Photo: Grand Cayman, Xmas 2006, on a boat with Donna's dad. It was beautiful.
Wormholes abound in the blogosphere, and I fell into one in October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, when I started writing a blog for my job. Just facts and news and events and stuff. Weird part is, I was most inspired to do it because my aunt recently went through a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery, but I didn't even tell her about it. She had complications with the surgery and was really depressed, and I felt like it would be weirdly opportunistic to start talking about how I'm doing this blog and she was my inspiration when I haven't even spoken with her in ages. I didn't want to be self-promoting, self-congratulatory, if that makes any sense at all. I just wanted to tell her I loved her and that I was thinking of her. This is when you feel like you could do so much more in your life. Go the extra mile. Stop thinking about yourself and how you can improve your life, but how you can be useful somehow to humanity.
Maybe it's my age. Maybe it was reading all those stories of people fighting this awful, mysterious thing that nobody can get rid of. I've gone back and forth in my life between being numb and being as "sensitive as an eye" (a line from a Margaret Atwood poem that I first read as a freshman in college and has never left me). No surprise that dumb and numb are almost the same word. You feel dumb, stunned by the world, when you encounter awful things. And of course, I'm like most New Yorkers and in therapy and exploring my numbness and trying to learn how to surf the swells of heightened sensitivity and the blackouts of numbness like so many other creative, feeling people.
Excuse me if I feel a tad confessional today.
In the time that I have been on hiatus on this blog, I've turned 35. It's a milestone. It's a marker. One that is making me ask, yet again, but with more intensity: What are you doing with your life?
Well, for one thing: I'm learning how to deal with security.
For those who don't know: I didn't stay an entire year in one school until 6th grade. And I think from the time I was 5, I didn't see my parents much. I remember a lot of wood paneling and black and white tvs, transistor radios and books, books and more books. No friends, but books, yes. Small Louisiana towns, punctuated by short stints back in Iowa. Plantations and pigs. Humidity and stockyards. Loneliness and family. Kinda weird New Orleans became home; Louisiana was so lonely for me as a kid. It's like I got to start all over when I hit New Orleans, though. New Orleans is like the Vatican: It deserves its own borders. It's like no other place in the world.
You know, my background isn't that strange. It's not like I grew up on the streets or had a heroin addiction at the age of 10. But it was still pretty hard to grapple with. Sometimes I'm shocked I don't believe unicorns exist. Hmmm...or do I? I've met a few unicorns in my life. You know the Margaret Cho bit where she talks about meeting a good-looking, nice, straight, available guy and asks him "Are you a unicorn?" I've been lucky enough to meet some unicorns in my time. But they're different: they're magical humans whose existence gives me hope.
35 years old. Means it's time to grow into myself. I was such an old kid. And after I hit college, I kind of subconsciously decided to get that youth back. Actually, it happened after I graduated and my first major relationship disintegrated. I did a typical thing: fell in love with the bottle, and all the accompanying drugs and late nights. OK, bad-girl youth covered. Now, meaningful life. Time to pursue that. Time to do the "dream following." Maybe I need to buy a dream catcher. Ha.
Well, this is probably the most I've ever said about myself on this freaking blog. What's happening? When you turn 35 does the bullshit start to evaporate? Because I feel like I've surrounded myself with a lot of bullshit in the last few years of my life. Try 10. I think it's time to admit I get depressed about my past and live in it for periods that last far too long. Maybe that's the only way to get over it. You know how Christians talk about the times you turn your back on your faith to find it again. Then you know what's out there, you know what life is like without it. You lose your faith to find it again. I feel like I've lost myself several times, but some things are still here. I've returned to writing. I quit it for years. Now I'm writing again. I think that may be the only thing that can truly help me do that growing into a meaningful life I'm talking about. Because that's how I grew up: books, books, journals, diaries. That's me.
When I started writing again, it truly was as if I got back in touch with a really old friend I didn't even know I'd missed. Me. I missed myself. We used to be really good friends. Well, now we're reacquainted. It's not like it's not hard. Movies never show the boring times. Jack Kerouac was an idiot--shambling after people who never yawn or say boring things. No wonder he was an alcoholic. That's not life. I shambled after that too, but you know what, yawning isn't a bad thing. Quiet gives you time to figure things out, to evaluate, to know what's happening. You can't burn, burn into the night your whole freaking life.
I am boring. But sometimes I make some interesting discoveries. That's what I want to share. And even boredom has a rhythm. Breathing has a rhythm, and that NEVER ends until you do. So, the song of life beats on every day of your life. I want to make it my job to hear that song: Song of the yawns and the blood flowing, the breathing, and I hope that it will unveil something to me. In the noticing, I think it will. Start walking, follow feet. At the end of it, I'm bound to find a grown-up.
