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Hello Darkness, my old friend.

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     “If I were thinking clearly? If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark and that only I can know. Only I can understand my own condition. You live with the threat, you tell me. You live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too.” Virginia Woolf to Leonard Woolf, The Hours       The best, most effective way I know how to communicate is to write. I come from an exceedingly verbose family and the only way I’ve ever been able to organize my thoughts is to write them down. (Put the rage on the page ladies!) If I stare at the words long enough and reorder them a dozen times, they start to make sense. I don’t know if this makes me a writer, but it means I write. A lot. My phone is full of notes and observations, funny comments from eavesdropping and general thoughts. The only reasons I choose to share with others is because I hope it helps. It may not and it may annoy the hell out of you that I am so transp
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A Resolution

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       I realize it’s almost March but  I have something to say about New Years resolutions. I love them!  Who cares if statistically people don’t carry them out, I love the hope. The hope for a change, the plan to redirect or pivot and even when it doesn’t fully work the way you think it will, something happens. I’ve learned through the years (and therapy) that I have a tendency to go full throttle when I want to do or learn something. Age has taught me the art of a good pace. I didn’t teach myself how to cook by reaching to the Mount Everest of recipes, I started with a pot of beans. The year I decided to read 50 of the best books of the 20th century, I challenged myself to read a chapter a day. Rome wasn’t built in a day and the rail roads all started with one nail. There was no possible way I could set goals in January. I was still in a depressive fog that meant I couldn’t see further than my day but now I’m feeling a little lighter and way more hopeful.      During the pandemic I
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Start Here

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     Have you ever seen “Julie and Julia”, or “Under the Tuscan Sun”? “Wild”? You know that whole subsection of movies where privileged, white women are magically transported to another part of the world. They learn valuable lessons from the natives and find their true selves. They cook. They have 1-2 (dozen) emotional breakdowns. They have wild, messy hair. They have an almost saint-like supportive friend or partner. About 6 months into this global pandemic, I woke to a startling revelation. This is my life. Like the scene in Rosemary's Baby when our heroine wakes up during the satanic impregnation ritual and says "this isn't a dream, this is really happening!" I thought all of those movies were escapists fantasies but, the joke is on me because now I'm living in one of them.      Maybe we all feel that way this year. Lost and trying to stay open minded to the world around us. Like Julie Roberts in "Eat, Pray, Love", I'm filled with anxiety
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1500 words on talking about politics with your family.

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How to talk about politics with your family...in one word- Don’t. It’s really that simple. This isn’t some antiquated rule about not discussing sex, religion, or politics. If you know me, you know my family mainly talks about sex and religion. And we used to talk about politics, but with the current administration, it’s practically impossible. ‘Politics is personal’ couldn’t be more applicable today as we sit across from people that justify such horrible human rights atrocities. Trust me, I’m not being polite, this is self-preservation. Do I really wanna debate with the person who believes freedom of speech should only be extended to a real estate blowhard and not to the black athlete showing respect to by kneeling? What’s to debate? You’re so far from human decency, I have no shot of having a conversation. I talk to so many people who feel this way about their parents and families. There’s an entire generation of kids who look at their parents undying love for Trump the way the
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1000 words on discovering I’m loved.

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I am 36 years and until recently I didn’t realize I deserved to be loved just as I am. I had never fully considered that even as flawed as I am, that I could still be loved. My past and negative traits do not exclude me from love, but why did I not know this? Certainly I have loved people and I knew people loved me but there was always a voice that said you don’t deserve any of it. You don’t deserve love.  I recently had a really stressful month. I was in school and working full-time. I was buying a house and was the realtor doing the deal. At the end of it, I was relieved and exhausted and I should have been happy. I had everything I worked for and more. But a voice continued to tell me I didn’t deserve. I didn’t deserve the house I worked for. I didn’t deserve the relationship I worked for. My friends. All of it. I heard this voice before but now I’m what should have been one of the happiest of my life, it was louder than ever. I become edgy and depressed, snapping at people and
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750 words on grief, forgiveness and my father.

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I was organizing my bookshelves today and I instinctively pulled out Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. The first line of the book reads, “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity.” How succinct. How perfect. Didion’s cool detachment after witnessing the death of her husband is overwhelmingly emotional yet distant and observational . Life does indeed change in the instant. I’ve had two deaths in my life that happened so quickly and they changed my life. I understand Didion’s detachment from the actual event because it’s how I felt. When I was told my father had died, I was preparing to go out to a bar. I told my friends, took a shot and went dancing. As I stood in the hospital room watching the doctors unplug and take my friend off life support, I left. I went outside and smoked. It was all too much. Everyone around me handled those situations differently, but both deaths had a permanent and
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1000 words on abortion.

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Let’s talk about abortion. No really, let’s talk about it. Everyone else is and just like me, I’m sure you have an opinion. As we discuss this we must remember, our opinion doesn’t really matter. What matters is what each particular woman chooses to do with her body. We will not be discussing incidents that involved rape or incest, because quite frankly if you don’t agree that those women and children deserve to terminate their pregnancy, you’re so far past human compassion we have nothing to discuss. To belabor the point, if you think the 11 year old in Ohio who was raped deserves to now carry her rapists baby- we’re done here. Also, if you say things like ‘the baby could be Einstein or Beethoven,’ I can’t. The baby could also be Hitler or Ann Coulter.  Why are people so adamant about abortion restrictions lately? Did the #metoo movement scare men so much they had to think of a new way to silence and control women? Did Dr. Ford’s testimony make you think you didn’t have ownership
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