trust

I am lying here

/ autumncircles / Leave a comment

I am lying here
my hands crossed over my chest
my heart beats faster than it should
my skin feels every thread of fabric surrounding me
my breath barely reaches beyond shallow

I am lying here
hands crossed over my chest
unable to awaken any part of me
have I done the right thing
will this finally heal me

You are lying there
cross over chest
eyes closed
lips sealed
light shines

I am lying here
You are lying there
long passed
We are not the same

Clearing Out Clutter

/ autumncircles / 5 Comments

Okay – let’s start at the blog ending revelation which is I hold on to stuff –

and by stuff, I mean fabric I envisioned making quilts or curtains from, baby jars to decoupage into cool candle holders, letters from old boyfriends, scraps of paper with partial poems on them, grief, fat clothes, skinny clothes, curling irons and hot rollers from the eighties, ideas of how relationships should work, beliefs on where I should be in  my life, misconceptions on what I should weigh, fear of a punishing god or universe, t-shirts to start a tye-dye business, broken clocks, piggy banks, or vases I vow to fix,  fliers from a show I don’t perform in anymore, henna hair dye I haven’t ever used, pills and otc meds that are expired, emails, my tongue during times when I should actually speak up for myself, glasses from two or three prescriptions ago and various other items or beliefs that could fill a black hole –

out of my fear of being expendable. I don’t want to be tossed aside because I might be broken. Or left in a garbage heap because I am no longer in fashion. Or overlooked because I am not the cutest puppy in the bin. Or accidentally sold in a garage sale mish-mash box labeled junk because no one saw me there. Or even worse – intentionally given away because I was no longer loved or needed.

Yeah, I know – sucks to be me, huh? How do you think it must be for those that live with me? Or truly do love me?

Everyone has their own things that scare them and for some reason, mine is the oh-so-fun combo of fear of abandonment mixed with unworthiness to be loved topped off with a good old fashioned dollop of never-enough. Throw in a splash of survivor guilt and cannot quit until it’s perfect and you have quite the supersized unhappy meal deal from a rat invested hole in the wall that only serves entrees pressure cooked to diamond-like crispness.

Wait. Before you call Oprah to add me to one of her hoarder shows, I am actually a moderate case. I can still walk around my home and my car stays relatively empty of crap (on occasion). The unworthiness helps in this area because it is hard for me to believe it is okay to buy myself that used five dollar pair of pants big enough to hide my ass with the stuck zipper, therefore, I don’t acquire a lot of physical stuff to keep, but usually once I do – it will take years to get rid of it.

Which is where I am today.

Getting rid of it.

I have finally said “Fuck it! I am cramped and tired and need some space.” So, instead of getting rid of my family and friends, or changing my name to Toni Fredericks and moving to Kotzebue, Alaska to start completely over, I have been slowly, in tiny increments, clearing away some clutter from my life.

I have given away clothes I no longer wear because they don’t fit or that I plain didn’t like in the first place. I sold off all of my stacks of fabric that I never got around to making the most perfectly sentimental quit to keep me warm when everyone has left me. I got rid of discount handbags I never use anymore and decorative knick knacks I never displayed. I am tossing out what I think everyone else thinks I should weigh and am working towards my very own happy weight. I have chipped away at the granite around my punishing god and am molding it into a pliably unconditional love of the universe. I have purged emails clogging up my memory. If something upsets me or scares me, I try to vocalize it in the moment instead of holding on to it for ten years and then nearly getting divorced or losing someone I love.

I have a long way to go and many, many more things to purge. I am trying not to look at what I have left to expunge but rejoice in my new found free space. I have allowed myself not one, but two handbag purchases over $100. I bought some new pants that actually fit and flatter the junk in my trunk. I have conversations with the people I love instead of fights. I try to let my emotion naturally flow through me until it has abated without stuffing it deep down like an undercooked turkey. I continue to write, write and write some more about these truths and other revelations I may discover for well or ill because this is just who I am.

Most importantly, I am (hopefully) teaching myself and my children that I can love, be loved and let go – all at the same time.

Will the end result be a zen-garden style home with only a pallet on the floor to sleep and one organic cotton frock that keeps me both warm and cool? I don’t know but I am willing to slip-n-slide, make progress and fall backward and cut myself some slack to find out.

Yippe kay-aye …

Facebook infiltration

/ autumncircles / 3 Comments

Okay – I was NOT going to do this, but I need to write. Something. Anything. When I do, it calms my brain which is in overdrive over nothing. Well, not nothing, but certainly not something worth overdrive. No one’s ill, we are not totally broke and my marriage, family and career are tops at the moment.

Yet, the brain in my skull still finds a way to hit supersonic speed over tidbits of banal life chatter. Oddly enough, I don’t feel comfortable writing about what is bothering me. Hmm.

It’s my very own list of 25 random facts about me of which some I am not sure anyone – including husband and best friend know. The list was hard to compile for this blog since I have been pouring out a lot of random me for almost a year now.

  1. I do not feel like I am in my forties. At least, this is not what I imagined being 40-something would feel like.
  2. I prefer to type everything because I don’t like my handwriting.
  3. I have been putting this off out of fear that I do not have 25 interesting random notes to write about myself.
  4. I used to dream Sting sang me his new songs before he released them. Like on some sort of alter-dream-plane-universe.  Then, in the real world (well, my reality anyway), the songs would always sound familiar, like I’d truly heard them before. Most notable among those were “Every Breath You Take,” “All This Time,” and “When We Dance.”
  5. I used to consider joining the Army. Not to fight but to lose weight.
  6. I had an older brother who died of a terminal genetic disorder at the age of ten on St. Patrick’s Day, 1974. He would have been 45 this past January 30th. His short life and death affected my entire life. Seriously – my entire life.
  7. I once pumped out 12 ounces of breast milk. Quite an achievement for someone with my “a is for apple” cup size.
  8. I still have my wisdom teeth, but often do not feel very wise.
  9. I am pretty sure my soul has had previous lives but on the whole is fairly young. I think this may be the reason why I weep whenever I see soldiers in uniform, have a weird sense memory of hiding in the bushes as a child while trying to escape to freedom, and see faces in various objects, shapes and designs.
  10. I have a crush on Matt Damon and wrote him a letter thanking him for his smoldering yet authentic performance in The Bourne series. Surprise – I never mailed it. (Maybe I’ll post it here someday?)
  11. My first cigarette was when I was a tween with my cousin, Tracy – Salem Lights, menthol. Never was a full-fledged smoker – I smoked off/on for years and officially quit in 1992 after a severe throat infection. Occasionally when I am with my peeps, I’ll have one or two.
  12. I still have a curling iron I borrowed during a show in college that I forgot to return and it haunts me from under the bathroom sink like Poe’s “Tale Tell Heart.”  (FYI – I graduated college in 1993 – nice, huh?)
  13. I continue to dreadfully miss performing in the theater. I secretly search the audition lists and pray for an opportunity to run away and rejoin that circus.
  14. I sometimes forget which hand is my left and which is my right. I use my wedding band as a reminder.
  15. I used to be too afraid to reveal something like number nine out of fear of judgment from others. Now, I figure, what the hell? Judges will judge whether they know that about me or not.
  16. My husband recently referred to me as still being a MILF to him – aww, isn’t that sweet?
  17. I am sitting here listening to aforementioned husband play the guitar and sing while I type this out. He does both quite beautifully and on days when my brain is in negative overdrive, I get jealous instead of happy for him. How crappy is that?
  18. I tell everyone that I started my acting career in kindergarten as the third billy goat in the Billy Goat’s Gruff. But in actuality, I think that is a lie. I am thinking I was a rock by the bridge the goats cross over. Oh, well – we all get our start somewhere.
  19. I got a $15,000 bonus (lots of money in 1997 for a fledgling actor) when I worked at PaineWebber in NYC and walked away from the job and the clear opportunity to make more if I stayed in order to come home to Texas to start our family. No regrets – NOT ONE.
  20. I am coming around to the awareness that blogging while satisfying on many levels, is also very lonely. There are no stage lights to illuminate me, no hands clapping furiously after my post and not enough interaction with other humans with the same creative leanings as me.
  21. Sometimes I get so caught up in the things that aren’t working, I forget about the things that do:
    Does Not: fabled idea of relationships – Does: reality of relationships
    Does Not: my ability to deal with frustration and anger – Does: can deal with just about most anything else
    Does Not: worrying about money – Does: trusting that there will always be enough
    Does Not: worry – Does: trust
    Does Not: stuffing my feelings – Does: letting them pass through me naturally
    Does Not: hiding from fear – Does: facing it
    Does Not: shame – Does: love
  22. I desperately need a manicure and pedicure. And a weekend away by myself. Something I have never done – be alone in an unfamiliar place without anyone I know to keep me upright.
  23. I have a postcard from Alaska to someone named Kelli in Denton from someone named Dana in Houston that I found in a book. I have always, always wanted to go to Alaska.
  24. I prefer coke zero over diet coke, salt over sugar, lake over beach, vibrant over pastel, Shaun Cassidy over Lief Garret, spy novel over romance, coffee over tea, Superman over Batman, peace over war, love over indifference, and life over death.
  25. I have no fucking clue why I wrote all of these out after all of this time especially considering that I think I have confirmed my #3 fear. Oh, look! A turtle!

Peace.