happily ever after
It's strange how we all tend to tap into that vague feeling that celebrities are super-human-- that they are somehow a little more protected from the elements than the rest of us mortals, despite the fact that centrifugal force is holding us ALL onto the same planet with the same risk level all the time-- code orange-- leave your shoes in the bin at security.
When a celebrity dies in a senseless tragedy, it is always a startling feeling. I'm truly saddened that Natasha Richardson died, especially from a sudden and completely bizarre beginning ski accident. Her husband, her sons, her mother, her close friends... all wake up today without this woman in their lives, and they are forced to pick up the pieces and start over.
It's terribly tragic. I've written a lot in this rambly, emotional little 'blog' over the years about the feelings of vulnerability in senselessness... mortality... the fear of having things wrenched from you. I'm sure that in most journals, you can flip to almost any entry and read more or less of the same.
Something that I've been thinking about a lot lately is what I affectionately but truthfully consider to be some kind of abandonment complex. Complex might not be the right term... there's a lot attached to a complex... but it's definitely a constant source of dormant anxiety within me. In my experiences with family members and close friends, I seem to have the volume turned up in this arena more than the other people who are close to me seem to, but it's something that I'm sure we all share to a great extent.
We all need human comfort and the closeness of others, but we're all so hopelessly neurotic and nerve-y about relationships. And of course that seems to come from fear. Fear that we're 'settling', fear that we're not spreading the 'seeds to the wind' enough... whatever psychobabble we want to say about it, it's really a fear of loss. Fear of finally letting our guard down enough to truly love someone, and then the crippling fear of losing them.
I'm not sure if my 'loss' anxiety seems to be cranked up because of family stuff, but I'm sure psychoanalysts would roll their eyes, chew the end of their pen and tell me that I'd be crazy if that wasn't the case. I hate most of the things that people try to pin on only children, but one thing that I do feel very strongly about is that I'd be a less anxious person if I'd had siblings.
(*unless I had an extreme personality in the family... someone who brought out the absolute worst in me, or someone who was very volatile and worried me all the time)
When you're a small child, the world is much rougher around the edges. Your physical relationship with the world is constantly changing as your body is growing (and your understanding of gravity is adapting)... animals with big teeth are chest-high or taller compared to you... stoves are much hotter and the sun burns much faster than you expect. Children are also notoriously mean to other children due to the fact that the Id is a very loud little f*cker, and they're obviously still learning to test boundaries and explore what communication and human relationships are all about.
The thing about being little is that you're constantly, *constantly* aware of how much bigger and different adults are than you, and people your own age are very, very meaningful because of that. Adults have all the power and answers and physical ability to lord over you, but other children help you see the world through a *child's eyes*... and there's a certain comfort in any stage of life that goes with being close to someone who's close to your own age and status and life experience.
When you're four, or six, or nine, relationships with other children are very volatile, at best. Your friends can be determined by how many cupcakes you bring to share with your class, or what Kelly said about you behind the tree when you were going down the slide. In my case, there just weren't other kids to be found, for the most part-- my family lived in a *wonderful* small house on a busy street that was flanked by elderly residents. The few kids who lived nearby, three that I can remember over the 8 or 9 years that we lived there, were all in difficult family situations, and 2, or maybe even all 3, left my life when their families packed up and left at 4am because they could no longer make payments on their homes, or deal with the crazy exes following them around.
At school, as every American child experiences, the other kids were either bullies or too popular, or they were friends... as long as childhood friendships last. Some were sweet and meaningful; some were terribly painful; many were just fickle and short-lived because that's how kids are. I was the same person I am today-- a totally exasperating, people-loving ham, but inwardly very shy, and when I was a kid I had the stigma of being 'the weird girl who went to the upper grades for part of the day for reading period', so a lot of kids pulled the "I won't play with her because she won't say the words 'awesome' or 'boogers'" card. I don't blame them. I wouldn't play with Joe D' orazio because he told me that he was working on a motherboard that would eventually be a robot who would string my brains along I-25. We were all exclusive little anklebiters, and we knew it.
The point of my rambling is that, as the kid who was growing up playing by herself and watching the old folks on my street out the window every afternoon, I didn't really get to tune into that kid frequency that teaches you how and why kids say the things that they do. I didn't understand that Tim might just hit you because he hadn't had his nap... playing by yourself, you don't get into fights with ANYONE, so when Tim hits you, or throws a tantrum, or says that you're ugly and he hates you, your world is *rocked*. Parents don't talk to you that way, and their 30-something friends certainly don't. So why would these kids hate you? What did you do?
It's just an odd introduction into socialization... looking back, I realize how deeply I really felt the loss of those elementary school friendships. I idolized my cousins, who were a few years older than me and lived in Boulder, but in kindergarten our families went different ways. A big part of me always felt that I was to blame for them leaving my life... that somehow, by being so excited to see them and play with them, I had actually driven them away.
So, as any 20-something adult, this is an interesting time to look back and try to sidestep the b.s. that comes with psychoanalysis and get into the interesting aspects of it. How *do* I feel about close human relationships? Really close human relationships? How many of my actions are dictated by fear... and really, really old fears that have been settling in my brain since I was a kid? How many of my actions are dictated by a sense of responsibility and logic? How much of my life is currently dictated by joy?
I think the most interesting question I've asked myself recently is how I *truly* feel about joy.
I strive for it in many of the small aspects of my day... I try to surround myself with it... I try damn, *damn* hard to be honest with myself when I know I'm griping or being petty, but to keep the 'bigger picture' joys in the back of my mind when I'm done being a whiner.
This last month, I've had a life change that's totally new for me, and it's revealing some of my character flaws that I wasn't quite expecting. It feels like someone lifted a big rock off part of my personality, and I'm standing here watching the rolly polies unfurl in the sunlight; confused little black bodies in armor, with their little spindly legs feeling out from underneath their shell in buggy confusion.
After all of my big pinwheeling arms song-and-dance about 2009 and 'finding myself' and forging new frontiers and completely reinventing the wheel, I turned around and ran smack-dab into a really, really good relationship. It hit me like a softball to the face... I not only didn't see it coming, I got hit particularly hard because I think I was whipping around to announce to the world how confident and fine I was with the fact that it *wasn't* coming.
I started dating my best friend... although the word 'dating' feels anemic and laughable for what it feels like... the drama of crossing that chasm between 'friends' and 'more than friends' and the complete, drama-free bliss of just feeling like you're home with someone.
*author's note: apparently, I also *really* gush when something like this happens. As witnessed by the eye-rolling goo that I've already started pouring all over my prose lately. I've requested a name change to 'pancakes' since I hear that the really sappy ones are the maple-producing trees.
but I digress.
So... I'm exploring the chambers of my heart, very wide-eyed, with all of the enthusiasm of a Shakespearean love sonnet, but also, the detached fascination of an anthropologist.
"what is this going to feel like NEXT..." I keep thinking... and then scribbling frantic field notes in the deepest recesses of my brain when that data is piped through.
"Oh, how disappointing", a lot of my field notes read: "apparently the North American female *does* cry when presented with a dozen red roses and a night at home making fajitas and curling up with an endless supply of netflix. How terribly cliche of the North American female to get raccoon mascara face when she's surprised all the way down to her red toenail polish by a romantic gesture from a North American male."
I'm very, very interested that this feels this way. To be honest, it's a strange battle between just sinking into the comfort of a person and a bond that I already *completely* trust and hold close to my heart, and the increased anxiety that comes with change, especially when it involves change in a relationship that plays a big part in your life.
There's also a weird tug of war going on between just enjoying feeling happy, and feeling cautious about being happy. I'm trying like hell to let go of the knots that accompany happiness, but they do make themselves known.
I think that's human, though. It's scary to let your guard down and look someone in the eyes and tell them those three words that mean everything... "love" means letting someone in just as much as you're letting yourself into the world of that other person. Love means looking your flaws square in the eye because in about 15 seconds, that other person is going to be taking the white house tour of your flaws, and if YOU can't stand them about yourself, how will they? And love means putting your bulletproof vest on the ground for a second even though it feels like there are still guns pointing at you... and doing it with a gleam in your eye.
those are three big, BIG words to say.
There's so much that I want to write/think through here about this, but it wouldn't be prudent. NONE of this entry has been prudent so far.
Plus, I have much more introspective thinking to do before I can write things that won't make me wince too badly. I'm very happy right now, but I'm also feeling anxious in a way that makes an awkward, fight-or-flight part of my personality come out, and I don't want to write things that I'm scared about because I'm not sure or proud about all of them.
I'm accepting-- embracing, with full arms-- a relationship that's important to me, and I don't want to look back at this in 12 months and read: "I started dating someone. It's wonderful. I'm scared." I want to look back and read, "I'm taking a big risk about something (my heart) and someone (one of my best, best friends). I'm happy that I'm taking this risk because it means that I'm not sticking my head in the sand-- I'm embracing something good and sweet and totally sincere and down-to-my-pores important to me. I'm willing to relinquish control so I can experience what love feels like."
Human relationships are profoundly complex... they are so meaningful, and so frighteningly powerful over our lives. The fears I have about loss are so compounded by the moments when someone mentions things like 'Natasha Richardson died at the bottom of a beginner ski run in Canada'... these fears rise to the surface so fast and so violently that I have to tamp them down, forcing them into knots that live in my stomach and bizarre, meaningless thoughts that will go through my head in the future about the safety of a friend who is simply enjoying his day on a safe, quiet drive on his motorcycle.
It's all about perspective, I guess. You can't live your life in fear... so I will keep doing the best I can to let go of the part of my personality that is terrified of people walking, running, or leaping out of my life when they mean so much to me.
When I was young, I was obsessed with the movie "The Parent Trap" because of this... the idea that these two girls, only children, went to camp just to discover they had a twin... and at the end of the movie, when the audience is supposed to applaud the romantic rekindling of the flame between the parents (*who, if you look at the actual story line, are the most evil people who EVER lived... and the screenwriters were sick, too, making all their young audience members believe that they can get their divorced parents back together...anyway,I digress)... I was jumping up and down clapping just because both girls found their unconditional love in a sister soulmate. (This is why I'm so crazy obsessed with twins... not just a sibling, but someone EXACTLY your age? It was my idea of heaven. And still kind of is.)
When Disney released the equally campy Linsdey Lohan version of "The Parent Trap", I reluctantly hopped on board with that version as a kid, despite its obvious shortcomings. I couldn't help myself... it was the same intoxicating (albeit evil and twisted-- but as I mentioned, that's a whole different journal entry) plot, with the sisters finding each other and celebrating "happily ever after", which in their case was just a new sense of family and permanency in their lives. Natasha Richardson was cast as the mother... and she repeated a line that's in the '90s version and the Haley Mills version. When twin daughter #2 gets home from camp and runs into her house pretending to be twin daughter #1 that the mom has raised for 11 years, the girl finally sees her mom for the first time since infancy. She leaps into her mom's arms, starts to cry and says something like:
"I'm sorry, it's just that I've missed you so much."
Natasha Richardson replies, "I know, it seems like it's been forever"
and her daughter looks up at her, with real emotion on her face: "you have no idea".
Oh. My heart breaks every time I think about that scene. Disney movies or not, that's a real movie moment... isn't that what's at the basis of every relationship? When we're finally in the arms of someone who feels so familiar and meaningful, we want to say, "where have you been?!?", but all we can do is hug them back and learn what it feels like to just let *go* for a second.
Happiness is complicated.
I guess I will have to remember to appreciate happiness because it's not the complete absence of fear, as I keep trying to chide myself into thinking, but really... it's just a victory over fear. It's the acknowledgment that we may suffer loss, but that our suffering would stem from the fact that we had something very valuable to begin with.
Carpe diem... sieze the fish. Hug the people you love and tell them you love them, even if it's nerve-wracking. The world is so big, and so unpredictable. The movies, like my internal monologue this month, are so goddamned sappy because love really *is* what gets us through this spinning orbit that we're in.
goodnight, earth. take good care of us... we're doing the best we can down here.
When a celebrity dies in a senseless tragedy, it is always a startling feeling. I'm truly saddened that Natasha Richardson died, especially from a sudden and completely bizarre beginning ski accident. Her husband, her sons, her mother, her close friends... all wake up today without this woman in their lives, and they are forced to pick up the pieces and start over.
It's terribly tragic. I've written a lot in this rambly, emotional little 'blog' over the years about the feelings of vulnerability in senselessness... mortality... the fear of having things wrenched from you. I'm sure that in most journals, you can flip to almost any entry and read more or less of the same.
Something that I've been thinking about a lot lately is what I affectionately but truthfully consider to be some kind of abandonment complex. Complex might not be the right term... there's a lot attached to a complex... but it's definitely a constant source of dormant anxiety within me. In my experiences with family members and close friends, I seem to have the volume turned up in this arena more than the other people who are close to me seem to, but it's something that I'm sure we all share to a great extent.
We all need human comfort and the closeness of others, but we're all so hopelessly neurotic and nerve-y about relationships. And of course that seems to come from fear. Fear that we're 'settling', fear that we're not spreading the 'seeds to the wind' enough... whatever psychobabble we want to say about it, it's really a fear of loss. Fear of finally letting our guard down enough to truly love someone, and then the crippling fear of losing them.
I'm not sure if my 'loss' anxiety seems to be cranked up because of family stuff, but I'm sure psychoanalysts would roll their eyes, chew the end of their pen and tell me that I'd be crazy if that wasn't the case. I hate most of the things that people try to pin on only children, but one thing that I do feel very strongly about is that I'd be a less anxious person if I'd had siblings.
(*unless I had an extreme personality in the family... someone who brought out the absolute worst in me, or someone who was very volatile and worried me all the time)
When you're a small child, the world is much rougher around the edges. Your physical relationship with the world is constantly changing as your body is growing (and your understanding of gravity is adapting)... animals with big teeth are chest-high or taller compared to you... stoves are much hotter and the sun burns much faster than you expect. Children are also notoriously mean to other children due to the fact that the Id is a very loud little f*cker, and they're obviously still learning to test boundaries and explore what communication and human relationships are all about.
The thing about being little is that you're constantly, *constantly* aware of how much bigger and different adults are than you, and people your own age are very, very meaningful because of that. Adults have all the power and answers and physical ability to lord over you, but other children help you see the world through a *child's eyes*... and there's a certain comfort in any stage of life that goes with being close to someone who's close to your own age and status and life experience.
When you're four, or six, or nine, relationships with other children are very volatile, at best. Your friends can be determined by how many cupcakes you bring to share with your class, or what Kelly said about you behind the tree when you were going down the slide. In my case, there just weren't other kids to be found, for the most part-- my family lived in a *wonderful* small house on a busy street that was flanked by elderly residents. The few kids who lived nearby, three that I can remember over the 8 or 9 years that we lived there, were all in difficult family situations, and 2, or maybe even all 3, left my life when their families packed up and left at 4am because they could no longer make payments on their homes, or deal with the crazy exes following them around.
At school, as every American child experiences, the other kids were either bullies or too popular, or they were friends... as long as childhood friendships last. Some were sweet and meaningful; some were terribly painful; many were just fickle and short-lived because that's how kids are. I was the same person I am today-- a totally exasperating, people-loving ham, but inwardly very shy, and when I was a kid I had the stigma of being 'the weird girl who went to the upper grades for part of the day for reading period', so a lot of kids pulled the "I won't play with her because she won't say the words 'awesome' or 'boogers'" card. I don't blame them. I wouldn't play with Joe D' orazio because he told me that he was working on a motherboard that would eventually be a robot who would string my brains along I-25. We were all exclusive little anklebiters, and we knew it.
The point of my rambling is that, as the kid who was growing up playing by herself and watching the old folks on my street out the window every afternoon, I didn't really get to tune into that kid frequency that teaches you how and why kids say the things that they do. I didn't understand that Tim might just hit you because he hadn't had his nap... playing by yourself, you don't get into fights with ANYONE, so when Tim hits you, or throws a tantrum, or says that you're ugly and he hates you, your world is *rocked*. Parents don't talk to you that way, and their 30-something friends certainly don't. So why would these kids hate you? What did you do?
It's just an odd introduction into socialization... looking back, I realize how deeply I really felt the loss of those elementary school friendships. I idolized my cousins, who were a few years older than me and lived in Boulder, but in kindergarten our families went different ways. A big part of me always felt that I was to blame for them leaving my life... that somehow, by being so excited to see them and play with them, I had actually driven them away.
So, as any 20-something adult, this is an interesting time to look back and try to sidestep the b.s. that comes with psychoanalysis and get into the interesting aspects of it. How *do* I feel about close human relationships? Really close human relationships? How many of my actions are dictated by fear... and really, really old fears that have been settling in my brain since I was a kid? How many of my actions are dictated by a sense of responsibility and logic? How much of my life is currently dictated by joy?
I think the most interesting question I've asked myself recently is how I *truly* feel about joy.
I strive for it in many of the small aspects of my day... I try to surround myself with it... I try damn, *damn* hard to be honest with myself when I know I'm griping or being petty, but to keep the 'bigger picture' joys in the back of my mind when I'm done being a whiner.
This last month, I've had a life change that's totally new for me, and it's revealing some of my character flaws that I wasn't quite expecting. It feels like someone lifted a big rock off part of my personality, and I'm standing here watching the rolly polies unfurl in the sunlight; confused little black bodies in armor, with their little spindly legs feeling out from underneath their shell in buggy confusion.
After all of my big pinwheeling arms song-and-dance about 2009 and 'finding myself' and forging new frontiers and completely reinventing the wheel, I turned around and ran smack-dab into a really, really good relationship. It hit me like a softball to the face... I not only didn't see it coming, I got hit particularly hard because I think I was whipping around to announce to the world how confident and fine I was with the fact that it *wasn't* coming.
I started dating my best friend... although the word 'dating' feels anemic and laughable for what it feels like... the drama of crossing that chasm between 'friends' and 'more than friends' and the complete, drama-free bliss of just feeling like you're home with someone.
*author's note: apparently, I also *really* gush when something like this happens. As witnessed by the eye-rolling goo that I've already started pouring all over my prose lately. I've requested a name change to 'pancakes' since I hear that the really sappy ones are the maple-producing trees.
but I digress.
So... I'm exploring the chambers of my heart, very wide-eyed, with all of the enthusiasm of a Shakespearean love sonnet, but also, the detached fascination of an anthropologist.
"what is this going to feel like NEXT..." I keep thinking... and then scribbling frantic field notes in the deepest recesses of my brain when that data is piped through.
"Oh, how disappointing", a lot of my field notes read: "apparently the North American female *does* cry when presented with a dozen red roses and a night at home making fajitas and curling up with an endless supply of netflix. How terribly cliche of the North American female to get raccoon mascara face when she's surprised all the way down to her red toenail polish by a romantic gesture from a North American male."
I'm very, very interested that this feels this way. To be honest, it's a strange battle between just sinking into the comfort of a person and a bond that I already *completely* trust and hold close to my heart, and the increased anxiety that comes with change, especially when it involves change in a relationship that plays a big part in your life.
There's also a weird tug of war going on between just enjoying feeling happy, and feeling cautious about being happy. I'm trying like hell to let go of the knots that accompany happiness, but they do make themselves known.
I think that's human, though. It's scary to let your guard down and look someone in the eyes and tell them those three words that mean everything... "love" means letting someone in just as much as you're letting yourself into the world of that other person. Love means looking your flaws square in the eye because in about 15 seconds, that other person is going to be taking the white house tour of your flaws, and if YOU can't stand them about yourself, how will they? And love means putting your bulletproof vest on the ground for a second even though it feels like there are still guns pointing at you... and doing it with a gleam in your eye.
those are three big, BIG words to say.
There's so much that I want to write/think through here about this, but it wouldn't be prudent. NONE of this entry has been prudent so far.
Plus, I have much more introspective thinking to do before I can write things that won't make me wince too badly. I'm very happy right now, but I'm also feeling anxious in a way that makes an awkward, fight-or-flight part of my personality come out, and I don't want to write things that I'm scared about because I'm not sure or proud about all of them.
I'm accepting-- embracing, with full arms-- a relationship that's important to me, and I don't want to look back at this in 12 months and read: "I started dating someone. It's wonderful. I'm scared." I want to look back and read, "I'm taking a big risk about something (my heart) and someone (one of my best, best friends). I'm happy that I'm taking this risk because it means that I'm not sticking my head in the sand-- I'm embracing something good and sweet and totally sincere and down-to-my-pores important to me. I'm willing to relinquish control so I can experience what love feels like."
Human relationships are profoundly complex... they are so meaningful, and so frighteningly powerful over our lives. The fears I have about loss are so compounded by the moments when someone mentions things like 'Natasha Richardson died at the bottom of a beginner ski run in Canada'... these fears rise to the surface so fast and so violently that I have to tamp them down, forcing them into knots that live in my stomach and bizarre, meaningless thoughts that will go through my head in the future about the safety of a friend who is simply enjoying his day on a safe, quiet drive on his motorcycle.
It's all about perspective, I guess. You can't live your life in fear... so I will keep doing the best I can to let go of the part of my personality that is terrified of people walking, running, or leaping out of my life when they mean so much to me.
When I was young, I was obsessed with the movie "The Parent Trap" because of this... the idea that these two girls, only children, went to camp just to discover they had a twin... and at the end of the movie, when the audience is supposed to applaud the romantic rekindling of the flame between the parents (*who, if you look at the actual story line, are the most evil people who EVER lived... and the screenwriters were sick, too, making all their young audience members believe that they can get their divorced parents back together...anyway,I digress)... I was jumping up and down clapping just because both girls found their unconditional love in a sister soulmate. (This is why I'm so crazy obsessed with twins... not just a sibling, but someone EXACTLY your age? It was my idea of heaven. And still kind of is.)
When Disney released the equally campy Linsdey Lohan version of "The Parent Trap", I reluctantly hopped on board with that version as a kid, despite its obvious shortcomings. I couldn't help myself... it was the same intoxicating (albeit evil and twisted-- but as I mentioned, that's a whole different journal entry) plot, with the sisters finding each other and celebrating "happily ever after", which in their case was just a new sense of family and permanency in their lives. Natasha Richardson was cast as the mother... and she repeated a line that's in the '90s version and the Haley Mills version. When twin daughter #2 gets home from camp and runs into her house pretending to be twin daughter #1 that the mom has raised for 11 years, the girl finally sees her mom for the first time since infancy. She leaps into her mom's arms, starts to cry and says something like:
"I'm sorry, it's just that I've missed you so much."
Natasha Richardson replies, "I know, it seems like it's been forever"
and her daughter looks up at her, with real emotion on her face: "you have no idea".
Oh. My heart breaks every time I think about that scene. Disney movies or not, that's a real movie moment... isn't that what's at the basis of every relationship? When we're finally in the arms of someone who feels so familiar and meaningful, we want to say, "where have you been?!?", but all we can do is hug them back and learn what it feels like to just let *go* for a second.
Happiness is complicated.
I guess I will have to remember to appreciate happiness because it's not the complete absence of fear, as I keep trying to chide myself into thinking, but really... it's just a victory over fear. It's the acknowledgment that we may suffer loss, but that our suffering would stem from the fact that we had something very valuable to begin with.
Carpe diem... sieze the fish. Hug the people you love and tell them you love them, even if it's nerve-wracking. The world is so big, and so unpredictable. The movies, like my internal monologue this month, are so goddamned sappy because love really *is* what gets us through this spinning orbit that we're in.
goodnight, earth. take good care of us... we're doing the best we can down here.
posted by JustJane at
11:45 PM
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