Mirror, Mirror

03/28/07 – Beauty

I caught myself in the mirror just now and you know what I saw?

Beauty.



Okay, sure, I saw the extra 20 (or 30 or 40) pounds that are sitting around my waist and my butt. I saw the lines around my eyes (my father’s eyes, apparently, and so, therefore, my father’s lines). I saw the toll from 16 years of an abusive relationship on my face. I saw the flaws and the imperfections and the areas that need improvement.

But, for the first time in the past almost two years of my new life, I saw a glimpse of the beauty I have. It’s something we all, as women, lose the ability to see in ourselves. The most beautiful women I know doubt that about themselves, no matter how confident, no matter how sure they are. They still doubt. That’s why we endless do crunches and subject ourselves to counting every calorie and every bite of food and constantly assess and reassess the size of our ass/thighs/waist/boobs.

But tonight, I saw the way my hair now lies – a little longer, a little shaggier, a little more feminine. I saw the faintest glimpse of cheekbone struggling to come through. I saw the light in my eyes – what I’ve always thought was my best feature. I saw a voluptuous woman instead of an overweight one. I saw a figure, not a flaw. I caught a glimpse of the woman I was at 25 and I could see that the woman I was then is still in the woman that I am now, as I face a landmark birthday 20 years later.

I saw that the years that the marriage put on me made me mature, not worn. I saw that the defiance I have makes me strong, not hard. I saw that the struggles and the choices and the disappointments I have faced in the past two years, as well as those through the end of my marriage, gave me a grace and a serenity by accepting and dealing with and trying to put those behind me. I saw the difference between a victim and a Wonder Woman.

I finally saw that, despite the flaws and the foibles and the weight and the wear and tear, I am a dynamic, incredible, beautiful woman who is slowly but surely coming into her own, regardless of the age, regardless of the time. I caught a glimpse of the woman I am becoming through the trials and the struggles and the loneliness and the pain and all of that. I caught a glimpse of the future me and she is astounding. I cannot wait to meet her.

Pooped.

Wonder Woman is tired. She’s tired of being strong and powerful and tough. She is tired of the expectation of the world because of the image she has put forth. She wants to break down and weep and scream how she is full of rage and pain and sorrow and worry and fear and uncertainty and terror. She wants to cry copious amounts of tears, rend her clothing at the unfairness of things and pound the ground with her fists. She wants to behave like a four-year-old, just for a few moments.

Wonder Woman is tired of boys in men’s clothing, swaggering and pretending to be grown-up when, at the heart of it, they are four years old and incapable of looking past their own noses and seeing there is something out there other than their self-concern. She is tired of Mr. OOMA who can’t get past his own fear and inexperience to just be a goddamned friend. Fine, don’t want to sleep with me but stop being so fucking schizophrenic. If you think I’m too much and you’re worried I’m going to pull a Glenn Close and boil a rabbit in your kitchen, then tell me that. If you’re scared and unsure and just plain confused, just tell me that. If you never want to see me again and you’re sorry you’ve invested the time in this relationship, the grow some balls and tell me that so I can get on with my life. If you read this (and I’m pretty sure you do, although, god forbid that you actually admit it), then just talk to me. Be a friend, because, at the heart of it all, that’s what I thought you truly were. And Mr. Cute Boy, willing to flirt and play and be coy while being with someone who obviously doesn’t do anything for you, yet not willing to put your neck out to try something that might make you happy, either embrace the one you’re with or get off the pot and do something. If just one of you would be a Superman and just open your stupid mouths, Wonder Woman maybe would be able to get some rest and stop trying to read your frigging minds.

And Wonder Woman is tired of being tired. Of seeking and wanting and needing and reaching and coming back empty-handed. What she wants is simple – inner peace, contentment, someone to hold her close and tell her it’s okay not to be Wonder Woman for a while. Someone to rub her feet and kiss her forehead. Nothing much. Just everything.

Mostly, she is tired of her broken heart, shattered by someone who should have protected it for all those years, leaving her incapable of trusting that fractured organ to be real, to feel real, to be true. She wants the pieces to be put together so they will stop sticking her in the ribs, keeping her in constant pain, every single day, every single moment, while she keeps on the face the public expects.

Or maybe Wonder Woman just needs to quit whining, accept her fate and wreak havoc on the world. That’s always an option. Wonder Woman goes Emo. Hmmm. Food for thought.

Warning - poetry ahead

Arm's length
has become
too far
to cross.

I'm tired of trying
reaching
finding
nothing
on the other end.

You win.
I'm worn out.

So
when you look for me
I won't be there
across the table
across the room
across your life.

And what breaks my heart
is that
you won't even
miss
me.

what i need...

tonight, what I need is to be able to get shif-faced, incoherently drunk. to have some warm, wonderful incredible man see my pain, understand, wrap me up in his embrace, take me home, tuck me into his bed (the option to curl up in said bed and hold me all night is open). Sorry, no sex tonight. Wake me gently in the morning, still holding me. Tell me everything’s all right and let me cry out everything I’ve held in the past few days. Wipe away my tears, tell me to come back when I need to, and kiss me sweetly and gently and tell me he loves me.

Instead, I’ll go and sing a few heartbreak songs, have a single drink, as I am driving the parents’ car tonight, and come home to my empty bed, shed a few tears into my pillow, get up and start all over again tomorrow.

That’s what I need to do.

Sometimes I forget...

The day-to-day drama that I create in my own mind and life sometimes makes me forget how lucky I am to have the life I have.

In talking to my aunt and uncle, who flew down from Canada yesterday, and regaling them with tales of my life with all of you - particulary Patty, Monica, Zadra, Peter, Chairman, and AJ (and too many others to name) - I am again reminded how lucky and blessed I am to have all of you in my life.

I'm sorry sometimes I'm crazy and manic and make a big thing out of nothing. I'm sorry I take some of you for granted sometimes. And I'm sorry that sometimes I don't feel like I am the friend to you that you are to me. Know you are loved and appreciated and that I would not have the wondrous life that I have without every single one of you.

I want a Superman

Men don’t want Wonder Woman.



They want the victims that Wonder Woman saves – the meek, mild, unambitious 25 to 30-year-olds who aren’t a threat and aren’t a challenge. Men admire Wonder Woman from a distance but are afraid to get too close to her, afraid that they’ll never be able to stand up to her superpowers. They are eager to have her around when they need her support and her help and her strength. But after that, Wonder Woman’s on her own. They’ll hover at her periphery, holding court, looking up to her, sleep with her if she’d let them, but when it comes to something more, there’s a man-shaped hole in the wall announcing their departure. But if Wonder Woman needs them or their support or their participation, they find an excuse and run to the victim, hiding behind her vulnerability and her fear and making sure that Wonder Woman can’t find them.

Wonder Woman is screwed.

I want Superman.



A man who is not afraid of my Wonder Woman-ness. A man with the balls to not be afraid of my super-powers and who is not going to use his gifts of evil instead of good. A Superman who knows when I need to be Wonder Woman and when I need to just be Lt. Diana Prince and let him be Superman and protect me and take care of me. I am tired of mere mortals like the OOMA and Cute Boy who don’t see the wonder that is me standing in front of them and who can’t handle a Wonder Woman in their life. Let them hole up somewhere protected and unreachable with the victims of the world while I keep up my search for a man to stand with me and be proud of the Wonder Woman I can be. A man who is just as strong, just as determined, just as ambitious as I am and who can handle my vulnerable days when being a superhero is just too much.

Because, days like today, I could use a Superman in my life.

Read into this what you will...

I had survived some weird, military, "LOST" sort of scenario in some far off island. I thought others had survived but I could not find them. Somehow, I was back in a military building, no one knowing that I had survived this thing. They were looking for me but I was in the lobby of the building and no one knew where to find me. And I couldn’t get anyone to tell me where I should go. There was this pattern on the floor in a circular pattern that were words but not words and they seemed to keep shifting. Every time I’d figure out what it said and where I should go, the pattern shifted again and the words were in a different order. They were words like “eleventh” and “management” and “services.”

The OOMA kept coming through the front door over and over again, not like Groundhog Day because things didn’t repeat. He just seemed to keep coming through the door. He was in full dress Navy whites, which is weird because he’s Air Force and I kept thinking exactly that – that’s weird, he’s in Navy whites and he’s Air Force. At one point, I was in some odd Star Trek sort of outfit that was a red jumpsuit with white patches and silver trim and he was trying to help me get the shoulders to fit right because they kept sitting oddly. He would adjust the shoulders and then they would slide right back to where they were. He was infinitely patient and it seemed fairly important that the shoulders were just so. And it seemed that every time he appeared, I was somehow closer to where I was supposed to be. He was infinitely patient and sometimes seemed to know I had been missing and was glad I was there and wanted to help me get to where I should be and sometimes both of us seemed unaware that I had been missing and couldn’t figure out where I was supposed to be. But he was unflappable, knowing that it would be all right eventually and I would get to where I was supposed to be. And Nellie Bly’s “His Uncheckered Life” kept playing in the background.

During all of this, I kept getting flashbacks of my adventure, which included getting some sort of robotic dinosaur thing to work and that’s how I got off the island. That part’s kind of blurry because I don’t remember much other than getting the thing upright and something about someone who was a negative essence – not really a threat, just very negative and I was trying to get away from him. I knew there were others on the island but I couldn’t figure out where they were or what they were doing, yet they seemed to know I was there with this dinosaur thing and they wouldn’t come over to where I was for no apparent reason.

Then I was in a grocery store with the OOMA and we were trying to get something specific but I didn’t seem to know exactly what it was. He kept asking me, “Is that it?” and I’d say, “I think so.” But then we’d put it back and keep going. I put a Caesar salad in my cart and that was the only thing that was consistent.

Then we were back in the lobby and we had dishes that had been used and couldn’t figure out where to put them. I finally put mine on the guard desk after we kept walking around and around but then couldn’t find the others to tell them where to put their dishes and it seemed really important to tell them where to put their dishes. And the OOMA came in again, in his dress whites, and finally seemed surprised to see me there because I supposedly had been lost in this weird astronaut crash landing thing.

And then Twyla jumped on my head in real life and woke me up.

I've made my own Freudian analysis, I'm sure you will, too.

Yeah, right.

I'm so full of shit sometimes. I actually believe what I say when I write it and then...

Well, anyway...

Doubt.

The hardest thing in dealing with emotional abuse is the lingering vestiges of doubt that invade your life. Even now, almost two years after leaving my ex, I still harbor huge amounts of doubt about my emotional life. Every single day, I ponder and obsess and wonder whether or not what I feel is true, from everything from my on-going struggle with the OOMA to how I am dealing with living with my parents to just happiness on an on-going basis. I have to run everything through a “test” filter almost to see and evaluate if what I feel is true. And the thing is, everything that you feel is true. It’s true to you and doesn’t matter if it’s “true” to anyone else.

I was lucky in my creative life to have outside verification of my intuition and impulses. And it’s easier to be objective about the truth of my creativity because it’s an external extension of my life. I see something on screen or on stage and the response of the people watching it let me know whether what I think about the piece is true. And I have been able to gain enough objectivity of my own that I know when something I do is good and when it could be better. My fears and worries about “Cinderella” are just normal, every day concerns I’m sure every filmmaker goes through so I’m handling that part of my life.

It’s the every day banality of life that still stumps me, particularly when it comes to the relationship with men in my life. Considering the fact that most of the men that have been in my life have been emotionally distant, it’s no wonder I don’t know what the hell to do or to feel when I’m around someone I am attracted to. And, wow, no wonder I’m attracted to emotionally distant men. My father, a lovely, darling man, is not that open emotionally. Through all of this stuff in the last two years, once in a while we have broached the subject of how I feel but mostly, it’s just the “we want you to be happy” approach to emotion. We have never discussed my depression or my almost-suicide. I don’t think he could. My brother also was extremely distant throughout my life. I think the deepest conversations we had were when he was using me as a hair model and we talked about my moving to LA. That’s about it.

My first husband, while passionate about many things, was not passionate about us. We never talked about our relationship or where we were going or anything like that. We were also so young. He said “I love you”, as required, but never tried to find out how I felt. He belittled my dancing ability, which eventually drove me to quit dancing. He belittled anything I did that made him feel less than.

Ditto with my current ex. “I love you” came frequently to his lips but did not always come frequently to my heart.

So now that I am thinking I would like to have someone in my life, I realize I don’t necessarily know how to approach that. I think my current lesson is learning about boundaries, because I have never been good at setting boundaries with the men in my life. I can say, “what you said hurt me” but I’ve never been good at the kind of confrontational end of that. That hurt me and you need to know and understand that it hurts me and you need to change the way you treat me because I will not tolerate it anymore. I always backed down, I always hesitated to convey the depth of the injury caused.

So now I have to practice what I’ve been learning. I have to learn to set boundaries with the OOMA because things recently have made me feel the way my ex made me feel, to a point. And this is where I get hung up. Do I feel bad because of the way he’s treating me? Do I feel bad because I bring a whole cartload of baggage to this and it’s not him, it’s me, because that’s what I was told for so long – it’s just how YOU feel so don’t feel that way. It’s not that he’s so much treating me badly but it’s that he’s got me at arm’s length again and it reminds me of where my ex kept me for so many years. In his life, but not IN his life. Valid as long as he needed me but not valid when I needed him. I was there when it was convenient but god forbid I should need him to be there for me. And the OOMA is on the receiving end of a lot of confusing emotions from me, some of which he causes, a lot of which I cause for myself.

So, in examining things lately, I realize that this is where I fail on my end of a relationship, because I have never had a lot of success with saying, “hey, what’s going on here? Why are you treating me like this? I don’t like it. Talk to me and tell me what’s going on. It’s okay, whatever you’re feeling, but you need to know and understand that this is how I’m feeling.” Because how I’m feeling has always been negated and never allowed to be accepted as true. I seem to be able to convey these things to the women in my life or to those men who aren’t as close to me as this particular one, which makes sense, I guess.

My work right now is on finding a way to tell him that I’m not happy with being at arm’s length, which doesn’t mean we have to be attached at the hip. I miss him. I miss spending time with him. I need to know if there is something I am doing that is causing him to hold me at a distance. I need to know if our relationship has changed on his end but he hasn’t bothered to inform me of that (men seem to do that – change what they think about a relationship and wait for the woman to put the point on it and then do something about it). This whole scenario terrifies me because my ex would never allow that discussion to go past “well, that’s what you feel, just don’t feel that way.” If I would push the issue, he’d end the discussion with, “I don’t accept that” or, my favorite, “That’s not true so don’t feel that way.” There was never a way to get past that with him and I’m afraid to have my feelings negated by the OOMA. But it’s got to be better than this unknown, unspoken tension between us. I may lose him, and I know that, because he’s not great with confrontation either. But maybe it’ll free something up in both of us. Maybe it’ll get us past this awkwardness and on to whatever the next phase of our friendship is. Maybe it’ll show both of us that open conversation approached with affection and honesty can lead to something better rather than just ignoring a situation and hoping it will go away.

The most important thing is that I need to learn to take care of myself first, acknowledge that something is not making me happy and confront the source of that unhappiness. I need to learn that the core of my feelings are true – I’m hurt by the distance between us, I don’t like being held out here with no explanation – and that the tsunami that these feelings stir up are the “untrue” parts of this whole thing. My challenge is to express the clear true feelings without the waves of other emotions that get tangled up in it. Be clear, be concise and be honest. Sounds simple. Soooo not simple.

We’ll see what happens.

Damn you.

(Warning - if you're a friend of my ex, you don't want to read this.)

Damn you.

Damn you for taking something so precious and so important to me – my jewelry business – and infecting it with your anger and your perception and your criticism.

Damn you for doing such a good job that every time I do a show/sale, like today, it only fills me with dread and worry and panic because nothing I have/do is good enough, despite the fact that people stop me on the street and chase me across stores to find out where I got my jewelry/purse/notebook.

Damn you for filling my boxes of supplies and stock with your negativism, so much so that I almost vomit with anxiety every time I open them up and start working with them.

Damn you for instilling so much doubt in me that even today, 18 months later, I still hear your angry, bitter voice in my head, making me not want to pursue something that is lucrative, creative, and fulfilling.

And damn me for allowing you to do this to me.

Well, today, I am damning you to the past. No matter what happens at this sale today, it has nothing to do with you. I damn your anger, bitterness and criticism to hell, where it belongs. Today is all about me, I will succeed or fail on my own merit. And if today is not successful financially, I’m sure I will find success in damning you into the distance, where you belong. And these events always have success – they always show me that what I do is valuable, even if it’s just to a few people, because those few people are the ones who will help me build a success. I’d rather have five excited customers than 25 unenthusiastic ones.

So, damn you to hell, where you belong, take your shit with you. I don’t need it here anymore.

The woman to be

I am beginning to see the woman I am to become. Something about stability in my life – as much as I will have – that seems to have brought this about. That and the lack of clowns in my head – although I do hear their tin cups banging against the bars, demanding to be let free. Luckily, the bars have held.

What I see is probably not that much different from what I was. Maybe just more defined. Ironically, without having someone in my life to be defined by, I am becoming more defined. There are no expectations except what I put upon myself. No one to answer to except for myself. Sounds great but I can be pretty hard to please.

What I see is the image of a woman done in watercolor or maybe done by Picasso. There are bits and pieces I can make out clearly and see what they are and they are incredible. But there are still bits and pieces that are not so easily seen and could be anything at this point, and they are shadowy and erratic. But without those, the picture wouldn’t make sense.

I see a woman in front of me who is strong, confident, fearless. Someone who doesn’t second guess (well, not too much) and has embraced her strength rather than find excuses to hide it. I see a woman who understands her emotions, doesn’t strangle them and conceal them, but who also knows how to wrangle them and work through them instead of letting her emotions run amuck and create destruction. I see a woman who laughs easily and loudly and doesn’t worry about being too loud. A woman who loves deeply those around her, without hesitation, without over-thinking, without agenda. A woman who understands that, to be whole, you have to be open to being hurt again. A woman who is no longer in hiding, who doesn’t cower, but doesn’t overpower at the same time.

That same woman is also vulnerable and easily wounded. That maybe is not as much of a weakness as it sounds. It means being able to love fully and completely, regardless of the outcome. It does mean pain and sorrow but it also means an incredible amount of feeling and passion. You can’t have one without the other, I don’t think. She trusts maybe a little too easily but it also makes her easy to trust. She is the pillar many others need and, in turn, there are suddenly pillars for her in her times of need.

She is creativity personified. Maybe to a fault sometimes with too many fingers in too many pies but there is such a deep passion and drive for this creativity that it makes up for all else. Embracing that creativity and learning to acknowledge her gift for it allows that passion to be released without qualification and so it becomes true artistry, not something that someone else thinks it should be. It is pure and from the source.

Mostly, I see someone who is unapologetic about who she is, both with good and bad, because we are all made up of both. There is no perfect. There is no right way to be. There is only who I am, with strength and weakness, with power and with fear, with grace and with goofiness. Ying and yang, one and the other.

There is still a long way to go to build this woman I see but I can also see the blocks that are there for this creature. I see it in the eyes of those around me, both my new friends and my cherished older ones. I am so unbelievably blessed to have those eyes around me because, without them, I wouldn’t have begun to see a reflection that mirrors what I see in my mind’s eye. I see the person I have wanted to be for so long reflected back in your eyes, all of you, and it’s astounding. With those reflections, with that love, with that support, I know I am on the right path and that the woman I am meant to be is just waiting around the corner for me to finish discovering.