"almost" is live

So I decided to take a recent screenplay and turn it into an online novel. Weekly, a new chapter will be released, with the goal to publish an ebook with illustrations at the end of it.

Check it out and let me know what you think:

http://almostnovel.wordpress.com/

Emotional rescue

I’ve been rearranging my apartment this week because it’s cluttered and crowded and it needs it.

I moved my art table over to where I can sit at it and see the TV and where my back isn’t to the room. And my computer is part of that area and it all works very well. Made me very happy because my apartment has been chaos since I moved in. Never quite got it to where I wanted it to be. So I’m working on that.

I pulled out the vacuum to clean up the area where the table was because, well, it hasn’t really be vacuumed well since…

August 2, 2012.

The night I shaved my head.

A stupid vacuum brought me back there because suddenly, I could see the Filmmaker so carefully cleaning up all the hair we’d shaved off. Humming and sweet. And Tracy, making me laugh, keeping me entertained. And the Filmmaker, vacuuming, making sure he got every chunk of hair on the floor.

I didn’t cry much that night because there was so much love in the air. Tracy brought a ridiculous wig. And the Filmmaker… what can I say about him that I haven’t already said?

I don’t think I comprehended the loss then. I don’t think I could feel it then because it was so big. I was almost numb because so much had happened and so much was yet to happen. I cried a bit but Tracy and the Filmmaker made sure I felt only laughter and love that night.

But tonight, I feel everything I didn’t feel that night.

Because I’m on the other side of it. And I can see the trail of loss left behind.

And I know it’s part of moving on and moving past. Of letting go. Of releasing the pain into the universe for the universe to send it “to the trees”, as my friend’s baby girl says about things she wants to go away. “Send it to the trees”.

My hair has grown back quite nicely. And even as it was growing back, everyone said the gray suited me and commented on how great it looked. And I colored it back to black, just so I can feel like myself. And I look in the mirror now and I don’t see a cancer patient or even a cancer survivor. I see me. And that’s where I want to be – where I see me.

But for tonight, all I can see is that night. That moment when the Filmmaker cleaned up my hair. When a big part of me was taken away and left on the floor, to be sucked up into the vacuum bag. And which is probably still in the vacuum bag. I’ve never been a great housekeeper and am now just getting the energy back enough to clean on a regular basis.

I still have the little sprig of hair, the last piece the Filmmaker shaved off that night. He jokingly shaved it down to that little sprig and then hunted for a piece of ribbon and tied that ribbon to that sprig before he shaved it off. That lives in a little box on my shelf.

And then he vacuumed up the rest of my hair.

I know this probably doesn’t make sense but all I can see right now is him and the vacuum and my hair.

And all I can feel is the loss again – the loss of my life for almost a year, the loss of him and his beautiful everything that he was to me, the loss of so many things.

And I guess the only way to get through the loss is to grab the fucking vacuum and suck up the memory and let it go to the trees. And hang on to the good memories of that night – the love and the care and the beauty of that one sprig of hair left over. And just move through that night and leave it in the past, and tackle the next memory that bitch slaps me and brings me to my knees.

I do know that eventually, those memories won’t have any power. They will live in a past where I can see them with clarity and without excruciating pain.

But not tonight. Tonight, I will remember…

Pssssst....

I still miss you.

I know I shouldn’t.

I should be over you.

But I’m not.

I miss you at weird times – mostly in the morning when I get up. I miss waking up to you, in your big, warm bed, in your big, warm arms.

I was getting over you.

And then you came by that night.

And you gave me hope with that last kiss. And with your hand on my thigh.

And I started to miss you.

Again.

And I think you miss me, otherwise why would you come by?

But we were both too afraid to do anything but miss.

And if you come by again, I don’t know that I could stop myself from doing what I wanted to do so badly that night.

Because…

I still miss you.

I miss her

I finally found the words, two weeks after my mother died.

I miss her.

Not the her that she was at the end, where we couldn't talk for more than a minute or two on the phone and where she was really starting to lose herself. Not the her that she was the last time I saw her, disjointed and mean, slapping me across the face in a drunken stupor. Not the her that looked at me with lost eyes, wondering what was going on inside of her.

I miss the her that was my mother. 

It makes sense that I couldn't find words for her because she was a difficult, complicated and screwed up woman. She could cut me to the core and then do something that lifted me up to the clouds. She had a scalpel that could go to the direct center of my heart and cut me so deep, yet she could be so gentle and kind once she put that down.

My mother had a difficult life before she was my mother. Alcoholic father, hinted at abuse. Well, maybe not hinted. She talked about her mother hitting her across the head with a broomstick at one point, possibly being responsible for the damage to her eardrums discovered years later. She ended up taking her own mother out of the situation and being responsible for her family before she was really old enough to be responsible for a whole family. 

And she had a difficult life with us. She didn't sign up to have all the troubles she had with my brother (won't get into them here because, believe it or not, some things should stay out of the public record). Or the challenge that is my sister, who is a carbon copy of my mother. Or having a husband who went through double bypass heart surgery at 48 and spent the rest of his life battling life-threatening heart problems. And me, with whatever issues I brought to the table - two marriages, never having a real job, being the nomadic artist that I am.

It's no wonder that she was kind of batshit crazy so much of the time.

I also think she struggled with mental illness but would never admit it and would never explore it. I would say she had bipolar tendencies and she had epic highs and deep black lows. In that way, I am my mother's daughter - and that scares the shit out of me. 

I guess I'm still struggling for words. It's easy to talk about the surface of who she was but it's not easy talking about what was under that.

I miss the mother I remember from my 20's, I think. The mother that laughed easily. The mother that teased without the scalpel in her hand. The bright, vibrant mother who liked to lay out in the sun, slathered in tanning oil, and who smoked like a chimney. The mother that always had something going on - Avon, Tupperware, on top of her regular job and her family. 

And I miss the mother from my young childhood. The one who always had some craft thingy for us to do. I guess I never gave her credit for nurturing the artist in me when I was that young. We made moonscapes out of melted wax, pie tins and cold water. Ceramics. She taught me to knit as soon as I could hold the needles. In elementary school, I remember having knitting needles sticking out of the little hole that used to be an inkwell. 

I miss the mother who made fudge in the kitchen so very often. Nothing brings me back to my mother like making fudge. Hours of memories in the kitchen, watching that brown liquid bubble and boil, the smell of sugar and chocolate, the concentration on her face and the pleasure when it was all done and we were sharing the remainder of the fudge straight from the hot pot.

I miss the mother who looked at me when I said I wanted to move to LA after my first divorce and just said, yes. The one who handed me her credit card the day I left and who cried a river as I drove away.

I miss the mother who took me in with open arms when my second marriage turned so ugly and awful. Who never said a bad word about my ex-husband and always treated him with kindness and dignity when we were together and continued to speak of him with kindness and dignity afterward. She would always say, "It's just him, it's just R and how he is". 

I miss the mother who tried so hard to understand me, her nomadic artist. The agoraphobic who came to my plays anyway. Who would give me blank checks to cover whatever artistic endeavor I was pursuing. Who didn't understand me so she did what she knew how to do - hand me a check and say, do your thing.

She was not affectionate and I don't ever recall hearing or saying "I love you". It was just not in her nature. Yet I remember her sitting on the couch, rubbing my back gently while we watched movies or I did homework. And the affection she had for my father more than made up for her inability to express her affection to us. There was never a moment where I doubted how she felt about him. He was her life, despite the separation at one point and the fights (oh, my god, the epic fights) and everything that went with their sometimes volatile marriage. But with him, as with all of us, she was always there and would never leave.

The past few years, as her mind started to lose its grip on itself, we talked less and less. We used to talk at least once a week, even when she was living here. If I couldn't get down to see her in Long Beach, we at least would talk. But once she moved to Minnesota and her health started to decline, it got harder and harder to talk to her. She couldn't hold on to a thought for too long and I think it got harder and harder for her. And when I went home last year, it broke my heart to see both of them so fragile and so broken. They were not the parents I remembered. They were both shells of themselves.

And even then, I missed the mother I remembered.

My mother was so much - difficult, devoted, ferocious and stubborn as a weasel, hard-working, angry, funny, broken, dedicated, determined, driven, generous to a fault. So many things, so hard to describe.

So I guess the only way to describe her is this.

She was my mother.

And I miss her so very, very much in so many, many ways.