Since my last post, I’ve scored a writing gig. Well, two. Possibly three. Only one of which will probably pay me anything…but a body’s got to start somewhere.
The first is a regular column with a nationally-based Web site that provides news, entertainment, and opinion articles specific to particular cities. It pays based on numbers of hits per page (which, in my city, isn’t much yet). The second is an informal contract job helping my Kundalini teacher rewrite the copy on his Web site — for pay. The last, which is only in the talking stages right now, is a blogging position with a popular local online magazine that probably won’t pay me a dime but would look great on a resume.
All of this transpired in less than a week.
**
Give me a sign, I had begged, just days before, of The Universe or The Gods or Whoever might be listening. Or as Tracy Chapman once put it, Give me one reason to stay here.
As you know, I recently lost my job. And with it, my spiritual home, my cherished community. I don’t own a house. I don’t have a family of my own. I’m not in a relationship. I love someone, but we’re not together, and may never be. Even my beloved little vintage Volkswagen has given up the ghost. I have friends here…but I have friends all over the United States.
I found myself wondering if all of this were itself an indication that I should take my ball and go home — wherever home is. Maybe I’d need to find a new one. Or fly to places unknown.
**
“You should come!” my beautiful Indian girlfriend Samira had said.
She and her bite-sized boyfriend Ken were preparing to embark upon a series of globetrotting travels of indefinite duration: first to India, then Indonesia and Thailand and Vietnam and Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and Nepal — not necessarily in that order. When she told me they were leaving, I cried. I love them both so much; I love being with them; traveling abroad with them would undoubtedly be a delight, even it meant being a bit of a third wheel.
After Samira made the suggestion, I found myself thinking about it in my most desperate moments — much like I entertain thoughts of suicide — as another way of leaving behind everything I’ve cared about for so long. Rushing headlong into the unknown, as it were.
Paying for such a splurge with next to no money would, after all, necessarily require maxing out credit cards I’d have no hope of ever paying off. Then I really would have to kill myself.
**
I’ve lived vicariously through Samira and Ken, through their obstacle-ridden but ultimately triumphant love story. It was only nine months ago that I was sharing a picnic with Samira in the park and listening to her fatalistic pronouncements about her feelings for Ken. “I don’t know why I even think about it,” she was sighing. “It’s never going to happen.”
She had met Ken in a teacher training, while attempting to struggle her way through an unhappy arranged marriage. Their friendship, and her growing attraction to her new friend, only increased her internal conflict. Now, a year later, she was going through a bitter divorce. Ken still had no inkling of her true feelings. Knowing Ken the way I did, I strongly suspected that he’d be over the moon to discover that this gorgeous creature was even thinking about him. But Samira wouldn’t believe it for a minute. Her “sensible” voice, the voice of self-preservation (informed by damaged self-esteem), kept arguing that he couldn’t possibly be interested in her. Ever the incorrigible romantic, I kept urging her to spend more time with him.
When they finally kissed, one night after sharing some wine, and Samira told me about it the next day, I literally jumped up and down.
Their love has only grown since. They’ve traveled and taught classes together and visited each others’ families in other states. Their happiness has been my happiness. And yet Samira almost talked herself out of the whole thing with her voice of so-called “reason.” So I have to take some credit, for always being such a damned fool.
**
The fantasy of taking off with these two felt to me like the second-choice Make-A-Wish of a terminally ill woman. People grieving major losses in life have been known to make similarly impetuous and haphazard leaps. It’s how I wound up out here in the first place. (And found myself depressed, lonely, and bored for a long time after, so I don’t believe a change of scenery is necessarily the magic cure.)
But the question persisted: should I leave? Move back East? Move further West? Is there anything left for me here? Whether I stayed or went, it seemed I risked missing something. Whether I stayed or went, I would still be dying little by little every day.
So I asked for some indication that I was in the right place. Here, now.
**
I look at my page on the Web site, and the feeling is indescribable. There’s my face, there’s my title, those are my words. Suddenly I have a public media presence. Suddenly, to the world outside, I’m somebody. I may not be Arianna Huffington, or the late Molly Ivins — not yet, anyway! — but I’m out there. And now two other people right here in the area are interested in making use of my gifts.
My high school obsession Damien Moreau wrote for Slate magazine years ago, and co-authored an award-winning screenplay. I always envied that ability to successfully make an impact, and a name for oneself, in the world; much of my overwhelming desire for Damien may have actually been envy. Seeing him acting on the stage in high school, and in independent films years later, I felt an ineffable yearning, like that of a groupie with pretensions to playing lead guitar. For centuries women denied professions did have to live through their men, so this confusion of desire and envy is probably nothing unique.
My own mother never particularly modeled or encouraged feminine achievement, and from my earliest years I felt instinctively that my accomplishments were less important to everyone than my brother’s. Men were the true masters of the world; I could only be elevated by association.
Jung was one of the first to point out how we seek out in others the missing or disowned parts of ourselves…when what we need to do, for the sake of wholeness, is to own our own capacities — our own inner masters of the world.
**
An odd thing is happening. For the first time in a long time, I can look at the world without the dark filter of unworthiness and insecurity that has been coloring my every perception. My unspoken mantra for the past few months has been I’m not good enough, and much of how I’ve interpreted what has or hasn’t happened to me has supported that hypothesis. Naturally.
That mantra places you in a space of fear, a space of extreme neediness, where your very right to be alive can be challenged by how others react to you. I‘ve become extremely sensitive to what I perceive as my status as a community pariah; people who were once a large part of my life seem to have backed away, as if I suddenly contracted the Ebola virus by leaving the studio. Lord only knows what they’re thinking. (I will say that I used to believe that everyone who left there the way I did must have done something absolutely awful; the pure-intentioned, divinely inspired owner could do no wrong. Now I realize that those conclusions were most likely unjust…as unjust as the accusations that I was “negative” or “toxic.”)
A beautiful young man I dearly loved confessed to me once that he was close to suicide over the conviction that his ex-girlfriend’s circle of friends was gossiping cruelly about him. He was confused at the time about his sexual orientation, and for him, their damning judgments (or what he perceived to be their damning judgments) seemed an accurate assessment of his fitness to live. My emphatic insistence that he was a worthy and wonderful being fell on deaf ears. Obviously I didn’t know what I was talking about. He was fatally flawed, not good enough.
That mantra, that assumption, has also informed my reactions regarding a certain gentleman’s doings (and not-doings). In that space of unworthiness, everything is personal, and rife with evidence of my unworthiness (and inferiority, compared to other women). In that space of unworthiness, I’m desperate for him to validate me. Pretty soon, that’s all I know, and all I can feel. And that kind of dreadful anxiety leads in the exact opposite direction from any kind of love.
Without that dark filter, I can see myself as deserving…talented…even amazing. Without that dark filter, suddenly I feel like he’s missing out. How much better would Sonny’s life be with me in it? How is he, anyway? Is he okay? Maybe he’s having a hard time himself. Maybe he’s listening to the Smiths because he’s feeling as bad as I do when I listen to the Smiths.
When he’s not master of the world — or of me — he becomes human-sized again. He becomes my warm-eyed, affable friend in scuffed cowboy boots who has no more of a clue than any of the rest of us. (He’d be the first to tell you he has no more of a clue than any of the rest of us.) It’s not his job to validate me. It’s not my job to validate him. But I do remember why I love him.
**
Everything looks different when the proportions change. It’s as if we’ve been little children, looking up at others as the giants grownups seem to be when we’re knee-high. As toddlers, we really do live at the mercy and the whims of the giants. As adults, perhaps the most important thing we can remind ourselves is that there are no giants anymore.
Coming off the preschool autopilot, all of a sudden you’ve got to be a grownup and take some responsibility for yourself. I’ve said before, in not so many words, that I’m frequently a chickenshit when confronted with an honest-to-goodness opportunity. Hopefully writing this regular column will be the beginning of the end of some of that, career-wise…but as far as my gentleman friend goes — if he is, in fact, nervous, I’m petrified. Let’s not forget who couldn’t answer the damn phone.
If we did somehow manage to meet, it’s quite possible, based on past experience, that we could wind up at my place, or his, and if we wound up at my place, or his, it’s quite possible, based on past experience, that we’d be having more than tea (knock wood, no pun intended)…but what then? Honestly, we’re both like a couple of wild animals skittish about nets. I can’t project all of my historic ambivalence onto him, however convenient that may be. I should know by now that it’s not his job to carry everything I won’t own.
Way back when, I turned him onto Hesse’s classic about a wandering artist who makes love to every woman he meets and never settles down, and he loved it. I knew he would; I did. There’s something expansive and exhilirating about that total freedom, access to the endless variety of beauty, rapturous intimacy without routine or risk. (Don’t think that such scenarios appeal only to men, even if they’re more likely to act them out.) At the end of the day, Sonny and I are both just a couple of gregarious, warmhearted, lovable, imaginative, curious, restless, moody, passionate, sensual, ambivalent commitment-phobes. I told you he was my soul brother!!!
Dear God, I do love that man. Regardless of how fucked up either of us may be, at least in this lifetime. So sue me. Maybe we’ll get it right in 2095.
**
“Keep writing,” my coach friend advises when I ask him what I should do. I share with Samira and Ken what’s been happening, and Samira says that it sounds like things are starting to “come into alignment” for me.
I still wake up in the morning nervous that I have no real income (people keep asking me “Did you find a job yet???”), still feeling the wordless longing I’ve had for as long as I can remember. It’s hard not to reach for the usual strategies — poring over not-even-vaguely-intriguing listings of hateful-but-necessary jobs, and attaching to palliative fantasies about rolling around deliriously happily ever after in bed with my yummy but MIA kindred spirit. Having nothing but time, without the usual distractions of a job and a social hive, really does force you to confront yourself, much like a silent retreat at a monastery does. You realize how much you project into the future, hoping for something exciting or gratifying, or dwell on the past, remembering something exciting or gratifying. Anything not to feel your present discomfort! Linda, my coworker at the studio, used to say she would go crazy if she weren’t busy all the time. I think most of us prefer to be occupied like that.
Unease aside, perhaps this is a time to trust and relax, despite my skeptic’s inclination to think I have to earn every possible desired gain by the sweat of my brow (and even then, often not). Because, frankly, I haven’t a clue. All I know is that I’m doing what I love, what I do best, and finally getting some recognition for it. I’ve read literally hundreds of testimonies from people for whom things began to turn around once they started moving in the direction of their true talents. Why not for me? Stranger things have happened.
As for that other matter…who knows. Would either of us carrot-chasers ever want to belong to a club that would have us as a member?
What do you say, Sonny? We could book ourselves in at the Y…WCA…
I like it here, can I stay…and do you have a vacancy for a back-scrubber?
Yee-haa, hats thrown in air, wild nonsense gesticulations, big smiles and celebratoriness. 80D
Sorry for scan-reading – i have promised myself today, or rather about an hour today, for catching up with 2 months’ online friends. Only just read your previous post about magic and thinking what to say about that. But I must tell you it is heartwarming following you through these events.
ps I love ‘bite-sized boyfriend’. As in Barbie? lol
Great that you’ve found work doing something you like. I read your articles, you’re very good at it.
I guess the salient point to address here is how a sense of worth can put the entire world into perspective. It’s a good feeling, isn’t it? Last Tuesday will keep me going for months.
And for those moments when you don’t feel like you can take on anything, when it seems like you’re holding no good cards? Just remember some advice from Paul Newman: “Sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand.”
Mand: thanks! I’m not sure how many of the other projects will actually go forward, but I’m keeping up with the online column.
Yes, Ken is quite diminutive. Maybe not THAT diminutive.
Russ: please elaborate via email. You’ve been mum since the shindig.
And thanks for the Cool Hand Luke quote, I may use it as my status on Facebook. This week I’m not feeling so high.
I see a lot of back-and-forth here about how we envision each other–a while back you had me drinking coffee (which I do daily, though caffeine doesn’t do much for me) and smoking cigarettes (which I’ve never done–tobacco is for chumps, THC is much more rewarding). That, and there’s a lot of who’s a he and who’s a she. I find the question of gender to be fascinating, it’s one of the most defining aspects of our identity and individuality.
Here’s something: ever heard of the Bem Gender Role Test?
http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=9417365772332679709
Found it in a past posting on the LiveJournal account of the Object Of My Obsessions.
I scored an impressive 87 masculine (O.O.M.O.’s then-boyfriend scored “only” 86, which made me feel…well, manly)–however, I concurrently rated a significant 53 feminine, so I’m labelled Androgynous. (87+53=140 What’s the extra 40 points? Value-added or something?)
I’d say that’s about right, I’m something of a mixed bag. I’m unapologetically, and at times boorishly, masculine: a dominant personality, very object-oriented, an aggressive driver, I don’t lose arguments, and I’m emphatically pro-sex and libidinous. On the other hand, I’m not always a good fit in a roomful of men: I hate sports, I’m not competitive (in that I don’t play to win, though I do play), I don’t like mindless violence or crass humor, and I don’t react to stereotypical feminized beauty–Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton look ugly to me. I’ve read Playboy for the articles since a very young age. But, I don’t have any homosexual inclinations at all. You’ve seen my “type”, as it were–she usually scares men away. Gets me intrigued, though.
And so I have an autist’s fascination with how we perceive each other. I don’t “get” other people, not intuitively, so I spend a lot of time trying to put myself in other peoples’ place. Helps my writing, I think–I’m told I write character and dialogue very well.
Anyway. As for last week, it stands as a validation for me, since I don’t date often (and never as formally as that). Now I’m going through withdrawal (you see my latest LJ post?). I definitely see her on a human level, not up on some pedestal. She’s the girl right next to me, as the Goo Goo Dolls would say, perfect not in some eidetic sense, but rather as everything I’m looking for (and nothing I’m trying to avoid). And so I’m not really disappointed that she didn’t stay over–when I’m with her, I lose all sense of what else we could be doing, I’m perfectly satisfied just to be in her presence.
Good thing love makes you stupid, because when I take a step back and get some perspective, I laugh my ass off at myself.
Even in writing, Russ, I’d never mistake you for a chick.
Am I going to have to read your LJ to get the lowdown? Very well then.
Hey, i scored 60% masculinity and 63% femininity on that Bem Gender Role Test. And it doesn’t surprise me. (Apparently ‘mand’ means ‘man’ in Danish.)
A tangent, though still joined to the gender curve of thought. Oops, poor metaphor. I had some feedback the other day that made me think i come over offputting and/or unfriendly, online. I’m sure our online personas (maybe for some people only) are different from the impression we give in the flesh. (I *love* to power-dress while in my dressing-gown picking my nose.) I’m usually quieter offline, but not sure if the unfriendly image was just that one person’s reaction or if i start off appearing that way in general.
clicked through the gender test rather quickly, scored 50% male, 50% female and therefore 100% androgynous. but that is just kind of a random result. I don’t feel qualified to judge my own helpfulness, secretiveness etc.
maybe we should have others fill out the test for us
if you don’t smoke, Russ, then who is that coffee drinking and smoking girl? And do you smoke your THC or eat it or drink it?
the only way is to home-brew our drugs directly inside our brain, by old fashioned thinking and acting in an appropriate manner. Prefer your biologic factory over external substances.
Personally I consumed too much of it when I was 23. I guess it did break down the walls of autism for me, and additionally I gained detailed experience about paranoia, psychosis and how to live without any short time memory. Some newer science hints that this can really be triggered by THC (as opposed to: it all slumbered in you already, you loser). They say today’s genetically modified plants are much more potent than those of the early 90s. Smoking it is very bad for your lungs. And when using THC with alcohol there might be some third drug involved that emerges from the mix…
I’m the voice of warning here
I prefer cocaine.
No, of course not, this was just a joke to wake you up.
I guess (imagine a very serious voice now
The same applies to anti depressants / tranquilizers. There’s no real shortcut in the long run, you need to achieve some ecological sustainable balance in your nervous system, we could learn a lot from animals in that respect, btw.
I digressed…yes, it is important for our feeling of self worth, how much do we match the gender stereotypes…a man has to be a man and a woman has to be a woman, even in the l-word season one or two there was this episode with the LIM, lesbian oriented male, and they really made fun of him…
I did read about some kind of study that identified female-like qualities in male poets, authors, possibly script writers
sigh, we could write whole books in the comment section…
the reduced emotionality of men, sometimes you curse it, sometimes you want it –
I guess the key is that your man can be truly emotionally towards you, and can turn it off when it’s time to fight some dragons
Especially the dragons inside ourselves.
Well, maybe there not really exist any others but that’s another topic and I’m definitely not sure what I’m writing about
‘Don’t feel qualified to judge my own helpfulness, secretiveness etc’ – definitely yes, we need others to do the test for us.
Hm. I may just print it out so my family can. If i bother to do that, i’ll let you know!
I’m not sure feeling very ‘female’ is important for my own self-worth, but i’d be the first to admit my reactions (to almost everything) are atypical.
‘Female-like qualities in male poets, authors, possibly script writers’ – then i imagine vice versa, male-like qualities in female wordsmiths. We’re talking animus/anima here, aren’t we? And of course they say people who seem sexy are those with a strong element of the opposite sex in them. ‘They’ say. Whoever says, i agree, anyway.
Btw i’m dipping into Manhood by Steve Biddulph – excellent so far, if journalistic in style (i started on his Raising Boys; would you guess i’m surrounded by menfolk?). He’s generaly pretty sound on the male identity thing.
‘We could write whole books’ – Now there’s an idea.
I’m sure there were other bits i meant to reply to but i have to give up now…
I’m trying to give up ellipses. Not doing too badly for the first day.
Mand: I never got that impression!
You guys made me go out and take that test — which I found pretty stereotypical, but maybe that’s the point — I scored 40-80 masculine-feminine.
Blue: I’m not sure how well we judge ourselves either. Did you really have autism or were you just borrowing a phrase from Russ? Glad I never experienced the paranoia so many people do with weed…drugs of any kind are just too potent for my system, though. I’m wiped out for days. I can hardly have a glass of wine anymore.
You reminded me that W.H. Auden once called Rilke the “greatest lesbian poet since Sappho.” And Virginia Woolf opined that Proust was more feminine than masculine.
Hey, Mand, we were posting at the exact same moment.
Let us know if your results are any different!
My okc profile begins something like: ‘I have never needed drugs cos my mind came pre-expanded…’ Bit pretentious – but truly, years ago considering an album cover that had lots of LSD-ish bits written here n there, someone said it proved they were using mind-expanding drugs as no one could write that kind of thing without, and i replied that i wrote that kind of thing all the time. (I was into surrealistic automatic writing for a phase.) When he saw some of the stuff i’d written he didn’t know whether to be shocked at the ‘expandedness’ or disbelieving of my claim not to have used drugs. ;0)
Haha…like it. How do you suggest the rest of us do it?
Erm…
Wait while i expand a little further…
I was just borrowing a phrase from Russ with the autism.
Btw, Russ, to avoid another potential misunderstanding, my asking if you smoke/eat/drink THC was meant literally, if you consume it in the form of e.g. cookies or dissolved in milk.
Sometimes I’m just writing nonsense, please excuse, I could state this is some kind of automatic writing – it is just easier with my mind turned off, I’m too lazy I know
I somehow liked the idea of THC breaking down autistic walls, but I’m not at all sure what exactly autistic walls are…
I have same vague feelings about it only…
I may have suffered (or still do) from a mild form of Aspergers, which might be helpful for my job as a programmer (<- did you guess that?) but that’s only self diagnosed. If THC could help against this? Maybe by stopping your clear thinking
Russ, if you are affected by any form of autism, please excuse, I definitely don’t want to make fun of that.
The autistic spectrum is a sliding scale – hence the word spectrum – so ‘mild’ is perfectly possible.
A friend of mine says (and i agree) that it’s more than a spectrum, which implies two dimensions, but rather a 3D landscape – a person may have only one or two features, and those may be features that are right at the ‘mild’ end of the spectrum, but if the person is severely affected by them that has big implications for their life and family. (I’m thinking of rigid thinking, compulsions, phobia, etc.) And that person wouldn’t meet the criteria for diagnosis. The labels – whether you tick the boxes for the title ‘Aspergers’ or anything else – are less useful than recognising the individual’s pattern of needs and of relating to the world.
I’m trying to say, and again this friend puts it better than i do, that self-diagnosis is perfectly valid. Anyone can learn about the condition(s) and come to a logical conclusion. It’s just that you have to be a professional to be taken seriously by other professionals.
Another way she says it is the ‘Ah, yes’ test. If you read about a condition and feel sympathy or horror, ‘That would be awful to live with,’ then you haven’t got it. If you read about something and think, ‘Yes, that’s what i’ve been trying to describe!’ then you (or your child or whoever you’re wondering about) have/has.
The more i’ve learnt about Asperger’s and the whole spectrum, the more i’ve been able to look at people i know – esp some i knew when i was mixing with very bright chemists and logicians, and other geeks ;0) – and recognise traits, or even diagnose (to my own satisfaction though i wouldn’t impose that thought on them or anyone else). It’s not a yes/no question. Consequently one person may be perfectly comfortable and able to function with their autistic tendencies, and another may need a lot of support. My preferred attitude is the huge benefits of looking at life the autistic way. Simplistically, logic and attention to detail, memory, and sometimes enormously creative offbeat thinking – but it’s less simple than that.
Hey! Seeking to illustrate that, i just found this. 80)
The most important thing in my view is that Aspergers and related conditions do not need to be cured. Some of the traits are difficult to live with and people need to learn how to live with them. But at root, cure isn’t the point.
I seem to have answered questions no one asked, sorry; i’ve saved this two days to ensure i wouldn’t just waffle, and i’ve waffled anyway. Bear in mind this is all at a tangent and i do know that, but perhaps interesting nonetheless.
Yes, I’m self-diagnosed on the autism/Asperger’s thing. It does explain why I’m so socially awkward (I don’t get other people), and it makes for something of a shorthand in explaining my demeanor to others. I don’t have full-blown autism like you see in the movies or such, and I don’t mean to co-opt that kind of debilitation, but I do fit the definition of the condition, albeit mildly. I also have ADHD and OCD, similarly self-diagnosed. Describes my personality and proclivities pretty well.
Not that I want to be cured, or even medicated any more than I am (booze and pot, mostly). Tames my runaway mind pretty well, and the side effects are pleasant rather than troublesome. Sure, the long-term effects can be problematic, but I’m prepared to live with that.
My strategy is to find someone whose particular mental disarray complements my own. (My Crazy Roommate *not* fitting that bill very well.)
I think that paper Mand linked to has a bullet point that describes your relationship with your C.R. very well: “often take(s) care of others outside the range of typical development.” I’m not absolutely sure that this is what the author means, but you’ve been looking after your very “atypically developed” friend since college…Lord knows what she would have done without you.
This is what happens when i allow myself to burble on. I forgot the one thing i was going to ask: what thc does for autism? Are we talking just inhibitions or more than that? (Googling, i can only find Alzheimer’s.) My own take on it has been more about rheumatic pain.
Like I say, I’m not be the poster child for autism or Asperger’s, I just portray myself that way. I’ve always been locked in my own thinking, trapped in my own head. I first tried alcohol and weed when I was 25, and it made a big difference. (And yes, BM3, I smoke. Bad for the lungs, I know, but it’s done wonders for my mental health. Life is full of trade-offs–at least mine is.) Helped to break me out of my mindset, develop an appreciation not necessarily for why other people do things, so much as a recognition that other people do things for reasons other than my own. I don’t understand other people, or even feel I have to: I simply accept the differences. This is what I describe as breaking down my autistic wall, the barrier I’d always felt (and still sense, to a degree) that separates me from the fellow members of my species.
I do not recommend this sort of therapy to anyone. It’s like Hunter S Thompson said, “In my case, you know, I hate to advocate drugs or liquor, violence, insanity to anyone. But in my case it’s worked.”
russthelibrarian, i love your attitude.