Autonomy and the Oops!, Gritty Details

This year I think I turned into myself. Really, it's who I always was, but I didn't have the confidence to carry her around. Through the grapevine that is my family's way of communicating, I learned that they think I have dum dum dum! CHANGED! It was weird to hear this, like a far-off thought that was slung my way from behind a barrier, meant to define me, categorize me, hurt me... I honestly don't care.

I went through a lot this past year. Sparing you the gritty details, I was essentially tossed to the wayside without explanation after three years of building what I thought was a castle with someone, but was actually a sandcastle. It's what I imagine great cinematographers feel like they can do when filming a miniature set, tricking audiences into thinking it's the real thing. Behind the scenes, we see if they'd just zoomed-out that it's not real. It's make believe. It was marvelous, but in the end, it's not feasible. You can't live in a sandcastle. So he crushed it, packed both our bags without telling me, and told me to go home.

My therapist loves my metaphors. What I'm saying is, I was dumped, and dumped hard. We had celebrated our three-year anniversary days before, him taking care to call the restaurant and tell them we were celebrating this occasion, them giving us two glasses of champagne and dessert. The actions of a man in love, I thought, and all romantic comedies would lead one to believe. Thanks to an overly shall we say "helpful" aunt, I had read He's Just Not That Into  and The Rules and even Not Your Mothers Rules. If I wanted the things that conventional society says I want, then I knew what to look for and, more importantly, what to avoid. (Note part of my growth is realizing, um, I don't want what conventional society says I do... that's why I moved to Los Angeles to become a star. Cue the music!) Anyway, we had had a hard couple of days, but the ship was righting itself until I walked into his apartment, swinging by just to pick up some paint cans I'd left in his garage. I opened the door and before I could say, "Hello," before I could register sadness, toil, trouble in, well — it wasn't paradise, but aren't all relationships this way?— I heard the words, "I need to break up with you."

You know that feeling when your heart is beating fast, and you're wondering: is my blood outside my veins? Are my veins outside my body? Should I grab a pen, because this is too good to make up, and eventually I'll want to write about the person who made trust seem like a luxury I'd never known I had until it was gone? That feeling? That feeling where you're wondering, how did I let this happen? How did I not cut and run before he did? Aren't I worth something? Aren't I worth more than this? Is every self-help book lying to me about my inherent, undeniable value? Aren't I worth more than this moment suggests?

In the first few months after I'd wonder nightly if I had just not gone over that day, would we have worked it out? I'm glad we didn't. And this isn't all to say that every person who rids themselves of another person is pure trash, because that isn't true. I actually wish him nothing but the best. But, in sharing this I get to own a little bit more of my life. We are a combination of what happens to us, whether it's our own doing or the doing of others.

So, I guess I didn't spare you all the gritty details. There's a lot more to this — obviously more family, learning about boundaries and how I'm allowed to have them (What?! Who knew!? I did not. Irish Catholics don't love autonomy), and a bottomless pit of anxiety quantified by a black sphere holding space behind ribs for too long. That probably hurt the most. The metaphysical ambiguity was startling and, frankly, pretentious.

I started this with the intention of showing how I turned into myself, and this was a big thing that catapulted that growth. I'm grateful for it. I wish it didn't have to happen the way it happened, but it did. I've turned into myself in the way that only traumatic experiences can show you who you are. Spending time and money on self-care is worth it. These days I look at it like its making up for all the years where I didn't even think I was worth caring for. I didn't know I felt that way until I saw what I was and didn't recognize her. This year has been one of authenticity, speaking up, and setting boundaries to help me maintain my autonomy, then tripping, falling and getting back up again to do it over and over and over.

Anyway, one day we'll be dead. :)

I'm Out. Drops the Mic. & a Critique Involving How Life is Improv (whaaaaat? I am so original)

**I found this in my drafts just now, and I can't believe I never posted it. Feel free to read it, and then read my thoughts on it at the end.**

"And, that's my time. Thanks, guys. You've been a great audience. Sincerely."

I twisted the microphone back into it's holder. The audience still clapping. It was a lazy clap though, like they felt they had to do it. I've been in those audiences, been the person who just did not want to keep being there.

This has been my fear for so long, I don't even know how to quantify it. I mean, I suppose I could say for the last 27 years. Or, I could say for the past 7, or I could say, for as long as I knew what stand up was — imagining all the while that talking is difficult. Talking in front of strangers is difficult. Talking. Difficult. Frozen.

BUT. That's not how it is at all. Man, if only I knew. There was one time about two years ago now where I was at a birthday for a friend, well, the birthday of a friend's boyfriend and we were all comedy people, doing improv in Chicago for the last four years, whataever, some standups, some writers, some actors, all jokesters. Anyway, there was a microphone you could use to roast the birthday boy.

I've always been a rather funny person, I guess. I make people laugh in conversation and tend to be opinionated about things that have no bearing on anything. I hold fast to my ideals even if it means that I stick with the wrong thing because I thought it was something else and then I realized I was wrong but don't want to admit it.

Basically. I am a one woman show wherever I go.

Stand up just makes it such that no one can interrupt me when I'm going on my verbal expeditions. Taking a crowd of people with me on my journey from learning how to play a guitar, numb fingers and all to why firemen have the easiest job on the planet.

If people do interrupt me, there's a special name for them (heckler) and they get thrown out! If only this happened in my real life when people are being real dicks.


**It would be nice if people would stop interrupting my verbal expeditions. What a great phrase, Bridge. But in all seriousness -- I think why I didn't publish this is perhaps I had the fear that I then would be accountable to becoming a standup, and not just a standup, but a good standup, a female standup, always held to a different higher standard, because god forbid, we have a female Dane Cook.

I chalk it up to this feeling: if I missed a mic I couldn't call myself a standup anymore. Some arbitrary rule I made myself follow. Throughout my life, and I'm sure most of us do this, I've had nearly one-billion irrational fears. Because I grew up competitive, and have a brother who one could say was a natural athlete, it escaped me that practice was necessary for most everyone. And the truth was, my brother was given a ball when he was a baby, so he'd actually been practicing his whole life, so scratch that, practice as necessary for everyone. My brother just never lost interest in his thing. And, what happens to most of us, I'm learning, is we lose interest in that first thing. It happens in improv all the time. You could say most people's lives are rather rough improv shows, that we trudge through hoping somehow it will all tie together, everything will make sense in the end because we remembered our suggestion.

We remembered, "Ball," and we can trick ourselves into thinking we were going to get back there all the time. That there is some invisible hand guiding us home, and maybe there is. I like to think so.

My goal at the present moment is to not just cut myself some slack with my purpose in being alive, but to remind myself I'm just making all of this up as I go along. I've never done this before. I've never done today before. Have you? How can I possibly know what I don't know? And when I strike gold, when I have those little victories that makeup a life, when I remember something I did learn, and I then put it into practice, that's a gift, it's not the rule.

We're just doing a bad improv show most of the time, and it's fine. We just made it up. Just do as much as you can with what you have, and it's pretty tough to regret those choices. It's sort of nice to think of life this way.

That said, I don't do standup, but I should again because it was fun, and man, some of my Twitter jokes get a lot of favs. I see you, favs. Thanks!**