LaurieWrites

November

People die. They marry. Rain falls, and then, an oddly warm sun shines. 

None of it makes any sense. Moments of it make every kind. 

We walked up the hill behind the car with a beloved body inside that it made no sense was dead. It was an impossibly beautiful day, radiant with late fall sun. We didn't know where we were, really, literally or figuratively. We'd seen this church, but never the cemetery. We'd seen her dead, but never where she'd rest. And when we saw it, this sun-crazy place, we were, I could tell, unexpectedly, collectively pleased. Who would not want to rest here? Who who had loved the outdoors would not want to eventually land here, leaves and birds and trees?

Besides the obvious answer of a person who died entirely too soon, there was some kind of seemingly collective calling in of eventual redemption among what had just seemed a waste, a fight against a disease that took and tested and eventually killed.

I have a phrase that I've come to use over the years, "locate in space." If you matter, if it matters, if I can locate you in space amid the inevitable chaos, I'm okay. If I feel you must need me, must need to find me for any reason, I'm available. You can locate me. 

That's what we were doing. We were located in space, you could find us all there, your spirit, I guess, if it needed to. You were there, I'm sure, because you were powerful like that. We were locating, all lost in whatever our perception and processing was of this event, and no matter what the hem of Daddy's suit, the sun glint off of Patrick's phone, Jimmy's cigar smoke, Billy's grieving dog on a leash. It brought us back. 

It's weird, the things that call you home. You may have to work harder for them over the years, older as you are, more inured. They're still there. They will always be. 

You leave someone you loved for better or for worse in the ground on a sun-speckled hill in a county just north of where you live. You make a phone call or wait for a text message from someone you're not sure at all you love but you're fairly sure you do -- although maybe you do or don't or probably you shouldn't -- from states away at the same time. Your relatives ask you who you're seeing and you can't appropriately answer according to the family construct, because there is no acceptable answer besides yes, this. Your job sucks. 

All of this swirls around you. 

It swirls around me. 

It is so hard. 

And meanwhile, amid this, you know that ease is around the corner. You know for goddamned sure that there is one brave, impossibly difficult step between you and the next part, before it all smooths out, as it must, to make the second half so immeasurably better than the first, as you know you need it to be, in this particular combination of human body and brain. 

And you know you have to take it. You know the story  is  playing out -- like Sons of Anarchy, like Hamlet, like The Facts of Life. You know that you are merely the instrument to see it through. 

And that's the part that's hard. That's the part that exposes what you're paying for, whatever past-life-things you think you did, and that after that, after you accept the hugeness that you may lose and the beyond-hugeness that you'll gain? You know although you don't want to know at all, really, that that's where it is. 

That's the real thing. That's the good stuff. 

You're kind of ready, though. You're done. Alert Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the media, the people in boxes underground who would have ultimately loved you no matter what, who do not care at all from where they lay beyond what it looks like except please, please, please be happy?

You know like they would have ultimately, like maybe they knew before you. That you are so, so  beyond, so overdue. 

Life List 2011

Camp Mighty begins tomorrow night in Palm Springs, and I'm late with my life list. 

Oh hey! Here I am! Already here, just finishing this post now. (Actually this is last night, pre-space party, to which I went without a "costume" that met the theme. This spurred another list item. Please see below.) 

Of course I'm late. Water is wet, etc. 

And oh, here I am, again! Just now posting this, on Saturday, at 3:47 PST. 

Can you tell this exercise freaks me out a little? Well, it does, to tell the truth, and to top off my problem here, the list I drafted last week (sitting in a bar, impulsively, after Kris intelligently got in a cab to go home) is in a notebook that is way, way back in Maryland, in a purse I swapped out the other day. Change bags carefully, people. Sigh. 

Anyway, I just thought that since this is supposed to be a positive, aspirational thing most of all, I'd do it over again, stream of consciousness, here. And that also I would shut up and just start writing. So here we go. 

1. Shoot an Operation Smile surgical mission. 

2. Have Boston Terriers in my house again and work more actively with senior rescue. 

3. Have a yard. 

4. Pay off all student loan debt early. 

5. Embrace my most hated holiday: go to a Halloween-type event in a costume and not feel like a fool and also not complain about it. 

6. Hike the Grand Canyon. 

7. Finish the Ancestry.com family tree for both sides of my family. 

8. Travel the regions in Ireland and Germany where my relatives originated. 

9. Digitize as many of the White family photos as possible and share them with the whole family. 

10. Have an online presence that reflects my personality and my skills, and what I have accomplished so far in writing and photography -- a portfolio, a business site and a blog. Also, to help Draft Day Suit be the best that it can be, along with the other sites I write for. 

11. Have Washington Capitals season tickets. 

12. Have competent knife skills, and a really great set of kitchen knives. 

13. Have somewhere I can go to stay on a beach that is mine, anytime. 

14. Be self-supporting strictly through writing/photo/media work. 

15. Grow a hydrangea and a lilac bush. 

16. Print out and organize copies in books and frames of all of my images that move me or that I want to keep off of the computer. 

17. Find the courage to visit my grandmother's grave, at least once. 

18. Be able to hold crow, headstand, side crane, wheel and all other yoga poses that I currently cannot successfully hold. 

19. Visit the rest of the 50 states. 

20. Have a 41st birthday party, because I wasn't ready for 40. 

21. Have my grandmother's ring resized and made more stable so I can actually wear it. 

22. Go to a Super Bowl and a Stanley Cup championship game with Sarah. 

23. Grow a garden -- even just an herb garden or a few flowers -- without killing it. 

24. Get overall financial house in order so it is not a constant source of anxiety. 

25. Have a Christmas Eve tradition that brings me joy. 

26. See every country in Europe.

27. Go back to Vietnam, and to Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. 

28. Find a place called Dodge and get the hell out of it. 

29. Understand how to competently use Speedlite flash and studio lighting. 

30. Work in a darkroom again. 

31. Publish an article in a national magazine. 

32. Get my 200-hour yoga certification. 

33. Visit the White House, go into the Washington Monument, and other things I've never done because I live in the D.C. area. 

34. Actively support surgeries for at least five children per year through Operation Smile. 

35. Go on one silent weekend retreat per year. 

36. Drive cross-country. 

37. Find a way to give back to my parents in the significant way that they have given to me. 

38. Go to Michael's Virginia Tech graduation. 

39. Get another tattoo before I turn 41. 

40. Host a Thanksgiving dinner. 

41. Have a regular practice of having people over to my house for meals and conversation. 

42. Have a women's weekend in a pretty place by the water with some of my closest friends. 

43. Read every classic novel I feel I should read before I die. 

44. Purge all belongings that have no purpose in my life -- clothing, books, stuff -- and be at peace with the basics that remain. 

45. Spend some time with Elisa and Maria in the Bay area. 

46. Visit the Alamo. Remember it. 

47. Go back to Houston and see my remarkable group of women of the blogs who live there. 

48. Catalog and recognize all birthdays for all important people in my life. Send the damn cards. 

49. Finally -- finally! -- visit Vicky in Seattle. 

50. See Duran Duran in London. 

51. Take trips on all major Amtrak routes in the U.S. 

52. Do something hands-on and helpful in New Orleans.

53. Do the Edgar Allen Poe touristy stuff and other fun things I've never tried in Baltimore.

54. Throw a crab feast for my half-birthday.

55. Learn to pack a suitcase competently.

56.  Have Maryland basketball season tickets -- men and women. 

57. Publish a book. 

58. Understand New York  -- the subway system, visit all boroughs, know Manhattan like the back of my hand. 

59. Cultivate a competent slap shot.     

60. Learn to play the drums. 

61. Go to an Orioles-Nats game. 

61. Actually record a fun and ridiculous podcast with Sarah. 

62. Go to Ireland with my sister. 

63. See all the oceans. 

64. Buy myself a pair of diamond earrings. 

65. Have someone who knows what she is doing rewrite my resume to reflect my skills and experience. 

66. Photograph a birth. 

67. Drive on the other side of the road in England. 

68. Own a pair of ruby slippers. 

69. Pay someone's college tuition.

70. Have a photo site with Laurie.

71. Understand how to design a basic website in a variety of platforms.

72. Publish an op-ed. 

73. Visit Karen and Shannon in Ottawa. See the rest of Canada and all of my friends there, too. 

74. Throw a great 50th anniversary party for my parents. 

75. Take a food and wine trip to Italy. 

76. Spend a whole summer and a whole winter at the beach. 

77. Publish a piece in Salon, Slate, Washingtonpost.com, 

78. Understand wine, maybe at the sommelier level. 

79. Take my mom on a trip anywhere of her choosing, on me. 

80. Know how to give a basic haircut without ruining someone's life. 

81. Consistently practice receiving compliments with gratitude, not apologies or self-effacing comments. 

82. Hike a (smallish) mountain.

83. Sing backup in a band 

84. Volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. 

85. Complete my local Mental Health Association hotline training, finally, and volunteer there. 

86. Write a short story I don't hate. 

87. Become a doula. 

88. Learn American Sign Language. 

89. Own a core wardrobe of green dresses. 

90. Have a king-sized bed with really good sheets, an actual duvet, and pillows that don't drive me crazy. 

91. Create an annual tradition with my cousins. 

92. Perfect a variety of vinaigrettes. 

93. Become conversationally proficient in French again. 

94. Have a full Christmas tree of my own ornaments, and also a beachy, small tree with the ones I've bought on vacations. 

95. Go to Bonnaroo and the Virgin Festival in London (or at least see a show at Wembley Stadium.) 

96. Refinish and use an awesome antique writing desk. 

97. Outfit my whole kitchen with good small appliances and all gadgets I need to make me feel like I'm not in college anymore. 

98. See every artist live who is left on my list -- Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, and I know there are more. 

99. Drink coffee in a Parisian cafe.

100. To acknowledge the possibility of falling madly, yet sanely, in real, live adult love with an actual functional human being who feels the same way. Maybe let them live in my house. 

And most importantly: 

100. Be able to confidently say that I love what I do, that the structure of my daily life reflects what I care about, what I'm good at, and how I can best contribute in words and pictures. Oh, and that I love where and with whom I live, and that I am content in my life.  

I picked five big goals off of this list to share with my group, that I'm going to work on extra special over the next year. There are some that I know I can do more easily that I didn't put on my five-things list. I saved some tough stuff for that one. I'll share that later. 

And if you've ever thought this activity sounds lame or ridiculous or like something you shouldn't really have to do in an organized way? Well, I thought the same thing. I blew it off and shot it down as stupid for a long time. And at least in my case, I was totally and completely wrong. I just sat in a room with 20 strangers for three hours. I stood up and I said what I wanted, I acknowledged that I need help with some of it, and I listened to the rest of them do the same. It was one of the most powerful, uncomfortable, cool, inspiring, and sometimes just plain enjoyable things I've ever done. 

Thanks for hanging in there with me. I'll keep you posted. 

Additions: 

I keep thinking of new stuff. 

102. Go to the Olympics. 

103. Go to a Sox game with TwoBusy and ClumberKim. 

What I Love

I wrote this post almost exactly a year ago. It's partly why I'm going to California, so I'm going to do the whole "don't blow NaBloPoMo by doing dumb things like repost posts" and repost it. 

As much as I really am my very harshest critic (seriously -- the trash you talk about me will never surpass the voices in my head) there are some things I like about myself too. For instance, I have better-than-average taste in music and a sense of responsibility to other people and the world at large. I understand how to competently merge on the highway. I make a kickass grilled cheese sandwich and I do not purchase cheap beer.

But when it comes down to the very awkward -- for me, anyway -- question of what I love about myself, I think the most important thing is something that I can only describe as my constant engagement with life, and a commitment to learning and experiencing new things as much as I can until I die.

That sounds wrong, and vaguely awkward. I can't really sum it up.  

EXCUSE ME WHO CAME UP WITH THESE PROMPTS ANYWAY?

But all I know is that my willingness to try new things -- to learn them or go to them or hang out with them or eat them or purchase them -- has made a profound and positive difference in my life.

It hasn't always felt like it was so great at the time. I climbed a rock wall once, for instance, and that pretty much sucked. I am a terrible rock climber. I don't have an extreme sports bone in my body, and I fear the destruction of years of reconstructive surgery and invasive orthodontia, to tell the truth. But when a (cute!) man with very serious looking climbing gear and an earnest expression handed me the little shoes and the helmet, at some point over the past decade I learned not to cry about it, but to put it on and try it until I either accomplished the goal or failed.

In this case I almost achieved the goal before I nearly stroked out -- major anxiety attack -- at the top. But the point is, I tried.

Over the past ten years, especially, I've had several opportunities to respond to negative situations -- heartbreak, depression, the impossible grief that comes with the deaths of some of the most important people in my life. And although some days it felt like swimming against every imaginable current just to meet the basic demands of my life as I was going through those things, I really never stopped living. I caved in all but the most basic, essential of ways. I raged and drank and babbled to my friends, but I never stopped, in very small and some very big ways, reaching for better.

I miraculously never stopped trying, even when the last possible thing I wanted to do was try anything. Even when the last thing I felt capable of was another activity or thought or plan.

This is the characteristic that led me to take a trip almost every month in 2005, the year the supposed love of my life left to follow his me-less dreams. I cried my way through the American Southwest for the first time, and ended up in California for the first time the following year. I also signed up for my first photography class in the deepest throes of depression following that breakup, and it would take an entire blog to describe the effect that has had on my life.

This is what led me to blogging and the rack of great friends I got from that, and back to school and across the world to take a cab across Hanoi alone and sit with kids who couldn't hear or speak, which was only one of the reasons that it didn't matter that our languages were different.

 

My rolling stone brain gives me my stories, by virtue of the hands and feet it sends on various travels and the mouth that goes along. And although my life may lack some of the fundamental things I still kind of believe I ultimately need to think it was what I wanted it to be, in the meantime I live it every day.

Because the alternative is horrifying. Because when I'm idle I'm insane. Because there is so much to do -- can't you see it all out there?

I don't wait for anyone to go with me, because I can't afford to.

Even when I'm sitting still, I'm planning. I'm dreaming and imagining and knowing that no matter how many years I have left, it will not be enough to do all of the things that I have the capacity both to rock and to fail on the face of this planet. And as much as that could be overwhelming, I'm just glad I still think that way.

I want to go everywhere.

I want to learn languages.

I want to see so much more live music.

I want to be the writer I've always wanted to be, in every way that I can possibly make that real.

I want to be part of a community -- a real one, one that is physical and that I can feel around me in my  house or on my street.

I want to take your picture.

I want to understand major political conflicts and economics and learn sign language and how to change my own oil.

And they're not all big things, either, the things I pick up. This fall I made chicken soup from scratch for the first time. It was a pain in the ass, but it was completely rewarding and now I know how and I can do it again.

As long as I'm alive and capable, I won't ever stop learning. I won't ever stop doing stuff or going places or trying things. And I kind of love that about me.

No, not that kind of cuff.

I am so tired of bad or just annoying news. I'm trying really hard to be positive because although some things are making me sad and some things are really on my nerves and I don't know how to handle some other things, I've got some other things to be very happy about.

So I'm trying to be good and I'm trying to be a grown-up and I'm trying to take care of some of the things that no one else but me can do. Like, I need to go to the dentist. I needed to find a new doctor. I need to get the bloodwork done that I've been putting off for a year. I need to get a (blech) mammogram. 

So I found the new doctor, and I made an appointment a couple of weeks ago, after my mom nagged and nagged and nagged for days. She just started going to her and said that I would like her, and when people in my life say that I tend to believe them, as prepared as they are for me to call bullshit on what and whomever.

I don't know what the ethics are of disclosing a doctor's name online, but let's just say that her last name? Is almost identical to that of a 140-character message that I send way too many times daily, except with a d in between the second "e" and final "t". Trippy, right? Gave me some serious joy. She was also lovely right off the bat -- maybe a little younger than I am, not creepy or distracted or cold, just warm enough, focused, direct. The office itself was also professional and fairly quiet, in the basement of a newish medical building, really nice except for its lack of any kind of 3G or regular G reception. Seriously. Phone dead the whole time, and you know how that flies with me. 

The medical assistant did her thing and then she took my blood pressure. It was 150 over 100, she said. Did I normally have high blood pressure? I told her no, and she said okay, the doctor would check it out. 

The doctor came in and asked me again what my normal blood pressure was, and I was all, I don't know, pi cubed? I don't know math. It's usually pretty normal, never been a problem. 

"Okay," she said. "That's something to keep an eye on. Plus, people are sometimes anxious or under duress when they come here." 

Under duress. Bingo. She just described everything. I neglected to cry like that "I MISS YOU JESSICA" jackhole in the State Farm commercial, but I kind of wanted to. Oh Dr. Twitter (not exactly, but that's what I'll call her) I am. I AM! Thanks for noticing.  

Then she decided to take it again, and I started to freak out a little. She spoke in slow, measured tones that make freaks like me crazier, as she wrapped the TOURNIQUET I MEAN CUFF around my arm and squeezed it and leaned down and read it and said "Hmm."

The 150 was the same, but we were down to 92 on the bottom.

Then she sat down on her little stool and started pounding away on her keyboard, making notes, no doubt, about my descent into hypertension and cardiac disease at 40.

"Okay. We need to monitor this. Let's have you monitor it at home daily for a month to see if there's any change, before we talk about other interventions."

Neat! Where would I procure a blood pressure cuff? Does Target carry blood pressure cuffs? MISSONI BY TARGET BLOOD PRESSURE CUFFS? Actually, what really immediately occurred to me was the blood pressure machine at the Giant that I'd stick my puny arm in when I was little just to watch it expand and retract, expand and retract, no doubt enraging a then-40-year-old woman whose doctor just told her the salad days (with dressing, anyway) were over. Oh hi, future self. Sorry for being a little asshole. 

I nodded calmly and didn't ask her what kind of cuff to get or how I was supposed to do all of the actions associated with a blood pressure reading, including the occasionally impossible task of interpreting numbers, by myself, upside down. Were there left-handed blood pressure machines?This would probably be its own special kind of hell.

I also started to feel a counterproductive pounding in my head, and I told her that yes, lately, I had felt this. I told her that sometimes I don't sleep very well and that on mornings after that I feel a little weird, a little more odd lately. She nodded her head and said yes, yes, yes to all of these things and I just wondered the whole time if there was a blood pressure app, if I could press my broken iPhone screen up to my bicep and have it spit out ridiculously accurate numbers. 

I'm really not sure I'm equipped to care for myself in my middle age, even, forget when I'm actually old. 

Anyway, I left, some crazy orders for tests I don't want clutched in my hand. I walked out into the sunny day, and I did what any mature woman of an advancing, withering age would do. 

I texted my mom. 

"I finally have high blood pressure like you said I was going to give myself. Yay." 

She asked me several questions and then she said "You'll need a cuff" and "What are you doing to follow up on the other stuff" and "Is she going to treat it" and what and when and then I went back to work. 

You know, 40? You're a riot. Lol. 

Lists suck generally so here are some lists.

It's not tomorrow in California, so I'm claiming that for NaBloPoMo. Also it's not like I'm doing this for a prize. And if I was? Oops. 

It's a little early to phone this in, but I'm in a jam because I was traveling this weekend and then there was this entirely engaging football game, so let me give you some lists rather than nothing at all. 

Five things my life eats, as in consumes them without my permission or awareness so that I can never find them when I need them, which is frequently, and have to replace them on a consistent basis: 

Hair ties. 

Contact lens holders. 

Corkscrews. 

Camera chargers. (See also phone chargers, computer chargers, any kind of charger, basically.) 

Olive green eyeliner. (I feel like I buy green eyeliner whenever I see it to prevent this problem, but yet and still, nowhere. I can always find the random brown I never use. No green.) 

Five main current earworms: 

Moves Like Jagger, Maroon Five (Hell. Hell on Earth. Plus no one will stop referencing it online, so, it's all SHE GOT THE MOOOOVVVVEEESSSS LIKE JAGGAH, SHE GOT THE MOOOOVVVVEEESSSSS LIKE JAGGAH around here) 

You Should Hear How She Talks About You, Melissa Manchester

Whip It, The Dazz Band

It's Raining Men (Hi. We're your Weather Girls.) (Horrible. Unmanageable.) 

Any of Dr. Hook's only three very famous songs, most likely When You're In Love With a Beautiful Woman, based entirely on mine and @parentopiadevra's latenight transgressions at Blogalicious. 

"You watch your friends, you better watch your friends." 

Five top-played songs on my main iTunes: 

Take It Easy On Me, Little River Band (shut up) 

Heavy Cross, The Gossip (have you heard Beth Ditto's voice? Because you should.) 

Jackson, Hem (Ditto Sally Ellyson) 

Jungleland, Bruce Springsteen (I went a little nuts when Clarence died and this upped the play count, for sure. This song will break your heart and put it back together a little. ) 

Where the Boat Leaves From, Zac Brown Band (shut up.) 

Five places I would live with little hesitation if someone presented me with a worry-free move and at least a lateral move job: 

San Francisco

Charlotte

London 

New York

Baltimore (I know. What can I say? I'm a Maryland girl.) 

Five best concerts I have ever seen (I'm just pulling the first five that come to my  mind, because it's impossible otherwise): 

Metallica, Capital Center. Just, holy hell. Holy hell. 

Elton John, Red Piano, Las Vegas

Prince, Nutter Center (ha.), Dayton, Ohio

Hem, Ram's Head, Annapolis

Raconteurs, 9:30 Club, DC

(And now I'm thinking Patty Griffin at Constitution Hall during most of which I cried, Duran Duran at Constitution Hall, 2000ish, the first time I saw them live, Pearl Jam at JazzFest in New Orleans, Red Hot Chili Peppers at Virgin Festival in Baltimore, The Killers at the Hard Rock in Vegas...I can go on and on for days. This is a tough one.) 

Five of my most frequently-stated words and phrases according to my own unscientific deduction, proving that I am neither articulate nor original in casual discourse: 

Seriously? 

Really? 

Whatever. 

Right. I know. RIGHT? 

Thanks. (I am a grateful sort in spite of myself.) 

Edited to add that I didn't include "fuck" which makes this the most inauthentic list of all time. And we hate inauthenticity around here, don't we? WE DO. 

Five things I wonder if I have enough of every time I go to the grocery store: 

Olive oil

garlic

protein sources

Milk (although I hardly drink it anymore.) 

avocados (am compulsive avocado buyer.) 

Five people who made me laugh this week: 

Kris

Deb

Samantha

Kim

Kelly

Five most very favorite yoga poses: 

Pigeon

forward fold

dolphin 

legs up the wall

Clearly I can't count. That's four. Returning to add: 

tie between savasana (corpse pose, where you just have to lie still.) and downward dog, because it makes me feel strong. 

Five most loathsome yoga poses that make me question my relationship to my namasted center: 

Chair (GAH CHAIR SUCKS OUCH CHAIR MY THIGHS BURN CHAIR BURN)

goddess (ironically named as goddesses ought not to suffer so.)

headstand (because I can't do it, mostly, and that gets on my nerves.) 

crow (see above) 

tree (I have no balance. My balance sucks.) 

There you have them. Boring. Wrong. I may supplement them later, but I think we all know that when I say I will I totally will not. 

Day Five Stream of Consciousness

I love NaBloPoMo for how it makes you scrounge a dark corner in a room, desperate for words, with five minutes left to spit them out. 

I love it for how it makes me remember that the reason why I picked this stupid name -- this LaurieWrites that I hate so very, very much -- was because I was halfway into my wine six years ago, broken hearted, desperate for an outlet, and this exact same space is what I found. 

I love it for how I know that other people I love and admire and respect are doing it, for how there is a quickening pulse in my strangely small collective of a writing world, that this year feels so much more vibrant, for some reason. 

I love how we have become more urgent as a result of what I'm guessing is our strange exhaustion. 

I love how there are three minutes left. 

I love how we're all still here. 

I love that I still think that I have something to say, that I agonize over topics and conclusions and constructs, even though there is no defined audience. 

I love that these posts don't get the perfect picture, that I don't care about the pixels and the diagrams. 

I love the messy and insane and the stressed and the everything of this. 

As a card-carrying glutton for punishment, I'm sure I always will. And I kind of love that knowledge too. 

Let Me Take Your Picture for Charity Water

Some of you who know me in real life know that this is turning out to be quite the year of change and transition for me. I turned 40 last December, which means I'm staring down the crazy barrel of 41 in just a few short weeks. (Oh my hell.) I have a lot of different ideas and plans and goals taking shape, as well as a lot of obviously more challenging things to go through on a daily basis, as I wrote about earlier this week.

Speaking of that, I am so grateful to the people who came and read here this week -- for the support, for the feedback and for what felt like a hundred awesome hugs, I swear. Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you, if you are back again. I really didn't know what to do or where to go with a lot of stuff that was in my head, and I'm very happy that I chose to come here. The morning I wrote that post I woke up and I thought, immediately, that I'd said too much and felt too much and I was going to go put that baby back in draft where it belonged. But by the time I did that, Tracey had written me the kindest comment and a person I'd never met had shared a story of great pain in response, so I had to leave it alone. 

And thank God, really. I really believe that the responses deepened my own understanding of what I was writing about. How much I love my family and my friends -- how I'd gone to the edge of disposing of a friendship for absolutely no reason, how I hadn't considered anything good about myself in the context of all I had convinced myself was bad. I got dms and emails and comments telling me things that I don't think people had ever felt they had a place to share. And people, themselves, wrote in response to the post on their own sites. I couldn't believe it. Tracey expanded on her comment and so did Schmutzie and I swear I felt like maybe it made a lot of this worth it? (Although I never want to go through anything like that again, make no mistake.) 

My blog is a virtual place that's given me a lot and I guess that continues to be so. I guess no matter what I think I've got all figured out, life still has the remarkable capacity to surprise me, every day. 

Anyway! In the interest of all of these goals and dreams and new things, and the good people I've had the fortune to meet in my on and now offline travels, I am going to Camp Mighty, which is, oh goodness, next week. Time is getting short. 

I am part of a team for this event that has committed to raising a certain amount of money for a very worthy cause -- Charity Water. Their mission is to bring clean and drinkable water to places around the world where that is not a given. 

Easy cause to support, right? 

Well, as part of my contribution, I need to raise at least $200 to support water conservation efforts in the places where Charity Water is currently working. Here is Eden's list of what some other people are doing. 

There are a few ways I can do this. 

I can take your picture. I have taken the pictures of many people and they didn't hate it. In fact, I think it's kind of fun to have me take your pictures, because I'm sort of a fool for the whole process, especially if you're the type who doesn't like having her picture taken. I really enjoy working with you and making you laugh so you forget you're supposed to hate it. I shoot: 

Grown-ups. (This one doesn't mind having her picture taken at all, but I've still taken some pretty good ones of her, I'll just go ahead and say it.) 

Little people. (This is Meghan. We are buddies. She doesn't have a blog. Yet.) 

Musicians who have no idea what I was doing. I mean, how weird is it that I have a picture of John Taylor's hands in my possession and he has no idea who in the hell I am? 

RELATED: JOHN TAYLOR'S HANDS. I was that close. Yes. I was. 

Not-people who think they are people. (This is my niece. She is very photogenic.) 

I can do a headshot or more casual portrait session anywhere in the DC metro area -- this includes Baltimore, Northern Virginia and pretty much anywhere else I can drive within an hour. I will happily work with pets and children, and also John Taylor, if you can scrounge him up for me again. I'd ask for a $50 donation to the cause for this, and that includes post-processing of your portraits, a cd of all useable images, and three prints. 

I can also send you a picture that is not of yourself, but is instead a print of any image in my collection. I will share a nicely-printed and perhaps even frame-accentuated print in your choice of size, for a donation of $20. (I'd do $15 but I'm eating some printing costs there because I don't bother doing it at home. Because, the agony.) 

Maybe you love San Francisco. 

Or the sun and the ocean. 

Or maybe, baby, you're a firework. (Or a sparkler, like Tarrant and Rebecca.) 

Or more the Lewis Carroll type. I'm sure there are some of you out there. 

I am in the process of trying to put some things on Etsy, but the uploading feature isn't cooperating with me and I really want to get this out there before I leave on a short trip this weekend. So I can provide you with a Flickr gallery that may include something you'd like. (I'm new at selling my stuff, so bear with me. I'm pretty easy to work with, I think.) 

NOTE: Since I wrote this below I've since gotten a clue that there is a direct Charity: Water donation page here. Super easy. 

Other things I can do for you, if photos aren't your thing? Well, we've got this little NaBloPoMo deal going on. If you're doing it and running out of ideas, I'd be happy to write a guest post on yours, also for a $20 donation. Sound cool? I think so. Writing this November is reminding me again how much better this blogging place is when we all hang out and write and read together. If that's something you'd be interested in, let me know and I'll work out a theme with you. 

With whatever I send you, you're guaranteed some surprises in the package -- a mix cd, most likely, or maybe...oh, I don't know. I guess you'll have to give it a shot. 

Sound cool? Great. Drop me a line at lauriesays@gmail.com, and we'll work out the details. 

Warm Card

I'm not proud of my behavior in Union Station last week. I'm really not. I'm also not proud of yelling at a stranger named Sergio in an unknown location, whose sole purpose in his job is likely to handle being yelled at by people like me. 

I'm also not proud of the fact that I'm listening to Air Supply on purpose right now, but the flip side of that is that I'm not ashamed, so whatever. 

YOU WANT TO CARRY ONNNNNNNNN. 

(Me, in Union Station, in happier, shinier times.) 

I took this crazy trip last week, from DC to New York to, er, Oxon Hill, Maryland, which is now herewith rechristened as "National Harbor", a fancy schmancy East Coast mini-Vegas of a place minus casinos and Elton John and coke and it's-totally-the-heat-not-the-humidity. So I'm wrong, it's minus almost all of the things that make Vegas Vegas, and I'm also pretty sure Nic Cage isn't going to be bottoming out in a hotel room there. But things are really big. 

My argument is failing here. 

Anyway, before I got back to National Harbor (good LORD people, this place is Oxon Hill. You know this, right? OXON HILL.) I was in New York, i.e., my favorite city in the whole wide world. I left Union Station because taking the train is one of my favorite things to do in life. And while I waited for my train, I decided to call my credit card company and confirm that my travel card was clear, as it certainly ought to have been, given that I returned the obscenely expensive camera lens rental six days before. 

I checked the website first, sitting amid a raucous group of Japanese tourists, all of us circled by a transit cop with a bomb-sniffing dog who really liked my bag, because hello there is always some errant piece of fruit or a whoopie pie or some shit in my bag that smells like drugs or a homemade bomb? The website said, "Fuck you, you still have that camera lens, as far as we're concerned," because of course it did. 

So I called Capital One, using the arduous iPhone keypad that I only use to enter bank and credit card pin numbers and to occasionally call a person I am required by law to call. 

"Hello, this is Capital One. This is Sergio. I am happy to help you today." 

"Hey Sergio. How are you?" (I am nice to these people. I am not an asshole. I swear to THE GOD WHO SMITES ME DAILY.) 

"I am doing well, hello, Mrs....White? How are you today?"

"I'm good, and it's not Mrs. And Laurie is good. Birthdate 12.27.70, pin number CAPITAL ONE SCREWS ME DAILY AND I LOVE IT SO HARD. 

(That is a joke. I did not say that.)

Then he asked me how he could help me, and basically I was like, look, Sergio, I need this pre-authorization code removed. I didn't buy anything, I took the shit back, it's gone from my life for half a pay period now. I didn't break it or lose it. I hate my pictures, I need to be able to buy wine and maybe a room in New York on this card because this is my TRAVEL NEW YORK CARD SO FUCKING FIX IT. 

"I am very sorry for your concerns, Mrs. White. I will see what I can do to alleviate your consternation." 

(Sergio is talking to my mom. Ignored. Bygones. Also they give these poor souls thesaurus.com with their training manuals, right?) 

"Look, Sergio, can you just clear my card? Because I have a train in 20 minutes and need an Egg McMuffin like Lindsay needs a bump, so really." 

I almost said this. Not super proud. GIRL YOU'RE EVERY WOMAN IN THE WORLD TO ME. (Related, that sounds like a lot of really hard fucking work. Multitasking.) 

I hear bleedeeebleepbleeps in the background that indicate that Sergio is scaring up some information about my relatively paltry financial situation. I really do just need this card to work. I had plans for this card. Dreams. 

"Hello. I see the concern."

(OMG THERE IS NO CONCERN.) 

"I see the concern, and if the camera company will please to call us soon we will remove it." 

The Japanese people started laughing more loudly, like the rotating clowns in Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

The dog sniffed everything six times. 

"Sergio. Honestly. The camera store is not going to call you." 

As I said this, I imagined the endless stream of iPhone calls I would have to make to work this out. Jack or Steve or Bill, lounging on the counter, completely disinterested in arresting his discussion of prime lenses and chicks who can't take pictures to make a phone call via many menus to Sergio in God knows where. 

I was never going to get my money back. I was not going to have my New York story financially told. And this made me mean. 

"That is unacceptable, Sergio. Unacceptable. I need you all to be able to call the camera store, if that is what you need to do, after THEY TOLD ME THAT THE HOLD ON MY CARD WOULD JUST NATURALLY FALL OFF LIKE THE LEAVES OF ADAM AND EVE AFTER A MAX OF 72 HOURS WTF SERGIO?"

He was contrite, yet unflappable. 

"This is a surprising development, I know. Please allow me to investigate further." 

And he was gone. For five minutes. And when he returned, he was saying stuff about tomorrow morning and telephone calls and the Dalai Lama and credit cards and whatnot. So, fully committing to hating myself for a refractory period of several hours, I said, 

"Hey Sergio? You got a supervisor." 

"Why yes. Yes I do. I will retrieve Melissa."

Sergio, Small Wonder, same difference. Melissa was on the line in a minute or two. I've worked with Melissa. Melissa went to my high school. Melissa was going to dispose of me in .5 minutes, and she had no idea my student council poster housed hers, hard.

"Hello, Ms...White? Yes. White. So you're traveling to New York?"

"Yes. And I  need you all to clear my card so I can move on with my life." 

"So you're going to have (redacted) call us to take care of this little charge?"

"No. I'm not, Melissa. (Because I have read the findings of repeating names and mirroring, yes I have. Also I watched The Office for years.) I'm standing in a line for a train to New York, a situation that normally takes all of my Oregon Trail survival skills, clutching an Egg McMuffin, an unconscionably hot-regardless-of-burning-lawsuit McDonalds coffee AND MY PHONE. I need you all to get in touch with the camera store, if that is what you need to do, and settle this." 

"And you can give us the number of the store?" 

"No. No I cannot. Do you have a computer in front of you, Melissa? Because, Google."

And I spelled it for her when she responded like this: agveargvaer;nhagraga;agvnbaga??????? And oh my God. I felt myself transforming into a Sleestak by the minute, but the rage, the RAGE. MELISSA! Seriously?  

And then I lost the call, because of course I did. And then the Northeastern line started moving, which, if you've never been in it? Is intense. It evokes a primal need to move and be first and elbow people that is not frequently seen outside of exercise class space placement and the lawn seats at the Indigo Girls. It is a horror show.  

As Melissa's stupid ass call dropped, the lady with the embroidered bag in front of me, who hasn't traveled since the Reagan administration, tried to Battle of the Network Stars elbow check me, and I wasn't having it. As I tried to aggressively reestablish my place in line, my phone rang.

Ringing phones: worse sounds on earth besides IT'S LATE NIGHT WITH JAY LENO, hands down.

I answered.

"Hi, Mrs....White? It's Melissa. I was able to contact (insert popular 90s name here) at (redacted) and he said all was well, that that equipment was returned unharmed several days ago. Capital One is happy to return the full functioning of your card to you, and we hope you have a fabulous time in New York City!" 

"Well. Okay. Thanks. Great." 

And I will leave it there. I will not tell you about slowly going insaner over the next 36 hours, as this company tracked my every move, shutting down both of my credit cards no matter where I went within an EXTENSIVE 500 MILE RADIUS. I won't detail talking to some guy whose complicated name I forget from a bar in New York, when they decided to "confirm" that my destination that I had told them about three hours before was accurate. I will spare you the details of my conversation with Brian, the next day, (I had learned by then to just ask for the supervisor immediately, because, well, the comedy.) who declined my card until I called to tell him I was back in Maryland, just to alleviate any more "concerns" that a thief was purchasing my one beer and rainbow roll at a dinner with colleagues, in my home state. 

It was like someone who hated me had called this place and told them I was a rogue person charging exorbitant amounts of, oh, say, $32.67 at a time. I was not to be trusted. This operation was to be shut down, before it tried to pay for another ten-dollar cab ride. 

Because I know this is my fault. I know this is our fault. This credit situation. This need for confirmations and codes and deposits, when really we'd be likely better served by stacks of dollar bills in mattresses, or trading beans for Etsy shit.

No, I won't. I'll just say this: Sergio holds it down. You want Sergio on your team. Hell, I want him on mine. He held the flare gun throughout my two days of Stockholm Syndrome with Capital One, and he made it feel like sugar going down.

I really wish I could friend him on Facebook. I'm pretty sure he would help me move. 

NaBloPoMo -- Day Two

Dammit. 11:58. It's like this every November, but usually not by day two. 

Here's a picture of Roxie. She lives in my neighborhood. I'm going to write a story about her someday. 

If I say I don't need anyone I can say these things to you.

The first time I sought psychological help, I was 29 years old. The man I had dated for almost a year broke up with me, three weeks before Christmas and my 30th birthday. 

He was the guy they tell you to wait for, the one who you immediately recognize as "the one," the one you build ideas and thoughts and plans around, even against your better judgment. And that was the first time (of what would turn out to be five, by the time it was all said and done) that he decided that I wasn't that for him. 

I flipped the fuck out. I lost it. I cried or was a second away from tears for days. I couldn't sleep. I felt close to insane, whatever that means, most of the time. I felt like the bottom had fallen out from under me. 

I remember coming home the night it happened, to my parents' house, where I was living since I'd come home from Ohio a year before. I knew that I just needed to get from the car to my room without any conversation, which is entirely possible with my father but not so much with my mother. 

I walked in the door and they were sifting through what they'd just purchased on what may be one of maybe five trips they've taken to the grocery store together in my 40 years. I don't know why they went together that night, why for one night of his life my father had channeled his father, a person whose sole purpose in retirement besides working at the rectory had seemed to be traveling from grocery to grocery within a ten-mile radius plus the Navy commissary to score ten cents off here, 20 cents off there, on staples -- beans, napkins, dishwashing liquid, cigarettes. My grandparents' basement would have been the perfect place to end up in a post-Apocalyptic world, Nirvana for that guy from The Road with his shopping cart, as long as he could get in through the window well. 

As soon as I walked through the door, I sat down on a 24 pack of toilet paper that sat atop a pallet of kidney beans in our small, dark foyer. And I cried, amid the passel of crap my parents had assembled at the Giant and the Shopper's Food Warehouse. I remember them both gaping at me, as I disrupted the unpacking and shelving. And then I remember my father talking to me for two hours while I sniveled on the kitchen table. And then I remember several weeks of hell. 

**************************************************

So don't chastise me
Or think I, I mean you harm
Of those that take you
Leave you strung out
Much too far

**************************************************

It was the first time I lost it for real, after years of losing it mildly. I'd always had an edgy, rarely satisfied sort of personality. I had periods of time where being upset was the norm, but I ascribed them to typical things -- school and work stress, relationship stuff, my weight and endless obsession and dissatisfaction with my body, social anxieties. 

But this time, I knew it was worse. This time I knew that the loss of this relationship had tripped a terrible cord. I felt crazy. I felt out of control. I felt like nothing would be okay again, and I knew that there were certain patterns in my life that weren't right. I came to understand that for a long time I'd been operating on a certain, shifting level of daily discontent, and that this was a final trigger. 

And on a practical, physical level? I couldn't sleep. If you want to feel crazy, easy peasy: don't sleep, not much if at all. And when I did, I'd wake up between 4 and 5 every morning and lie there crazy for two hours until I finally passed out from physical exhaustion just before my alarm was due to go off. I also experienced anxiety that made me long for any other state of physical or emotional being. I wrote a bad poem about it, the electrical impulses I felt shooting through my arms and out the bottoms of my feet and through the top of my head. This was real, excess energy trying to get out of my body. To top it off, this is when my dog who was the other center of my life started having epileptic seizures. And if you've never seen a living thing have a seizure in your fucking bedroom that is very lucky for you and I hope it never happens. Because yeah. 

I was so awake I felt like a tragic superhero, like I could lift a car or climb a mountain, but I didn't really want to do those things or to go anywhere so I just walked around the usual places. Somehow I still had to go to work, and I still had to figure out what to do. I knew this was a problem that was beyond my scope, and I was scared. So I took myself to therapy, and I went to my primary care doctor. My doctor gave me anti-depressants, the first ones I'd ever had after many years of Tom Cruisian-resistance to medication. I would have tried leeches at that point, I swear. I wasn't ready to kill myself and I didn't want to feel like I felt so I did things. Desperation is an alternately shitty and amazing motivator. 

The first wacko shrink I saw -- at her only available appointment, at 7 a.m. on a Saturday, days after the breakup when I still couldn't speak of it or really speak at all without weeping -- told me after 10 minutes of discussion that I was probably bipolar. 

I should mention that I'm not a morning person. And that I was still crying nonstop. 

I knew even then as a counselor myself that throwing out diagnoses like that after knowing someone for ten minutes was extreme, particularly when I had told her that I was in crisis, essentially -- that I was dealing with an acute life situation and I needed to sort that out before I went any deeper. If a kid I've never met walks into my office I'm not all "Oh hey, ADHD yeah?", even if he can't sit still and can't complete a sentence but can go over and over the same concept one million times with surgical precision. It's not cool and it's not ethical and I don't know if he's had more Red Bull than usual this morning, right?  So I told her I didn't think I was bipolar, I satisfied the requirements of the visit, and I never went back. 

Somehow I dredged up the ability to find another therapist, a lady who challenged me mildly on some things but seemed more fascinated by my life and family history as a story she was reading for entertainment, rather than one she was helping me to sort out in the here and now. She dozed off a couple of times, as my appointments tended to be in the afternoon and the sun slanted just so over her chair. So essentially, looking back, I guess this lady was a house cat of a shrink and my visits were story time. She was in love with my genogram. She reminded me that I was 30, like I didn't know. She was nice enough -- better than the crazy fellowship student I saw in grad school who snapped her fingers in my face whenever I went off topic, which is a lot -- but nothing revolutionary happened. 

Nothing revolutionary has ever happened in my efforts to tend to the interiors of my mind that have such a tremendous effect, naturally, on the exterior that is my life. And typing that amazes me, how much we do in our culture to try to minimize the concept that what happens in there can go awry, that the things we see on the outside AREN'T profoundly affected every minute, second, hour by a seemingly random collection of chemicals and cells and nerves and impulses. 

We are animals. Fucked up crazy ass animals. We're all lucky we aren't walking around shooting off fireworks in public places, is what I'm saying.

**************************************************

I can turn on anyone
Just like I've turned on you
I've got a tongue like a razor
A sweet switchblade knife

**************************************************

It has been almost 11 years since my first serious problems surfaced, and over the course of that time I have had good times and bad times. I have been lucky and I have struggled. I have felt like I wanted to die and I have had moments, like one yesterday, where I walk outside in to the sunshine, look at the sky and think that this very space in time is perfect, that it makes all of the hard ones worth it. 

 The past few months have not been the good times, although within them there have been good times. They have been largely dark and frightening, on the worst , self-indulgent kind of existential level. They have been unattractive. 

And these are the worst kinds of times to acknowledge that I do not live this life in a vaccuum. I have friends and family around me sometimes, and a lot of people who care in various capacities. There are people who feel like they want to help me, and this is not my favorite thing. In fact, it is my worst, neurotic nightmare. When I am in the bell jar, I hate attention as much as I love it. I hate my interconnectedness with others, because I know that I can't trust myself. I know that I am wired to reject support and to expect everyone to leave me, because if I cannot even stand myself, how can anyone else? Why would they?  

My friend Jenny posted again this weekend about her most recent trip through what this is that some of us go through. And again, I read it and was moved to speak up because I don't think that we can do that enough, especially if we haven't done it at all. I admire her more than I can say. I admire myself not at all right now. It doesn't matter what I do with the information I'm given as long as I don't take other people down with me. There is nothing that makes me feel worse. 

I have friends in spite of myself. I have people who want to hang out with me and who continue to seek out my opinions even in the worst of times. I don't understand this. I have eaten more humble pie, as it were, in the last two months of my life than I maybe ever have, and it is gagging me as much as it is healing me. 

The sad truth is that by the time I get to this point, it's possible that I have ruined good things. I know that's true, and I know my propensity to either wallow completely in that knowledge or to ignore it and act like I don't care. 

This is the sentence of this particular chronic disease. This is the need to act like everything is fine because dealing with everything that's not fine is a killer for real. It's hard and it's time consuming and it's lonely fucking work. 

I am mean. I am impulsive. I am selfish. I am rude. 

I am the most loving person in the world. My empathy is off the charts. I will do anything for you if I love you or maybe even if I don't. 

I will break your heart and I will sweep it up off of your kitchen floor. I am a procrastinating asshole and I am the best of my worst on the worst possible days. I can pull a solution from anywhere when you lose your shit, and I will only hope that you forgive me for how forthright I can be in telling you that a solution is really, really important. 

I blame other people for my problems sometimes and yet I take full responsibility for everything from the immolation of Joan of Arc, the Afghan war, the death of the dictionary with the addition of fake words like LOL and gangsta and the bad day you had yesterday. 

I want you to be with me and I never want to see you again, with all of the things you know and the way that I care about you and the ability you have to hurt me because of all of this.

I am the sum of my chemistry and in that  (some chemistry word here) there is the best of my DNA and the results of all of the ways I've been nurtured and neglected as well.

I am a sad fucking case and I am an absolute rock star on my best day. I don't know how else to describe it, except to say that as self-aware as I have prided myself on being, the past year has been mostly an exercise in denial and fear and self-loathing. And once it killed or tried to the two things that I love the most that is when I woke up, to a place so lonely it shone, to a silence I hadn't known in a very, very long time, and yet could identify from one of the saddest spaces in my history. 

It's really, really bright here.