I had a long, whiny, petulant post in my head that says, waaaaaaa, I’m all alone. I have no friends. My family doesn’t even know I exist. Feel sorry for me. Feel bad for me. Tell me how important and valuable I am.
And some of that may spill over into this but maybe not.
It’s hard for me to let things go. And I guess the nature of friendship is that it ebbs and flows, like everything else in life. But I hate the ebb and want the flow all the time.
This week has been particularly hard. Naturally, the holiday made it difficult because my best friend, Z, is at home with her family, which is where she needs to be. She jokingly invited me to come along and some day, I’ll take her up on that offer. Anna offered for me to join her for her funky, funny Thanksgiving at an old ‘50s diner down near the airport, which I did and which was fun. But that was it. No other offers, no other friends checking in to see what I was doing. Nothing. But they all have their lives and things going on and I have to accept the fact that I’m just not a part of their lives anymore and let it go. I did get an invite from Kerr, a new friend, after a Facebook post about wanting something to do in the evening and ended up at a very funny, drunken, disorganized Thanksgiving dinner that was a blast and very, very weird. But even my family didn't bother to call me to wish me Thanksgiving. I had to call them and we spent a total of five minutes before they hung up.
But what has exacerbated it was a flood in my bedroom Wednesday night. Was out all day, teaching and rehearsal, etc. Came home to a waterfall in my bedroom. Literally like a tap was turned on in my lighting fixture and had been on apparently most of the day. My carpet is soaking wet (still) and smells so absolutely delightful. I had to completely dump my bedroom into the living room so I could make sure nothing else got soaked. Luckily, nothing important got wet, including my laptop or my hard drives.
I called Anna and she immediately ran over and helped me get stuff out and patted me on the back figuratively. I’m so glad she was there and willing to come over and watch me freak out.
I did what we do nowadays - updated my status on Facebook about this. Got a few “oh, that’s too bad” comments back. And nothing else.
I guess my expectations of friendship is higher than I realized.
My friendship with Z and Anna is what I expect a friendship to be. We talk at least once a week. Talk. By phone. Or in person. Sure, we text and email and Facebook in between but we have some face time in between. If I don’t hear from one of them for a while, I call them. Vice versa. Anna called me once just because I hadn’t updated my Facebook status for a day or two. God bless her.
Maybe those expectations are too high. Maybe I should settle for friendships that are loose and casual, with no expectations and no consistency. Call once in a while, see each other at events, cute Facebook comments and pictures with no real substance in between. Be happy and delightful and perky every time we’re together, keep the real feelings and stuff under the surface so as not to disrupt anything or put anybody in an uncomfortable situation. Keep my mouth shut, show up and smile. That’s apparently what I’m supposed to be in a lot of my friendships lately.
Maybe being alone with a couple of real, true friends who I can yell at and yell with and be yelled at by is preferable. I spent too many years putting on a face, hiding things without release to do that over again for people who only talk to me for 10 minutes if I come to a show and can’t be bothered to respond to invitations to do something or reach out to me when I’ve reached out to them over and over again.
These couple of close friendships require no reaching. They require only a response to a text for “Pie?”, which we have never actually eaten in response to such a text. They require only bringing myself to the table, whether it’s a table at Olive Garden or at Z’s house. Z and I can spend two hours walking around Target and Vroman’s and still need eight more hours to talk. I can tell either of them anything and be angry, both with them and with myself, and they can do the same. I can be me around them and not have to be Superwoman, emotionless and undemanding.
I’m looking at what I need to change to make sure I’m not out there, pissing off the whole world. But my constant companions assure me they love me just as I am - fragile, demanding, needy, occasionally bitchy, funny, determined, driven, angry, bitter, sad, delicate, fierce and sometimes just tired. And I love them for exactly the same reasons.
Maybe that’s enough.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
The most amazing sentiment on Prop 8
I was proud to march in the Silverlake protest on Saturday (photos coming soon) but Keith Olbermann said it best. I've posted both the video and the text because he expressed what so many of us feel. For all my friends that Prop 8 affects, this is for you.
Special Comment: The Passage of Prop 8
Posted: Monday, November 10, 2008 9:01 PM by Countdown
Filed Under: Special Comment
Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.
Some parameters, as preface. This isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics, and this isn't really just about Prop-8. And I don't have a personal investment in this: I'm not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.
And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics.
This is about the... human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.
If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not... understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want -- a chance to be a little less alone in the world.
Only now you are saying to them -- no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights -- even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?
I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage.
If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal... in 1967. 1967.
The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn't marry...black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.
You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are... gay.
And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing -- centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children... All because we said a man couldn't marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage. How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity" of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?
What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don't you, as human beings, have to embrace... that love? The world is barren enough.
It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.
And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?
With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate... this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness -- this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness -- share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
---
You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of...love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate. You don't have to help it, you don't have it applaud it, you don't have to fight for it. Just don't put it out. Just don't extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don't know and you don't understand and maybe you don't even want to know...It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow **person...
Just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too.
This is the second time in ten days I find myself concluding by turning to, of all things, the closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.
But what he said, fits what is really at the heart of this:
"I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar-Khayyam," he told the judge.
"It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all:
"So I be written in the Book of Love;
"I do not care about that Book above.
"Erase my name, or write it as you will,
"So I be written in the Book of Love."
---
Good night, and good luck.
Special Comment: The Passage of Prop 8
Posted: Monday, November 10, 2008 9:01 PM by Countdown
Filed Under: Special Comment
Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.
Some parameters, as preface. This isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics, and this isn't really just about Prop-8. And I don't have a personal investment in this: I'm not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.
And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics.
This is about the... human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.
If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not... understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want -- a chance to be a little less alone in the world.
Only now you are saying to them -- no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights -- even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?
I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage.
If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal... in 1967. 1967.
The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn't marry...black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.
You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are... gay.
And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing -- centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children... All because we said a man couldn't marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage. How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity" of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?
What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don't you, as human beings, have to embrace... that love? The world is barren enough.
It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.
And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?
With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate... this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness -- this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness -- share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
---
You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of...love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate. You don't have to help it, you don't have it applaud it, you don't have to fight for it. Just don't put it out. Just don't extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don't know and you don't understand and maybe you don't even want to know...It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow **person...
Just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too.
This is the second time in ten days I find myself concluding by turning to, of all things, the closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.
But what he said, fits what is really at the heart of this:
"I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar-Khayyam," he told the judge.
"It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all:
"So I be written in the Book of Love;
"I do not care about that Book above.
"Erase my name, or write it as you will,
"So I be written in the Book of Love."
---
Good night, and good luck.
Eat, Pray, are you kidding me?!
I’m trying to work my way through “Eat, Pray, Love” because my friend, Anna, just read it. She’s as cynical and angry as I am and she assured me that it wasn’t the typical, self-help, Oprah pabulum that has become so popular these days. She did warn me that I may find it a bit of that, but not cloyingly so.
Well, I’m about two dozen pages into it and I know I won’t finish it. Why? It’s not because it isn’t well-written, because it is. It’s not that I can’t relate to what she’s going through, because I can.
What I can’t get past is that this woman, an established writer so I can’t fault her there, took her divorce recovery and rebuilding on the road to Italy, India and Indonesia. She starts the book having coffee with a gorgeous Italian man - who has a gorgeous twin - as they exchange language lessons in Italy. Yeah, I do that every Thursday.
She spent time in an ashram with an amazing guru. I’m sure there are many other wondrous and vivid adventures she had while she took her recovery on the road.
You know where my recovery took me?
First, to my friend’s living room for a month while I figured out where I was going to live.
Then to a small bedroom in someone else’s apartment while 90% of my life lived in a storage room across town.
Briefly, I had my own place for four glorious months but my parents basically paid my rent that entire time because I’ve never recovered economically from going from two incomes to one.
Now, I’m living in a tiny bedroom in an apartment that is dominated by parents, as is my life.
Hmmmmm, Italy, gorgeous men, ashram are a long way away from where I am.
She fell in love immediately with a young, studly actor/performer who swept her off her feet.
I fell in love with one of my best friends who never so much as held my hand and now merely tolerates my presence. The only thing she writes about that I can relate to is how she drove the young performer away with her neediness. Hm, that sounds familiar. However, the OOMA was not young and not studly, although I still view him as one of the most incredible men I have ever known. And he’ll always be handsome in my eyes.
While I understand the fairy tale, oh I wish that were me quality of “Eat, Pray, Love”, I just can’t do it.
Most of us don’t have the luxury of taking our divorce/mid-life on the road to these fabulous places. And I realize that she went through exactly the same thing I did and that I will probably find other things that I can relate to if I should manage to struggle through more of it.
But what I’d like to read about is someone like me. Someone who can’t figure out how to pay their bills, who hasn’t had a date since she left her husband in June, 2005. Someone who’s managed to pretty much drive a lot of her friends away. Someone who didn’t find company with young Italian men but spends more of her life in a single room, working towards a dream but finding herself lonely and empty and melancholy so much of the time. Someone who keeps putting one foot in front of the other just because there are no other choices.
It wouldn’t be “Eat, Pray, Love.” It might be “Cry, Battle, Survive.” That I might read.
Well, I’m about two dozen pages into it and I know I won’t finish it. Why? It’s not because it isn’t well-written, because it is. It’s not that I can’t relate to what she’s going through, because I can.
What I can’t get past is that this woman, an established writer so I can’t fault her there, took her divorce recovery and rebuilding on the road to Italy, India and Indonesia. She starts the book having coffee with a gorgeous Italian man - who has a gorgeous twin - as they exchange language lessons in Italy. Yeah, I do that every Thursday.
She spent time in an ashram with an amazing guru. I’m sure there are many other wondrous and vivid adventures she had while she took her recovery on the road.
You know where my recovery took me?
First, to my friend’s living room for a month while I figured out where I was going to live.
Then to a small bedroom in someone else’s apartment while 90% of my life lived in a storage room across town.
Briefly, I had my own place for four glorious months but my parents basically paid my rent that entire time because I’ve never recovered economically from going from two incomes to one.
Now, I’m living in a tiny bedroom in an apartment that is dominated by parents, as is my life.
Hmmmmm, Italy, gorgeous men, ashram are a long way away from where I am.
She fell in love immediately with a young, studly actor/performer who swept her off her feet.
I fell in love with one of my best friends who never so much as held my hand and now merely tolerates my presence. The only thing she writes about that I can relate to is how she drove the young performer away with her neediness. Hm, that sounds familiar. However, the OOMA was not young and not studly, although I still view him as one of the most incredible men I have ever known. And he’ll always be handsome in my eyes.
While I understand the fairy tale, oh I wish that were me quality of “Eat, Pray, Love”, I just can’t do it.
Most of us don’t have the luxury of taking our divorce/mid-life on the road to these fabulous places. And I realize that she went through exactly the same thing I did and that I will probably find other things that I can relate to if I should manage to struggle through more of it.
But what I’d like to read about is someone like me. Someone who can’t figure out how to pay their bills, who hasn’t had a date since she left her husband in June, 2005. Someone who’s managed to pretty much drive a lot of her friends away. Someone who didn’t find company with young Italian men but spends more of her life in a single room, working towards a dream but finding herself lonely and empty and melancholy so much of the time. Someone who keeps putting one foot in front of the other just because there are no other choices.
It wouldn’t be “Eat, Pray, Love.” It might be “Cry, Battle, Survive.” That I might read.
Monday, November 03, 2008
VOTE!
No matter who you cast the ballot for, make sure you cast it!
If you're like me and supporting Barack Obama, make sure you vote, even if you are sure he's going to win. He'll only win if we actually go in and punch the ballot or smack the computer or whatever the hell voting entails these days.
If you're voting for McCain, I won't hate you. That is the beauty of this country, we get to express our right and say this is who represents me.
I have friends who think that yelling at me and chastising me for my choice is somehow going to make me convert. I think a gentler approach is much better.
Weirdly enough, something at the movies yesterday really confirmed to me why voting No on Prop 8 is right. Don't throw "protect traditional marriage" at me. A "traditionally married" couple, who we're told is what voting "yes" will protect, brought their two toddlers, who we're told voting "yes" will protect, to "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" yesterday. So, the folks who are worried that gay marriage and information about two men or two women loving each other enough to desire to make vows together and create a union that is sanctioned by the law and by God and whomever else it's sanctioned by, will corrupt their children apparently didn't think that two hours of "fuck", "motherfucker", "cocksucker" and other words I won't use going into their children's ears and the sight of an extraordinary amount of almost pornographic sex apparently won't warp the minds of their five and six-year-old children. Hmmmm. Good argument.
So vote your heart, vote your soul, vote your conscience and embrace those who don't share your views. Celebrate the fact that we get to do this, that we get to say we don't agree and that we all get free Starbucks and Ben & Jerry's tomorrow!
If you're like me and supporting Barack Obama, make sure you vote, even if you are sure he's going to win. He'll only win if we actually go in and punch the ballot or smack the computer or whatever the hell voting entails these days.
If you're voting for McCain, I won't hate you. That is the beauty of this country, we get to express our right and say this is who represents me.
I have friends who think that yelling at me and chastising me for my choice is somehow going to make me convert. I think a gentler approach is much better.
Weirdly enough, something at the movies yesterday really confirmed to me why voting No on Prop 8 is right. Don't throw "protect traditional marriage" at me. A "traditionally married" couple, who we're told is what voting "yes" will protect, brought their two toddlers, who we're told voting "yes" will protect, to "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" yesterday. So, the folks who are worried that gay marriage and information about two men or two women loving each other enough to desire to make vows together and create a union that is sanctioned by the law and by God and whomever else it's sanctioned by, will corrupt their children apparently didn't think that two hours of "fuck", "motherfucker", "cocksucker" and other words I won't use going into their children's ears and the sight of an extraordinary amount of almost pornographic sex apparently won't warp the minds of their five and six-year-old children. Hmmmm. Good argument.
So vote your heart, vote your soul, vote your conscience and embrace those who don't share your views. Celebrate the fact that we get to do this, that we get to say we don't agree and that we all get free Starbucks and Ben & Jerry's tomorrow!
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Poetry warning
My heart
in pieces
all over the room
tonight.
The one who had my heart
and shattered it,
leaving us with
no words
but glances
that say everything
we can't say
aloud.
the other
who still
still
still
has my heart
as much as I try
to take it back
since he's not
using it.
This is why
it's just me.
Because my heart
is a long way
from whole.
in pieces
all over the room
tonight.
The one who had my heart
and shattered it,
leaving us with
no words
but glances
that say everything
we can't say
aloud.
the other
who still
still
still
has my heart
as much as I try
to take it back
since he's not
using it.
This is why
it's just me.
Because my heart
is a long way
from whole.
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