And yeah, I’m just generalizing here.

But lately, the conflict is within.

And it has to do with my thoughts and my fears and how they can gang up on me. Because just when I thought I was having a really good time at recess, they’ve suddenly taken my lunch money and oh well, it’s okay that they have it because I’m not hungry anymore anyway.

Because dear God, I get scared sometimes. I feel misplaced sometimes; like everybody else got an invitation to the ball to meet Prince Charming and I am Cinderella and I am in rags and oh sorry–that part that you loved as a little girl–the part about the talking mice and the fairy godmother who makes everything okay for you? That’s the part we made up. Giggle, giggle, high-five.

And sometimes I am not good at silencing those thoughts. Sometimes my tears say what I cannot; they respond when otherwise I would simply sit and listen, and that’s something, I suppose.

But I think I need to get better at this; I think I need to be more like a friend of mine who, when he was younger, punched someone in the face.

Because see, this friend is a very kind soul. The kind who wouldn’t hurt a fly, as they say. Well, actually, he might hurt a fly, but definitely not if he could help it. And he would certainly not hurt a toad. Or at least, he made sure not to once, by stopping his car in order to let the toad hop across the road, unmolested. Whoa. Unmolested makes it sound like my friend saved this toad from a lot more than just getting squished.

But, anyway.

I randomly asked him today if he had ever punched someone before (the friend, not the toad). It was one of those questions you ask while thinking that you already know the answer. It’s a script; he’ll say no and then you’ll move on to something else. Until he said yes. Whhhaaa? And then, Um, why?

Because there was this kid who was so mean to me, he said. He made fun of me all the time, told me nobody liked me, and called me all sorts of things.

And so you just punched him one day? I asked.

Well, he continued, This had been going on for a long time. He’d always pretend to be really nice in front of my mom, and then when she left, he’d be cruel again. Finally he was making fun of me in front of a lot of other people and I just did it. I punched him in the face and gave him a bloody nose. This kid never made fun of me again.

And I love this story; it’s so perfect, it’s like a sitcom. But the kind of episode that I liked to watch–not the kind that would stress me out, like when the guy would accidentally agree to take two different girls to his prom and then have to juggle two dates who knew nothing about each other until, inevitably, the jig would be up and he’d be left alone at the prom before the half hour program had run out of time. Ugh, the stress of it all. Don’t be an idiot. Just take one girl, pay attention to just her like she deserves, and FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S GOOD AND HOLY, DON’T LEAD A DOUBLE LIFE, NOT EVEN AT THE PROM.

Sorry to yell, I get a little passionate about that kind of thing lately.

But well, punching someone in the face isn’t exactly the nice way to go, right? I mean, it’s not the kind of lesson that’s spelled out in black and white under the pictures you’d color in neatly at Sunday School. But in my friend’s case, it got the job done.

And I think I need to punch my thoughts in the face sometimes. I don’t care if that’s nice or not. And I think I need to get divorced sometimes; I don’t care if that’s nice or not. Nice to whom, anyway? It’s truth. It’s free. It’s reality. It’s acknowledging what’s wrong, what’s ugly, what’s been broken until it no longer even is and deciding to not live in those hideous, messed up places anymore.

And the other night I was talking to a different friend. Someone who has been shocked and saddened by the past events in my life. He looked at me squarely during our conversation and said, Lately, life makes me want to punch it in the face. To which I added, And once you locate Life’s face, I’ll aim about three feet lower and Life will really know how we feel about what’s been happening.

And so we made a pact.

And then we laughed because it was funny.

Which is usually why people laugh, I guess.

They all start the same way, mostly.

I generally get so hungry that I am reduced to opening my eyes. Nice and slow. Maybe even one at a time.

But about being hungry–every morning I wake up to a belly that acts like I’ve never put anything in it for the entirety of its existence. And believe me, this is not true. So I’m all, Listen, belly. I got up in the middle of the night, not even five hours ago, in order to creep up to the kitchen and eat; can’t you at least act grateful? But it’s all, WAAaaaaaaaaa!!!! and my reasoning is completely lost on it until I eat some cereal.

But before I get to the cereal part, I blearily walk to the bathroom and attend to business.

But sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and bam! I see my hair.

And it looks like I was visited in the night by The Hair Fairy, who is maybe The Milk Fairy’s second cousin once removed, but was definitely a stylist on the set of The Wedding Singer.  And she comes in with her curling iron, her hairspray, and her wrists that can tease hair a hundred strokes a minute.

And by the time I get up in the morning, I look like this.
And oh, baby, those bangs. So I document it, because–well, look at it. Flock of Seagulls should totally ask me to do their reunion tour. I can play keys, guys. And I can harmonize to whatever you throw my way. Oh, and I have a little treewood guitar, but please don’t ask me to use a pick. I’ll make up for the lack of a pick with my bangs, though, promise.

But then it gets better.

Cause I decide to run my hands through my hair, embellishing The Hair Fairy’s work just a bit, and I get this.

And as you can see, it makes me totally happy.
I’m so in with Flock of Seagulls.

My counselor, I mean.

I nodded and went through all the motions of agreement, but I could hardly imagine it. I guess because I’d never been there before. It’s like trying to describe the color purple when you’re blind; when you’ve never seen color anyway. You could talk about a mixture of red and blue, how it mingles and fades into something else entirely, but that has no relevance because you’ve never seen that either. You might as well be the President talking about a mixture of peace and healthcare reform; they are just words, and once said too much without the actual idea it represents, they lose their power. And then peace and healthcare reform become like red and blue; they mingle and fade into something else entirely. Though I’m not sure it’s purple.

There’s this song we sing in church, I Can Only Imagine. It’s a beautiful song that frames the afterlife in lyrics and the key of D. Well, it’s in D when I sing it, anyway. And I have this vague notion that the time after death will be good, that I will finally and once and for all be hidden from enemies that hate me for no other reason than God loves me. And yes, the fact that what I do, whether I ever say another kind word again, has absolutely no bearing on either of those–the love of a God and the hatred of another–is stunning.

But the afterlife.

I am going to be honest now and say that the very notion of it scares me. I’m not saying I know it won’t be good; I am simply saying that I don’t know it at all, and I have a long history of fearing the unknown.

But just because you cannot imagine something does not mean that a). it will not come to pass or b). it will not be okay. Because it’s true, my counselor was right. I was driving in the car, on my way to the gym, and all of the sudden I just knew I was ready to move on with my life.

And I stepped into the unimaginable like it was an old pair of sneakers. Or at least pretended to. And I looked around for someone to pronounce the Time of Death, but nobody was there; so instead I texted my brother Jason that it was time. I even used the d word.

And no, not that d word.

I am talking about divorce, but now that you mention it, the other d word could have been appropriate too.

But how?

How do you go from both saying I do to one saying I didn’t to me now saying I don’t?

Beats the heck out of me.

But this is my journey and I pinch myself often, but not in the pinch me, I’m dreaming sort of way; more like pinch me, this absurdity just can’t be real.

Not when it involves a link to a site that my friend sent me, after we talked about how I was thinking about selling my rings:

outofyourlife.com

I’m not even joking. They send you a box, a breakup box, and once you fill it with your unwanted jewelry, you mail it back to them and then wait for a check to arrive once they’ve sold it for you. If you think you could get more than what they got for it, you have the option of returning the check in exchange for the jewelry.

Nice. Low risk. I’m not in the riskiest mood right now. You don’t generally see a lot of survivors playing Russian Roulet; you just don’t.

My breakup box arrived just this afternoon. And I cannot believe how ridiculous the name of that thing is; cannot help but like to say it, because WTF. The F stands for freak, in this case. As in I sometimes freak out when I take a long hard look at the landscape of my life.

Or maybe, just maybe the F doesn’t stand for freak.

But if you ever wondered what a breakup box looks like, now you know.

And I know, I was kind of let down by how normal it looked too. I mean, really, not even a broken heart? Or even a cartoon black widow spider, happily munching away on her mate?

But then I opened it.

And saw this.

And couldn’t help but laugh.
At least it wasn’t Girls Rule! Boys Drool!, I guess.
But again, WTF.
How in the world is this my life?

The main event didn’t cost any money. It didn’t even involve going anywhere, really. And mmmmm, there was definitely toast involved. Nice crunchy, perfectly buttered toast for which you mourn the last bite but pretend not to because who gets sad over that?

Okay, so a few of us do, but who admits it?

Okay, so I do: I really like toast and it makes me sad when I finish it. There. Now that I’ve bared my soul, do you feel close to me?  Because my affinity for toast is definitely the deepest thing I’ve shared here lately. Can’t wait to see the controversial comments that this garners.

But other than the toast, the thing that struck me is the way that conversation can fill a room and make life better than television. And although I like to watch Teen Mom just as much as the next person, there’s something about digging deep within yourself and then dumping it out before a trusted friend and vice versa.

And something else: it’s really empowering to tell my story. And though I hope to God that I don’t ever become a person who drones on and on about the rotten hand she was dealt back in ’09, there’s freedom that comes in talking about what’s happened. Even in relating the memories, describing the images that crowd my mind at night.

The first time I met with my counselor about all this hullabaloo (I realize that word sounds like something involving lots of brightly colored cartoons and maybe even a pair of googly eyes, but actually it can mean something quite serious. Like an upheaval. Disturbance. Uproar. So yeah, I’m gonna stick with hullabaloo), but the first time I met with my counselor, I talked for three hours straight.

He started out the session with a notepad and pen, poised and ready for action, but after about the first hour of me just describing the events that had recently darkened my sun he slowly put down his pen and simply let me talk. He’d stop me only to clarify something, since I am not always the most linear story teller, but other than that he just got out of the way as the dam within me finally began to give.

Once three hours had gone by I realized I was exhausted and I also realized something else: I had not yet been able to tell anybody what had happened in my life. This was the first time and it actually felt good. And then there was the fact that he didn’t look at me as if my life is over, that he kept telling me over and over again that God has a plan for my life and even a good one at that.

Whoa.

Okay.

But, whoa.

And so tonight my friend and I talked. We talked like words were in season and nobody was gonna run out of them anytime soon because there was always the cellar and all the extra jars of it that were stored down there; we were lavish and generous with our conversation and even managed to make fun of some of the things that suck so much.

After we cried about them first, of course.

And there we were, either in the living room or the kitchen, and nobody was bored and nobody was wondering what it was we were going to do. Because we were already doing it.

We were talking and God, it was good.

I mean, there are parts of me that have been around forever. Things that I am used to, that I even like now. Like the beauty mark in the middle of my forehead that causes random strangers to accuse me of playing with hindu tattoos. Or at least one random stranger, anyway. In a coffee shop. True story. But I am used to the fact that my eyes are brown, but green too when the sun shines in them just so. Or even that I hear myself referred to as skinny more often than anything else; that I can continue to use my own preference of slender as much as I can, slipping it into casual conversation in a clumsy attempt at subliminal messaging, but that won’t make my friend David stop saying that I am the skinniest person he’s ever met. And it won’t change the fact that I get no compassion when I complain about this to others either. Rather, they tell me that they’d love to be called skinny just once. And again, I am skinny. Not slender, but skinny, subliminal messaging and all.

But now I have a syndrome and I hate it.

Now when my phone rings or I get a text telling me to please call, I have a visceral reaction. My heart starts beating faster and faster, racing to I don’t know where, but it’s getting there way too soon. My breathing becomes shallow and I taste panic. It is not savory, it is not sweet; it is fear and it is pervasive. It starts in my mouth and eventually makes it down to my stomach so that there is no longer any room for food. And I become full and nauseous at once as all I know to do is wait for myself to waste away because nobody can live on fear for too long. Which is a little bit nice in the moment since it means that there is an end.

And an end to a very bad thing is actually a very good thing.

This morning, for instance, my brother called me before 9 am. And to a performer, that is early. Nobody calls me then, not even my mom. But he called and I was scared and if I am going to be honest, too scared to answer. So I didn’t. Whatever it was, I wanted to be blissfully ignorant for just a little bit longer. But then he texted and told me to call him. Shoot. No more sweet naivety. Instead, the panic. Instead, the heart beating hard enough to sustain a few hundred, rather than just one skinny (if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right?) female.

And there it was, not even 9 in the morning and I was being reminded of my new syndrome. Nice. Perhaps, along with the simple task of answering a phone call from my brother, the sounds of my spoon against my cereal bowl will be just too much for me today also.

*oh, and on a completely different note, I was inspired by my brother who just added snow to his blog. So not to be outdone, I went out and got some for myself. Because of it being December and all. And because of my competitive nature and all. Hope the snowflakes don’t annoy you guys too much…Unfortunately, mine look more like dandruff while my brother’s look more like the beautiful romanticized snowflakes we all see on the victorian christmas cards we never do quite get around to mailing, but oh well. Merry Christmas anyway.

And tonight’s was a doozy. They say everything is bigger in Texas, and I guess the parties fall under that category too.

A lamborghini and ferrari salesman here in Dallas is an apparent lover of theater as well, since he hosts all the touring shows that come through. Um, in his mansion.