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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It's the holes or the spaces in our lives that give us room to breathe and room to rest in, room to contain both good and bad days, and--when the time is right--room for something else to come along.

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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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No one dances completely alone.

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farts aren’t planned (blog #32)

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This morning I woke up with a tickle in my throat. I actually dreamed about it last night, and a friend in the dream told me to eat some yogurt. So that’s what I did when I got out bed because I wanted my subconscious to know that I’m listening to it. Now if I end up getting sick, I’m going to tell my subconscious to go screw itself, to which I’m sure it would reply, “Will you PLEASE go to bed sooner, quit eating ice cream and tacos for dinner, and stop thinking that you’re still twenty-three?”

Well, maybe today’s the day. With any luck at all, I’ll finish this post before the sun goes down, and I can get some sleep. Before the week is over, I plan to clean up my diet, start doing some push-ups. And then in two weeks, maybe my favorite pair of jeans won’t look like a pair of acid-washed yoga pants.

Whenever I decide to start or stop something, to form or break a habit, there’s always a lot of buildup and anxiety about it. I think about it, pray about it, think about it, pray about—for weeks, sometimes months. Not changing anything, mind you, just stressing.

Once a change HAS been made, I can rock out a good habit for a while—meditating every day, going to the gym five times a week, eating well. But then something happens, and that all goes to shit, and it’s cigarettes for breakfast and banana splits for lunch.

When things are going “the right way,” when I’m behaving like I think I should, I feel pretty good about myself. But when things fall apart, my go-to response is to beat myself up, to start “shoulding” on myself. My therapist says that’s because I want things to always be the same. But everything changes, she says. Even good habits fall away.

For the longest time, I would go to my therapist’s office and beat myself up about smoking cigarettes, a habit that started in my early twenties and effectively disappeared until I broke up with my ex three years ago. And while I was more concerned about my health and what other people would think if they found out, she was more concerned about the fact that I was shoulding on and judging myself. She said that one day I would have enough and quit.

And she was right. One day it became clear. I stopped. Just like the seasons, it changed.

This afternoon my friend Marla and I went to speak at our friend Anita’s writing class at the Fort Smith Public Library. (That’s our picture at the top of the blog.) Anita has been teaching writing in Fort Smith since God was a small child, and her second novel comes out this summer. Like her first novel, it’s about a murder that took place in Van Buren over thirty years ago. Anyway, I thought that I was going to the class to support Marla and reconnect with Anita, but had I read my messages more clearly, I would have known that I was actually going to speak about my glamorous life as a blogger.

So I winged it and read a story I wrote last September about how unhappy I was owning the dance studio and living in Fort Smith, how I wanted to write more and move to Austin. And then I talked specifically about the blog, and Anita told the class that if you don’t like R rated movies, don’t go to one, and if you don’t like four-letter words, don’t go to Marcus’s blog.

So even though I didn’t plan to speak, it all turned out fine. And what I loved about it is that there wasn’t any planning, no thinking about it and praying about it, no anxiety. It just happened.

When I finished, a dear lady named Marilyn said, “Marcus, I think you need to get on the next bus out of here. Just move to Austin.” And then several others chimed in and said, “Fuck it. You only live once.” (I’m paraphrasing. They didn’t actually say that.) But I totally felt encouraged, so I asked Marilyn if she’d like to take a selfie with me, and she said, “I would love that,” so here it is.

Alan Watts tells the story of a Buddhist monk who poetically stated that you can’t plan everything in life. You don’t think, I’m going to go to the supermarket at ten tomorrow morning and then “drop fart” at ten-thirty. And this is actually a spiritual lesson. Farts aren’t planned. They’re “a happening.”

Honestly, I think I give myself too much credit. It’s probably an ego thing. I think that I can control when I get sick and when I get well, when I work and when I don’t, and where I live. And I’m not saying I don’t have any influence in what I eat or when I go to bed or when I’ll move to Austin, but I do think my therapist and the Buddhist monk are right. One day, I’ll clean up my diet and go to bed sooner. One day, I’ll get on a bus and get out of here. When that is exactly, I can’t say, but I can save myself a lot of anxiety by not worrying about it so much. When it’s time, I think I’ll know it’s time, and it will simply happen. And just like the speech that wasn’t planned, it will all turn out fine, even if there are a few four-letter words along the way.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

"There are a lot of benefits to being right here, right now."

on being embarrassed (blog #31)

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Today I woke up at two in the afternoon. I should really start doing that more often. It felt glorious. Alternatively, I guess I could start going to bed earlier, but I really think God intended things like blogging and eating tacos to only be done after midnight, under the cover of darkness. (Isn’t that one of the commandments?)

When my aunt woke me up this afternoon, she told me that she’d come into my room earlier to make sure I was still breathing. She’d read last night’s blog about my talking to Jesus and taking a Hydrocodone, and wanted to make sure I hadn’t overdosed on either one. (I’m currently picturing one of those witty church signs saying something like: Prescription—Jesus, Side Effects may include heaven.)

Once I got around, my aunt took me to lunch with my cousin. At one point, they were talking about a flower arrangement my cousin had given my aunt, and when she realized that he’d made the arrangement himself, she said, “You did good!” And then my cousin, totally deadpan, looked at her and said, “Mom, I did WELL. Superman does good.”

Isn’t that amazing? Superman does good. I nearly spit out my third cup of coffee. (And I wonder why I have trouble falling asleep at night.)

After breakfast (that’s lunch to you), I walked to Utica Square to do some shopping. Well, even though it was cold, I wore shorts because they fit better than my jeans. It’s like this little mind-game I play with myself. The tighter my pants are, the fatter I feel, so if my pants aren’t tight, that must mean I’m not fat. Well, that logic works for a while, at least until it’s fifty degrees outside and the only pants that fit you turn out to not actually be pants at all.

Even though I tried on six or eight items of clothing, I didn’t buy anything because everything was either too short, too tight around the shoulders, too not perfect. And whereas I actually do need a few more things to wear, it was nice not to spend the money and end up with something I wasn’t really gung-ho about. I’ve blogged about it before, but this is one of the perks of minimalist living—more money, fewer things I don’t adore.

Back at my aunt’s house, we spent the evening in her living room, just chatting. A few times her dog Benny climbed up on me, looking for some attention. This is what I love about animals. They just ask for what they want. (One time in therapy, my therapist suggested that anytime I wanted a hug, I could simply ask my friends for one, so sometimes I do that. So far, no one’s refused.)

My aunt pointed out that Benny has some benign lumps on his body, and the biggest one (about the size of a baseball) is in a rather personal area. And then my aunt joked, “If he knew any better, he’d be embarrassed.” So we both laughed, and then my writer brain went to work thinking about all the times I’ve been embarrassed and whether or not I could make a story out of any of it. And the only memory that came to mind was when I was in my early twenties and got hit on by a millionaire.

I’ll try to be brief.

When my dad was in prison, he met a millionaire (a guy in his sixties, maybe) who was in prison for something to do with taxes. So when they both got out of prison, the man invited our family to visit him. And I guess a lot of guys in prison brag about having big houses and a lot of cars and antiques, but it’s usually all bullshit. But this guy actually had all that stuff.

Why should anyone be embarrassed about the truth?

Well, we had a great time, but looking back, the guy hit on me a lot. I guess I knew it at the time, but I was pretty naïve back then, so I didn’t fully see it for what it was. At one point, he straight up told me that I had a nice ass, and I guess I blushed or started stuttering. I don’t remember what I said, but it must have been something like, “I’d be too embarrassed to say something like that.” And I just remember the guy saying, “Why would you be embarrassed to say you like something?”

I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. And although I’m not saying I think everything the guy said and did was socially appropriate, even now I’m struck by his confidence, his lack of shame. I used to think that his confidence had to do with his money or age. I’m sure it all helps. But in my experience, the more I accept myself, the less ashamed and less embarrassed I am. I’m still not where Benny is, but maybe one day I’ll be completely okay with a few extra pounds, or a pair of pants that fit too tight, or asking for what I want. I mean, why should anyone be embarrassed about something they can’t immediately change? What’s more, why should anyone be embarrassed about the truth?

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Nothing physical was ever meant to stay the same.

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Jesus and dolphins and oxygen (blog #21)

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First, my immediate goal, other than digesting the tacos I just ate and trying to keep my head from falling on the keyboard due to sleep deprivation, is to keep this blog post short. Or at least be finished within an hour. I mean, a girl’s gotta sleep.

Second, I’ve been thinking lately that it would be worthwhile to make an effort to blog about only funny things, you know, to not be so fucking serious all the time. Like, I could probably stand to spend an entire day watching The Golden Girls and picking my nose and not try to make a life lesson out of it. It would probably do us all some good. The problem with this idea, however, is that just about every day, there’s something that gets under my skin, sort of like a soul chigger, that won’t leave me alone, and writing about those sorts of things seems to help.

But good news—nothing like that happened today. Surprising, I know, since Mercury is in retrograde, and that’s supposed to screw with everybody’s life. But really—today was a wonderful day. Like, if you were in a bad mood, you wouldn’t have wanted to be around me because I would have been THAT PERSON that just LOVES Jesus and dolphins and oxygen. (Isn’t breathing GREAT!)

Don’t worry. I’m sure it will pass.

The day started with lunch with my friend Ray. He’s the one with whom I usually have “therapy after therapy.” But today, we had “therapy before therapy,” which my mom later referred to as foreplay. (I’m just going to pretend she didn’t say that, but I guess that therapeutically and professionally speaking, she had a pretty clever point.) Anyway, Ray and I caught up on the latest with each other, and when I talked about living with my parents, he said, “I’m sure that has its charms and challenges.” Isn’t that a great phrase—charms and challenges?

After lunch with Ray, I showed up to therapy early, so I got to hang out for a while in a waiting room that could—quite honestly—use the help of a gay man. I mean, it looks like someone went shopping for furniture at a yard sale once a decade for the last thirty years. (My therapist knows I’m totally judgmental on this point. And to be fair, it’s a shared office space, and they recently got some new chairs that aren’t half bad. And my therapist’s office is LOVELY. Her answer to the waiting room is, “Look down.”)

Anyway, while I was waiting, I ran into a friend of mine whom I must have known in another life, since our paths seem to cross every few years, and it’s always in a different context (dance, therapy, etc.). So we hung out for a while, and it was like even more therapy, since my friend works in the field and is a good listener. Each of us shared about our lives, and we laughed a lot. We were THOSE PEOPLE in the waiting room. The whole time this was going on, there was a lady across the room that was waiting (on an ugly couch) for her therapist, her head buried in a magazine. I kept wanting to draw her into the conversation, like, So, why are YOU here? But I assumed that wouldn’t have been appropriate.

Well, therapy was great. (And we all lived happily ever after.) For the longest time, I almost always come to therapy with what we call “the list,” which is simply all the things that have happened since the last visit that I want to talk about. (Can you say, “Anal retentive?”) When I used to do a lot of construction work, “the list” was always written on a paint stick, and I called it “the paint stick of truth.” But now “the list” is on my laptop because that’s much easier. Anyway, I’ve had a number of things on “the list” that have been there for a couple of months, nothing major, but a lot of times I like to ask questions about psychology or self-help books I’ve read. For me, it’s like an educated version of Fact or Crap. So I got to do that today, and it was like my little heart went skipping barefoot through a field of pink tulips.

We also talked about the blog, which she told me before it went live that she supported, and she said the same today. (#winning) I told her my experience with it so far had been nothing but positive, that it’s helped me to figure out what I’m feeling and thinking, work toward solutions for problems, and even cry (to which she said, “Get the poison out, get the poison out.”) And then she said that the term therapists use for what I was doing was “self as instrument.” When I asked her to say more, she said that I was using the blog as a form of self-therapy, so I was using myself as an instrument of healing. (#morewinning)

After teaching a dance lesson this evening, I caught up with my friend who likes birds. (I’m assuming he wouldn’t want me to use his name, and I can’t think of a better way to describe him at the moment.) Anyway, bird friend was probably my original therapist, as we joke that he has “tell me everything” written across his forehead. I’m sure you have a friend like that—a good listener, a straight shooter, someone fundamentally kind.

Well, before I left the birdcage, my friend showed me a gift someone had given him. It was a Mickey Mouse calendar, one of those ones you have to change by hand every day. (Sounds like a lot of damn work to me.) And at the top of the calendar it said, “My, oh my, what a wonderful day!” (Doesn’t that sound like the cutest thing you’ve ever heard?) And you probably already know this, but bird friend said the quote was from the tune “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” his favorite song. He said you just can’t listen to it and stay in a bad mood. And then he started singing it, kind of moving his shoulders up and down, dancing ever so slightly around his kitchen. (He was THAT person.)

Okay, it’s been an hour, and I’m at twice my anticipated word limit. I’m not exactly sure how to wrap this up, other than to say I think we all need days like today. Ray calls them Self-Care days, those days when you only spend time with people you LOVE being around, your BEST friends. And maybe you get a massage or do something decadent. You know, stop for tacos. That’s what I did on the way home tonight. TALK ABOUT SATISFACTUAL.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

"Sure, people change, but love doesn't."

it’s time to soften up (blog #1)

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My friend Marla says that she could be a bank robber because no one ever remembers her. Most of the time, she’s quiet. She doesn’t get in anyone’s way. Like, you could probably step on her shoe on purpose, and she’d apologize for not having a smaller foot. By her own admission, she tries to blend in, to not stand out. I guess we all develop strategies for getting by in the world, and at least for now, this one is working for Marla.

Which is too bad.

This morning I woke up at 6:45 to hear Marla speak to a group of local business leaders. She currently writes and edits for a magazine in town that I used to write for, which is how we met. So six years ago she was just my editor. Now she’s also my friend, which is the only reason I got out of bed so friggin’ early.

Getting dressed, I threw on a white t-shirt that I bought as part of a three-pack deal from TJ Maxx. I love a white t-shirt first out of the package, but as they start to shrink, I usually grow to hate them. For this reason, I’ve recently taken to not putting my t-shirts in the dryer. Well, now that I’m living with my parents, of course, my mom has started doing my laundry. Turns out, she uses fabric softener on t-shirts. Well, I guess the scent is extra strong because the shirt wasn’t put in the dryer, so every three minutes, I get huge whiff of the stuff, and it smells like a brand new teddy bear on a glorious spring morning.

It makes me want to vomit.

The event this morning was held at a local bookstore and coffee shop, and the hosts provided a free waffle bar that was so fantastic it’d make even the Holiday Inn Express jealous. So I’m in the waffle line this morning, just holding onto my coffee cup and smelling my t-shirt, hoping that no one will talk to me or stand too close. And just at that moment, the guy next to me calls me by name and strikes up a conversation. All I could think was, “Shit” because I hate it when people know my name and I don’t know theirs, especially when there’s a timer ticking away on a waffle iron two feet away. It’s like the universe hitting you over the head and saying, “You’re stuck here for another two minutes and sixteen seconds.”

And then to make matters worse, I realize whom I’m talking to. It’s a guy who’s hit on me a number of times online. On Grindr. (Grindr is essentially a hookup app, but sometimes after five days of feeling lonely and three hours of drinking margaritas, I’ll think that it’s a good way to stumble across marriage material. I could probably compare this mentality to my dad’s believing that God wants him to win the lottery.) Anyway, this guy in the waffle line has straight up asked me for sex before, something that always offends me, at least when it happens before I find out someone’s name. (Once another guy asked me for sex, and when I asked what he did for a living, he told me that information was too personal. But sex is okay. Go figure.)

I realize that my getting on a hookup app and being offended by a quick offer for sex is a bit like showing up to an orgy and sipping tea and crumpets in a three-piece suite with your pinky raised in the air (like, I’m so much better than this), but we all have our standards.

So back to the waffle line. The timer’s up, it’s my turn to make a waffle, and the guy moves on. And despite everything that was going on in my head, it was a pleasant conversation. It didn’t make me want to go on a date or have sex with him, but it did make me think that some people come off better in person than they do online.

When my waffle finished, I topped it off with hazelnut cream cheese, bananas, and maple syrup, and sat down at a table in the middle of the room to hear Marla speak. (I guess I overdid it on the sugar and coffee because I’m actually shaking as I sit here in the library.) True to form, Marla started slowly, quietly. She read from a prepared speech, and she mostly looked down. She talked about losing a former job, about all the shit things that happened in her life before she ended up working as a full-time writer at the magazine. And I can only assume that I wasn’t alone as I sat there wondering where the talk was going and how she was going to connect with everyone in the room.

But then it happened.

In a still, small voice, Marla, whose exact beautiful words I can’t recall, said something like, “We all have times in our lives when we feel like we’re up against a wall, when we feel like things will never get better.” Right then, I wanted to cry, and I guess it’s because I’m single and I’m living with my parents, and my mom’s doing my laundry, and I smell like a field full of daisies. And to make matters worse, now I’m crying into my Belgium waffle at eight in the morning. (I’ll take “Things that are not a turn-on” for a thousand, Alex.)

My therapist says that life always balances itself. Like if you swing a pendulum really far in one direction, you know it’s going to swing back in the other. She says that I’ve been burning the candle at both ends for so long that this period in my life is the universe’s way of saying, “Whoa, Trigger, slow down.” This period of time is about resting, about getting balance. And as for living with my parents, she says that she lived with her parents for a while when she was getting her Master’s Degree and that it really laid the foundation for the good relationship she has with them today.

So maybe being at home again isn’t a bad thing. Maybe it’s about building better relationships and about finding balance, even if it’s in the little things like Mom doing my laundry because she was so sick with depression when I was growing up that she wasn’t able to back then. At that time, I had to grow up pretty fast. I had to take care of myself, do my own laundry. So now it’s like there’s this chance to turn back the clock. It lets her be a mom, and it lets me be a kid. It lets me experience being taken care of.

When I think about balance, I think about how I’ve spent most my life being really hard on myself and everyone else. Like, totally judgmental. Pinky in the air–I’m better than this. It’s like, maybe a little judgment is useful now and then, but I’ve been way overdoing it, like putting too much hazelnut cream cheese on my self-judgment waffle. And I think that Marla’s words hit me this morning because that kind of thinking and judgment can really make you feel like you’re up against a wall. Things don’t go the way you want–say, you might move in with your parents–and suddenly you feel like you’re all alone, that things will never get better.

I like to think that the universe is always trying to get my attention, that it’s actually interested in what’s going on with me, that it’s wanting to spark a conversation, dropping hints here and there. And if that’s the case, I think the fabric softener on my white t-shirt is a big hint. I think it’s telling me, “Hey, you’ve been really hard on yourself for a long time now. It’s time to soften up…a lot. It’s time to swing the other way.”

Earlier I mentioned that I thought Marla’s quiet persona was too bad. What I meant by that is that I think she’s an amazing writer and an even better friend. I think more people might notice her if she spoke in a louder voice. But what I’m finding is that sometimes it’s the still, small voices that have the most to say. They slip in late. They sit on the back row. But if you listen, they disarm you. They remind you that you’re overdoing it. They tell you that you need to soften up. They say, “You may be up against a wall, but I’m right here with you.”

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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All things become ripe when they’re ready.

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