Just Keep Swimming

With the end of 2017, I’m hoping for a better year.  Now for me personally, 2017 wasn’t a completely awful year.  It was, however, a rather negative year.  It felt like everything on the news and everything that we talked about around the office Keurig was negative (except maybe Game of Thrones).  But I realized that if 2017 was negative, it was because I allowed it to be.  So, in an effort to keep 2018 on a more upbeat note, I’m going to do some posts on the people who inspire me or make me feel better about life.  There isn’t any real rhyme or reason to who I’m writing about or when I’m writing about them.  I hope maybe you’ll get a little sunshine from this, too.

Spring of 1997 I was eleven years old and finishing up sixth grade, getting ready to start junior high in a private catholic school in the fall.  One of the biggest topics of conversation those days was the show Ellen.  Ellen DeGeneres, the actress and comedian, had come out of the closet, and her character on her eponymous show was also going to come out.

My dad worked second shift, so much of my childhood was spent watching tv after dinner with my mom, and we were big fans of Ellen.  I distinctly remember that Ellen coming out was a big deal.  At my house, it was noteworthy for its novelty but in no way was it considered a bad thing.  But just one street away, at my best friend’s house, she was no longer allowed to watch Ellen.  I remember being shocked about this.  My friend’s family is Catholic, but her mom was, and is, one of the nicest people I’ve ever known.  This seemed nuts.

The show was canceled the next year, but as we all know now, this changed television and America.  She was the first, but she certainly wasn’t the last.

In 2003, Ellen came back to our living rooms via her talk show.  For me, her show filled the void left when Rosie went off the air in 2002.  Soon, however, the country fell in love with Ellen.  Everyone watched Ellen.  People would tape Ellen so they could watch it when they got home from work.  She was America’s Sweetheart.  This could have happened to no one more deserving.

But not only did Ellen come back and show everyone why so many people had liked her in the first place, she made the world a better place.  If you haven’t balled your eyes out during a segment of her show when she gives money to a deserving family or school or charity, you’re lying.

I know that Ellen herself doesn’t give away all (or probably most) of the money on her show, but she is the catalyst.  She brings together people and organizations who have the ability to give and those who need it.  And she inspires her viewers to give, to take whatever bit they can add weather it’s money or time.

Whenever I see Ellen, either on her show or elsewhere, she says nice things.  She makes people smile and laugh.  She brings people together.  While I’m sure Ellen the real person has her problems like we all do, the fact that she chooses to use her public image to make the world better says a lot about her.  She spent years of her life being harangued and harassed by the world and when she had a chance to be on top again, she used it to make people happy.  I can guarantee that some of the people whose lives she’s improved are the same people who said and wrote horrible things about her.  We should all choose to take the high road like Ellen has.

Citations:
I used IMDb to confirm some dates.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108761/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379623/?ref_=nm_knf_t1
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115338/?ref_=rvi_tt

I was inspired in part by this article detailing some of Ellen’s good works and including video clips of several segments http://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/1108319/times-ellen-degeneres-charitable-giving-changed-lives

The beginning of this is one of my favorite Ellen moments of all time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u2O-fF8__A

Ellen receiving the Medal of Freedom from President Obama, makes me cry every time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOErQMqCXvM

 

 

No use crying over frozen peas

I almost started crying in the freezer section at Safeway today.  I was trying to find a reasonably sized package of frozen peas.  I finally found one I liked and when I grabbed it out of the freezer I was brought back to all the other times I had pulled frozen veggies out of the case.  You would think that would be pretty common but I don’t often eat frozen vegetables. My grandparents, however, did and I did most of their grocery shopping for the last year or so of their lives.

So there I am standing in the middle of the freezer section when I get one of those slams to the heart.  I took a couple breaths and it passed, but, man, it hurt.

Losing my grandparents has been a lot harder than I expected.  I had lost my mom, their daughter, three years before my grandparents and that was pretty awful.  The year before I lost one of my cousins who was only in her early forties and left a seven year old daughter.  That was fucking rough.  I had been preparing myself to lose my grandparents for at least ten years.  They were in their nineties for Pete’s sake.  But it was so hard at the time and it continues to be hard.

I don’t know if it is because it was another loss in a line of loss and heartache and hardship for me.  Maybe I thought I was due for a break and instead lost two of my favorite people within six weeks.  It might have hit me hard because I knew they missed my mom as much as I do.  Having people who understand what you’re going through makes it easier.

I typed that last sentence and was reminded how alone I felt through the whole time my grandparents were in hospice.  My mom and I were always very close with her parents but not necessarily her brothers and their families.  My dad was close with my grandparents but it was different.  My brother was as lackadaisical with his relationship with Grammy and Grampa as he is about everything in his life.

The night my Grampa died my dad wasn’t there.  He was at work.  To be honest, I’ve blocked it a bit because I was so frustrated with everyone, but work is the only reason he wouldn’t have been there so I have to assume that’s where he was.   He came later but I remember one of my aunts hugging me and I just wanted to shove her off of me.  Why was she touching me?  This person I saw maybe once a year.  I tolerated her hug because I was aware it might not have been me she was trying to comfort but rather herself.

Gram was in hospice for almost two months but when she took a turn it was about thirty six hours till she passed.  I again found myself in a room full of people who despite being family didn’t know me and who I was sick of.  At one point, I could feel myself starting to lose it so I got up and left the room to be alone.  I went into a private room in the hospice and closed the door behind myself.  I decided to call my dad, who again was at work, when someone knocked on the door and opened it.  I was hysterically crying at this point so it was obvious there was someone in the room.  I hurried to the door to get rid of whoever it was.  My uncle opened the door and started to ask if I was ok.  I don’t really remember exactly what he said as I shoved the door closed in his face telling him I was on the phone with my dad.

I know he was just trying to check on me.  I know he was being nice.  But I don’t know you.  I left the room to get away from you people and now you put me in a situation where I feel even worse for being rude to you.  That moment was literally the worst I’ve ever felt in my life.  I don’t remember what I said on the phone to my dad, besides telling him I didn’t feel like I could talk in case my uncle was still right outside the door.

It’s only right that I admit that many of my people had offered to come sit with me.  My friends and members of my dad’s side of the family had all said they would come up whenever I needed them.  All of them would have come at the drop of a hat had I asked.  But I told everyone no because in those moments I was speaking to them I was ok and surrounded by people.  The problem is I was not surrounded by my people.   I later told my dad that it really sucked that my favorite aunt, his sister, had been in Florida at the time.  I had told her not to come home even though she had offered.  I am in no way mad at her or disappointed, it just would have been easier with her.  My father promptly informed me to never tell her that as she had expressed some distress over the issue.

Death is hard no matter the circumstances.  I don’t know why some hit me harder than others.  Like everything in life I just try to learn from it.  So next time I really need someone, I’m going to ask.  And I’m going to keep reminding myself that intentions count and you have to give people credit for trying.  Sadly, there are only going to be more and more of these occasions as I get older.

As I was just getting ready for bed I noticed that my glass of wine had turned my mouth blue and was reminded of a visit to Grammy in hospice.  I went to see her every day after work but one day I met a friend for drinks first and ended up having a couple of glasses of red wine.  When I got to the hospice I passed a mirror and realized my lips and tongue were very blue.  So before I went to see my Gram I used a cup of coffee like mouthwash to hopefully de-blue.  It made me laugh tonight as it did at the time, especially since my gram didn’t drink and might not even have known why my mouth was blue.

I’m going to keep trying to remember the funny things and the good times.  And maybe this year I’ll be ready to make her stuffing for Thanksgiving.

The hunt continues…

Looking for a job is the worst.  I don’t know that there is anything that makes me feel so badly about myself.  The entire process is set up to make you feel like crap.  No wonder most people hate their jobs.  By the time you find anything, you’re so desperate you’ll take it.

How do you translate life into a one or two page resume?  How do you get across in a one page cover letter enough information to show who you are and all the good things you will bring to the position?

I’m sure there are tons of articles out there from professionals answering these questions.  But everyone reads the same stuff, makes their resumes and cover letters meet those guidelines.  So it’s back to everyone’s materials looking the same.

How do I get across that my resume is a mess because I moved home to be with my dying mother?  How do I sell my best traits: being a real people person and that I’m crazy smart.  The application process is not set up to allow me to say this.

Who hasn’t sat in a job interview and just straight up lied?  I certainly have, and I hate it.  That is not me.  How good am I at Excel? To be honest, not great.  But it’s 2017, so I just Google it.  I had a job that involved a lot of work in Excel.  My boss would call me into his office and tell me what he wanted me to do.  I’d take extensive notes, assure him I knew what I was doing, go back to my desk, Google it and get it done.  He never had any complaints about my work.  The fact that I called out the hugely inappropriate behavior bordering on sexual harassment that happened frequently in the office that he had complaints about.

I’m trying hard to network.  Talk to people about what I’m looking for, talk to anyone about my job hunt.  I have high hopes that this is going to be a better way to find a job.  I’d love to end up somewhere I know a bit about first.  What is the work culture like?  Because just as much as the applicants lie in the interviews, so do the interviewers.   I want inside information.

I don’t know what the answer is for a better application process; I just know the way it is doesn’t work.  Who knows, maybe it just doesn’t work for me.  Maybe there are other people out there who hear back from every job they apply to, who are getting interview after interview.  People who aren’t sitting at home wondering if they’re gonna end up taking some awful job just to have a job.  That sounds extra awful.  I know I’m so lucky to be able to not work for a bit, but I just continue to be baffled by a system that is not set up to help employees or employers.

Grampa

Two years ago, on a Monday, I started a new job.   It wasn’t a good job.  It was just a job.  I had been laid off several months before and after a summer of looking for work, but also enjoying the sun, I really just needed a job.  I went to a temp agency and said I’ll take anything.  And I did.

Tuesday night after work, I was leaving the gym and I had a voicemail from my aunt saying both of my maternal grandparents were in the ER.  At the time, Grammy was 90 and Grampa was 91.  He had been diagnosed with heart failure years earlier.  Gram had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a week before.  Hospital visits were not totally unheard of.

Weirdly, well not that weirdly if you knew her, my grandmother had forbidden us from telling my grandfather that she was sick.  The doctors had given her months, at best.  Surely he was going to figure it out pretty quickly, but she said no.  So we didn’t tell him.  But that night at the ER, we didn’t have much choice.

At one point, before we filled him in, everyone else was with my Gram and the doctors and asked me to stay with Grampa.  He and I were chatting while a nurse was checking his vitals.  Grampa was telling me how he had barely been able to get out of the chair earlier when he had heard Gram fall out of bed.  Thankfully, he was able to reach the phone.  As he talked about not being able to catch his breath or have the strength to stand up, I laughed in my irreverent way and said “Grampa, you’re heart is literally falling apart, this isn’t shocking.”  He laughed, but the nurse didn’t seem amused.

The next day, my dad, their son-in-law went up to the hospital to visit and in a quiet moment my grandfather mentioned that he wasn’t sure what was wrong with my Gram.  In the chaos and noise and stress of the ER, he hadn’t understood what we had told him.

Quickly it was decided that they would both be going to hospice.  My family managed to find a facility that would allow them to be in the same room, just as they were at the hospital.  Grampa had even asked that the beds be pushed together so he could see Gram better and occasionally hold her hand.

On Friday, they were both transferred to hospice.  Grampa asked to be driven by his house one last time.  My grandparents bought that house freshly built in 1954.  Up to that point, they had been the only owners.  They had raised my mom and two uncles there.  And certainly contributed to raising me, my brother, my cousins and others.

The hospice was a beautiful building.  It felt a little bit like a hotel.  There were ten rooms and they all overlooked a pond.  They pushed the beds together.  By Sunday, Grampa was gone.

None of this is untrue, just a lot of it isn’t the whole truth.  About my uncles and my aunts who were never around before suddenly making all the decisions.  Wailing and wringing their hands like their lives were going to be so irrevocably altered.  All the talking where those aunts and uncles said “yes, that sounds like a good idea; yes we will do that” and then did whatever they wanted.  Two weeks later when it would have been Grampa’s birthday and the decision was made to have a birthday party for him anyways.  As if that was fun.

Really, it only got worse because Gram was in hospice for two months before she died.  But that is a story for another time.

I’m trying to forget all the bad stuff.  There isn’t anything I can do about it.  There wasn’t anything I could have done differently at the time without making a horrible situation even worse.  But it was awful being the youngest person there and the most mature.  It was awful watching these people who were surprised that I knew what kind of ice cream Grammy liked act like the world was ending.

They didn’t mean to upset me.  They probably didn’t even realize what they were doing.  And at the end of the day, intentions do matter.  But it was awful and even though it’s been two years, I’m still working on letting it go.  Maybe I won’t ever totally let it go, but I need to try.

Theatre: My Personal Chicken or the Egg

I just had the TV on while I was online job hunting.  I turned it on TCM when I saw that there was a Doris Day film on.  It was an adorably hokey film about Ms. Day’s character hitting it big as a singer and finding love along the way.  Enjoyable, as all her films are.

When the film ended there was a maybe ten minute segment about Frank Capra, whose films have more than stood the test of time and on which one could write forever.  But after that Ben Mankiewicz, who presents many of the films on TCM came on and began to discuss a new show on their sister network, TNT.  That show, Will, is a new take on the life and times of William Shakespeare.  Tonight TCM is airing films inspired by Shakespeare and to help present, Mr. Mankiewicz had the director and writer of the premier episode of Will.  The writer, Craig Pearce, wrote the screenplays for director Baz Luhrman’s Red Curtain Trilogy (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo+Juliet, and Moulin Rouge!) and 2013’s The Great Gatsby.  The director of the premier episode of Will, Shekhar Kapur, directed the Queen Elizabeth I biopics Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

Immediately, I’m riveted.  This is the writer and the director of some of my favorite films.  As they began to discuss how they got involved with the show and their take on Shakespeare my mind is swirling in a million directions.  I love television, film and theatre.  And while, I haven’t seen Will yet, I will most definitely give it a shot.  As I contemplated all these things that I so enjoy, I thought to myself “Do I like theatre because I was involved in theatre in school, or at least do I like it more because of that?”  And this stuck.  Did I start doing theatre in high school because I like theatre or do I like theatre because I did it in school?  This may be too much of a the chicken or the egg type question.

I don’t know that I could tell you the first play I ever saw in person.  I danced as a child and certainly attended ballets by age five or six.  So even if I had not attended a play, I was certainly familiar with going to the theatre.  I do, however, vividly recall seeing my first live musical.  There used to be an outdoor theatre in my hometown and when I was in about the third grade my family went to see a production of Fiddler on the Roof.  I made my mom take me again the next week.  I’ve been hooked ever since.

In junior high I started participating in my school’s fall musical.  To my recollection, I only did this because a lot of my friends were.  At the time, my school had the rather odd rule that anyone and everyone could be a part of the play, so long as they met the academic requirements and attended all required rehearsals.  There were usually about forty kids acting in each show.  The only way to consistently accommodate that many actors is to produce musicals.  Unfortunately for me, I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, so I was always relegated to the choir.  But I still loved it.  Hanging out with friends, learning goofy dance moves, painting and constructing sets, sewing costumes.  I enjoyed every second of it.

I continued to be involved in theatre in college.  And in a exciting stroke of luck, one of the classes I was required to take when I did study abroad in London was an English class that focused on modern plays, modern being anything from about  1700 to now.  We didn’t read almost any of them; we went and saw them.  At least one play a week the whole semester.  Ten years later, I’m pretty sure I can still name them all.

Musicals are amazing.  They speak to us in a way that even the best theatre somehow can’t.  And while I truly love musicals; it’s opera that just kills me every time.  I started going to the opera at the Kennedy Center while I was living outside DC after college.  For a few years I went to every show each season.  Generally, I went by myself.  Even for theatre and music lovers, opera is an acquired taste.  But for me, I’ve never seen a bad opera.  I remember as a child my mother watching opera on TV; I’m sure it was PBS.  For a long time, I assumed that she like it and I think a lot of my initial interest came from that assumption and the memory of watching it together.  It wasn’t until much more recently that she told me that she really only watched the operas because she was taking a music class in college and it was required.

The first time I managed to get someone to go to an opera with me, it was my college best friend and at the time roommate.  We went to see Don Giovanni.  It was a lovely production.  When we left we dissected everything about the show.  The costumes, the sets, the lighting, the singing.  My friend had attended a theatre program at governor’s school in Richmond for high school.  She is even more knowledgeable than I am.  And she can actually sing.

She’s my favorite kind of person to attend the theatre with.  Even if the show we see isn’t our favorite, she, like me, still takes so much away from it.

It baffles me that there are people who don’t like the theatre.  There are shows out there for everyone.  There are certainly more types of shows and more styles and more genres than you could list.  From classical productions of Shakespeare, or even Sophocles, to the most modern of plays, the theatre is as varied as the human race, if only one would take the time to examine it.

Whether it was the chicken or the egg doesn’t really matter, I guess.  I’m just glad this chicken hatched and is always on the lookout for the next great show.

Uncomfortable

Having not written anything in much too long I’m feeling overwhelmed trying to find a place to start and one topic to focus on.  My mind was concocting a post that managed to include emotional eating, exercising, feminism and clothes all in one go.  And really that’s just too much.

So here is an attempt to rein it in a bit.  Notice I say attempt.

For a long time, but with varying degrees of passion, I’ve dreamed of being a writer.  As in a professional writer.  Someone who gets paid to put pen to paper.  I think I’m pretty good sometimes.   And as someone whose self esteem generally peaks at “I’m ok,” this is a pretty big deal.  Obviously, even if you have a talent for something, you only get great at it with practice, and I definitely do not practice writing enough.  It kills me whenever I read something about how to be a good writer or how to be a better writer and the tips are usually so simple.  Most often it will just say: Write.

I read something recently, though I don’t recall where, that talked about writing better and what you should write about.  It said to write about the hard stuff, the uncomfortable stuff.  I don’t do this.  I never have.  My old diaries and journals are full of entries that make no sense anymore because I didn’t actually talk about what happened, just how I felt in vague terms.  Not surprisingly, I’m not going to talk about anything uncomfortable right now either.  But, I’m hoping to.  I want to.

If you knew me in person, you’d know that I talk a lot.  All the time.  About everything.  And when I’m upset about something, I talk about it to everyone, constantly.  But, when I am really upset about something, I do not talk about it at all.  I will tell no one.  It’s a weird trait I discovered about myself in high school when I found out I didn’t get into my top choice college.  Now, I try to force myself to talk about things when they bother me that much.  The uncomfortable stuff.  In the last couple of years, I’ve had more uncomfortable stuff in my life than I would have liked.  And I’ve been ok about talking about it.  Actually, ok may be a bit strong.

The idea of writing about the uncomfortable stuff makes my skin crawl a bit.  It makes me recoil from the keyboard.  But what better way to improve my writing than writing about the stuff I don’t want to tell you about.  And this has to be good for me emotionally.  It’s certainly never good to keep it bottled up.

So that’s the plan for next time.  Something uncomfortable on the page.

Here’s hoping I can do it, and I can do it justice.

Well Joan Rangers…

(Note: I wrote this quite a while ago not long after Joan Rivers died)

I feel like the world has been sucked of all our funny.  Losing Robin Williams, to suicide no less, was awful.  It sucker punched us.  Who was going to be our true comedic genius? How could Mrs. Doubtfire be dead?

But, for me, as much as Robin William’s death was sad and upsetting, losing Joan was and is devastating.  I feel like I’ve lost a friend.  I’ve been known to tell people that Heath Ledger was my Elvis.  That celebrity whose death I’ll always remember and that really affected me.  But this, Joan, is just as bad in a different way.

I read an article online soon after Joan’s death that seemed to really dismiss Joan’s work on the red carpet and QVC.  But that’s how I first met Joan, asking “who are you wearing” and watching the most famous actors in the world pray she didn’t say anything too crazy to them.  It was in those moments that Joan first taught me not only about fashion but about how important it is to be able to laugh at yourself.  You can be the most beautiful person in Hollywood, on your way to winning your craft’s top honor, but tomorrow, all of us normal people will be talking about how you take yourself to seriously.

Joan was, from beginning to end, a pioneer for women.  I was going to say women in comedy, but I truly think it goes beyond that.  By always saying what she was thinking, what we were all thinking many times, she helped tear down that bullshit wall of “ladylike” behavior.  My gender shouldn’t and doesn’t limit me or my opinions or what I can say.  Without Joan, there wouldn’t be Lisa Lampanelli, Sarah Silverman, Kathy Griffin, or even Mindy Kaling and many other less “harsh” comedians.  Joan showed us all the way.

There was also another personal element to losing Joan.  For years, I watched Joan with my mother.  And when I lived away, we used to catch up about the latest red carpet or episode of Fashion Police on the phone.  I lost my mother two years ago.  But every Saturday, I would watch my DVR’d episode of Fashion Police, and mom would be there with me, laughing and being shocked over what Joan said this week.  I like to think that Joan is doing stand up, or having a book signing, or MCing the red carpet for some Saint’s 500th birthday, and my mom is there.  And she and Joan get to have a laugh and talk about their daughters.  And Joan would be impressed by that wicked sense of humor that my mother too often kept hidden.

I read that Sarah Silverman, on Kimmel the day after Joan’s death, said that despite being 81 years old, Joan wasn’t done yet and had gone too soon.  This really resonated with me.  I had an episode of Fashion POlice on my DVR that I hadn’t watched yet.  I finally watched it the other day, just missing Joan.  At the end, the DVR cut off before the end, Joan was mid-word as it stopped.  Outloud, I yelled “but she wasn’t done yet,” and tried not to cry.

A question of nerd-dom

Today I talked to my grad communications class about Gamergate.  Gamergate says a lot about a lot of different people and groups.  It also means different things to different people.  It’s a multifaceted thing that I’m not going to try to explain here.  If you aren’t familiar with it, I recommend you Google it.  One of the issues that most resonates with me is that I can consider myself a member of a group while that group might not consider me a member.

When I was little, I danced and I have this weird idea that once a ballerina, always a ballerina.  But I’m sure that the prima ballerina in the Bolshoi Ballet would not agree with me.  About six months ago, I started running.  I’ve done two 5ks and try to run a couple of times a week.  It’s a good day if I do 3 miles in under 40 minutes (for you non-runners, that’s slow).  But I consider myself a runner.  Would Usain Bolt agree with me?

Gamergate really hits me, though, because I consider myself a nerd.  I’m not a super-nerd.  I like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who and the Marvel movies and a couple of comic books.  And I love my fellow nerds.  Generally, nerds are smart, interesting, creative, well-rounded people.  Why wouldn’t I like and want to be a part of this group?

There are, however, a lot of nerds out there who are much more intense and committed to their nerd-dom.  Their love of nerdy things defines them.  And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  But experience (and the internet) has shown me that these uber-nerds sometimes feel superior to us casual nerds.  And there is something wrong with that.

To me being a nerd is the ultimate in acceptance.  I don’t only want to talk about our shared fandoms but I want to hear about the other stuff you’re in to.  Explain The Last Airbender to me; I hear it’s good.  Who’s your favorite Doctor? Mine’s Ten.  But I haven’t watched much classic Doctor Who.

Being a nerd is not a competition.  None of us is better or worse for knowing more or less about Marvel versus DC comics.  I’m not less of a nerd because I love Harry Potter and know nothing about anime.  For so long being a nerd was considered almost shameful.  The mainstream tried to put us down and we had to hide our interests from people.  So why now that nerd culture is popular culture are we attacking each other?  Why aren’t’ we welcoming each other into the light with open arms?

Clearly, this is (in most cases) a much more trivial idea than Gamergate.  Gamergate really brings some important, and occasionally completely awful issues to light.  This is just one of the things that speaks to me.

Hoping I’m being helpful…

A friend of mine is getting divorced.  I think it’s a good thing.  She does too, on some levels.  I do not, however, agree with the way she is going about it.  So I find myself in this super awkward position.  How do I support my friend while not actually agreeing with about 75% of what she’s doing?

My biggest problem with things is a general one.  My friend talks about pretty much everything in front of the kids, ages 7 and under.  I’ve been vocal about my concern.  the other day she said she didn’t think they understood.  I said that they are children, not idiots.

How do I support my friend when most of the time even talking about the problem makes me anxious? She is a stay at home mom and with at least one of the kids probably 80% of the time.

I am NOT the friend who tells you what you want to hear.  My friends know to share their problems with me at their own risk.  I’m going to be straight with you and tell you what I think and what you need to hear.  My friend is used to me not pulling any punches.  But I worry that this is a subject where she might not want to hear it.  Or that eventually, there might be a line I’m not aware of that I will cross.

How do I balance being there for my friend, while still being true to myself? I love her kids.  They call me Auntie.  I get mad when people say they aren’t my “real” nieces and nephews.  So what can I do to be there for all of us?

Lord knows if there is an answer to any of this.  I’ve made my concerns clear several times and she has just brushed me off.  At this early stage in the game, I guess I’ll just have to keep repeating myself, give it some time, and hope we figure something out.

Gerhardt to the rescue

I don’t know what it says that movies and books seem to be what leads me to the deeper thoughts that I have.  I don’t know if it’s a bad thing or not, but at the moment anyways that’s how my brain has been working.

I was just watching this movie, 28 Days.  It stars Sandra Bullock and Viggo Mortensen and is about people going to rehab.  I’ve always enjoyed it, though I’m not really sure why.  I don’t really relate to the addiction part of it, but I think we can all relate to the theme of needing help and wanting to have people around us who we can count on.  There is a scene at the end of the film where Sandra Bullock’s character runs into a character played Alan Tudyk.  He is having a hard time and when he sees her he says through his tears “It is so good to see you.”  In that moment, you can just tell that running into this person he can count on and trust has saved him a little bit.

For me, that has happened a lot in the last few years.  While my life isn’t some huge disaster, it has certainly had its rough moments.  And time and time again I’m blessed to have someone show up at exactly the right moment or say exactly the right thing.  So many times the person isn’t even trying to do or say anything epic; they are just there for me.  It means so much in those moments that they just want to help.

The other night I had a bit of a meltdown but it was late.  As much as I wanted to talk I didn’t want to wake anyone up on a week night for something trivial, though I knew there were people who would have talked to me just because I needed to talk.  So I texted a friend who lives a few time zones earlier.  Best decision in ages.  He was there when I needed him.  And again, he said exactly the right thing.  It wasn’t anything huge or earth shattering, just proof that he was there and he was listening and he knew me well enough to know what to say.

Even in my darkest moments, I have felt so blessed by all these wonderful people who surround me.  I don’t know how I got so lucky to have such wonderful friends and family.  People who love me and support me and listen to me and understand me.  Family who is always there for me no matter what, no questions asked.  Friends who call me on my bullshit and just know when I’m leaving something out, or what I’m really thinking.

Hopefully, I’m as good to all of these people as they are to me.  I try to be.  I try to be there even when I maybe don’t want to, or it’s inconvenient, or stressful.  Life is a two way street and I don’t want to be the one not following the speed limit.