Today, I am 30.
Today, I am single. Today, I am independent. Today, I am self supporting. Today, I am anxious. Today, I am funny. Today. I am scared. Today, I am hopeful. Today, I am skittish. Today, I am mildly self assured. Today, I am snarky. Today, I am independent. Today, I am less naive. Today, I am slightly more wise. Today, I am smart. Today, I am dumb. Today, I am less crazy. Today, I am more eccentric. Today, I am less vulnerable. Today, I am more empathetic. Today, I am tipsy. Today, I am determined.
Today. I am lucky.
Today. I am loved.
(Today, I think I am me.)
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
It is Only a Door
In my life as a city dweller, I have always favored walking to any other mode of transportation. In fact, the ability to easily stroll from here to there (and not have to cross a busy median and 8 lanes of traffic) is, in large part, why I prefer living in the city. There is, of course, more to see and do in a city, but I would argue that in itself is true only because a city forces you to interact with it, every part of it, by encouraging you to get out of your car and walk the walk.
From the moment I moved to my current big city of choice, I walked everywhere I could. Here. There. Everywhere. But most often, I would cut up and over a hill, marching along the top plateau, only to descend at its crookedest point, at which I took a deep breath, admired the 360 degrees of breathtaking, postcard views, and ambled my way down through countless tourist's shots, always, without question, at the end of my descent inexplicably veering off to the right. Well, it was inexplicable only at first. It quickly came to be habit because I had an agenda -- I liked to visit the doorways. The doorways of the buildings to the right were so beautiful. Each different, each mesmerizing. Being a child of the suburbs, the audacity and intrigue of the red door always captured my imagination. As is its way, the city did the childhood daydream one better. Intricate latticework, sculpture of wrought iron, framed in alabaster, majestic in its sweeping details, some delicate, some incredibly grand. I wondered what it would be like to live a life contained within such a doorway. The thought of it, even on the darkest days, as I walked past, inspired a relentless curiosity and possibility.
And then I forgot.
I now live behind the tallest, grandest and most ornate of those fabled doorways. It has been over two years now. It is only today that I remembered that I had paid continuous homage to these magical thresholds, and that I live behind the one I found to be the most beautiful and mesmerizing of all.
Two years.
There is so much I missed for so long. Even my own preferences and desires, forgotten. And yet, apparently, myopic as my mind's eye may be, I am led back to where I belong.
Panglossian as it may sound, I know that is true. I always end up where I belong. When I lead with my other senses, I am more likely to get more directly to where I need to be. If I lead with my sight, with what I "know" and what I "want", I will get there too. But, without exception, the road is longer, bumpier and exceedingly more painful.
I need to trust in that. And yet, though I know it to be true, I can't. Trust eludes me.
Me of little faith.
When I was graduating from college, the op-ed piece in the school paper was written by a classmate of mine. Topically, it was the usual reflective piece on the college experience and what the future would soon hold. But within the piece, my classmate excerpted a poem. Though I clipped the article, and the emotion of how it moved me remains vivid, I cannot locate the yellowed clipping (and so far Google has let me down in locating the text via alternate means). What I remember is this, the poem, a piece about immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, extolled the virtues of the door. Of all the possibilities such a thing holds, of all the magic it conjures, of all the disappointments it might also contain. But that in the end, while it is all of those things, the power for it to realize them always rests with you, as, "It is only a door."
It is up to me to walk through it. Impossible as the task has always seemed, that was the part I was sure of long ago. It is the part about realizing you have walked through, and opening your eyes to the magic and the possibility on the other side, that I am only now beginning to understand.
From the moment I moved to my current big city of choice, I walked everywhere I could. Here. There. Everywhere. But most often, I would cut up and over a hill, marching along the top plateau, only to descend at its crookedest point, at which I took a deep breath, admired the 360 degrees of breathtaking, postcard views, and ambled my way down through countless tourist's shots, always, without question, at the end of my descent inexplicably veering off to the right. Well, it was inexplicable only at first. It quickly came to be habit because I had an agenda -- I liked to visit the doorways. The doorways of the buildings to the right were so beautiful. Each different, each mesmerizing. Being a child of the suburbs, the audacity and intrigue of the red door always captured my imagination. As is its way, the city did the childhood daydream one better. Intricate latticework, sculpture of wrought iron, framed in alabaster, majestic in its sweeping details, some delicate, some incredibly grand. I wondered what it would be like to live a life contained within such a doorway. The thought of it, even on the darkest days, as I walked past, inspired a relentless curiosity and possibility.
And then I forgot.
I now live behind the tallest, grandest and most ornate of those fabled doorways. It has been over two years now. It is only today that I remembered that I had paid continuous homage to these magical thresholds, and that I live behind the one I found to be the most beautiful and mesmerizing of all.
Two years.
There is so much I missed for so long. Even my own preferences and desires, forgotten. And yet, apparently, myopic as my mind's eye may be, I am led back to where I belong.
Panglossian as it may sound, I know that is true. I always end up where I belong. When I lead with my other senses, I am more likely to get more directly to where I need to be. If I lead with my sight, with what I "know" and what I "want", I will get there too. But, without exception, the road is longer, bumpier and exceedingly more painful.
I need to trust in that. And yet, though I know it to be true, I can't. Trust eludes me.
Me of little faith.
When I was graduating from college, the op-ed piece in the school paper was written by a classmate of mine. Topically, it was the usual reflective piece on the college experience and what the future would soon hold. But within the piece, my classmate excerpted a poem. Though I clipped the article, and the emotion of how it moved me remains vivid, I cannot locate the yellowed clipping (and so far Google has let me down in locating the text via alternate means). What I remember is this, the poem, a piece about immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, extolled the virtues of the door. Of all the possibilities such a thing holds, of all the magic it conjures, of all the disappointments it might also contain. But that in the end, while it is all of those things, the power for it to realize them always rests with you, as, "It is only a door."
It is up to me to walk through it. Impossible as the task has always seemed, that was the part I was sure of long ago. It is the part about realizing you have walked through, and opening your eyes to the magic and the possibility on the other side, that I am only now beginning to understand.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Naked Lunch
I am having lunch with my mother tomorrow. Which is unremarkable, but for the fact that we have spoken only a handful of times since Christmas, and the only time I have actually seen her since then was at my father's birthday dinner in July.
She lives about 20 minutes away.
Our relationship began to spoil about four years ago, when I allowed myself to be bullied into an ill advised investment. Numerous tearful exchanges, a variety of 6 to 8 month periods of not interacting, and my unending state of continuous denial later, we are having lunch. A cozy party of four. Mother, child, the ill advised investment, and either her failure (or mine) to extricate me from it as the pink elephant in the room.
I need to talk to her. I need to wrest control of the situation back. I need to make her hear me. I need to confront these demons -- the last, and actually, the only which have caused me prolonged stress due to sheer anger. This topic is the only one I can think of, in all my life, that has provoked a visceral and unending anger in me. I have to exorcise the anger. It burns. I generally try to ignore it, but my heart tells a different story. It bears the telltale blistering and puckering. Ever-raw and unhealed.
But this anger, this unexplained rage -- its strength scares me. And only now am I beginning to realize it is because the pool from which it emanates is so much deeper than I had ever realized. The investment isn't the issue. My mother ignoring my opinions isn't the issue. The issue is that the lesson I learned early on, the one I have spent my whole life working towards applying, is that I don't want to live a life like my mother's. And with this ill-fated investment, I feel she has pulled me into that morass. The one that made my breath short as a child, that seemingly compelled me to ensure dinner be made and the house cleaned prior to my father getting home every day in the hopes he would be a little less angry, that spoke with a soft Spanish whisper of "shhhh, don't tell your father" right in front of his uni-lingual-face, that post-dated checks, that was generous with promises, but always made you never want to ask "how" when they where actually fulfilled, that always screened calls, that prized cash-and-carry as the existence of a viable credit card was always a dubious proposition, that was always scrapping and planning, and hoping and wishing and risking and betting, with a wink and prayer that it would all turn out okay.
It did. Well fed and properly clothed, exceptionally educated and not at all deprived is how I turned out. I was a fortunate kid. I am grateful. But that fortune was so hard fought. The battle scared me. I worried about survival from one day of the battle to the next. I worried about the foot soldiers. I was always worried. I was always insecure. I was always afraid.
There was no safety net.
And after all these years, there still isn't.
I am my own safety net. I accept that. I am proud that I can do that. But I am fiercely protective of it. The one thing I loved about working at the firm was that I never had to think about money. I just don't want to think of it. I want it to be a non-issue. I have enough for what I need and for a fair amount of what I want, and that is that. When that is threatened, my whole world seems tremulous. A quivering house of cards that can fall at any moment.
And I fear, as I down shifted the fiscal benefits of my career, that my mother now has the power. The power to pull me down, to pull me under, to drag me out to sea, untethered, unmoored.
I need to talk to her. I need her to hear me.
I am afraid.
She lives about 20 minutes away.
Our relationship began to spoil about four years ago, when I allowed myself to be bullied into an ill advised investment. Numerous tearful exchanges, a variety of 6 to 8 month periods of not interacting, and my unending state of continuous denial later, we are having lunch. A cozy party of four. Mother, child, the ill advised investment, and either her failure (or mine) to extricate me from it as the pink elephant in the room.
I need to talk to her. I need to wrest control of the situation back. I need to make her hear me. I need to confront these demons -- the last, and actually, the only which have caused me prolonged stress due to sheer anger. This topic is the only one I can think of, in all my life, that has provoked a visceral and unending anger in me. I have to exorcise the anger. It burns. I generally try to ignore it, but my heart tells a different story. It bears the telltale blistering and puckering. Ever-raw and unhealed.
But this anger, this unexplained rage -- its strength scares me. And only now am I beginning to realize it is because the pool from which it emanates is so much deeper than I had ever realized. The investment isn't the issue. My mother ignoring my opinions isn't the issue. The issue is that the lesson I learned early on, the one I have spent my whole life working towards applying, is that I don't want to live a life like my mother's. And with this ill-fated investment, I feel she has pulled me into that morass. The one that made my breath short as a child, that seemingly compelled me to ensure dinner be made and the house cleaned prior to my father getting home every day in the hopes he would be a little less angry, that spoke with a soft Spanish whisper of "shhhh, don't tell your father" right in front of his uni-lingual-face, that post-dated checks, that was generous with promises, but always made you never want to ask "how" when they where actually fulfilled, that always screened calls, that prized cash-and-carry as the existence of a viable credit card was always a dubious proposition, that was always scrapping and planning, and hoping and wishing and risking and betting, with a wink and prayer that it would all turn out okay.
It did. Well fed and properly clothed, exceptionally educated and not at all deprived is how I turned out. I was a fortunate kid. I am grateful. But that fortune was so hard fought. The battle scared me. I worried about survival from one day of the battle to the next. I worried about the foot soldiers. I was always worried. I was always insecure. I was always afraid.
There was no safety net.
And after all these years, there still isn't.
I am my own safety net. I accept that. I am proud that I can do that. But I am fiercely protective of it. The one thing I loved about working at the firm was that I never had to think about money. I just don't want to think of it. I want it to be a non-issue. I have enough for what I need and for a fair amount of what I want, and that is that. When that is threatened, my whole world seems tremulous. A quivering house of cards that can fall at any moment.
And I fear, as I down shifted the fiscal benefits of my career, that my mother now has the power. The power to pull me down, to pull me under, to drag me out to sea, untethered, unmoored.
I need to talk to her. I need her to hear me.
I am afraid.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
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