Part of a book I’m working on.

Neon signs fill walls of emptiness and smoke lingers with nowhere to go, colliding with dust and dampness in the air. A man sits in a poorly lit bar, shadows hiding his face.

The woman behind the bar has tired eyes, red from smoke and swollen from sleepless nights and a lifetime of making the wrong choice. Bleached hair sits high on her head in a messy bun, threads of thin hair curling tightly around her neck. A shirt stained with sweet liquor fails to hide skinny legs and pale skin covered with broken blisters and flaking flesh. Another sad victim of the antagonist.

“What are you having sweet’ums?”

The man at the bars eyes move up the woman’s arm, bouncing from each track mark, finally reaching her pale, tired face. His gaze narrows before his eyes slowly roll back to his own hands, sitting in tight fists on the bar. Unhindered, the woman walks away from him toward the other side of the bar.

A man and woman burst into the room, laughing in an unfamiliar way that makes the man’s head pulse and his lips curl with contempt, displaying a perfect row of straight, but slightly yellowed teeth. The smoke muffles the laughter and then it dies completely as if the couple accidentally stumbled into the wrong bar. The woman turns her body slightly toward the man, whispering something in his ear. He takes her by the hand, and with a look of understanding, pulls her toward the door. They leave.

The man with shadows on his face stands and pulls three dollars from his pocket, placing it on the bar top. The bartenders eyes stay fixated on his silhouette and she whispers, “didn’t even buy nothing.”

He walks toward the door, limping to the right in an inconspicuous way, battling the pain in is knee and the pride in his heart. Outside, sheets of rain fall from a black sky, pelting his face and long black coat. It is late and curfew is in effect. The thought of getting stopped by the MP causes an unwilling tightening in his jaw and temperamental flare of his nostrils. Fear quells anger as the pain in his knee moves long ways up his thigh, as if to remind him of the tangent danger in what should be a trivial inconvenience for a person such as himself. Violent images of skin and blood-soaked tar flash through his mind, still images of justice.

The man walks through the dark streets, keeping his head low and his pace as fast as his leg will allow. He knows these streets well. Cracks in the pavement run like veins through the street, the heart of which cannot be found. Empty food cans complement cigarette butts and once important parts of ink stained paper line the streets, constant reminders of inescapable poverty.

A man across the street stands hunched over, with his penis in one hand, and an empty can with a stewed tomato label in the other. He’s shaking himself violently, cupping the can around himself so the walls of it rub against his bruised penis. He grunts under his breath, crying and shaking his hand. Blood drips from the edge of the can. Stewed tomatoes.

The man with the shadows on his face finally reaches large iron gates to the Well Living Suites, the rain stops. He notices now how wet and cold he is, rain having soaked through every layer of clothing and saturating his skin. He draws his eyes slowly upward, noting the ornateness of the gates surrounding a mile square area of land, a barricade from the filthy part of town which he is forced to visit every day. He reaches into the breast pocket of his trench coat and pulls out a gold wallet, a gift from the Chief of Precinct A40.

He presses the gold plating to his warm cheek to remind himself of his own importance. Pulling it away from his face, the man presses a button on the clasp of the wallet and a small platform slides away from the frame. He presses the fleshy part of his thumb on the plate. A green light glows underneath his thumb. The wallet softly clicks and opens from lucrative hinges. He pulls out his Well Living identification card and holds it up to a small black bar next to the gate’s brass handles. An electronic voice says, “Access granted. Welcome, Mr. Peel.”

A subtle inhale of breath draws in from behind where the wet man stands in front of the gates. He turns his head slightly to listen for movement. The gates slowly lurch open. He steps inside, slowly, his leather shoes pressing against the wet pavement.

The stewed tomato man runs toward the heavy iron with his arms in the air and his flaccid penis flopping from side to side with each step. A look of fear fills his empty eyes. Mr. Peel’s hand moves upward to warn the man, but as his sense takes hold of him, lowers it to his side with disgust. Just as the man enters the threshold between the dirt of the inner city and the paved sidewalk of the Inside, a hardly visible flash of blue light moves from the gate to the man’s body. A faint sound leaves his mouth, the sound of air being pushed from his lungs, and he falls motionless to the ground. Smoke rises from his body, mixing with steam from the cold, wet ground. Mr. Peel inhales the smell of burning flesh and the sweet dampness of the October air.

The man with the shadowed face turns to go home.

Part II: What Happens In Vegas Might Just Stick Around Forever

No, this story doesn’t involve any STDs. This is the one about the day that followed the most reckless day of my life.

While in the bathroom, I looked down at my stomach, red and bloated from dehydration and french fries. I walked out to our living room, bouncing against walls, my bad choices from the night before a scrapbook of what actually happened. Our futon was pulled out, so I rounded the corner, heading to the bathroom to check on Alice. I all of a sudden became light-headed. My arms began tingling, so I looked down at them, and witnessed a blue hue move from my shoulder down to my fingers. Then there was no blood left in my head, and I hit the floor. Coming to, I stood back up and rewitnessed the same event again. A wave of blue that flooded to my finger tips. This time, I did what anyone in my situation would have: I screamed.

“Aaaallllliiiiccceeeeee” That long, drawn out scream with undertones of fear that we’ve all experienced. The one that makes you rush into whatever room that it’s coming from, heart pounding, expecting the worst. Alice called back from the bathroom, “What?” in an annoyed, un-realizing tone. “Something is very wrong….” I called back, and laid down on the cold tile of the hotel floor. I became very cold, shaking, and short of breath. When she came out of the bathroom, confused, I explained to her that I was blue, and not in a poetic sort of way.

It gets hazy from here. I remember being very cold, being put under blankets and shivering uncontrollably. I remember looking down at my stomach, and it looking like a giant bruise. I experienced a similar situation a few years later, while wearing a pair of new blue jeans; the dye had rubbed off against the skin around my waist, producing the same effect. I was denim-colored. Where my lungs were, darker shades of blue. I was cold and shaking and felt as if someone had their hands wrapped around my throat. Alice’s mom was there, telling me it was fine, these things happened all the time. But they don’t and I knew that. I did what anyone in my situation would have. I called my dad.

He rattled off a few things, lead poisoning being the one I remember him saying. Then I told him I knew it was alcohol poisoning. I had been drinking a lot and the signs made logical sense. Restricted blood vessels, lack of oxygen sort of sense. Then Poison Control was on the line. It was alcohol poisoning, but not an appropriate moment for “I told you so”. They said I needed an IV immediately to re-hydrate my body. My parents rage was masked with worry. I was supposed to be the smart one that did things right, and this was dumb. So, I was torn. Alice’s mom kept telling me to relax, things were fine. My parents, 2,000 miles away and on the line with Poison Control were telling me to go to the nearest hospital. I told them I couldn’t stand, which was the truth. I lied and said the hotel did not have a doctor on-hand. I kept telling them everything was fine. I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone. It was getting harder to breath, every breath taxing my energy. I was frigidly cold, shaking and slurring my words. I kept lifting the blanket, looking at my stomach, expecting it to go away, but it was still there. And I was so tired. I was afraid to fall asleep because I didn’t think I would wake up again. Being blue wasn’t a normal thing to experience.

I genuinely thought I was going to die. I could have demanded an ambulance, but my parents had been working for themselves for a year and we didn’t have medical insurance. I didn’t want to burden them because I knew whatever care I received would be expensive. I asked for a Sprite from the refrigerator in our room. I would never have asked for a $7 can of soda otherwise, but figuring this was my last meal, I went for it. Everyone around me seemed unscathed, like I was overreacting. I could feel the life leaving me with every breath I took.

Alice was laying next to me, telling me it was fine. Her voice was fading in and out, it was getting harder to hear anything. I kept telling myself I couldn’t do this to her. I kept telling myself I had to live. She had a rough year, losing two people she cared about tremendously. I couldn’t be another. I felt like she needed me. Maybe she didn’t need me in every regard, but I know she needed me to stay alive at that moment. And so, I kept telling myself that I would stay alive. I didn’t pray, and I didn’t ask anyone for anything. I just kept telling myself not to die; I couldn’t do that to her.

My eyes finally shut and the world went away. I’m not sure what happened while I was asleep, or for how long, or any other detail of the day. I woke up, taking a brief moment to survey the room, to make sure I was still alive. My throat was tight, and I was still shivering under the blankets. I pulled them up again to look at my stomach, now fading from blue to a red color, the way a sunrise lights up the sky on a cloudy morning. That’s the analogy I used to tell myself that I was going to be okay. My stomach, the rising sun.

So we checked out the next morning, boarded a plane and made it back on the ground in Arizona. I think I had a rehearsal dinner that night for a friend’s wedding. Needless to say, I wasn’t participating in the champagne toast that night. My stomach was bloated for days and my body sore all over, exhausted from passing out and shaking and being metaphorically strangled. The physical strain that I placed on my body that night lasted for days, but the psychological trauma I inflicted lasted much longer. The first months following were the worst. I had frequent panic attacks. I would wake up my parents in the middle of the night on a regular basis because I thought I was turning blue. I remember lying in bed one night, my throat closing in on me, so I called my dad to come upstairs. I couldn’t stop crying. I knew it was irrational to relapse into alcohol poisoning from months before. But the feeling of looming death, the feelings I had on that day, flooded me every time I got nervous or if I was alone too long, or if my hands were cold. Anytime my heart rate would pick up, I would relate it to that near-death experience. I’m sure Pavlov would have something to say about all of this.

I went to Florida a few months later and had a large margarita. I lay in bed all night with that feeling, the fingers around my throat, shaking feeling, thinking that I had depleted the oxygen to my organs so long on the Vegas night that I ruined my body forever. And it went this way for months. DeJa Vu, again and again and again. Its not as if I wanted to feel this way, be this scared, have this much fear for my life all the time. I could always feel it coming on and I always begged it to go away. But, it always came.

My parents eventually got fed up with the late night death threats, so they did some research and we talked one night. I couldn’t see through my wet eyes, I couldn’t control myself from crying. I just wanted to go back to before any of this happened, back to when breathing was easy. My dad told me not to fight the feeling when it came on. He promised I wouldn’t run out of air, that I was safe, and that if that feeling started, to challenge it, to make my nerves my bitch. So I tried. I said ‘bring it on, bitch’ when the feeling cropped up. Eventually, it gave up on trying to scare me. I conquered my mind and my fear by embracing it.

I still get the feeling to this day. The feeling that my blood isn’t moving quick enough, that there isn’t enough oxygen in the air I’m breathing. I can control it now, though. I tell myself its okay to get nervous, but that I’m safe. Allowing myself to have the feelings was the solution. Running away did nothing for me. There’s a life lesson in there somewhere.

***

When I was a little girl, I used to say the words, “I wonder…” the way an actress does in a movie when she all of a sudden notices the particular secret book that opens the secret door. I used to think that all of the questions that I posed the majestic “I wonder…” would be answered when I died. So whenever there was a question I would never have the answer to in this life, I saved it in my  ”I wonder…” database for when I died. If I lost a five dollar bill, where my puppy lived before I adopted him from the pound, who shot Kennedy. If my theory is right, I’ll have a lot of answers waiting for me when I die.

Vegas changed my life – it made me realize the power of my own mind. I was able to make myself literally sick for months by thinking a certain way, and I wasn’t even fully aware of those thoughts. Reflecting on it long after I conquered those feelings, I realize that my mind is much more powerful and magical than I could ever understand. If I can make my breath short, my heart race, my hands tingle, I can make myself anything. I can decide to be happy or heartbroken or lazy or anything else I set my mind, or even accidentally set my mind to. I know it’s a bit cliche. It’s not an epiphany I can accurately convey to anyone. But it’s something that I’m reminded of whenever my arm goes to sleep or whenever I drink a Bloody Russian.

Maybe I was being dramatic, but if there’s ever a time, it’s when your body turns blue. In the darkest corners of my mind, I believe that I was knocking on heaven’s door, making a deal with the devil, or whatever comes between those idioms. I’ll never know how close to death I actually was. And, I realize I won’t get to know until I do die and finally get my “I wonders” answered. By then, I have a feeling it won’t really matter anymore.

Speaking in Tongues: What Happens in Vegas.

Day Three: Or maybe it was day two, or four. I don’t actually remember how long that trip was. This story is 24 hours long, though.

I think the morning started out with gambling. Going from one penny machine to another, dropping a coin in, pulling the lever. Taking turns playing a machine so the waitress would come over to take our drink order. This particular waitress came over lazily, orthopedic shoes and a sequin blouse that squeezed her breasts out of the sides and top of every opening. She looked sideways at us, she was on to us. Play slowly, drink quickly. We had been drinking so long and such a variety that we had no idea what to do next. All the cosmopolitans and b52s and tequila sunrises and vodka tonics were buzzing around in our bodies, but we had been drinking for so many hours that we couldn’t even feel it anymore at this point. She suggested a “Bleeding Russian”, or at least I think that’s what she called it, a black russian with raspberry schnapps. So we got those. And we drank, slowly taking turns pulling the lever, trying to lose our money at least according to the pace we were drinking.

It gets fuzzy from here. Whether that’s from the brain cells that I killed that night, or the typical lull of memory that happens when you try to recall something from a few years ago, I’m not sure. We walked to another hotel, maybe down the strip and back, I don’t remember. Playing the same game, drinking free liquor, trying new things. Both being new to the game of 21, our horizontal ID’s were burning in our pockets. At one casino, a cop asked to see them so we flashed them proudly. At some point in the night, we went back and put on our tightest jeans, our highest heels and as much hairspray as our teases could hold. Its just flashes of memory from this point on.

Me, sitting on a stool, next to Alice. Us talking, lazily, looking out into the casino, debating our next move. A man and a woman, maybe two men and a woman walk up to us and begin chit-chatting, the way you do on a long elevator ride. And we start talking in Vegas – you’re only young once, what happens here stays here – and so on. A tall, athletic black woman with Vegas hair, curled and teased locks eyes with me. She tells me they are in the FBI and enjoying their last day here. She had on dark blue jeans and a low-cut red top, with black leather boots that I knew would have been hurting her feet if she were able to feel them. I remember thinking at the time that this wasn’t one of those Vegas pranks; this woman was honest and decent and probably an FBI agent. Looking back, I doubt if she even made it into the local precinct. But, at the time she was magical. She turned to me, eye level where I was sitting, put her hands on either side of my face, and said in a deep, soultry voice, “your lips, they are so luscious”. I didn’t have time to react. When the words finally were processed into meaning, I realized that her tongue was in my mouth, rubbing the tip of my tongue, her hands holding my head in place. By this time, I figured, I had already began making out with the black FBI agent, so I might as well give it all I’ve got. So I kissed her back. She slowly pulled away and gave me a crooked smile. She did the same maneouvre on Alice before walking away with her friends. I looked over at Alice, her mouth still in an “o”. “We just made out with a black woman,” I said. “No one can resist your…” she gave me a smile to the side, “luscious lips”.

Flash forward. Later in the night, I don’t even remember what we were wearing at this point. There was a line of people outside of the club, DeJa Vu. Ironic now, considering. So we walked to the front. We tried to brush it off like we were hot shit, but in honesty, we had a VIP card from the hotel we were staying in from Alice’s mother. The line didn’t need the details though. Next thing, we were on an elevator, heading to the roof of a hotel for a party. We stepped off the elevator into a blue room that glowed the way a laser tag arena glows. The music shook the floor, so loud that my ears curled up inside themselves, tingling in an effort to escape the noise. There were women on glowing blocks, dancing naked, or nearly naked. They are naked in my memory, but that might be for added effect. We weaved through the crowd, to the inside bar. The music was pulsing in our heads, there were men swarming around us, but none offering to pay. So we spent some $30 on a bowl of something that glowed and had smoke rolling off the top. And we sucked on our straws, surveying the crowd. Bored with the men around us, we wandered outside.

Now, there are flashes of the Australian Navy. The guy I had been talking to, we’ll call him Chris, pulled me on the dance floor, up close to him. I was drunk. I could feel the alcohol tingling up and down my body and his breath, hot, against my neck. After a few vain attempts at conversation, he cupped his hand around the base of my head, pulling slightly on my hair, cocking my head to the side, moving his lips across my pulsing neck. I had my hand on his stomach, feeling every ripple of his chest, hard, the muscles moving under his shirt as he swayed to the inaudible chaos around us. We had been dancing for several minutes, but my heart was racing and my blood was hot. It felt like hours. He slid his tongue up my neck, to the lobe of my ear, and pulled on it slightly with his teeth. I couldn’t handle the teasing anymore. I wrapped my fingers around his belt buckle, pulling him into me, hard. Our lips met, softly at first, then with more passion as he wrapped his hand around my hip and pulled me into him so there was no air between us. I could taste the liquor in his mouth, and felt every breath, warm against my skin.

He pulled away and looked at me, stricken with surprise. I realized he probably got a little too into the kissing and told him it was okay, pulling him towards me again. He pushed me back, “I can’t,” looking straight into my eyes, sternly. “I have a girl at home. A wife.” Tears began welling up in his eyes, and I felt terrible for him. Not for her, but for him. I don’t know how, at this point, I was able to tell him I wasn’t offended, but I hugged him politely, said “thanks for the dance” and he walked away.

Flash forward. Alice and I are standing next to the hotel lobby, by a bar and some slot machines. Two new Australians. We are playing some sort of game, on teams. Taking turns and moving around a lot. My head is buzzing, but I’m not impressed with these Australians. The funny one is scrawny and clearly into Alice, flirting the way you do in junior high. The other smells of cigarettes and whiskey. Somehow, I’m sitting on his lap, tasting his smoke a few moments later, our tongues weaving around each other. But, he has a wife too. Says its something that people do when they are on holiday. I don’t remember how we got out of that one.

Flash forward. Same night, sitting at a new bar, with a new set of guys. I fooling around with the video game next to the bar, pushing buttons without any credits. A boy comes over and tries to explain to me how to play, inserting money for me this time. I lost all the credits he put in. He bought us drinks at the bar, or he and his friends did. He was from Kansas or Nebraska or somewhere rural where farming pays the mortgage. Tall, a bit lanky and obviously nervous to be talking to us. Under dressed for Vegas, but clearly overdressed for anything else he had shown up for in his life. And, he told me I was pretty. He went on and on about how amazing I was. He asked me for a kiss and I refused, knowing I wouldn’t need much more convincing. I don’t remember actually making out with him, but some horrendous photos on the plane ride home cleared that question up.

Somewhere before I ended up in bed, there was another group of people. A beautiful girl, trying to convince me to take a cab with her and her friends to another hotel. Well, she had convinced me, but Alice had to play Mom at this point. It was somewhere around 6:00 in the morning, the sun was coming up and people were filling the casino again to start their day. So we went back to our room and somehow managed to go to bed.

When we woke up the next day, after what felt like just closing my eyes, we went to breakfast. I had a club sandwich and fries that I couldn’t finish. My hangover hadn’t caught up with me yet. Alice was in the same boat. We pushed our food away from us and ran up to the room, heading for opposite bathrooms.

The next few hours that followed changed my life forever.

Keeping Your Resolutions

For most of us, a new year means a new list of resolutions. With demands from career, family and everyday life, we often find ourselves giving in and eventually giving up. Here are some tips for keeping your resolutions and taking steps to make yourself healthier and happier.

Baby Steps. As opposed to setting rigid goals, try setting goals that will change with you and allow for some flexibility and growth. For example, if your goal is to lose 30 pounds by July, break your goal into smaller pieces to track your progress. 30 pounds sounds like a lot, but losing 10 pounds every two months is not so scary.

Blueprints. You can’t build a skyscraper without a blueprint. Figuring out how to attain your goal is just as important as setting it. If your goal is to lose 10 pounds in two months, create a blueprint for achieving it.

Be Flexible. Don’t create a rigid plan. Creating a plan that is flexible, like exercising for 30 minutes three times a week, (as opposed to “going to the gym”) allows you to adapt your goal to your lifestyle. Exercise can mean walking your dog, jogging or rock climbing. Create an action plan that’s specific enough to track, but gives you room to rule out monotony.

Daydream. When you start getting discouraged, envision yourself a year from now, your goal achieved. Literally close your eyes and daydream. Let the feeling of accomplishing your goal fill you up – how do you feel now that your goal is realized? When you snap back to
reality, chances are, you won’t want that cookie anyway.

Really Get it. Invest time into understanding your goal. Know the potential setbacks before you begin. Learn about quitting smoking, getting out of debt, fighting food cravings, volunteering – or whatever your goal is. Read about your goal, join a support group, or ask for help. Be prepared by equipping yourself with the facts.

• Mission possible. Don’t set an impossible goal. Keep your lifestyle in mind. Aim high, but set goals within reach.
• Tell your friends. Letting others know your goal will make you more likely to achieve them. Challenge a friend to accomplish their goals with you. Start a healthy competition with family, friends or coworkers if it will make you more invested in your goal.
• Don’t sweat setbacks. One mistake does not undo your entire goal or the rest of the year. If you gave in to temptation, revisit your goal and the reason you set it. A simple reminder is often enough to get you back on track.
• Reward yourself. When you lose that first ten pounds, buy yourself a new pair of jeans to celebrate and motivate you to losing the next ten.
• Track your progress. Don’t wait until December 2012 to revisit your goals. Keep your resolutions in a visible place and look at them. Set reminders on your calendar to look over your goals and remind yourself why you created them in the first place.
• Be accountable. Don’t make excuses for falling short. Look at what went wrong and adjust your blueprint in a way that will help you accomplish your goals moving forward.
• Don’t stress. Resolutions should make you happier. Don’t waste the year being disappointed in yourself. Keep moving forward and remember why you set your goals in the first place: to be the best version of yourself!

My Search for Meaning

I’ve been thinking a lot lately – about the universe, the meaning of life, the meaning of my life.

I just recently finished the book, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor, and founder of the concept of logotherapy which is focused on the will to meaning. Existential therapy, a major concept in this school of thought, suggests that inner-conflict rises from inevitable negative aspects of life, but even through the worst of circumstances, meaning can guide a person to a happy existence. The idea that people, when given a sense of purpose, can overcome. The original name of the book, “trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen” is translated to: saying yes to life in spite of everything. This coming from a man who spent three years in concentration camps.

This book really moved me. My mind has been in a different place lately. So I forgave myself for the things I’ve done wrong and am accepting life for what it is right now. I’ve already realized a few things, even in the last few days – just by paying attention: 1) Whatever it is, it’s part of a bigger picture. Assume you have no idea what that picture looks like. 2) People are good, even when they mess up (including you). 3) Every person has value. (You aren’t omniscient – don’t expect to see it.) 4) If you truly believe in something you will never ever give up on it. Ever. 5) There are people who care about you – always.

I’ve been doing research for an end I’m not sure that I can accomplish. Actually, the odds are stacked against me. There is a large chance I’m going to fail at something that I really care about. But, the mere idea of being better has made me better. My search for purpose has actually given me purpose. I’ve regained focus that I lost somewhere during man’s search for being a twenty-something.

I don’t believe in the invisible unicorn in the sky, but there is something to be said about the energy around me lately. It’s purposeful. It’s hopeful.

Thoughts about Collaboration

Curiosity is what moves me. I’m not the smartest person I know, or the best looking, or the best at any one thing. But I ask a lot of questions. Then, I question the answers I am given. Then I ask, “how can this be made better?” and I search for ways to improve. My incessant search for answers often means spending more time on the internet than I do sleeping each day. Between research, reading the news, social media and countless ‘googling’, most of the world as I understand it, is created and maintained in a virtual environment.

 But, how can this be made better?

 There is no doubt that mine is an interactive generation, but I whole-heartedly feel that our interaction could be more collaborative and impactful in nature.

 In my mind, that is what the internet is all about – boundless collaboration. For the first time in the history of our species, we have the ability to instantaneously communicate with nearly anyone in the world. I know that this ability to collaborate has the power to make lives better, if even in the smallest of ways. The wisdom of many prevails over the wisdom of few. Collaboration gives us the ability to solve all of our world’s problems; we just haven’t asked the right questions yet.

 In order to understand the potential of collaboration in a virtual environment, it is necessary to better understand the relationship between creativity and collaboration, and the ways in which they are perceived. To do so, the delicacy between initial idea manifestation and the continued growth of an idea, which takes great consideration into the security of expression and ego, must be examined. Because the ideal collaborative model relies on diversity of thought, factors such as education level, background, cultural differences and perceived value are also crucial to idea sharing.

I’ve reached the point where I am ready to learn how collaboration can be bigger than an idea in an office, an advertising slogan, a marketing tactic. I’m ready to do research that will help the world better understand how we can work together. But, I’m going to need a lot of guidance. I’m going to need endless support from scholars who can answer a lot of questions. And when I finally reach the point where I have found an answer, I need someone to ask me, “how can this be made better?”

Guide to Being a Successful Failure

When I was in the third grade, Mrs. Ellinghausen told me that anything I could imagine, I could make reality. At the time, that meant becoming President. I didn’t care if it was cliché; I was going to fix things. That was until the fourth grade, when Mr. L —- told me that there had only been a handful of presidents and none of them had ever been a woman. He told me I needed a Plan B. Fourth grade and my dreams already needed a backup plan.

Somewhere between fourth grade and about an hour ago I realized: No one has any idea what you are capable of, including you. So tell them all to shutup, including you.

Who knows. If I would have stuck with the notion of becoming president, it may have happened for me. But the lesson isn’t to be hard-headed and unyielding. I know a lot more now than I did in the third grade- president is not on the list anymore. And maybe it would be if my fourth grade teacher would have been more encouraging, who knows. Every action has a reaction but that’s a conversation that Newton and Freud never got to have.

Here’s the take away: If you decide to take a different path to anew future, then do not tread lightly. Walk vehemently toward whatever destiny you create for yourself, and if the road forks, choose a path. Or, if you prefer, travel where there is no path and create a trail for others to follow. It’s not to say that you will always choose the path that is the most appealing, or the one that will make you the most money, or find you the best love. You’ll get lost and go the wrong way sometimes. Someday you may find a darkness in yourself that you never knew existed, and hopelessness will sweep through your soul, dividing you into fragments of the person you once thought you would become. There is nothing more noxious than self-defeat. So accept it: sometimes there will be no light and you will find no support. But that’s okay too.

Because then, you always have the capacity to turn around, find your way back and choose a different direction entirely. Every choice you make shapes you. Another rock on the beach of who you are. Finding the darkness in yourself -and in the world- will make you see burden in a way that no one else can appreciate. Carry the memories of your past with you, but you need not carry the diffidence. Someday that rock will be a tiny piece of sand.

A person who feels happiness, knows sadness well. A person who is fulfilled has felt emptiness. A person who feels the paragon of success has experienced failure time and time again. So be sad if sadness makes you happy. Feel empty if it will fill your soul with compassion. Above all else, be sure to fail. Fail time and time again. And when you finally get it right, find something new to fail at. Never stop failing.

But don’t tread on sharp rocks. Eventually, all of it will be a tiny piece of a much bigger picture.

So screw Plan B. There is no passion in a Plan B. “Good enough” is not good enough. Dream as if you’ve never been told no. Fight as if you’ve never experienced defeat. We are only as great or as obsolete as we decide to be. So go fail at something over, and over again.

Pits of Peaches

I always drive in the left lane of the freeway. The “fast lane.” Except I don’t like to call it the fast lane because then people get the impression that you “live life in the fast line.” I’m neither that daring, nor that cliché.  Mostly just impatient. So I drive in the left lane and honk at people who get in front of me and make me hit my breaks, or people who ride my ass too closely.  I get all angry and flail my hands in the air with a look of disapproval on my face. Sometimes they honk back or give me the bird, which makes me realize I’m ridiculous, so I laugh. One time a guy made fun of me for flailing my arms in the air and gave the “I don’t know” shoulder shrug, hands to the side gesture. He really made me laugh. Then he laughed with me.  A little mini relationship. Come and gone in a matter of 7 seconds.

Then I started thinking about all the mini relationships we have. The people we encounter and interact with on a daily basis with no intention of ever seeing or speaking to again. Micro relationships that come full circle and affect us without our ever knowing. On a Tuesday morning, a businesswoman walks into a Starbucks and compliments the barista with the pixie haircut. She just had it done yesterday, she says, and gives the woman her morning coffee on the house. While walking back to the office, the businesswoman notices someone’s parking meter has expired so she puts her coffee change in their meter. When the old man rushes back to his car to put in more change, he realizes that someone else already did. This might spur the thought, “If only parking meters would cover you for a few minutes if you were running late…” and maybe that thought turns into credit card meters that charge until you leave the parking spot. So maybe the old man starts the process of creating the new meter. This guy gets rich, pulls in six figures. When he dies, he leaves everything he has to the delivery unit at his community hospital. The hospital adds a cardiovascular specialist to their team with the funds. Maybe the doctor’s first surgery is a little girl who was born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. Maybe her mother is a Starbucks barista with a pixie haircut. Just maybe.

What if all those years ago, the barista had her hair cut on Wednesday, or decided to wear a hat to work? Maybe it would have happened all the same. Then again, maybe not. The world is intricate and delicate. It is ever changing, ever growing. Every action we take, every word we choose, the shoes we wear, the way we decide to drink our coffee has the power to change the world. And there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it. It’s overwhelming.

What if things had gone the other way? What if the business woman gave the barista a look of disgust instead of a compliment? Would the old man have gotten a ticket, had a stroke and died, allowing the little girl who would be born years later to die? That seems a bit dramatic, but either scenario could take place.

So the point I’m making is maybe there is something that can be done. A peach tree grows from the pit of a peach, so maybe love can grow from the pit of good intentions. Just maybe.

A page in a chapter in a book in my head.

My therapist asked me if I love him. My eyebrows furrowed and I repeated the question in my head, “Do I love him?” I was always been under the impression that if you love someone, it’s a simple thing. It’s singing from mountain tops and composing love songs and Shakespeare rattling off in your head. That’s what I thought until I thought I fell in love. All of a sudden, love was a dark secret, a temptress, something that made me cry uncontrollably and curse every sonnet I’d ever read.

I had a dream last night that I was a little girl with my new tea set. We were together, he and I, and he was drinking tea and we were laughing together. I loved him the way a little girl loves her first tea set. When it is perfect and you want to share your happiness with the world. I wanted to have a tea party and invite everyone I knew so that they could finally see that I tamed the wild beast that was him. The boy who was emotionally unavailable, the one that used girls and threw them away without every looking back. I wanted everyone to know that I had broken him. That he loved me and things were going to work because our big love would prevail. He was drinking the tea, the light pouring in from a window behind him, so I was only able to make out his shape and shadows on his face. Dreams are funny that way. A person doesn’t even have to be a person. Your mom can be a fire hydrant and you still love her just the same. He was him though, and although I couldn’t see him that well, I knew we were both happy.

But then the light sort of shifted, the way it does on a sunny day when a cloud suddenly blocks the sun. The room grew darker, his smile straightened, and he looked away, staring somewhere into the distance. His interest was somewhere else. I kept waiting for him to look back at me. I was trying to speak, to get him to laugh again, but nothing was coming out of my mouth. I looked down, embarrassed that he would notice my anxiety. Then I noticed a little chip on the side of my teapot. I wondered if it had been there all along, but I didn’t notice. But then the little handle on the little teacup broke off. The next thing I know, I’m trying to drink my tea, trying to have my party, but the tea is pouring all over my lap. I’m trying to keep everything together so that no one will notice that everything is falling apart. From across the table, he slides out of his seat, walking towards the other side of the room where he has been staring. I can’t stand to turn around to look where he is going. I’m afraid that someone else will be standing on the other side of the room, holding a new tea set without any broken edges and cracks. I can tell that my guests are becoming restless. They are leaving. They are laughing behind my back because I ended up being the same girl that everyone else knew I would become to him. Just another girl. Nothing.

So did I love him? I did, at the time, at least. In that moment, he was what love meant to me because I had never known anything better. It was a painful thing, dark and twisted. My love for him was that of an addict for cocaine. When I had my fix, I felt great, like I could take over the world. I was powerful and fully of energy and happiness. But when he was gone, when the high was gone, it was bad. There was a lot of hyperventilating and me feeling bad, and trying to convince myself that I hadn’t let someone down. Not being able to fall asleep at night because all the problems we had were because I was insufficient. And that’s always how he made me feel, insufficient. Bad enough being a crack-head, but he was the only person I could buy from, and I never had enough to give him.

So I’d go off of it for a while. Get the drugs out of my system, tell him I never wanted to talk to him again, tell him I was better off without him. I’d go through the 12 steps, I’d rehabilitate myself. Just when things were going good, just when I felt empowered and complete, he would come back and give me something a little better than the last time to get me to relapse. Each time he knew he had to do a little more than the time before to make me want him again. He was so good at it. It had happened over and over again, and every time I told him that I was happier without him and I’d walk away. Until I got lonely and would call him up, or until he needed to get paid and would call me up. An endless cycle: Addiction. Sobriety. Relapse. Repeat.

I heard scribbling and looked back up at Dr. Kimberly Hatcher, Ph.D., unsure of how long I had been sitting there, in silence, narrating my life in my head.

“I’m sorry, could you repeat the question?” was all I could come up with.

She looked up at me, squinted her little black eyes behind her cheap, thick black frames, her irises magnified behind bottle cap lenses. She opened her mouth and let some air escape, then closed it, pursing her lips, and writing more notes. I just stared at her, an eyebrow raised, while she wrote. Her red hair was wild on her head. Pinned in a bun the size of a ping-pong ball, directly on top, bobby pins sticking out at every angle.

God only knows what she was scribbling on her little notepad about me. “Patient displays symptoms of Dissociative Identity Disorder, Schizophrenia, Bipolarism and Cyclothymia. Unable to distinguish thoughts from reality. Also exhibits paranoid behavior in conjunction with mild hypochondria.”

I was about to defend myself from the accusations I made up in my head in that moment (Paranoid Personality Disorder), about to begin convincing her I didn’t actually need to be committed somewhere, that it was just a rough patch. Then she said,

“Sounds like this guy was a real sociopath.”

My face did that thing where it stretches out in confusion. Eyebrows up, mouth open, eyes round. I thought she was trying to make me feel better about my own issues, but I went over the symptoms in my head.

Superficial charm. Check. Grandiose sense of self. Check. Incapacity for love. Check. Changes friends or living situations frequently. Check. No sense of shame/guilt. Check. Lack of empathy. Check. Impulsive behavior. Check. Infidelity. Check. Double Check. Narcissism. Check. Entitlement. Check. Need for stimulation. Check. Incapable of real human attachment. Check. Double Check.

“Oh,” I said, “Yeah, I guess he was. Or, I mean he is… He’s still alive. I mean, I think he’s alive… we don’t actually talk anymore so he could be dead. My friends are friends with him on facebook though, so I think I would know if he were dead…um…so…is…present tense and everything.” and my voice trailed off a bit.

She looked up at me and cocked her head to the side. More scribbling in the notebook.

Taj Molehill

And breathe.

Such a simple idea, yet so complicated in nature. We walk. We see our legs move beneath us, we feel our toes grip the sand. Each muscle swims in perfect harmony under the layers of skin that hold us together. And we breathe and we move and we think without even realizing our mind is functioning. We live this way. This breathing and moving and making our bodies do what we tell them, without ever having to tell them. We wake up in the morning, we fix our coffee, toast our bagel, drive our cars, sit at our desk, do some typing, tell a few jokes in the break room. Then we start it all over the next day. And that becomes as easy as the walking, as simple as the breathing. It becomes who we are. Some days it will rain, and that might make us stir. We put off our work so we barely make those deadlines. That really gets our blood going. We might jump in a relationship that’s bad for us, or drive too fast on the freeway, or spend money we don’t have. That’s what makes life exciting. Breaking our own hearts and being frightened that we are on the brink of disaster. Except our disasters are over drawing our bank accounts and changing our facebook status from “in a relationship” to “single”. Mountains out of molehills, I believe is the saying.

Self-inflicted pain. But we aren’t able to cut very deep. Just enough to scratch the surface. Just enough so everyone can see the blood. We choose the razor because the rope is too severe. We only want the pain if others can bear witness to our scars. We traumatize ourselves so we have some trauma to compare. We need stories to tell. Because the unfortunate truth is that we are below-average. Mediocrity at its finest. Completely ordinary on our greatest of days, perfectly content in our lack of ability. This is the life we create for ourselves. We make grand hyperboles of our own lives to convince our counterparts that we are indeed, alive.

I’ll tell you a truth you do not wish to hear. The secret of the universe. The purpose of our beings. Our hearts are not built for moving blood, our minds are not created for sleeping. We are meant to love in a way that we don’t. To think in a way we can’t understand because we have never tried to think in any way accept the way we are told. We are meant to alter the illness in the world, to breathe life into death. We are meant to be the swell of the ocean and the fire under the dirt. Our purpose is not to be idle, nor to be reactive. If we have any purpose at all, whether there be a God or nothing worth believing in, our purpose is to be full of life. To live through every moment with audacity and conviction. To never be dull, to never stop pushing, not even for a moment. If there is any purpose, this is my purpose. Living means nothing. It means driving our cars and pushing our mowers and reading the Sunday paper. It has lost all meaning because we stopped asking what the meaning could be, and accepted what we have been told it is. We have given up on our own lives. We have given up.

We should no longer be the supporting roles in the story of our lives. We should never do something with half a heart. If your heart is not in something, if you are not convicted in your moment, you are in the wrong moment. You are in the wrong place; you are living the life of someone else. You are living the life of someone ordinary who will die ordinary. We shouldn’t fear the terrorists or the drugs or the poverty. We should only fear ourselves for doing nothing about the things we can change. We are our own greatest enemies, and each breath, each choice, feeds the flame of whatever fire we are keeping alive, or whatever embers we let burn out.

Take your little molehill, and start building. Keep building. Every day should get you higher, every moment you should be adding and fighting for something more. Make a mountain out of a molehill and don’t tell anyone a thing about it. Build because you want to be elevated. Build because the view from the top provides a clarity you will never otherwise be able to realize. Life is not meant to be mundane. It should take our breath away with wonder and we should cry because we’ve never seen anything more beautiful. We must live now, build now, because there is not much time left.