STOP

My mom called me this afternoon.  She does that, sometimes.  We’re BFFs, so it’s not unusual for her number to show up on the caller ID.  But on a Sunday afternoon, she’s usually gardening and shopping and doing whatever else she does.  So, I was a little surprised to hear her voice on the other end of the phone.  I was even more surprised to hear her say “I need to talk to you about something.”  No child wants to hear their parent say that.  Usually, they are getting ready to tell you that you fucked up in a big way.  Or that they are disappointed in you.  So, when my mom said “I need to talk to you about something,” I wondered why I answered the phone in the first place. 

So, after we had talked about the good days that we’d had, she said “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you have been saying about marriage and how it’s not for you.”  Then she said “I wasn’t looking for love or marriage when I met Gene.  And it turned out to be the most remarkable love of my life.”  So, I sat silent.  Rolling my eyes as she talked.  Even on my best day, I still feel like a child with her.  Logically, because I am her child.  Anyway, she went on and on about how you never know what life has to offer and you never know what you will find in the world. And let’s don’t forget about the part when she told me about unexpected miracles.   She doesn’t usually do this with me, so I let her talk and I waited for the point.  I don’t actually know what the point was. 

Then she said “Angela, I honestly believe that I was destined, from the day I was born, to be married to Gene.  Please don’t rule anything out.”   Then I got it.  A few days ago, when  I told her that marriage isn’t for me.  Clearly, she was uncomfortable with that.  Kind of weird, seeing as she’s a hippie and all.  But, anyway.  After I listened to all of what she had to say, I said “Mom.  Stop selling it.  Stop selling me the dream.  That is not my dream.”  So.  She did momentarily while she listened to what I had to say. 

This is what I had to say:  “Mommy.  I know that you loved Gene.  I know that he loved you.  I watched your amazing love story evolve over 17 years.  I know that soul mates exist because I grew up with them.”  I was trying to tell her not to be offended that what she had isn’t want I want.  It was beautiful and rare, but it’s not what I WANT!!!!  She said, “But Angie, you were a really good wife.  You can be that again!”  NO!!!  NO!!! I absolutely was NOT a good wife.  I cooked dinner and I vacuumed the floors and made babies.  None of that made me a good wife.  My mom, the feminist hippie thinks that that made me a good wife.  AAAGGHHHHH!!!!!!!! 

I finished the conversation by saying “I love you mom.  Thank you for raising me in a home full of love and magic.”  When I hung up, I yelled, out loud, “STOP TRYING TO SELL ME YOUR SHIT!!!!”  I felt like I was talking to a telemarketer.   I don’t need a new vacuum.  I don’t need 50,000 airline miles.  I don’t need a significant other.  Your dream isn’t my dream.  And I know this for two reasons:  1.)  When I got married, so young and idealistic, I defended my marriage by telling the people I loved that I didn’t forfeit my dreams for marriage.  I had just found someone I wanted to live my dreams with.  2.)  Ten years into that marriage, in the middle of a dark and ugly night, the man I was so adamant about living those dreams with looked at me and stopped yelling long enough to say, “Angela.  What has happened to you?  What happened to the girl with dreams of swimming with the dolphins and building a house in the stars?” 

Yeah, so even the man I was going to make dreams come true with was disappointed that I abandoned my dreams.  Because it’s not for me.  He didn’t know it at the time.  I didn’t know it at the time.  But that was the beginning.  I’m sure his intention wasn’t to tell me that soul was lost.  In fact, I am quite certain that he meant to tell me that I should just find a way to be that girl again.  I know that because he’s told me that was his intention.  But that was the comment that ended our marriage.  He didn’t want to swim with the dolphins or build houses in the stars.  So, I bought new cars and new clothes and new houses.  I was still expected to dream of oceans and stars, though.  You can’t have it both ways.  You either dream or you conform. 

When I was talking to my mom, I realized that.  For years I’ve been thinking that I was a failure because I didn’t want to conform.  I’ve been thinking that the way I live, can’t possibly be right.  It’s because when I’m sad, people tell me I will find someone who will make me happy.  It’s because when I work hard, there’s always someone there to tell me that one day my hard work will pay off.  It’s because when I’m lonely, others always remind me that one day I will be complete.  With a house or a car or the best sex of my life.  So, to finally counter, I have only one thing to say:  STOP IT!!!!!! Knock that shit off.  Stop sheltering me from the real world.  Stop telling me that the way you live your life is the only way to live life. 

To the people I love who have found the loves of your lives, I applauded you and marvel in what you have found.  Everyday.  To those of you who have achieved success, I respect and appreciate your hard work.  To those of you who “just want me to be happy”,  I love you and honor our friendship.  But no union, no job, no well wishes are going to make me happy.  Too much of anything makes us ambivalent. I’ve been ambivalent for most of my life.   Because I grew up sheltered and spoiled.  That didn’t make me happy, so your way won’t make me happy either.  Only my way can make me happy.  So, while I love you all, please stop.  Stop.  Please stop telling me that I have to wait for more.  Please stop telling me that I need more.   Please stop telling me that I deserve more.  I’m good with what I’ve got.  You don’t have to sell me anything.  

Gypsy

I like to call myself a hippie.  You know, being the product of two hippie parents, I have to assume that I must also be a hippie.  And I am.  In the peace, love and butterfly sense of the word.  I believe in Karma and the power of the universe and the Tao Te Ching.  I’m that person.  The one you have no idea what to do with because my God and my politics don’t make any sense to you.  I’m the girl doesn’t go to church or registers to vote anymore.  Because God and politics don’t make sense anymore.  I am that person.   I am the person you can’t fight with, because I won’t ever understand your argument. If you can’t incorporate the sunset or the ocean or the wind through the trees into your definition of how we should be living our lives, I cannot relate to you.   I always thought those things made me a hippie.  But I’m starting to think that I identified myself with the wrong group of people.  I might not be a hippie.  I think that maybe “gypsy” better defines me.  I might be a gypsy. 

Gyp-sy (jipse)  - (n) a nomadic or free spirited person. 

When I was little, my dad would come pick me up every summer after school got out.  He would drive 400 miles from the house on Warner Street in Ventura, to where I was in Lake County.  Then at the end of the summer, he would make the same 800 round-trip, so he could return me to the school year.  I thought all of that traveling was normal.  Because it was normal to me.  Then I got old enough to fly on a plane from Sacramento to Burbank.  And that became normal to me, too.  Then I became old enough to maintain a job and drive a car.  So, I would work one job during the school year, and then, I would drive my car 400 miles to my summer job.  And that became normal, too.  Moving was normal.  Doing different things was normal. 

During the school year I went to school and did the cheerleading thing and worked 20 hours a week at the pizza place.  Then over the summer, I went to Ventura and worked on boats.  Boats that did stuff.  It was really cool stuff.  Boats.  Kayaks.  Hiking.  THAT WAS MY JOB!!  Doing stuff on the water. But, what I remember most from those summer months are the transits.  The transits.  The 350 miles seven hours down I-5 because it was quicker and I was excited to get there.  Then three months later, the 400 miles and ten hours back up the 1 so that I could see Pt. Conception, one last time for the season.  So I could listen to Fleetwood Mac, as I drove through Big Sur.  So I could smell the vendors in Chinatown before I crossed the Gate and left summer behind, sheltered in the fog of memory.  That’s where I would forfeit boats and dolphins and breakfast burritos for textbooks and pom-poms and cheap, greasy pizza. 

Even then, I knew there was a time and a place for both.  And I never felt entirely comfortable in either place.  I rarely feel comfortable anywhere, though.  But that was the beauty of the situation.  When I became exhausted of one, I knew I could always leave for another.  I also knew that on the other side, I would be grateful for what I had.  A proverbial “grass is greener” kind of life.  By the by, I’m pretty sure that the grass is always greener adage was not derived by a gypsy.  Because when you are gypsy, you can go anywhere, anytime you want.  Therefore, you can choose the how green you want your grass to be.   I love that about the gypsy spirit.  Never bound to a well-manicured lawn or a grassy field or sandy beach.  They all have their functions, but none require commitment. 

I don’t know if I ever understood my attraction to the gypsy lifestyle.  We are socialized in a culture that has attached dozens of ugly connotations to the word “gypsy.”  Essentially, a gypsy is the antithesis of what society tells us is normative.  Gypsies don’t put down roots.  They don’t make plans.  They don't glorify money or status.  So, in this country, when we think of the word “gypsy,” we envision dirty transients who steal and seduce for survival. They can’t be trusted because they don’t value what we value.  And because of the way we are conditioned to think about success, we discredit everything that doesn’t fit our skewed definition of the word.  As a result, I have fought the desire to live with a free spirit.  It’s just not normal. 

I’m starting to realize that’s why I tried so hard, for so many years, to conform.  To try to be successful.  To live by societal norms.  Those summers that I transited the California coasts between two separate realities wasn’t normal.  Living in one place is normal.  Having a steady job is normal.  Getting married is normal.  Playing house is normal.  Gypsies don’t do those things.  So they are not normal and they are not successful.  And that friends, is how you destroy a gypsy spirit.  By stifling it.

I realized early that I wasn’t fulfilling my cultural destiny because I was comfortable with transience.  I knew that I had to get onboard with social expectations.  I got a job because that’s how you become successful.  I hated it.  I quit it.  I got married long before I should have because that’s how you establish roots.  I fought it out for 12 years.  It didn’t work.  Because I didn’t want those roots.  And before you speculate, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t want to be a mommy.  I did want that.  I got an education.  Because you can’t do anything without an education in this country.  It cost me 30k so I could work as medical records clerk.  I am grateful for my education, but not the demands to get one.  So, you ask, what all of this abiding by social expectations got me?  It got me unemployment.  It got me a divorce.  It got me in debt.  It made me feel like a failure.  Because those things just weren’t for me.  Now, culturally, I suck.   

In the last 16 years, I have lived at 14 different addresses.  I haven’t spent more than three consecutive birthdays at any one of them.  Until this job, I haven’t had a steady job for more than four years.  Ever.  Until I moved to Holly Heights, I never dreamed I would live more than 36 consecutive months in the same place.  And if it weren’t for my obligation to Radley and my commitment to keeping him close to his dad, I would have burned it down and gone somewhere else a long time ago.  This is my home because I make it my home.  This isn’t my home because society tells me I need to have one.  I’ve made a home at all of those other 13 addresses, too.  That’s not what makes me a gypsy, though. 

It’s the fact that I don’t feel obligated to the place I live or the stuff I have.  It’s because I feel obligated to the people I love and the places around me.  It’s because I can find beauty in where I’m at, even when I’m in the dark.  It’s because I value independence as much as I value community.  I’m not a gypsy because I don’t adhere to group-think bullshit, but because I recognize stagnation that comes with it.  I’m a gypsy because I am more comfortable by myself when everything around me doesn’t make sense.

 

-Inner Peas

On This Day

So, Facebook has this app now that allows you to look at posts from you and your friends from a year ago.  It’s called “On This Day.”  So, I was cruising through that earlier this morning, as I was sitting on my back patio, watching a lady bug.  And I saw this post from this day last year that read “I just spent the last 50 minutes sitting on the patio watching a lady bug.”  Wow.  What are the odds?  Same thing, same place.  365 days later.  That’s weird.  Coincidentally, this is not the first time the “On This Day” app has reminded me that my life seems to be following the same pattern as the years pass. 

A couple of weeks ago, I came home to a dead gopher on my front porch.  I posted that on Facebook.  Then, one of my girlfriends countered with my post from a year ago.  It said the same thing.   So, naturally, I found some humor in the idea that my life is repeating itself, to the day, every year.  It can only mean two things:  1.)  I’m really boring.  OR, 2.)  I really am the definition of insanity.  Either way, I feel like there should be some change or variation or something else.  Then, I realized something more terrifying than realizing that the internet knows exactly what you said and felt one year ago.  I realized that the lady bug post was the beginning of the monumental meltdown that I almost didn’t survive. 

Last year, on this day, I was getting ready to take a week off and head to New England to visit with some of my favorite people.  I was trying to get the house cleaned up and get my shit packed and blow this popsicle stand for a little while.  There was going to be wine and laughing and music.  I should have embraced it.  I don’t take time off.  And being able to enjoy people who are so very important is an added benefit.  But, as I sat there, watching that lady bug on April 6, 2013, I just couldn’t find the motivation to do anything else.  So I just sat there.  And watched the lady bug. 

Well, I finally got some stuff together in the following days, and I got in the car to drive Radley to my mom’s.  She was going to keep him for the week I was going to be gone.  As I made the three hour trip from West Sonoma County to the Foothills where she lives, nothing felt right.  By the time I got there, I was shaking so bad that she felt it when I hugged her.  She looked at me and begged me not to go on this trip.  She said “Angela, I don’t think you can drive yourself home.  You absolutely can’t travel across the country.”  And I said “I have to go mom.”  And so I went.  Not to New England, but back home.  I felt so obligated to myself, to my friends, to the airline for the $500 ticket I had purchased two months earlier, that I couldn’t not go.  When I pulled into the driveway that night, I went and finished packing.  I was fucking going.  The next thing I knew, I was texting my little bro to tell him not to pick me up in the morning to take me to the airport. 

He tried to come over to see what was wrong.  He had no idea what was going on.  Neither did I.  I just knew that I was paralyzed with an unidentifiable emotion.  I pleaded with him not to come over.  “I just really need to be by myself.”  I absolutely did not need to be by myself.  I didn’t know that.  I just knew that I didn’t want anyone to see me acting like a crazy person.  So, he let it go that night, and the next night.  The third morning, though, he showed up at my front door and said “Breakfast.  That’s not a question.”  I didn’t want to go.  I just went.  Because I had to do something. 

I could barely dress myself and I tried to tell Conrad it wasn’t a good time.  He looked at me and said “Did you eat yesterday?”  I just stared at him.  “Did you eat on Friday?”  I had nothing.  “For fuck sake, when was the last time you ate, Angela?”  I just stood there.  He loaded me into the car and we drove to Hallies.  He tried to order me the crab benedict, on account of it’s my favorite.  I just looked at it and avoided eye contact.  I was so humiliated.  And he was really scared.  So, we left and when he dropped me off, I could see he had no idea what to do.  I really wanted to tell him that I was going to be OK, but I couldn’t.  It was so bad, my little brother couldn’t even tell me that it was going to be OK.  I spent the rest of the week hold up inside the house, too afraid to leave.  I did my very best to sever ties with the people who were important to me.  I made it very clear to everyone who tried to make contact with me that I didn’t want them in my life anymore.  It was textbook. 

After nearly two weeks of feeling completely out of control, including spending one week of “vacation” exiled to my house, I had to go get Radley.  I had no idea how I was going to drive up to get him.  I called Mike and told him he might need to go get him from my mom.  That’s I really started to lose it.  If I can’t take care of my son, they will take him away from me.  Then, in a brief moment of reprieve from the overwhelming darkness, I saw a hazy fog.  So, I wrote.  I wrote about all of it.  Not all of it.  This is actually the first time I have written about all of it.  But I did write about my feelings and the panic and the self-destructive behavior that I had been so vehemently committed to over previous weeks.  The writing didn’t solve the problem, but it did offer a release.  Finally, some freedom from the ugly place I had shackled my mind to.  And that’s where this blog began.   Right in the middle of an emotional tsunami. 

When I saw that Facebook post this morning from one year ago, I found a little irony in it at first.  Then, I got really scared.  Because just like at this time last year, I’ve been feeling a little out of sorts.  I really don’t want lady bugs to be my emotional kryptonite.  But more importantly, I REALLY don’t want to ever feel that way again.  I panicked.  A lot.  And I started shaking.  Then I remembered that I was shaking because I just weed wacked the yard.  That actualization didn’t really help calm me down, though.  So, I put Radley in the car and we went to get ice cream.  By the time we left the creamery, I felt out of control.  So, I thought, maybe I’ll write about it.  I decided not to sit at the kitchen table, where I have written every other blog post for the last year.  I brought my laptop out to the wine table, and revisited the morning, and clearly, the last year, as well.  Somewhere in this process, I have been reminded that I live with an illness.  Not an illness that you can see at first sight, but an illness all the same.  And I also am reminded that I have some limitations.  My mind words different than many others.  I won’t ever be the light of a party.  I won’t ever be able to maintain my composure in public situations.  I won’t ever be able to feel comfortable in every situation.  But I do know how to recognize the problem and change my behavior to, at least enough to survive. 

I get asked about my anxiety a lot.  I think because mental disorders are common and I talk about it, when other people think its taboo.  People come to me a lot after they have had a panic attack and feel comfortable enough to tell me about their experiences.  Probably, because I have no judgment, and clearly, I can relate.  There are, also, other people who talk to me about my anxiety because they love someone who suffers from it, too.  And let’s be honest, if you have never been incapacitated by what happens in your mind, you can’t possibly understand how those who have feel.  Recently, a dear friend asked me how he should deal with the people he loved when they were at their emotional breaking point.  I told him “you can’t fix this for anyone.  When you try to fix it, you are patronizing and enabling them.  You need to empower them by being there when they need you and encourage them when they need it.  To which he responded “keep doing what you’re doing, girl!  You’re going to make anxiety your bitch!”  See….Empowerment.  Although it is not as easy as just kicking your emotional deficiencies in the ass, when you know your limitations and you have people who support you, regardless, it doesn’t have to own us. 

Now, I’m gonna go watch a lady bug. 

-Inner Peas