The Truth Is a Monster (Blog #42)

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This morning I helped my friend Madeline redecorate her home. For a while, I just kept walking around the house, going from room to room and thinking about what needed to go where, but I couldn’t decide. After a good bit of this, I finally sat down in a chair in the living room. Instead of thinking, I decided to feel. Call it intuition or Feng Shui, but there were areas of the room that felt crowded, and there were spaces on the walls that didn’t feel like they could breathe as well as others. There were pieces that didn’t feel like they got along with each other, like they needed to be separated.

Having checked in with my feelings, I could then explain them to Madeline. “See, all these pieces look hand-made, they don’t belong next to the ones that are mass-produced.” But it wasn’t something I could articulate before I sat down and checked in with my gut. Once I did, we were off and running.

Here’s a picture of three pieces we grouped together because of their complimentary colors.

This afternoon I watched a movie called A Monster Calls. It’s about a boy whose mom is terminally ill and his encounters with a tree outside his window that turns into a monster. The monster tells the boy three stories, for which the boy must tell the monster a story—his nightmare. I really wanted to love this movie, but I didn’t. (I’ve had this same experience with several people and more than one piece of chocolate cake.) Having said that, there was a pretty profound scene in the movie that I loved. (I’m about to tell you about it, so if you’re hell-bent on watching the movie and not knowing what happens, I suggest you put this blog down, go watch it, and come back to the next paragraph. If you’ve already seen it or don’t care, tally forth.)

Toward the end of the movie, the monster comes to collect the boy’s nightmare, and the boy kind of beats around the bush and says, I can’t tell you the truth, I can’t say it. But the monster is really big and really intimidating, so the boy finally comes out with and says that he wishes his mom would die—he loves her—but he wants the whole thing to be over—it’s too painful.

(Since we’ve come this far, I’ll go ahead and tell you that the monster tells the boy his feelings are normal, very human. More than anything else, he says, the boy is very brave for being honest.)

The movie made me think of a situation that came up in therapy once. I was having some difficulties with a friend who was crossing some boundaries, and although I knew I had a problem, I couldn’t articulate it. So kind of like the monster in the movie (and I mean that in the most endearing way possible), my therapist got a little aggressive and said, “Do you want to spend time with this person or not?” And I kind of sheepishly said, “No.”

And my therapist said, “Say it again.”

So a bit more forcefully, I said, “NO.”

And my therapist said, “Say it again.”

“NO!”

My therapist shot to the edge of her seat, clapped her hands together like a televangelist casting out demons, and said, “THAT’S your truth!”

In the movie, the boy thought that he would die or be punished when he spoke his truth, and he was surprised when he didn’t. My reaction to my truth that day in therapy wasn’t that dramatic, but I was surprised that I felt so strongly about the relationship with my friend. I mean, we’d spent a lot of time together. I cared about them.

Over the next few days, I was able to make sense of the truth I’d spoken in therapy. I’d been angry with my friend for quite a while but had been biting my tongue (my therapist says that hurts). I was sweeping problems under the rug.

The thing that I have slowly learned over the years is that my gut is trustworthy. Looking back, I can see so many times that it was telling me to slow down or back away or run like hell. But I almost always made excuses in favor of avoiding a confrontation. (Red flag? No problem—full speed ahead!) However, now I’m learning that relationships are like decorating a room. Sometimes things get crowded and you need space to breathe, and sometimes things don’t go together and they need to be separated. And maybe it takes a little work to make the necessary changes, but it always feels better when you do.

At least in my case, I’ve found that sometimes I have to get out of my head and stop thinking about things so much. I have to sit down and check in with my gut. When I do, the truth is always right there waiting for me. And I don’t blame anyone who runs from the truth because the truth isn’t always pretty, and the truth isn’t always easy. More often than not, the truth is a monster. It gets in your face and makes you get honest. And sometimes the truth even physically separates you from people you care about, if for no other reason than to bring you closer to yourself.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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We're allowed to relabel and remake ourselves.

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everything right where it belongs (blog #41)

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This afternoon I met my roommates (my parents), my aunt, and a family friend at a cafeteria for lunch—like a buffet line, green Jell-O, all-you-can-eat-dessert-section cafeteria. Personally, I think places like this are heaven, but not when you’re on a diet. Somehow I was able to stick to salad and baked chicken, but kept drooling over the tacos, macaroni and cheese, and soft-serve ice cream. It felt like having a spectator pass at an orgy. Like, I wasn’t completely satisfied.

After lunch, I’d intended to go to my office (the public library), but realized that I’d left my laptop at home. Well, when you’re retired (unemployed), you don’t have anything else to do, so I drove home, got my laptop, then drove all the way back to the library.

Recently I discovered how to sync my laptop files to an online account. I realize I’m a little late to that party, but I can’t tell you how good it feels to have everything backed up, especially considering the fact that I lost all the files from my other computer. It feels good to know that something is secure. So today I copied the files from my recent CT scan to my online account, and I kept looking at the file structure, satisfied that everything was both “safe” and “right where it belonged.”

Even now, I keep going back and looking at the files. Yep, they’re still there—organized—exactly where I left them.

It just makes my little heart sing.

A couple of weeks ago I took a metal shelf from my parents’ garage, cleaned it off, and put my collection of Broadway show magnets on it. The project took about an hour because I arranged the magnets first by the city in which I saw the shows and second in the order I saw them. I realize NO ONE ELSE GIVES A SHIT or would even notice, but every time I look at it, it makes me happy and reminds me of a line from a poem I memorized in high school: “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.”

I think my therapist has only used the term Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with me a couple of times in three years, and I think she said, “A little OCD” or “A touch of OCD.” (You think?) But it’s definitely a label that comes to my mind whenever I’m arranging my computer files or magnet collection. Hell, I should probably put it on my business cards:

Marcus Coker, OCD
(Let’s alphabetize!)

My psychologist friend Craig told me the story of a lady he knew who HAD to wash her dishes five times by hand before they could go in the dishwasher. She was afraid her family would get sick from germs. No one ever got sick, so that reinforced her habit. He also told me about a woman who could never see her son because she obsessively thought about killing him. (Whoa.) So Craig said OCD can get really bad; it can seriously alter your life.

Once I read a slightly angry blog that said people like the dish-washing lady and the might-kill-her-own-son lady who have clinically-diagnosed OCD don’t particularly appreciate people like me using the term. Like, YOU don’t have real OCD, I do. You’re just tidy.

I mean, I can appreciate that. And I am tidy. But I guess OCD is a bit like a scale, and Craig says that a little OCD can be functional, so I’m not quite ready to give up the label.

We can hang on and put everything safely in its place, and then at some point, we’re forced to let go.

This evening I went for a two-hour walk. I ended up on Mount Vista, an area of town that was hit by a tornado in 1996. It’s really weird walking in that part of town because I used to ride my bike there, and I have all these memories of the houses and landmarks I’ve seen hundreds of times. Well, there’s this one house on my Mount Vista route that stands out because my sister and I volunteered to clean there after the tornado. And I really don’t remember much about it, but I do recall standing in the kitchen in a puddle of water and going through a cabinet, and there were dozens and DOZENS of Cool Whip containers stacked neatly inside each other, right where they belonged, tidy except for the fact that the house around them was completely ruined.

I’ve thought about those Cool Whip containers a lot over the years. My guess is that the person they belonged to was a little OCD like I am. And I think it’s interesting how we can hang on and put everything safely in its place, and then at some point, we’re forced to let go. A tornado comes into your life, and everything is out of place, and safe no longer exists, if it ever did.

Even though I recently voluntarily let go of a LOT of stuff, I still fight the tendency to start hanging on again, whether it’s with computer files, magnets, whatever. To be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with collecting, and I certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with putting everything in its place, right where it belongs. I imagine I’ll always be tidy. But whenever I start hanging on and organizing, there’s part of me that feels like I’m reaching for control, as if I’ll somehow be able to avoid a disaster if everything is—in order.

But life doesn’t work that way. Sometimes it’s chaotic and sometimes it’s messy. So going forward, I don’t want to kid myself into believing that having everything just so makes me safe and secure. It doesn’t. Everything, after all, passes way, and it’s not like anything temporary completely satisfies. And that’s more than okay. I don’t need all my things lined up in order for my heart to sing. The heart sings for its own reasons—it doesn’t need a thing.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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No one is immune from life’s challenges.

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the long road to resurrection (blog #40)

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When I sold most of my possessions several months ago, one of the few things I kept was a mid-century modern crucifix that shows Jesus with both hands nailed above his head, kind of off to one side like Martha Graham or Jerome Robbins. It’s part of a “traveling alter” I set up wherever I move, and whenever I joke about it, I call him Rock Star Jesus, sometimes Jesus Christ, Superstar. Personally, I don’t think that’s blasphemous, although I probably would have at one time. Plus, I didn’t keep the crucifix because it’s a good joke. It actually means something to me.

There’s a story in the Acts of John that Jesus danced with his disciples the night before his crucifixion. When one considers that the cross represents surrendering personal will to divine will, this becomes a beautiful image. Jesus had so completely given up his own will, so surrendered to the father whom he trusted, that he could actually find joy in giving up his life.

That’s why I like Rock Star Jesus. He reminds me to surrender—joyfully.

Tonight I went for a walk around the neighborhood. I drank a lot of coffee this evening and felt like I needed to burn it off. It sort of worked, but about halfway back, the coffee really started working, and I thought, Uh-oh. Anyway, up until the coffee kicked in and I started power walking, it was a lovely midnight stroll. The full moon hung in the sky, the smell of honeysuckle drifted across the cool air, and I was kept company by the sounds of the crickets and the bullfrogs.

As I walked, I thought a lot about a book my friend Marla gave me last year called Learning to Walk in the Dark. The book is by Barbara Brown Taylor, a former Episcopalian minister who left the church, as I understand it, in favor of a more-encompassing form of spirituality. In short, Barbara proposes that although the term dark is almost exclusively associated with things that are bad or wrong or scary, almost all of us would agree that the times in our lives we have labeled dark are also the times that our souls have grown the most. So even though the dark is often unfamiliar and uncomfortable, it’s just as necessary to our spiritual path as the light is.

Tonight as I walked up my parents’ street, the street I grew up on and have walked more times than I can count, I tried closing my eyes. This is something I often tell followers to do while dancing. It helps put your focus more on what your feeling and less one what you’re seeing. But whether your dancing or walking along the road, it’s hard to do. I found tonight that when I’d close my eyes, my ears would immediately tune in to sounds I hadn’t noticed before—a train going down the tracks, my shoes striking the pavement, a church bell in the distance. But I could only go maybe a dozen steps without opening my eyes.

Going down a familiar hill, I tried putting one foot on the road and one foot on the grass. I can keep my eyes closed longer this way, I thought, I can see with my feet. But still, my eyes kept popping open.

It’s hard to trust what you can’t see.

Shortcuts don’t really get you where you want to go.

Last September, Marla and I drove to Little Rock to see Barbara Brown Taylor speak as part of a lecture series at an Episcopal church. This is the sort of thing writers really get off on. It was like going to a rock concert. For over an hour, I sat on the edge of my pew in absolute wonder at Barbara’s ability to not only write and speak beautiful words, but also to accurately and compassionately comment on what it means to be human.

Go read the book (after you read this blog).

When Barbara finished lecturing, she opened the floor up for questions, and I jumped out of my seat and headed for the microphone in the middle of the room. First I thanked her for being there, then I brought up the story of Jesus dancing, and then I asked how a person could take joy during the difficult times in life. Barbara said she wasn’t sure that most of us have the same spiritual DNA that Jesus did, so it’s difficult. But then she said, “Obviously you’re going somewhere with this, so what do YOU think?”

So there I was stood, in a room full of people, thinking, Oh crap, I wasn’t prepared for this.

But I said, “Well, I’m really fascinated by this idea that Jesus trusted God so much that he absolutely knew that God had a plan. And I know that personally there are times that something happens—a breakup, a death—and I think, This is the worst thing. But then maybe a few years go by and I look back and think, That’s the best thing that could have happened. So the older I get, the more hesitant I am to label anything as bad. But sometimes I get frustrated that it takes so long to have that perspective.”

Barbara said that was called wanting a “spiritual shortcut.” Things take as long as they take and that’s where the growth happens. It’s not overnight, and it’s not right away. She said that sometimes when bad things happen, the best we can do is maybe drink a beer with a good friend.

I remember talking to my therapist that first time on the phone and saying, “Well if we can take care of everything in six sessions, that’s great, but I’m willing to come for a year if that’s what we need to do.” She said, “I’m just going to go with my gut and say it’s going to take a year.”

Here we are three years later, and even though the last three years have been full of challenges, I can’t tell you how glad I am that I didn’t take the shorter route.

So I think about shortcuts a lot. This time in my life feels like walking in the dark, stumbling along, trying to find my way. Some days I try to close my eyes and feel my way through it, but it’s hard to trust what you can’t see. It’s hard to surrender. It’s hard to dance when you know your old life is dying and you don’t have a promise of resurrection. It’s easy to want the difficult times to be over. I think that’s why Jesus said, “I don’t want to do this if I don’t have to,” like, “I don’t want to do this if there’s a shortcut.” But obviously there wasn’t. Shortcuts don’t really get you where you want to go. Resurrections happen on the long road.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Whatever needs to happen, happens.

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getting body positive (blog #39)

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I’ve been thinking that if I want good material to write about every day, it would really help for me to leave the house. I mean, I could tell you about my trip to the mailbox today, or the fact that Dad watched his favorite soap opera twice (once by himself and once with Mom), but I can’t imagine that would be anymore exciting than the fact that I had spinach for breakfast (woo).

Yesterday while I was waiting on my prescriptions to be filled, I decided it was time to buy some groceries and put together a meal plan for the week that didn’t involve white bread and eating peanut butter from a jar. So I picked up some protein, fruit and vegetables, almond milk, and granola. I also got some dandelion tea because I’m fancy (and it’s supposed to be cleansing). And despite the fact that I ate fried chicken, chocolate chip cookies, AND cheese fried in corndog batter less than twenty-four hours before, I still felt like a superior bitch when I put my healthy food on the conveyer belt next to some lady’s TV dinner.

I’m telling myself that I don’t have to do a 30-day balls-to-the-wall diet like I’ve done in the past. I can start slow, drink more water, cut out desserts. So that’s what I did today. After dinner, Mom and Dad and I listened to the S-Town Podcast, which if you don’t know about, you need to. This is my second time through it, and it’s storytelling at its finest. Anyway, during the podcast, I did a few yoga stretches. It was nothing major, but it was a beginning, and that’s something.

I’m not sure why the decision to eat a couple healthy meals today and do some light stretching feels so good. Like, I stepped on the scale this evening, and it’s not as if the number changed from what it was last week. But I actually feel better, and I’m sure that feeling has something to do with self-respect.

Caroline Myss, who teaches about chakras (the energetic centers that produce and maintain our physical bodies), says that our self-esteem is located at our third chakra, which is around the navel. She says that we grow our self-esteem when we keep the promises we make. So if you’re always telling yourself that you’re going to start a diet or go to the gym or whatever and you don’t, your self-esteem will take a hit because you’re literally not being true to yourself.

My therapist and I don’t talk about weight a lot, but she says that if you’re going to eat stuff that’s “bad” for you, eat the expensive stuff. Don’t waste your time on Cheetos because they don’t fully satisfy. Really indulge. At some point, you’ll burn out. She also says that most people go back and forth within a ten-to-fifteen pound range, so even though I freak out about gaining ten pounds, it’s a normal thing to do. As my friend Jim says, “Weight goes up, weight goes down.”

Seasons change.

Beating yourself up is a far cry from self-respect.

Last week I spent a couple of days with my friend Kira. She used to take dance from me, but then, just to prove that miracles exist, she met a stud in the military and moved to Italy. Anyway, she’s back in the states, and while we were hanging out, she used a phrase that I’ve fallen in love with. It’s “body positive.” Kira says that body positive means that you think and speak well about your body, you don’t put yourself down. And maybe it’s not something you get perfect, but it’s a goal, and I think it’s a good one.

In light of body positive, I’ve been thinking a lot this week about my tendency to pick at all my physical imperfections, and I had a small revelation. It might seem obvious, but I realized that all the picking and self-criticism don’t do any good. They don’t really motivate me. More than that, none of it makes me happy.

Recently a friend and I were talking about how I was able to get to the point of selling most of my worldly possessions, how I went from being a hanger-on-er to a let-it-go-er. I said that before I decide to sell everything, I was coming home most days depressed. (My therapist says I wasn’t clinically depressed, but I definitely wasn’t myself.) And one day I was looking at all my stuff and thought, If it’s that great, it would make me happy. If it’s that important, I wouldn’t be sad.

So I got rid of it. And sure, there are a few things I still think about, but nothing I’m heartbroken about letting go of, and I’m happier with less than I was with more. Go figure.

That’s what I mean about all the self-criticism not making me happy. I’ve been at it a long time, and both in the short and the long-term, it hasn’t done anything for me except make me feel worse. I mean, I know I want to eat better, and I can do something about that to show myself respect. But changing your habits in order to improve your life is different than beating yourself up in order to feel better about yourself. Beating yourself up, after all, isn’t body positive. Beating yourself is a far cry from self-respect.

I’ll let you know how the gentle, body positive approach goes. It’s only been one day, but so far, so good. And don’t worry, I promise this won’t become a food blog. I’m not a great chef. Plus, I’m leaving the house tomorrow (woo), so there will be other things to talk about it.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Damn if good news doesn't travel the slowest.

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a higher perspective (blog #38)

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Wayne Dyer tells the story about a memory he had during a spiritual experience. The memory took place before his birth, and his soul was deciding under what conditions it would be incarnated. He says that during his life on earth he wanted to teach others about unconditional love and finding their inner strength, so he knew that he first had to develop those qualities in himself. The best way to do that, he reasoned, was through a difficult circumstance. So it was at that time, before he was even born, that he decided his father needed to be an alcoholic who would later abandon him to an orphanage.

I think about this story a lot. There are a number of spiritual teachers who propose that we choose our parents, that our souls map out major players and events in our lives long before they actually happen, that there are no such things as accidents. Most of the time, I’m inclined to believe this way. Of course, the bitch of the whole thing is that once you’re here on earth (and not wherever you were before you came here), you forget all the reasons your soul had for picking out your family, your partner, your job, and even your body (you know, the one with the receding hairline).

Many people who have had out-of-body or near-death experiences say that in between lifetimes, our soul has counselors, other souls who advise us on how best to set up our life here on earth. I guess those counselors are pretty sharp, and they say things like, “I know it’s been a while since you’ve been in a physical body, and you’ve probably forgotten how miserable it can be to have back problems. Maybe you don’t really want to go to earth this time. Take another look. It’s a fucking mess down there.” I also guess our souls are pretty determined, like they can look at the plan for a painful life, decide that the positives far outweigh the negatives, and say, “Sign me up. I can take it.”

Personally, I haven’t had a spiritual experience during which I’ve remembered why my soul decided to come to earth. But I’m constantly attracted to literature and teachers that talk about unconditional love and the idea that life is kind, so it probably has something to do with learning more about those things. As a result, I can usually look at even the most terrible events that have happened in my life and see that those are the times when I grew the most. So the older I get, the more reluctant I am to label any experience as bad. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I enjoy the difficult times, but it does make them more bearable.

These things have been on my mind today because this afternoon I went to a walk-in clinic. I’ve been coughing for a week now, and last night during a fit of coughing, I think I actually levitated and I know for certain that my chest vibrated. I’m not a doctor, but I don’t think that’s supposed to happen. So I went to the doctor and found out that I have an upper respiratory infection, probably brought on by “allergy season.”

Even as I’m typing now, I’m fighting the urge to not get frustrated because I’ve been on so many antibiotics lately (and I hate that) and because I just had that sinus surgery and it’s easy to look at the mucus that I cough up every morning and think that it didn’t do a damn bit of good. I’m so tired of getting sick (again) that my knee-jerk reaction is to label the whole thing as “bad.”

Now, that being said, I’ve done a pretty decent job today of not letting that frustration overwhelm me. Rather, I’ve thought a lot about the fact that everyone at the clinic and pharmacy was extremely kind and helpful. Insurance took care of the majority of charges, and the doctor was gentle and attentive. When I told him I taught dance, he asked if I had a studio, and when I said that I’d closed mine and wanted to move, he said, “I hope you find yourself in a place you love doing what you enjoy doing.”

I imagine that he has no idea what a simple sentence like that means to me. Most days, I keep my chin up. I can look at my life the way it is—living with my parents, in a town I’m grateful for but not in love with, having no definite plan for what’s to come next, worried my dreams won’t come true—and keep putting one foot in front of the other. But when I get sick, especially with a sinus infection, I tend to lose hope. And I’ve spent so much time being scared of and intimidated by life as a whole, that it’s a really big thing to sit in a doctor’s office comfortably and recognize the moment for what it was—kind.

I spent this evening reading another hundred pages in Andrew Solomon’s book about depression, so my parents and I talked about it, and my mom told my dad how grateful she was that he’d stuck by her for all these years. (It’s common for depressives to lose their jobs, friends, and spouses.) The conversation made me think of just how hopeless depression must feel, especially chronic depression like my mom’s. Comparatively, my sinus issues are nothing, although they do bring up that feeling of hopelessness.

When I look at my mom, I see someone who is really strong, although I’m sure she doesn’t feel that way most of the time. But she was probably one of those souls that said, “Sign me up. I can take it.” I wouldn’t presume to know what her journey is all about, but when I think about why my soul might choose a mom with depression, I imagine that it would be because it’s teaching me to be gentler with myself and others, to be more compassionate, to be less demanding. As Mom said once, “You don’t have to excel every day.”

And when I think about why in god’s name I might choose a body with tendency for sinus infections, I imagine it would be because it’s been the perfect vehicle for me to learn to love myself—no matter how I feel—no matter what condition. Additionally, it’s helping me see the world as a kinder place, a place where there is help, a place where there is hope, a place where there is rest for the tired.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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It’s okay to ask for help.

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friends are for fun (blog #37)

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Today for lunch, I met my friends Margo, Eddie, Jennifer, and Chase at Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen in Fort Smith. I wish I could tell you they came all the way from Northwest Arkansas exclusively to see me, but that’s not the case (and I’m okay with that). Rather, the four of them made the long haul to the River Valley because Chase wanted a Monte Cristo sandwich, and Cheddar’s is the only place that has one. Talk about dedication. I know people who won’t drive an hour for a booty call, let alone a sandwich. Chase actually created a Facebook page about it—that’s how much he loves the Monte Cristo.

After lunch, we took a moment to digest and made our way to Chase’s car. We all piled in, and I was in the back between Eddie and Margo, and it sort of felt like the Partridge Family bus, except we weren’t singing, and none of us are related, so maybe that’s a terrible comparison. Anyway, we went antique shopping, and Margo bought a cat with flowers on it to use as a doorstop because she likes cats and, I can only assume, has a door that won’t stay open. She also bought a set of glow-in-the-dark Madonna and Jesus statues because they were amazing.

Amen.

When I was a kid, my sister and I had a camera with actual film in it, and when we’d return from summer camp, we’d be so excited to get it developed. However, there was always a partially used roll with pictures yet to be taken, so we’d go to Walmart and take pictures of ourselves, you know, in shopping carts, next to a “for sale” sign, stuff like that. Well, even though the days of actual film are long gone, I still like to take silly pictures when I’m out shopping. So that’s what I did today.

Here’s one of me and my lord and savior, Jesus Christ. (For some reason I thought he’d be shorter. And don’t worry, I plan to go back and talk to him about those eyebrows.)

This is Chase in one of those machines that’s supposed to shake away body fat. The lady at the shop said it worked (although she didn’t know if it “worked”), but that you have to plug it in.

I took this photo because the ugly couch reminded me of a “gay test” that went around the Internet that pictured a hot guy in an ugly chair. It said, “If you think the guy in the chair is cute, you might be gay. If it occurred to you how ugly the chair is, you are gay.”

Lastly, here’s one of me with my head in the mouth of a golden crocodile. When I took it, there were several people standing nearby, and I almost decided not to take the picture. But then I reminded myself that I didn’t give a shit what they thought. So if you ever wonder what three years of therapy will buy you, you’re looking at it.

After the antique stores, we went to the mall in search of cheese on a stick, fried in corndog batter. (This was apparently another reason for the trip from Northwest Arkansas, and if you don’t have friends with this level of vision and dedication when it comes to food, I suggest you reconsider your friendships.) Well, the teenager at the corndog shop said that the corndog fryer was broken, and that it would be forty-five minutes before the repairman showed up. I think Jennifer said, “We drove all the way from Bentonville.”

First, damn it. Second, I don’t remember my teachers in high school ever mentioning that “corndog fryer fixer” was even a career option. Frankly, I feel let down.

To make up for The Great Fried Cheese/Corndog Disappointment of 2017, we got cookies and brownies instead. And then after we at those, Eddie said he was going back to the corndog shop to see if the fryer was fixed. A few minutes later, he sent Margo a message that said something like, “Jackpot,” which I took to mean that the fryer was working. So the rest of us started walking, and I silently thanked my insulin for all it had done for me over the years and said, “Now’s your time to shine.”

Well, every single one of us had cheese on a stick, fried in corndog batter. And we all lived happily ever after.

Okay, that’s not the end of the story, but it’s close. I was in a rush to get to a dance function, so we all took our cardiologist-approved food to go, and Chase drove me back to Cheddar’s where I’d left my car. Ever since we all said goodbye, I’ve been trying to figure out how to turn our time together into a blog post. I mean, all four of my friends have amazingly quick wits and wonderful senses of humor, so I kept thinking that I could write about some of the hilarious things that were said today. But of course, stuff like that usually falls flat on paper. (See what I did there?)

But here’s something. Over the years in therapy, I’ve had a number of friends who have been brought up in conversation with my therapist over and over and over again. At some point, I realized that if I was talking about someone to my therapist on a regular basis, it probably meant that I had a problem with that person, some sort of drama. Maybe I needed to fix a boundary, have a confrontation, or even apologize.

One day my therapist said, “Friends are for fun.” And I think her point was that often our friendships become too serious, too filled with drama, and we forget that friendships are relationships we choose in order to make our lives lighter and more enjoyable. Some days, I think, need to be spent with friends who like to laugh. And even better if they like to eat cookies and comfort food and cheese on a stick fried in corndog batter on days like today because those things are not only fun, they’re delicious. And God didn’t make stretch pants so they could hang in the closet and collect dust. So this is my letter of gratitude, both to my friends and to my stretch pants.

[Thank you, Margo, Eddie, Jennifer, and Chase for lending your beautiful faces to this blog and my day. I had an absolutely marvelous afternoon.]

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

"The heart sings for its own reasons."

small beginnings (blog #36)

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Last night I slept for a grand total of two hours. When the alarm went off at 7:45 this morning, I stumbled into the kitchen and stood in a daze with the freezer door open for five minutes while I stared at one frozen waffle and wished it were two frozen waffles. (Unfortunately, the waffle never multiplied, so don’t ask me to feed the five thousand.)

I spent the day attending Leadercast at the Van Buren Performing Art Center. Leadercast is an annual, national event where several prominent leaders from various fields come together to discuss leadership. This year’s theme was “purpose,” and the event took place in Atlanta, but was broadcast to cities around the world, including Van Buren. Two of the speakers today were local, and one of them was my friend Marla, and she had an extra ticket, and that’s why I dragged my ass out of bed so early.

When I got to the event, the third speech was already in progress, so I sneaked in the back and thought, Apparently some leaders get out of bed REALLY early. The guy speaking was Jim McKelvey, the creator of the credit card processing software called Square. Well, anytime I attend events like these, I always take notes because my inner straight-A student simply will not quit, even when he’s sleep deprived. So the first thing I wrote in my “lowing my expectations has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams” notebook was “An artist is someone who makes something that nobody needs,” but what I thought was “An artist is someone in his mid-thirties who lives with his parents and stays up until five-thirty in the morning blogging about it,” which just made my ego soar. I’m an artist.

After Jim’s speech, there was a break and I found Marla. We walked upstairs where several sponsors were giving away free pens, magnets, squeezy balls to help reduce stress, and coffee. Ya’ll, I’ve never been so glad to see a cup of coffee in all my life. It tasted like a miracle, better than two frozen waffles ever could have. But the most notable part of the entire break was that there was a jazz combo playing, right there in the middle of the room (in Van Buren, Arkansas). I looked at Marla and said, “Who has a jazz combo at nine-thirty in the morning?” Talk about something that nobody needs. Still, I couldn’t help do a little Bob Fosse number as we walked down the stairs, the whole time thinking, I should get up before noon more often.

After the break, there were more speakers, and then we had lunch. And then there were even more speakers. One guy, a psychologist named Dr. Henry Cloud, told the story of a woman with an eating disorder who used to come to group therapy “dressed to the nines.” And it became this point of discussion, like, why do you have to look so perfect? But she said she just had to.

So one day he’s in a suit and tie, about to leave the group and go straight to give a big presentation, and he looks at this lady and takes his cup of coffee and pours it down the front of his dress shirt and says, “You don’t have to be perfect.”

As he told the story today, he did it again. He just poured his coffee down the front of his white dress shirt, made a couple jokes about not having a six-pack (but having a keg), and kept going with his speech. So I got out my notebook and wrote, “You don’t have to be perfect,” and I centered it perfectly in the middle of the page, and then I went back and added a smart-looking exclamation point. (And that, my friends, is called irony.)

The last speaker in Atlanta was Tyler Perry, the creator of the character Madea. Back to the theme of purpose, Tyler said that he found his purpose on the other side of his pain. Tyler also said that when he was first getting started, he wrote a play that took six years to really get off the ground, that he lived in his car for part of that time. “Scripture reminds us to never despise small beginnings.”

After Tyler, Marla spoke. She talked about how much she loved this area, how her roots were planted deep, and how she wanted local leaders to know what a difference they make, that people notice. Her speech was so beautiful that it almost made me not want to move.

Almost. (But maybe that means that when I do move, I’ll move with more appreciation for my roots.)

This evening I took a nap for a few hours. When I woke up and told my brain that I needed to write, my brain took one look at me and said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding.”

So here we are. It’s two-thirty in the morning, and I wish I could tell you where I’m going with all this. Usually I try to pick one event or emotion and stick to it, figure it out, find a lesson in it. But on days like today, it’s harder to do that. I heard so many wonderful, inspiring things today. Hell, I heard a jazz combo at nine-thirty this morning. All day I kept thinking about the blog and about writing, about being an artist and how I struggle with perfection. I thought about how therapy and even this blog have helped me to work through my pain and how it feels like I’m getting closer to my purpose. I thought about small beginnings, how I often despise them, wishing for something better rather than appreciating them for what they are—actual beginnings.

And how beautiful it is to begin!

And how beautiful it is to begin, however imperfectly.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Normal people don’t walk on water.

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excitement turned upside down (blog #35)

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Today I drove to Northwest Arkansas with the intent of settling the hospital bill from my sinus surgery. The bill was several thousand dollars—after insurance—and I was hoping to get a discount by paying it all at once. (Thank God for credit cards.) My other goal for the afternoon was to call my dentist’s office and schedule ANOTHER appointment to deal with residual sensitivity and pain after I had two fillings a month ago.

Things like this always make me nervous. It’s like anyone who sits behind a desk reminds me of a principal or a judge and brings up all my authority issues. (Have I mentioned that Dad went to prison?) So I spent the entire drive to the hospital this afternoon feeling like I’d just had half a pot of coffee, going over in my head how I would turn on my charm and what I could say to the nice billing officer.

Well, there were two ladies working in the billing department, and as I sized both of them up, I figured neither one had been laid in a year (but maybe that’s just me projecting). And since I always end up in the wrong lane at the grocery store, I was convinced neither lady was going to make my day any better.

Only one lady was moving people through her office, and eventually it was my turn. After I sat down, I introduced myself, showed her my bill, and asked what the options were. Specifically, I asked about the note at the bottom of the bill that said there was a discount if the balance was paid in full. Then rather matter-of-factly, she told me that specific offer was no longer valid. She said there was a new sheriff in town and he was pretty strict about deadlines, and I’d missed mine by a few days.

Shit.

My therapist says that money is a real “sticky wicket” for me, that I have a “poverty mentality.” She also says that considering my background, it’s understandable, but that it doesn’t apply to my life now. It’s like I’ve been running old software and need a new program. “The universe is abundant,” she says. That’s the new program I can’t quite get to load. (To better explain why I can’t quite load it, here’s a picture of what happened to our house when I was four.)

Back in the billing office, just as I thought everything was going south and that I’d have to pay the bill in full, the lady starts talking to me about an assistance program they have for people who live with their parents (at least that’s what I thought she said). She asked, “Do you make less than $35,000 a year?”

I tried not to laugh. “Yes, I certainly do.”

So the lady just goes to work filling out forms and asking me questions about my income and my bank account. Well, I immediately go back to being nervous because I hate anything official, and that includes forms and paperwork and bank statements. Again, I’m going to blame that on Dad.

I’ve talked to my therapist about situations like these, the way I flip shit inside whenever something involves authority AND money. And this was her response: “Would you STOP IT with your FUCKING Blair Witch Project?”

“Are you saying I’m overreacting?”

So I took a deep breath today, answered all the lady’s questions, and signed all the forms. And when it was over, she said that it would take thirty days to know for sure, but the program would most likely pay for seventy to ninety percent of my hospital bill, and I’d just be responsible for the rest.

Holy crap. Major “living with your parents” silver lining.

Well, I really wanted to hug her, but decided that wouldn’t be appropriate. So I just said, “Thank you. You’re my new best friend.”

I realize nothing is settled yet, and I don’t want to count my chickens before they hatch, but wow. I went in hoping for a ten to twenty percent discount and potentially ended up with something much, much better. I mean, the whole time I was sitting there thinking, This won’t work, I’m screwed, and this lady just kept plowing through, like, “I am going to help you, damn it.”

The universe is on my side.

There’s an affirmation I wrote down from a book I read once that says, “The universe is on my side. It pushes good to me.” And whereas I’ve always thought that sounded nice, I definitely experienced it today. So maybe the universe is abundant. And fine, I admit it. I was wrong.

Back in the car, I called the dentist’s office and made another appointment—like an adult. Despite my nervousness, it went fine. My therapist told me once that nervousness is basically excitement turned upside down—or inside out—I can’t remember which. But we were talking about my having a confrontation with a friend, and that’s what she said. Like, I know you think you’re about to soil your pants because you don’t want to do this, but the truth is that your subconscious is excited about it, and that’s why your bowels are about to evacuate.

I’m pretty sure I rolled my eyes.

Well, it turns out she was right. (I hate that.) I had the confrontation and felt like a million bucks. And today after talking to the billing lady and calling the dentist’s office, I also felt like a million bucks. Okay, so maybe I felt like eighteen dollars and seventy-nine cents, but all my nervousness disappeared, and I was really proud of myself for “feeling the fear and doing it anyway.” And maybe from now on, I won’t look at nervousness as “something bad’s about to happen,” but rather “something good’s about to happen.” Why shouldn’t it? The universe is on my side.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Sometimes we move with grace and sometimes we move with struggle. But at some point, standing still is no longer good enough.

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this present moment (blog #34)

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Dad just finished taking a shower and getting dressed. The entire house smells like twenty-five-year-old cologne. I’m gagging. Earlier today I decided that I don’t have a sinus infection but do have a cold, and I can only imagine how bad the smell would be if I weren’t congested. He must have slathered the cologne on, maybe taken a bath in it. “You smell like a French whore,” I said. “I’m going to blog about it.”

***

I spent the day coughing and reading a hundred pages in a book by Andrew Solomon called The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. It’s 445 pages of total text, and it’s not exactly what I would call light reading. But I’ve had it checked out of the library for over a month and I’m determined to finish it.

A couple of months ago, my mom and I watched Andrew’s TED Talk called Depression, the Secret We Share (30 minutes), and we both cried. So I checked out his book from the library, and Mom read it first. Having been clinically depressed for over thirty years, she identified with Andrew and marveled at his ability to put into words many of her dark feelings and difficult experiences. So more than anything else, I’m reading the book to better understand my mom and people like her.

Mom’s depression started shortly after I was born, and I don’t have many memories of her without it. I guess as a kid I didn’t fully understand, but I remember that she had to go away for maybe a year when I was six or seven to live in a hospital in Baltimore. I guess all kids are embarrassed of their parents, but I can remember thinking that my mom seemed different than the other moms. Maybe it was just that she wasn’t able to do as much.

At some point, Mom had to quit her job as a nurse. The depression was too bad. The electric shock treatments affected her memory. From what I can gather, nursing was one of the few things that she really loved about her life, something she was really good at, and I think it’s taken her a long time to come to peace with the loss.

I’ve heard all my life that Mom has a type of depression that never goes away. Her doctor says that it’s like that for a small percentage of people. Some days and some years are better than others, but it’s like she’s never really out of the woods.

When I was in my early twenties, Dad had a heart attack. I remember going to the Van Buren City Park the next day and jogging. I started going to the gym soon after that, subscribing to Men’s Health. Even Dad will admit that the heart attack didn’t scare him into changing his lifestyle. He’s heavier now than he was back then. But it certainly scared me. Looking back, the jogging, the working out, the reading—it was all motivated by fear.

I’ve spent the last fifteen years really digging into health—what it is, how we lose it, how to get it back, how to keep it. It’s taken me down some pretty interesting paths, both traditional and alternative, and I’ve learned a lot. And whereas I thought that it all started with Dad and his heart attack, I’m sure now that it actually started with Mom and her depression.

Over eight years ago, I took a class in Reiki, a hands-on form of healing that originated in Japan. I usually preface any mention of Reiki by saying that it’s really weird, but it seems like things that are weird are becoming more and more mainstream lately. Anyway, my Reiki teacher says that there is a divine intelligence that is capable of healing any illness. Anything is possible.

Frankly, I love this idea, and it actually lines up quite nicely with my Christian heritage. (I can do all things through Christ, God can move mountains, etc.) Still, there’s a big part of me that has a lot of evidence—like Mom’s depression—to the contrary. So it’s something I really struggle with, this idea of whether or not things like pain and sorrow come and go or simply come—and stay.

I think it’s a huge part of the reason that I get so frustrated when I get sick. Every illness feels like it could be permanent. I can handle a sinus infection for a week, but the thought that I’ll have to handle them for the rest of my life is pretty unbearable. Those are the times it feels like everyone else has things that get better, but I’m the exception. Worse, it feels like I’m doing something wrong. Like if there’s a divine intelligence capable of healing, it’s either not willing to, or it must be my fault when things don’t get better.

Last night I started reading a book by Pema Chodron called Comfortable with Uncertainty. I picked it up at an estate sale last weekend in Tulsa because I liked the title and because I’m not. There’s a line in the first chapter that says, “We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is.”

Wow.

“We try not to push it away.”

I can’t tell you how hard I try to push pain away, how hard I work to make health a permanent state of being, to make it certain. (A history of chocolate cake and cigarettes notwithstanding.) But clearly, the truth is that it’s uncertain. As Saint Teresa of Avila says, “All things pass away.” (I just got up to take some Claritin and Ibuprofen, and the house STILL SMELLS like a teenage boy who’s discovered Axe Body Spray. So—obviously—some things pass away more quickly than others.)

A few years ago, Mom’s depression started on an upswing. I can remember going out to eat with her in high school or college and her not saying a word. Now she talks and talks and talks some more. (It drives Dad crazy.) She’s still sick, but it’s a remarkable difference. And I think that’s one of the benefits of my being here now. For the longest time, it’s been easy for me to keep Mom’s illness at a distance, to personally run after health and treat someone else’s sickness like something that doesn’t concern me. Looking at it now, that’s because I haven’t been ready to admit just how scared and vulnerable I really feel about it.

So this week my goal is to do my best to lean in, to be more okay with having a cold or a mother with depression, to open up to this present moment rather than trying to push it away. And rather than wishing things were different than they are, I can look for the gift in this present moment—a chance to experience compassion for myself and others, a chance to experience my heart.

[The top photo is of my mother when she was in nursing school. Isn’t she lovely?]

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

"We were made to love without conditions. That's the packaging we were sent with."

the prison doors (blog #33)

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Last night I dreamed that I was in a dark, dank prison. It looked medieval. You know–guys with bad dental hygiene locked behind bars–the whole bit. But then later in the dream, the prison was cleaned up. The guys behind the bars were gone. The doors had been taken off the cells. It was like a museum, and as I was walking through it, I saw a few ghosts fly across the corridors.

When I woke up this morning, I was sick. Like feeling gross, coughing, hacking up box-of-crayons-colored snot. As I type this now, I can’t say that it’s gotten any better. All day I’ve been fighting disappointment. I mean, I just had this sinus surgery to help cut down on sinus infections, and here I’ve probably got one staring me in my face, or more accurately—I’ve got one in my face. I guess the word that comes to mind is hopeless, as if it’s never going to get better.

I’ve really been trying to be patient with my body, to consider that there are a lot of other factors that contribute to getting and staying well besides having a surgery. I’ve heard that nutrition and sleep are important, and I’ve pretty much been giving those things the finger for the last month. Plus, there’s this new thing called stress that’s supposed to be a negative influence, and I may have a tiny bit of that in my life at the moment.

This afternoon I saw my therapist. I told her about speaking at the writing class yesterday, about how I read a story that I’d written six months ago and how the whole time I was reading it I was thinking, God, Marcus, you sure say “fuck” a lot. And I can’t believe you just told this group of total strangers that you’re gay! But then I told my therapist just how liberating it was to be myself, and I figured that’s what the dream with the prison was about, like my subconscious was saying that I was finally free.

My therapist agreed about my interpretation and added that the ghosts in the dream are like those people-pleasing or self-judgmental voices in my head, the guests that are welcome to come to the party but not sit at the table. She called them “the ghosts of Christmas past.” She said she thought it was an INCREDIBLE dream, and both her eyebrows shot up when she said INCREDIBLE, so it felt like my subconscious had just gotten a gold star.

Another thing we talked about was unexpressed emotions. For pretty much my whole life, I think I’ve put most of my emotions in a really big jar with a really tight lid on it. Over the last few years, I’ve given myself permission to take the lid off, which has been both relieving and terrifying. The terrifying part has to do with the fact that you don’t get to pick when emotions come out of the jar. I mean, if it were up to me, I’d get out my planner, look at next Friday, see that I had some free time, and write down “Cry” between three and five in the afternoon.

But that’s not how emotions work, apparently.

My unexpressed emotions always show up unannounced. Once I was on a massage table and ended up crying as soon as the lady got to my stomach. My body was shaking, and I had memories of the fire that burned out house down when I was four. Another time I got extremely angry in yoga class when the teacher kept telling me what to do and it reminded me of my father because he likes to do that. And then at the end of class, as soon as I went into Child’s Pose, I started sobbing. Another time on another massage table, I couldn’t stop laughing. The guy said I was probably laughing at how shitty my life had been. (Isn’t that perfect?)

So I told my therapist today that I feel like there are a lot of emotions left in the jar. My hip pain always feels like frustration, and my sinus issues always feel like sadness. And I want it all to come out. I want it to all be over. But my therapist has said before that emotions happen in their own time. You can’t force them. And she reminded me today how much progress I’ve made since I first walked through her door three years ago. She said that I had started the journey long before I came to her and that I’ll continue it long after, but she said that I had gone through the dark part of the woods, that I wasn’t lost anymore.

So I think when it comes to my health and my sinuses, I could look at having the surgery like coming through the dark part of the woods. And whereas I always want a “one and done” miracle, the more realistic viewpoint is that I’ve come a long way and that’s something to be proud of, but the journey is not over.

Last night a dear friend gave me a small notebook. She’d read one of my blogs where I quoted a bookmark I used to have that said, “If at first you don’t succeed, lower your expectations.” So the front of the notebook said, “Lowering my expectations has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.” (See the picture at the top of this blog.)

Well, I think that’s amazing. I also think it’s an excellent reminder to not put so much pressure on myself. I can lower my expectations. I don’t have to cry today. It took decades to shove all those emotions in the jar. I’d probably have a mental breakdown if they call came up at once, so a little bit here and a little bit there is fine. It’s enough that the lid is finally off. And I don’t have to fix all my sinus problems all at once. Isn’t it a big deal that even as I sit here feeling sick, I can actually breathe? And really, the prison doors are finally off. I can handle a few ghosts.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Patting yourself on the back is better than beating yourself over the head.

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