Kindness

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the very spiritual experience I had at my aunt’s memorial service down in Fairfax.  It was a beautifully gray North Coast Day.  It was a beautiful gathering of friends, family, and people who she had reached.  While I was there I was overcome with love.  I was also overcome with a reminder of my spiritual journey. 

A few days later, I was relaying the experience to one of the people closest to my heart.  I told him that I had needed to be reminded that my spirituality lies deep in the belief that we are all connected.  That as human beings, we are all connected.  That we are connected to the earth around us.  That our connectedness with each other creates balance.  It was then that he asked me a question I didn’t expect.  He said, “So, how do you worship?”  Although I hadn’t’ expected the question, without hesitation, I told him “with love and kindness.”  I hadn’t had the opportunity to think about it or to figure out if it was sensible.  But I said it.  And I said it with so much conviction that I actually believed myself. 

I preach a lot about the universe and its power over us.  I speak a lot about our connectedness and how we all have a place and a pull.  I focus a lot of my thought and my writing on finding balance and peace.  I also focus a lot of energy on orgasms and asshats and Teslas.  Not necessarily in that order and not necessarily related.  But sometimes.  But everything I write about helps me to find conscious and spiritual balance.

So a couple weekends ago, when I told my friend that the way I worship, the way I celebrate my spirituality, is through love and kindness, I kind of had an epiphany.  That’s my road.  It might not always be tactful or in good form.  But that is what I believe in.  I believe in love and kindness.  I have dedicated most of my adult life to loving other people.  I have committed myself to doing right by people who need help.  And still I am more surprised when people love me back than I am when I see people who don’t understand love. 

I had a long day.  Fuck, I had a long couple of days.  For that matter, I have had a long 16 years.  But today, on the way home, I was stuck behind a Volvo station wagon, circa mid 1990’s.  You know the one with the hatchback as tall as it is wide.  And, of course, plastered on the back window was all sorts of nostalgia, in bumper sticker form.  “Clinton/Gore ’96.”  "Visualize Whirled Peas.” (My personal favorite.)  The sticker that resonated most with me was one that I remember on my step-mom’s Mercury Sable, “Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty.”  Remember that sticker?  Ok.  If you aren’t from California, you probably don’t remember it.  It was a movement with California hippies though.  I saw that peeled, bubbling bumper sticker and noticed how the color hadn’t faded over the years.  It was weathered, but it was still the same periwinkle blue it was 20 years ago.  I smiled to myself. 

As a child, I remember the “ah ha” moment when I realized how poignant the idea of practicing “random kindness" was.  I can almost see the moment in my memory and thinking “Wow.  Just be nice to people.  No matter who they are.”  Give me some props, friends.  I was nine when I figured that out.  At that time, it meant smiling at people I didn’t know and pushing the shopping cart to that place where the shopping carts go in the parking lot.  That’s kind of impressive for a nine year old. 

The older I got though, the more I realized that kindness wasn’t random.  Kindness is a manifestation of love.  A universal, unconditional love.  A love that you show to other human beings because we all need that.  It’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  We won’t necessarily die without it.  But, believe it or not, people have actually died without it.  Anyway, back to kindness and randomness.  Kindness is not random.  You choose to smile at someone as you pass on the street.  You choose to push your cart back to the shopping cart place.  You do that not because there are rules that dictate that you should do that.  You do it so the poor kid who has to walk 100 miles across the parking lot, collecting stray carts can catch a little break. 

Kindness isn’t random.  Kindness is intentional.   Kindness is spiritual.  We can’t all be connected without compassion.  Even on days like today, when I see the darkest, ugliest side of humanity masquerade as righteousness, I have to remember that there are more of us who choose love and kindness as spiritual principles than there are who choose greed and ambition.  I have to remember the days that I have held young women in my arms when they were at their very weakest.  I have to remember the people who have held me in my arms when I was at my very weakest.  I have to remember that kindness is a decision.  It isn’t random; it’s a choice. 

-Inner Peas

Work

This morning, I had breakfast with one of my oldest friends.  While we have been friends for more than twenty years, this morning was the first we had seen of each other in nine years.  This is one of the times that I say “thank you, technology.”  If not for Facebook, I would never have known that my childhood playmate was only minutes away.  As soon as I found out, I begged her to go to breakfast with me.  She conceded.  And there we were, sitting in the damp west Sonoma morning on the patio of a little bohemian coffee house.  We had coffee, a Boston Terrier, and nearly a decade of catching up to do in a matter of hours. 

We have both been a lot of places and done a lot of things since the last time we saw each other.  But, now, Jenny is doing something completely different than what she had been doing her entire adult life.  For that matter, she is doing something different than anyone our age has done in their entire adult lives.  Jenny quit a job that she was good at, after she was offered a promotion and a raise.  Not just a raise.  She was offered twenty thousand dollars more than she was making.  She was respected and accomplished in her profession.  Still, she uprooted herself from a job that had owned her for seven years, and walked away.  To go on a seven month road trip.

I had to know.  I had to understand what this journey was about.  I asked her “So, what are you doing now?”  She looked at me and grinned “This.  This is what I am doing now.”  I still didn’t’ understand.  So I probed further.  “Where are you living?”  Again, she grinned and shrugged.  At this point, my mind was fucking blown.  I had no response.  She said “Like I told you, I’ll be in Big Sur tonight.  Then Huntington Beach by Wednesday.” 

Sure.  Big Sur.  Huntington Beach. Makes perfect sense.  But it doesn’t.  I screamed “WHY THE FUCK WERE YOU IN THE PETALUMA KOA???”  Then she told the story.  The story about being a company woman.  About how when you are in your mid-thirties and don’t have a family, you find yourself only living for work.  She talked about how she had done it all right all of the time.  College.  Jobs.  Careers.  Paying bills.  Paying off her student loans.  One day, she woke up and realized the only thing she was paying for was food and that cute little 320i that has gotten 7,000 miles out of during the last three month.  She finally said “The only thing I had was my work.  Work that I was proud of, but didn’t want to define me.” 

That was the second time in less than 28 hours that I had heard the same sentiment escape from the mouths of people I love and consider successful professionals.  Yesterday morning one of my beloveds told me “If today is the end, all I have is a career that I only half care about.”  The first time I heard it, I tried to be encouraging and give reassurance that being committed to your career is purposeful. But the second time I heard it, I had to wonder if, maybe, successful young people with promising careers are right to be unfulfilled.  What are we actually working for? 

Are we working for savings accounts and retirement plans?  Are we working for life insurance policies without beneficiaries?  Are we working to buy good health insurance that will pay for good medications?  What the fuck are we working for?  For promotions and accolades?  For our bosses to affirm us?  We all want to think that our jobs have meaning.  We want to think that we dedicate our lives to making a difference.  But in the process of making a difference to our employers, we often find that we are distancing ourselves from what is really important. 

So, now is the time that we need to ask ourselves what is actually important.  Is it health insurance and survivors’ benefits and 401k’s?  Is it your boss’s promotion?  Is it mission statements?  Probably not.  More likely, it’s the time you exhausted your savings traveling the globe.  Or maybe it was the time that you wrote with all your heart, without fear of retribution.  Or the mornings you were late to work because you were too busy cuddling with your babies before they grow up to live the same meaningless, corporate life you are leading. 

What are we working for?  What is our purpose?  When will we stop forfeiting laughter for money?  When will we love each other before we love status?  When will we appreciate orgasms more than attaboys?  When will our children be our actually be our first priority, without fear of unemployment? 

-Inner Peas

Change

Yesterday, I had the privilege to celebrate the life of a woman who had traveled an extraordinary path.  A woman who had overcome adversity and addiction on her road to discovering the healing powers of universal love and mystic spirituality.   I was so intensely overwhelmed by the experience that I knew I had to retell it as soon as I had a few free minutes.  I just felt compelled to do it.  And I had to do it soon.  Today was going to be that day. 

Then today, I went to work, and had one of the most disturbing days I have had in a very long time.  It wasn’t just one thing.  It was the culmination of many things.  By the time I got in the car as soon as I possibly could.  I looked down at the clock on the dash board that read 3:32.  That was the earliest I remembered leaving in quiet some time.  I picked up Radley from school and drove home, as fast as that little Jetta S would get us there.  After everything I had seen today, I knew that I needed to write about it.  I had to find a way to make sense of the senseless. 

As I do, so often, on days that make my head spin,  I sat in the car and watched Radley fumble out, no shoes, one sock and dragging his backpack all the way to the door.  I was getting more and more discouraged.  I closed my eyes and shook my head.  “WHY CAN’T THIS KID JUST KEEP HIS SHOES ON AND CARRY THE GODDAMNED BACKPACK????”  I sat in the car, alone, a little longer than usual today.  Then, I remembered yesterday.  I found myself staring down two different roads.  I wasn’t at a crossroad, I was at a fork in the road.  I was at the place where I had to decide if writing a character assassination about people who assassinate characters would make me feel better than sharing my post-mortem experience about a woman who would never participate in a character assassination. 

That’s a tough place to be in when you are emotional.  Trying to decide between discussing the brilliant and the ugly.  Trying to find an outlet that will better satisfy your emotions.  Do you choose anger or do you choose love?  Anger is an easy emotion to express.  It is relatable, familiar and controversial.  But love…Love sometimes is less relatable than anger.  So, there I sat in the car, sunglasses on, eyed closed, head back, screaming at myself:  “WHAT ROAD ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE?””  Finally, I made a choice.  And this is it. 

June 15 of this year was a Sunday.  My dad usually calls me on Saturday while he’s running errands.  The problem with Saturday calls during errands is that usually I am running errands, too.  So, I called my dad back on the following Sunday.  It just happened to be Father’s day.  On Saturday’s I will call my dad on his cell phone.  On Sunday’s, I always call to the home phone.  When made the call to the Wainiha Valley on Sunday afternoon, Kathy answered.  She usually does when I call the house.  As we exchanged pleasantries, she described their morning trip to the beach.  Then she said, “We got a call earlier today that my sister passed this morning.”  Kathy paused.  I was silent.  “Christina?”  I asked.  She confirmed.  I still didn’t understand, so I mumbled something along the line of begging her to let me know when Christina’s memorial service would be. 

My dad and Kathy have been together for more than 14 years.  When I barely knew Kathy, my dad was visiting the mainland without her.  He was staying in Mill Valley with Kathy’s sister.  Christina invited me to her home for dinner so that I could spend some time with my dad.  I remember being very intimidated driving over the San Rafael Bridge from Alameda.  When I got off at the exit to Stan and Christina’s home, and ascended the narrow road to their home overlooking the Marin Coast, I remember thinking “I don’t belong here.”  But I knew I had to finish my journey.  I parked my little blue Saturn on the side of the hill, walked up their driveway, and knocked with trepidation, on the front door.  First, I saw my dad’s face.  Then I saw a tall, slender woman push him out of the way.  She opened the door and hugged me.  Before I could ever extend a hand to her, I found myself in her embrace. 

The rest of the evening was very similar.  We all sat and talked; bantered.  This place that I was so intimidated to go visit my dad at, became a very comfortable setting for discussing the world’s affairs.  Mid-term elections.  An uncomfortable war in a region of the world we were all unfamiliar with.  The heart’s desires.  After dinner and a few drinks, I felt like I was part of the family.  Even though, a few hours earlier,  I didn’t know the family I was feeling connected to.

I encountered Christina and her family several times.  Of course, because my dad was a part of their family now.  But every time after that, I would see them at my very worst.  Divorce.  Neglect.  Abandonment.   Christina, Stan, and her children would always hug me and talk to me like I was a human being.  The last time I saw Christina was at my Uncle Bill’s.  We were having a magnificent lunch at Random Ridge.  She asked me how I was doing.  It’s hard to lie when you aren’t doing well.  I walked outside to have a cigarette.  She followed me.  We didn’t say anything for a few minutes.  But as all smokers know, you feel judged by nonsmokers.  I finally said “I don’t want to get the smoke in your face.”  Christina walked away, respecting my wishes to be alone. 

Then, there was yesterday.  My dad flew into town the night before.  He got to my house after Radley and I were fast asleep.  When I got up to go to work in the morning, he hugged me and Radley and then reported that I was snoring by the time he walked in the house.  I don’t do 6:AM very well.  So I gave him a squeeze and told him I was recovering from Ebola and that a little known symptom of Ebola was snoring. I walked out the door smiling and rolling my eyes at the same time. Dads do that to you. 

Two hours later, I was back at the house to pick him up for Christina’s memorial service.  As we hit the road, I just assumed that the day would take us to the very uncomfortable places that death and family usually take people.  But as we made our way out of town, on to the back roads of coastal Marin, we only talked when there was something to be said.  It was all meaningful though.  When we finally turned South on Sir Francis Drake, we were at a place that we didn’t need words.  We could just appreciate each other for who we were and the experience we had committed to, together. 

As we pulled into Spirit Rock, I found it funny to see signs adorn the parking lot that cast reminders to lock your cars.  Really?  Where people go to worship, they should lock their cars first?  A place where people go to free their souls requires keys?  I looked at my dad and winked.  I knew I was in for something unexpected.  In the words of every lame article that has ever gone viral:  “What happened next blew me away.”  Or “Mind Blown.”  Or “Amazing.” 

We were early.  I hate being early.  That means that you have to look people in the face.  You have to act interested through awkward introductions.  You have to hug people and act like you know what to say.  I don’t do that.  But as I watched my dad walk to people, talk and hug.  I suddenly felt much removed from his life.  Instinctively, that made me want to remove myself from the picture.  I was so involved with faces and hands and hugs at that point, I couldn’t leave.  Before I knew it, I had hugged all of Christina’s nearest and dearest.  I’m a lover and a hugger and even I couldn’t understand what had just happened.   Finally, I saw Christina’s daughter.  I hugged her and said “Thank you so much for letting me be a part of this day.  It means so much.”  She just hugged me tighter and whispered in my ear “You are family.” 

I was ready to walk into that service expecting for the unexpected.  Turns out, the unexpected happened to me before I even took off my shoes in the temple.  Then I sat, for two hours, and listened as the three people most important to Christina paid tribute to her.  They talked about her journey, her escape, her spirituality, her love.  Not one of them made light of her life experiences.  But they all made weight of her character.  They all made note of the way she showed her love for people through food.  They all made note of the way her words, while she was separated from them, kept them connected.  They all addressed how her mystic spirituality gave her the love that reached so many. 

I spent two hours barefoot, absorbing all of the love and positive emotion before it became too much.  I gathered my shoes and walked outside.  I looked down from the hills of West Marin.  I looked to the grey sky above and decided to walk down the hill.  I told my dad that I had to go…the people were just too much.  He understood, and went in to hug Sarah and Peggy and Stan and Than.  Then he followed me down the hill. 

We got back in the car and made the intentional right back up the coast.  I didn’t tell him about the very intimate, very spiritual experience that I had that morning.  I think something similar had happened to him.  He asked me if I wanted to go for lunch.  I did, but I felt this compulsion that made me feel obligated to go back to work.  Go back to work. Go back to work.  GO BACK TO WORK!!!.  That’s all I heard in my head.  Until I finally blocked it out.  We stopped at the intersection that gave the opportunity to go back to Petaluma or go the other direction to Pt. Reyes.  I choose Pt. Reyes. 

We parked outside of town, and walked the city streets.  Both of us were taking in the day and the experience.  When we got to the end of town, we walked back and my dad said “how about there?”  There it was.  We had a marvelous lunch at the Station House.  He had a burger, I enjoyed the grilled mushroom sandwich.  It could have been the morning we had.  It could have been the food we were eating.  It could have been the fact that we finally understood each other.  But I have never had a more delicious sandwich.   In my life.  Ever. 

It was over that lunch In Point Reyes that I made a decision.  It was there, after an amazing morning, and a guilt free lunch, I shared with my dad the very long and tortured road I had been traveling for so long.  It was in the midst of that spiritual experience that I finally saw that my path wasn’t moving the direction it needed to be headed in.

That is why I titled this blog “Change.”  It could have been titled something more appropriate.  I could have called it “Love” or “Journey” or “Experience” or anything else besides change.   But that day changed my life.  It reminded me to change my course.  It made me feel change.  I could have very easily come home from work after a bad day and wrote 1,000 words about ugly people.  I could have talked about how ugliness prevails despite beauty.  I could have written a very dynamic blog post about the good, bad and the dysfunctional.  But I’ve done that before.  And, to be quite direct, I am fucking tired of making noise about hateful people.  I am ready to start sitting in silence with people who are loving.  People who are good.  I need that in my life.

I need to make that change. 

-Inner Peas

Easy

A couple of weeks ago I started this 3-part series about easy and hard places after a midnight conversation with a friend half a world away.  Of course, for me it was midnight, for him it was midday.  It started after he made a comment about how living in a different part of the planet isn’t as easy now as it was when he was younger.  I told him if it was easy, he wouldn’t be doing it.  It just wouldn’t be worth it.  That was less than three weeks ago when he suggested that maybe I write about easy vs. hard. 

When I started writing the next day, I knew it was going to be a three part blog.  Which, objectively, seems a little illogical.  Why write THREE parts for TWO topics?  Somehow, I just knew that I was going to need more than two.  Probably because there are more hard places than easy places.  And finding a way to write about “easy” places would be harder than writing about “hard” places.  See?  The whole thing got far more complicated that I even realized it would.  Because when your drinking wine at midnight, talking to someone who has already been up for five hours, things seem easy, but are actually much more difficult than you imagine in those late night hours. 

“Hard” was easy, because it’s common.  Easy was much tougher.  I had to start thinking about the easiest times of my life.  Being 6 and climbing hills with my friends and going to the beach with my family.  Being 18 and scrubbing bilges in 41’ utility boats.  Being 24 and in college on the GI Bill’s dime and taking out student loans to pay for books and rent.  It was the old Montgomery GI Bill; not the new, good one.  Those were the easiest times I can remember in my whole life.  At this point, I thought I would give anything to go back to those places.  They were carefree and restless.  They were places without responsibility or retribution.  They were the easy places.  Or so I thought.

Now, I sit watching my own 6-year old grow up.  I am reminded of how hard it is it find your direction at that age.  How difficult it is to understand your own emotions without even factoring in other the actions of others.  How hard it is to learn to be responsible for yourself and your stuff.  Growing up is really hard.  Climbing hills and beach trips may be easy when you are six.  But that’s not all that being six is about; maybe we forget that after we are too far removed from 6. 

I am now trying to remember those days I sat scrubbing bilges with a wire brush, season after season, in the engine room of that 41’.  41381 likely had the shiniest bilges in the entire Coast Guard.  It’s where I went when I needed to appear productive and out of sight.  It was a time when I spent half of my month with 14 men and the other half completely alone.  It was a time when I longed for liberty after 48 hours of duty, but felt alone after a few hours away.  It was 3:AM for me.  You know that Matchbox 20 song?  The one with the girl who said “It’s 3:AM, I must be lonely.”  And that she “can’t help but be scared a little sometimes.”  And in the end, it turned out that “the clock on the wall had been stuck on three for days…and happiness is a mat that sits on her doorway”  She was lonely all the time, and didn’t have the sense, or the will, to check the goddamned batteries in the clock?  Remember that song?  That’s what scrubbing bilges was to me. 

I don’t even know if I can go back to 24, with all the emotion I had in college.  All of my fire and sass.  The desire to make the world a better place, the need to have my voice heard.  I had the answers.  I had the solutions.  I had the words.  That was in college, though.  Somebody is always listening in college.  You always have the possibility of changing the world in college.  You also always have the possibility of getting drunk and breaking into a public swimming pool and getting arrested for DUI on the way home from such an expedition.  Then after that, you have to deal with your student loans and arrest record and wasting that idealism and expensive education on a job that barely pays the bills.  But the memories of jumping off the cabana into the deep-end at 2:AM remain.  That was easy. 

When you are having a hard time, people always say “It’ll get better.”  Or “It won’t be like this forever.”  And they are right.  It won’t be like that forever, but I’m not convinced that it will ever get easier.  I think we might just get more accustomed too and more acclimated to dealing with the hard places.  The fact remains, if it’s easy, it’s probably not worth it. 

Sometimes, I look over the fence at those million dollar homes and think “it’s probably a lot easier over there.”  Then I remember, everyone is fighting a battle I know nothing about.  It might be 3:AM over there, too. 

-Inner Peas

A Hard Place: Part Deux

I talk a lot about why I started this blog.  I talk a lot about my journey with my mental illness.  I talk a lot about my spiritual journey.  I do that in writing not to share all of my business with the entire internet, but because expressing my thoughts and feelings through my written words gives me clarity and closure.  I need that.  For years, when the demons in my mind got too loud, I would just yell back at them.  In case you don’t know, that’s how people get institutionalized.  And since I have a child to raise, I didn’t see a permanent residence in a mental hospital as a viable option.  So, when I was on the verge of that becoming a reality, I started writing this blog.  Inner Peas. 

As the name suggests, I needed to find some solace.  And for the first year, sharing my thoughts here kept me employed and out of a state hospital.  As time passed, I realized that it was becoming more and more difficult to share my thoughts.  Even more, it was getting difficult to organize my thoughts.  It got to the point that I could no longer express myself.   I felt stifled, suffocated.  I was embarrassed of my writing.  My self-worth took a beating.  And trust me when I tell you that it was not any condition to take another hit. 

I have been plagued by low self-esteem my entire life.  But over the last few years, I have convinced myself that I don’t deserve.  Anything.  I wasn’t worthy.  Of Anything.  Most notably, I didn’t deserve to be happy.  I made myself guilty for enjoying myself.  It didn’t matter if it was an afternoon with my girlfriends or a weekend away.  Vacations were completely out.  I always had an excuse.  “I can’t take the time off.”  “I don’t have the money.”  Mostly I was scared that if I had a good time, I have to pay some monumental emotional price just for being content for doing something for myself. 

Those same self-deprecating behaviors crept into my relationships.  I’m not even sure that deprecating is the appropriate term.  That would indicate that I was exhibiting some semblance of humility.  A better term would probably be self-destructive.   As noted here on multiple occasions, the men I have allowed to be a part of my life were emotional fucking degenerates.  Narcissists, troubled loners, emotionally retarded sociopaths.  Those were the men I would let in.  And every time, I would be devastated when they didn’t stick around.  I convinced myself that if I wasn’t good enough for them, I wasn’t good enough for any man. 

About a year ago, I gave up completely on even allowing men to be a thing.  I didn’t need it, and more importantly, I didn’t deserve it.  Since then, it’s just been me and BOB, my battery operated boyfriend.  And I was cool with that.  No drama, no hard feelings, no bad sex.  I had convinced myself that I was OK with that.  I did a really good job at making myself a believer, too.  It was just easier.  It was during that year, however, that there was one man who became the closest thing to a constant I had had in a very long time. 

Of course, there was a problem with that man.  What man doesn’t have a problem, right?  But this guy’s problem was much different than most other men.  He was smart, funny, sexy as hell, and he really wanted me.  I just couldn’t believe that a man with an education and a career and like-minded social and spiritual values could really care about me.  We went out a few times over the last year and a half.  Every time we had a wonderful time.  Without fail, though, every time the night drew to a close, I would get scared.  Really scared.  I was paralyzed with fear because he was just so fucking wonderful.  I would be devastated when the inevitable rejection came.  One night, I became so afraid, that I had a panic attack in the middle of dinner in the city.  As we walked to the car, the city fog made its appearance.  The night was damp and cool.  I sobbed, convinced that this would be the last time I would ever see him.  Nobody wants a crazy girlfriend.  And I had pretty much trademarked crazy that night. 

As we drove the fifty miles over the bridge to my home in Sonoma county, he handled the situation with so much compassion.  It was almost like he knew exactly how to defuse the anxiety.  He let me be quiet and breath.  But he would also periodically remind me that he was there.  He asked me questions.  He didn’t try to make me laugh or patronize me.  He just tried to ground me.  He did everything they teach health care professionals about dealing with anxiety-plagued patients.  It was amazing.  Of course, I was still convinced that was the last time I would ever see him. 

I got home and finally looked at my phone.  A text from my little brother read “how’d it go.  Best night ever?”  I just replied “not so much.”  Immediately, my phone was buzzing.  I picked it up and took a verbal beating that lasted about 20 minutes from a kid so irate with my self-disparaging behavior that he lit me up with every profanity he could find in English, along with three other languages, and a few he made up, I’m pretty sure.  When he finally said “What the fuck is wrong with you Angela?”  All I had was “I don’t deserve him.” 

Conrad wasn’t the only person concerned with my behavior.  My girlfriends threatened to disown me if I didn’t find some belief in myself, in the fact that I could be happy.  One guy at work walked in my office not too long ago, he said “I was thinking about you last night.  I was going to ask if you ever talked to that guy anymore.  Then I remembered you fucked it up.  I just wanted to remind you that you fucked it up.”  Thanks, Pedro.  That was a huge help.  But he was right.  Because that’s usually what I do.  Nobody can turn pixie dust into a giant, steaming turd like I do.  Because I DON’T DESERVE ANY BETTER.  Period.  Done.  End of conversation. 

Now, back to all that talk at the beginning about why I write.  I write to find a way to get right with myself.  I talk about the fear and anxiety because it helps me control it.  But until now, it has never made me feel any more worthy.  The other day, one of the most magnificent women in my life, a friend for more than a decade texted me and said “Everyone wants to be happy, Ang.  Everyone except you.”  Again, I repeated my mantra to her:  “It’s not that I don’t want to be happy, D.  It’s just that I don’t think I deserve it.”  To which she responded: GET.  THE. FUCK. OVER.  YOURSELF.  So, I did.  I called that man.  I told him everything.  I told him why I could never let myself get too close to him.  I told him that he deserved better.  I told him that it’s much easier for everyone if he found someone worthy of him.  Through more time zones than I can count, he told me that he’s perfectly capable of deciding what he wants and what is good for him.  So, I believed him.  Even though it was hard.  So, fucking hard.  I’ve lived my life believing that happiness is a frivolous luxury that will end up punishing those who are not deserving of it.  But I’m going to take the gamble.  I’m going to believe that happiness is a real thing.  That love can also be a thing.  Maybe I’ll find out in Greece in January. 

-Inner Peas

Porpoising

I have always associated myself with dolphins.  They’re pretty cool.  They swim.  They surf.  They feast.  The mate.  That’s pretty much a dolphin’s life.  If they drank wine, they would totally be my spirt animal.  We rarely think about their cousin, the porpoise.  The porpoise is, essentially, the homely cousin in the cetacean order.  They are shorter, stalkier, and more erratic than their finned, mammalian family members.   Even though they are though and beautifully marked, porpoises aren’t as fit and attractive as dolphins, so they are often cast off as outcasts, rejects, in-notables.  But still, porpoises are cute and fun and the bob up and down.  They’re just real likable. And relatable. 

I started thinking about the porpoise last week.  I was really tired.  Of a lot of things.  Mostly I was tired of people who are underqualified to do simple tasks.  Just as I was about to unleash my mental garbage on someone, I closed my eyes and I saw a very vivid picture from my past.  It was a memory from one of my earliest days in the Coast Guard.  I don’t remember the exact scenario.  I feel like it was something like throwing a tow line to a vessel in distress, but as I heaved the monkey’s fist, I stepped on the line, it tied a bowline around my ankle and as I was dangling between boat, not only didn’t the slack in the line get caught in the props, but it also pulled two other crewmembers into the water and I was forced to watch them drown while I hung, suspended by my ankle from the tow line in the frigid winter Puget Sound waters. 

What really happened was I tangled a tow line during a training evolution, and while passing the line to another boat, it ended up in a tangled heap in the water and I spent six hours untangling and drying it.  But during the training debrief, I had eight pairs of eyes on me asking what went wrong.  I remember my face getting hot.  So hot I thought the skin was melting off.  Someone asked, “What happened, Angela?”  All I could say was “I guess I dropped the ball.”  Silence.  More silence.  Awkward silence.  Then the guy who was driving the boat looked at me and said “You didn’t just drop the ball, Angela.  You dropped it.  Tripped over it.  Kicked it.  Watched it roll down the gutter, fall into the storm drain.  It sat in the sewer for a few hours until high tide came and swept it out to sea where a baby Dall’s Porpoise…A BABY…Choked on in and died.  He died because of you.”   

After that brief, yet illustrated diatribe ended.  I didn’t say anything.  I just mentally envisioned that ball rolling down the gutter.  Then, in my mind, I saw that baby Dall’s porpoise washed up on the beach with the ball he choked on, hanging out of his mouth.  I couldn’t sleep for months.  It was horrifying.  All because of a tangled heaving line that I fixed by myself.  But it left an impression.  It was a statement made by a man so intelligent that I couldn’t ever imagine being his equal. 

Well, last week, as I was in the midst of a mind boggling situation with someone as equally inept as I was on what we will now refer to as that “line passing day,” I heard those same words escape my lips.  To a grown person.  So, I sat for a few minutes and remembered where they came from, nearly 16 years before.  I was both outraged that I had to use that mantra to another adult and amazed that I could recite it without hesitation.  As I sat, I thought to myself, “You need to tell him the impact that he made on your life.”  But still I was torn.  I was torn between being angry at myself for losing my cool and being angry at myself for repeating the words that had left me alone on so many sleepless nights.  I was torn between reaching out to a man whose words had kept me up so many nights, and the rejection that might result from finally admitting that to him. 

Well, if you know me, you know I can’t keep my mouth shut.  So I did it.  I sent him an email.  A day or two passed, and I hadn’t heard back from him.  Naturally, I figured that he still considered me a porpoise slaughter.  I let it go.  I had said what I needed to say.  At least it was done then.  Then, this morning, after five days off, I logged into my email. As I sifted through a pile of email, mostly of little consequence, I spotted his name at the bottom.   Maybe I was scared to open it.  Maybe I thought it was spam.  I ignored it.  For a few hours anyway.  Then, at lunch, I remembered that email was still sitting in my inbox. 

After I finished my leftover pot roast, I went back to my computer and read the email.  I read it. Then I read it again.  After that, I read it one last time, for good measure.  And after all those readings, I finally understood what he was saying.  He said stuff.  But he was honest.  He said that sometimes he wants to do something different, but he stays because of days like this.  He said that, maybe, he once thought himself to bit a badass.  Without saying it, he said “I’m bobbing up and down, too.”

If I saw that man tomorrow, I would hug him so tight, I might never let go.  Not because he taught me the most influential lesson I have ever learned about responsibility.  Even though he did that, he also taught me about highs and lows.  He taught me that even though your head is under water, you can still breath. 

Porpoises are fucking bad asses.  They get the back seat to dolphins.  We all want to be dolphins.  But nobody ever called surviving “dolphining.”  It’s called porpoising for a reason. 

-Inner Peas