The Power of Perspective (Blog #189)

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It’s one in the morning, and my friends Justin and Ashley just left. For about two hours we’ve been in the hot tub, and I’m currently limp as a wet noodle. The harvest moon shines full in the night sky, I’m not sure where the cats are, and bed sounds really great about now. But I just started the music I always blog to, downloaded the pictures I plan to use tonight, and here we go. As for where we’re going, I’m not exactly sure. (Insert long pause here.) Some nights this is easier than others.

Oh look, that’s a hundred words. Almost done.

I woke up this afternoon in the middle of a dream about the hard drive I dropped and broke last year, the one with pretty much my entire life on it. In the dream I was in Van Buren, and there was a guy with bad teeth who said he could fix the hard drive pretty cheap. Apparently he was also a hair dresser, and I was sort of apologizing for how messy my hair was. Anyway, I woke up in the middle of the dream because someone was ringing the doorbell. Well, the doorbell where I’m staying is really loud and sounds like one of those buzzers you hide in the palm of you hand that vibrates when someone shakes it, and the guy wouldn’t leave it alone. It felt like being woken up by a cattle prod.

I wasn’t impressed. Still, despite the fact that I was half-naked, I stumbled downstairs, opened the door, and tried to be pleasant.

Recently I’ve been watching the Netflix series GLOW, which stands for Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. My friend Marla turned me on to it, and it’s about some ladies in the 80s who are in the process of becoming professional wrestlers. Anyway, the last episode I watched had a scene where one of the girls ends up making out with the hot, feathered-hair pizza delivery boy, so I was sort of hoping something similar would happen when I answered the door this morning. Well, damn it, no such luck. It was just a guy (that was not my type) who’d brought the paper from the yard to the porch and was looking for some work.

So that made two of us that were disappointed.

You know, sometimes the universe is a real bitch. As if the doorbell incident weren’t enough, I discovered after breakfast that one of the cats had thrown up again, this time on my friend’s backpack. Well, being the dutiful house sitter that I am, I took the backpack outside, shook off the vomit in the yard, and came back in only to discover that the cat had also puked down the side of the dryer, sort of on a trashcan but not in it, and all over a piece of wrought iron furniture, the kind with all the loops and curly q’s perfect for holding throw up. Less than an hour before I discovered this disaster, I was raving on Facebook about a friend’s newborn he’d dressed up like a little lumberjack. I thought, Oh my god, I want one. But then as I was on my hands and knees cleaning up vomit, I thought, No–no I don’t.

After The Great Feline Stomach Upset of 2017, I went to the Fort Smith Regional Art Museum, something I’ve been meaning to do since they opened in their new location four years ago. I’ve been skimping on taking my inner artist on dates lately, so I figured today was as good as any. Having never been to the museum, I didn’t know what to expect and was pleasantly surprised to find a photograph collection on loan from the Smithsonian. The collection was a project by the Environmental Protection Agency and documented life and environmental conditions in the 70s. So it was mainly about pollution, but also about fashion, drugs, and personalities.

One of the photographers for the project referred to his camera as a passport, saying, “It takes you into the lives of people you might otherwise never meet.” This is one of the things I love about reading and writing. I can pick up a book written twenty years ago, and it’s like it’s happening today. If I walk away from that book with one new idea, one little thing to chew on, I’ve been changed in some way. Even if I never meet the author in person, our minds have met, and the world is different than it was before. I think this is the power of story, and whether it’s done through the lens of a camera or words on a page, I love that no good story ever ends.

For the last few minutes I’ve been looking at the above picture, a photograph of–I’m assuming–an Italian man who owned a restaurant. Had I known him, I think I would have liked him. There’s an exercise taught in some writing classes where you take a picture like this and make up a story about it, so my mind has been running wild with possibilities–what time he got up every day, how many kids he had, how he might have gone outside for smoke break after the lunch hour rush and ended up meeting a photographer.

You can’t change what happened, but you can change the story you tell yourself about it.

My therapist says that the natural state of the universe is neutral. I take this to mean that things happen–someone rings your doorbell and wakes you up, a cat vomits, whatever–and those are just facts like photographs. Where we come in, however, is we experience or look at those facts and tell a story about them–this is disappointing, this is disgusting, this is a place I’d like to visit. In so doing, we take something neutral and turn it into either a personal positive or negative. This, of course, is the power of perspective. Maybe you can’t change what happened, but you can change the story you tell yourself about it.

When I think about the hard drive I dropped last year, the first word that comes to mind is “memories.” Because the dream had to do with fixing the hard drive and it happened in Van Buren (where I’m currently living), I imagine it was about changing my perspective about my past and current life, healing, and restoring the parts of myself I thought were lost. As for the messy hair and bad teeth, these are both things I’m pretty vain about, so they simply remind me that healing doesn’t always look like you think it will. If you’d told me a year ago I’d make my biggest internal strides by living back at home and writing a daily blog, I would have told you to get lost. As it turns out, it’s been the very way I’ve found myself. So I’m reminded tonight that underneath all of our stories about life, there’s a wisdom that not only puts a full moon in the sky and changes our fashion choices over the years, but also changes us. Often we think, I’m not exactly sure where I’m going, yet somehow, we arrive.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

"The heart sings for its own reasons."

Taking Ownership in Therapy (Blog #50!)

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Tonight’s blog post is number fifty, which means that every day for the last fifty days, I’ve snuggled up in a chair or in bed with this blog, held the keyboard in my arms, and poured my guts out. (You’re welcome.) In other words, this blog is quickly becoming my longest and most intimate relationship.

Over the last fifty days, I’ve had several conversations with my friends and even my therapist about the benefits that writing this blog have provided me. First and foremost, it’s the reason I’m writing, and even though I’m not getting a check in the mail, it still feels really good because writing is one of the things I want to do with my life. But above that, it’s given me a huge sense of ownership regarding the last three years in therapy and all the things that I’ve been learning.

For most of my life, I’ve felt like a child, like everyone else was a grownup and had it all figured out (whatever the hell that means), but I didn’t. Well, at some point during the last few years, I was able to look around and realize that everyone else is just as fucked up as I am. (Sorry if you’re hearing this for the first time.) As my therapist says, some people just hide it better than others.

Still, that tendency to feel less-than has hung on. Once during therapy, I was talking about how it felt like a lot of other people were “further ahead” in terms of sexuality. Maybe I was talking about a guy I used to date that had a lot more experience than I did. (I heard somewhere that the definition of a whore is someone who’s slept with one more person than you have, so he was definitely a whore.) Anyway, my therapist said that we all mature in different areas at different rates. If someone isn’t as far along sexually, it’s probably because they’ve been spending their time growing in other areas like self-awareness, business skills, or spirituality. She said it’s simply impossible to be advanced in all areas of life.

We all bring different things to the table (or even the bedroom).

I think that conversation has gone along way in leveling the field for me. It’s often easy for me to compare myself to others in a particular area of life (looks, talent, money), and walk away feeling less-than or even more-than someone else. But when I consider that all of us are good at certain things and not so good at others, I’m reminded that we all bring different things to the table (or even the bedroom). Life, it seems, isn’t a competition, but a potluck.

Sometimes I think that the very act of going to therapy has reinforced my tendency to feel like a child. What I mean by that is that since starting therapy, I’ve had A LOT of dreams about being back in school, so it’s felt like being a kid again and starting over. And even though my therapist has always treated me like an adult, the process has often been awkward and new–childlike–on my end. I can only imagine it’s what many of my dance students feel like, maybe why so many people quit. It’s easier to not learn something new than it is to constantly be reminded how much there is to actually learn.

Of course, in both dance and therapy, I think the growing pains are worth it. And here’s something interesting. For most of the last three years, I’ve kept a dream journal, and I just went back and did a search for my dreams about school. Well, for the first year of therapy, all my dreams about school placed me in high school. And then at the start of the second year of therapy, I graduated from high school in one dream, and my dreams after that placed me in college. Earlier this year, I had a couple of dreams about being a substitute teacher, and just last night, I was a teacher. (When I woke up this morning, I wanted to call my therapist and say, “I’m not a student anymore!”)

But I have boundaries, so I didn’t.

I can only assume that the progression regarding school in my dreams has to do with the work on my mental health and the relationships in my life. (If anyone ever tells you that those things aren’t work, tell them to eff off.) And even though I think the teacher dream had a lot to do with the fact that I’m sharing my experiences online, I also think it was my subconscious saying that I’ve come a long way. Sure, there’s more to learn. In the dream, I was five minutes late to class. (If you know me, this won’t come as a shock.) But just because there’s more to learn, doesn’t mean I haven’t come a long way.

And that’s the sense of ownership that I mentioned earlier that the blog has given me. Flannery O’Connor said, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I see what I say,” and I’m finding that to be true. There have been so many times over the last fifty days that I’ve typed something only to start crying or get angry as soon as I read it. Like, Oh my god, I didn’t realize that hurt me so much, or, Obviously, I haven’t let that go. But more than anything else, I get to the end of a blog and think, Wow, I really have learned something. My life is completely different than it was three years ago. I don’t feel like a child anymore.

So to everyone who has shared any part of the last fifty days with me, thank you. And for those of you who have known me before and after the last three years and are still around, I’m grateful for your sticking by and all the space you’ve given me to grow in. I hope each of you have people in your life who do the same for you.

And, of course, if the people in your life don’t give you space to grow in, tell them to eff off as well.

[Tonight’s photo is of me as a child—in school. I was probably writing a math problem, but I like that I was writing nonetheless.]

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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In this moment, we are all okay.

"

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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And God knows you don't make everyone else happy. But this is no reason to quit or be discouraged, since doing what you love and feel called to do is never--never--about gaining acceptance from others.

"

stardust and fairies (blog #2)

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Last night I had a dream about my friend Hunter. As background, I met Hunter several years ago when he was still a senior in high school and I was working for a local magazine as a writer. Hunter had written a play that his drama department was putting on, and it was kind of a big deal that a school was producing a play written by a student, so I wrote a story about it. (I’d share it with you, but the magazine changed names and websites and took down all the old stories. Bummer.)

Almost immediately, I liked Hunter. I found him intelligent, talented, adorable, and charming, and we started to form a friendship. He’s now living in Los Angeles, trying to make it as an actor, and we maybe get together once a year. Even though I don’t see Hunter very often, I feel about him today the way I felt when I first met him–I love him unconditionally. What I mean by that is that although I’m not in love with him, I just love him. Like, it doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do, and it doesn’t matter how often we talk, or if he comes to town and doesn’t call. I just care about him, I want him to have a good life, and that’s it.

I can’t say exactly why some people get unconditional love just like that and others either have to warm up to it or never get it at all. But I think the answer has to do with stardust and fairies.

The author Elizabeth Gilbert tells a story in her book Big Magic about meeting the author Ann Patchett, exchanging a kiss, and later finding out that Ann was halfway through writing a novel that was almost detail-for-detail the same as one Elizabeth had given up writing years before (but had never talked to Ann about). Elizabeth says that she believes ideas sort of float around, knocking on people’s doors until they find someone who will let them in, work with them, and help them become real things. She says that because she couldn’t finish the book, it went to someone else. And she thinks the idea jumped from her to Ann when they kissed.

I love shit like this.

Last night I heard Ann speak at the Fayetteville Public Library. When someone asked her about her side of the story involving Elizabeth Gilbert, she said it happened basically like Liz said, although she added that they’d been drinking before they kissed and that no body fluids were exchanged. As for the interpretation of what happened, she said that Liz was more spiritual than she was, that Liz was more “stardust and fairies.” She said that the coincidence was hard to deny, but that she was more “meat and potatoes” about it. I guess she told Liz, “So you’re telling me I was the book’s second choice?”

Personally, I like stardust and fairies over meat and potatoes. Call it God, the universe, your soul, or your subconscious. Call it stardust and fairies. But I like the idea that something wise is driving the ship or at least on board the ship, helping to steer us in the right direction.

I once had a friend tell me that when you’re gay, you don’t just come out of the closet. He said, “First you accept it in someone else, then you accept it in yourself.” I think the statement is pretty profound, largely because I think its application goes beyond sexuality.

My friend Eugenia says, “If you spot it, you got it.” Normally, we think of this truth in a negative sense, like if you notice how someone else complains all the fucking time, it probably means that you complain all the fucking time. (It sucks, I know.) But I think this truth applies across the board. Getting back to Hunter, if there’s someone in your life that you think is intelligent, talented, adorable, and charming, it probably means that you are too. First you accept it in someone else, then you accept it in yourself.

In my experience, accepting the good parts about myself is a process. It’s much easier to recognize them in someone else. It’s easier to love someone else unconditionally than it is to love myself unconditionally. But I think that’s why people like Hunter show up in our lives. They help steer us in the right direction. They help remind us of our deep capacity to love. Even better, when we give love, we get love. It’s like a trick the universe plays, like when you’re walking down the street and see a person in a shop window. At first you think it’s someone else, but then you realize, “Oh wait, that’s me over me. That’s me I’m loving.”

My therapist and I talk a lot about dreams. A couple of months ago, I had a dream that I was riding on the back of a swan, and (go figure), Katie Holmes was riding on another swan next to me. Both of us were flying over a big body of water. (Water shows up a lot in my dreams and is universally associated with the subconscious and emotions.) My therapist said that dreaming of a swan seemed pretty auspicious (she likes to use that word), and that swans are associated with grace under pressure, that it was like my subconscious recognizing that I was doing the best I can during this time of change.

When we talked about Katie Holmes, my therapist asked me what I associated with Katie Holmes. (When it comes to dreams, it’s not really about the other person; it’s about what the other person makes you think of.) I said that when I think of Katie Holmes, I think of her character on Dawson’s Creek and the episode in which she sang “On My Own” from Les Mis. So my therapist said the dream was also about my feeling alone in the world right now.

So get this. My therapist comes back the next session and says that she’s been researching swans. She says that she found out that they are always found in pairs. Swans are never alone.

I love shit like this.

In the dream last night about Hunter, Hunter and I were in a hotel. Hotels, like water, show up a lot for me. They represent times of transition–like, I don’t know–living with your parents. I haven’t discussed the dream with my therapist yet, but I’ve been at this long enough to know that the dream has something to do with being in a time of transition and seeing myself as intelligent and talented (and maybe even adorable and worthy of unconditional love) even though I haven’t made it to my next destination.

When I came to the library this afternoon, I knew that I was going to blog about Hunter and the dream, so I started looking for a photo of Hunter on my personal Instagram account. The one I found was taken over four years ago, when Hunter and I were hanging out at IHOP. It was the first time I found out about his nervous habit–a habit I’d forgotten about until this afternoon–twisting paper napkins into the shape of animals.

Well that’s not exactly right. Hunter doesn’t make animals out of paper napkins. Hunter makes just one animal out of paper napkins. And maybe you’ll look at the picture and see meat and potatoes.  But I look at the picture and see stardust and fairies. I look at the picture and am reminded that I’m being steered in the direction of unconditional love, both for others and for myself. I’m reminded that I’m not alone. Why? Take a look at the photo I took long before therapy or any of the dream interpretation ever started. Hunter makes paper…swans.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

"No one comes into this life knowing how to dance, always moving with grace."