And add a touch of...

For the first time in my adult life, I look forward to cooking. Cooking just about anything. Maybe because, for the first time in my adult life, I feel like it’s my kitchen.

My first husband was a chef so I was always intimidated by that. I did make a few fabulous dishes. I seem to remember doing roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, which actually turned out great. Good thing, too, because I think it was to impress is bitch of a mother (sorry, TS, but it’s true). And I think I made one magnificent order of eggs benedict, surprising even myself.

My second husband was critical of everything I cooked. If I made chicken, he’d say, that was good but I was really in the mood for steak. Or, next time, maybe add more of this or that. Keep in mind, the only time he ever cooked during our almost 20 years together was to grill a couple of times over the summer. I did love to make a particular veal stew (live with it, I made something with dead baby cows), mainly because it filled the loft with the most delicious smell of bay leaves and garlic and onion that just made it feel like home for an evening. We also ate out a lot due to our crazy schedules but I never felt great cooking anything.

Living with my roomie, T, the kitchen wasn’t really conducive for cooking. Small and tight and I didn’t really feel like I belonged there. Although I did make one amazing, awesome dinner one night for PRS and his mother and Chairman, just as a thank you for being so wonderful to me that first year of me being on my own. It was just simple stir fry but I made three different ones and had nine little cheesecakes for dessert. And Chairman brought a delicious dessert wine that we drank over ice. Maybe it was the food or maybe it was the company but I keep that night as one of the most beautiful nights of my life.

Living here for the past two years, I have rarely cooked because my mother would hover over and carry on a running commentary about what I was cooking, whether it was pasta or scrambled eggs. And she would stand and smoke in the kitchen while I was cooking, which really took away whatever flavor there was to my food.

Cooking was always done as a necessity, except for the rare occasion. And, as with so many things in my life, there was always such an association of criticism attached to cooking. It really took that lovely dinner with PRS and Chairman, where they just ate in silence for about ten minutes and then almost moaned in appreciation, for me to understand that cooking can be about pleasure and giving pleasure and just simply enjoying the food.

I realized today, as I’m sitting here, knitting and waiting for laundry to be done, that I am excited about the idea of going into the kitchen and making some either pasta or scrambled eggs for lunch. Just excited about going into the kitchen and whipping up something for dinner. And I’ve spent about $100 this week on groceries so there would be things I could cook, mainly because of financial concerns. $100 on groceries goes much further than $100 in take-out. That just shows how excited I am about the idea of using the kitchen to its fullest potential.

But just the simple fact that I’m embracing the kitchen says a lot to me. I’ve never been a big “foodie”. I just want something to eat. But the fact that I can do that simple task without having any criticism and critique going on in the background speaks volumes.

It’s part of the whole rebirth of my soul, now that I am truly accepting and embracing my life as it is. Not trying to make it something it’s not. Just enjoying the day to day existence of life. Not focusing on, oh, my god, what am I going to do tomorrow and the day after and the day after and then thousands of days after that. I’m focusing on today, this moment, this time, this space. This single plate of scrambled eggs. That’s my focus.

It sounds simple but it’s been a long journey to enjoying these simple moments without creating something highly dramatic about every little thing in my life. It’s about scrambled eggs, it’s about this show, it’s about this painting, not about my whole life in one single moment.

So this moment is about how much I’m going to enjoy simple scrambled eggs with some hash browns and artisan bread for lunch. And then I’ll get my laundry out of the dryer. And then maybe paint. But that’s as far as I want to think right now. Not think about rehearsal tonight and work I have to do for tomorrow and teaching tomorrow. Just about this moment, these eggs, this single solitary time in my life. And that’s just perfectly fine with me.

Be vewy, vewy quiet...

I am happy, right now, this moment, this second.

Shhhhh.

I don’t want to frighten it away.

True, honest happiness is so fleeting, so brief, that it’s easy to miss. By the time you realize you have it, it’s gone and something else has taken its place - anger, depression and, in my case, fear.

I don’t want to look too closely at why, at this moment, I am happy. Looking too closely can make it hide, can make me overanalyze it right into oblivion.

I painted and that makes me happy.

I wrote last night and figured out a few things with the feature screenplay for “The Wraith” and woke with some new ideas and that makes me happy.

My cat, Twyla, is curled up on the back of the sofa, her tail covering her face while she sleeps and she is so incredibly adorable and that makes me happy.

I have rehearsal tonight for a show I’m stage managing with people I really enjoy working with because they make me feel like I’m the greatest thing on earth and I really am enjoying this show and rehearsals are fun and that makes me happy.

I picked up an extra day of teaching this week, on Sunday, and it’s a birthday party for kids at Mission Renaissance and it’ll be a blast and it means a bigger paycheck and that makes me happy.

I have a very cool roomie who hugs me when I get home and that makes me happy.

I’m very excited about the next painting I’m going to start and that makes me happy.

We’ve had a breakthrough on the script for the comedian and that makes me REALLY happy.

I don’t feel obligation or guilt or panic about making sure I make everyone else happy and feel that I have to put someone ahead of me and that makes me happy.

I have paint all over both my hands and, weirdly enough, up near my armpit on my left arm and that makes me really, really happy.

So I’m going to live in this moment, this second, this feeling for as long as my crazy life and my crazy brain will let me. And maybe, just maybe, these tiny, simple, unexpected little moments will build into a life made up of mostly those moments and not much else.

Ch…ch…ch…Changes…

Last night, for the first time in almost 20 years, I finally felt like I owned my life. It was a simple night. Made some angel hair pasta with diced tomatoes, garlic, onion, garlic bread. Nothing fancy but really delicious. Then I sat on the couch and ate some ice cream right out of the carton, watching my new big screen TV (actually Dean’s old big screen TV). My roomie was over at her boyfriend’s so it was just me and Twyla. Roomie’s cat was hanging out in her room so not even an extra cat was distracting.

And suddenly, I realized that this is truly the beginning of my life. MY life. I could do whatever I wanted - which turned out to be doing nothing at all, really. No one would yell at me for doing nothing, no one would accuse me of being lazy. It’s all about me, now. Which is kind of scary.

I left my now-ex-husband four years ago to build a life that I wanted. A life that would be fulfilling. A life that would be filled with love and joy and wonder. A full, complete creative life with no limits. Well, I should know that is an impossibility but at least I wanted to get as close as I could.

It’s been a long struggle over these past four years (in June, it’ll be four years). Never quite feeling like my feet are under me as I lived with a temporary roommate and then in a sublet, which I knew was a short-lived adventure, and then with my folks. I’ve never quite felt like I could do what I wanted to do without feeling guilty about ignoring someone or letting someone down. Don’t ask me who I was feeling guilty about or ignoring, but the lingering effects of living with a selfish, controlling, self-absorbed man for almost 20 years don’t go away overnight.

I realize now that I have been scared for the past four years. Scared that I made the wrong decision. After all, why did I think I could build a life without him when I couldn’t build a life with him? Why did I deserve to be happy, to be creative, to live the life I want to? How dare I?! Even all the films and shows I’ve done in the past four years have terrified me. What if I let someone down? What if they’re not really that good? It’s terrifying when you actually start to see your dreams come true.

I have a lot of unfinished things lurking around me. I think it’s because I’m scared to finish them. I feel like I need permission or approval or something before I put the final touches on things. I don’t know whose permission I need. I don’t know what I’m waiting for. I know that there is a strong fear of failure, whether I finish these things or not. If I finish and it’s not good, then I’m a failure. If I don’t finish, then I’m a failure. If I do finish… I don’t know how to finish that sentence.

Now, I have a clean palette in front of me. No more responsibility to my parents, which has been hanging over me almost ever since I stepped out on this adventure. I’m the one who’s been here to take care of them and I feel I owe them for what they’ve done for me. Not in a negative way but in the way a child feels obligated to return the love to the parents that they’ve shown her. But with them gone now, there’s this weird void, this emptiness that I didn’t expect. I’m so used to giving to them that now I don’t know what to do now that they’re in Minnesota.

My challenge now is to channel that energy into myself, something I have never been encouraged to do. I have always been taught to focus my energy on someone else, not on me. I don’t deserve to focus on my, that would be selfish. Focus on everyone else, make everyone else happy, and then, maybe there’ll be a little left over for me. And I should be happy if everyone else is happy, right?

So the rest of this year is learning to change the focus to me. To my career. To finishing the ends of things that I’m afraid to finish. To truly finding the life that I left my old one to find. To be selfish, in the best possible way. To fill me and find me and make me happy. And I think that’s scarier than anything I’ve ever done before. But it’ll be worth it.