unraveling the past

Before moving any further forward, let me take a couple of steps back. Because life certainly didn’t start following adolescence, even though it feels that way sometimes.

Like I said, I had a nice family and a good upbringing. My dad worked hard to provide for his family, eager to give us everything his childhood, which bordered on poverty, couldn’t. He worked in computer sales, climbed the ladder, built a home in the suburbs in 1974, acquired a cobalt blue Volvo station wagon in 1980 and eventually opened his own computer business.

My mom stayed home, walked us to the bus stop before school, greeted us on our return, made us snacks and played games with us. She adored and loved my sisters and I; she was (and is) the quintessential caretaker: Loving, funny, sweet and full of energy.

We ran around the neighborhood, we rode bikes, we built forts and we served pink lemonade at sidewalk lemonade stands. We took vacations to the beach, to the desert, even to Hawaii. We did our homework, did our chores and did our Catholic duties (mass on Sunday morning, Catholic school on Wednesday night). We were a family of five. We grew up together in the suburbs. And we had everything we needed, and often more.

And like any family, we had our issues. Mom and dad argued regularly. Dad worked too much and was, at times, unintentionally emotionally detached. Mom was, at times, depressed and unintentionally needed us too much. Dad became angry; mom painted anger as unacceptable. Dad withdrew; mom gave guilt trips and silent treatment. We hid and pretended nothing was wrong.

And things weren’t all that wrong – just enough to lead my sisters and I into habitual guilt, worry, insecurity and, later, the classic consequences of such. Nothing tragic. Nothing monumental. Just regular life, our regular average life that I can’t help contemplating, curious to know about the sequence of events and decisions that shape the person one becomes – that shape the person I’ve become.

Worry and fear were sewn into our beings, as if they were necessary to our own survival. We worry about what others think, worry about what we think, worry about what we’re doing and worry about what we’re going to do – it seems to never end. And with such incessant worry comes incessant guilt. If you can’t stop questioning and second-guessing what you do, you can never reach a place of approval or satisfaction, from yourself or anyone else.

I believe the inconsistencies and blurred lines in my life—never feeling quite sure of my behaviors, my decisions and myself—keeps the wheels of fear and worry and guilt spinning and nagging. It’s a cycle I fell into so long ago it’s melted into my every move, Most days, I try to undo it.

Waiting for a soft landing

But leaving didn’t mean I’d left much behind. I took my ingrained inclinations with me. And recreated a similar scenario amongst new people.

A new job, a first real job, tugged me away and asked me to reconsider my life. I had one foot through the door and the other grounded in a familiarity too comfortable to abandon. I hastily lured a new boyfriend—so new, we’d only dated for about a month—south and clenched tightly to my old security blanket.

The new job, the new people, stood at the edges, inviting me to come along but I hesitated, opting to retreat to the dark corners of my dingy, overpriced apartment. I blamed the boyfriend for holding me back, pouted and picked fights. It took years for me to realize I was alone responsible for my own stagnancy.

So rather than taking charge, rather than working to undo my unhappiness, I shrugged helplessly. I tossed and turned and cried about my stomach pain, cried about my constipation, cried about weight gain, cried about everything but the real problem at hand.

At work, life wanted to give. At home, it wanted to take. I ignored many of work’s offerings and gave myself up to whatever home needed. I gave but it wasn’t a selfless sort of giving; my giving—my staying home—was also my own personal shell, a place and excuse to hide from the scary new world that was unfolding before me.

And so the scary new world spit me out. It tried but I wouldn’t listen. Who can blame it for giving up? Not me, at least not anymore. Laid off exactly one year from the date I was hired, I moved back home where I teetered between the new (not so new) boyfriend and the old friends, struggling for something familiar, something assuring, something that told me I was in a good place, doing good things.

I spent the next five years hovering awkwardly, searching for a soft landing.

dysfunctionality

We were like a dysfunctional family, although none of us were connected by blood. Instead we were brought together by something our blood relatives couldn’t provide: A sense of belonging, acceptance, love maybe, none of which we would actually find from such a hodgepodge of maladjusted outcast types.

I had a loving and supportive family. Yet, even as a child, I felt out of sorts. As soon as age gave me the freedom, I gravitated toward people with problems. Somehow in my eyes, those problems, translated into appeal. I was intrigued by people who fought the norm, even if their crusade was as intellectually empty as a long night of partying, hanging out car windows, stealing half-racks of cheap beer and robbing ATMs. Fascinated with trouble and troublemakers, I found myself also in trouble, a common accomplice. In fact, I managed to select the lead troublemaker as my partner and kept him around—in spite of crude and twisted disrespect—for an unfathomably long time, keeping me high in the hierarchy.

Our dysfunctional family did everything together, so long as it involved drinking in ridiculously large quantities. We found solace in our familiar faces and phrases. Our shared appetite for over-indulgence—for filling a hole likely neglected years earlier—bound us and kept us convinced that what we were doing was not only acceptable but good. In fact, if you didn’t want to get plastered, you risked degrading verbal assault in the form of: “You fucking pussy.” I’m not sure whether any of us genuinely cared about the well being of our cohorts – I’m not sure any of our relationships could be rightfully considered friendships. Rather, we were dependent on one another to defend our bad habits as good. It seemed we stuck together more because we needed to than because we wanted to – as most dysfunctional families do.

The cast was classic: There was the odd artist type. The obnoxious life-of-the-party. The one who was willing to try heroin. The other who tried crack. The goof who got sloppy. The adrenaline junkie who walked the edge of high-rise buildings. The musician who would never start a band. The doormat who’d do anything for the troublemakers. The one who always seemed fully capable of leaving but didn’t. The one who slept with anyone for attention. And so on.

I feared leaving. I wasn’t scared to miss my so-called boyfriend. I was scared to be without my family. I was scared to be alone. Not until my early ‘20s when I landed a job in another state was I finally able to escape. I almost went back a few times. But it never felt the same. I had abandoned them and they no longer treated me as a member of the family. Aged and drawn further to the earth, their faces looked vacant as I described what I had been doing, how the new job went. I stopped talking as their attention shifted elsewhere, to someone who had never left, someone who wanted to get wasted, someone who still had a familiar face and phrase, someone who wasn’t such a fucking pussy.

it's just life

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about life lately. I cringe when I type that because it sounds so generic and cliché. It’s vague and could mean almost anything but it’s true. I’m not sure if it’s age or just me that’s lately brought a sort of increased consciousness to everything around me but, these days, I can’t live a day without thinking about what it means.

I’m trying to change. And I guess by that, I mean grow. I want advancement out of old ways and old thinking. I want to break free from old patterns and adjust the lens I view life from. I want to know what I want, be sure of what I want and be happy with what I want once I find it.

So I’ve started with trying to figure out just what it is I want. I suppose, like most people, I want a lot of things. I mean, ultimately, we all know it’s happiness (or however you define it) but what combination of things—what balance of people and experiences—brings happiness?

Life is meant for ups and downs, naturally – you really can’t have one without the other. But lately, my highs have been super sunny highs and my lows have been well, you know, low. I’d like to pull them a bit closer to each other. Sure, throughout life, I’ll go up and I’ll go down. But I don’t want to fly so high that I have to fall so hard.

I suppose the idea is getting to a place where you confidently handle the lows as moderately as you handle the highs. And if you’re viewing life from a place you feel sure of, accepting of, confident about and content with, then the ebbs and flows will be easier currents to endure.

My early adult life, so far, has been wrought with confusion, uncertainty and a lack of confidence. Such has led me to stay in relationships better off left, deny myself experiences that I’d been better off experiencing and block myself from understanding there’s a better way to live.

But I’m making it sound worse than it is. Course I’m leaving out all the good stuff (you wouldn’t want that whole chapter right now anyway). Life has been good to me, really, it has. And, primarily, because I believe it has. Indeed, it’s what you make of it or, better put, how you see it. And being somewhat of an optimist, I like it.

It’s just that lately, I question a lot more, I feel a lot more, maybe too much. It’s just one small lifetime really. From afar, it’s pretty basic and it will end, as with everything and everyone. Sometimes the end doesn’t feel so far off; other times I feel I have eons to work with. And then there’s the thought that something comes after … but who knows really.

I guess, like most, I like to think of it as all one giant learning experience. That I will forever grow and learn. That each year will bring a new lesson. And I will keep myself open to everything new to me and somehow that will keep me fulfilled. And life’s small revelations will keep me entertaining and understanding life on higher levels—and feeling happy because of it. Maybe.

don't let it go to your head

Self-flaunting, I’ve always tried to steer clear of it. When a friend asked me if I wanted to join a local community of bloggers, I panicked like a little kid at Show ‘n’ Tell. After a few days of fretting over what it might mean to have a blog (Who will read it? What will I say? Is blogging self-absorbed?), I agreed. Nervously, I pecked out a few entries, but never consistently enough to garner any kind of following – who wants to follow a blog that hasn’t been updated in months? Eventually, my blog—sad and inactive—was killed to make room for bloggers actually interested in blogging.

But suddenly today, four years later, I’m interested in having a blog. It doesn’t have to be for flaunting purposes, I tell myself, but rather to force me to write more often, with intent and for an audience, even if it’s an audience of only one and that one person is me. ‘Cause regardless of who reads it (or who doesn’t), I’m still threatened by the chance someone will and that’s more motivating for thoughtful writing than a locked journal, no?

So here I am. And nice to meet you. Suppose I’ll start with a brief rundown of myself. I live and write in the same small city I grew up in. Sometimes, I live with my parents’, other times I live at the house I moved into with the boyfriend about two years ago. I’ve been thinking about furniture and paint and yards so often, I’m sure I’ll be moving back in soon. I have two older sisters, one in town and another that fled long ago. I’ve been keeping journals since I can remember. I was a goofy kid and a tomboy at times. I felt guilty and insecure often, landing me in the hands of jerk-off boyfriends for far too many years. Writing was the only time I felt confident, or at least functional, so I kept it up, freelancing here and there. I freelanced and worked shit jobs for five years until I found a full time—and unglamorous—writing gig, which like any job, has its pros and cons. I don’t take jobs (or careers, if you prefer) seriously anymore. I’d rather focus on more important stuff, like family, friends, health, good times, etc. Finally finding a “real” job coincided with finding a “real” relationship, though I’ve had to retrain myself to understand how to behave in one. I’m pretty basic. I like sleeping (diagonally usually), eating (peanut butter mostly) and being around people (genuine entirely). I’m taking yoga seriously again and reading a book about gardening so I can understand how plants grow and stuff. I don’t really know who I am but, for the first time in my life, I half-smile when I walk down the street. And I think that’s a good start.

Spinning: The Shaky Hands’ self-titled debut (Holocene Music label)

Reading: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez