then had to remember when everything blew up. Spot it when you can, but if it gets you, swim alongside it — it’s shorter than you think it is, and far shorter than if you just let it drag you. Recognize how powerless you are to go at it head on. And don’t try to scramble back to where you once were the second you get out of it. Take your time getting back, and recognize you’ll be far from where you were from before the riptide.

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Scene: we’re a few days into San Diego, sprawled out at a beach nestled away by a set of cliffs. The lifeguard comes barreling down the shoreline in his red Toyota pick up. He’s letting everyone know that the rip currents are prevalent today — that, if you’re not a strong swimmer, to go no deeper than waist height.

We appreciate the warning. We really haven’t been going out further than shoulder height, but it’s still good to know. My husband was once an elite swimmer, and I’ve amassed a decent amount of upper body strength over the last few years. My cardio isn’t the best it’s ever been, but it’s still good. It’ll translate well enough to swimming sideways, should the need arise.

In the event that the worst occurs, we’ll be ready.

Besides, nothing can keep us out of the water. Some waves are just meant to be faced head on.

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What’s Next.

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“Well, always busy, busy, huh!” she says. I choose to take this as a compliment. “So, what’s next?”

The question feels like a tag-along echo, in some ways.  Acquaintances catching up on the year so far have asked it.  Close friends have asked it.  Family has asked it.  I ask it.  Constantly, I ask it.

What’s next.

Maybe it’s just how things are this time of year.  I remember, last year, standing on the precipice of summer, a handful of new credentials and certifications under my belt, plans for the autumn and winter already in the back of my mind.  Like harvest season had come and gone and now I was wondering what new seeds to sow.

What’s next.

What’s next?  What’s next is a collection of poetry, including all the poems I was too timid to include in my first collection, and the hopes that a publishing house specializing in the online poetry renaissance will pick it up.

What’s next is the audiobook for my most recent book, set to release as soon as Audible gives it the greenlight.

What’s next is a return to my roots, using short fiction to hone my craft, to tease out a book idea that continues to dance in the shadows, revealing half of itself and then disappearing when the lights come on.

What’s next is the ongoing/lengthy editing and querying processes for my two completed manuscripts, the blind hope that these will be it, that one of these pieces waiting in the wings will be enough to put me onto the center stage.

What’s next is a three-spot vacation, jet-setting to Las Vegas before driving to San Diego and Hollywood and then retracing our steps back to Vegas (what qualifies as an “easy-going vacation” in this household).  What’s next is a summer of events, of skydiving and matinee Broadway shows, of camping in Maine and conquering a few more 4,000 footers.

(What’s next is me following far too many traveling sites and aching fiercely and going, “Perhaps we could go somewhere in autumn, too?”)

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What’s next.  I’ve been asking myself that across the board.  I’ve been asking it in my professional life. I can feel the rumblings, like something in my teaching career, like the ground beneath me, is about to shift.  I can feel myself rumble, never content to just conquer something, to fill up my teaching schedule and then invoice happily.  What’s next.  What’s past the bend.  What’s over the horizon.

I’ve been asking myself, “what’s next?” after recognizing just how new of a chapter I find myself in life, these days — and how starkly and decidely different it is from this time from even a few years ago.  All right, I’ll happily turn the page — but what’s next?  What’s in store?

What’s next.  What’s next, what’s next, what’s next.  I honestly don’t need anyone to ask me it.  I live on the “what’s next”.  When I trail run unknown paths, I always go farther than planned. I need to see what’s past that turn, over that hill — and once I find out, I’m already onto the next spot.  What’s next — what’s just past the spot that I can’t fully see.  What’s past the bend.  What’s over the horizon.

What’s next.  And next, and next, and next.

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It’s a life with one foot always in the future, and it has its benefits.  I have a wall full of diplomas and certifications to speak of those benefits.  I have four published books and a full teaching schedule to speak well of it.  That foot perpetually in the future propels me into it, keeps me from resting on my laurels (or is it my yannies?).  The foot in the future is the foot on the gas pedal, and I can assure you I’m never in the slow lane.

But, on the other hand, I get restless leg with that foot.  It can be an anxious way to live — one where it’s hard to be fully still.  Why just watch TV when I could edit, or research, or write as well.  Why sit down when I could go on a walk, or a drive, or explore another mountain instead.  Why stay in the state when plane tickets are cheap right now. Why do something that even hints at nothing when I could be doing a whole litany of somethings.

Perhaps the hardest part about having one foot in the future is making sure the other foot stays grounded, that I don’t get swept off my feet by my insatiability.  That, when I eventually touch down in San Diego, I can let both feet sink into the sand.  That I can let myself just stand by the shoreline, letting the waves slowly wash over my feet.

(You know, wait a moment before I seek out the yoga studios, the circus gyms, good running routes; before I open my notebook and go, “This is the perfect atmosphere to write!”)

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What’s next.  In some ways, I don’t know.  There’s writing on the wall for some things in my life, and all I can do is wait it out until the inevitable happens.  Others are like chips thrown to the air and all I can do is let them fall where they may (so long as it’s not on top of my head).

But, surprisingly, it’s all done with presence.  Perhaps it’s because I burned out the part of me that used to be desperate for the blueprints — God, I still marvel at the girl from not even three years ago, crying and begging the heavens to tell her how it was all going to work out; if she had been given the sparknotes then, she wouldn’t have understood or accepted them (if ever I (or she) needs reminding that there’s a reason we’re not told the future, that we have to let these things unfold in real time).

Perhaps it’s because this is how I always get once summer hits.  My harvest season was when the winter winds were bitter, when a chance to lay out in the sun wasn’t an option (even if it’s laying out in the sun with my laptop on one side and a book I’m trying to finish reading on the other). There’s something lackadaisical about it, something that has no interest in trying to predict.

What’s next is allowing myself to fill up my own cup.  What’s next is embracing my summer schedule, even though three of my classes will be on hiatus until September.  What’s next is waking up and realizing my to-do list doesn’t have to be a mile long.  What’s next is spending more time with my husband — the one person who can commend my achievements while still knowing when and how to gently lift my foot from the gas pedal — even (and especially) if it’s just cuddling together on the couch as we blaze through another season of Supernatural.

I still hear the echoes from what I wrote from this time last year: it’s time for more opportunities to just lay in the hammock (which, thanks to busy schedules and terrible weather, has yet to be put back up).  More time to just be.  More time letting both feet stand in the present moment and allowing the immediate surroundings to wash over me.

What’s next?  Well, how about the what now?

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A New Chapter

It started with a conversation about the shifting winds.  A talk about how this fiscal quarter feels so different than the last — about the things that have already changed or are about to change, the major shifts that could happen as early as this summer.

“It feels like a new chapter,” I remarked.  And thus opened up both the can of worms and the rabbit hole: the concept of a new chapter.

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Perhaps it’s the writer side of me: the side that is always trying to find and piece together narratives, even when there isn’t one.  I know I have to be careful with that: it’s the same part of me that seeks out the story like Don Quixote and his windmill giants.  It’s the same side that’ll exhaust my soul in the effort to find the happy ending, even when the ending has no choice but to be ambiguous and unsatisfying.  It’s the same side of me that can attribute personality traits and personal motivations to people when the opposite proves to be true.  The side that will assume things are far deeper than they actually are.

But it’s not just the writer side of me.  Chapters can act like milestones, like moving pieces coming together, like markers to show you just how far you’ve come in the grand scheme of things.

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New chapters used to be very clear and crisp for me, if only because life always seemed to happen at once.  Graduate college, start new job, get engaged (start chapter).  Get married, move to a new state, quit old job/start new job (end previous chapter/start new).  Leave job/career field entirely, purchase first house, move to the country, start yoga teacher training (new chapter).  Tableaus in my life so neatly delineated that they practically could be brand new books.

But what happens when new chapters stop feeling so black and white?

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A new chapter.  Truth be told, it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while.  I know there was a time not too long ago when I was desperate for a new chapter — desperate to put as much space between me and what had turned out to be the most difficult, heart-wrenching, heartbreaking, infuriating, necessary time in my life.  So desperate, that I’d secretly relish when any change occurred — when even my teaching schedule would change, when classes were added or canceled, when entire studios closed down — because it meant one fewer relic from the past hanging onto me in the present day.

A new chapter.  So eager and anxious to put it all behind me — so hard-lined assertive that I’d never be made to feel the way I did in the old chapter ever again, never allow myself to repeat any part of that in any way, shape, or form — that I’d seek out any proof that I had finally turned a page.  I’d notice when something was different, when there was a shift in the energy, and I’d immediately go, “Is this the new chapter?”

And then something would happen — a chance of fate, an interaction, a becoming of the fly on the wall to something that indirectly involves me, an echo that had a few sound waves still left in it — and I’d scramble.  Because, clearly, I was still stuck in the old chapter, the page had not yet turned, and I needed to do whatever it took to change things.

A new chapter.  I seemed to be looking for it the way one might look for a building leveled by explosives.

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Perhaps it was because I was worried about referencing old scenes again.  I know I have a tendency to do that — to flip back to previous pages, go over the lines.  Simultaneously beg the main character to be a little more on the ball and berate her for not wising up faster.  Reread all the sad parts, the bad parts, the cringe-worthy parts.  Shake my head at lines of dialogue, at the things that could’ve been said instead. Reference the actions of side characters, lest I ever forget any betrayal, lie, or manipulation.

“You can’t keep referencing the past if you want to start a new chapter,” I had told myself.

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But what is a new chapter?  The book I’m currently reading treats chapter breaks like a pause to take a breath.  The boundary between one chapter and the next so small that sometimes you’ll still be in the same scene, with the same characters, as Chapter 12 turns into Chapter 13.

The thing about new chapters is that you usually get all the returning characters.  And even if the chapter were a true blank slate, you’d still have the main character, who is still experiencing the world through the same set of eyes.  And even if you toss away the book and pick up a brand new one, the reader is still the reader.

So perhaps the concept of new chapters should feel less final, less severe — less like a wall constructed but more like an evolution.  The same way we never feel our new age on our birthday — how it’s never like we went to bed and woke up with our skin completely shed and a new identity staring at us in the mirror — chapters are not synonymous when clean cuts from the past.

(And, really, that’s what I was chasing after — not a new chapter, but a clean cut from my past.  But I already knew something like that was impossible.  Run from your past, and it’ll find a shortcut to catch up with you.)

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I’ve noticed an uptick in the Cranberry’s “All My Life” on the radio as of late.  Across multiple stations, I hear it with a frequency that doesn’t match its previous airplay.

Oh, my life is changing everyday in every possible way.  I take pause when certain songs come on the radio, or when certain songs are played at almost absurd levels.  I’m just crazy enough to take it in as a message.  Bare minimum, I use it as a chance for a thought experiment: on the off-chance I’m wrong and I’m just projecting out a hope that it’s the Universe/God saying something, why is it that this song gives me pause in the first place?

I’ve been doing a lot of comparing and contrasting — especially in regards to the ways I respond to things now, versus how I would’ve responded not even a year or two ago.  Recently, I found my new sense of self put to the test.  I found myself knee-deep in one of the most infuriating, mind-boggling email exchanges of my career, perhaps my entire life.  I walked away with tears in my eyes and elevated blood pressure and me scooping up my kitten and bemoaning, “People are such garbage sometimes.”  But I also walked away realizing how differently that exchange would’ve gone a few years ago.

Instead of falling into old habits, I had stood my ground.  I was calm, but I took no shit.  I wasn’t going to collapse under the first sign of aggression, nor was I going to feel guilty for having a grievance.  Old me would’ve collapsed, would’ve buckled under even the hint of aggression, would’ve been made to feel ashamed that she dared to feel negatively about something.  But that was the old me — and she’s not me, anymore.

All my life is changing every day in every possible way.

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If I am honest with myself, things have been shifting for a long time.  Shifting in a positive way.  Maybe not in the ways I was desperate for one, two, three, perhaps even upwards of four years ago, but they’ve been changing in the way I believe they’re supposed to.  In accordance to whatever plan God/The Universe has for me.  And I don’t realize how much has shifted until something happens that references back a previous chapter, and I see just how different things are — how different I am.

And what is more important: the feeling of a new chapter, or the feeling of a new me?  A turned page, or a rebirth?

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A great book has realistic character development — development that creeps along, rising with the story arc and sliding into place as the tale winds down.  It usually doesn’t appear in the blank spaces, the page breaks, the space between the last paragraph and the words “Chapter Two”.  And perhaps instead of constantly looking for a new chapter, I should just keep on ahead, relishing the words in front of me, seeing in real time what’s in store for the protagonist, and resisting the temptation to see how many pages are left in this particular chapter.

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Insomnia and Mirrors

And so it is that I’m up at 1 in the morning, writing about mirrors.

These wee hours of morning. For a few weeks now, they’ve been my consistent companion. Whether I find my nights stretching into their territory, or I’m awakened in the middle of the night as if to be reminded of their presence, I find myself here. As a naturally early sleeper, I take pause when this happens. Such a disruption of my circadian rhythm is usually a sign something is afoot, or evolving — or, bare minimum, wants me awake for it.

But, yes, mirrors. Metaphorical mirrors. Perhaps I’ll start small and go from there.

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Perhaps I’ll start with pets — because they say your pet can be a reflection of yourself.

“They”. Whoever they are, I’ve wondered their rationale.  Is it because of how we interact with our pets?  Is it because, with time, we tend to take on the mannerisms and traits of those around us?  Is it confirmation bias, looking for proof and parallels when there might otherwise be none?  Is it something more — more mystical?

I don’t doubt it when it comes to our cat Salem.  He was adopted by my husband before I officially moved in, and the parallels between Salem and my husband are striking.  Salem’s intelligence is unparalleled . He carries himself with equal parts regality and mischief.  He is at once a beast to contend with and a gentle giant.  He’s both a ruthless killer — killing mice and chipmunks and garter snakes with an efficiency that leaves me in awe — and a big, affectionate teddy bear.  He is at once feral and docile, a force and fragile, straightforward and complex.  Self-aware and cunning, but, at the end of the day, just wants to be loved and secure in that love.

When we got Milo, I adored every ounce of him, even as those ounces turned to pounds.  But I never saw the reflection, outside of the fact that his emotions always seem unfiltered. When he loves, he loves with all his might.  When he is happy, he is rapturous.  His whole body goes into that love, that joy, as if you could pick up the happiness just by patting his head.

But when he hates, he hates viciously.  When he is mad, he is a hurricane of negativity.  The veterinarians who’ve had to give him shots or draw blood — especially the vets who had to tend to him during his medical emergency nearly 7 years ago — would have a hard time believing this tabby is the sweet little boy who comes when you call and purrs so loudly he’d hang his mouth open a little.

I see a bit of myself in that: my emotions are unfiltered, undamped.  When I love, I love mightily.  But when I hate, I hate viciously.  When I am happy, I’m a child on Christmas morning. But my anger could burn a village down with flames left to spare.  It’s taken a lot of work to calm the pendulum swing — and to no longer get dragged along with it.

But I saw my reflection in Artemis, as my husband was describing Artemis and her antics to some of our friends.

“She’s not a dumb cat,” he said. “She just dives into things without thinking it through.”

“And we don’t know anyone else in this house who’s like that!” I quipped, tilting my drink self-deprecatingly in my direction.

The more we have her, the more she goes from a kitten into a cat, the more I see it.  There’s a restless quality to her that goes beyond just high energy.  She is constantly wanting something, but I’m not sure even she knows what she wants.  She is anxious, even as she rests.  Her eyes could be closed but her breathing stays rapid.  She tends to plop down into snuggles, but the slightest noise could have her up again.  And she is the happiest when she can explore — when she’s hoisted up on top of large shelves or the top of a door, trying out things that will probably get her hurt, attempting to get to one more unexplored spot, try out one more thing. Her purrs are the loudest when she can travel to something she’s never been before.

I see a lot of myself in this kitten.  And, at its most basic definition, that is a mirror: something we’re able to see ourselves in, for whatever reason we need to.

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—

We’ll graduate from pets to friends now, shall we?

Sometimes — no, way more than sometimes — I think about the friends I have made in my adult life.  I think about the people I’ve gravitated to, the people that felt almost thrust upon me by a higher power.  I think about how it was no coincidence that some of my most cherished friendships in my adult years formed right as I had to contend with how I was raised — and it was all with people who were raised in frighteningly similar fashions.  We’d compare our childhoods, our demons, our hang-ups — and, good God, they’d run perfectly parallel.  And through that, I rebuilt.  Through that, we all rebuilt.  We laid our cards out on the table and found solace our identical hearts and spades and clubs.

It was almost like, in becoming each other’s reflections, we created a new world, an infinite corridor.  It’s almost as if all it takes for a demon to lose a bit of its potency is for it to meet its doppleganger.

I think about the friendships where the parallels outside of childhood traumas are frighteningly similar.  When personality traits seem to blast past coincidence and into the eerie.  When an overlap is made apparent and a joking, “And that’s why we’re friends!” is made.  When there is comfort in seeing a mirror in yourself, even as it reflects back the same lines and blemishes and parts of you that you’re not so thrilled about.

And, likewise, the friendships where the parallels were more like parallel universes — where I could see myself as them, had things been a little different for me.  If I hadn’t met certain people, or if certain healing hadn’t occurred.  And it took a very, very long time to recognize when I have to step back from people like that, that I’m not here to play up any survivor’s guilt and do penance for all the ways I could’ve turned out, but didn’t.

Amazing how a mirror can be a comforting embrace, a knowing nod, and a warning call all at the same time.

—

I think about what a vital tool the Enneagram has been for me.  As I’ve admitted to others who dove into the nine personalities, there was nothing too, too surprising, nothing the test told me that I didn’t already know on some level.  What surprised me what how well every piece stitched together — that, for once, I wasn’t given shards to make sense of individually, but instead a full-length mirror, something that encompassed me from head to toe.

I remember how often I cried during the first few weeks — again, not because I was learning anything new, but because I had been given the most comprehensive, unflinching mirror.  Everything was reflected back at me — the good, the bad, the ugly.  And how needed it was, to have that reflection.  I was simultaneously comforted and called out — and at a time when I needed both.

You can try to guess what you look like, but nothing will beat standing in front of the mirror, staring straight on.  But then, of course, the question remains: do you do something about what you see, or do you just keep staring, as if your reflection will solve it for you?

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—

The wee hours of the morning.  It’s now closing in on 2.  I think of a character I wrote in my most recent manuscript.  The reader is introduced to her as she stands out on her porch, in a weird, retroactive kind of mourning, thinking to herself that nothing good happens at this hour of night (how fascinating, the ambiguity of this time of day — it is either morning or night, or both, depending on your viewpoint).

There’s a poem I wrote recently, and posted it online with brash (reckless?) courage: I’ve wished you many different, contradictory things over the years — but now I think I just wish you the bravery to stand square in front of the mirror and stare without trying to paint a new image over it.

I write rawly.  Truth be told, the overwhelming reason I all but stopped writing for websites, for companies — why I stopped performing on cue like a monkey with her cymbals — was because I either write raw or completely inauthentic.  When I wasn’t allowed to write my topics, on my time, on my terms, the words sounded almost mocking — like I couldn’t hide my contempt for pretending.

But I wouldn’t change the way I write, even if it sometimes lands me in vulnerable or awkward situations (or, every so often, in hot water).  I write the way one might smash a fist into a mirror and then turn it towards the world: in hopes that perhaps one or more of those shards will reflect something back for those who take the time to look, even if my fists are bloodied in the meanwhile.  And perhaps I’m also hoping people will see the cuts on my hand and realize that it looks way worse than it actually feels.

—

It’s 2:45.  In just a few hours, I’ll have to get ready to teach.  It’s going to be a long day, but I’m not worried.  I’ve learned a long time ago to embrace when sleep evades me.  Sleep is like a fickle cat — chase it, and it will hiss and run and hide from you, leaving you feeling rejected and alone.  Do your own thing, and perhaps it will come to you.  Or perhaps not.  Either way, you can’t force it.

It’s a far cry from this time 5 or 6 years ago, when insomnia would leave me hysterical with exhaustion: why can’t I just sleep?  What horrible things will await me the next day because of this exhaustion?

But it is an echo from 3 years ago, when my soul would be stirred up in this similar fashion, and I’d simply retreat from the bedroom to read or write or dance.  (Oh, the number of times I needed to put on headphones and dance before my heart would settle enough for sleep.  As if I had to prove I could literally dance with my demons before I was allowed rest.)

(And, yes, the past — aren’t you quite the mirror?  But a peculiar type: the kind that reflects back how different things are, or points out the origins of things.  Its reflection is a measurement of how far you’ve come.)

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Both Milo and Artemis have joined me in the living room tonight (this morning?).  Milo curls up next to me as Artemis patrols.  This is their MO when I can’t sleep, almost like a stand in — if sleep would rather hiss at you, we’ll come to you instead.  We’ll stand guard during this vulnerable hour.

I still want to know: why the disruption?  Am I to blame the full moon?  The confluence of recent events that outright convince me that a higher power is at play?  Is this a growing pain the same way a child’s calves cramp up as their legs get longer, stronger, better?

Like so many things — will I ever actually find out?  Or am I stuck staring into the mirror and seeing what little details I can pick out in the distance?

There’s a book I’m reading right now about the Four Agreements.  The book starts off with a story about a man from 3,000 years ago, who, in a dream, leaves his body and realizes that we’re all made of stars, and that stars are not made up of light so much as they reflect it.  And, likewise, our beings, our bodies, our lives, are reflections of that light — reflecting our true source, our unified spirit.  Reflecting each other.

The sentiment alone makes me want to cry, but the actual sensation — the physical understanding and belief in such a thing — transcends feelings to the point that even the most violent sob wouldn’t assuage it.

The day after I read that story about the dream (and found myself carrying it around like a needed backpack) I opened my notebook of quotes to this:

“The sun shines down, and its image reflects in a thousand different pots filled with water.  The reflections are many, but they are each reflecting the same sun.  Similarly, when we come to know who we truly are, we will see ourselves in all people.”

I always end my yoga classes with a quote, and I usually try to open the notebook to a random page — let happenstance and the powers that be direct me to what quote is needed.  Perhaps it’s because my soul had been stirring for weeks — and the sleep has been so hard to come by — but I nearly burst into tears when I eyes fall upon it.

It’s all reflections.  All of it.  And I’m just loopy, exhausted, mystical, crazy, enlightened, enraptured enough to believe it.

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Messages

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I.

Let’s set the scene: I’m in high school, and left in the wake of yet another terrible relationship.

The relationship had been a special kind of toxic, the kind that should’ve heralded a warning: that this was the type of guy I would keep on attracting until I could actually find some self-worth.  I’d been treated like dirt, cheated on, and unceremoniously dumped.  He’d eventually return and I’d take him back, because it’s amazing how far you can bend over backwards when you don’t have a spine to stop you.  He’d dump me again, this time with a pocket full of insults instead of another girl waiting in the wings.

Let’s set a more specific scene: I’m in the car with my mom, sitting both passenger side and in the wake of the final break-up, venting about the newest set of verbal sparring — the terrible things he’d said about me, the things I’d said to friends in response, the anger and repulsion felt towards a guy I once thought I’d loved.

I look over and my mom is smiling amusedly.

“Oh, you two will get married someday.”

In college, I would learn about crystallizing moments during my cognitive development in children class.  Moments that might’ve meant nothing to the adult, but had seared into the child’s mind in indelible ways.  You probably could’ve asked my mom a week after that exchange what she had said, and she wouldn’t be able to recollect it.  But, for me, something had been set.  The venom over the high school ex would dissipate before I’d hit college, and now even the memory of the memory feels hazy and vague.  But that moment — in the car, with my mom and her statement — stays sharp and clear.

I felt a swell of anger at the dismissal, at what my mother was implying: that all of this was somehow quaint, that the boy who was a liar and a cheater and cruel with his words was somehow fit to be my husband.  I can’t remember exactly what my response was, but — knowing me — I probably responded by immediately shutting down and refusing to talk.  Withdrawal has always been my strongsuit.

II.

The boxes of childhood toys have stayed stacked one on top of each other in our guest room.  (“How fitting. The ghost of my childhood as been the perennial guest as of late, anyway.“)  I’ve had zero interest in sorting through them.  Truth be told, I had zero interest in even having them.  It had been a source of contention for the last nearly-five years.  A source of contention that was never as simple as an item taking up space.

When the last set of boxes were trucked into our house Thanksgiving of 2017, I turned to my little brother and said, “If there is anything else, just call and we’ll do a clean sweep, because I never want to have discussions about this ever again.”

Perhaps a slightly dramatic response for a set of childhood and adolescent things.  And it’s not exactly uncommon or unreasonable for a parent to do this. But an act never happens in a vacuum.  The weight of an item can’t always be measured by the number on the scale.

III.

Of course, my mom would never dream of overtly telling me that I should marry the boy who cheats on me, who breaks my heart, who makes my blood boil with his behavior.

But that’s the thing with messages: it’s never the overt ones that sneak past the sensors.  We get good at filtering out the ones yelled at us.  It’s the ones inferred that do the most damage.

IV.

The first thing I tackle are the books.  It’s a simple enough decision: the books stay.  If there is any hoarder’s indulgence I’m allowed to have, it’s my books — including the ones from adolescence.  I have the complete collection of Animorph books, and the smaller but also complete collection of The Boyfriend Club books (the boy-crazy answer to The Babysitters Club).

My children’s bible and my teen’s bible are both in the mix, as is The Phantom Tollboth, and Charlotte’s Web and Walk Two Moons.  My Goosebump collection is incomplete but still staggering.  I was a walking, talking Scholastic book fair in my days.  And all the books stay.  Their boxes were the heaviest, but the books hold something light — which is perhaps part of the magic behind creating entire worlds that the reader can sink into.

Perhaps that is why I write as obsessively as I do.  Stories are a way of making the world around you a little bit lighter.

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V.

“Well, they say life is a quiet desperation.”

This was one of her few explicit messages.  It was a saying my mom referred back to time and time again, saying it the way other moms might say, “A stitch in time saves nine,” or “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

“They say life is a quiet desperation.”

What a weird piece of supposed insight to pass along to your child.  Or perhaps it was never really meant to be an insight.  I know I never took it in as so — what I took in, instead, was the impetus behind it.  What remained unsaid.  The look in my mom’s eyes and the wavering smile as she repeated herself time and time again.

When I was old enough to read Thoreau, I’d learn that the line was a bastardization from the first chapter of Walden — in which he gives a scathing indictment against the average man.  He talks about “quiet desperation” with derision, and as proof that one must fight against the status quo — as reason why he was disappearing into the woods, to suck out all the marrow of life, to actually live before his life is up.

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VI.

Some of the boxes are easy to consolidate.  The packing was haphazard and inefficient, and for that I am grateful.  With minimal work, I am able to collapse four or five cardboard boxes, doing nothing more than rearranging a few items.

It feels good, like I’m clearing something out, even though I really haven’t done any work — even though everything I still need to sort through is still right in front of me.

“This is a metaphor for how you used to live your life,” I think to myself wryly.

“Everything has to be a metaphor, doesn’t it?” I add.

VII.

I’ve learned that, if utilized properly, your 20s and 30s can become a time of great deprogramming.  A chance to notice what messages you’ve been blindly listening to, recognize which messages are toxic, and figure out what you can do to shut off its signal.

I’ve also learned that, until you are made aware of the messages logged, you run the risk of doing things that make you turn around and go, “Why did I do that?”  And you can blame manipulation or trickery or just plain being played like a fool, but something had to have primed you to let it happen in the first place.

I’ve learned the first step to rewiring the messages is to figure out where the messages came from in the first place.  It’s why I don’t begrudge the retrospectives.  Sometimes you have to keep digging until you hit the treasure — or the landmine, whichever comes first.

VIII.

I look at the boxes and realize that my mom hasn’t found the cache of stuffed animals packed into garbage bags and tucked away in the eaves of my mom’s little cape-style house.  I wonder if I should tell her about it, or if the eaves are enough out of sight, out of mind.  I figure for now, I’ll let it be.  If the time comes and I have to make good on my vow to do a clean sweep, so be it.

My Barbies spent decades in a sturdy, white, cardboard box.  But, for some reason, they weren’t packed away in it.  Instead, they were relegated to a flimsy, flattened box alongside my LEGOs.  I think of the hours I spent with those dolls, creating intricate stories — stories that, at some point, all became about war and the end of the world, the Barbies taking shelter until it was safe to come out again.  I’m sure a child psychologist would’ve had a field day with the type of stories I came up with.

I take a good look at the remaining boxes.  It is only now that I realize almost all of them are alcohol boxes — red wine, beer, whiskey, the shipment boxes for bottles as they arrive at the package store.

My toys enclosed in containers meant for booze.  The metaphor is so loud my ears start ringing.

IX.

I’ve learned a long time ago that the best way to fight your demons is head-on.  You can’t evade them.  You can’t lose them in the chase.  You certainly can’t wait until their backs are turned and then implement your assault.  Do any of the aforementioned and your demons will just strike back the moment your guard is down.

And I’ve also learned a long time ago that the powers that be will find ways to grab you by the shoulders, swivel you in the direction of your demons, and go, “Round one.  Fight.”

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X.

“Marriage is what people do when they want to make each other miserable.”

It was one of the first truly candid things I said to my husband when we started dating — a candid thing stemming from my discomfort over even joking about marriage.

Marriage is what people do when they want to make each other miserable.  Of all the messages I’ve had to deprogram, that one has been the biggest and most vital to tackle.  It’s also why I can’t begrudge my mom too much for thinking my ordeal with my ex-boyfriend was cute.  She didn’t know any better, especially at that point, married for nearly 20 years.

Hers was a marriage defined by screaming matches and chaos.  A marriage that proved you need to make sure your demons can run alongside with your partner’s demons, lest they start street fighting.

The overt messages were there as well: my mom loved to tell me that marriage was like two oxen that had been yolked together for so long that they kept plodding along, side by side, when the harness was taken off, because they didn’t know any other way of living their lives.

But it was never the explicit sayings that did the damage.  It was the day-to-day toxicity, the palpable unhappiness from both sides of the table.  I learned all the wrong lessons on how to handle conflict, how a man should treat a woman, how a woman should respect herself.  These would all be things I’d have to grapple with when the powers that be grabbed me by the shoulders, forced me in the direction of my demons, and told me, point back, “The days of consolidating boxes are over.”

Their marriage was proof that divorce is not the only way a marriage can fail.  And perhaps way more than contently remarking that I’d marry my toxic ex, this message made me withdraw most from places that should’ve brought me warmth.

XI.

There are plenty of other messages to deprogram.  Plenty other messages that are just as vital to stop, to shoot the messenger down before it could send another telegram.  Messages that perhaps, in their absence, the comment about my boyfriend would’ve came and went, and perhaps the messages about marriage would’ve been nothing more than a sharp sting in the back of my mind.

Other messages, the ones that I did my best to rewrite retroactively once I got a little bit more information, once I became more educated on the world of mental health, on addiction, on the human condition.  But, interestingly enough, those were not the things I was thinking about as I was going through my boxes.

But it did make me think: isn’t that what we’re doing, as we become a little more self-aware and self-actualized?  We become just a little more informed so we can retroactively rewrite those messages?  So that we can read between the lines and decipher between intent and outcome?  That we stop shooting the messenger so much as we start to learn to understand them?

That we stop fighting our demons so much as we learn to dance with them?

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XII.

One major thing I keep finding in these boxes are my creations.

Flip animation books, pretend movie reels that fed out of coffee cans, figurines made from various wires.  Sand art and clay sculptures and binders upon binders upon binders of old writing.  Doodle and sketchbooks, blueprints for the future, DIY jewelry.

I know I can hyperfocus on the negative.  It’s something I knew long before the Enneagram called me out for it.  Cause me pain and that’s probably the only thing I will remember.

(And, boy, will I remember.)

A box of creations doesn’t offset a toxic childhood.  Much like a camping trip, or jazz music, or Sunday morning church service doesn’t erase the damaging messages given during the darker times.

And perhaps all these creations were not the counterbalance to the negative so much as the response to it.  But perhaps it doesn’t matter.  I lived in my own world, a world of my creation both in the mind and with my hands.  And it’s probably why I’m as prolific of a writer as I am today.

I was given my own binder’s worth of messages that have done subtle and explicit damage.  But within those messages might’ve held the morse code that made the person that I am today — and, in a way, I can thank those messages, that source, even as I reprogram and delete them.

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XIII.

“When we finish the basement, we can put the boxes in the closet,” says my husband.  He had gone to great lengths to add built-ins to the semi-finished basement — built-ins that will someday become shelved closets, big enough for small cardboard boxes to fit.

But then I’m just moving things around.  Consolidating boxes and calling it clearing things out.  I have made major headway with my endeavor, but I still have a long ways to go.  More boxes to go through, more decision to make.

Decide what stays, decide what goes.  Decide what I can live with and what will be let go.

I think of the messages my husband has worked so tirelessly to give me (you are loved, you are worthy of love, you are not a monster, you don’t need to be ashamed of who you are, I am here) and the times I’ve leaned all my weight on him to tell me the things I never heard growing up.

You are loved. You are safe. You are protected. You deserve respect. Marriage can be a beautiful thing.

I smirk at the idea of those closet shelves, of him building something to hold my childhood baggage.

I am here.

Everything must be a metaphor for me, huh.  Almost like anything can serve as a messenger.

My Voice

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“Everyone can sing.  It’s just a matter of finding your range.”

“I’ve heard that before, but I don’t know if I believe it.”

It was one of those conversations in passing — a few lines before the dialogue shifted to something else — but it echoed a little bit in the back of my head.  It bounced off the cylinders that always seem to be running — the introspection and self-analysis, always trying to crack the code, always trying to reveal what might still be hidden.

Everyone can sing.  It’s just a matter of finding your range, what set of notes you best sing under.  I thought about how I, more or less, came to that realization a few years back.  It wasn’t enough to steer the conversation back to the topic of singing — perhaps I’m just a little too keen, sometimes, on respecting the flow of a conversation and, save for when I leak out words in torrential, blabbering spouts, I err on the side of silence — but it was enough to get my own internal gears turning again.

It’s something I’ve thought about, for a while.  It’s been something I’ve been meaning to write about, for a while.  But, like many things, sometimes you have to allow it to incubate, lest it come out half-formed.

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I think about the years I spent assuming I couldn’t sing.  I think of my high school years, the times I spent driving around with my friends, deliberately singing below the volume of the radio, apologizing preemptively if my terrible voice was ruining the song.  The times I tried recording myself singing the latest pop hits — only to delete the recordings, because there are few ways to truly fuel teenaged self-loathing quite like playing back a track of you feebly attempting a Britney Spears tune.

(My God, I marvel at that little girl, the person I supposedly was upwards of 20 years ago.  Perhaps I have my gaze so firmly set to my upbringing because I think, if I stare long enough, I’ll be transported back in time and I can just give my broken teenaged self a hug.)

I think of sometime in middle school, when I would just let the music fly out, and my mom would say things like, “Oh boy. I sure hope they’ll teach you to sing right in choir,” and my dad would say things like, “Who sings that song?  Let them,” and I would harbor a crushed spirit and deep resentment until I learned to rewire those messages.

(But that’s a topic for a different day — another one that needs a little more time in incubation before it’s fully formed.)

There was an opening that occurred the day I realized I have a naturally deeper voice — that I might go up half an octave in my talking voice when I’m uncertain, sounding almost baby-like in the big people’s world — but at the core I’m a low alto, bordering on female baritone.

So of course Britney Spears and Mandy Moore wouldn’t work with my voice — but Amy Winehouse and Paloma Faith could.

It was not a perfect realization.  The dawning didn’t usher in a brand new day.  I still sing off-pitch sometimes, go nasally too easily — perhaps from too many years of attempting a soprano’s song — and my knee-jerk response is still to shy away from singing in front of others.  Let the music be turned up.  Let other people sing.  Who knows what’ll happen if my voice is heard.

But the metaphor is there, every dark corner and line.  How long I spent trying to force my voice to be something it wasn’t, to fit the square peg into a round hole.  How long I spent trying to force myself into a role only because that was what I’d heard and that was what I thought was expected of me.  And how off it sounded — how my voice strained as I mimicked — but how rich the music became when I let my voice be authentic.  How beautiful life’s potential became when it stopped being about mirroring so much as it became about unfolding.

And yet, still, the echoes of that insecurity.  The hesitation, the erring on the side of silence.  The impossible mission of rewiring those messages of my upbringing — do you really think anything positive will happen if you speak up? if you let your own voice through? — that I still feel uneasy in my new form.

(And perhaps writing about those messages is a little more ready than I thought.)

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A week or so after the conversation with my friends, I find myself singing “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” as I get ready for my next class.  I find I have a lot of freedom to sing aloud these days.  I tend to go home between classes, where expanses of lawn and forest and a small pride of cats await me.  Then there’s always the car as I drive from class to class, where there is no one else but me and the radio.

My voice is off.  I’m still recovering from a cold that knocked me off my feet turned my lungs into mush.  My throat is still scratchy, my talking voice still with that rattle that comes with days of violent coughing.

I have no idea what I actually sound like.  I am within my range, but those of us who didn’t grow up musically inclined have a hard time hearing our own pitch and tone.  I’m also aware that my walls are not soundproof — that the neighborhood might be mercifully spread out, but a loud voice can carry from the road into a home, and vice versa.  But I also don’t care.  The song is in my head and I’m allowing myself to croon it out.

I can’t help but think of a line in a Tori Amos song — a beautiful song sung by a beautiful soprano, a song I might’ve attempted a time or two in my life:

“I’ve been here, silent all these years.”

It’s a line I let simmer, just like so many other quotes and lyrics and passages that flitter into the mind.  There’s nothing silent about me right now, and perhaps I’m beginning to uncover the other beauties in finding your own voice, such as learning to let go of that fear and let yourself be heard.

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Thaw

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You don’t realize how stale the air is until you open the windows and let the spring breeze in.

It reminds me of something Melissa Febos says in her memoir Abandon Me: some burdens can only be measured by their relief.  I’m sure there’s bigger a tie-in for that quote somewhere, but, for now I just let it simmer, hanging out in the smell of melting ice and shifting winds.

Spring has been shyly introducing itself over the past couple days, and it is through this thawing that I realize how stagnant I feel.

The reality is, I haven’t been stagnant.  I’ve been knee-deep in a new book release.  I’ve been wading through a corrective exercise course, one that simultaneously reaffirms what I’m doing and reminds me why I haven’t exactly signed on to become a physical therapist.  I’ve had my hands in a thousand different projects, from online classes to podcasts to fundraisers — I’ve been hosting get togethers and seeing friends and going to events.  It’s been a busy winter, a full winter.  I’ve been content in the busyness and, conversely, content in the downtime.

But in the thawing, something stirs.

I ache for mountains.  I ache for my old schedule, where gigantic swatches of the day were free.  I realize that while I’ve been busy and professional and aspiring, my wanderlust has been hibernating.  And I don’t realize how dormant it has been until it wakes back up again.

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I don’t do well with feeling caged in, like snowbanks have impeded my path or the brutal winter winds have pushed the door shut.  To paraphrase Jeanette Winterson in Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal — yet another memoir, as I find an unquenchable thirst for women’s stories right now — I must have a toe in both worlds.  I’m the cat who’ll stay domestic so long as the door stays open.

And now the door to the back porch is open, complementing the windows, creating a cross breeze.  Air filters through the screens and the stagnancy of winter is shrugged off.

I stir in this warmth.  It makes me want to cancel classes and drive backroads to no where. There is so much to see and do and I am insatiable.  If I am but a portal for the universe to perceive itself, then I want to grab hold of as much of the universe as I can.

I ache, I ache, I ache.  My God, will there ever be a time when I’m not aching for adventure, when my soul isn’t tugging me to the one more spot on the horizon — just a little bit further; I need to see where this path goes after the bend.  I’m already planning trips in my mind — I want Quebec City for a long weekend, I want bungee jumping for my birthday.  Let’s make good on our promise to go to San Diego, to Miami, to Iceland.  Let’s visit a national park.  A spot on the Appalachian Trail.  A summit.  Two summits.  Let’s just get in the car and drive.  Vamonos, vamonos, vamonos.  Tengo una alma salvaje y un cuerpo energético.

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My husband — the yin to my yang — loves this about me.  He loves my wild spirit, even if that wildness has proven to tear at the drapes and chew on the woodwork when left unchecked.  I pull him towards the sun and he keeps the wax in my wings from melting away.

The air awakens something in me and I become like the tulips eager to burst from the ground and bloom.

Yes, but remember what happens to impatient flowers who make their presence known before the last frost hits, I warn myself.  Sometimes I can be my own yin to the yang.  Sometimes.  And perhaps that why I stay in a region with such long winters: without hibernation, I would truly go feral, even with my husband and my ever-strengthening rational side keeping my Icarus below the stratosphere.

I’ve spent so long afraid of winter — fearing the darkness, the cold, the perpetual indoors — and this is the first year I’ve truly embraced it.  But one does not fully remember how inviting the ground is until the snow melts away.

***

I detour heavily after my morning class, Day 3 of this spring-like weather, the peak before the temperatures are due to drop again, before the rainfall hits.  I blast across roads with the windows down and the music up — my audiobook on pause, as if I don’t have it in me to listen to someone else’s words, someone else’s story right now.  I play songs that have somehow been imprinted with the serene drives home after my longer hikes.  I can practically taste the dried pineapple slices that I greedily ate up one afternoon as I navigated my way back to the highway.  I can feel the exact way I felt after returning to the trailhead: tired, satiated, temporarily tamed.

My to-do list is still heavy.  Your workload with a book doesn’t stop just because you’ve released it.  And I still have a few more chapters to read and a good amount of studying to do before I can take my exam and finish my course.  And then, of course, there are the afternoon classes — classes I wouldn’t dream of canceling, despite my wanderlust.  I’ve worked too hard to get them, to get to where I am now.

But for now I’m twisting down this small town roads — roads that were once imprinted with blazing, surreal anxiety, a time when I drove them because I just needed escape, I needed just one fleeting moment where the weight of everything wasn’t shattering my heart.  Roads that, when I finally got my head above water and put my foot down and let the dust finally clear, I actively took back, refusing to permanently give them up to the darkest time in my life.

Now they are back to what they were in the before: majestic, tranquil, exactly what I need to keep the feral side of me content for now.

Some ordeals can only be measured in how good it feels once they’re gone.

(…and there’s the bigger tie-in.)

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The Day Has Come!

The day has come!  Now you too will know what to do in the event the flower girl explodes!

(…or, kinda.)

It’s been a long six years — from inception, to editing, to trying to get an agent’s attention, to my Kindle Scout campaign, to today: release day.

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You can get both the paperback and ebook on Amazon (currently two separate pages, but they’ll merge any minute now).

So what is the book about?  In the Event the Flower Girl Explodes is a biting comedy about weddings, love, communication, and family. The book touches upon the subtle and all-too-real heartbreaks that happen when we attempt to protect those we love. The main character goes through obstacles that are familiar to every twenty-something struggling in the real world.

But, don’t take my word for it:

“My Best Friend’s Wedding with a rainbow twist! From the first page, readers will be sucked into Nicole Winger’s world. Smart, funny, new-grad Nicole wrestles with territory all too familiar to twenty-somethings… An entertaining read for anyone who enjoys their black humor with a side of substance (and a little frill).”

-Sara DiVello, bestselling author, Where in the OM Am I? One Woman’s Journey from the Corporate World to the Yoga Mat

“Abby is a fresh, relatable voice,” – Carina Stikus, author of Grandma’s How-To List for Getting Through Life

“In the Event the Flower Girl Explodes is an amazing coming of age story that truly captures the feelings that build when we don’t know how to communicate about them. It culminates in lessons learned and renewed faith in oneself,” — Sarah Woodard, author of Adri’s Big Dream

“You will read chapter after chapter without noticing it,”  – Ruty B, critic, Reading, Dreaming

So… go buy it!  Or else you’ll never know what to do in the event the flower girl explodes!  (Or…something.)

Just Not-Bad Enough

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As I quickly learned, cleaning out your closet feels a lot like digging something up.

I had long-ago dropped the former-teacher narrative: not the story of my time as an early education teacher, but the tale of my quitting of the field — and quitting far too late, when the burnout had left indelible grit under my nails and a lingering cough in my throat.  It had taken a few years, but eventually the radioactive dust from the fallout of quitting had dissipated and the air had cleared out again.

But something always lingered.  The gnawing guilt, simultaneously over leaving and over not leaving soon enough — because I didn’t stick it out, and because I stuck it out when the best thing I could’ve done was leave.  Like any wound that didn’t get a clean cut, it festered and reinfected and took years before it finally scarred over.

As I boxed up my old preschool teaching clothes, the old gnaw returned.  I was reminded of the things that were thrown at me in my first job, how different the environment was from my student teaching days at the respected preschool just outside of Copley, or at the revered integrated primary school in Belfast.  I was reminded of when I burst into tears on my third day at my first job, crying so hard on my lunch break that I swore I wouldn’t pull myself together in time to go back inside.  And I was reminded of how I knew then — then, three days into it — that I didn’t have the fortitude to handle what the early education world was really like.

(And yet I stuck it out.  Until I didn’t.)

In the presence of this unearthing, I couldn’t help but wonder what would’ve happened, had the variables been different.  If I hadn’t been thrown to the wolves in my very first job.  If I had been able to stay with my chosen age group — Pre-K, instead of getting shuffled around and eventually working two years in a room full of one-year-olds.  If I had had more compassionate leadership, or smaller classes, or more support staff — or more support, period.  If the tribulations were not Kafkaesque in their absurdity and merciless cruelty.  If just one of the hurricane-like Capital B Capital T Bad Things had been taken out of the equation.

Truth be told, I probably would’ve stayed.  Things would’ve been just good enough — or, should I say, things would have been just not-bad enough, for me to lack any impetus to change my situation.

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But things were bad enough.  And they had to get there.  I had to come home after a particularly horrendous, outright illegal day, too stressed and drained and overstimulated to even burst into hysterics like I had on previous nights, and say with such numb certainty, “If tomorrow proves to be the same as today was, this will be my last year,” and then watch as the next day proved identical to the previous one (and then go home to write my letter of resignation).

It had to get bad — so bad that I had no choice but to leave.  Because that’s how I operate.  I’m a little bit like the Lady Gaga song — you’re giving me a million reasons to let you go, but baby, I just need one good one to stay.  I have to be stripped of every positive attribute — any chance of putting an optimistic spin on things — before I finally put my foot down and go, “Enough is enough.  This has to end.”

I think of what I’ve dubbed my Saturn Return.  Particularly, of how things had to get bad — absurdly, mercilessly, Kafkaesque, bad — before I finally had the courage to turn around and plant both feet down and face what I had been running from and go, “It’s time to end what I should’ve ended a while ago.”

I have to have my back against the wall before I even think of pushing back.  The building has to be already collapsing before I agree with create something new with my lot of land.  I have to be practically yanked out of my seat by the universe as it yells at me, “Don’t you see this is a bad situation?  How much more severe do I have to make things until you get that?”  I have to have every other avenue blocked off before I’m even daring enough to take one step down the path I should’ve been on all along.

Or, at least, had to — past tense.

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The retrospectives keep coming in waves, no matter how much I remind myself that eventually I have to cease them, eventually I have to be fully in the present moment (my therapist once made the mistake of joking about how a yoga instructor struggles so much with being present, and the energy I gave off in response must’ve been something, because she never made that joke again).  But, to paraphrase Joan Didion, it’s best to stay on nodding terms with the older versions of yourself, no matter how unattractive they may be.  You have to keep a firm grasp on who you used to be, if only to serve as the anchor to things you want changed.

There are many older versions of myself that I turn to, if only to stare them square in the eye and go, “I never want to be you again.”  And one of those unfortunate souls is the version of me who had to wait until everything had blown up before admitting it was time to walk away.  The one who would stay with her current set of circumstances because they were not-bad enough.  The one who had to be backed into a corner, who had to have it spelled out for her, who wouldn’t trust her intuition when it said, “This does you no favors.  Turn your back on it and go.”  Who always had to wait until that moment of overload, when even that one good reason to stay would be obliterated.

And I know the reasons why — and whether I got to the reason from years of therapy or through years of introspection or perhaps a mix of the two is somewhat irrelevant.  It stems from a mix of a weak sense of self and a strong sense that I don’t deserve better.  Of course I can’t trust myself to know when to stick it out and when to walk away — and, likewise, maybe deep down I know I deserve this mistreatment.

But that inevitably means that life will have to get tough — no, not tough.  Dire.  So bad that it flies past not-bad enough and into a territory miserable and misery-inducing.  It’s an exhausting way to live a life, and it inevitably results in time wasted in unhappy situations because you were waiting for the universe to effectively shove you out of harm’s way (by first shoving you off the cliff).

But, once you realize the pattern, you have the foundational tools needed to go about changing it — even if things had to get bad-bad enough to recognize it in the first place.

—

There’s a trick I sometimes use with my yoga students.  I stole it from the psychiatrist who ran a weekend intensive training I went to a few years back, one designed to help yoga teachers work with veterans with PTSD.  At the very beginning of class, I have my students take a moment to notice how they’re seated, and if it’s possible to be even 5% more comfortable, to give themselves permission to readjust.

The idea is that you’re not only getting them to be more aware of the sensations in their body, but reminding them of their own agency.  In fact, in all the trainings I’ve done over the last few years for trauma-sensitive, trauma-informed yoga, the reminder of your own power to do what you need to do is one of the biggest, overlapping themes.

(Yoga — what I eventually started to do after I left the early education world.  I’m going on four years in this profession, and it fits me like a glove.  If things had been just not-bad enough and I’d never left the ECE world, I wouldn’t be here now.)

A reminder of one’s agency.  I sometimes keep it subtle in class, and sometimes I’ll be overt.  Sometimes I’ll give students multiple choices and tell them to try them out and remind them that, “We’re challenging everything with our yoga practice.  Not just our balance and strength and breath, but our mindsets over staying in something even when it’s not constructive.”

Reminding ourselves of our own agency.  My teaching style reflects that attitude.  I’ve perfected that technique over the years — and perhaps I have perfected it because I want to give that lesson to my students, that reminder that we shouldn’t be okay with just not-bad enough, so that maybe, just maybe, they aren’t waiting until their inner doomsday clock is 30 seconds to midnight before they finally do something about it.

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