Time Well Spent (Blog #200)

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9:33 AM

I’ve been awake for an hour or so, and I just finished a continental breakfast here at the glorious Comfort Inn and Suites in Carbondale, Colorado. Check out is in an hour and a half, so I’m about to take a shower, pack up, and hit the road. (It’s been real.) My destination is Albuquerque, where my sister lives, and it should take about eight hours, stops included. Because I’m still feeling yuck, blah, and gross, I imagine it’s going to be a long day. Jesus, take the wheel. Still, at the end of the road will be the ones I love. All things considered, life is good.

If it’s not obvious, I’ll be writing the blog in “installments” today to make my life easier. If you can think of some little something to make your life easier today, do it–you have my full support.

4:12 PM

I think I just set a new personal record. I drove for five and a half hours without a pit stop. I didn’t realize that was possible, so I’m considering nicknaming my bladder Champ. Who knows why the sudden change in behavior? Usually I pee constantly. Maybe my kidneys got enlightened this weekend, or maybe I’m just dehydrated.

The drive so far has been surreal. For whatever reason, my mind is at ease, and my usual sense of nervousness is nowhere to be found. Even when driving along narrow roadways with steep drop-offs, I was like, Whatever. I’ve only taken one picture (at a stoplight in Aspen), but the scenery has been gorgeous–Colorado and New Mexico in the fall are basically God’s backyard. Anyway, I’m in road-warrior mode and ready to see my nephews, so I’ll write more later.

8:08 PM

I got to my sister’s a couple of hours ago. When I arrived, the nephews started bouncing off the walls, and even Ander (the younger one), who usually hides from me, went nuts. They were skipping, jumping, leading me outside then back in. Eventually I sat down for dinner (thanks, Dee-Anne) and visited with my sister and her husband while Ander scooted across the kitchen floor on his back and repeatedly said, “Ow, ow, ow.” My brother-in-law said, “Imagine this non-stop for seven years.” I said, “I can’t.”

Seriously, how do parents do it? Well, how do parents who don’t drink do it?

Before Christopher (the older nephew) went to bed, he put a craft book on the table and asked me to help him make a paper airplane.  Seriously, this kid is great with building and making things, so he probably could have done it himself, but I guess this was an “advanced” model. Y’all, uncle-ing is hard. The instructions had like ten steps–the plane had a tail fin and everything. It was super detailed, complicated actually, and a couple times I thought, I can’t figure this out. But then I did–it finally came together. What’s more, it flew!

That’s right, I’m thirty-seven and can make a paper airplane.

But get this shit. Christopher–that little turd–ran straight to my sister and said, “Mom–I made an airplane!”

(Awkward pause)

“Well, I helped make one.”

9:40 PM

We always have more support than we realize.

For the last hour I’ve been chatting with my sister, but she just went to bed because she’s a mom. Anyway, I really like her. We talked about our family, school, and our individual responses to some of the bullshit we went through as children–specifically the fact that she expressed her emotions back then and I stuffed mine way, way down. (It’s okay, they’ve been working their way back up–like they do.) Since Dee-Anne lives so far away and most of my healing progress has happened the last few years, sometimes I forget that she went through a lot of the same stuff I did. Of course, it’s always good to remember that you’re not alone. We always have more support than we realize.

10:08 PM

A couple hours ago I realized that today’s blog is number 200. That’s 200 days in a row of sitting down, more than once propping my eyelids open with toothpicks, and opening my mind and heart for both me and the world to see. The goal is every day for a year, and I recently hit the halfway mark (183 days), but I note it on the blog every fifty days if I remember. So that’s why we’re talking about it now.

When I started this blog over six months ago, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Since I’ve been living back at home, I was originally going to call the blog Me and My Parents, then Me, My Parents, and My Therapist. But I thought, Surely I’ll move out again one day, so I dropped my parents altogether (but just from the blog). Anyway, as I’m writing about the blog now, it makes me want to cry. Maybe that’s because I’ve come to think of it as a friend. We have all these memories together. Each night we cuddle up together, I talk about my day, and the blog listens, wraps me up in its arms, and tells me I’m okay.

I’ve said it before, but I can’t overemphasize what a positive journey this has been. I’m out of work, living with my parents, and really have no idea what the rest of my life will hold. On the surface, I don’t have a lot to show. But beneath the surface, where it counts, I’m better than I ever have been. I’m less afraid and more sure than ever before. I’m more self-confident, comfortable in my own skin. I’m not perfect, of course, but I own my shit and am either working on it or okay with saying, “I’m fine the way I am.” The reason I want to cry, of course, is because I realize it’s not the blog that’s been my friend these last 200 days–it’s me–I’m the one who’s been there for me.

10:31 PM

At the spiritual retreat this last weekend, the teacher was joking about how people approach their spiritual lives, like, “Oh yeah, I’ve got a few free hours between errands today, I’ll check out that meditation thing.” This attitude, of course, is ridiculous. After all, he said, what’s more important than your freedom?

Learning to be there for yourself is the essence of healing.

I’ve thought about this question off and on today. I know I’ve worried a lot this last year about how I’m going to make a living or what I’m going to do with the rest of my life, but when I consider how much freer, happier, and peaceful I am now as compared to six months ago, all that “worldly stuff” pales in comparison. I’m not saying this process has been easy. On the contrary, there have been plenty of days that it’s felt like making a complicated paper airplane and letting someone else take the credit for it. Often the road has been long, and I haven’t felt so great. Still, I’d recommend the journey to anyone. For surely learning to be there for yourself is the essence of healing, and making time to be your own friend is time well spent. And here’s what I can promise–at the end of the road will be the ones you love (and that includes you), and things will finally come together.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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We are all connected in a great mystery and made of the same strong stuff.

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the person beside me (blog #11)

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Usually, at some point during the day, it becomes clear what I’m going to blog about. It’s like an idea shows up, and part of me just knows—that’s it. Well, it’s two hours to midnight, Cinderella, and so far that idea hasn’t shown up. That being said, it’s National Siblings Day, so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my one and only sibling, Dee-Anne. (That’s her in the photo above. She’s the pretty one. With long hair.)

As I write this now, I’m in the room that was hers when we were children. All of her furniture is gone, the walls have been repainted, and there aren’t many signs of her left, save a bookend of a teddy bear. The bear has its legs spread far apart, heels to Jesus, so I don’t know what that’s about. In the closet, there’s her Teddy Ruxpin, as well as a dry-erase notepad with two more teddy bears on it. Both of them are wearing leotards. (It was the 80s.)

Obviously, Dee-Anne had a thing for teddy bears.

It’s weird being back here, living in the house I grew up in, staying in her room. Even without closing my eyes, I can see where her canopy bed used to sit. I remember getting a spanking in here once, by her nightstand. I remember where in the room she and her friends used to play with Barbie dolls and I wasn’t allowed.

Memories for me are almost always related to space. Like, when I think about things that happened at my dance studio, I always remember the thing and exactly where I was standing when it happened. It’s like that with everything. I remember the spot in my grandparents’ front yard where I was standing when I saw the smoke from our house burning a few blocks away. Just that one memory of the smoke and the spot in the yard is all I’ve got. Nothing else comes back, other than I know that my sister was there beside me.

Sometimes I walk through the house, and it’s like a dream. In reality, Mom and Dad are in the living room watching Days of Our Lives, but I see my sister and me there the night that Dad was arrested over twenty years ago. We watched it on television together.

There’s a wall in the living room with pictures of us, most of them taken about twelve years ago, when I opened my dance studio. Dee-Anne was my first dance partner, and we took a lot of pictures for publicity. But there are also a lot of pictures from when we were kids, as well as one when I was a senior in high school that’s airbrushed more than the cover of Cosmopolitan.

As I think about it now, I realize that my sister was my first friend, one of the first people I met when I came into this world. And I guess we did all the normal things that siblings do—double bounce each other on the trampoline, go to each other’s ballgames and ballet recitals, fight with each other in the backseat of the car. But there were certainly all the not-so-normal things that happened, like the time we walked the streets of El Paso as teenagers, searching for a Western Union, because Mom’s purse was stolen and we needed cash if we were going to be able to visit Dad in prison. (I really should have started therapy sooner.)

After my first nephew was born, I came out to my sister. I think I had just broken up with my first official boyfriend, and I was such a fucking mess that my parents had asked what was going on. So I told them, then decided Dee-Anne should know too.

So we’re driving to the grocery store, and my nephew is in a car seat in the back, and I just blurt it out. “So this probably won’t come as a surprise, but I’m gay—now you say something supportive.”

And then my sister stuck her hand in the air (like a Pentecostal on a Sunday morning) and said, “High five for finally saying something.”

Later that year, for my birthday, she sent me a card that said, “I’m sorry for not letting you play with my Barbie dolls.”

I always tell people that I’ve been really fortunate in terms of my sexuality. My family is over-the-top accepting. Just today, my mom made a point to tell me how handsome she thinks Don Lemon and Anderson Cooper are. More than little things like that, I know that I can be myself. I know anyone I choose to date or spend time with is welcome here. But that’s not always the case, of course. I know gay guys who have been kicked out by their mothers, thrown up against the wall by their fathers, told they can’t see their nephews by their sisters.

And all I can say is that I’m grateful. There’s something special and humbling about being able to be fully yourself around your family, the people who have known you the longest, that have been through hell with you. It’s so easy to put expectations on people you’ve known forever, to insist that they don’t change or even grow up. But I think if you really love someone, you love them no matter what. And it doesn’t matter if they get sick, or go to prison, or come out of the closet because sure, people change, but love doesn’t. That’s the thing that stays the same.

And if someone changes and you stop loving them—well, that’s not love.

So if I’ve never said it before, Dee-Anne, thank you for loving me. Thank you for being my first friend, for standing beside me during the very worst moments of this life, and thank you for dancing with me, and for that high five and the retroactive invitation to play with your Barbie dolls. I definitely would have taken you up on that. But then again, had I come out sooner, I also would have stopped you from wearing those jeans in the eighth grade.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Life is better when we're not in control. When we mentally leave room for anything to happen, anything can.

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