When I first began this mid-life adventure, I had the life I thought I would always have. Lots of friends, hanging out a lot with friends. Going to see bands and such with my dearest Chairman. Doing great work at the Ark, hanging out with those folks in the off hours. Just really enjoying life.
But things have changed in the last two years. Dad got sicker and sicker and he and my mom and I moved in together. That’s when my life was put on hold. Or so it seems.
I spend most days hanging out in my room. I love my mom but can only take her in short stints. My father sleeps 18 hours a day due to his heart only working about 15%. I teach so I get to talk to children a few days a week. I paint. I write. I edit. That’s my life.
Money’s been tight so I haven’t been going out because, well, there’s no money even for gas right now. I’m hoping that’ll change soon. But it’s reality.
I have to base everything on my folks. Taking a job - will it allow me to chauffeur them to doctors’ appointments and groceries, etc., because Mom is becoming increasingly dependent on me as Dad has good days and bad days. So I can’t take a job that ties me up in the mornings. And I can’t take a night job because Mom wakes up at 7 and by 9, her patience for those sleeping - no matter what time we all got to bed - wears off. I’m afraid to be out too late as I worry something will happen while I’m gone. So I’m on hold.
I have a few friends who are close and who I can count on to get me out of my room occasionally. They call and invite me out or to just check in on me, which I appreciate. But the vast majority of my friends are busy with their lives and broke as I am so they aren’t around like they used to be. And I’m not in the Ark circle anymore, so that creates even more distance because I’m not accessible. So the distance grows and the connection loosens and my support system narrows to a point.
But I miss mostly having a man around. I know it’s stupid but I do. Chairman was so close to me when I was first alone and it was so wonderful to just have a guy to hang out with, even if it was just friends. There’s something about men that we just can’t get from women. Even male friends can make you feel attractive and wanted and beautiful. While women can tell you that, they just aren’t men.
But that part of my life is on hold as well. Not like it was ever active. But I don’t know how I could have someone in my life right now and that makes me sad and makes me ache because I don’t know when this hold button will be released.
And it’s painful to basically be on a death watch for my father. It’s been so evident lately how bad he can be because, ironically, he’s been a bit like his old self the past few days. We went out for dinner the other night and he was chatting with me about what he was watching on TV and which shows he’s interested in and a bunch of other stuff. Usually at dinner, he has trouble just staying awake and doesn’t usually engage. It makes me sad because I know it’s just temporary, his life on hold as well, maybe.
The hardest thing is that we don’t know how long he’s got. He could be around for another five years like this - barely living, just existing, biding his time until there is no more time to bide. And Mom and I stand by, on hold, watching, waiting, not sure what to hope for because he’s not going to get better, that’s about all we know.
My sister watches from a distance, I’m sure judging what I’m doing wrong and how much better she could/will do, if they actually move up there with her. My brother checks in occasionally. But their lives go on, they travel, their children get older, they move through time like everyone else.
Meanwhile, I wait, staring at the walls, wondering if there is a future out there that I will get to sometime. But that would mean losing someone I love very much. Makes it hard to look there.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Virtual fridge - it's been a while.
This was my first "master duplication", which means choosing one of the old Masters - this case, Manet - and painting something of his while learning why he painted the way he did and how he used the paint, etc. Not just to duplicate the painting but to learn how to paint like Manet. I really love this one.
Another master duplication, this is a landscape by Monet. An exercise in impressionism. I kinda like it. ;}
I've been screwing around with learning how to draw noir/crime comics and these are a few of the drawings I've been messing with. Kinda like them, too.
That's it for now. Been working on some watercolors for "Cinderella Drives a Pick-Up", which is going out to Slamdance this week (finally!). Cross your fingers.
Another master duplication, this is a landscape by Monet. An exercise in impressionism. I kinda like it. ;}
I've been screwing around with learning how to draw noir/crime comics and these are a few of the drawings I've been messing with. Kinda like them, too.
That's it for now. Been working on some watercolors for "Cinderella Drives a Pick-Up", which is going out to Slamdance this week (finally!). Cross your fingers.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Just a single tear
You never cried for us. Not a tear that I saw. Maybe if you had, I might not have made the choice I did.
When I told you I was done with us and I didn’t know what to do and I needed some time to figure out things, you just looked at me blankly and said, for the first time in our marriage, “if that’s what you want.”
In the year of counseling, you never shed a tear. I cried oceans and screamed and let out everything and you sat there like Mr. Spock, staring, fighting, not willing to cry for us. Not a single tear.
When we packed up our home of nine years, the place I wanted to love so much but that you had made your own, not a tear. You coldly packed. I know you were hurt but you never asked why, you never said that simple, single word that might have stopped it all - “stay”. Okay, two words - “stay, please.”
When we stood outside our place for the last time and I couldn’t stop weeping, you just said good-bye, no tears, no questions. Just walked away.
In the time since, not a tear, not a sign that our marriage meant anything.
I realize I cut you off because I think I was afraid if I saw you, I might not have the strength to walk away from you. I might end up like Carrie in “Sex and the City” and just throw myself at you if I saw you and put everything behind us -- all the pain, all the abuse, all the shit you put me through. And then I might have another 15 years of the same thing. I could not do that.
But if you had just showed me that you valued our life, that you valued me, by letting yourself go enough to cry with me or in front of me, it might all have been different. But you coldly walked away, ending our relationship because you “didn’t want to be fiscally responsible” for me anymore. Not because you were hurt or you didn’t love me anymore or because you wanted to end things and move on, because you didn’t want to be “fiscally responsible”. Wow, that’s love.
Maybe movies have corrupted us into wanting, needing, expecting that moment when we open to the door to find the one we love standing on the other side of it, begging us to come back to them, that they don’t care what happened, they can’t live without us. Sorry, doesn’t happen in real life.
In real life, you end up with resentment and distance and anger and pain. And that’s it. No glorious romantic comedy moment where everything you want comes true. Just the struggle to get through the day, even now, almost four years later.
I know you shed your tears to your friends and your family. I know you shed your tears into your pillow.
But what might have saved us is if you had just shed a single tear around me.
When I told you I was done with us and I didn’t know what to do and I needed some time to figure out things, you just looked at me blankly and said, for the first time in our marriage, “if that’s what you want.”
In the year of counseling, you never shed a tear. I cried oceans and screamed and let out everything and you sat there like Mr. Spock, staring, fighting, not willing to cry for us. Not a single tear.
When we packed up our home of nine years, the place I wanted to love so much but that you had made your own, not a tear. You coldly packed. I know you were hurt but you never asked why, you never said that simple, single word that might have stopped it all - “stay”. Okay, two words - “stay, please.”
When we stood outside our place for the last time and I couldn’t stop weeping, you just said good-bye, no tears, no questions. Just walked away.
In the time since, not a tear, not a sign that our marriage meant anything.
I realize I cut you off because I think I was afraid if I saw you, I might not have the strength to walk away from you. I might end up like Carrie in “Sex and the City” and just throw myself at you if I saw you and put everything behind us -- all the pain, all the abuse, all the shit you put me through. And then I might have another 15 years of the same thing. I could not do that.
But if you had just showed me that you valued our life, that you valued me, by letting yourself go enough to cry with me or in front of me, it might all have been different. But you coldly walked away, ending our relationship because you “didn’t want to be fiscally responsible” for me anymore. Not because you were hurt or you didn’t love me anymore or because you wanted to end things and move on, because you didn’t want to be “fiscally responsible”. Wow, that’s love.
Maybe movies have corrupted us into wanting, needing, expecting that moment when we open to the door to find the one we love standing on the other side of it, begging us to come back to them, that they don’t care what happened, they can’t live without us. Sorry, doesn’t happen in real life.
In real life, you end up with resentment and distance and anger and pain. And that’s it. No glorious romantic comedy moment where everything you want comes true. Just the struggle to get through the day, even now, almost four years later.
I know you shed your tears to your friends and your family. I know you shed your tears into your pillow.
But what might have saved us is if you had just shed a single tear around me.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Mid-life update
Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted. I have had too much and/or too little to say so I haven’t been posting. Sometimes I feel like the things I have to say have already been said and I would just be repeating myself and boring all of you. But I have had a couple of requests for new blogs so here you go.
First, to answer a couple of questions from new readers – I am an art teacher for a private company with around 20 studios throughout Southern California. I love this job almost more than I love directing and writing, which are the passions of my life and one of the reasons why I left my marriage of almost 20 years almost four years ago. Oh, and he was emotionally abusive and extremely controlling.
But enough about that.
What I’ve been thinking about recently is security. I realize that I have never felt secure about anything in my life – my relationships, my talent, my abilities, my jobs. Nothing.
I know this probably comes from my family. I think I felt left behind and ignored most of my life, so I have never felt secure about my place in the family. I feel like I could have disappeared and nobody in my family would even notice that I was gone. This is still true today. My sister’s family and my brother’s family get so much more interest and attention from my mother than I do, despite the fact (or maybe due to the fact) that I live in the same apartment with her and take care of her and my father. But when packages are sent to my mother’s sisters, they include photos of my sister’s family and my very talented nephew and my brother but rarely does she ask to include photos of me. I have to go, hey, Mom, how about including the photos I took in Austin when my film was top 5 on Famecast.com and they flew me out there? This only serves to make me question my success and make me feel very insecure about my place.
I was always the odd girl out in school, always feeling like I didn’t fit in, that I would lose the friends I had if I wasn’t the fun, groovy, happy girl that I pretended to be at home. If I wasn’t happy, nobody would like me. I never felt secure as myself because I couldn’t figure out who I was. I was smart (almost straight A student), excelling at English and writing (big surprise). I loved to write even then and luckily had a few teachers who supported and encouraged that, which kept me writing. But I never quite believed that I was as good as they said I was, because, after all, I didn’t exist and I was not “special.”
My relationships with men have not done much to help with the security aspect. I didn’t date a lot because I wasn’t the pretty girl and I was smart and I was uncertain of how to “date.” I didn’t believe in sex before marriage, although I might as well have had sex with the few guys I was that close to because we did probably just about everything but that. I was afraid, I think, that if I did actually have sex with one of them, I would lose them because I wouldn’t be very good at it and that would make them leave me behind.
My first marriage didn’t give me any security (sorry, TS). We were both very young and maybe shouldn’t have gotten married when we did. He left me behind a lot, going to parties and wanting to be with everyone else but me. I spent many nights, sitting at home, wondering where he was, what he was doing, who he was doing, when he wasn’t with me. I guess I knew eventually he would leave me because, obviously, I wasn’t what he wanted. If I was, he would have been there. And it was true. I wasn’t who he wanted. After less than three years, he left me for someone else – someone younger, someone who was what he wanted, as he’s still with her today.
That left me with no sense of self, even moreso than when we got together. I thought I knew who I was, I thought I was figuring it out, I thought I was getting more secure in myself when I got to LA but I was just kidding myself. I was waiting for someone to make me feel secure, make me be defined by them. And I found him in RJ.
At first, he made me feel secure. He confirmed my strengths but always followed that up with my weaknesses. I thought that was great. I thought that was learning and growing. What it was, instead, was giving him my security in myself and letting him define me without keeping any security within myself. He never had to say that if he left, I would have nothing. He didn’t have to say it, I felt it. My only security was in trying to hang on to him with all my strength, leaving no strength for me. His continued verbal abuse and constant criticism left me with nothing until I stared at a pile of pills, not even having the security in my own choice to take them. I allowed him to steal my security in my talent and in my gifts. I allowed him to steal everything from me.
I never felt secure in my relationship with the OOMA (object of my affection, for you newbies). I fell for him so hard and I just wanted to grab him and hang on to him because I had no sense of security that I would be able to hold on to him. And I wasn’t able to. My need to feel secure in our relationship made me grab him and pull on him and try to make our relationship secure just made him finally run away, leaving our friendship in tatters, which still makes me very insecure about where I am with him.
What does all this mean? It means I’m realizing that the security I seek has to start with me. It has to be in myself because no one else can give it to me. I have to work to figure out how to hang on to that security when I have weeks like these past couple, where the petulant little five-year-old boy who lives in my head tried to stage a coup with the clowns who also live in my head. I have to dig deep down inside and trust that I am who I am and that I have the talents I have without seeking approval from outside. I have to embrace the woman I am without having to have a man tell me I’m beautiful, tell me I’m smart, give me the security I seek. I have to know that I am special and precious and gifted without seeking approval from my family and acknowledgement from people who aren’t going to be able to give it to me.
I have to take baby steps and not get stuck in “forever” mode and think that the way I feel today will be the way I always feel. I have to take baby steps in finding and hanging on to the security I feel in those moments when I’m directing and I know I am awesome at it. I have to hang on to the security I feel in the moments when I’m teaching and I know I rock at guiding these kids – whether they’re five or 15 – through drawing and sketching and painting, feeling secure when they have success because it reflects my own success. I have to hang on to the security I feel when I finish a painting – like I did when I finished an oil this week as a present for someone – that feeling when I step back and I say, wow, that’s incredible, before the voices in my head try to make me push that positive voice away. I have to acknowledge the security I feel in those moments and embrace it and color every single fucking day of my life with that security. Then, if I find someone, I won’t need them to be my security, I won’t need to cling and obsess and panic to hang on to them, I will be able to just be me and be secure in that and know that they love me because I am me and that’s it.
First, to answer a couple of questions from new readers – I am an art teacher for a private company with around 20 studios throughout Southern California. I love this job almost more than I love directing and writing, which are the passions of my life and one of the reasons why I left my marriage of almost 20 years almost four years ago. Oh, and he was emotionally abusive and extremely controlling.
But enough about that.
What I’ve been thinking about recently is security. I realize that I have never felt secure about anything in my life – my relationships, my talent, my abilities, my jobs. Nothing.
I know this probably comes from my family. I think I felt left behind and ignored most of my life, so I have never felt secure about my place in the family. I feel like I could have disappeared and nobody in my family would even notice that I was gone. This is still true today. My sister’s family and my brother’s family get so much more interest and attention from my mother than I do, despite the fact (or maybe due to the fact) that I live in the same apartment with her and take care of her and my father. But when packages are sent to my mother’s sisters, they include photos of my sister’s family and my very talented nephew and my brother but rarely does she ask to include photos of me. I have to go, hey, Mom, how about including the photos I took in Austin when my film was top 5 on Famecast.com and they flew me out there? This only serves to make me question my success and make me feel very insecure about my place.
I was always the odd girl out in school, always feeling like I didn’t fit in, that I would lose the friends I had if I wasn’t the fun, groovy, happy girl that I pretended to be at home. If I wasn’t happy, nobody would like me. I never felt secure as myself because I couldn’t figure out who I was. I was smart (almost straight A student), excelling at English and writing (big surprise). I loved to write even then and luckily had a few teachers who supported and encouraged that, which kept me writing. But I never quite believed that I was as good as they said I was, because, after all, I didn’t exist and I was not “special.”
My relationships with men have not done much to help with the security aspect. I didn’t date a lot because I wasn’t the pretty girl and I was smart and I was uncertain of how to “date.” I didn’t believe in sex before marriage, although I might as well have had sex with the few guys I was that close to because we did probably just about everything but that. I was afraid, I think, that if I did actually have sex with one of them, I would lose them because I wouldn’t be very good at it and that would make them leave me behind.
My first marriage didn’t give me any security (sorry, TS). We were both very young and maybe shouldn’t have gotten married when we did. He left me behind a lot, going to parties and wanting to be with everyone else but me. I spent many nights, sitting at home, wondering where he was, what he was doing, who he was doing, when he wasn’t with me. I guess I knew eventually he would leave me because, obviously, I wasn’t what he wanted. If I was, he would have been there. And it was true. I wasn’t who he wanted. After less than three years, he left me for someone else – someone younger, someone who was what he wanted, as he’s still with her today.
That left me with no sense of self, even moreso than when we got together. I thought I knew who I was, I thought I was figuring it out, I thought I was getting more secure in myself when I got to LA but I was just kidding myself. I was waiting for someone to make me feel secure, make me be defined by them. And I found him in RJ.
At first, he made me feel secure. He confirmed my strengths but always followed that up with my weaknesses. I thought that was great. I thought that was learning and growing. What it was, instead, was giving him my security in myself and letting him define me without keeping any security within myself. He never had to say that if he left, I would have nothing. He didn’t have to say it, I felt it. My only security was in trying to hang on to him with all my strength, leaving no strength for me. His continued verbal abuse and constant criticism left me with nothing until I stared at a pile of pills, not even having the security in my own choice to take them. I allowed him to steal my security in my talent and in my gifts. I allowed him to steal everything from me.
I never felt secure in my relationship with the OOMA (object of my affection, for you newbies). I fell for him so hard and I just wanted to grab him and hang on to him because I had no sense of security that I would be able to hold on to him. And I wasn’t able to. My need to feel secure in our relationship made me grab him and pull on him and try to make our relationship secure just made him finally run away, leaving our friendship in tatters, which still makes me very insecure about where I am with him.
What does all this mean? It means I’m realizing that the security I seek has to start with me. It has to be in myself because no one else can give it to me. I have to work to figure out how to hang on to that security when I have weeks like these past couple, where the petulant little five-year-old boy who lives in my head tried to stage a coup with the clowns who also live in my head. I have to dig deep down inside and trust that I am who I am and that I have the talents I have without seeking approval from outside. I have to embrace the woman I am without having to have a man tell me I’m beautiful, tell me I’m smart, give me the security I seek. I have to know that I am special and precious and gifted without seeking approval from my family and acknowledgement from people who aren’t going to be able to give it to me.
I have to take baby steps and not get stuck in “forever” mode and think that the way I feel today will be the way I always feel. I have to take baby steps in finding and hanging on to the security I feel in those moments when I’m directing and I know I am awesome at it. I have to hang on to the security I feel in the moments when I’m teaching and I know I rock at guiding these kids – whether they’re five or 15 – through drawing and sketching and painting, feeling secure when they have success because it reflects my own success. I have to hang on to the security I feel when I finish a painting – like I did when I finished an oil this week as a present for someone – that feeling when I step back and I say, wow, that’s incredible, before the voices in my head try to make me push that positive voice away. I have to acknowledge the security I feel in those moments and embrace it and color every single fucking day of my life with that security. Then, if I find someone, I won’t need them to be my security, I won’t need to cling and obsess and panic to hang on to them, I will be able to just be me and be secure in that and know that they love me because I am me and that’s it.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Virtual Fridge - cont'd
Okay, so this is what I do for a living:
It started out as a demonstration on how to draw a pig for a girl on my left. The boy on my right was drawing a butterfly and somehow, the butterfly wings ended up on the pig. Then we added a tube top, clown hair, and alient antennae. Yup, I get paid for this.
This is what I get trained to do:
I really struggled with the colors on this one. The Gluck Method narrows their palettes down to two to simplify things when we teach - an "American" palette and a "European" palette, which is what this one was. Took about six hours to do altogether, from sketch to finish. Need to get faster and more confident about how to create the colors. But I love the colors and I'm happy with how it turned out.
Every day, I am grateful for this job because I would have never known I was capable of this. I've always wanted to draw and paint and it's so incredible to be getting paid to learn how to do this and to get to make clown pig butterfly aliens every day!
It started out as a demonstration on how to draw a pig for a girl on my left. The boy on my right was drawing a butterfly and somehow, the butterfly wings ended up on the pig. Then we added a tube top, clown hair, and alient antennae. Yup, I get paid for this.
This is what I get trained to do:
I really struggled with the colors on this one. The Gluck Method narrows their palettes down to two to simplify things when we teach - an "American" palette and a "European" palette, which is what this one was. Took about six hours to do altogether, from sketch to finish. Need to get faster and more confident about how to create the colors. But I love the colors and I'm happy with how it turned out.
Every day, I am grateful for this job because I would have never known I was capable of this. I've always wanted to draw and paint and it's so incredible to be getting paid to learn how to do this and to get to make clown pig butterfly aliens every day!
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Don't hedge me out.
So what is it with men with girlfriends? Why don’t they want to tell you?
Cute Boy, who I still have a huge crush on, never admitted to having a girlfriend when we were having our most intense flirts. I found out through a friend of his. He didn’t admit it until I finally had to ask, and then he admitted he was flying across the country to see her. “Yeah, I guess it’s serious,” was his response when I asked him about it (her).
New Guy just did the same thing tonight. Have met a few times through a variety of things. Nice connection, nice flirting, nice guy. Three times we’ve had plenty of time to talk about many things. None of those times did the word “girlfriend” come from him. Tonight, after walking me to my car and spending a good half hour talking to me, he asked if I was going to see the show at the theater this weekend. I said, sure. He said, what night? There was a definite feeling of wanting to meet me there. I was just about to invite him to join me earlier for coffee or something – perfect opening to get some time with him to see if there’s anything there – and we got joking about how our cell phones have made us kind of stupid because we don’t know anybody’s numbers anymore because they’re in the phone and he said, “Yeah, like I don’t even know my girlfriend’s number…” Long, awkward pause. I almost kicked him in the shins and screamed, “Then explain all this flirting you’ve been doing, you ass.”
Are you guys just hedging your bets so that if things don’t work with the chick you’re with, you have one on deck? I am just the fall-back if your girl don’t do it for you anymore?
I have one thing to say – stop flirting with us! If you’re not going to date us, don’t give us the cute boy face and the flirty eyes. We think you’re flirting. We think you want us. We get all giddy at the thought that you find us attractive and maybe you want to be with us. Then you drop the “girlfriend” bomb and are surprised when we run screaming from the room.
Is it me? Am I so safe that you all think you can flirt with me and not think I’m going to get all gooshy inside? I hate to tell you but I’m not. I get gooshy, probably way too soon.
But mention the girlfriend immediately. Save us the days and nights of wondering about you and picturing you picking us up and taking us somewhere wondrous and beautiful and save us from naming our children and picking out the house. C’mon, you know you do that. It’s not just me.
If you have a girlfriend, save the flirting for her. Don’t waste it on me. I don’t have the time for this. Be nice, be friendly, flirt with me AFTER you tell me about your girlfriend so I can know that the flirting will be just friendly with nothing at stake and no hopes to be dashed.
And girlfriends, know that your boyfriends are out there flirting with us. Maybe they mean nothing by it – after all, men are a bit dense about the signals they’re sending. Maybe find a nice, polite way to inform them that harmless flirting doesn’t exist, especially when they don’t mention you to us. Explain to them that informing a cute girl about your girlfriend will make the flirting harmless. Otherwise, they deserve everything they get.
Men. Fuck.
Cute Boy, who I still have a huge crush on, never admitted to having a girlfriend when we were having our most intense flirts. I found out through a friend of his. He didn’t admit it until I finally had to ask, and then he admitted he was flying across the country to see her. “Yeah, I guess it’s serious,” was his response when I asked him about it (her).
New Guy just did the same thing tonight. Have met a few times through a variety of things. Nice connection, nice flirting, nice guy. Three times we’ve had plenty of time to talk about many things. None of those times did the word “girlfriend” come from him. Tonight, after walking me to my car and spending a good half hour talking to me, he asked if I was going to see the show at the theater this weekend. I said, sure. He said, what night? There was a definite feeling of wanting to meet me there. I was just about to invite him to join me earlier for coffee or something – perfect opening to get some time with him to see if there’s anything there – and we got joking about how our cell phones have made us kind of stupid because we don’t know anybody’s numbers anymore because they’re in the phone and he said, “Yeah, like I don’t even know my girlfriend’s number…” Long, awkward pause. I almost kicked him in the shins and screamed, “Then explain all this flirting you’ve been doing, you ass.”
Are you guys just hedging your bets so that if things don’t work with the chick you’re with, you have one on deck? I am just the fall-back if your girl don’t do it for you anymore?
I have one thing to say – stop flirting with us! If you’re not going to date us, don’t give us the cute boy face and the flirty eyes. We think you’re flirting. We think you want us. We get all giddy at the thought that you find us attractive and maybe you want to be with us. Then you drop the “girlfriend” bomb and are surprised when we run screaming from the room.
Is it me? Am I so safe that you all think you can flirt with me and not think I’m going to get all gooshy inside? I hate to tell you but I’m not. I get gooshy, probably way too soon.
But mention the girlfriend immediately. Save us the days and nights of wondering about you and picturing you picking us up and taking us somewhere wondrous and beautiful and save us from naming our children and picking out the house. C’mon, you know you do that. It’s not just me.
If you have a girlfriend, save the flirting for her. Don’t waste it on me. I don’t have the time for this. Be nice, be friendly, flirt with me AFTER you tell me about your girlfriend so I can know that the flirting will be just friendly with nothing at stake and no hopes to be dashed.
And girlfriends, know that your boyfriends are out there flirting with us. Maybe they mean nothing by it – after all, men are a bit dense about the signals they’re sending. Maybe find a nice, polite way to inform them that harmless flirting doesn’t exist, especially when they don’t mention you to us. Explain to them that informing a cute girl about your girlfriend will make the flirting harmless. Otherwise, they deserve everything they get.
Men. Fuck.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Technological dysphoria
I am a technomancer (I hear Monica giggling off on the Westside). I love technology. I have an Iphone, a Macbook, various IPods, just about anything Apple makes, I have. I covet big screen TV’s and I have been known to salivate and envy anyone’s technology that is better than mine.
Technology has made it easier to communicate en masse to our friends and family about good news and bad news. It makes it easier to keep in touch with folks far away and makes it easier to stalk those we love who may not necessarily love us back.
Technology has made it possible to make a film in 48 hours. Or 24 hours. From writing through filming and editing. I know this as I have done it now almost a half dozen times.
Technology allows me to post this silly little missive into cyberspace and have tens of people read it at their leisure, including people that I will probably never meet who live on the other side of the country.
This makes technology amazing.
However, this ability to communicate quickly and efficiently has taken the human factor out of our communication. We now text message instead of call. That’s great for “I’m running late” or “are you busy tonight” kind of communications. We email our concerns and worries or post them in our blogs or comment on someone’s Myspace page when they post news. We seem to have forgotten how to pick up a phone and call. Or sit down and have coffee.
Technology creates the feeling that we are all communicating so much and so regularly, which we are. We’re communicating, we’re not connecting. We’re sending messages but we’re not relating on a human level. No amount of Myspace messages or emails or text messages can make up for a single phone call. You can’t riff off onto other subjects with text messages. You kind of can by email but it’s time consuming to type all that shit.
Maybe it’s the lingering part of me that is old-fashioned but I feel more and more disconnected by this advanced technological communication. When something goes well or goes wrong, I do the technological thing and post it on one of the social networking things I belong to or the Yahoo board for the Career Success Group and I get responses. But I have to admit, sometimes those responses leave me feeling even more disconnected because they’re letters on a page. While their intent is clear and their owner’s desire to communicate is appreciated, I think I still prefer more personal contact – a phone call, a coffee date, something.
We are creating a world where we all can communicate instantaneously and constantly, which we do. I’ve seen more groups of people standing around, all talking on their phones or texting away while the others in the group wait for them to finish. I know I’m guilty of texting or checking my email while I’m hanging out with someone. It used to be a social faux pas but now it’s acceptable. We communicate constantly through our IPhones and our Blackberries and our Sidekicks but I think that is making us less human as communicators. No wonder our children are growing up disconnected and cold. They’re learning how to communicate from us. And if all they see are grown-ups on cell phones and emails and computers, that’s what they learn. If we allow ourselves to only communicate through devices, that’s what our children will learn. If we don’t find a way to stem the contagion of children communicating only through their text messages, we are creating a cold and disassociated society, which is not a society I want to live in.
So I will do my part and try to communicate more through phone calls and coffee invites with my friends. I will reach out more personally instead of through texting and emails. And I hope that you all will do the same. Know that your text doesn’t have the same impact that a phone call does. Know that your email is taken in the way it is meant but that those techie communications can feel cold and disconnected, especially at times when a connection is really needed.
Let’s just try once a day to call someone who needs support, encouragement, a pat on the back, something, instead of just dropping an email or a text saying “way to go,” “don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” Let them know you’re still a person on the other end of the technology, not just a keyboard and a wifi connection.
Technology has made it easier to communicate en masse to our friends and family about good news and bad news. It makes it easier to keep in touch with folks far away and makes it easier to stalk those we love who may not necessarily love us back.
Technology has made it possible to make a film in 48 hours. Or 24 hours. From writing through filming and editing. I know this as I have done it now almost a half dozen times.
Technology allows me to post this silly little missive into cyberspace and have tens of people read it at their leisure, including people that I will probably never meet who live on the other side of the country.
This makes technology amazing.
However, this ability to communicate quickly and efficiently has taken the human factor out of our communication. We now text message instead of call. That’s great for “I’m running late” or “are you busy tonight” kind of communications. We email our concerns and worries or post them in our blogs or comment on someone’s Myspace page when they post news. We seem to have forgotten how to pick up a phone and call. Or sit down and have coffee.
Technology creates the feeling that we are all communicating so much and so regularly, which we are. We’re communicating, we’re not connecting. We’re sending messages but we’re not relating on a human level. No amount of Myspace messages or emails or text messages can make up for a single phone call. You can’t riff off onto other subjects with text messages. You kind of can by email but it’s time consuming to type all that shit.
Maybe it’s the lingering part of me that is old-fashioned but I feel more and more disconnected by this advanced technological communication. When something goes well or goes wrong, I do the technological thing and post it on one of the social networking things I belong to or the Yahoo board for the Career Success Group and I get responses. But I have to admit, sometimes those responses leave me feeling even more disconnected because they’re letters on a page. While their intent is clear and their owner’s desire to communicate is appreciated, I think I still prefer more personal contact – a phone call, a coffee date, something.
We are creating a world where we all can communicate instantaneously and constantly, which we do. I’ve seen more groups of people standing around, all talking on their phones or texting away while the others in the group wait for them to finish. I know I’m guilty of texting or checking my email while I’m hanging out with someone. It used to be a social faux pas but now it’s acceptable. We communicate constantly through our IPhones and our Blackberries and our Sidekicks but I think that is making us less human as communicators. No wonder our children are growing up disconnected and cold. They’re learning how to communicate from us. And if all they see are grown-ups on cell phones and emails and computers, that’s what they learn. If we allow ourselves to only communicate through devices, that’s what our children will learn. If we don’t find a way to stem the contagion of children communicating only through their text messages, we are creating a cold and disassociated society, which is not a society I want to live in.
So I will do my part and try to communicate more through phone calls and coffee invites with my friends. I will reach out more personally instead of through texting and emails. And I hope that you all will do the same. Know that your text doesn’t have the same impact that a phone call does. Know that your email is taken in the way it is meant but that those techie communications can feel cold and disconnected, especially at times when a connection is really needed.
Let’s just try once a day to call someone who needs support, encouragement, a pat on the back, something, instead of just dropping an email or a text saying “way to go,” “don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” Let them know you’re still a person on the other end of the technology, not just a keyboard and a wifi connection.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Depression part 58
The most difficult thing about depression isn’t the soul-sucking, I want to slit my wrists, nobody loves me and no one will miss me, I am all alone and nobody cares feelings.
It’s the apathy.
At least suicidal thoughts are active and require some brain power. It takes focus to figure out whether hitting a freeway divider at 85 mph will be enough to really kill you or will it just leave you as a vegetable and a bigger burden on those left behind. That requires math to figure out. You’re at least thinking.
Apathy is what can kill you with depression. Nothing matters. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. There is nothing you care about enough to actually rouse yourself to do more than sit and stare at the walls/ceiling/TV/cat. Your brain just simply stops, not wanting to touch the emotions that are buried deep down inside. The apathy and numbness mask all that you are thinking about and make you absolutely unable to function.
That’s the worst thing. The not caring, the not wanting to care. That’s what leads you to cut yourself off from your friends because it’s just simply too hard to actually try to reach out and contact somebody. Because you just don’t care. Or maybe you just can’t care because the rest will all fall open and you’ll be suicidal and crazy again. At least apathy is quiet. Numbness is silent. It requires nothing from you other than to sit and be silent.
You can blame so much on that apathy. “I was depressed so, therefore, I couldn’t do anything.” It sounds so much better than “I was apathetic so, therefore, I couldn’t do anything.” Not so much sympathy and understanding for apathy.
I see the same expression my mother’s face – apathy. She won’t let herself be depressed, she won’t let herself be happy, she won’t let herself be anything because that would mean she’d have to FEEL something. So she tries to go on being apathetic instead of acknowledging the fear and the sadness and the anger and the depression underneath, which only makes her more angry and more sad and more frustrated instead of numb. She relies on the wine to make her numb.
I see the same expression on my sister as she tries to tell me what I’m doing wrong and how happy her life is and what everyone else should do. When we try to discuss anything worth anything, she pulls on the apathy mask. It’s easier to just push away the feelings and the pain and everything else and just be apathetic about what’s going on around you (her apathy is disguised as cynicism but it’s the same thing). She also uses alcohol to keep the numbness going rather than accessing the big scary part inside.
I don’t want that. I don’t want to be apathetic. I don’t want to numb my feelings with other things, which I find myself thinking about more and more. A drink, two drinks, 20 drinks and maybe I won’t have to think about all of this anymore. Just shut down, just don’t care, that will make it all better. To not feel, to not care will make things easier.
But I left my marriage to feel, to throw off the apathy, to get rid of the mask I had been made to wear for at least half of my marriage.
But every day is a struggle. I don’t know if it’s hormonal – being a woman of a certain age. I’m going to start back taking Estroven today and see if that helps. It takes a week or so but if you haven’t taken it, if you’re over 40 and you’re finding you’re struggling, too, try it. It does help when times get very bad.
So that’s where I am. Trying to overcome the apathy because I have so many projects in front of me that need me and they really mean so much to me that I want to push this apathy aside and tackle them with all of my attention, not with 50% with the other 50% hiding somewhere underneath. I created this life to live it, dammit, and I must find a way to do that fully.
It’s the apathy.
At least suicidal thoughts are active and require some brain power. It takes focus to figure out whether hitting a freeway divider at 85 mph will be enough to really kill you or will it just leave you as a vegetable and a bigger burden on those left behind. That requires math to figure out. You’re at least thinking.
Apathy is what can kill you with depression. Nothing matters. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. There is nothing you care about enough to actually rouse yourself to do more than sit and stare at the walls/ceiling/TV/cat. Your brain just simply stops, not wanting to touch the emotions that are buried deep down inside. The apathy and numbness mask all that you are thinking about and make you absolutely unable to function.
That’s the worst thing. The not caring, the not wanting to care. That’s what leads you to cut yourself off from your friends because it’s just simply too hard to actually try to reach out and contact somebody. Because you just don’t care. Or maybe you just can’t care because the rest will all fall open and you’ll be suicidal and crazy again. At least apathy is quiet. Numbness is silent. It requires nothing from you other than to sit and be silent.
You can blame so much on that apathy. “I was depressed so, therefore, I couldn’t do anything.” It sounds so much better than “I was apathetic so, therefore, I couldn’t do anything.” Not so much sympathy and understanding for apathy.
I see the same expression my mother’s face – apathy. She won’t let herself be depressed, she won’t let herself be happy, she won’t let herself be anything because that would mean she’d have to FEEL something. So she tries to go on being apathetic instead of acknowledging the fear and the sadness and the anger and the depression underneath, which only makes her more angry and more sad and more frustrated instead of numb. She relies on the wine to make her numb.
I see the same expression on my sister as she tries to tell me what I’m doing wrong and how happy her life is and what everyone else should do. When we try to discuss anything worth anything, she pulls on the apathy mask. It’s easier to just push away the feelings and the pain and everything else and just be apathetic about what’s going on around you (her apathy is disguised as cynicism but it’s the same thing). She also uses alcohol to keep the numbness going rather than accessing the big scary part inside.
I don’t want that. I don’t want to be apathetic. I don’t want to numb my feelings with other things, which I find myself thinking about more and more. A drink, two drinks, 20 drinks and maybe I won’t have to think about all of this anymore. Just shut down, just don’t care, that will make it all better. To not feel, to not care will make things easier.
But I left my marriage to feel, to throw off the apathy, to get rid of the mask I had been made to wear for at least half of my marriage.
But every day is a struggle. I don’t know if it’s hormonal – being a woman of a certain age. I’m going to start back taking Estroven today and see if that helps. It takes a week or so but if you haven’t taken it, if you’re over 40 and you’re finding you’re struggling, too, try it. It does help when times get very bad.
So that’s where I am. Trying to overcome the apathy because I have so many projects in front of me that need me and they really mean so much to me that I want to push this apathy aside and tackle them with all of my attention, not with 50% with the other 50% hiding somewhere underneath. I created this life to live it, dammit, and I must find a way to do that fully.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Two films in two weekends.
I shot a long short film on the 8th - "The Hit", based on the play by Kerr Lordygan. It was a blast. The script was so good, the actors solid. It was great to work with some of the actors from the Eclectic, since that's where my next few directing projects will be. They're a terrific group, really excited about working on new and exciting projects.
Then I succumbed to the lure of the 48 Hour Film Project and shot "A Hit to the Heart" from a script written by myself and the funny David Smith. Tiny little crew, including Anna B. as our boom bitch for a short time. Erik's kids came and helped out and were terrific. I think Jean wants to be a director at 3.
Here's the link for the photos from the two shoots, if you got nothing better to do.
If you'd like to come out and support the 48 Hour Film Project, please join me for the screening of "A Hit to the Heart" on Wednesday, June 18 at 8 PM at the Fairfax Beverly Cinemas, 7907 Beverly Blvd. Los Angeles, CA. 90048 (323) 655-4010. Tickets are $10 and not available in advance. Please come early as they almost usually sell out. The audience gets to vote for its favorite film so please come out and help us get more votes!
Thanks to all who came out and helped, to the actors for their marvelous performances in both films, and to my usual suspects for their dedication. Thanks particularly to The Piper Downs and Deena Rubinson for allowing me to use their music in "A Hit to the Heart."
Then I succumbed to the lure of the 48 Hour Film Project and shot "A Hit to the Heart" from a script written by myself and the funny David Smith. Tiny little crew, including Anna B. as our boom bitch for a short time. Erik's kids came and helped out and were terrific. I think Jean wants to be a director at 3.
Here's the link for the photos from the two shoots, if you got nothing better to do.
If you'd like to come out and support the 48 Hour Film Project, please join me for the screening of "A Hit to the Heart" on Wednesday, June 18 at 8 PM at the Fairfax Beverly Cinemas, 7907 Beverly Blvd. Los Angeles, CA. 90048 (323) 655-4010. Tickets are $10 and not available in advance. Please come early as they almost usually sell out. The audience gets to vote for its favorite film so please come out and help us get more votes!
Thanks to all who came out and helped, to the actors for their marvelous performances in both films, and to my usual suspects for their dedication. Thanks particularly to The Piper Downs and Deena Rubinson for allowing me to use their music in "A Hit to the Heart."
Monday, June 09, 2008
Hawking my wares
If you've ever admired a piece of jewelry I've created or a purse or a notebook, or you've desired to own your own print of one of my pieces of artwork, you now can purchase one of these items for your own.
For my jewelry and purses and notebooks, please go to:
Lee's Take-Out (Accessories To Go!) at Etsy.com.
For prints of my artwork, please go to:
Lee's Take-Out at Imagekind.com. Not all of my artwork is up there, in fact, there are only a couple of pieces while I track down a large scanner I can use to scan in my bigger pieces. But Imagekind allows you to pick the size and type of print you would like - simple glossy poster or museum wrapped high end canvas. You can also order a frame to go with it.
If you feel you'd like a custom purse or notebook or a particular painting of something done, I'm more than happy to accommodate that, with a small 10% custom fee.
So, please check these out. Feel free to pass the info along to your friends/family. A more formal invite will be issued once I get my own personal website up and running but for now, this is the best place to find my stuff!
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Fragility
My horoscope today:
“Like a newborn, you are most powerful in your fragility because you are the closest to divine presences in that state.”
Particularly powerful today as I have been feeling very fragile as of late. In fact, I added a “Define me” application to my Facebook account recently and “fragile” is the one word most people chose to describe me.
Fragile.
I have often felt fragile inside but it kind of freaks me out that fragile has made its way to the surface.
I have spent my life trying to prove to the world that I am strong and powerful and independent. Now, suddenly, the word “fragile” is echoing throughout my life.
Is this the universe trying to get me to acknowledge my own fragility?
I have never been allowed to be fragile in my whole life. Neither of my marriages allowed the luxury to be fragile. Both men expected me to be strong and powerful – Wonder Woman often comes to my mind about how I am supposed to be. (Alex Ross’s Wonder Woman mostly, who is strong but human and flawed) God forbid in my family that I should any fragility at all.
Fragility has always equaled weak to me. And it’s disturbing to suddenly be defined all around as a word that reflects weak back to me. It makes me want to cover up all my emotions and just present this hard-nosed, closed down person to the world so that people will find me powerful and strong and not fragile.
But is fragile a bad thing? Here’s the definition:
frag•ile – adjective (Middle French, from Latin fragilis)
1. a) easily broken or destroy (a fragile vase) b: constitutionally delicate: lacking in vigor (a fragile child)
2. Tenuous, slight (fragile hopes)
Synonyms (too many to list but here are a few) brittle, crisp, friable (substance that are easily crumbled or pulverized), weak.
Oh, yeah, I guess it is.
This recent view of me as fragile has me all messed up. I don’t want to be viewed a fragile. I don’t want to be viewed as weak. And fuck the horoscope, explain to me how it brings me “closest to divine presences” when I’m weak and breakable.
It rattles me, I guess, because I’ve always been told the way I feel is irrelevant and just as I’m starting to feel stronger in my life, where I don’t feel like I’m one big ball of emotion, the one emotional personality I am most afraid of showing is apparently tattooed on my forehead.
So, what does all this mean? I don’t know. It means I am off my pins, sets me off my game. I have been feeling vulnerable these past few weeks, tied strongly into how lonely I have been feeling as well. But fragile? FRAGILE. It’s a big word to me and something I need to look at and see how I am projecting fragile to the world.
Maybe I do need to stop expressing my every emotion and every feeling. Maybe I need to hide a bit more of what I feel and stop broadcasting it to the entire world. Maybe I need to cover up that fragility and hide it from the world. I don’t want to be seen as fragile. It’s something I never thought I would be defined as. Yet, I think it is a word that almost perfectly describes me.
Maybe that’s the biggest fear, is that I am truly fragile. Because then it means I am easily broken. Which I am. And I don’t want to be broken any more. I want to be whole and strong and powerful. I’m not sure how fragile can possibly fit in with that.
So fragile will be the thought of the day. See what that brings.
“Like a newborn, you are most powerful in your fragility because you are the closest to divine presences in that state.”
Particularly powerful today as I have been feeling very fragile as of late. In fact, I added a “Define me” application to my Facebook account recently and “fragile” is the one word most people chose to describe me.
Fragile.
I have often felt fragile inside but it kind of freaks me out that fragile has made its way to the surface.
I have spent my life trying to prove to the world that I am strong and powerful and independent. Now, suddenly, the word “fragile” is echoing throughout my life.
Is this the universe trying to get me to acknowledge my own fragility?
I have never been allowed to be fragile in my whole life. Neither of my marriages allowed the luxury to be fragile. Both men expected me to be strong and powerful – Wonder Woman often comes to my mind about how I am supposed to be. (Alex Ross’s Wonder Woman mostly, who is strong but human and flawed) God forbid in my family that I should any fragility at all.
Fragility has always equaled weak to me. And it’s disturbing to suddenly be defined all around as a word that reflects weak back to me. It makes me want to cover up all my emotions and just present this hard-nosed, closed down person to the world so that people will find me powerful and strong and not fragile.
But is fragile a bad thing? Here’s the definition:
frag•ile – adjective (Middle French, from Latin fragilis)
1. a) easily broken or destroy (a fragile vase) b: constitutionally delicate: lacking in vigor (a fragile child)
2. Tenuous, slight (fragile hopes)
Synonyms (too many to list but here are a few) brittle, crisp, friable (substance that are easily crumbled or pulverized), weak.
Oh, yeah, I guess it is.
This recent view of me as fragile has me all messed up. I don’t want to be viewed a fragile. I don’t want to be viewed as weak. And fuck the horoscope, explain to me how it brings me “closest to divine presences” when I’m weak and breakable.
It rattles me, I guess, because I’ve always been told the way I feel is irrelevant and just as I’m starting to feel stronger in my life, where I don’t feel like I’m one big ball of emotion, the one emotional personality I am most afraid of showing is apparently tattooed on my forehead.
So, what does all this mean? I don’t know. It means I am off my pins, sets me off my game. I have been feeling vulnerable these past few weeks, tied strongly into how lonely I have been feeling as well. But fragile? FRAGILE. It’s a big word to me and something I need to look at and see how I am projecting fragile to the world.
Maybe I do need to stop expressing my every emotion and every feeling. Maybe I need to hide a bit more of what I feel and stop broadcasting it to the entire world. Maybe I need to cover up that fragility and hide it from the world. I don’t want to be seen as fragile. It’s something I never thought I would be defined as. Yet, I think it is a word that almost perfectly describes me.
Maybe that’s the biggest fear, is that I am truly fragile. Because then it means I am easily broken. Which I am. And I don’t want to be broken any more. I want to be whole and strong and powerful. I’m not sure how fragile can possibly fit in with that.
So fragile will be the thought of the day. See what that brings.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Cuz I needs gas money
Please check out my store at Esty.com at Lee's Take-Out, Accessories To Go.
Lee's Take-Out, Accessories To Go is a re-branding of an older accessory company I started many years ago that remained dormant for a while.
There are some hand-crafted purses and notebooks up there right now, hoping to expand and include some of my Asian-inspired jewelry as soon as I can find the time to reshoot the stock. I also will be adding in some of my original oil and watercolor paintings as well.
So check it out, buy something, put some gas in my car. I highly encourage custom orders, if you don't quite see what you want.
Lee's Take-Out, Accessories To Go is a re-branding of an older accessory company I started many years ago that remained dormant for a while.
There are some hand-crafted purses and notebooks up there right now, hoping to expand and include some of my Asian-inspired jewelry as soon as I can find the time to reshoot the stock. I also will be adding in some of my original oil and watercolor paintings as well.
So check it out, buy something, put some gas in my car. I highly encourage custom orders, if you don't quite see what you want.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
I don't need fixing
I realized that I thought he would fix me. I thought he was everything I wasn’t. He was smart, clever, educated, talented, ambitious, focused, reliable, consistent. So many things I thought I wasn’t. So many things that were different from my first husband, who was talented in a different way, focused in a different way, etc.
I saw myself at that time as drifting. I was thinking I was an actress but never really believed it, despite high praise from Susan Strasberg about my talent. It never felt real so I felt like a phony doing it.
He knew all about the entertainment industry, so I thought, and I figured he would be the one to guide me to success, because I didn’t know what I was doing. He would fix that. He would make me successful, after he was successful, of course. Which was fine with me then.
He knew about all my faults and was able to talk about how he perceived his own faults. I thought it was refreshing to find someone so in touch with themselves. He would help me and fix me in that way, help me to find myself and be in touch with my own flaws. When he criticized me, I thought it was because he was trying to help me, to fix me, to make me better.
I liked the fact that he was consistent and reliable. If he said he’d call by 7, I knew he would call no later than 7:02. He would help me be reliable and consistent. He would show me how to be a better person that way, because I wasn’t, or so I thought.
He would fix my flightiness because, god knows, I thought I was a mess. I needed someone to show me how to keep my feet on the ground and not go off daydreaming about what I wanted to do with my life. I had to be practical and he would help fix that in me.
He was supposed to fix me. He was supposed to save me. He was supposed to be the one who saw my flaws and loved me in spite of them. He was supposed to be the one who would find a way to help me become a better person, to be a stronger person, to fix the broken me that was standing before him.
And that’s just too much to put on a person. To stand naked and vulnerable before someone and say, “Here I am, broken and shattered and afraid and needy and uncertain and weary and wary and insecure and unsure about everything. Please take me and make something of me because I don’t know what I’m supposed to be.” Of course he wanted that job. Most men want to “fix” those they love – make things better for them, solve their problems, repair their car, whatever it takes. That’s their job.
And he took the job. He “fixed me.” Or at least he tried. He tried to fix me so that I would be whatever the person was he saw me as. He wanted me to be his ideal, his vision, his beautiful creation. Pygmalion.
And I wanted so much to fit that mold. I wanted to be what he saw in his eyes. To be the perfect wife, the perfect partner, to be exactly what he wanted me to be. And I almost died trying to be that perfect.
What I never realized until it was too late was that I didn’t need fixing. Maybe I needed a tune-up or someone to hand me the tools and suggest where a bolt needed tightening. But I wasn’t broken. I just couldn’t see it then.
And by handing the reigns of myself over to someone else, I gave them permission to take the raw sculpture in front of them and hack away at it with a chainsaw so that they could reshape it into what they saw. I gave him permission to take what I saw as a Degas sculpture and chop off my head and try and turn me into the Venus De Milo. Both very beautiful works of art, both completely different things. Both very different visions.
It’s taken me almost five years since that very dark, horrible night to finally see the sculpture that is me coming out of the block of stone. I have been seeing glimpses of what I want to become here and there but I am finally seeing the shape I want it to take, trying very hard not to let someone else’s vision – no matter how beautiful or tempting – to interfere with my work. After all, the only one who can see what I see is me. Hopefully, in the long run, the whole world will be able to see and appreciate the work of art that is truly, perfectly me.
I saw myself at that time as drifting. I was thinking I was an actress but never really believed it, despite high praise from Susan Strasberg about my talent. It never felt real so I felt like a phony doing it.
He knew all about the entertainment industry, so I thought, and I figured he would be the one to guide me to success, because I didn’t know what I was doing. He would fix that. He would make me successful, after he was successful, of course. Which was fine with me then.
He knew about all my faults and was able to talk about how he perceived his own faults. I thought it was refreshing to find someone so in touch with themselves. He would help me and fix me in that way, help me to find myself and be in touch with my own flaws. When he criticized me, I thought it was because he was trying to help me, to fix me, to make me better.
I liked the fact that he was consistent and reliable. If he said he’d call by 7, I knew he would call no later than 7:02. He would help me be reliable and consistent. He would show me how to be a better person that way, because I wasn’t, or so I thought.
He would fix my flightiness because, god knows, I thought I was a mess. I needed someone to show me how to keep my feet on the ground and not go off daydreaming about what I wanted to do with my life. I had to be practical and he would help fix that in me.
He was supposed to fix me. He was supposed to save me. He was supposed to be the one who saw my flaws and loved me in spite of them. He was supposed to be the one who would find a way to help me become a better person, to be a stronger person, to fix the broken me that was standing before him.
And that’s just too much to put on a person. To stand naked and vulnerable before someone and say, “Here I am, broken and shattered and afraid and needy and uncertain and weary and wary and insecure and unsure about everything. Please take me and make something of me because I don’t know what I’m supposed to be.” Of course he wanted that job. Most men want to “fix” those they love – make things better for them, solve their problems, repair their car, whatever it takes. That’s their job.
And he took the job. He “fixed me.” Or at least he tried. He tried to fix me so that I would be whatever the person was he saw me as. He wanted me to be his ideal, his vision, his beautiful creation. Pygmalion.
And I wanted so much to fit that mold. I wanted to be what he saw in his eyes. To be the perfect wife, the perfect partner, to be exactly what he wanted me to be. And I almost died trying to be that perfect.
What I never realized until it was too late was that I didn’t need fixing. Maybe I needed a tune-up or someone to hand me the tools and suggest where a bolt needed tightening. But I wasn’t broken. I just couldn’t see it then.
And by handing the reigns of myself over to someone else, I gave them permission to take the raw sculpture in front of them and hack away at it with a chainsaw so that they could reshape it into what they saw. I gave him permission to take what I saw as a Degas sculpture and chop off my head and try and turn me into the Venus De Milo. Both very beautiful works of art, both completely different things. Both very different visions.
It’s taken me almost five years since that very dark, horrible night to finally see the sculpture that is me coming out of the block of stone. I have been seeing glimpses of what I want to become here and there but I am finally seeing the shape I want it to take, trying very hard not to let someone else’s vision – no matter how beautiful or tempting – to interfere with my work. After all, the only one who can see what I see is me. Hopefully, in the long run, the whole world will be able to see and appreciate the work of art that is truly, perfectly me.
Friday, May 23, 2008
"I was alive and I waited, waited..."
...to paraphrase Jesus Jones.
“I was alive and I waited, waited/ I was alive and I waited for this/Right here, right now/There is no other place I want to be/Right here, right now/Watching the world wake up from history.”
I realize this song has a more global purpose and message but, for some reason, those lyrics resonated very personally today.
“I was alive and I waited, waited…”
I spent so many years waiting for my life to start. Figuring I had all the time in the world, I could wait for it to get better, for things between us to get better, for everything to get better. I was asleep, living in history and not thinking about the next day/month/year. Just getting through the history of that day.
“I was alive and I waited, waited…”
I waited for him to define me, to tell me who I was, who I am, who I would be. I waited because I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t realize I could wake up and find my own definition.
“I was alive and I waited, waited…”
Waited for someone else to save me, because I knew I couldn’t save myself.
“I was alive and I waited for this…”
Waited for a life worth living, waited for friends who allowed me to be who am I, waited for a history that would begin new and not be weighted down by the history I dragged along behind me.
“Right here, right now, there is no other place I want to be…”
Simply true. Right here, right now, there is no other place I want to be. “Watching my world wake up from history.”
Right here. Right now.
“I was alive and I waited, waited/ I was alive and I waited for this/Right here, right now/There is no other place I want to be/Right here, right now/Watching the world wake up from history.”
I realize this song has a more global purpose and message but, for some reason, those lyrics resonated very personally today.
“I was alive and I waited, waited…”
I spent so many years waiting for my life to start. Figuring I had all the time in the world, I could wait for it to get better, for things between us to get better, for everything to get better. I was asleep, living in history and not thinking about the next day/month/year. Just getting through the history of that day.
“I was alive and I waited, waited…”
I waited for him to define me, to tell me who I was, who I am, who I would be. I waited because I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t realize I could wake up and find my own definition.
“I was alive and I waited, waited…”
Waited for someone else to save me, because I knew I couldn’t save myself.
“I was alive and I waited for this…”
Waited for a life worth living, waited for friends who allowed me to be who am I, waited for a history that would begin new and not be weighted down by the history I dragged along behind me.
“Right here, right now, there is no other place I want to be…”
Simply true. Right here, right now, there is no other place I want to be. “Watching my world wake up from history.”
Right here. Right now.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
17 years
It would have been 17 years today. 17 years. 19, if you count the time we knew each other before we got married.
I don’t know why it’s sitting with me this year – 17 years – when the last two years, this date passed with just a thought of, “oh, it’s our anniversary.” I was kinda glad it was that insignificant. I don’t want this to be an “anniversary” date the rest of my life, although I do occasionally think about my first marriage on that anniversary.
I’m not sure if I really miss him today or if I just miss “us”. Being a couple, having someone in bed with me every night (other than my cat), having someone to bounce ideas off of, someone to hold my hand in the movies, someone to GO to the movies with.
I am overwhelmed with the feeling of loss these past few days. We don’t talk at all because I choose not to. I am so filled with anger when I do see him – anger at him for the way he treated me and how much he added to the wounds of my life; angry at myself for letting him treat me that way, not seeing what was going on, just existing instead of participating in my life. I want to slap him and scream at him and ask him if he really understands the consequences of his actions. Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t talk to him.
17 years. What does it mean? What came of that relationship? How could we have been together so long and not made it? How could we have been together so long and not have a relationship now? And I don’t want to have a relationship because I’m afraid it would go back to being what it was – hard, angry, difficult, negative. I have a finely balanced life right now and I don’t want that life to tip back to the dark, dank place it was on that horrible night I almost took my life. I never want to be there again. But what did all those years mean? Is it just a void in my life now, something I can refer to gingerly, an era I don’t want to acknowledge but can’t avoid acknowledging?
He is still on the fringes of my life and even that pisses me off. He does little things that make me feel like he’s clinging to our relationship yet he’s the one who chose to close the door by filing for divorce before I knew what I wanted.
I guess I still struggle with the fact that, even though I was the one to say I need to be alone for a while, I never thought it would end. I thought we’d separate, I’d figure out where my head was at, get myself straightened out emotionally, we’d stay in counseling, and eventually, we’d get back together, stronger, better, ready to face the rest of our lives together. I know it hurt him when I told him I didn’t want to be with him anymore. And maybe filing for divorce was his only way to regain some control over the situation, make it hurt less somehow. But that simple act ended any relationship we could have had.
Maybe that’s what I’m angry about as well, that the way he handled the end of our relationship was just the same as the way he handled most of our relationship – making it what he wanted, not considering what I wanted. Maybe it’s best we ended that way instead of hanging on, trying to figure out if we were ever going to be together again, having that undefined, disconnected lingering thing that so many couples go through. When my first husband left me, there was that period where I didn’t know what we were – together?, apart? He’d call and want to see me and then call can cancel. We’d have drinks and I’d think we were getting better then I’d hear he was with this girl he left me for. I finally had to put my foot down and stop maintaining any contact with him because it was too hard to be on the edge of something and not know what that something was. I guess that’s how RJ had to be – put his foot down to figure out what the end of our relationship was.
I just know that today, I am struggling to find closure, find perspective, find some reason why it ended and why it couldn’t have been that beautiful future we planned on May 11, 1991. Wondering what I could have done to change the course that ended in June, 2005. There are answers I’ll never know, no matter how much I look at it. And maybe I’ve gained some insight that will carry through into another relationship 100 years from now when my wounds will have healed enough to allow me to let someone else in.
For now, I’ll just try to get through to the 12th and put the 11th behind me, for this year anyway.
I don’t know why it’s sitting with me this year – 17 years – when the last two years, this date passed with just a thought of, “oh, it’s our anniversary.” I was kinda glad it was that insignificant. I don’t want this to be an “anniversary” date the rest of my life, although I do occasionally think about my first marriage on that anniversary.
I’m not sure if I really miss him today or if I just miss “us”. Being a couple, having someone in bed with me every night (other than my cat), having someone to bounce ideas off of, someone to hold my hand in the movies, someone to GO to the movies with.
I am overwhelmed with the feeling of loss these past few days. We don’t talk at all because I choose not to. I am so filled with anger when I do see him – anger at him for the way he treated me and how much he added to the wounds of my life; angry at myself for letting him treat me that way, not seeing what was going on, just existing instead of participating in my life. I want to slap him and scream at him and ask him if he really understands the consequences of his actions. Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t talk to him.
17 years. What does it mean? What came of that relationship? How could we have been together so long and not made it? How could we have been together so long and not have a relationship now? And I don’t want to have a relationship because I’m afraid it would go back to being what it was – hard, angry, difficult, negative. I have a finely balanced life right now and I don’t want that life to tip back to the dark, dank place it was on that horrible night I almost took my life. I never want to be there again. But what did all those years mean? Is it just a void in my life now, something I can refer to gingerly, an era I don’t want to acknowledge but can’t avoid acknowledging?
He is still on the fringes of my life and even that pisses me off. He does little things that make me feel like he’s clinging to our relationship yet he’s the one who chose to close the door by filing for divorce before I knew what I wanted.
I guess I still struggle with the fact that, even though I was the one to say I need to be alone for a while, I never thought it would end. I thought we’d separate, I’d figure out where my head was at, get myself straightened out emotionally, we’d stay in counseling, and eventually, we’d get back together, stronger, better, ready to face the rest of our lives together. I know it hurt him when I told him I didn’t want to be with him anymore. And maybe filing for divorce was his only way to regain some control over the situation, make it hurt less somehow. But that simple act ended any relationship we could have had.
Maybe that’s what I’m angry about as well, that the way he handled the end of our relationship was just the same as the way he handled most of our relationship – making it what he wanted, not considering what I wanted. Maybe it’s best we ended that way instead of hanging on, trying to figure out if we were ever going to be together again, having that undefined, disconnected lingering thing that so many couples go through. When my first husband left me, there was that period where I didn’t know what we were – together?, apart? He’d call and want to see me and then call can cancel. We’d have drinks and I’d think we were getting better then I’d hear he was with this girl he left me for. I finally had to put my foot down and stop maintaining any contact with him because it was too hard to be on the edge of something and not know what that something was. I guess that’s how RJ had to be – put his foot down to figure out what the end of our relationship was.
I just know that today, I am struggling to find closure, find perspective, find some reason why it ended and why it couldn’t have been that beautiful future we planned on May 11, 1991. Wondering what I could have done to change the course that ended in June, 2005. There are answers I’ll never know, no matter how much I look at it. And maybe I’ve gained some insight that will carry through into another relationship 100 years from now when my wounds will have healed enough to allow me to let someone else in.
For now, I’ll just try to get through to the 12th and put the 11th behind me, for this year anyway.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
My heart (warning - poetry ahead)
My heart
breaks tonight
for love I had
and
love I lost
You
when I was
young
and sure
and wrong
and can’t let back in
because the wounds are still there
and will never go away
You
who was my
soul
mate
who broke my
heart
soul
ego
passion
and just about
broke all of me
and the years between
are just air
nothing
gone
done
You
who
still holds my heart
in his indifferent hand
and who I still feel
within that empty space
where your heart lives
And you
who I never had
and yet
I somehow
always have
but can never have
So
here I am
pieces of my heart
scattered to the wind
mourning the losses
and
wistful for the promises
that may never come
breaks tonight
for love I had
and
love I lost
You
when I was
young
and sure
and wrong
and can’t let back in
because the wounds are still there
and will never go away
You
who was my
soul
mate
who broke my
heart
soul
ego
passion
and just about
broke all of me
and the years between
are just air
nothing
gone
done
You
who
still holds my heart
in his indifferent hand
and who I still feel
within that empty space
where your heart lives
And you
who I never had
and yet
I somehow
always have
but can never have
So
here I am
pieces of my heart
scattered to the wind
mourning the losses
and
wistful for the promises
that may never come
Monday, April 28, 2008
Life is not a romantic comedy
The one you love doesn’t suddenly decide he misses you more than life itself and show up at your door, bearing some cutsie-pie gimmick that makes you laugh and forgive him for being an ass and throw yourself into his waiting arms.
No, real life means it continues to be awkward and hard and terrible to see him even though you should be long over him and moved past him. Real life is him keeping distant and cold even though there is still that connection so strong, you know he’s going to be there even before he does.
And the one marrying the wrong woman does not suddenly realize you are the most incredible person in the world and suddenly show up at your door…you know where I’m going with this.
No, real life means he leaves in the next few weeks and marries the wallpaper woman (as in one who is as interesting as, not one who sells wallpaper). He will live his life with this blandness and I get to sit on the sidelines, my mouth forever sealed, never saying, “what the fuck are you thinking? At least marry someone interesting!” No, real life means sitting by and hoping I am entirely wrong and they’ll be happy and together forever, while I watch and groan.
Startling strangers do not suddenly appear, showering you with anonymous notes of love because they’re too shy to say anything. You don’t run into men at the store who adorably step on your feet, look up into your eyes and fall madly in love with you. And the men you do meet are just mortal men, not gods of rom-com, and they have no idea that you exist.
So real life means trying to let go of those you’ve given your heart to who don’t realize you have (or don’t WANT to realize you have) and trying to find some peace with being alone with your cat and your friends and ignoring the empty shell inside that just wants to be held and embraced. That’s real life.
No, real life means it continues to be awkward and hard and terrible to see him even though you should be long over him and moved past him. Real life is him keeping distant and cold even though there is still that connection so strong, you know he’s going to be there even before he does.
And the one marrying the wrong woman does not suddenly realize you are the most incredible person in the world and suddenly show up at your door…you know where I’m going with this.
No, real life means he leaves in the next few weeks and marries the wallpaper woman (as in one who is as interesting as, not one who sells wallpaper). He will live his life with this blandness and I get to sit on the sidelines, my mouth forever sealed, never saying, “what the fuck are you thinking? At least marry someone interesting!” No, real life means sitting by and hoping I am entirely wrong and they’ll be happy and together forever, while I watch and groan.
Startling strangers do not suddenly appear, showering you with anonymous notes of love because they’re too shy to say anything. You don’t run into men at the store who adorably step on your feet, look up into your eyes and fall madly in love with you. And the men you do meet are just mortal men, not gods of rom-com, and they have no idea that you exist.
So real life means trying to let go of those you’ve given your heart to who don’t realize you have (or don’t WANT to realize you have) and trying to find some peace with being alone with your cat and your friends and ignoring the empty shell inside that just wants to be held and embraced. That’s real life.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Missing
I miss the way you spooned with me almost every night of the 16 years that we were together.
I miss the way your eyes would look at me with such love, before those eyes turned critical and angry, only seeing my flaws.
I miss having my hand on your thigh when we drove long distances.
And I am sad that I don’t miss more of you.
I miss the way your eyes would look at me with such love, before those eyes turned critical and angry, only seeing my flaws.
I miss having my hand on your thigh when we drove long distances.
And I am sad that I don’t miss more of you.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
48 Hour Film 2008
Yes, I did it again. I signed up for the 48 Hour Film Project on the weekend of June 13. Yes, it's an addiction. But I'm thinking this may be my last one... although don't hold me to it.
But this year is tinged with sadness and memories.
Last year at this time, Perry and I spent several hours phoning each other back and forth, somehow knowing the registration was about to open. It's not like in years past when, if you didn't register immediately, you didn't get in. Now, it seems like you can register at the last minute and still get in. But that's no fun. Perry and I were texting/emailing around midnight last year when the registration finally opened about both of us waiting anxiously by our computers and finally registering. He was as excited and happy as he always was getting ready for this project.
I had decided last year that I needed to step things up a notch for this year as I feel like I've stagnated in the process. I want the writing to be better (although I love what we wrote last year, Madame H and Ranger Smith) and I want the production to be better and I want the editing to be gremlin-free. But this year, I really want the film to be the best it can be as it will be dedicated to my dear friend, Perry. I really feel his absence right now.
So here's to the best year yet in the 48 Hour Film Project. And here's to my dear friend who inspired me and encouraged me and made me feel like there is nothing on earth that I cannot achieve. I miss you, Perry, and hope you're watching over all of us on that June weekend. We'll certainly be thinking of you.
But this year is tinged with sadness and memories.
Last year at this time, Perry and I spent several hours phoning each other back and forth, somehow knowing the registration was about to open. It's not like in years past when, if you didn't register immediately, you didn't get in. Now, it seems like you can register at the last minute and still get in. But that's no fun. Perry and I were texting/emailing around midnight last year when the registration finally opened about both of us waiting anxiously by our computers and finally registering. He was as excited and happy as he always was getting ready for this project.
I had decided last year that I needed to step things up a notch for this year as I feel like I've stagnated in the process. I want the writing to be better (although I love what we wrote last year, Madame H and Ranger Smith) and I want the production to be better and I want the editing to be gremlin-free. But this year, I really want the film to be the best it can be as it will be dedicated to my dear friend, Perry. I really feel his absence right now.
So here's to the best year yet in the 48 Hour Film Project. And here's to my dear friend who inspired me and encouraged me and made me feel like there is nothing on earth that I cannot achieve. I miss you, Perry, and hope you're watching over all of us on that June weekend. We'll certainly be thinking of you.
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