Caterwauling

Attitude is everything. Duh, I know you know that. But do we ever believe it?

I’m not dishing details because I don’t want to jinx anything. Not that there is a lot to tell. But it is truly amazing when you awaken and say, “This is going to be my week,” and then all signs start to point in that very direction.

The road is still a difficult one, and the journey is far from over. But you can’t fear mitigating circumstances all your life, either, or you’ll travel in circles instead of shooting upward. And sometimes, even staying on course is just as good as moving on, although cruise control was never my speed and I never intend for it to be. What you have to do is take the crappy, sappy music off the stereo and get some upbeat, ass-kicking rhythms back into your soul. I’ve often said the universe provides, but whether or not I particularly believed it is anybody’s guess. But I decided to believe in it, mostly because I ran out of other options. And it’s not too shabby, having a heart lightened by hope.

I have a story to tell. It took place in the early 1990s in Pittsburgh’s Market Square. It was the summertime, and I ran into a man who did maintenance work at my college. His name was Hal. He was always pleasant and soft-spoken. When I saw him on that late afternoon, he and I had a phenomenal conversation, whereupon he told me that I am a “chosen one.” I’ve often pondered this and never came up with what that meant. I do know that he pounded it into my head that I wasn’t meant to be understood but that I was meant to accomplish superhuman feats. He’d been psychic in his day and tried to suppress the imagery because he knew a child was going to die and it ripped him apart when the vision came true. And that he didn’t know me from anything other than seeing me hanging around in the cafe, studying and smoking, I thought he might be onto something. And I want his vision for me to come true. For those who are wondering, Hal died unexpectedly a few weeks after we talked. Crushed me the way the dark psychic images tormented him.

Thinking about him was one huge contributor in my discovering my faith again — my faith in humanity, in goodness and justice, in the sunrise coming after the sunset, in the ways of the muses and the universe and, most importantly, in me again. Because I have a world to change, apparently, so let’s get that party started, and soon!

On iTunes: Gwen Stefani, “Serious”

Dear WJLA-TV:

Love, Dawn

On iTunes: Gwen Stefani, “Hollaback Girl”

The weather had been inordinately gloomy of late — it’s just been dismal, with rain and fog o’plenty. If it’s going to rain, then let it thunderstorm. Get it the hell overwith already — rain like you mean it, Mother Nature! No more of this “I’m going to torture you slowly” crap. I get enough of that from life. 😉

I feel like the seasons are affecting me more — bleak skies have intensified my case of the blahs. I suddenly “get” why people flock to the southern states … seeing vibrant citrus peels and wildflowers and rays of warm sunlight has to do wonders for one’s mentality. I have a friend who is literally addicted to colors — so much so that she recently planted flowers at midnight just so she could awaken and have them greet her on the way out of the house the next morning. It’s like color can set the tone of your day. Cosmopolitan tells us to wear orange when we want to feel upbeat. I personally wear a lot of hunter or kelly green because A) it’s my eye color and B) it’s the color of money. And that’s all that’s ever on my mind, anyway, of late.

I paid myself a compliment today, though. It’s not something I do much of anymore, but I remembered someone in authority once told me that I do everything the hard way — and she didn’t mean it as a compliment. She was intimidated, probably, of the thoroughness with which I tackled everything. And I kind of laughed about it today, realizing that I execute my screw-ups with fevor as well — I don’t just mess up a little bit, instead going for the f-up of the 14-karat variety! But that’s not the compliment — the real props I gave to myself were that I really never did take the easy route, even when it was apparent to me. I took chances and soared; I’ve also taken chances and landed splat on my face. But no matter what the situation, I didn’t do it half-assed. 🙂

Lately, I don’t have enough energy to do anything to the utmost of my ability, though, and I need to get out of my head and change that pronto. Someone (who didn’t even know me!) told me quite snarkily yesterday that I seem like my confidence is shot. And it kind of kicked me in the ass, like, no — I don’t show my “true” feelings that way. I am pleasant to cashiers and bank tellers and post office workers … nobody needs to know what’s happening inside my head. I wish them a happy holiday even though I’m having anything but.

However, when I do get out of the labrynth of my mind, I see the puzzle pieces trying so hard to come together. I’m not 100 percent sold on the “everything happens for a reason” idea, but I do accept wholeheartedly that everything happens to lead you to other things — hopefully, better ones. I mean, I can’t count the acts of kindness that come to me every time I start losing faith — it’s like the universe’s way of telling me to not give up because nobody has given up on me. Prime example: I asked a friend if he could help me with something. Although he couldn’t help as requested, he actually went and found someone who could help me, laying the groundwork so that I could swoop in and pick up the opportunity. And I realized that I may not have a lot of things I’m seeking right now, but I’ve got a pretty terrific cheering section. And I’ve been on the damn bleachers long enough — I just need to figure out a way to get the coaches to let me play again … it’s time to win for a change!

On iTunes: Gwen Stefani, “What You Waiting For 2004 (DJ Chaos Breakbeat Remix)”

When you break a bone, you get a cast. When you pull a muscle, you get a bottle of Percocet. When you rip open your skin, you get a bandage. What happens, though, when your spirit is seemingly exorcised?

There’s a constant mental tug-of-war going on in the hearts and minds of many who make a decision and, when faced with the consequences, wonder what the hell got into them when said decision was made. I’m not talking about regret for the sake of regret (e.g., you’re sorry for more than just what happened to you specifically). What I’m thinking about is how it is true how the flapping of a butterfly’s wing can literally change the tides around the world. We make a thousand decisions a day, not realizing that there is a consequence to every single action, down to whether you decided to merge into the passing lane at a particular time. Not all consequences are bad, of course, and it is always argued that each move was meant to happen the way it did — it’s that whole “there’s a reason behind everything” mantra.

In any event, it occurs to me that, the more you do, the more bad things are likely to happen. But, conversely, you’re upping your odds for better things, too. I mean, I did something that was a total waste of time this morning. And I knew it would be. But I made a deal with myself that I would learn something from it and that something would happen to offset the utter uselessness of it all. And something did happen to erase the ugly memory from earlier. I’m still struggling with the lesson in the first thing, though. Maybe it was a reality check, although that’s the only check I have that hasn’t bounced lately. 😉

Anyway, I went out and had a little bit of fun with a friend. We used to have the best times, but with me becoming a hermit for various reasons, I’ve missed our companionship. But I don’t know that I’m that good of company anymore; maybe I should just stay hidden until the tide turns. But if I keep clinging to the underside of a wave, it’s going to drown me. Perhaps a little entertainment here and there won’t kill me. I don’t know — I tend to choose pain because at least it means I’m still feeling something. But enjoying one’s time provides such a wonderful reprieve. It reminds you that you want to switch the balance and feel elation over ache any day. It’s been so long since I dreamed, danced, sang out loud, wrote a poem, wept with joy. But as difficult as it is to envision doing those things again, I have to believe I will … that I can. I hope there will come a day that I can’t find a reason not to do those things and more.

On iTunes: Bertie Higgins, “Key Largo”

Dear Universe:

Love, Dawn

On iTunes: Taste of Honey, “Boogie Oogie Oogie”

I just found a card I’d bought ages ago to inspire myself with:

Everything will be okay in the end.
If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”
— (unknown) —

Is it too much to hope that a happy ending will arrive during this season of miracles?

On iTunes: Matchbox Twenty, “Forever December”

Subtitle: It’s called a dictionary. Open one someday.

So I broke down and did some laundry — it’s always a painful event. And apparently, the washer/dryer manufacturer knows just how desperate I must be to voyage into the bowels of my building just to generate some fresh guchies:

On iTunes: Laurie Anderson, “World Without End”

I was talking to a good friend tonight about someone we know who harbored a secret for 14 years and only started talking about it today. Yes, today. Fourteen years after it happened. And while the revelation was tragic and blew us both away, well, I realized that it explained a lot about this girl. In partcular, she had some very erratic actions and somewhat dangerous behaviors. It suddenly made sense that she had a lot of anger bottled up in her for years and that was the only way she knew how to cope with it.

And I related it to my friend and me. We’ve both recently faced (let’s be honest — are still facing) enormous amounts of stress in our lives. But we cracked long before this time. We buckled under standard amounts of despair. And thinking about the friend with the Big Secret, it suddenly made sense in my mind about us, too.

We tied our identities to what we did throughout our days. For years, we let our days spill over into our evenings, nights and weekends. We did it in an effort to ignore what was going on at home or maybe what wasn’t going on. Sure, we cared deeply about the daily-turned-nightly activities or we wouldn’t have poured our hearts into them. But we didn’t exactly have anything to which to look forward, outside of that.

And, that’s a contributing factor to stresses that develop in the environment over which we think we have some control. So when you encounter an average stressor or a textbook-case stress-inducing individual — in any situation — well, that magnifies their regularly scheduled level of intensity on your radar scale. Not that you couldn’t handle them under “normal” conditions. But when you’re carrying years of hurt and frustration that were never resolved, well, it’s like accidentally putting a stick of dynamite where a tampon belongs. Instead of absorbing the shock and dealing with it appropriately, it becomes the proverbial straw that puts the poor camel in traction.

And what you find are that your so-called coping mechanisms are only masking the pain that was never healed in the first place. My one friend gambled, the other picked fights (verbal and physical) and I, well, misdirected my vitriol as well. We should have risen above our situations and handled life with the grace of the women we are and not with the impulsivity that often cannot be undone.

In any event, all three of us find ourselves at a crossroads right now — we’ve learned how much the human heart can hold, and it’s a lot. And we sit and look at our lives and think about what we screwed up and what we could have done so much better, but we also need to be gentle with ourselves and realize that you can’t build a condominium on a cracked foundation — it becomes a Jenga tower of pain, just waiting to collapse as you try desperately to hold everything together. And, with all of us, the towers fell. Whether it was the towers in New York or the complicated layers inside our hearts, they couldn’t stand with a hole in them. Now, I’m not saying that the situation on Sept. 11, 2001, had to happen to teach us a lesson (although if it did, then at least some element of good came from that tragic day). But sometimes, maybe our own personal houses of cards collapse to force us to rebuild instead of putting Band-Aids on wounds that have been needing stitches for years.

In the case of this group of friends, and many more whom I haven’t mentioned, I think we’ve sufficiently ripped off the bandages and bled the wounds dry. And while the skin is raw, it is slowly growing back. And maybe the hurt just reminds us that it’s healing. And someday, I hope the ache goes away completely, although there will always be a fine, pale-pink scar to remind us how far we’ve come. I’m not proud of my scars (inside and out) — some days, I’m downright embarrassed of them. But they show me that I survived a lot and that I will survive much more, and that is important on days like today when I am not sure whether to welcome or dread what tomorrow will or won’t bring. But they’re my crosses to bear. And they each tell a story, usually not a good one. But I somehow always find the spirit to tell them anyway, in hopes that somebody will find themselves at the same crossroads and remember my story to change the direction of their own lives. Reminds me of this quote: “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”

I feel like I fell off the boat entirely for awhile, and I also feel like I’m scrambling to get into the boat. I can’t wait to navigate it again — I can’t wait to see where I’m going to land. But I will tell you one thing, this woman’s heart might have broken and everything might have come out of it for all the world to see, but that just means there’s even more room in it and that it needs to be filled again. May it be filled by the “right” things next time around. …

On iTunes: The Zombies, “She’s Not There”

I’ve learned a lot of lessons during the past few months. At some point, I’d like the opportunity to start applying said lessons to my life, but in any event, I started this blog as a means of serving as the warning just as much as the example. Several of you got the hint about what not to do, and now, I’m going to give it to you straight what you need to do if you aren’t doing it already.

1. Unleash the negative. I can tell you what it’s like to lose time you’re not getting back. I think the thing that has finally happened to me is that I’ve released my toxicity. There’s always room in life for a little bit of offbeat humor, but when you’re spending days, hours, weeks and months being sarcastic, well, you miss the beauty that presents itself to you. Guys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses. Codicil: unless they’re rose-colored. I’m serious. Nobody wants to be around a towering inferno of unhappiness. They want to be around someone sensitive, adaptable and positive. I find I attract much better things and people when I’m smiling, and most of them stick around when the smile fades. And those people also have the power to help me bring that smile back.

“Desiderata” tells us to not distress ourselves with dark imaginings and that, as children of the universe, we have the right to be here. And it’s so easy to look around and see so much suffering and wonder why we should have anything good happen to us when so many others are so much less fortunate. But then we watch crappy shows on E! and see how much better everyone else seems to be living. So we do the best we can and take what we get but also know that we’re inherently good, too, and we deserve fortune from time to time to carry us through.

2. Dream out loud. Or just dream. Having a reason to awaken every day is nothing to take for granted. Find something, anything to keep your mind out of the abyss. Even when you sequester yourself from society, as I often do, when I’m down — tell your cats what fabulous things you’re going to do when you get on your feet again. And tell them how you’ll get on your feet again. Then they will dream of once again eating something other than the cheapest dry cat food you can possibly get away with bringing home!

Don’t forget, though, that a dream is just an idea without a plan attached. I’ve had lots of dreams throughout the years. But I never had the “grand scheme,” and while it is possible to come up with one on the fly, it doesn’t always come. And that’s when your dreams become your biggest nightmares. It’s all fun and games until somebody loses motivation. And if a body in motion stays in motion, how does an inert, deflated one get back into gear?

3. Be grateful. Say thank you. And say it again to everybody who did anything to make your day more bearable. And don’t just be grateful, but pay somebody back when you can. It’s OK to squirrel your emotional resources for you when life’s got the shit-stompers on. But pay it back or pay it forward. Much like bad times don’t last forever (although it feels like it!), good times don’t, either. When you’re fortunate enough to be on an upswing, look down sometimes.

Another hard knock I’ve taken is that I’ve felt like, OK, I’ve suffered enough. Where’s the good stuff? All this to only see more bad things happen and more good things go away. But you know what that does? It teaches you the value of values. If you could have lived without something in the first place, then why do you have it? Conversely, now that you don’t have something anymore, do you see what you didn’t when it was yours? And maybe it was just time to part with the old, but there is a lesson under ever stone on the beach. Take it for what it’s worth and be glad you will live to apply it.

4. Forgive yourself. So you got into a bad run of luck. And it seems like you’re floating in the ocean, swimming for dry land that you can’t even see. That’s where I am right now. But if you’re lucky, someone will throw you a floatation device, but you’re the one who has to chart your course, find the land and pull yourself onto shore. And you won’t have the fortitude to do that if you’re always berating yourself for even getting into the bad situation, even if you had no control over it. And we never know how or when things are going to happen, but in retrospect, we always find out why. I like to think of it as Fate getting tired of me flapping my yapper and testing me to see if I can do what I said I would.

And feeling bad takes all that strength out of you. You’re not going to climb the molehill with a defeated attitude, let alone the mountain. But life has a way of beating you down, but I figure it’s to strengthen our muscles as we fight our way back. There’s a reason we look at our elders and wonder how they are so smart and know so much. That’s going to be us someday, looking at these crazy kids who just don’t get it. I know people who say they’re sorry but don’t mean it. I know what it’s like to be sorry and not say it. But the only person who needs to hear it is me, because I hurt me the most. And just like I don’t want anybody else putting me down, I certainly don’t need to take that kind of attitude from myself, of all people!

On iTunes: Howie Day, “Ghost”

From Closer, the haunting melody that has been playing on a continuous loop on my computer and in every commercial for the film. Which you need to go see, BTW. Caught the matinee today and loved it. Ending was odd, but for me, it worked. That’s how I want my movie to end.

On iTunes: Damien Rice, “The Blower’s Daughter”