The Total Package

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 3 Comments

Give me a man who isn’t fussy about his hair more than I am

Who loves baseball (but will only watch it on TV with the sound turned down)

Compliments my ass

And artfully dodges engagement when I press whether or not something looks good on me

Loves my cat as much as I do

Appreciates anything I cook for him

Takes care of his health without me having to ask

Loves the way I process things out loud

And how often I change my mind

Can listen and be empathetic when I complain

Doesn’t judge when I get depressed

Is turned on by a mere glimpse of me naked

Will hold me when I cry

And let me go when I need space

I just described you, my love

So glad I had the good sense to marry you.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: total

Lifted Spirits

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 1 Comment

What happened that night

Punctured my soul

Essential me-parts leaked out

In slow seeps, bit by bit,

Leaving a life force shell

A burst balloon hanging from a tree

It’s taken years to repair and refill

But I’ve tested the patches

And I’m flying high now

No strings attached

Just enjoying the view

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: puncture

Ebbing Flow

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 3 Comments

Each time you act out

My ability to love you is tapered

They say love is infinite

But my capacity to care is not

 

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: taper

Love Appraisal

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 4 Comments

 
What is the volume of a heart
Can the love contained within be measured
In liters or meters
Does it even carry weight
Or is it like air
You calculate the mass
What would normal pressure be
Would the mass increase when in love
And decrease when heartbreak sets in
What is the volume of a heart
When heavy with grief
Does sorrow tip the scales
Or does love forever keep the balance
And its value never depreciate

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: volume

 

Athlete, Interrupted

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 4 Comments

Growing up, I was that kid who hated gym.

I’d try to hide when it was side-picking time. I’d try to avoid someone passing the ball during basketball. I’d get in the far outfield in softball. Volleyball? It was simply terrifying. There was nowhere to hide.

I could barely run a lap. I couldn’t do one pull up or push up.

I had zero confidence in my self. I was awkward physically, and had no sense of athleticism.

I decided early on that I did not have the right body for sports like running. I was too shapely and too heavy.

I tried. Boy did I try. Despite my social shyness, my physical awkwardness, my lack of self-assurance, I scraped together what pluck I could and tried to be on teams anyway.

They were a series of humbling failures.

As a very young girl, I had loved to move. I took ballet, tap and jazz from ages 3 -6, and I loved it. I danced all around my room at home, choreographing dances to well-worn albums of my parents’.

But after a move and a series of significant events in my sixth year, I became disconnected to my body. I began to live in my head, in a fantasy world created to blot out a reality that I was not equipped to handle.

And I turned to food as my, well, my everything. It numbed me out, it made me feel good, it comforted me, filled me, calmed me, excited me, made me feel safe, made me feel a part of something. It was my weapon, my barrier, my mode of expression. It was a mood stabilizer and alterer. My best friend, my lover, my family. My church.

So no wonder I became uncomfortable in my own skin and body and had trouble being in the world within it.

Mix in the social world of sports, and it was a recipe for disaster.

Later, after I lost weight rapidly on an extreme diet one summer when I was 12, I started exercising compulsively. I didn’t realize it at the time. I justified it. It was healthy, after all, to work out, right?

I lost and maintained a new, better looking weight, but I was just as disconnected from my body. As a matter of fact, though I knew I looked better to the world at this lower weight (suddenly I got positive attention – people wanted to know me,) I did not love myself any more than before. I actually became even more critical of my body. You could even say I hated it on some level.

It was never good enough. I wanted my body to look like the models in the glossy magazines I grew up reading. To be like the women in the movies and on TV. Like the girls at school that were popular and voted Most Beautiful. I compared the way I looked to world I was surrounded by in the media, and I always fell way short.

I concluded that in order to be lovable, I needed to look like them. Since I didn’t, I was doomed to a lonely, loveless, “loser” life. In my emotionally immature logic, I decided I had two choices: kill myself or reinvent myself.

So I turned to exercise as I had to food. It was a great way to numb out. A great thing to become obsessively-compulsive about. It’s much easier to disguise a disordered relationship with your body by working out too much. Most people think you are “just fine.” Our culture supports the idea of killing it at the gym: “No pain, no gain.” “Transform your body, transform your life.”

At my worst, I was working out 3 hours daily. My body ached, but I seldom noticed. My periods stopped and I felt exhausted all the time. My hair and skin looked awful.

There came a time when I realized that I wasn’t comfortable being around other people unless I had worked out for three hours. I started to understand that something was still way out of whack between me and my body.

Eventually, my world came to a crashing halt. My body simply could not withstand the way I was treating it.

I now understand how amazing the human body is. That it innately seeks healing and balance and has an intelligence far superior than that of my mind. My body called a halt to the imbalanced, disordered behavior, and demanded that I examine and re-approach my relationship to it.

Fast forward many years of therapy and recovery. I eventually have come to a place of understanding and connection again with my own body. A place of loving it as it is, even. (That journey is many blogs’ worth. Today I wanted to share about some of the fruits of that journey so far.)

After much healing, I started to work out again, but with the sole intention of doing it for my health, and for the pure pleasure of moving my body. I learned to listen to my body, giving it rest and recovery when needed. I found that early girl’s love of moving and I gave her plenty of space to play.

And at a certain point, after all those years of telling myself that it just wasn’t in the cards for me, I started to run.

In 2012, just after I had set a New Years’ intention of finding my inner athlete, I heard of an app that helped you go from “couch potato” to 5k runner. I was very inspired hearing about how well it had worked for a friend of mine. In June of that year, I started using it, and within a month, I was running 5k distances with ease.

And I found that I loved running! I started running 5 days a week, and it quickly became a major area of focus in my life. I ran a 5k race towards the end of 2012 on a lark, and discovered how much I loved running with a herd of other runners.

From that 5k, I ran a 10 miler, followed by a half marathon in Jan. 2013. I ran more half marathons in 2013, loving the training process. Training and racing became an important part of my life. I trained no matter what, and really began to feel like I had finally found my inner athlete.

And then, in 2014,  I ran my first marathon: the NYC Marathon. Crossing that finish line was a personal triumph for me for so many reasons. Not only was it an amazing accomplishment to have trained for such an iconic race and to finish it.

But to have brought myself through full circle from a child at home in her body, loving using it, to being completely shut down to my own physical life, to brutalizing it with disregard in order to become someone more lovable, to acceptance for and love of, to testing, training and ultimately celebrating the abilities of my own body.

I wept, as so many do, as I crossed that finish line. For the girl I had been before being interrupted. For the girl who got so lost and misdirected. I cried out of grief for all that they had lost. And I wept with joy for all I had come through, and for where I had brought myself to.

Today, I still love running. But I have continued to listen to my body, and today, she wants some different kinds of movement. I still run, but am not training and racing. I love those years where it held such prominence in my life. It was a five year span of joy, and I  learned so many things about how strong I am, and what amazing discipline I am capable of. But I’m seeking other experiences now.

I’ve been taking tap, which has been amazing to rediscover. (My inner 4 year-old is very happy!) I’d like to start taking ballroom dancing too. I am listening to see what is next. I trust my body will lead me where I most need to go. I know I will be moving, somehow.

My inner athlete is ever alive. Now that I found her, I will never let her go.

#itsnevertoolate #runforlife #running #runner #innerathlete

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: triumph

 

 

Broken Lineage

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 4 Comments

When I was in my mid-20’s, my father made a revelation to me.

In the instant he told me, it was if suddenly, an off-feeling I’d had my whole life until that moment suddenly made sense. Something aligned within me. My relationship to the world felt different. It felt like the earth turned just a bit on its axis and snapped into place after having been off for so long.

I felt like I could breathe just a bit easier after a lifetime of holding it in just a little.

My Dad and my mother sat me down and the story unfolded. My father had been at a work conference in Galveston, TX at which he was to speak. As she always did, my mother went along.

She stayed in the hotel when he actually went to the event that morning. Before the event, there was a meet and greet in the front area of the arena. My Dad had on a name tag, as did the other guests and participants.

At a certain point he noticed an older woman looking at him form across the room. Later, she approached him, and he recalled thinking she seemed hesitant about talking to him. As they began to small talk, he looked down at her name tag, and commented, “Hey, that’s funny. We share the same last name.”

He said the woman sort of paused a moment as if considering what to say next, and then suddenly blurted out, “I’m Rose Curry. I was your father’s first wife.”

She went on to explain that she’d been married to my grandfather and that they’d had a son together, my Dad’s half-brother. They were long-since divorced, and agreed not to have contact or tell anyone about the child, but her son had always known of him had always wanted to contact my grandfather, his father.

She and her son both lived in Galveston, and she had seen in the paper that my Dad was speaking. She had not been sure of whether or not to come.

My Dad says he went into a kind of shock. He doesn’t recall anything else about the conversation or the event. He gave the speech somehow and then afterwards went back to his hotel room.

My mom said when he walked in the door, he was white as a ghost.

He recounted the story to her, and they posited that perhaps it was someone looking to grift some money out of him. He was sure that his father could never have been married before, much less have a child and not tell anyone about it. Surely they were just looking to demand some inheritance or something, claiming to be relatives.

But curiosity got the better of him. He looked through the phonebook and found the name of the man that Rose Curry had claimed was his half-brother, and he called the number. He spoke to the man, and they arranged to meet that afternoon in the parking lot at a McDonald’s.

And my Dad said that the moment he saw the man get out of his car and approach him, he knew that the story was true. He could see the resemblance clear as day.

He spoke with the man for several hours. It turned out that this man, my half-uncle, had tried several times over the years to re-connect with my grandfather. He’d gone to Midland, TX (halfway across the state) to his house and rang the doorbell, only to be turned away in the snow.

He’d even called my Dad’s house once, at holiday time, in the hopes of speaking to him.

He’d had a tough life, struggled with depression and alcoholism.

My parents told me that after they left Galveston that day, my father had talked to my grandfather about the man. But my grandfather wanted nothing to do with him. As he had turned him away so many times over the years, so he turned him away again.

I. Was. Floored.

Suddenly, my whole childhood made sense.

I’d always sensed an indefinable energy around my grandparents’ house in Midland. They were loving people. I loved to be at their house and around them. But they didn’t leave home much. And there was a tension that I could feel as a child, something I could not make sense of. I guess I always felt that something was about to happen. Something bad. It felt like we were always on hold.

Hearing the revelation of this first family of my grandfather’s, it all made sense. That energy was the energy of holding a secret together.

My grandfather had been married and met my grandmother and fell in love. He had left the other woman, and their son, and they’d divorced. My grandfather’s side of the family knew, but were sworn to secrecy. My grandmother’s family and the family she and my grandfather would make together were not to ever know.

My God, that takes a ton of energy, to hold that big a secret.

So every time there was a knock at the door…every time the phone rang…they must on some level had been thinking would it be someone who knew the dirty dark little secret?

I remembered a man coming to my grandparents’ house at Christmas. My grandfather going out and talking to him on the front yard, coming back in angry.

(Now I know it was him.)

I was at the Thanksgiving dinner table when a man called interrupting dinner, asking for my Dad. My Dad came back to the table saying “some guy had just called and as said he was his brother, must be a wrong number, the guy sounded drunk.”

(That poor man trying yet again.)

Secrets are powerful things. They create an energy, they take up space. As you work to hold them in, it takes away from the living of your life. Every relationship feels that weight in some way or another.

As a sensitive child, I sensed it all. But no one would say a word.

I was close to my grandmother, but the one time she ever got mad at me or denied me anything was when I asked her in college for some family history. She refused to help me. I was so confused by her behavior at the time. It was so unlike her.

But once the big secret was outed, it all made sense.

My idea of my grandfather was forever altered on that day. My grandfather and my grandmother, but she had been dead for some time.

I never spoke to my grandfather about it. I had wanted to, but my Dad said not to, and I complied. I guess I have been conditioned to accept the weight of lies.

Sadly, he never agreed to have contact with the man who was his son, my half-uncle. I never met him either. All involved parties are dead now.

I remain. And I seek to be sure that I live life lie-free. Lies cost too much, and they can never be held forever.

I had a half-uncle. I wonder what he was like. I hope his children and their children have also broken the chain of lies. You can only hold the Truth at bay for so long.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: revelation

 

 

 

 

Breaking Through

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 1 Comment

There’s new growth inside

Tiny greens are poking through

In-between the cracks of my heart

Tender tendrils of hope

Pushing promises of freedom

Of joy and release

And of peace at last

I attend to their needs with full study

I patiently await what will bud

 

 

Hope Springs

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Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: crisp

Crisp twenties so new that you have to separate them from themselves

Freshly cleaned laundry, folded neatly

Dry cleaned sweaters in plastic protective wrap

Kittens or puppies sleeping on or near each other

Baby animals, period

The release of the receptacle handle after returning library books in on time

A blazing sunset that stops you in your tracks and out of the fray of the day

A child’s unrestricted peal of laughter

The rise and fall of a sleeping baby’s belly

The moments just after re-organizing my purse

How gum tastes in the earliest moments it is in your mouth

A blank spiral-bound notebook or college-ruled yellow pad of paper

Walking out of Starbucks with that little green stick plugging up the hole, keeping the heat in

Discovering urban art in unexpected places

Budding flowers

A plant’s leaves reaching towards the light

Sharing eye contact and/or an experience with a stranger on the train, in passing on the street or in a line anywhere

Seeing someone drop trash, thinking they don’t care, and then seeing them pick it up and put it in a receptacle

Feeling heard after a grueling session with any company’s customer service on the phone or on-line, coming to a solution that actually feels fair and human

Those little plants fighting to sprout in-between cracks in the sidewalk

Spreading tree branches that snake between fences, around posts, and survive

Same-sex toddlers holding hands un-selfconsciously, line partners as they pass with their class on the streets of NYC

 

#itsthelittlethings #findinghopewhereyoucan

 

A Perfect Ten

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 9 Comments

I was always ashamed of my hands as a child.

I bit my fingernails. I was always picking at the nail bed and tearing the nails. Though sometimes I made them bleed, there was a weird pleasure in the pain of that self-destruction in the moment it was happening. Later, regret set in, and then shame.

As a young girl, I would make play fake nails out of Elmer’s glue and stick them on, pretending I had lovely, long nails like the women I admired on TV and in magazines. They did not stay on very well, however. Just a few, brief moments of the illusion before they fell off, semi-hardened ovals of Elmer’s again.

I also had what I considered a misshapen right thumb. It was shorter and wider than my left. I hated my right thumb and it’s squat ugliness. I would sit on my hands in elementary school. Didn’t want anyone to see my defect, fearing it as outer proof of my innate defectiveness.

Around the summer between sophomore and junior years of college, I discovered artificial, or acrylic, nails. There were also, at the time, inexpensive, temporary stick-on nails available in stores, but for whatever reason, I never tried or trusted those. They were too obviously fake. They would never pass as my own. (So I would never pass.)

But the acrylic nails? They were an answer to my prayers.

These artificial nails were not a replacement, but an extension for natural nails. They involved the application of tips made of lightweight nail-shaped plastic forms that are glued onto the end of the natural nail. They would then don masks and brush on acrylic powder to cover the nail. Then an artificial nail is sculpted out of the acrylic and shaped and buffed to a shine.

In over an hour’s time spent in front of a nail salon employee, I, too, could have perfect, long, beautiful nails.

But the best part of it all was the polish.

I chose the richest and darkest red being made at the time. This was before get manicures and the myriad of colors of polish in fashion today.

I was drawn to the red. I had always loved old Hollywood glamour, so I guess that influenced my taste. Subsequently, I also started wearing red lipstick to match. It became my signature look in my last two years of college. (I also wore a lot of black before it was chic. I got a lot of comments on all of these things. I didn’t mind the attention as long as my nails were perfect.) My nickname was Maybelline.

After discovering acrylic nails, I fell in love with my hands. I felt more attractive in every way. Suddenly, my hands were available for self-expression and communication in a way they had never been before.

Great, right? So what if I had to pay a fortune. So what if I had to spend two hours each week in the nail salon breathing what must have been toxic fumes and having toxic substances put onto my nails in order to feel whole and worthy? Small price to pay if you ask then-me.

The problem is, when you rely on an external factor of your appearance for your sense of worthiness, you are depending on something that is transient.

And acrylic nails, while petty durable, were known to break off at times in-between salon visits. They were a system not without flaw.

If my acrylic-enhanced nails were less than perfect, I felt unpresentable, imperfect. Life had to stop until I could re-perfect myself again. But salons are not open 24/7. So that meant hours of waiting, feeling awful, until I could be restored to lovability again.

I remember literally plummeting to the depths of despair one time bowling with friends.

I am right-handed, so I was using my right hand to bowl. My “special” right thumb had trouble fitting into the thumbhole of the ball that fit the rest of my grip. It was a bit snug for it. And, well, you guessed it, disaster struck.

There I was, in all my shame, my deformity not only exposed but highlighted. The naked odd man out against perfect and polished siblings.

When I think back, I feel compassion for the girl I was then. Sad that my entire esteem of self was riding on such a superficial thing as my nails. But it was.

It took some years after college to begin to learn to let that kind of outwardly-obsessed perfection go. It symptomatically focused on my nails then, but that was not the only area of my appearance that suffered.

I have had to delve deep, to find my core self, the self worthy of love, having nothing to do with externals of any kind. I am still working on that one.

Perfectionism and obsessive-compulsiveness seem to be a shape-shifting animal that morphs from one area to another.

Whereas over the years my perfectionism has often been fixated on my appearance (nails, weight, sustaining a youthful appearance,) in the last 15 or so years it has also been on my career and accomplishments.

I am still working to find full value in myself just as I am. Nails or no. Big acting credits or no.

Today, I try to love who I am, how I look, just as I am. I try to enjoy the work I get and to treat every job as if it is “big time” because in my heart of hearts, where I don’t care if anyone else is looking or not, it is.

In over words, I am trying to live from the inside-out.

It is challenging. The outside world with all of its social media trappings and the business-of-acting business bytes is like a siren call that draws me off course to crash on the rocks.

Am I doing enough? Am I meeting the right people? Do I have the best headshots? The right representation? Am I in the right mindset? Am I relevant? (Yes, I have actually just recently gotten an email from an industry professional who council actors suggesting that as the focus of what actors must ask themselves. To whom? In what regards? And what if I am not relevant? Does that mean I should just stop pursuing what I love?)

And then there are the ever-present questions of well-meaning people: What have you been doing? What have you done that I would have seen you in? Anything big? Are you doing anything important? Yikes. So easy to slip off my own core-driven track of loving what I do and start to question my validity. Easy to feel lost at sea and doubt that I am on the right path, despite having a map that I love right in my own hand. Easy to feel like I have to use yours or hers or buy a new one in order to be marketable “enough” to feel worthy.

But thankfully, I know what is what. I may have to work hard to stay centered within my self some days, navigating the seas of the outer world that used to have such reign on my sense of worthiness, but today, I know what is what. And that is huge. I recognize the siren calls for what they are. I can course correct back to my own route.

I confess, I do still love nice-looking nails. Today, we have gel technology, so I only have to go to the nail salon once every two weeks. (I can barely stand to be in there. Some people love it. I just spent too many hours there for the wrong reason in the past to enjoy it. It is a reminder to me of where I have been. I do not want to go back to that.)

I have a new signature nail polish. It is called Always and Forever. It is a purplish nude matte color that is subtle, like a pink or a white without being pink or white. It is different, unusual.  I love it. It suits who I am right now. Next year, it might be something different.

I do still wear red every so often. I enjoy the bright red shock of color. I always feel a bit more glamorous when I wear it.

My nails do not have to be perfect today. Neither do I. I am the captain of my own career ship most days, and the sailing is fine.

 

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: polish

 

 

 

Here Comes the King, Here Comes the Big Number One

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I stopped drinking in 2001. That’s pretty amazing, considering how much, at one time, I loved to drink. There’s plenty to be amazed about my life since I stopping drinking. Loads to write about. But today, I wanna write about something else.

In the years since then, there are these constantly evolving alcoholic concoctions that are of little interest to you when you are no longer a part of the drinking culture, yet clearly must be of massive interest to the drinking community.

My God, all of the vodka flavors alone! I think in my time there was maybe black currant and lemon.  Now there’s lime, lemon-lime, orange, tangerine, grapefruit, raspberry, strawberry, blueberry, teaberry (really?!), vanilla, chili pepper, cherry, apple, green apple, cinnamon, coffee, chocolate, cranberry, peach, pear, passion fruit, pomegranate, plum, mango, white grape, banana, pineapple, coconut, mint, melon, rose, herbs, bacon, honey, cinnamon, kiwifruit, whipped cream, tea, root beer, caramel, marshmallow, and many more!! Wow!

The flavors of tequila. The craft beers! I loved imported beers and bars that carried them. Then, it was less common to find craft beers on a restaurant drink menu like it is today. Then, you’d hunt out a pub that imported your favorites. I even won a contest once by drinking over a hundred imports carried by The Richmond Arms in Houston, Texas. (NOT all in one night, of course.)

What about all of the new twists on drinks that contain more alcohol than the others? Or less, depending on the demographic they are trying to reach. How to make it all look more attractive…must be challenging and fun to figure out new ways and new inventions.

The ad campaigns. The fashionable drinks endorsed by celebrity that sell a lifestyle and promise a dream fulfilled.

All of the above, as I said, are of no importance and therefore little interest to me, but I do find it fascinating from an anthropological standpoint. The alcoholic beverage industry is alive and well! My withdrawal did not make a dent.

But there is one recent alcoholic development that is particularly inventive and amusing.

The slang use of the phrase: Natty Ice to refer to cheap, bad-tasting beer that is cheap but has a higher alcohol percentage, according to the Urban Dictionary.

There actually  is a Natty Ice beer — it is Natural Ice, by Anheuser-Busch. And even they refer to it as Natty.

They even offer a history of how they developed this beer designed to be “the best bang for your buck.”

Here’s an unsolicited consumer review of Natty Ice:

 

Amazing, like I said. I had no idea such a beer existed.

You learn something new everyday. (Even if you really wish you hadn’t sometimes.)

Cheers! (Or not, depending.)

 

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word: natty