All That Is Best and Broken (Blog #246)

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After eight months of solid blogging, I haven’t quite figured out how to “blog early.” (Perhaps this is not a surprise.) This morning I woke up at 11:30 and completed all my other daily routines (morning pages, chi kung, half a pot of coffee), and Bonnie and I have been shopping in Fayetteville ever since. My energy level is slightly better than yesterday, but now it’s 7:45, we’re at a dance in Northwest Arkansas that hasn’t even started yet, and I’m already worn out. Since the dance lasts for a while and then there’s the drive home, I’m trying to blog now while my brain is somewhat–somewhat–functional. I just can’t stay up late again to blog, at least until I feel better. I just can’t.

Great, that’s 125 words.

Oh wow, there’s a live band tonight–the Prairie Grove Jazz Band–and they just started warming up. It sounds like a bunch of toddlers who found the pots and pans. (I’m sure it will be much better when they’re actually playing a song.) Anyway, I wonder if I’ll be able to concentrate, keep a coherent train of thought going in between all the noise and the dances. Oh well–hang on–this could be a bumpy ride. AND the band just started. Much better, but loud. (YOU’LL HAVE TO TAKE MY WORD FOR IT.)

Oh my god, I just danced and am dying. Where did all the air go? Talk amongst yourselves.

The shopping objective today was to replace holiday decorations that Bonnie recently lost in a house flood. Anyway, we went to several stores and ended up with dozens of oversized tree ornaments, a holiday kitchen towel, and a Santa Claus that looks like St. Francis of Assisi that we’re calling St. Nicolaus of Assisi. Oh–and how could I forget?–we found two little statues–an owl and a squirrel–in fancy circus clothes and top hats! Who thinks of this stuff! Anyway, Bonnie’s gonna stick those suckers next to a little artificial pine tree, and it’s going to be so adorable you won’t be able to stand yourself.

Woodland critters in top hats for Christmas!

I told Bonnie that the best thing about today has been that not only have I gotten out of the house, but I’ve also gotten out of my head. I mean, if it hasn’t been obvious, I’ve spent a lot of time lately worrying about the state of my physical body. Why am I so tired? Am I ever going to feel well again? Maybe I should go ahead and pick out my headstone. This sort of thinking, of course, is exhausting (not to mention dramatic). Still, it’s hard to avoid when I have almost every minute of every day to myself with little else to do or think about. So whereas I think I need to take it easy, I’m reminding myself that I need to get out and be around other people–other people who will let me whine for about five minutes then shut me up with a margarita.

For lunch Bonnie shut me up with a margarita. Y’all, both of us have been on really healthy diets lately, Bonnie for nine weeks, me for four. But today we broke all the rules and had Mexican food. Wow, it was like reuniting with an old friend. I seriously felt like I owed the cheese an apology. I’m sorry I haven’t called lately–I’ve been cheating on you with spinach–I won’t let it happen again. Everything was so delicious; I probably gained five pounds from the chips alone. Of course, it feels like all my hard work just went straight down the drain, just like the flour tortillas went straight to my hips, but I realize that one meal is only one meal. Even even if it weren’t–it was totally worth it.

When we sat down at the restaurant, Bonnie surprised me with a birthday present. Granted, my birthday was over two months ago, but Bonnie made my present by hand, so it took her some time. Y’all, Bonnie knitted me some multi-colored wool socks–just in time for winter! I realize this is totally an old person thing to do, getting excited about socks. But these are homemade socks, and since my feet are always cold this time of year, warm socks really are the perfect thing. Plus, Bonnie designed the socks with a path down each side, sort of like a road, but it’s intentionally crooked and bumpy because Bonnie said that’s how life is.

Having lived for twenty-seven years now, I’d have to agree.

The card Bonnie gave me tonight had a quote by Oscar Wilde on it that said, “Be yourself–everyone else is taken.” Bonnie didn’t know it, but that quote is also used in the musical Kinky Boots–one of my favorites. So again, it was the perfect thing. Anyway, the quote makes me think about the importance of authenticity. I know we all wear masks and play different roles. Some of this, of course, is necessary in a polite society. You can’t tell everyone everything. But having spent plenty of time over the years trying to be someone I wasn’t (for example–straight, interested, or completely fine with bad behavior), I realize now I was mostly trying to be someone who didn’t even exist. Newsflash–there is no straight Marcus. There is no Marcus who’s okay when he’s cheated on. There is, however, a gay Marcus who sometimes falls apart and sometimes gets mad as hell.

Circuitous routes are where the healing happens.

Naturally, the road to authenticity is a crooked, bumpy path, just like recovering from an illness is a crooked, bumpy path. Being yourself, taking care of yourself, takes work. As my therapist says, it’s exhausting to always be the person setting boundaries and speaking your truth. So sometimes you wander as you figure things out. I think that’s okay. Nobody shows up to this life with a map in their hand, and even if we had one, I’m not sure we’d want to travel in a straight line. No, circuitous routes are better and more interesting. Circuitous routes are where the healing happens, since they let you double back and pick up the pieces of yourself you dropped along the way. This is what authenticity looks like, I think, the willingness to gather together all that is best and broken inside you and share it with someone else without apology, to face the world and say, “This is my winding road–this is MY winding road–and this is who I am.”

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Suddenly the sun breaks through the clouds. A dove appears--the storm is over.

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On Walden Pond (in My Parents’ Spare Bedroom) (Blog #228)

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Believe it or not, I’ve been awake since 9:30 this morning. Is this what normal people do? Now it’s 1:20, also in the morning, and I’ve had so much coffee that my legs are periodically going into twitching fits. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I were having a religious experience, a la big tent revival. I really think I’ve been overdoing it on the caffeine lately, but considering it’s been two weeks since I’ve had a piece of bread and even longer since I’ve heard from Zac Efron, a cup of joe is about the only fun left in my life. Still, I should probably drink some water, maybe say a prayer to help get me off the ceiling and balance things out. But so long as I’m all jittery, I plan to use the extra energy to get me through tonight’s blog.

This afternoon I saw my therapist, and during a discussion about personality traits that I might have but not be aware of, my therapist mentioned Johari’s window. Johari’s window is “a therapy thing” that says each of us is divided into four basic sections, which are: 1) the parts we know that others know too, called the arena, 2) the parts we know that others don’t, called the facade, 3) the parts others know that we don’t, called the blind spot, and 4) the parts nobody knows, called the unknown. As I understand it, the arena is where we’re authentic, the facade is where we’re “fake as hell,” and the blind spot and the unknown are where we don’t know our own shit from Shinola. And whereas I guess we all hang out in each quadrant from time to time, I’m assuming the goal is to know and be open about as much as yourself as possible and, therefore, spend most your time in the arena.

After therapy I spent the day at the library. Y’all, I honestly think the library is a sacred space for me. While I was there today, I started and finished a book about forgiveness, but I kept getting up every so often just to roam the aisles and be near the other books. I even explored the children’s section, where I ended up reading two books on the floor with my legs criss-cross, applesauce. Just before I left, I checked out two adult books, so now my pile of “books I’m currently reading” makes me look like a post-graduate student.

One of the books I checked out was called Expect Great Things. Having such clear instructions, I deliberately got my hopes up. Well, the book is about Henry David Thoreau, I’m already fifty pages in, and I honestly think it would have been better to call it Expect Mediocre Things. I mean, it’s well done and I’m enjoying it–don’t get me wrong–I just think the author could have set the bar lower and left more room for being pleasantly surprised. But I guess a book with “mediocre” in the title wouldn’t have exactly flown off the shelf and into my hands.

Honestly, I don’t know that much about Thoreau, so I’m excited to read the rest of the book. I do know that he went to the woods because he wanted to live deliberately and that he said, “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer,” and these facts alone make him a hero in my world. I used to have this fantasy that one day I’d do something like going to the woods–pack it all up, live in a log cabin, and spend all day reading. You know, keep away the neighbors by never bathing. Okay, maybe not that last part, but I have always loved the idea of being in nature and getting to know myself, looking through as many of my window panes as possible. But that’s not gonna happen, I’d think. Who has time to read all day?

Maybe you see where this is going.

Sometime between checking out the book on Thoreau and writing tonight’s blog, I realized that in a lot of respects, I’m currently doing what Thoreau was doing. Granted, the spare bedroom at my parents’ house isn’t exactly Walden Pond, but it is the place where I’m learning to live deliberately. Put another way, it’s where I’m learning to live in the arena of authenticity, to be myself. And I guess sometimes I give myself such a hard time about not doing what everyone else is doing the way everyone else is doing it that I forget they hear their drummers and I hear mine. Like, Wait a damn minute–I’m not supposed to do things like other people–because I’m not other people–I’m me.

When we expect great things, we see great things.

As I’ve said before, I worry a lot about what’s going to come next and about earning a living, but my therapist says that when you follow your bliss, it always pays off. Not that I don’t believe her, but I’m curious to see how it worked out for Thoreau, if he had anything to say about the matter. But considering I’m already happier than I ever have been and am currently getting to spend my days as I want to, in sacred spaces with piles of books to read beside me, my sense is that things have already been paying off and I simply haven’t been acknowledging it. Maybe we all do this–wake up every day, go through our routines, and expect the mediocre. We say, Oh, that’s just my life, and we end up taking our Walden Ponds for granted. But I’m reminded tonight that when we expect great things, we see great things–great things that are right here, right now.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Healing is like the internet at my parents’ house—it takes time.

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