Blades of Grass and a Chandelier

Last night I dreamt that while Sasha and I were downtown helping the homeless, we got news that our house had been repossessed, was being turned into townhouses and that they were about to put all of our belongings out onto the street. The homeless and the other workers were barely phased by my panic, and I ruminated about how we were going to get there to save our things. How were we going to get home in time, we took the bus and the car was at home? Suddenly, a Vespa appeared (something I’ve always wanted), sent by my friend Darren, complete with two helmets and a note taped inside mine, which had a big hole in the top of it. He said he put the hole there specially for me so that God could get in.

I was trying to maneuver through heavy traffic and driving like a maniac, eventually needing to get on the freeway, which you can’t do with the Vespa. I kept my “holy” helmet on, though, and I kept it on throughout the entire dream, even as I got off the Vespa, left it with Sasha and began to run up the freeway ramp. My friend Michelle pulled up out of the traffic and told me to get in, hurry it up (as only Michelle can say, brisk without offense). We don’t have time for your bellyaching about the Vespa and no, I don’t care who gave it to you.

Michelle drove me back to a neighborhood I didn’t recognize, where all the “houses” had turned into white “townhouses,” plastic like the motels in Monopoly. I couldn’t recognize the streets or the houses and I didn’t know which one was mine and Michelle was getting perturbed by my very verbal shock and awe. Get a grip.

I only recognized where I lived because my friend Brian was outside, standing in waders in water almost up to his waist and helping all the belongings downriver. I got out of the car and shouted over the roar of the water, “Brian, where are my things? Where is my house?” He smiled and lit a cigarette. "Oh, I saved this lamp (my Buddha lamp) cause I thought it was kind of cool. The rest of its coming out – ah, there it is…” and out onto the river comes my couch and chairs, etc. Brian helps it all along with a paddle and says, “Ah, don’t worry, there’s more where this came from. You don’t need it anyway, Nance, it’s a couch! That is a nice ottoman, though (and laughs).”

One of my favorite movie scenes of all time is in the movie Empire of the Sun where, after years in the harsh confines of a Japanese internment camp, freed British former wealthy diplomats wander about, confused and not sure where to go. They are hungry and sick and ragged. As they wander the countryside, they cross over a hill, in the middle of a great field, and all of a sudden they come upon the former riches they once had: chandeliers, gilted mirrors, French stuffed sofas, art and pianos – just sitting there like an abandoned circus, dumped right in the field, no better or worse than the blades of grass.

It so puts “things” in perspective. Their things didn’t save them from suffering a fate worse than they could imagine. They didn’t save them afterward either. They just sat there, immobile in the grassy field.

I’m not implying there’s anything wrong with wanting things – I do, and I own a few things I would really miss if they were gone. But in my sometimes panic that there will never be anything or anyone for me, I have grabbed for whatever’s in my path, without taking the time to invite the spirit within to help me really know if it’s for me. So often, what I need looks so foreign to what I thought I wanted that unless I invite the spirit in to weigh it with me for awhile, I’ll just skim right over it. But then, all of a sudden, I recognize it – and it’s beautiful and just what I’ve always wanted. Then comes the lovely, fingers-pried-off-the-wheel surrender. Wow. Who knew?

Today I am grateful to have an inner spirit I recognize and can sit with (usually).

Mammon Off the Pedestal

In the mid 90's I had a pretty much total financial meltdown. It appeared that I had gotten my life back together fairly well - I had been clean and sober about 7 years, I had quit smoking, I had recovered from anorexia which had, unbeknownst to me, become my switch-off addiction when I quit chemicals, I had a good therapist and I had a good job with decent pay.

What I didn't know was that when I quit all the other stuff, I had transferred onto the big bad mammon train. I think a big part of the reason the denial was so thick was that I wasn't spending on things visible. I had massages twice a week, a facial a week, traveled back and forth to Key West every other month, went to the theatre a lot, took many, many cabs. Again, like any other addiction, immediate gratification. Nothing owned, everything experiential. And in the end I have nothing to show for my money spent.

They (you know, them again) say that food is mommy and money is daddy. And in my case, this is absolutely true. In just about every aspect of her life, my mother was a big old package of deprivation, sprinkled with a binge or two here or there. Not unlike anorexia, which is starvation simply for the purpose of feeling the power that only hunger can incite.

My dad was sneaky and secret with money, and as I stated in my last post, to this day I have no idea how much money he made and where exactly we lived on the scale from poor to privileged. I know he grew up very poor, one of six kids with a mother that worked three jobs while his father languished in hospital with tuberculosis for 10 years before he died. I know that every Christmas when we'd open a gift that we loved, he'd point at us and say something like, "Well, you better appreciate that because when I grew up we had nothing to play with but our toes!" Merry Christmas Mr. Buzz Kill, right?

So after I dropped the starvation thang, it seems that I picked up the credit card thang. Now, I did not understand the credit thing. I filled out an application and they approved me and sent me this plastic card with my name on it. So when I wanted something I handed my plastic card over and they "ran" it and it was over, as far as I was concerned. However, a couple of weeks later I would receive a "statement" in the mail tracking my purchases and have money due to the credit card company. Say What? What the hell is that? I gave them my card and now they want money too? This is how my brain reads credit. Give it to me, thank you very much, now buzz off.

Unsecured credit, that is, buying something that cannot be repossessed upon non-payment, is processed in my brain like water going down the swirling vortex that is a drain. A tumbleweed passes through the hole in my brain where credit sense should be. I don't get it. And even when I learned how it works, I still don't retain it and cannot resist the urge to "buy now, pay later." So I don't. Period.

How did this change? I got in with a group of people like myself, who didn't have a healthy relationship with money. You can overspend, you can underspend, doesn't matter; same coin, different sides. Money's not going to save you and it's not going to sink you either. I am powerful over money, it's just green paper that's used in trade for things. I'm just powerless over knowing how and what to do with it.

See, the nice thing about booze and drugs is that I just don't do them anymore. I don't have to develop a relationship with them. I put them down and I don't pick them back up or hang with people who use where they use. But food and money are different. I have to find a way to live in harmony with both. I have to eat and I have to make and spend money. Even though my perception of them both is like looking in a fun house mirror. I learn tools and I apply them daily, every single transaction, whether they make sense to me at the moment or not.

This started as an exercise: I carry a notebook everywhere and write down absolutely every penny I spend, even for a gumball. Everything. After a month, I break it down into catagories - and see where my money goes. I make X amount and I spend Y. They have to come into alignment for me not to debt. So, with the help of others, I look at my catagories and decide what's essential, like mortgage and electricity, and what's important to me, coffee, haircut, books - and see what's not as important to me, like gumballs and more towels (just because they're on sale doesn't mean I have to buy them now for the future) and magazines (they were all over my office) and my 24th pair of shoes. Although if 25 pairs of shoes were important to me, that's okay too. I would just have to buy 4 less books or skip a haircut, etc. And I personally needed a spontaneous money category too, because I needed to feel "free" to choose something "out there." So I figured that in too. And it's not called a "budget" because that word implies deprivation. It's called a "spending plan."

They taught me how to talk to creditors, how to pay off the IRS one tiny amount at a time for years, but how to make the good faith payments no matter what. And in no time I was debt free and living like my own adult.

The key, however, was for me to continue writing EVERYTHING down EVERY day - a day at a time for years. There's a lot of magic in THE TRUTH - and I have found that the truth creates abundance. Wealth of every kind, including money, just starts to show up once I start to obey the laws of "reality." But that's another discussion for another time.

Today, I'm grateful to be freed from the fears of money and of lack. But...Abundance? I'm still working on that one - still a little too scary for me.

Mammon Meltdown

"Daddy, are we poor?"

"Nah, well...we're more like lower middle class slash upper poor." These are my father's words.

Last night while with friends, the subjects of money, jobs, and the lack thereof, and the economy came up. The mood seemed to land on fear, specifically the fear of financial and economic insecurity. Not an unusual discussion for this day and age, no?

Most of us, it appears, are either unemployed or underemployed. Maybe one out of ten of us is actually making their bills, and when people talk about credit cards, I generally hear the balances somewhere in the $20-30Ks. As the wicked witch of the west would say, "What a world, what a world...I'm melting, melting..."

I think most of us learned to relate to money at home, when we were kids. Kids watch and absorb just about everything. I mean, we all know that "don't do what I do, do what I say" is a bunch of hooey by this point, right? No matter what they taught us, we pretty much do what they did. Until it doesn't work anymore. But that's for tomorrow's post.

I grew up in a fearful, shameful, deprivational atmosphere when it came to the green stuff. There was no such thing as enough, and if someone actually appeared as though they had enough, they were assholes. And must have done something either crooked or selfish - anything that would have labeled them "undeserving" in my parents eyes. Or, more specifically, my dad's. Because no one deserved to have enough. I guess maybe if you had enough, then death should be next...or that was the insinuation.

So - we'd all be toiling out in the front yard and neighbor Jones would drive by in a new car and my dad would stand up tall, big and proud and say to my mother, "Well, WE don't have a new car!" And my mom would beam back at him, "Yeah!" ...Say WHAT? would be going through my head.

What's the matter with a new car? Well, obviously Jones is self-centered and selfish, just trying to show off and has got to be taking away something from his family. They would wait and watch, all lathered up, to find what it was that was lacking - maybe his kids had crappy shoes and were skin and bones, or he didn't mow his lawn because his mower was broken, or his roof would cave in - because NO WAY could Jones afford that new car. NO ONE who isn't dying or a pompous jerkoff could afford a new car. Everyone who is anyone must suffer mediocrity! Jones was a Mammon Monster (grandma Valborg would have a stroke!)

To this day I don't know how much my dad made for a living. If I asked my mother, she would blush heavily and say, "Oh, don't worry your head, we're not going to starve."

And then there was my mom's looney, magical thinking about money. We would go to the mall and she would try on this great, perfect dress and a look would cross her face like someone was holding a gun to her head saying, "Put it back, beotch!" She would put the dress back on the rack and say, "Well, if it's here when we get back on our way out, then it will mean it was meant for me and I'll get it. But we have to get what we need first."

She'd push us through the mall with slowly building speed, frothing at the mouth and gibbering on about where would she wear something like that and I would say, how about to scrub the bathtub (my mom wore almost nothing but dresses back then) and she would build up to a cackle and she would get what we came for in record speed and push us as fast as her little legs could carry her back to the dress and - of course - it would be gone.

Oh, the sad relief on that woman's face. "Well, it wasn't meant to be after all. Oh, well, we couldn't afford it anyway, really."

"But mommy, we just bought a dishwasher with all the extras the sales man was talking about."

"Yes, but that's for all of us so that we can have a better life."

"But daddy said no."

"Yes, daddy said no and he's going to be mad but I'm getting a damn dishwasher!!!"

Then she'd light one cigarette off another and make a martini when she got home.

So what is there between starving and a new car? And between a dress and a dishwasher? And how wide a range is this? No wonder I have no idea of the size of things or what they should cost! I buy a house at top dollar and bargain shop for toilet paper to this day.

When I got my first job at 15 as a carhop on rollerskates at A&W, my dad was proud, patted me on the back and "Wonderful! So that's it then - you're on your own!" And I laughed - but he didn't. He meant it. That was the last he ever bought of my school clothes or supplies or movies or anything other than the roof over my head. At 15. And, desperate, several decades later, when I asked him if he could please, please help me save my house for the sake of his granddaughter, he paused, sighed and said, "No, of course not." He meant it then and he means it now. When it comes to money, you're on your own. Who wouldn't be afraid?

And if you can't hack it, you should be ashamed of yourself. Cringe. And if someone helps you, you should shrink back in despair and assume the position...downward dog pose, girlfriend.

My dad had the same job for 45 years and retired to live off his pension and 401Ks. My mom held her job for 30 years and pretty much did the same. But life isn't like that anymore, and most of us are not at all prepared to know how to cope and readjust with fluctuating times. Even, or especially, our own government, for god's sake.

Changing times call for changing ideals of what we need and what we want and when each is appropriate and when the line is blurred. And that's what I'm talking about next.

But for now, I'm grateful to have suffered long enough through the internal echoing voices of my parents to know that what they thought was right about money is downright hooey to me!

Heaven and...Heaven

On this, our biggest human, commercial day of Love, I'd like to post two things:

First, to share yet another gem from the lips of my Number One Valentine Of All Time - Sasha Grace:

"You know what I think? I think that everybody goes to heaven and that all this hell stuff can be easily explained." This is what Sasha, my 13 year old daughter, shared with me the other day while she was doing her homework that she didn't want to do. I had just told her that I thought we probably just created our own "hells" for ourselves.

"I think everyone goes to Heaven. You know, in the end of it all. We all end up there together, I'm sure of it." Really...go on.

"Well, I think that what we live here, on earth, is where we make our choices, like, to choose which way we want to go. On the way to heaven." You mean the path?

"Yeah, like, there are more than just two or three. There's lots. And they have kind of tributaries, like what I just colored on the map for geography. Or if you're on the wrong tributary, you can, like choose to dig a path to the another one. Or back up and start again from somewhere else. It's more work, you know, than just taking the big river to the end, like see, the delta? But you can at least get to it if you really want to." And when is this all happening? In purgatory?

"What's purgatory?" We're Jewish.

From what I understand, purgatory is something that some Christians believe is a place that you go after you die, before you go to heaven or hell. I think you get to wait around and learn lessons or something like that.

"Oh, no. Well, kind of. But this purgatory is really Earth, where we are now. We're supposed to be learning all the lessons now, not just watching them from someplace after we die." Jeez. What did I give birth to? Gandhi? Okay, go on.

"What do you mean, go on? That's pretty much it. We are born at the beginning of this river, the source...oooooo [big smile]. And when we die we go back to the ocean, or heaven. And on the way we take the rivers, some of which are already made and some of which were dug by other people, some of which we dig ourselves." Hence, maybe digging your own grave?

"Mom! Sometimes they are the easy way and sometimes they are the hard way. But we can still change our minds any time we want, even if we're on a hard way. And, of course, you get to see more stuff if you travel down and up all the tributaries and it's kind of beautiful, even if you end up at a dead end. But you can turn around if you want, see?" She's showing me her homework map.

"Or you can just die. Hmmm...like then maybe you have to come back here again and start over until you get to the ocean." Like a board game, huh?

"MOM! I'm not done, stop getting all...makey-uppy." Okay, that's fair.

"Anyway, you mess around here until you find the ocean. But everybody always finds the ocean, that's the way it is." So what is hell?

"Hell is when you decide not to try to get out of your wrong decisions or, like, refuse to stop heading down the wrong tributary, even when it's getting more...narrow or mucky or something. Like [someone we know and care about]. They are in hell. But it's okay, even though it's hard for us to see, because they will eventually get to heaven because everybody does. Because it's water. It all finally goes to the end down here." Like living hell. Then the ocean is then heaven"

"Yes, yes, yes, go ahead and reword everything! Jeez, Mom!"


Second, one of my new favorite quotes:

"There is no remedy for love but to love more." Henry David Thoreau

Which, among its many other uses, is my answer to "How can you mend a broken heart?" And to, "What is the meaning of life?"

Today I am grateful I love.

BAM, The Last Huzzah, Part I.A(1)(c)

Here we are, BAMming back in again. I have this time come out of what will hopefully be my final blackout – to this day, anyway. I am in Elaine’s, a rather posh Upper East Side restaurant/bar about ½ block from my apartment, on Second Avenue. I am surprised for several reasons. The ambulatory days of my drinking have now pretty much fallen off by the wayside (or into the gutter, as it were) and I don’t usually leave home anymore except for work. And that’s only when I remember that I actually work somewhere, and where exactly that job is. And Elaine’s? What was I thinking – this place is expensive!

I realize that I am actually speaking and it appears that I am talking to a couple of hookers about the perils of being a working girl. Like I have any idea whatsoever of what I speak. Not unusual, really, as I pretend to be all kinds of characters when I’m “out there” but a hooker? Wow, I look out the window and the sun is coming up. Damn! Another day shot to hell.

The girls are talking to the bartender when I look down to see that I have a red dress on and there is blood all over my knee. Tch, what now? I have a mystery gash across my kneecap. I vaguely remember something happening at my apartment, something to do with the fridge…? Crap, I hope I don’t need stitches again. I look up to locate some napkins and as I do I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind the bottles.

On this day, in this moment, my life is about to change forever. If there be a god, he lives in the mirror behind the bottles. As I look up at myself, it occurs to me, as if a thunderbolt has struck me smack in the face, that the reason for the seemingly eternal mess I am in is – me.

This has not occurred to me before this moment, and believe you me, that seems somewhat impossible as I was 29 years old at the time. Up to this point, I honestly think that all of my “troubles” are “just happening to me” and that I am slowly but certainly diving into insanity, that it is only a matter of time before I arrive.

Who the hell wouldn’t drink and drug like I did if they were in my predicament? They say that denial is the number one symptom of addiction. Well, here I am, one big bundle of denial on a barstool at Elaine’s on July 16, 1985 at approximately 4:15 in the morning, seeing the face of god in a barroom mirror and having a bona fide spiritual awakening. BAM indeed.

I know I must have left the bar and staggered home in some kind of existential shock, because I come to several hours later, roll over and look up “alcoholism,” yet another concept I haven’t considered before, in the yellow pages. There is the number for Alcoholics Anonymous, a “club” I had heard of only once many years ago in a bar while I was talking to what I now know to be a chronic relapser. I barely remember this, but when I see it in print, I know who to call.

My first meeting was not easy. I felt like I had been run over by a freight train and had no idea what the hell I was doing, walking ten blocks in the blistering heat to find out if someone could please help me at this “club.” I got to the sign that said “Hungarian Literary Society,” like what the guy on the phone told me, and I buzzed up. The buzzer sounded and I pulled the door open and found myself at the foot of a very, very long staircase. I remember sitting down on the steps and crying because I was certain I couldn’t make it up them, when an arm pulled me up and said, “Don’t worry about anything, you’re coming with me.” I remember thinking, “This guy looks like a Hell’s Angels reject.” But he helped me up the stairs, no questions asked and told me at the top door to just find a place to sit down and hold on to my seat because I was “in for the ride of my life.” What a nut job, is all I could think. Some cliché idiot, right?

I found a seat in the back and the room was packed and buzzing with laughter and conversation. Then the meeting started and someone was reading from a clipboard. I looked down only to find that the dress that I had put on was on inside out. And covered with stains. Ugh, let me out of here, I thought. But the meeting was already going and I sure as hell was not going to call attention to myself (!) by standing up and walking out. So I sat there on my hands (to keep them from their incessant shaking) with my regulation sunglasses on and cotton balls stuffed up my nose to keep it from spontaneously bleeding (as per usual) and kept as quiet as possible. I heard almost nothing those first days, but what I did hear that Wednesday was this: “Hi, my name is Irwin and I’m an alcoholic.” Everyone answers “Hi Irwin.” Jesus, get me out of here! I can sit for an hour through anything, right? Irwin talked on and I hear him mention that he’s originally from Minnesota. Oh – My – God – I’m originally from Minnesota!!!

That Irwin was from Minnesota and decided on that day to share this is the true reason that I’m sober today - this was the first time in many, many years that I felt any kind of minute connection with another human being. And although I had no idea what was going on and wouldn’t know for a very, very long time, I knew that a connection with another human being was something that I was absolutely NOT going to walk away from. And so, a day at a time, I stayed.

On my 90th day clean and sober, a big deal for recovering persons, I was sitting in that same room and, yes, Irwin was there too, along with other newfound friends and fellows. I was proud to raise my hand and say that I had 90 days and have everyone congratulate me. Hope, something totally new for me, had tentatively arrived in my life.

After me, they called out for people celebrating anniversaries. A couple of people responded – and then, from directly across the room, I caught a glimpse of a very, very handsome man in scrubs, raising his hand to say that he had five years clean and sober that very day. The room burst into clapping and he smiled and laughed his deep, sexy laugh as he turned to his wife, who had beautiful flowing brown hair and looked very, very nice…

Yes. It was the couple I saw so many months before, on that Saturday evening, dancing their way back home with their dog and their New York Times and their light and happy lives! Please see previous post I.A(1)(b). Oh, yes it was them. And it occurred to me then, as it still does now, that they had been there that night for more than one reason, that my life did not change on the day I walked into the rooms, that it had begun it’s journey to that room long before that - as I lay in a gutter on Second Avenue and 80th Street.


That was over 24 years ago. And I have not found it necessary to pick up a drink or a drug since. Today I too am nice – most of the time – and it’s not an act. And I laugh out loud and I have danced down a block and I read the New York Times and I have a dog and I have never again seen the inside of a gutter from a rat’s eye point of view. And for all that and more, I am grateful.

BAM, A Night of Social Drinking, Part I.A(1)(b)

BAM – I come out of a blackout and I’m standing upright and dressed quite well, albeit a bit wrinkled. It’s dark and I know where I am – I’m on Second Avenue and about 80th Street or so and it appears that I’ve been “walking” north, which is toward home. Okay, well, I can live with that. I couldn’t have been too bad if I’m still dressed in my work clothes and on my way home while the streets are still pretty busy. I look down at my watch to see what time it is; I have a hard time seeing this fancy schmancy watch under the best of circumstances – so forget it now! I turn to my left, to a blurry blob of a person coming toward me and ask what time it is. Well, I never! – what an ass, it just looked at me and kept walking.

On the next block down is a Korean deli with a lit sign for Newports and a digital clock. Wow, it’s only 10:30. What’s up with that? I stand there for what seems like an eternity, trying to conjure up where I was tonight that I would have had one of them late-night bouts of insanity already, this early [I don’t know what a “blackout” is yet. I have become convinced that I am simply visited late at night by periods of insanity that no one can ever find out about and am becoming increasingly afraid that I will not come out of it one day soon]. How…disturbing. I’m not feeling so good, so I think I’ll just finish off the 9 blocks home – oh, jeez. I’m not walking so well either. So I attempt to resort to my handy “follow the middle line on the sidewalk,” couple of steps…OOPs – to no avail.

Not only have I fallen, when I open my eyes, I find that I have fallen off the curb by the side of the road. I am literally lying in the gutter. Wow, what a way to wreck a perfectly good pair of stockings.

While I’m down here I think I’m going to take a little rest. Whew, that half block was hard - and really potentially embarrassing, although I usually believe that no one sees me! I can’t believe I’ve taken to staggering without any sense of balance – I’m always in some kind of control of my legs at 10:30 at night – what the… This is just unbelievable. I think I really must need to drink more water. I think maybe I’m just super dehydrated.

And as I lie there, contemplating what’s happened that I might have ended up not being able to follow the straight line, I look up and see a simple, beautiful sight: out from the deli down the block skips a woman, her hair flowing in the wind, a Sunday New York Times Early Edition under her arm, a sweet dog on a leash and a big smile on her face. Behind her follows a man, a really handsome man in scrubs with a sexy deep laugh. He runs up, grabs her by the hand and they dance up the block with their dog, their paper and their seemingly light and happy life.

Wow, I think as I prop myself up on my elbow in my gutter. If only I could be nice. Look at her. She looks so…nice. And the guy – wow. I wonder how they just…live like that. She’s got great hair.

And I marvel again at how nice she is and I wonder if maybe I could do this “nice” thing and maybe get a nice life and be well at 10:30 on a Saturday night and get an Early Edition of the Times and maybe even read it with my nice guy and my nice dog in my nice apartment. And then we could go to bed and make love and wake up and have the energy to do it all again. Nicely. That’s it. I’ll be nice!

But that feeling from the deep, dark comes flying up and whispers in my drunken ear, nah, no way, girl, you’ve already tried that one. You can’t do nice. You just can’t pull it off, not for very long anyway. How many times have I told you, this just isn’t your life for romance. Not going to happen. Not your life for “normal” either. Just remember to keep dressing that way and you’ll be all right.

And it leaves me with a burn in my throat and a sour taste in my mouth. It’s right, of course. I’ve tried just about every act I can think of to shake this ongoing, progressive insanity that appears to be creeping up my ladder. Shrinks, anti-depressants, speed, coke, booze, acid…the list goes on. It’s just going to come when it comes.

I take one last look at them as they dance into the building, complete with the doorman holding the door open for them. Wow. I smile sadly – it is what it is, right? And I lift myself out of the gutter, straighten my ripped stockings and toddle home. Part (c), tomorrow.

Today, I’m grateful that, not only can I walk straight, I Can Snowshoe Up Mount Rainier!!

A Day In My Life As A Social Drinker, Part I.A(1)(a)

Chances. Ten years I'm working on trying to remember the name of the bar that I used to frequent, the one that filled the slot of "right after work" on my dance card, like from, say 6:00pm to my first blackout. It was over by the GM building and FAO Schwartz and The Plaza Hotel and it was a fabulous Irish dive where everybody knew my name. Or let's say they were willing to call me by whatever I told them. Kind of a social play I used to like to make, sometimes complete with accent change - ah, oui, but I am getting ahead of myself.

Yes, let's back up to waking up that same morning, or as I now know it to be called, "coming to." I cannot move my head or even twitch any of my muscles at first for fear that I will cease to exist - headache, nausea, sometimes a new bruise or two - once a newfound set of stitches! Where did they come from? I must remain still and not panic. But panic I do, and the tears of victimhood start. "How could this be happening to me again?! I have to get to work!" I finally get up, throw up, get in the shower and cry for half hour, but now from rage at god. "Why me, what do you want from me?" Why me what? I don't know, I just don't want to feel like this and I don't want to have to work and I don't want to have to pay rent or show up or breathe. You know, typical morning for a social drinker.

I get dressed in my little navy suit, the one that I wear to my paralegal job in Midtown, and grab my regulation gear for the trip to Grand Central Station: BIG sunglasses, a big duffel bag filled with laundry, a carton of milk and a couple of plastic bags. Ugh - out the door. The buzzing of the bright overhead lights in my hall make me want to run for cover, but walking is enough to have to keep going as it is.

I once had a friend that said, "If anyone else had awoken in this state they would have called an ambulance. You go to work." He's just an actor though, and very dramatic.

I climb the hill on my street and head for the subway - but first I need to throw up again and I do so in the public waste bin at the corner of Lexington and 89th. Who cares, people will just think I'm pregnant, right? I mean, I'm wearing a suit!

I go down the subway stairs being carried by the crush of people in a hurry. Ugh, again - the smells are so overpowering that I have to pull out a plastic bag and heave into it. But I'm pregnant - wait, no I'm not. I forget, did I just make that up? Anyway, I wait and here comes the train, screeching in a manner that can only signify the end of the world. No such luck. The doors open and people scramble off and scramble on at the same time and there are a few elbows that Grace had afforded me escape from somehow. The seats are full, but I needn't worry, I have my duffel bag so I can sit on it on the floor in my little navy suit. Thank god for duffel bags. Isn't that what they sell them for?

I get to Grand Central and push my way through crowd, through three revolving doors (sick) and out into the fresh air. Ahhhhh. My building is across the street. I go up and sit at my desk and open my milk. If I have milk and sunglasses, everyone knows that they shouldn't really talk to me, but they do anyway and I just find this so annoying and disrespectful. I mean, I have cramps! Oh. No. I'm pregnant? No, it's food poisoning. Yeah, that's it.

I will never drink again. Never. Ever. I will never do coke again, at least not unless I can remember to save some for the morning after. No, actually I will never do coke again either. Or snort speed. Never, ever snort speed again. Won't need to because I'll never drink again, and certainly not so much that I need to get a jolt so I can stand up and continue drinking. Never, ever, ever. God help me, I'll never drink again. Okay, at least for a month, until I can get my shit together. No way. Ach, here comes that pesky little bastard lawyer who's going to want me to do something for him. God, why me?

The sunglasses stay on, the milk by my side, and by noon I'm smoking cigarettes again - which means I've survived. Whew. I can't wait to go home and relax. But around comes 2:00, the witching hour, and off come the glasses, I order a CocaCola, light one cigarette off of another and finally brush my hair. Whoa, I'm feeling good. See - it wasn't that bad! I get the little bastard's work done, take it to his office and actually tell him a joke. He's really not so bad. I smile and wink at my boss and hum a little showtune. He comes out, hands me a little glassine envelope and walks away smiling. How nice! He must really like me!

I take the envelope to the ladies room, unwrap it and snort the lines of cocaine he's so thoughtfully handed to me and, baby, I'm ready to go. I go back to my desk and make a few phone calls to friends asking if they can join me for a martini after work at The Plaza Hotel, no, no, just one, really, I've got to get home tonight...no? Okay. Later.

That's okay. Doesn't matter. I know where to go - yep - Chances! I'll go to Chances and have one or two and then go home and do the laundry that's in my duffel bag. Right on, it's a plan!

I push through the revolving doors, ready to walk the four or five blocks to Chances and, damn, it's just too long, I'm ready NOW, the sound of the traffic and the people are revving me up and I want to be there NOW - so I hail a cab - "yeah, make that 55th and 5th." The driver looks back at me like I'm crazy, of course, because it's rush hour and it'll take twice as long by car but, "hey, move it!" and we're off. I'm happy (frantic?) and tip big and get out and up the stairs and Cliff's got my drink already on the bar because he sees me coming through the window! And here comes my really good friend what's-his-name that I see every night here too! And he's with what's-her-name that he works with! God, life is good!

So - blackout - now return to paragraph 2 and lather, rinse, repeat - daily, from this day on. Until it gets even hairier.

Today I'm so grateful to be alive, much less clean and sober.

The Days of Chronic Sighing

Sigh. It’s chronic in my house right now. If it were in style we’d be the hippest house on the block, maybe in Seattle. I sit at my desk and I sigh. I walk to get coffee, I sigh. I say hello to the neighbor and what do I do? Right, I sigh.

Sasha sighs. Say that five times fast. She doesn’t sigh as much as I do, but she sighs nonetheless. Gus, our dog, sighs more than any being on the planet, methinks. His is boredom and unrequited love, I’m quite certain of this. But Gus has a chronic condition, common to males of most species: he is in love with tail.

But – what makes us sigh on a physiological level, this is what I’m wondering. I mean, is it a sign of something you need to be tested for in an outpatient clinic; a symptom? I looked it up, albeit with shortness of attention span and three or four sighs, and looked through only two pages of Google answers, but here’s what I found, in short:

“Sighing is a spontaneous deep inhalation and exhalation. It serves to boost blood oxygen levels and fully reinflate the lung tissue. Sighing is not contagious in the same way as yawning, which suggests that its primary function is to do with respiration rather than communication of any state of mind. But it's also associated with certain moods, and laboratory rats have been shown to sigh with relief.” Ask.com

“1.a. To exhale audibly in a long deep breath, as in weariness or relief.; b. To emit a similar sound: willows sighing in the wind; 2. To feel longing or grief; yearn: sighing for their lost youth.v.tr.; 1. To express with or as if with an audible exhalation.; 2. Archaic To lament.n.” Dictionary.com

“Objectively, all that was found was an irregularity of respiratory depth and rate together with frequent (Type I) sighing; the heart and lungs were normal. Breathing became abnormal with the slightest emotional stimuli. Extreme yawning often accompanied the sighing, and this commonly caused temporary relief of the sense of respiratory oppression. Nowadays, we would consider these patients as having a chronic anxiety state, with or without panic, with a predisposition to overbreathe in response to stress. Sighing (Type I) may occur at rates of up to 25/min! We have no clear-cut neurophysiogical basis for this breathing behaviour, now called a ‘hyperventilation disorder’. However, we do know that breathing can be ‘driven’ by activation of the amygdaloid nucleus within the limbic system — a complex brain area concerned with feeling and emotions.” Some English Person’s Extremely Dull Paper [a C- no doubt]

Can I interject something here – just to appease your potential boredom? The meter reader just came by – he’s wearing a kilt and eyeliner. Okay, and no one will give ME a job! I could read a meter in spike heels and a low neck sweater, no problem, okay?! Sigh.

I love the word lament - it's so...ethnic. I lament, you lament, we experience therefore we perform lamentation. I'm Jewish and I know that we have lamented and sighed far longer than any Christian or Muslim and with much more exuberance. But this kind of sighing is sorrowful, and I'm not thinking that mine is strictly related to sorrow.

Although - I do miss my mom again, and this I go through regularly when I feel lost. Please see former post "Feminism" to understand just how much I could miss someone with the conviction of her decisions. I just wish I knew what to do next. Maybe I'll try burning my bra in the backyard, just to conjure up some of that Margie spirit. When in doubt, burn your undergarments...? I'm sure I can find an old beige one somewhere.

Anxiety's another sigh culprit. But screw anxiety. That's a normal state of being for me, even (almost especially) when I'm happy.

I guess I do have "longing and yearning." Sigh. See - there it goes again! Not necessarily for my "youth" as the boring guy above says - I wouldn't relive my youth for anything and I truly believe I'm the best I've ever been in most areas - but maybe more for the expression of that: being at my best.

But HOW?! Arrrrrrggghhh!

Stay tuned.

Today I'm still grateful to be me, even if I am not fond of my present breathing performance.