On Every Brilliant Thing (Blog #679)

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This evening I met my friend CJ for dinner and a show in Fayetteville. It’s been forever since we’ve seen each other. Probably six months or more. We were talking about how slow time seems to pass when you’re looking forward to an event or waiting for something to happen. Like, it’ll be five more months before I can dance again (because of my recent knee injury and subsequent surgery), and that feels like ages. But when you look back–has it really been two months since I hurt myself, has it really been six months since we’ve seen each other?–gosh, time flies by.

I guess it’s just perspective.

After CJ and I ate, we walked around Dickson Street before the show started. I say walked around, but because it was butt-cold, something like twenty degrees, we more like scurried. Ugh, I hate winter. The snow was falling, the wind was blowing, my nipples were hard and everything. CJ said her boogers froze. Anyway, we ended up at one of my favorite used book stores. And whereas I had a fabulous time looking around (I adore a good book), I actually wasn’t tempted to buy anything. Go figure. Maybe I’m coming down with a fever.

The show we saw was at Theatre Squared and was called Every Brilliant Thing. It starred Liz Callaway, who–I learned tonight–played Grizabella in Cats on Broadway. (Swoon.) In tonight’s show, Liz played a seven-year-old (who eventually grows up) whose mother is manic-depressive and suicidal. Well, in order to make her mom feel better, she makes a list of “every brilliant thing” about life–ice cream, water fights, staying up past your bedtime and being allowed to watch TV–over a hundred things. And although the list doesn’t bring her mother out of her depression, it becomes a touchstone in the girl’s own life, something she comes back to over and over again throughout high school, college, marriage, and separation. In time, the list grows to a million different things that are wonderful about life–the smell of an old book, Chrisopher Walken’s voice, hairdressers who listen to what you want.

Here’s a picture of a bunch of brilliant things audience members wrote on a board outside the theater space. My contribution: 80s music.

One of the brilliant things about the show was that although it technically only starred Liz, it included nearly everyone in the audience. That is, before the show started, Liz handed out numbered notecards to many of us that each listed a single brilliant thing on it. Then as the show started and progressed, Liz would call out a number, 6 for example, and someone would say, “Roller coasters!” CJ’s card was 999–Sunshine. Mine was 518. When Liz handed it to me, she smiled and said, “I was told you wanted a long card.” It said, “When idioms coincide with real-life occurrences, for instance: waking up, realizing something and simultaneously smelling coffee.”

I can’t tell you what fun this play was. Not only did I laugh and cry, I was reminded that there are a million beautiful things about life to celebrate and take note of, even when you feel depressed, even when your chips are down. For example, this knee injury has been a real drag, especially since dancing and teaching dance is largely how I make a living. Yet in the midst of this not-so-fabulous predicament, I’ve had AMAZING care. Plus, this situation has caused me to slow down and be kinder to myself. It’s gotten me back in the gym. It’s gotten my dad IN the gym, and that’s huge. Now we’re spending more time together. Talk about brilliant things.

I guess it’s just perspective.

Seriously, I could go on about why my life is beautiful right here, right now. This morning I had granola with homemade kefir for breakfast–delicious. My car, Tom Collins, has heated seats–glorious. This evening when I thought I’d left the tickets for tonight’s show at home and called the box office to find out what to do, the woman I spoke to said, “No worries. We didn’t actually mail the tickets. They’re here at the theater. Plus, we always have a list, so you’re perfect.” A stranger said I was perfect! (How perfect is that?) Anyway, I won’t go on, but I think we should all do this now and then–talk about brilliant things–because we feel better when we do. The way I see, it shifts our perspective, wakes us up to the love that resides within our own good hearts.

Here’s something wild. My grandpa, my dad’s dad, used to wear coveralls, like, every damn day. With the exception of the occasional funeral or anniversary, I really can’t remember him wearing anything else. Well, tonight after the show, out of the blue, CJ gave me a pair of grandpa’s old coveralls and a straw hat he used to wear whenever he worked in the yard. The two of them were friends, and I guess she ended up with them after he died ten years ago. “I thought you’d like to have them,” she said. I still can’t get over it. This is what I think is truly brilliant about life, that on the coldest night of the year, you can find yourself making memories with a good friend; that years after a loved one leaves you, their memory can come flooding back; that one or a million brilliant things can remind you of the love that always lives inside you.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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No emotion is ever truly buried.

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Content for Now (Blog #445)

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This morning I got up at 6:15 in order to go to Fayetteville and be tested for allergies. This was something both my primary care physician and immunologist suggested after all the blood work from my recent battery of tests came back as “pristine,” just as good as anyone else’s if not better (so there). I’ve been looking forward to being tested, thinking we’d finally have an answer to my lifelong sinus infection problems and recent skin irritations. But when I got up this morning I was nervous. I thought, What if I’m allergic to dogs, dust mites, grass, and everything else under the sun? Do I really want to KNOW that?

Thinking it was quite possible for me to “flare up” in response to being tested this morning, my friend Bonnie offered to take me. “If your body overreacts and you feel miserable,” she said, “you shouldn’t have to drive.” Wasn’t that kind of her? I’ve been dragging myself to doctor appointments for months now–alone–and that’s okay–but I can’t tell you what it meant to have someone simply offer to tag along, what’s more to actually go. At the butt crack of dawn.

Talk about a good friend. (I guess that’s what I’m doing.)

At the allergy clinic, I was taken excellent care of. They even weighed me in kilograms to protect my ego. (I’m under a hundred!) Now that’s service. But seriously, I was there for a solid two hours, and half of that was them taking a full medical history and me getting to ask questions. Then came the “fun” part, when the nurse scratched or pricked me sixty different times to test me for common allergens like dogs, cats, mold, ragweed, and every tree you can think of. For this I lay shirtless on my stomach as I gripped the table and–with each needle scratch–practiced enunciating my favorite curse words.

She-it!

Son of a bi-otch!

Y’all, these expletives were justified. It felt like the nurse was planting saplings between my shoulder blades with a rusted shovel. Granted, it didn’t hurt that bad at first, but it just went on and on–poke, poke, poke–like some sort of medieval torture device. What’s worse, I could have sworn the nurse was getting off on it, like one of those demented people on YouTube who enjoys popping zits, except this woman was popping perfectly good skin (mine). I can’t say how long this went on, but I was so grateful when it was over that I rededicated my life to the lord.

Of the sixty scratches, only fifty-eight contained actual potential allergens. The other two were controls, one being saline (which shows as non-reactive), the other being straight (as opposed to gay?) histamine (which shows as reactive). As I understand it, a person is “allergic” to any substance that hives up like the histamine control. The results take fifteen minutes to “come in,” during which time you’re not allowed to roll over or scratch. The nurse told me, “If you do, we’ll have to start over.”

So get this shit.

At the end of fifteen minutes, the nurse said I wasn’t allergic TO ANYTHING. That’s right, all that worrying, and nothing on my back hived up in response to our region’s most offensive allergens. See for yourself in the photo below. (The red dots are a normal reaction to having your skin scratched WITH A FREAKIN’ NEEDLE, and the one big bump in the lower right corner is the straight histamine.)

In response to why I sometimes sneeze or have watery eyes, the doctor and nurse explained that a person can be “intolerant” of things like animals or pollen but not truly be allergic to them. (Take an antihistamine, they said.) So that was the joke between Bonnie and me on the way home–that I’m INTOLERANT–I won’t put up with allergens, I simply won’t abide them. (UH-CHEW.) Honestly, I don’t know what to do with this information. Most of me is relieved. This is good news. Really good news. My immune system works. Better than I thought it did. (I was wrong, guys.) At the same time, SOMETHING has been negatively contributing to my health issues lately, and I still don’t know what that is. Alas, I leave this mystery for another day, content for now in the knowledge that something I thought was horribly broken (me)–isn’t.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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There’s nothing you can do to change the seasons or hurry them along.

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let’s talk about people pleasing (if you don’t mind) (blog #3)

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Yesterday morning I overslept and missed a breakfast appointment with a friend of mine. I don’t usually do that sort of thing, but I was super tired the night before and didn’t bother to check my calendar because it’s pretty empty these days. (As it turns out, if you want more free time, all you have to do is quit your job.)

When I realized my mistake, I immediately sent a text to my friend that said, “Oh shit, I way overslept,” then I called and left a voicemail apologizing. A day later, I haven’t heard back from her, so I can only assume she showed up to our appointment and had to endure her eggs benedict and coffee with cream without the pleasure of my company. (How miserable.) I really don’t know my friend well enough to know for a fact whether or not she’s upset with me, but I typically assume the worst, so I spent a good part of yesterday convinced that I’d made her mad and that she was just waiting for the right moment to send me a nasty text message IN ALL CAPS telling me what a piece-of-shit human being I am. (One of my friends refers to this sort of thinking as “awfulizing.”)

I also kept thinking, Maybe she’s not mad. Maybe she dropped her phone in her coffee, or choked on a piece of gluten-free bread and had to go to the emergency room. Maybe she’s just too busy to get back to me. (Maybe SHE has a job.) Or maybe she replied, “No big deal. Glad you finally got some rest. Let’s try it again,” but forgot to hit the send button. Maybe she has Attention Deficit Disorder.

Well, thank God for margaritas because after I drank one last night, I decided I didn’t give a shit whether she was mad or not. It was like magic. The truth was obvious–what other people think of me is none of my business. (I usually hate that fact, but it goes down a lot easier when you’re drunk. A spoonful of sugar…or whatever.)

As I’ve thought about the whole thing today, I know the anxiety I was feeling yesterday stems from being a people pleaser, from putting everyone else’s feelings and opinions before my own. I think this is a pretty common thing, but I don’t think it’s the way we’re born. I think we’re more authentic than that.

I remember being in first grade, and one of the teacher’s would hand out cartons of milk every day, and she’d always pick a helper first. Well, my favorite teacher was an older lady named Miss Jackson, and she’d been on vacation or something. So the day she comes back, she walks into the room, and I just remember wanting to help her pass out the milk. So I run up to her and throw my arms around her and make a big damn deal out of it, like a puppy who’s gotten into the Mountain Dew–PICK ME, PICK ME.

Well, the school I attended had more than one teacher in the classroom, so although Miss Jackson reacted to my enthusiasm graciously, the other teacher thought my behavior was inappropriate, so I had to sit down, or write sentences, or something, and some other kid helped Miss Jackson pass the milk out.

I guess I’ve felt guilty about that day for close to thirty years now. Maybe embarrassed is a better word. Not like it keeps me up at night, but it’s just been hanging out in the shadows, this feeling that I did something wrong. I guess it’s felt like it’s not okay to draw attention to myself, or ask for what I want in a big way. I remember really loving Miss Jackson, looking up at her and really wanting to help, and then my memory just goes to the floor. I don’t remember the other teacher’s face or name, but I can hear the sound of her voice and her anger.

Looking at it now, I have more compassion for that little kid, the one with all the enthusiasm and love, the one who only wanted to help. I think he was just being a kid. And I’m sure the other teacher meant well when she made me apologize, but the truth is, I wasn’t sorry–I was ashamed. More accurately, I was shamed into being sorry. So if I had the chance to do it all over again, I’d say, “I’m not sorry, Miss Jackson.”

I don’t think one incident like that completely shapes a person’s personality, but I think it plays a part. Although it’s so much better now, when I was a kid, my dad could get pretty angry and sarcastic. I remember a couple of times telling him how I felt, like, “Dad, I really want you to listen to this thing, and you keep leaving the room,” or “Dad, I’d like you to ask permission before you open my desk drawer,” and he’d just get angry. His voice would get really loud, and then he’d walk off.

I think the consequence of incidences like these was that I started to shut down. I’m not blaming anyone, I’m just thinking (and blogging) about it. I stopped expressing my feelings for fear of making someone else upset. I hated it when teachers were mad at me and when Dad raised his voice, so I did everything I could to be the teacher’s pet, the perfect little child who never got his name on the blackboard. I became a people pleasure. It seemed to be working pretty well for a while, but I can’t say I recommend it. It’s exhausting.

Personally, I think childhood is a bum-deal. It’s like all this bullshit happens that shapes you as a person before you’re old enough or smart enough to really get what’s going on. So you spend thirty years making yourself small and not having a voice, worrying about what everyone else thinks, afraid someone’s going to yell at your because you honest-to-god overslept and missed a Saturday morning brunch (gasp).

I had a gay friend tell me a couple of months ago that he’d slept with a girl on a recent vacation. When I asked why, he said, “She asked.” (Oh, of course, that’s why–she asked.) I’m sure there’s more to the story, but it became this big joke, like, all you have to do to sleep with me is ask. Whatever makes you happy, I’m glad to do it.

I could make fun of my friend all day long, but the truth is, I get it. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve taught a dance lesson or taken care of someone’s animals for shit-pay all because they asked or simply because I didn’t have the balls to say, “Thank you, but I’m worth more than that.” Hell, once I dated a guy and waited until after we’d slept together to inquire if he had any sexually transmittable diseases. (Thank God he didn’t.) It may sound pretty fantastic, but I was just too afraid to speak up sooner. I wanted his approval more than I wanted my own.

My therapist says that People Pleaser Marcus used to be this big giant in my head that ran the show. He made all my decisions. She jokes about this list of birthdays I told her about that I used to keep when I was in my twenties. That was before Facebook told you everything, so the list was pages long, and I’d check it every week so I could send text or MySpace messages to everyone I really didn’t know that well because I wanted them to like me. Then for a while, I just accepted every friend request I received, whether I knew someone or not.

Well, now my therapist says that People Pleaser Marcus has shrunk down to the size of tiny gnome. (She even made her voice real squeaky and held her thumb and index fingers like half an inch apart to emphasize how much progress I’ve made. Teacher’s pet!) His voice is still in my head, and that’s why I get nervous when I think someone’s mad at me, or I still worry about what other people will think when they read about the most intimate details of my life. But the good news is that People Pleaser Marcus isn’t running the show anymore. (We call the guy in charge Marcus at the Head of the Table.) As evidence, the birthday list is gone. Last year, I de-friended 600 friends (uh, total strangers) on Facebook. That was one in four. If I didn’t know the person or how we met, or if we never talked or interacted, they were gone. So now I’m left with people I actually know and actually care about. And what’s better–no one said anything. No one got mad.

What I’m learning now is that even if someone else does get mad, people choose their own reactions. People choose whether or not to be gracious, whether or not to raise their voice and walk off. And honestly, someone’s else reaction is all about them and not about me. I guess my challenge lately has been to be more like a cat because they don’t care if you get mad at them. They don’t care if you scream and throw them off the counter twenty times, they just jump right back up if that’s where they want to be. They say, “PICK ME, PICK ME, I wanna help with the milk” and they’re not embarrassed about it.

Cats, after all, are authentic. They don’t shut themselves down to make someone else happy. Cats express themselves. Cats don’t give a fuck.

Let’s be more like cats.

[Special thanks to Oscar and Riley (whom I’m taking care of this week for better-than-shit pay) for looking totally uninterested and not giving an eff about what anyone thinks about this blog post. Both of you inspire me.]

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Help is always on the way.

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