Abby Rosmarin's Blog, page 9

Nevada and Home

I.

For a New York minute, there was talk of moving Nevada.

It was a long shot, but also a once in a lifetime opportunity.  One of those offers that you just don’t turn down, that you see where it goes — no matter how unlikely, no matter how thrilling or frightening.

From a little before Christmas until a little while after New Year’s, there was talk about moving out west.  Casual talk.  Hypothetical talk.  “It’s too early to tell,” talk.  Keeping it casual.  Long shot casual.  Google searches of Lake Tahoe and the local realty, but, still, casual.

Nervous jokes about what it would mean — but, still, casual.

Analyzing and over-analyzing, obsessively riding hypothetical waves of what the future might bring — but, still. Casual.  Too early to tell.  Really, it’s such a long shot.  Not worth getting too amped up about.

But…still.

I had spent the last few years riding nothing but hypothetical waves, figuring out the future as if reality itself existed on multiple planes — and this wave was no different.  What would it mean, if the long shot actually proved fruitful, and we were faced with potentially leaving the Northeast.  What would it mean in terms of careers and friends and housing and everything.  What would it mean in terms of all the hard work that we had been putting in if there were yet another upheaval?

What would it mean if, in the midst of these shifting winds of change, we’d be thrown into a hurricane?

What would happen if the next step in this increasingly uncertain future be packing my bags?  What would happen if the perennial nomad got a chance to unhook her moorings and push off away from the dock?

As hypothetical and daunting and stressful as it was, this potential offer became chance to be a little more retrospective.  It was a chance to go back over the last few years and truly reevaluate.

At my absolute lowest points — when it felt like everything was unraveling around me and I was certain my heart couldn’t take any more — I had looked around and wondered if the only solution was to just leave town and start over.  At higher points — when I was alive with wanderlust and insatiable with travel — I had looked around and wondered just how long I was meant to stay in New Hampshire; if it was time to go, not because the problems got to be too much, but because my calling rested on different lands.

And now, here we were, faced with a very real possibility of putting down stakes in different soil.  And what could’ve been music to my nomadic heart had given me considerable pause instead.

I thought of the card reader, who had told me that I was not meant to stay in New Hampshire. And I thought of some of the other card reader’s predictions, and the ones that had seemed so certain but never came true.

Leaving Boston had never felt like this.  I had been hesitant about the “small town” of Nashua (oh, if I could only give 24-year-old me a visit now, and give her a lesson on what “small towns” actually look like), but it always felt like the natural evolution of events.  Good-bye, the Atlantic.  The mountains await.  I embraced the unshackling of my beloved Boston area in a haze of new jobs and wedding vows and an apartment with a view of a pond.

But there was something slightly unnatural about leaving New Hampshire.  Something kept tugging at me and making me feel uneasy, like I was attempting to trespass something.  All the pictures of Lake Tahoe in the world couldn’t assuage it.  Every time I took a deep breath and truly looked at the world around me, I got this deep feeling within my gut, one that told me, point blank:

It is not yet time.

I gave the feeling little thought at first.  I knew that there was fear and excitement and trepidation and worry backing every single thought — and I had learned a while ago that I can mistake my fevered emotions for gut instincts or even divine intervention.  But still, it stayed.

I looked at my home and my neighborhood and my community — the roads I traveled on a daily basis, the views and vistas I experienced weekly, the air of all that surrounded me — and felt that statement, time and time again, as deep and as calm and as true as a patient father:

It is not yet time.  You belong in New Hampshire right now.

I had had inklings of a similar feeling in the fairly recent past: a gentle voice telling me, Hang tight.  You’re going to want to see what happens next.  One that pinged at various moments, at both the high and low points of the past few years.

Listening to that voice would end up paying off in spades.  Hanging tight, letting things be, holding space until I got some vital pieces to some very confusing puzzles.  Allowing things that were destined to fall into place do exactly that.  And the voice would continue to ping at me, as if emboldened by being proven right.

(continue to hang tight; you’re really going to want to see what else happens next)

But — at the end of the day — that mantra was about patience, about not acting until I got all of the information, about letting the laws of cause & effect come into play.

It was different than this voice.  This one surveyed my smaller town on the border of civilization and the boondocks, and stated:

“It’s simply not time.  There is still work to be done.  Unfinished business to attend to.“

There are promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

II.

In the end, the long shot proved its length, and Nevada was off the table.

(“I didn’t want to jinx or sabotage anything but…I’m glad we didn’t have to make that decision.” “Me too. Me too.”)

Just days before we’d learn exactly whether or not we’d have to make said decision, my husband and I had stopped off at a local eatery, treating ourselves to gourmet mac & cheese after a day of darting around.

“I mean, we’ll definitely see what we’ll see but…it just doesn’t feel right, y’know?” I had said over my plate, repeating out loud what my inner voice had been saying all week. “Like, there’s unfinished business in New Hampshire, and it’s not yet time to leave.”

“Not time for you to leave?” my husband asked.

“Not time for us to leave,” I replied, and meaning every word.

“You’re right,” he said. “I feel it as well.  There’s still work to be done here.  At least for now, this is where we’re supposed to be.”

“At least for now, this is where we belong.”

That moment created something, in that casual restaurant, by that tiny table.  Something connecting and conspiratorial had materialized right between us.  A gentle type of energy, bridging the air between our spots.  The speakers piped in some type of bubbly pop music, a song that was completely ill-fitted to the situation, but I kept hearing one line from a song by the Script, playing over and over in my head:

-Even after all these years, I just now get the feeling that we’re meeting for the first time.-

(Hang tight.  You’ll want to see what happens next.)

III.

We had owned our home for three and a half years when Nevada showed up at our doorstep.  Three and a half years, thousands upon thousands of dollars in mortgage payments, repainted walls and a rewired sound system and a semi-finished basement.  Property we had been gently forming and shaping to our desires, a mailman who knew how terrible I was at checking the mail and arranged our fliers and junk mail accordingly.  A handful of neighbors who knew us by name; the rest by sight.  Nearly six years with a New Hampshire driver’s license, plus a car that was purchased and registered in the same state.

But none of that was truly confirmation, not until there was a chance to step away and I was forced to dig deep, to see what it was that I truly wanted.  And what I found was reassurance on a soul and cellular level.  A reminder that my roaming heart craves a home base, even if it itches to wander away from it from time to time — and my nomadic heart had found that home near the mountains of New Hampshire.

This might not be where I stay forever.  Who knows exactly what the future will bring.  I’d long ago given up such cutesy predictions and instead embraced the beautiful uncertainty of a chaotic and unfair world.  I’d long ago stopped trying to tell fate what to do and instead trusted something bigger than myself to take the wheel (at least from time to time).  And heaven knows how long it will be this way before the winds shift again.

But, for once, in the present moment, I knew where I was supposed to be.

This is where I belong right now.

This is where we belong right now.

And I had been waiting my whole life for exactly this feeling.

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Resolve

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I’ll go to the gym.  I’ll volunteer.  I’ll eat better, live better, be stronger.  In a sense, New Year’s Resolutions are a way of testing our resolve — of looking back at what you have no interest in repeating and seeing just how long you can keep those things behind you.  With each item on the list, we are essentially going, “I resolve to turn a new leaf, to go down a new path, to leave behind what needs to be left behind.”  Even the superficial resolutions are deep vows to ourselves, reminders that we have unhealthy habits that need dropping, that there is so much to do in this world.

If 2015 tested my strength, 2016 tested my resolve.  And I vow to go in to 2017 with more than just a set of resolutions.  I want to dive straight to the core — to what those resolutions actually mean, to the promises made to our souls.

I want to stick to resolve.

I resolve to remember my worth.  I resolve to stop trying to be as small and as unassuming as possible.  I resolve to step forward more often and be bigger more often and take up space and be loud and take pride.  I resolve to stop lowering myself just because I worry another person will think I’m too high up.

And I resolve to remember that my worth isn’t based on how many interesting things I can do or extraordinary things I can accomplish.  I resolve to remember my worth is innate, as inborn as my soul and as unknown to the outside world as I allow it to be.

I resolve to remember that worth.

I resolve to remember that actions speak louder than words: that apologies and promises mean nothing if you find yourself in the same cycle, over and over again.  I resolve to remember that my time and my energy are valuable.  I cannot be wasting them by going in circles.  I resolve to remember the very definition of insanity is doing the same thing, over and over, expecting a different outcome.  I resolve to recognize patterns quicker and to have the guts to stop repeating them.

I resolve to remember my worth.

I resolve to communicate directly.  I resolve to speak clearly — not skirt around the issues and hope people will infer & sympathize.  I resolve to plant both feet when I talk, never again retreating back or dropping the subject entirely.  I resolve to never downplay what I’m saying ever again, hurting myself because I don’t want the other person to get hurt.  I resolve to never again silence my suffering at the feet of someone else’s sob story.  I resolve to let my voice be loud and clear, to state simply:

“The things you’ve done have brought me pain.”

I resolve to remember my worth.

I resolve to kill the Cool Girl off, once and for all.  I resolve to stop saying, “It’s fine,” when it’s not, it’s not, it’s really fucking not.  I resolve to speak in real time when things are killing my soul, to speak in real time with my soul needs something.  I resolve to kill off this notion that the only way I can be in people’s lives is if I have no wants, no needs, no hang ups, no anything.

I resolve to remember my worth.

I resolve to continue to be proactive about removing the things that drain my soul — and embellishing the things that feed it.  I resolve to remember it’s on me to break cycles, to step away from toxic situations, to step forward towards the things I want.  I resolve to — never again — meekly state my situation and hope someone cares enough to listen and change.  Because, the thing is — they don’t.  It’s on me to blaze the trail and cut out what’s in my way.

I resolve to remember my worth.

I resolve to keep my eyes more open, to not be so blind as to what is blatantly in front of me.  I resolve to be a little less naive, a little more assertive.  I resolve to be vigilante, to not wait until things have to be spelled out for me before I finally act.  I resolve to hold truth in both hands and accept it to the best of my ability.  I resolve to remember there’s a world of difference between positive self-talk and outright denial.  I resolve to not wait until I’ve tapped out my reserves before I finally say, “I won’t give anymore.”

I resolve to remember my worth.

I resolve to take more time to feel the miracle of things, to fight mercilessly against the despair of the world.  To continue to retreat to the mountains and visit the ocean and dive headfirst into life.  I resolve to continue my inquiries, both around and inside of me.  I resolve to be fearless in my pursuits, to let unanswerable questions hang where they must, to solve what can be solved, to build what can be built.

I resolve to remember my worth.

I resolve to remember what is good about me, and to finally drop that “broken” narrative, once and for all.  I resolve to remember the warrior within me that has gotten me as far as she has — and remember that she’s done a pretty damn good job, all things considered.  I resolve to banish the part of me that’s quick to label myself as crazy just because I have emotions, just because I find myself at my wit’s end when I’m hurting.  I resolve to remember there’s a world of difference between regulating responses and outright invalidating feelings.

I resolve to remember I already have resolve, that I’ve come this far with it, and to not act like it’s something I must dig up, create from scratch, make out of absolutely nothing.  Much like my mind, my body, my heart, my spirit, it’s not some shattered thing that I have to scramble to piece together again.  It’s a force in its own right, one that simply can be built from.

I resolve to remember my worth.  And to never forget it again.

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Gardenia / If She Could See Me Now

There’s a new trend on Facebook, one where you post a picture of yourself from 2006, then one from 2016.

I’ve been meaning to do it. Especially since us godforsaken late Millenials — the ones who got Facebook in 2006 — have quick access to those pictures from 10 years ago. I’ve been meaning to take part in this exercise in seeing how different we look, how much we’ve changed.

And I have changed. It’s as clear as the pictures from 10 years ago. In 2006, I had dyed blonde hair and an uneasy smile. I spoke a half octave higher than my actual voice, speaking to the world as if I were afraid it would bite me.  I held my body as if I were ashamed of it. Always too tall, too clumsy, too oafish.  The younger version of me was filled to the brim with potential, but overflowing with self-doubt and self-loathing.  She avoided so much because of it.  She avoided sports because she thought she never would be good at them, because she wasn’t an athlete.

If only she could see me now.

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A weekend snowfall cancels school and opens up my Saturday. Plans get shifted and I end up joining my husband into Boston, parting ways briefly as he goes about his original plans before we reconvene for a few get togethers. I do what I do best: I put on my headphones and I walk the streets and immerse myself in.

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Walking the streets of Boston with music in my ears is a staple. It was how I explored the city when I first moved in for college. It was how I soothed myself during the tumults of the college experience. It was how I recentered myself when the real world was too chaotic, too monotonous, too anything.  Returning to it is like returning home.

I walk streets I know by heart with songs that are as old as this experience.  Mandy Moore’s “Gardenia” comes on and I might as well be in 2006 again. I decide to go straight to where the majority of my 2006 memories were made — back to my alma mater, back to Huntington Ave and the Huskies and college age me.

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Where was I in 2006? Depending on the time of year, an unsure freshman or an unsure sophomore.  A member of the literary magazine committee, eager to see if my latest terrible poem will make it in, and always grateful that the submissions were anonymous and no one ever knew when they were tearing into my work.

I was freshly 20 and filled with pipe dreams. I wanted to publish a novel. I wanted to publish a collection of poems. A collection of short stories. I wanted to be part of anthologies. I wanted to be way more than an aspiring writer.  My fevered little mind wanted people to read what I wrote and tell me that it connected with them.

But how in the world was that even going to happen? About 75% of my work never made it into the literary magazine and I didn’t really have any good book ideas and I probably could never really write a novel, anyway.

Oh if only that younger version of me could see me now.

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Walking down Saint Stephens Street to Northeastern University is like reuniting with an old friend. While the other end of campus is rapidly expanding, this side stays the same. Same white brick buildings, same red brick sidewalks.  Mandy Moore croons in my ear.

“I’ve been seeing all my old friends in the city, walking alone in Central Park. Doing all the things that I neglected, traded them all in just to be in your arms.”

Huntington Ave still has the same feel. The green line trolleys still emerge from the tunnel like tardy companions.  The tracks still clack.  People still dart across the ways, avoiding trains and cars and gigantic slush puddles.  The world is alive and filled with all walks.  The college kids all look like babies, like they should be worrying about getting their learners permit, not finals.  And I laugh, knowing that I was once one of those babies.  So eager to turn to the world and proclaim adulthood, but no where near close to actually achieving it.  Twenty and naïve and assuming it was all already figured out.

If she could see me now, she’d know how off base she was.

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I walk past an old white brick building, one with bay windows and iron railings. The one that used to house a boy I once knew. A boy I once devoted my heart to, and, because of that devotion, I never had the guts to stand firm, to say our arrangement was bullshit, to say that I deserve better. And, in being afraid of losing what little I was given, I was only wounded further.

The entire dynamic shattered my heart and cut me up.  It would continue to cut me up, to walk past that building, after everything was said and done and nothing more would be said or done, reminiscing with too much solemnity on what had happened in that building, rehashing and resurfacing the broken sides of my heart as if to reinspect them.  I used to morosely walk this side of the street, convinced I had lost my One, convinced I would forever feel this way, convinced that my one shot at love had misfired.

I walk by it now and can barely conjure up even the memory of that feeling.  I walk by it and the memory that pops up is one of a saying I saw online: “Remember that time you confused a life lesson for a soulmate?”

If only that younger me could see me now.

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“Gardenia” is on repeat now.  Mandy Moore sings lightly, sings to the me of 2006 and the me of now.

“I hear my own voice. It sounds so silly. I keep telling my story all around. And everything I’ve lost ain’t so different — ’cause this is how everybody gets found.”

My therapist warns me not to spend too much time in the past. And she has a point — looking back too much will tweak your neck. But the last few years have forced nothing short of a constant revisit.  The events from the last 2 years have forced me to compare and contrast, find root causes and flawed motivations and unresolved emotions.  And it all has shown me that sometimes the only way you can let go of the past is to dive headfirst into it.

I’ve already proven to myself that, if you don’t learn from the past, you are doomed to repeat it. I’ve already found that the lessons you refuse to learn will come back around, again and again, until you’ve no choice but to learn them.  I’ve already learned that if you don’t confront your demons, you will always attract people who’ll confirm them.

I think of a poem I’ve written recently, about letting go, and how there really is no such thing as it. We can pretend to pry open our hands and drop what we’ve been carrying. But it will follow us, wondering when it can jump back into our arms. The only way through it is to recognize we can’t let it go, so much as let it be. That we have to blaze forward and forge on ahead and pray we make it out on the other side with some of it left behind.

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My time at my old college is short. There is too much to see, too many streets I want to visit before reconvening with my husband. There are memories on every corner and I have no interest lingering at one of them for too long.  I loop around the Museum of Fine Art and around the Fens and toward Mass Ave again. I revisit familiar roads filled with strangers and forge on ahead, letting what needs to fall by the wayside linger behind me on the streets.

“I don’t wanna hang up the phone yet. It’s been good, getting to know me more.”

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This Is What It Feels Like to Write a Novel

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I once likened writing a book to a long run.

A really long run.

Particularly, that part in the run when you’ve hit the wall, when the road stretches out into infinity in front of you.  When you feel like you’ve started running through molasses, when you feel less like you’re running so much as you’re picking up one foot and placing it back down on the exact same spot.  When you feel like you’ve run out of energy and you swear you’re going no where and the actual end is no where in sight.

And it’s true.  It does feel like that sometimes.  Sometimes it feels like a slog.  Like you’re dredging the swamp and coming up with muck.  It feels like murder with each keystroke, like each word has latched on to the back of your mind, the tip of your tongue, and refuses to come out.

But it’s not always like that.  The reality is that writing a novel is like any intricate, long-term endeavor.  It’s a complicated, nuanced, layered beast.

There will be days where writing a novel feels like riding a wave, pushing you on and making you wonder if it can always feel this way.  There will be days where writing a novel feels like pushing a car out of a ditch, cursing yourself for getting stuck in the first place.

Writing a novel can feel like picking at the ice with a chisel, methodically going over the ground time, and time, and time again.  It can feel exactly like the metal against the ice, little fragments loosening incrementally — tiny pieces of progress while you tire yourself out, hitting hammer to handle.

And then you get the moment where you hit just the right spot at the right time and the ice around you breaks and everything comes tumbling into place.

Writing can feel like that freefall, when the ice finally gives way and you go tumbling in and you become submersed with what’s around you.

Writing a novel can feel like a job interview, a first date — where you sit down across the table from your characters and go, “Tell me about yourselves.”  And you get to watch in awe as the characters take shape, sometimes in ways you never could’ve expected.  You get to learn about them in interesting and intricate ways, and they start to open up to you like a trusted lover.

Writing a novel is a reminder that you’re not their creator so much as you’re the gardener, there to plant the seeds and tend to their branches as they grow on their own.

Writing a novel can feel like entering a labyrinth, gently touching the walls as you work your way through, figuring your way out by constantly asking, “Why?”

“Why?” to plot points and scenes.  “Why?” to every single line of dialogue, every single action.  And you let yourself bounce around the maze, backing up when you hit dead ends, retracing your steps, all the while exhilarated and terrified that you have no idea how or when you’ll get out.

Writing a novel can feel like traveling: those rare days when the ice has broken and you’re in freefall and you’re not so much writing a chapter as you’re describing what’s happening around you.  When the characters are talking faster than you can write it down, when the room they’re in is now the room you’re in.  And when the wave finally crashes onto shore and you’re no longer tumbling, you come back to your kitchen, your living room, your office, doubting how much around you is real.

Writing a novel can make you feel like time traveling — because all of a sudden, there’s no more free time, and the morning slips away, and the sun has set, and you have to fight tooth and nail to get it all crammed into one day.  When the laundry is piling up and you’re behind on your day job assignments and you wonder if this endeavor is nothing but a dive into pure self-absorption.

Writing a novel feels like you never actually get away from your novel.  That the characters never leave you, following you as you get up from your seat; following you around with potential lines of dialogue, personality quirks, character flaws.  That the storyline follows you around, pitching new concepts or bemoaning a block.  The novel becomes your constant companion and even your morning coffee is spent alongside the story arc, the newest scene, the recent impediment.

It’s an endurance test.  It’s a journey into the great unknown.  It’s mapping out where you’re going to go, knowing full well you might discard the map two steps in.  It’s going in without a map and being deliriously excited and frightened with what you might find.

Writing a novel is a gamble.  It is a labor of love that might bear bitter fruit.  It is hours in front of a screen and over a notebook and away from your doubts and knowing full-well it might be a dead-end.  That no agent will bite.  No publishing firm will want in.  And yet you soldier on, because you didn’t really get to choose writing this novel.

And yet, in some ways you did.  You chose to sit down and write, even when you didn’t feel like it.  You chose to slog out another paragraph, refusing to stop until you’ve hit a certain word count, reminding yourself over and over, “You can change it all when you edit.”

Because writing a novel is not a tryst, a secret rendezvous, a crime of passion.  It’s a commitment to hold tight, even when the muses aren’t driving you into fevered inspiration.  It’s a promise that your resolve will be stronger than your self-doubt.  It’s a promise to write even when you don’t feel it.  It’s a promise to tough it out until you work past the roadblock, until you hit that passage that tumbles out effortlessly and reminds you why you’re doing this in the first place.

Because that feeling you get upon reading the last paragraph of a good book is only amplified when you’re the one who wrote it.  Because finishing a manuscript gives you a funny feeling of reality, a profound sense of accomplishment.  Because finishing a manuscript feels like crossing the finish line of a race, legs jelly and brain slightly fried, delirious with knowing that you’ve finally crossed that threshold.

Because writing a novel is like giving birth.  The period of gestation, of knowing that what is inside of you that is not yet ready to come out.  The arduous, messy, eternal struggle to bring it out.  The knowing that, in some ways, the journey doesn’t end because your idea now sees the light of day.  In fact, just like that child, the journey has just begun.

Writing a novel feels like an empty nest.  Soon enough, you’re entertaining new ideas.  You’re planting seeds and seeing what will grow.  You are playing out scenes and asking the innocent, “But what if…” and “But why?”  You are meeting brand new characters with brand new quirks and flaws.  And you venture out into the great unknown, ready to repeat the process all over again.

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This Is What Rebuilding Feels Like

It was Thanksgiving of 2014 when I looked at the man sitting in the arm chair of the living room.  Thanksgiving of 2014 when I looked at a shell of a human being, a shell that was simultaneously hollow and yet filled with all the things I still couldn’t sort out.

It was Thanksgiving of 2014 when I sat in my car, shell-shocked and exhausted, and muttered, “I think that was my father’s last Thanksgiving.”

It was three days after the Thanksgiving of 2014 when he was rushed to the ER, and five days after Thanksgiving when he was transferred to the ICU.  It was a week after Thanksgiving when words like “encephalopathy” were thrown around, among a slew of words that never need repeating.

December of 2014 was marked with confusion and stress, with phone calls and conversations so maddening that I felt like throwing my phone against the wall.  My father would be in and out of the hospital, fighting tooth and nail to stay at home and rounding up anyone who agreed.  I’d be in and out of reality, desperate for a breath away from what life was turning into.

He’s spend his last December in the hospital.  I’d spend his last December in a anxious haze that gave the world a soft, surreal glow.

Thanksgiving of 2015 was the first one without him.  My husband and I hosted a humble Thanksgiving, bringing my mother and my little brother up to New Hampshire.

My mother’s talk and demeanor gave hint to the damage of my father’s decline.  It had been almost two months since he had passed and so much had been hollowed out in the wake of it.  Things echoed in ways that caused sideways glances and knowing looks and a profound feeling of soul weariness.

December of 2015 was a weary one.  It echoed the previous December.  It echoed all of 2015, which would turn out to be a year of extreme and brutal upheavals.  It was a month of going through the motions, of being leery of the Christmas cheer and absolutely desperate for it at the same time.  It was a December of exhaustion, of a hazy reality, of a frustrating and confusing ache that lay heavier than any snowfall.

The world was a different place by the time Thanksgiving of 2016 rolled around.  By 2016’s Thanksgiving, our family tree had trimmed off yet a few more branches: my older siblings’ mother, my beloved brother-in-law, both gone within a month of each other.  One death happening weeks before my father’s one-year anniversary, the other a few weeks after.

I brought up my mother and my little brother up again for dinner.  I could hear one of my nephew’s comments echoing through my head:

“It feels like all of family get-togethers as of late have been at funerals and wakes.”

The world was a different place.  There was no other way around it.  November echoed the lessons learned in 2016.  The beautiful and heartbreaking revelations and realizations.  The devastating and unshackling truths.  The recognition of the rebirths that had happened (and had to happen) in the midst of such merciless change.

In the midst of this evolution, there was an unshakable understanding that I was not the person I was in 2014, and I was not the person I was in 2015.  I was barely the person I was in October.  A page had been turned and I had adapted accordingly.  True to my promise to myself, I had risen from the ashes like the Phoenix, reborn and stronger than ever.

Unlike December of 2014, when I wished to dive into holiday cheer to escape — or December of 2015, when the holiday cheer served as a brutal mocking for how badly it had failed me the year before — this December is different.

The start of this December was subtle.  As subtle as listening to the Christmas music on the radio with an easy ear, of making Christmas plans without the weight of the world on my shoulders.

This December proved itself gentler.  It didn’t roll in with hypnotic and intoxicating nostalgia.  It didn’t envelop me in all things merry and bright.  It stepped in slightly, let itself be known, and waited for me to react.

And I reacted with decor.  I put up the garlands and the knick-knacks and the lights because it felt right.  As right as my morning cup of coffee, as right as turning the volume up when the right song comes on.  There was no fight, no struggle, no overwhelming sense of duty.  Just a subtle step forward and into the holiday cheer.

Just a toe into the festivities, as if it were the most natural thing to do.

“Let’s go over the basics,” my husband says as we go to the tree farm. “We’ll keep the tree wrapped until it’s all the way inside, we’ll make sure to never, ever use a plastic stand again…”

He references the comedy of errors from previous Christmases, a little bit of light-hearted humor as we set aside time to wander the rows of trees and cut down our favorite one.

Even the tree we pick is subtle and gentle.  It’s not the behemoth from 2015.  It’s not the tree I desperately wished was the one, right tree, the perfect tree, like I did in 2014.  It simply called out from the ones around it.

“Pick me.  I’m exactly what this Christmas will be.”

One of the men working at the farm is from Paris.  In his thick French accent, he asks if I am from Germany.  Apparently my sing-songy, vaguely-Boston, pseudo-SoCal accent sounds Eastern European to a set of foreign ears.

We set up the tree in our living room.  Our black cat patrols the area, jumping up onto furniture and giving his signature head butts.  The room already has the subtle scents of evergreen.

The lights are colorful and bright and bold.  The ornaments echo back to a blindly and beautifully simpler time.  Trans Siberian Orchestra plays throughout the house.  We decorate the tree, casually talking about gift ideas and joking about farts and strategically placing the good ornaments by the top & the cheap ornaments by the bottom.  There is no need to desperately reference the past, or escape from the present, or worry about the future.  Both cats watch us, ready to bat at the bottom ornaments.

“This is what rebuilding feels like,” I thought to myself, letting Christmas be what it needs to be, in its simple and light and ethereal glory.

 

Detox

“Sometimes you just need to detox the body.”

I’ve heard this countless times before, as if toxins stake territory in our body and the only way to get them out is by drinking some terrible potion.  As if we don’t have working respiratory, circulatory, and endocrine systems.

The grapefruit juice cleanse.  The lemon water and cayenne pepper cleanse.  Liquid diets as a way of clearing the body.  It’s everywhere in the pseudo-New-Age world.

I’ve wanted to say, “If you want to detox, eat healthy and stay away from the things that are bad for you.  If the body can’t cleanse itself then, you’ll be needing far more than a jar of juice and spicy water.”

All sardonic commentary aside, at the end of the day, it really is as simple as that.  You don’t need any special concoction.  You don’t need to fast.

Stop doing the toxic thing, and the body will detox itself.

Eventually.

Sometimes the detox is as innocent as removing pasta from your diet and feeling like the world has started revolving carbohydrates.  And sometimes it’s a less-than-innocent reminder of how entrenched you were with what was toxic to you.

The caffeine headaches I got when I switched to decaf were otherworldly.  For two solid weeks, the pain behind my eyes and around my temples made me wonder if a migraine was approaching.  It made me wonder if scaling back on my caffeine consumption was even a smart move in the first place.  But I knew I was drinking far too much coffee, and needing more and more caffeine to get the same results.  I knew it was not helping my innate restlessness and unease and anxiousness.  I knew it wasn’t solving my general feeling of weariness.  I knew I wasn’t doing myself any favors in the long run, and I needed a change.

My body detoxed from those caffeine levels in loud and painful and disruptive ways.  In ways that made me wonder if this was the new normal.

And then the headaches dissipated.  The switch was complete.

Stop doing the toxic thing, and the body will detox itself.

Even though sometimes the detox will be loud and painful and disruptive.

But sometimes the detox — like the toxin itself — will be subtle and nuanced and intangible.  Sometimes it’s detoxing from an old way of thinking, an antiquated belief system, a trusted reactionary measure or coping device.

Sometimes it’s detox through distance.  Sometimes it’s detox from a toxic individual.   Sometimes it’s detox from a one-sided relationship, an unhealthy situation.  Detox from a place that did you no favors.

The detox can come in the form of feeling like the work is too much and the sacrifice is too great and the change it too little.  It can come in the form of wanting to return to old habits, in the form of not really believing that the toxin was toxic in the first place.  It can come in the form of pointing out every time the toxic thing had done you right and made you feel good.  It can come in an ache in the head or the heart and in knowing nothing but time can remedy that.

But it’s still as simple as this: stop doing the toxic thing, and the body will detox itself.  In whatever ways it needs to.

And sometimes the detox is the opposite of innocent or subtle.  Sometimes it’s bold and explicit.  Sometimes it’s unabashedly blunt.

Sometimes it’s lethal.

For all its ubiquity, alcohol is a menacing force.  Depending on your level of addiction, it will scorch the earth when you try to leave it.

Alcohol detox is one of the few fatal withdrawals.  Ironically, opioid withdrawal might make you wish you were dead, but alcohol will actually go through with the deed.  It’s something I learned all too well, when my father was rushed to the ER three days after Thanksgiving in 2014, for what initially appeared to be a stroke.  Forty-eight hours in a hospital bed and away from the liquor cabinet, and the seizures were so severe he was rushed to the ICU.  The doctors did not mince words when talking about why he was there and what exactly it was they were monitoring.

It was a lesson in knowing what happens when things go too far.  A lesson in understanding that it only gets tougher with time.  A cautionary tale in what happens if you let it go on for too long.  An understanding that, at some point, the hole gets dug too deep and you’ll need a rescue crew to get you out in one piece.

But it isn’t always a crew of EMTs and ER nurses and IVs.  Sometimes the rescue crew comes in the form of support groups.  Sometimes in the form of therapy.  Sometimes in the form of turning to your cherished friends and going, “I don’t know how I got here, how it got this bad.”

Sometimes it’s yourself who mans the helm of the rescue crew, searching for yourself and repeating the mantra over, and over, and over again:

Stop doing the toxic thing, and the body will detox itself.

Stop doing the toxic thing, and the soul will cleanse itself.

Remove the toxic, and you will detox.

And the cleanse will always feel elusive at first.  You won’t wake up one morning and pull back the curtains and suddenly feel like you’ve stepped into a new body.  A body free of the toxic dependency, whether it was chemical, biological, or psychological.  You won’t be reenacting any of those pharmaceutical commercials, the world suddenly coloring itself in with vibrant new shades simply because you decided to step out of the trenches.  It will be slow and frustrating and nonlinear and filled with doubt.

But the body will detox itself.  Eventually.  And you will be grateful you got out yourself of the hole when you did.

Lights Out

The power went out in my town last night.

Even with the electricity flowing, this area gets wondrously dark at night. The town serves as a buffer between civilization in New Hampshire and the mountainous boondocks. My neighborhood rests literally on the border of this buffer. There are no street lights. You have to drive a few miles before you come across one.

But last night, we were reminded of how bright we are, even in the supposed small towns. The lights go out in my house, all my neighbors’ houses, as far as the eyes can see.

Pitch black.

As we get up from our spots in front of the TV — as we fumble for our phones and look for proper flashlights — my eyes eventually adjust. Outside, there’s a slick of light hitting the sides of wood panels and bouncing off the gravel pathway of our backyard. It’s so bright that I’m convinced someone is trudging through our backyard with a lamp.

At the risk of losing precious heat in the house, I throw on my jacket and step outside. Greeting me in the backyard is nothing more than the chill of November air, the muffled squawk of the chickens, and a bright, luminescent moon, blazing down on me as if to compete with its super moon predecessor.

Of in the distance, sirens echo. Some calamity has caused the town to go dark. A car accident. Maybe a fire. Multiple sirens let me know that this wasn’t a small incident. That it might be a while until power is restored.

But in that moment, there is stillness. There is a peace and a solace and a sense of wonderment. The stars are aggressively bright and the clouds are illuminated. The sky opposite the moon is the faintest shade of blue, giving its best impersonation of daylight. With my eyes increasingly adapting to the dark, the moon’s rays spill onto the driveway like a floodlight. 

In this moment, there is beauty.

The electricity doesn’t come back, even as we settle for bed. We wrap our guinea pigs cage in blankets and bring her upstairs with us. The tiny animal is sensitive to temperature and keeping her warm is the biggest priority. Phones are placed by the nightstand, replacing our traditional alarm clocks. A single flashlight is propped to face the ceiling and it gives the room a homey, cozy glow.

The world is so quiet I can hear the planes taking off and landing in the nearby airport. I can hear the guinea pig digging through her bedding. I lay in bed, my legs burning from being outside without proper insulation. The next day will be one of my busiest, but for now I round out my day with a book. Eventually one of the cats joins us in bed, kneading at the throw blanket I have on my side, his purrs loud and pure and joyful. The other circles the insulated guinea pig cage, wondering what to make of this new addition to the room.

In this moment, there is quiet. There is stillness. There is beauty and wonderment and peace. And all it took was a calamity to create it.

The Colors and the Super Moon

The super moon makes its appearance above the tree tops, giving the illusion of magnitude and proximity.  Making it feel like it’s so close we could actually touch it.  The world around us is defined by the hazy pink sunset and the authoritative glow from the moon.  We’re on a drive back home, snaking through the busy highways around Boston, deep in conversation.

“…it’s like trying to describe a color, if you think about it,” my husband concludes, and I agree.

After a few moments of silence, my eyes drooping with delirious exhaustion, the tunnel lights of the O’Neill painting the world orange and yellow, my husband adds:

“Do you feel like playing a game?”

“Sure,” I say. “What’s the game.”

“Let’s try actually describing colors.”

I’m in.  These little brain teasers — these chances to play around with words and vocabulary and syntax — are what I live for.  It’s a chance to go abstract and get away from the context of the world.

“Pick a color, and I’ll try to describe it,” he says.

“Okay, then.  Red.”

He pauses.

“Red is intensity.  Red is passion,” he says. “Red is that first moment after realizing you’ve been betrayed.”

He continues on, discussing red in experiences and sensations.  There are no similes.  Nothing is discussed in relation to things that can be painted that color.  It’s poetry and an observation on the human condition.

“I like that,” I say after he finishes.

“Let me give you an easy one: Blue.”

“Blue is cold,” I reply. “Blue is chilled.  Blue is loneliness and solitude — but not malicious or aggressive loneliness.  Simply the natural disconnect and quiet that is inherent in human existence.  Blue is the calmness that comes from being alone.”

The rest of the car ride is spent describing colors based on how they make us feel, or what story they convey.  Lavender is the soothing feeling after the storm has past.  Mint green is coy, and would rather be speculated on as a secret than ever be revealed for what it really is, lest it be seen as average.  Gray is the monotonous drudgery, the minimal dirty work it takes to survive.

Yellow is the warmth that is never warm enough.  Purple is our darkest desires wrapped in velvet and indulged upon.  Chartreuse is nausea and malicious noise.  Pink is false innocence; pink is everything red is, but packaged in a cute and palatable box.  Maroon is what it feels like to exact revenge and have it be as satisfying as you hoped it would be.

My inner ear spins as if I’ve had too much to drink.  I’m drunk on my exhaustion and wariness.  I’m drunk on the esoteric conversation.  I’m drunk on the poetry of it all.  Even in the dark, with nothing but highway lamps and headlights to illuminate, everything is prismatic.

This oddly perfect little moment.  Floating down the highway, imagining colors and just letting the words come out.  It’s a moment I gladly dive into, a moment that makes me wish I’d never have to come up for air.  I want to stay in these moments that exist outside of context, that exist without overthinking or analyzing, that echo nothing but the present moment.  I’ve gone abstract and I have no interest in going concrete again.

Green is freedom.  Green is stepping outside to a breath of fresh air after being stuck inside.  Green is the feeling of being unshackled.

It’s a moment I want to take with me as the drive home eventually ends, as we get into our driveway, as we leave the car and abandon our colors and eventually call it a night. By now, the moon is high, away from any buildings or treetops that can make it look gargantuan.  And we leave our colors — the ones with newfound stories and nuanced personas — for the light of the full moon, left behind in the abstract and the poetic, a time outside of context.

A Link, A Plan, A President

*cue the, “typically I don’t do this”*

But, for real: typically I don’t do this.

Most already know I write for various websites — although the frequency has been steadily dwindling, due to a slew of factors (some sites went in a different direction than the things I write about, some sites went out of business, I started writing my most recent novel and had less bandwidth to come up with article ideas, I started writing for clients and had less time to pitch for websites — and some sites, well, don’t pay, and I got sick of writing for free).

Regardless as to how often I write for them, I usually never link anything direction onto the blog (although you can always find these in my publishing creds section.  Hint hint, nudge nudge).

Today, though, I invite you to read something I wrote for Huffington Post, titled “Yoga & Namaste in the Time of Trump“.

As an avid (and still fervent) Bernie supporter, I don’t think I have to really dive deeply into my feelings on the presidential election.  It has pointed a lot of things out — for both sides of the aisle — and only time will tell what the future brings.

But I will say this: if those running on a platform of hate were to go through with exploiting anger to gain power, they would fail if we actually band together.  Their platform of hate will fall on deaf ears if we’re too busy listening to everyone else’s story and background.

And for those who are burned out and don’t want to look at yet another stupid post: “Namaste” literally translates into “I bow to you”, but has transformed to mean, simply put, recognition.  I recognize the light in you.  The good within me recognizes the good with in you.  But it can also be used in times of suffering.  The hurt within me recognizes the hurt within you.  The frustrated, angry, dark aspects of me acknowledge the frustrated, angry, dark aspects of you.

(And — guess what honeys — we all have that.)

I’m nervous about those who were told, “Your hatred is valid.”  But I’m hopeful for those who heard that message and went, “I’ll fight twice as hard to protect those who are marginalized.”

And — again — only time will tell.  I’m cautiously optimistic.

Saturn’s Return

I first heard of a Saturn return through No Doubt.

When I was 14, they released “Return of Saturn”.  In one of the tracks, Gwen Stefani references the album title, singing:

The return of Saturn / assessing my life / second guessing

But I was an adolescent and -– like a lot of the more subtle poetry in lyrics -– it was lost on me.  I wouldn’t hear it again until I read an article on Kesha’s current situation –- the sexual assault by the hands of her producer, the court battle to get out of her contract, the proof we still don’t get it as a society -– before I really understood what it was about.

It’s an astrological concept.  And I’m zaney enough to believe in it.  Whether it’s truly cosmic, mystical energy, or it’s psychological phenomena, or there’s some other, potentially scientific, parallel –- or it’s just a case of someone being in need of guidance, who lost the conventional faith nearly a decade ago and is a little too willing to look at the stars.

Whatever it is, there’s a part of me that cozies up next to it.

It’s supposed to happen when Saturn essentially completes a full orbit around the sun, returning back to the spot it was when you were born.  Something that happens every 29 or so years.

Our first Saturn return starts around the age of 27, and really doesn’t stop until we are 31.  It’s supposed to be 3+ years that bring light to the way we were doing things for the last 27 — and, particularly, the way we should be doing things going forward.  It’s a line in the sand between your younger, naïve, downright ignorant past and a more mature future self.

And it’s supposed to suck.  It’s supposed to suck hard.

“It’s when shit gets real,” Kesha had said in her interview.

It makes sense, even from a psychological perspective.  We are simply old enough to start knowing better.  The cells in our bodies have completely changed four times over by now, making us, on a cellular level, completely separate from the person we were as a kid.

It would also make sense that I’d adhere so quickly to the concept.  I was 27 when everything started changing.  When where I thought I was, who I thought I was, and what I I thought would be doing shifted.  When the positive and the negative gently started shaking the world around me, forcing certain things to rise up in the sand.

And I’d be 28 when the shaking would stop being so gentle.

I look to the events themselves – practical, empirical, objective events – and go, “I’m not making this up in my head.  I’m not arbitrarily assigning mystical value to the regular evolution of things.”

The gloriously positive events that got me in the direction I’m going.  The equal and opposite negative events that created the same outcome.  All things that spiked in intensity and frequency, to the point that the only thing that could keep my head above it all was the constant, insufferable mantra: “This will make for a great memoir someday…”

Saturn returned, and it broke down the door without knocking first.

And now I’m 30 — and, upon learning about the Saturn return, cried out to myself, “You mean I have another year of this?!”

Because it’s exhausting.  All of it is.  The return of Saturn.  Assessing my life.  Second guessing.  Watching so many safe, predictable truths fall out and fall by the wayside.  Seeing my entire family and the dynamics within it shift in irretrievable and irrevocable ways.  Seeing what I thought I had mapped out for the future get crumpled and burned up, the ashes still floating around me to this day.

Witnessing my old way of practically sleepwalking through the world and getting outright furious with the mess I had made for myself, if only because I wish I had woken up sooner — and because I wish it hadn’t taken this much noise to wake me up in the first place.

But the kicker of a Saturn return -– and this has more than enough roots in the psychological & pragmatic -– is that letting it happen will produce the best results.  Go with the changes and the pain and the fact that shit got real (real, real, really fucking real).  Don’t try to cling to how things used to be, or what might have been, had things not been shaken up.

In fact, don’t even cling to the self-loathing over the fact that you used to go about life a certain way.  It’s just as bad as clinging to the old ways in the first place.

In short, let the return of Saturn destroy what it needs to, because if you go about it intelligently enough, it will all be replaced with what you should’ve had in the first place.

The other kicker?  If you fight this period of upheaval in your late 20s/early 30s — if you refuse to address what needs to be addressed and change what needs to be changed — the next time Saturn returns (this time, in your late 50s), the doors will only get kicked down with more force.

You don’t need crystals and horoscopes and transcendental meditations to know that resistance to change only creates suffering, that there’s strife when the gap between what you had in your mind and what is actually happening is kept alive.

You don’t need to read a single astrological forecast to know how bad it is in the long term to force yourself to stay with what used to be, to cling to what you had previously built, to be so afraid of change you’d rather waste your youth, your health, your life — until you’re nearly 60 and the panic only intensifies and the feeling of being stuck is only worse.

I’ve likened the last 3 years as a bit of a slow burn – and only recently have I been able to accept that everything had to have been a slow burn.  These types of changes can only happen gradually.

Let them combust in a glorious mushroom cloud, and you’ll only mal-adapt.

And –- likewise, with that slow burn -– the smoke is still rising, and the embers are still hot.  And reaching into the fire to grab the things you want or wish you had will only sear the skin.

And I’d much rather rise like the Phoenix than be covered in scar tissue.