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Saturday
Jan012011
An Apocalyptic Spiritual Revelation On New Year's Day Morning Leads To Breakfast At 6:00 p.m.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
My past year was filled with some heavy stuff. I went through depression, which is not abnormal for me in the least. If you look back at the prevalence of depression throughout my life since I was about three years old, you would think it was one of my most favourite things ever. It's not, but there's been lots of it, and there was definitely enough of it over this past year.
Then, I also faced the ugly reality that is the trap of aging with my grandmother and my grandfather. I came to a point where I finally had to throw up my hands and admit to alcoholism. I walked away from my main social circle in order to hermit myself away from almost ten years of habitual living to quit drinking. Basically, 2010 had me me quaking in my metaphorical boots about mortality and the brevity of life while turning myself inside out both habit-wise and socially.
I had to think and feel and do things that were hard for me to think and feel and do, and I felt like I was pulling out my own teeth a lot of the time. Somehow, though, this turned 2010 into one of the best years of my life. It really did.
There is a lot of positive-thinking noise about learning how to say Yes! to things in your life, but saying Yes! is often best done by judiciously and sometimes painfully say No!, and 2010 was the year in which I said No! a lot every day so that I had the ability to say Yes! in other areas.
Some Pollyanna out there is going to pop up and try to tell me that all those No!s were really Yes!ses in disguise, and to that person I say Screw you. Those No!s were No!s, and I know, because they were hard and awful and dragged me through the mud face down, and that mud had rocks in it, and it was rainy, and it was cold, too, and I had a really shitty time of it. I love those No!s, though. I claim them. They made me.
Anyway, I was lying in bed this morning reflecting on the mindfuck that was 2010 and wondering what it meant that I pretty much just walked away from a whole life, and what it meant for me that I once left a fiancee and did all kinds of drugs and had a doomed love affair and suffered life in the closet and was diagnosed with all manner of psychological illnesses in the 1990s and became an alcoholic and quit my office job for no job and had cancer and on and on and on as all the crazy stuff life throws at a person is wont to just keep happening.
Instead of falling into my usual thinking about how there is no point to anything if it always just comes back to being terrible, though, I was lying here thinking about how fantastic all that shit was, because here I am.
My mother once said to me "Why are you alway jumping from the frying pan into the fire when you shouldn't even be in the frying pan in the first place?" There was this straight and narrow existence that she wanted me to live, because she naturally wanted me to be safe and happy, but that seemed like the worst kind of life for me to have. I've always thought that I had one time to do this in this skin with this brain, and I had better pack a lot of stuff up there.
I thought then, and I still do, that the frying pan is an excellent position in which to find oneself.
See, you're born, which is that little star there.
Yes, you were born a star. It's a little obvious, but it's true.
And then you started living. It wasn't very exciting in some ways, because most of it had to do with the basics of keeping you alive, and you had very little physical freedom to express your will.
But then stuff started getting exciting. Your parents divorced or someone touched you in a bad way or you broke your leg and got stuck in a cast for six months or your cat Fluffster was run over with a lawn mower or something.
You stopped being an individual with one forward path afterwards. Bits of you leapt off and explored this or that avenue while the larger changed part of you landed and established itself, only to have big things happen to you again, because you are only in one little body travelling in a huge universe bent on cataclysms.
The universe is very big, so the stuff it does is bound to be life-changing a lot of the time.
And on and on it goes, over and over, until your life looks kind of like this, at least when I draw it.
And here you find yourself full of stories and events. Bits of yourself speak to you from your past about what happened then, and the you of now speaks to those stories about how they sit in the context of all that has happened since, and you become a powder keg of stories informing stories.
My drawings are a little crude, but you get my meaning.
You don't have to be a writer or a storyteller of any kind. You are made of stories all the way down to that little star at the beginning, anyway, whether you want to be or not. You can't help but be that way.
It's brilliant, really. It's really fucking brilliant.
So, again, as I was lying here in bed this morning thinking about the thousands of things that have happened to me while I have been jumping in and out of a variety of frying pans, I realized that I am a bright constellation of my own stories. I am mapping my universe with each new step.
It was an incredible thought. It brought all the little exploded mes together under one roof and said We all belong together, because they all exist the way they do because of their interconnectedness, and if you extrapolate from that it becomes not only We all belong together but also I belong to myself.
I belong to myself.
It feels so revolutionary to belong to myself, not to be an almagamation of parts I could take or leave or love or hate as separate beings artificially cordoned off into falsely boundaried periods of time but to be this person whole, an indivisible unit of infinite selves, an exhaustive universe of one.
My life has been a series of frying pans and fires, and I would jump into them again and again and again, because the constellation of my life narrative would never want for less.
Then, I also faced the ugly reality that is the trap of aging with my grandmother and my grandfather. I came to a point where I finally had to throw up my hands and admit to alcoholism. I walked away from my main social circle in order to hermit myself away from almost ten years of habitual living to quit drinking. Basically, 2010 had me me quaking in my metaphorical boots about mortality and the brevity of life while turning myself inside out both habit-wise and socially.
I had to think and feel and do things that were hard for me to think and feel and do, and I felt like I was pulling out my own teeth a lot of the time. Somehow, though, this turned 2010 into one of the best years of my life. It really did.
There is a lot of positive-thinking noise about learning how to say Yes! to things in your life, but saying Yes! is often best done by judiciously and sometimes painfully say No!, and 2010 was the year in which I said No! a lot every day so that I had the ability to say Yes! in other areas.
Some Pollyanna out there is going to pop up and try to tell me that all those No!s were really Yes!ses in disguise, and to that person I say Screw you. Those No!s were No!s, and I know, because they were hard and awful and dragged me through the mud face down, and that mud had rocks in it, and it was rainy, and it was cold, too, and I had a really shitty time of it. I love those No!s, though. I claim them. They made me.
Anyway, I was lying in bed this morning reflecting on the mindfuck that was 2010 and wondering what it meant that I pretty much just walked away from a whole life, and what it meant for me that I once left a fiancee and did all kinds of drugs and had a doomed love affair and suffered life in the closet and was diagnosed with all manner of psychological illnesses in the 1990s and became an alcoholic and quit my office job for no job and had cancer and on and on and on as all the crazy stuff life throws at a person is wont to just keep happening.
Instead of falling into my usual thinking about how there is no point to anything if it always just comes back to being terrible, though, I was lying here thinking about how fantastic all that shit was, because here I am.
My mother once said to me "Why are you alway jumping from the frying pan into the fire when you shouldn't even be in the frying pan in the first place?" There was this straight and narrow existence that she wanted me to live, because she naturally wanted me to be safe and happy, but that seemed like the worst kind of life for me to have. I've always thought that I had one time to do this in this skin with this brain, and I had better pack a lot of stuff up there.
I thought then, and I still do, that the frying pan is an excellent position in which to find oneself.
See, you're born, which is that little star there.
Yes, you were born a star. It's a little obvious, but it's true.
And then you started living. It wasn't very exciting in some ways, because most of it had to do with the basics of keeping you alive, and you had very little physical freedom to express your will.
But then stuff started getting exciting. Your parents divorced or someone touched you in a bad way or you broke your leg and got stuck in a cast for six months or your cat Fluffster was run over with a lawn mower or something.
You stopped being an individual with one forward path afterwards. Bits of you leapt off and explored this or that avenue while the larger changed part of you landed and established itself, only to have big things happen to you again, because you are only in one little body travelling in a huge universe bent on cataclysms.
The universe is very big, so the stuff it does is bound to be life-changing a lot of the time.
And on and on it goes, over and over, until your life looks kind of like this, at least when I draw it.
And here you find yourself full of stories and events. Bits of yourself speak to you from your past about what happened then, and the you of now speaks to those stories about how they sit in the context of all that has happened since, and you become a powder keg of stories informing stories.
My drawings are a little crude, but you get my meaning.
You don't have to be a writer or a storyteller of any kind. You are made of stories all the way down to that little star at the beginning, anyway, whether you want to be or not. You can't help but be that way.
It's brilliant, really. It's really fucking brilliant.
So, again, as I was lying here in bed this morning thinking about the thousands of things that have happened to me while I have been jumping in and out of a variety of frying pans, I realized that I am a bright constellation of my own stories. I am mapping my universe with each new step.
It was an incredible thought. It brought all the little exploded mes together under one roof and said We all belong together, because they all exist the way they do because of their interconnectedness, and if you extrapolate from that it becomes not only We all belong together but also I belong to myself.
I belong to myself.
It feels so revolutionary to belong to myself, not to be an almagamation of parts I could take or leave or love or hate as separate beings artificially cordoned off into falsely boundaried periods of time but to be this person whole, an indivisible unit of infinite selves, an exhaustive universe of one.
My life has been a series of frying pans and fires, and I would jump into them again and again and again, because the constellation of my life narrative would never want for less.
Reader Comments (35)
That was a perfect piece of writing (and drawing).
I love this. So much that my insides hurt.
And all of those pans led to you writing this post, which is great. I always find your writing to be really interesting and inspiring.
Happy new year!
Dammit. Now I want bacon.
Tis true tho. I've always believed that there's roads, and some we just have to walk down, even if they're lacking in the awesomesauce.
THIS
Also... atta girl
Your writing hits the target always, but I love the visual. It makes my furrowed brow smooth out. And if the frying pans have bacon, I'll always be glad to jump in (and out) of 'em too.
Best thing I've read all year!
Oh wait...
Well, that actually may prove to be prophetic. Good stuff, for sure. Makes me think and be glad about my own frying pans. Thanks for writing this.
YES.
First: Happy New Year! Next: Well said, well drawn and well done....I'm into my middle age (okay really I'm kind of past the middle part--unless I get to live to be 110) and I consider myself fairly self-aware and curious regarding human nature (thanks years of therapy!) In the past I was looking to be “fixed” of all the things I considered wrong with me, as I get older I’m more interested in the ambiguity and paradox of my life and learning to live with what is....especially to enjoy the mystery, serendipity and joy in living. To as you said "belong to myself."
Shine on!
Love this. The kapow really did it for me *g*
Bang zoom. Of course. I love this.
welcome Home
YOU are fucking brilliant. Seriously.
"the mindfuck that was 2010" <- especially that.
And the cat being run over by a lawnmower line may have made me laugh out loud and almost choke on a mini marshmallow.
Although I'd like to erase 2010 (and 2009) from my memory, meeting you (and Aidan) would be one of the few things I'd keep.
xoxo
I remember when I figured out that sometimes I got to decide which me I became after one of those kapow moments. Saved my life.
Now, it's adventure, and frying pans, and bacon, and owning that all of that makes me (us) who we are.
You said it so much better than I ever will.
I will be linking to this over at my place, with some thoughts on how story shapes us.
Thanks!
"I am a bright constellation of my own stories."
A lot of the fluffy, feel good, touchy-feely warm goo writing and reflection that happens this time of year leaves me rolling my eyes and sighing very loudly.
When I read that sentence, I burst into tears. The good kind.
Thank you.
Following up: the link to my post. I'm not sure I've said all I want to say, but it's mostly there!
Thanks again.
I really liked this and the "mindfuck of 2010" was a great way to put it. Congratulations on learning the power of "NO" cuz I am still trying to learn it and also on turning your life around. I like how you described being dragged through the mud with rocks in it and it is cold and raining out. It is a great description of the shit we go through. Hugs and hope this is a better year for you.
You wanna talk brilliant? That piece of writing is brilliant. Your drawings are brilliant. YOU are brilliant. God woman. How I love to come here and visit you.
Awesome.
Thank you and Happy New Year to you and your sweetie!
I came to this same conclusion July 5, 1990; grabbed a meaningful life out of the detritus that was my alcoholic life, and have never looked back. I got: a lovely husband, 2 beautiful boys (now 10 and 9) and richness and joy that I could never have attained in a drugged/drunken fog. You did the best New Year entry ever, Schmutzie; hells YES it is painful to walk away from a lifestyle. But you are so very worth it.
I'd love to insert you mind into my head for just one day, Schumtzie, I really would. But I guess I don't have to because you generously share your brilliance here.
Thank you so much. I'm going to visualize your elegant (not at all "crude") infographics when I start along the road of regrets.
Perfect. Bookmarking it so I can read it a second time later.
I love this revelation. Revelations are cool. I just want to add, as my own revelation: There is no you.
Happy New Year. You are the diggity dog bomb.
This is an amazing piece. Perhaps a defining piece? Anyway, love it. love you.
This post is so beautiful, because you don't sugarcoat anything, especially the hard stuff that people often dance around because it's hard to talk about, but yet it IS who we are. And you do it in a way to gives it the respect it deserves, but with great courage and poise and humor too, so that even as we cry when we think about these things, we have to laugh too, which is really (I think) the only way to carry on through this crazy and gorgeous trip called life.
ALSO, this line: "I realized that I am a bright constellation of my own stories. I am mapping my universe with each new step," if I was ballsy enough to get a tattoo, I think I would get that tattooed around my wrist like a bracelet, so I could take it everywhere. And along with that, I LOVE the pictures. They made me think of this quote, with I just posted on "Thumbin' My Way"'s blog too. I can't help it, it's one of my all-time favorites:
"One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star." -- Nietzsche
i love this. very much.
If I had a blog called Five Star Friday I would put this on it so it could be showcased. Just sayin'. I like the way you work with stars.
This is amazing. You hit me in the gut with a Truth for myself. I belong to my child, my husband, my ghost of a mother, my staff, my house, my stuff. I will work toward belonging to me.
You're fucking amazing. You know this, I hope.
Thanks for this. Lots to think about.
This is one of the most perfect posts I have ever read.
what a wonderful post. I've also been writing some about facing up to No! and the profound effect it's having on my life. I'm convinced that one of the best things we can do for ourselves is figure out what we don't want/need. The trick is discovering the No that is so often disguised as Yes, and is in reality just a vampire, draining life and love from us. Thank you for sharing your stories.
just bloody fantastic - love this post! You are one amazing woman, Schmutzie - I am very happy to have you in my world!
Beautifully said!
"I was lying here thinking about how fantastic all that shit was, because here I am. " Yes!! Happy new year from one agglomeration to another.
I know I already commented, but I wanted to say I'm glad you included it in Five Star Friday! This is one that needs to reach as many people as possible.
What Barbara said. Brilliant.
I feel like I need to print out this post and paste it into a little shrine so I won't forget any of it. You stun me (in a good way) all the time.