Rendered Speechless tag:blog.artful-i.com,2011-09-15://1 2012-05-06T09:56:10Z Blogging my way back to a three-dimensional life Movable Type 4.37 Thumbprint tag:blog.artful-i.com,2012://1.116 2012-05-06T09:55:12Z 2012-05-06T09:56:10Z I sat alone at a table in the bar of the first restaurant I found on the Santa Cruz wharf. I chose it because I was tired of walking, and I wasn't even sure I was hungry, but it was... Amy
Nevertheless, I ordered a glass of wine, a glass of water and one of their specials, the Salmon Orzo. And it was magically delicious.

I was there for roughly an hour. I sat at a window that looked down the length of the wharf. And right in front of the hot dog stand was a flag stand, where the owner was starting to pack up for the day.

He looked like Paul.

Actually, I'm not sure if he really looked like Paul, any more than the hot dog stand owner looked like the tropical vacation version of Santa Claus (he totally did). The flag guy had gray hair that was long enough to touch his collar. He had a mustache and goatee, which Paul himself didn't have, but they still seemed to fit. He wore a sleeveless white t-shirt, shorts, a ball cap and sunglasses. He was tall, strong, and most of all, alive. It was like watching an impressionist painting. The spirit was clearly there, if not the stark reality. I knew if I got too close, it would cease to be him, and while I knew it really wasn't him, I was enjoying watching what seemed to be the impression of an earlier version alive and well -- and healthy -- right in front of me.

I stared out the window at him the entire time I was there. He looked back more than once, but most likely, not at me. It was strangely comforting, and sad, and completely unfair, because it wasn't real. And that sadness is something I haven't felt in some time. I used to feel it all the time while he was here, and especially right before he left. I always knew he was trying to get my attention when I felt a little stab in my heart.

I don't know what he actually did to make that happen, but it would come at me from out of nowhere. I would see someone that reminded me of him, or something that reminded me of his interests, his life, or something that he said, and it was as if he stood right in front of me and gently pressed his thumb right into my heart. And at that moment I would miss him terribly, and the connection was made.

I thought that would never happen again after he left.

At 5:30 on the morning of April 3, I woke up and tossed the cat a treat to get her to stop staring at me like some kind of bedside gargoyle clawing my hair. I went back to sleep, and woke up twenty minutes later from a very clear dream about Paul. Specifically, about the absence of him.

It was the anniversary of his death. My mom was in the kitchen chopping vegetables, talking to Paul as if he were there to hear her, like we often do, her back to me as I saw her over the counter from the breakfast area. It was pitch black outside. I stood on the other side of the bar and I thought, She's handling this better than I am. Next, I was sitting at the table with my back to the clock on the wall. I turned to look at it, and it was later than I had thought, just after midnight. It was now the actual anniversary of the day it happened, the day he died. It had snuck up on me. I remember thinking, By now, I knew. It didn't really make sense, since he died in the evening and this was early morning. As I looked at the clock, it was as if I saw his face in it but I knew it wasn't there. That he wasn't there. Painfully not there. Tragically, not there.

It was the first time I had ever felt the real tragedy of what had happened, the trauma of the act itself. It was as if I had been protected, both in my dreams and in life, until that moment.

I woke up in a sort of shock. I didn't feel anything. I lay there in the dark trying to decipher it, remember every detail so I could write it down. Analyze it. I rolled over to go back to sleep, and stopped, and then found myself sobbing uncontrollably from a very deep place I couldn't identify. I didn't feel it coming and then suddenly it was there, full force, and it was the only thing in the room. The only thing in my life.

I called my mom in a panic and woke her up asking what had happened in April of last year, because I couldn't remember. Something must have happened. I was reliving the anniversary of something terrible -- it was April 3, he died on July 3. Not a coincidence, but not the same day. Something must have happened in April.

Something had already happened in April, many years ago. Something traumatic from an old relationship that gets me anxious and insecure once a year until I remember my subconscious is reliving a terrible anniversary. It always seems to take me a few days and then I remember, duh, it's April, I'm not myself. I had already figured it out this time. I had already gone through that.

We talked for some time before I finally calmed down and realized, I was dealing with more than one anniversary, and the dream explained the other one so I could deal with it directly. This was about the time last year that my friend had predicted something "traumatic and unexpected" within the coming three months. There were no details. She felt it was a death, but she didn't know who, and if she had told me that much at the time, I would have made myself crazy trying to figure it out. She did me a favor by not saying that (I got my own death signs later, but wasn't sure that's what they were until it was over). But she really didn't know anything else. In fact, by the time it finally happened, I had written it off as something that was too vague or too exaggerated to really worry about.

The thought I'd had in my dream was the answer to the question of what had happened last April. By now, I knew. This time last year, it was already going to happen, and I had been told. And that was tragic in and of itself, and it was affecting me. Later that day I would find out that my dad needed a triple bypass, and that my great aunt had passed away, and I dealt with all of these things over the background of trauma that the dream had left me with. It took a few days to really sort out everything I was going through that week, but without that dream, I'm not sure I would have been able to figure it all out.

Then on the morning of Friday, April 13th, I awoke to my clock radio playing "Leaving On A Jet Plane." I opened my eyes and wondered why I was hearing it. And then thought it was odd that I didn't seem to feel anything in particular as it played. The 13th is a significant day in Paul's history with my mom, but other than that, I decided by the time I got up that day that it was a fluke.

The next Monday when my mom left for Texas to attend a painting workshop -- one that she had last attended with Paul -- I awoke hearing that song again. I didn't feel anything in particular, but I couldn't ignore it this time. By the time my mom came back from her trip, I knew what it meant: that he was with her on her trip. He was here.

She came back the next Monday. The day before, I had volunteered doing some art activities with kids for Earth Day, and one of the other volunteers complimented my ring, the one with Paul's logo. That hadn't happened before and it put him in my mind more than usual. That Monday, on my way home from work, I got stuck behind a really slow truck getting on the highway. I flashed on the memory of moving to California, of Paul driving the moving van of stuff to be stored in Colorado, of how he had his CDL and could actually drive a real truck. I didn't know why I was thinking this, but I was, and then before I knew it, his thumbprint was on my heart again.

I turned off the iPod and turned on the radio and I said, "If you're here, I'm going to keep the radio on until I get home. Okay?"

After about three songs, "Unchained Melody" came on. The song from Ghost, the one I heard the day that I realized he was listening to our conversations. I got emotional and drove past my apartment so I could listen to the whole song. And then when the song was over, the emotion was over. Like it had never happened at all.

When I got home, I called my mom and I said, "I think Paul said hi to me." And she said, "Did you see the pics I sent? Because I almost posted one of them on Facebook and said, 'Paul says hi.'" What? She said, "I felt compelled to stop and take that first picture and I felt like I was supposed to do it for you." It was a picture of the sign for the C & C Auto Ranch in Denton, Texas. Paul and I had spent an afternoon there in 2008 taking pictures of all the old cars, him telling me without fail what make and model each was and what year it was made.

Except the picture of the sign had something special about it. She took it from behind a street sign, and the combination of the two contained a very specific message.

auto_ranch.jpgIt's one of my favorite memories. And when I saw this, I knew for the first time that he really hadn't gone that far away. He had gone somewhere where he could return once in a while, and he had. Maybe to go with my mom on that painting trip. Maybe to remind me not to settle for something less than what I deserved, which he did very successfully. Maybe both.

I think he's been making his presence known off and on for a few weeks. Just a week ago, I was getting ready to leave work when one of the guys I work with started singing, "I'm leaving on a jet plane, I don't know when I'll be back again." He's barely out of college and Korean. "Out of context" doesn't even begin to describe that. For some reason, it compelled me to look up the lyrics to a couple of Eagles songs that I had heard quite a few times while Paul was here, and one of them was "Lying Eyes." It's one I heard a lot but couldn't really figure out what he was trying to tell me with it. I had come to the conclusion that since it was about a woman who cheated on her husband because she had settled and was unhappy, then it was a message for me to make sure I didn't settle myself. And sure enough, I heard that song on the radio almost as soon as I left work that night.

Today, I felt that thumbprint again when I watched that guy pack up his flags. It was odd that I didn't feel it earlier in the day. I had spent the day taking pictures of the amusement park on the boardwalk, and I've been drawn to one specific ride over and over again all day: the swings. They reminded me of the swings I saw in the dream when Paul told me he wanted me to have his camera. I've never forgotten that image, and I know I took over 100 shots of that ride today. But it wasn't until I walked down onto the beach to get a different perspective that I realized he might be here. When I got down onto the sand below, "Hotel California" started playing on the park's speakers.

I called my mom and left her a message about what had happened. She called back while I was having dinner, watching Paul's lookalike pack up his flags. She had talked to Paul too, and had gone out to take pictures of the sun setting in the mountains, when she saw another fox. He looked right at her this time, and she snapped a picture.

It seems odd that I didn't really feel Paul's presence until that one moment on the highway a couple of weeks ago, and until I saw his lookalike on the wharf, despite all the other signs that he's been here. It doesn't matter though. I'm starting to see that I don't always have to feel it for it to be real, for him to really be here. I'm pretty far removed from the connection I had a few months ago, but he still has his way of letting me know he's around. And his presence reminds me of everything he taught me while he was here before, that I deserve everything, that I'm worth the effort, and that I should never settle for less.

Not that I want him to leave or anything, but I hope there comes a day when he doesn't have to remind me of that anymore.
]]> Epilogue tag:blog.artful-i.com,2012://1.115 2012-03-10T09:57:27Z 2012-03-10T09:57:18Z I wanted to wait until the end to write about the end. And then the end came, and I didn't know how to write about it.I had a dream right after Paul died last summer, right before I went to... Amy
I had a dream right after Paul died last summer, right before I went to Vancouver. I never wrote about it, but it might be the first time I recognized a dream as something important. I was driving a white car that belonged to my grandmother. She was with my mom, and I was trying to drive past their place without them seeing me. I knew as soon as they saw me, my time to myself was over. And they did see me. I couldn't sneak away.

I was supposed to pick them up and take us all somewhere. So I stopped, pretended I hadn't been trying to sneak away, but I was disappointed. I opened the door to the back seat for my grandmother and said with an exhausted sigh, "Hi, Grandmother, where do you want to go?"

She stood there with her hand on her hip, looking at me as if she wanted to say something. She didn't say anything before I woke up. She never says anything in my dreams, this being the first dream of many about her over the last few months. But I know what she's thinking by the way she looks at me. And this time, she was concerned. She was worried about me.

This was so far the opposite of how I would react if I actually had a chance to spend the day with her and my mom one more time, that I felt guilty and confused when I woke up. But after a while I figured out that it wasn't just a dream. She was telling me that I didn't have to deal with things alone and help my mom by myself, and that I would wear myself out quickly if I tried. She had come back to help both of us and wanted me to know it.

She came to me in another dream last Saturday morning, and made sure I knew that she was the last to leave.

On February 12, I got the message from my friend that Paul was almost ready to move on. And for three weeks after that, I felt like I was living between heaven and earth, almost like I was trying to control a kite blowing in the wind by tying the string around my waist and daring it to pull me into the sky. It was exhausting, miraculous, painful, and an experience I will be grateful for until the day I die.

The day after we got the message, I called in sick to work. I couldn't deal with it. I was emotional, and I hated the idea that if I only had one day left with Paul, I would have to work through it. I had no idea how much time was left. So I stayed home and tried to make peace with the end of something I only barely understood. I ran errands, I did my laundry, and I heard from him. He wanted me to know he was at peace. He wanted me to go on and enjoy my life. I woke up to "Peaceful, Easy Feeling," a song I would hear many times over the next three weeks. Later, I heard "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," just as I saw a license plate that said EVER FWD. And then I asked him where he was going.

I mean, I knew where he was going, as much as anyone can know. But would we ever hear from him again? Was this permanent? Or would he be able to come back in times of trouble like my grandmother had? Would I see him again when it was my turn? Would he come back for my mom when it was hers?

I started my laundry and realized I was out of soap, so I left my clothes in the washers and ran down the street to the CVS. The weather was weird. It had been cloudy, but now the clouds were breaking and it felt like the space around me was getting larger and emptier. I came back out to my car and felt like something was happening faster than I could keep up with it, and I just knew I had to get back home. I turned on the car, and "Call Me" was playing.

Call me (call me) on the line
Call me, call me any, anytime
Call me (call me) my love
You can call me any day or night
Call me

It was the first time I felt like a song was from him, but questioned it. That couldn't be right. Was he going somewhere where I could still talk to him somehow? That was too much to hope for. I raced back to the apartment, hoping no one took my clothes out of the washers while I was gone. As I came out of the laundry room and headed up the stairs, I suddenly found myself racing up the steps at full speed saying, "Oh my God, there's gonna be a rainbow!"

I ran into the apartment and went straight for the balcony. The rainbow stretched from one end of the lagoon to the other. I grabbed Paul's camera and ran back outside to take pictures.

Later that night, as I was putting sheets on the bed, I talked to him. I told him something I was worried about. And I asked him some questions. I felt like the silence was helping me connect with him, and yet I walked over to the clock radio and turned it on. "Take It Easy" was playing.

I said back to him, "Yeah, you're right, I shouldn't create problems where there aren't any. I shouldn't expect trouble." And I turned off the radio when the song was over.

Then I asked him, "Was that from you today? 'Call Me.' I want to believe that was an answer to my question about where you're going, but I'm almost afraid to believe it. If you could maybe throw me another one like that, if that was from you, it would make me feel a lot better. But only if it's true. If it's not, I can deal with it. I just don't know what to believe."

I walked over to the radio again and turned it on. "Kodachrome." And I haven't heard it since.

Over the next few weeks, I listened exclusively to the 70s station on the car radio and the one I created on Pandora. And I got all kinds of things. Serious ones, like "Just Remember I Love You," the first song I ever heard that I knew was from him. And there were others he used just to make me laugh, like "Soul Man."

I heard "Hotel California" a lot. One day they gave us Jamba Juice as a crunch time treat at work. When I got back to my desk, I realized mine was frozen solid. I couldn't get the straw into it. Then "Hotel California" came on.

It was the acoustic version from Hell Freezes Over.

But one of the most amazing things that came from him that first week actually came through a friend and not a radio station. It was Valentine's Day. I walked into the room and saw over a coworker's shoulder that he was watching a keyboard tutorial on YouTube. I asked him to send me the link. As I was watching it, he sent me another, saying, "This is what I would play every day if I knew how."

It was "Great Gig In The Sky" by Pink Floyd. I stopped breathing. He wasn't just telling me where he was going, I think he was telling me I could play that song if I wanted to.

As I went out for my afternoon walk around the office complex later that day, I had the urge to go out the front door instead of the back. I didn't know why, so I ignored it and went the usual way. As I got to the edge of the water, a ship was coming in, just like the one he pushed me outside to take a picture of right after he died. So I sat down on a bench and waited for it to get within range so I could take another picture. And then I realized, if I had gone out the front door instead of the back, I would have gotten there at about the right time without having to wait on it.

Duh. Sometimes it's really hard to tell the difference between a passing thought and an instruction.

This kind of thing went on for about three weeks. I didn't know how long he would be here, and so I made sure every day that I was still connected, for as long as I could be. I had the music on all the time. I kept my eyes wide open. I had even asked to see a specific sign when he finally moved on, because I wasn't sure if it would be obvious or if I would think he was just being quiet. Every day I looked for that sign. Every day I didn't see it was a relief. But it was the last week he was here that the real miracle happened.

On Wednesday the 24th, I read a message from my friend who had had the dream about Paul. She told me more about it, about how he looked, how he acted. He was excited. He was tapping his foot like he was listening to music (he may have heard music but I think he was telling us to listen to it ourselves). He was swinging his arm back and forth and making a peace sign, while looking behind him over his shoulder. Just the day before, my mom suddenly had the thought that Paul needed her to tell him it was okay for him to go. She wasn't ready to do it yet, but she would; she was trying to make peace with the idea first. When my friend described what she saw in her dream, I knew we shouldn't drag this out too long. So I sent what my friend had told me to my mom in an email.

Right when I hit send, a song came on that I had never heard on Pandora before. "Leaving On A Jet Plane." I knew the song, because the John Denver version was really popular when I was a kid. And this was a 70s mix. But it wasn't John Denver. I clicked over to Pandora ready to give it the thumbs down when I saw the album cover: Peter Paul & Mary.

My mom's name is Mary. PAUL AND MARY.

I looked up the lyrics and there was no doubt that it was for my mom, so I called and told her. After she looked up the lyrics herself, she sent me an email and said that I was right, it was time to let him go. So she told him goodbye, and also told him that "Leaving On A Jet Plane" now meant more to her than any song she had heard from him in the last eight months.

Two days later, on Friday, I went out for lunch. I walked into the taco place and they had the music on, which was usually what I like to call Mexican polka music. In fact, I had never heard any other kind there. Except this time, as I walked in the back door I heard the live acoustic version of "Hotel California."

"Okay, you definitely got my attention," I said.

After that song was over, it was back to Mexican polka like it had never happened. I felt like that was an awful lot of trouble to go through to send me a song. Something was up. I had told him it was okay to go, and Mom had done the same. I didn't want him to be stuck here. So as I walked out, I asked him if there was something else he needed, if there was something I could do to make it okay for him to move on. "Is there something you need everyone to know?" I asked. "Do you need me to write something?"

I tried to think of a way he could answer me without any ambiguity. The right song. But I couldn't think of it. I said, "I'll try to think of some way you can answer that..." and just then, "You're So Vain" came on.

You're so vain
I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you, don't you?

"Very funny," I said. But what came on next was not only an answer to my question, but a pretty good explanation of the problem itself. "Margaritaville."

Some people claim that there's a woman to blame, but I know
It's my own damn fault

"Okay," I told him. "I get it. I'll tell them."

I was going to write it that night but I was too tired. Forgiveness. That was the topic, how to let go of anger. How to stop the blame and the rage. Paul wanted us all to know that this was his decision, that we shouldn't blame anyone for his death but him, least of all each other. He wasn't going to leave until everyone he loved heard this message. The next day, I went to the beach with the camera and took a trail I hadn't taken before. When I got back to the car, "Margaritaville" was on again. And then, "My Sweet Lord."

"Yes, I promise, I will write it tonight. We'll get you home." And I did. I posted it at 2:11am and then went to sleep.

The next day, I got in my car to go to the store and on the radio was playing "Leaving On A Jet Plane." Peter Paul & Mary. I felt like a building fell on me. I didn't think I had ever heard it on the radio before. When I got back to the apartment, I called my mom and told her. While we were talking, she turned on the 70s station on her TV and the exact same song was playing.

She started crying, and I stopped breathing again.

I sent a message to my friend and told her about the "coincidence." When she wrote back that night, she said that she had walked out to go to dinner with her family, and found herself singing that song. It was not her music at all, and she didn't know why she was singing it. Even her daughter asked her what it was because she had never heard it before and it sounded "weird."

It left as quickly as it came. It wasn't until she read my message that she realized, Paul was telling her "thank you." And at that moment I started to think, I should write a book about this. I should tell the story of the last eight months.

Think about it. How many people have lost loved ones to suicide? And how many have been told through their religious training or otherwise, that there was nothing good waiting for them on the other side, because of how they died? Obviously that was NOT what was going on here. There was hope. There's a lot of hope. Paul was clearly excited about where he was going. Everything written is for the suicide survivor, how to cope with the trauma and the grief and the survivor's guilt. There's nothing out there telling them that their loved one will be okay. And for some, the hardest thing to deal with of all is not the event itself, but what they believe awaits that person on the other side, and how they can do nothing about it. How they can't save them from eternity.

Three days later, on Wednesday the 29th, five songs in a row got my attention on Pandora. When the last one ended, I got an email from Petco titled "ONLY A FEW HOURS LEFT." I had my last conversation with Paul that night on the way home from work. Then when I got home, I called my mom and gave her the message, so she could do the same.

After that conversation with her, I sat on the couch watching TV and wondering what was waiting for me when he finally left. Would I feel it? And did I really want to spend what could be my last evening with Paul sitting in front of the TV watching reruns of Frasier? I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't think of anything else to say.

Then at 9:30 that night, something happened. I really don't know what it was. I looked at his picture on my coffee table and I suddenly started crying. I just lost it completely, with no warning at all. All sense of calm vanished in an instant. And I wasn't just crying, I was sobbing, hyperventilating, and saying things like, "It's not fair, the cancer shouldn't have come back. You didn't deserve that! I don't want to write a book. I don't want anything good from this, I just want you here!"

Seven minutes into that, my mom called, and told me she had seen the sign that she had asked for, to tell her when he was moving on. She asked to see an animal, and she had seen a fox walk up her driveway. I was still a mess. And after we hung up, I kept sobbing until about 11, when I finally calmed down and went for a drive.

Hearing "My Sweet Lord" when I was out didn't help much.

And then it was over. I went to bed, and I slept fine. The next morning, I saw the sign I had asked for, in, of all places, my Twitter feed. I had asked for a specific combination of numbers and something from OU, because Paul went to school there. I thought I would see it on the road, on a couple of license plates, maybe an OU sticker on a car, but this was better, because I could do a screen capture and keep it.

Maybe I'll put it in the book.

This was last week. And Saturday morning, I dreamed of my grandmother, and how she was the last to leave. I woke up at 8:30 and wrote it down. My email was open, and there was a message from West Elm titled "A reason to sleep in."

Not that anyone had to tell me to go back to sleep at 8:30 on a Saturday, so of course I did. And then I dreamed of Paul. He was walking toward me on a busy, sunny street, smiling and looking right at me. As he passed by me, he waved, and then pointed across the street as if to show me where he was going. I followed him, calling his name, but he didn't answer. I followed him to a moving van where two women were driving, but they were a little uptight, so he stole their keys. He was really happy about this. He had put one over on them, trying to lighten things up.

In the back of the van was a group of people, who seemed to be practicing for an informal performance of some kind. One girl was standing on an upside down paint bucket, dressed in silver, reading from a script. Everyone else around her was making noise and having fun. They were all having fun. I remember thinking, he's not alone.

Then I woke up.

When I went out that day, I was sure it was over. He was gone. I had the radio on in the car, and I pulled into McDonald's to get some lunch. I didn't think anything of it at all. But as I got to the driveway, "Peaceful, Easy Feeling" came on.

It hit me like a baseball bat to the stomach. I started shaking. My eyes hurt. My head pounded. I stopped breathing. I had to stop the car in the driveway and get it together before I could go on. I guess it was his last message to me.

And now, I have to say I don't feel very different. Not like I thought I would. Music is just music again. I've stopped listening to the 70s stuff for now, and I've gone back to my usual stations and my own collection on my iPod. Everything I treasured, all the songs, the signs, the little things that brought me so much joy and love are a little painful to think about now. But it's better every day. And I don't feel like he's gone very far. Across the street, maybe.

Death is very different to me now. There is no death. He exists. He always will.

And as much as I hate to admit it, he went at the right time. My mom and I knew he was here for the last eight months. But for the last three weeks, all we cared about was staying connected to him. And he knew that. He had to move on for him, but also for us, so we could focus on ourselves again and begin to enjoy the rest of our lives.

EVER FWD
]]> Save Yourself tag:blog.artful-i.com,2012://1.114 2012-02-26T10:11:55Z 2012-02-26T10:23:01Z About a week ago, I read just the headline and a few sentences of an article on a news web site from back home about someone who had been kidnapped for twelve days and released, or maybe got away, I'm... Amy
It reminded me of all the religious training I've had in my life, and how simple it was. How completely black and white, and often lacking any real application to the present time. And there's nothing really wrong with that, because whatever gets you to forgive someone who hurt you is worth it, even if it's the promise of something wonderful -- or horrible, if you make the wrong choice -- much further down the road. But I think there are a great many people who are not religious and who would not see the value in that statement, because it didn't apply to their present lives. Or because maybe they don't believe in hell, or in an afterlife at all.

If I had ever had any doubt in my life about the existence of an afterlife, well, after the past year that is certainly gone. I'm not so sure I ever really doubted it. And I definitely know now that I never will. But the concept of hell is one I don't quite have a handle on. Is it a place, or a state of mind, or both?

There is most definitely evil in the world. It would be nice if we could say for certain, all harm done by others is a result of harm done to them, and then try to understand, have compassion and move on. And in most cases, I think that's where a lot of malice comes from. But there are very scary things out there. Evil things. I would be naive if I didn't acknowledge this.

But I've found in my own life that most of the things done to hurt me were done by people who were only trying to save themselves.

My grandmother told my mom long ago that she wasn't sure hell actually existed as a place. She thought maybe hell was our life on Earth, and everything beyond was heaven. I'm not sure if that's true or not. Hell may very well be an actual place that is not here. But I know for a fact that we create our own hell every time we hang onto anger for longer than it serves any real purpose in our lives.

Forgiveness has been a lifelong struggle for me to understand and practice. It probably is for everyone. I think I've learned more about it in the past two years than I've ever known about it in my life. I've had things happen in my life that I actually needed books on forgiveness to help me figure out how to move past. They didn't help much. Either they didn't say what I'm about to say here, or maybe it just didn't make sense to me at the time, because I didn't have the understanding of life that I do now, having now seen both sides.

What I've learned is that anger is absolutely necessary. It establishes boundaries. It tells the world (and yourself) what is acceptable and what is not. But once those boundaries are established, or re-established once they've been breached, what purpose does it serve?

Forgiveness was always such a loaded word for me. It felt like something that made everything that happened to you okay. An act that condoned whatever hurt you went through, and said to the world, "I'm okay now, so go ahead, do it to me again." This is a misconception I lived with for years, and one I think most of the world shares, who can't let go.

Forgiving someone is not the same as saying what they did to you was okay. All forgiveness is, is a decision to not live in anger anymore. To not dwell on the hurt anymore. To stop looking for someone to blame for the pain you feel. That's all.

I'm not saying "that's all" as if it's an easy thing to do. It's not. When you keep replaying in your head what happened, all the things you wish you said, all the things you wish you had done differently, or the pain you wish you could cause in return, this is what hell is. Think about it. Is this fun, this living in the past, trying to rewrite it, and never being able to? Is it pleasant, feeling your blood pressure go up every time you think of that person and what they did? No. This is the definition of misery. And all your hurtful thoughts, all the revenge you wish you could get, the hatred you feel, it comes back to you as bad luck, bad attitudes from others, bad karma. More pain caused by others, more to be angry about, more to want revenge for. Whatever you put out into the world, even with your private thoughts, it all comes back to you. It feeds off itself infinitely ... unless you decide to break the cycle.

Decide. It really is a decision, a choice, to walk away. Not to say "this was okay," just to walk away, to stop thinking about it, and save yourself.

Making this decision is not easy. In fact, I don't think the decision can be made at all until you realize what your anger is doing for you. Only when you understand why you're hanging onto it, can you actually begin to let it go. More often than not, it's protection, sometimes real and sometimes imagined. If you stay angry at that person, and they are still in your life, then you feel safer. That anger is your barrier against getting hurt by that person ever again. It keeps you from being blindsided.

It also means that as long as you carry that anger around with you like a brick wall, you will never be close to that person again. So you have to decide, do you want to be close to them again, or do you just want them out of your life for good? If you choose to keep them around, the only way you'll have a real relationship with them is to find another way to protect yourself. If you don't want them in your life, then the anger isn't doing you any good anyway. So either way you need to let go, to save yourself.

The longer you hang onto anger, the longer you are a victim. The more time you spend blaming someone else for the pain you feel, the more time you spend as a victim. The longer you feel righteously indignant, even if you are absolutely in the right, the longer you are a victim. And the longer you are a victim, the longer all your energy is spent on them, and none of it is spent on you.

The decision to let go is not something that just happens one day and then you're done. It's a daily decision to walk away from the thoughts of that person, the pain they caused, the things they did that hurt you. Every day. Each moment that it comes up. Over and over again, every single time until it finally stops for good.

I have forgiven so many people in my life, and sometimes I didn't even realize it. Sometimes I'll think of something someone did, like cheat on me, help someone cheat on me, act abusive, or bully me in school, and it will make me mad all over again. But only for a second. When I realize that I haven't thought of that thing in months or years, then I know I have forgiven them. Because I'm no longer dwelling on it.

It still makes me mad when I think of it because it was a terrible thing. But I don't have to live there.

There are others though that I decided I want to keep in my life, at least on a trial basis, and I've had to work really hard to let go of the things they did. In some cases, I've even had to tell them how they made me feel before I could even begin to let it go. I also had to take responsibility for my own part in things. Some days I still feel the pain come up, and I have to make the decision to walk away, to not think about it at that moment. I can't change what happened, so thinking about it only causes me to relive the pain. If I do that, or I wait for an apology that may never come, I become a victim again, and that puts me in a really bad place to have a relationship with anyone. If I continue to see these people as hurtful and dangerous, they will never be anything better for me. Because I won't be giving them the chance to be.

There are a couple of people who I still think deserve the chance. But most of all, I deserve the chance to be happy, to not dwell on painful things, and to not close myself off for good. I can't be the kind of person who experiences a hurtful situation and then has to punish someone for it before I can get my power back. If I don't look at the people I love as people who are capable of loving me back, even if they're not perfect, then no love will ever come back to me, from them or anyone else.

Loss is a terrible thing for anyone to go through. A loss too soon, completely unexpected, is the worst of all. It's almost impossible to not assign blame when this happens, because the surprise of it makes you feel completely powerless, and blame gives you a sense of control. Unfortunately, there's a lot of blame going around right now that has to do with Paul's death. He couldn't possibly have made a decision like that on his own, right? He was happy that day. He would have never done something like this in a million years. Someone must have done something. And that someone must be punished, starved of all attention and affection, and hated for all eternity.

I talked to Paul that day myself. I didn't know it at the time, but it was clear later that he was happy that day because he had figured out how to get power over his life back. Because he had made a decision that would end his physical suffering and his fear of a future with cancer. Because he had finally found some control over a situation he hadn't had control over for years. He made the decision. And if you follow this blog at all, you know he has told me as much himself.

Since he clearly does not want me blaming anyone but him for his actions, then he certainly doesn't want any of us blaming each other. I feel like he's still here now because this is exactly what's happening, and he's not going to move on until everyone he loves decides to grow up, stop punishing each other (and in some cases, themselves) and move on as well.

It's not like I don't understand. When someone takes their own life, it's hard to not want to blame someone for that, to want to see the person who died as being just as big a victim as you feel yourself for having lost them. The pain you imagine you share with them seems to bring them closer as you come to their defense. And it's hard to be angry at the person who left. The guilt makes it almost impossible to put the responsibility where it belongs.

So walk away from it. It's the only choice left to make. Stop being a victim. Stop being pathetic and hateful. Be someone Paul can be proud of before he moves on for good, so he finally can move on for good. And most importantly, save yourself.
]]> Kodachrome tag:blog.artful-i.com,2012://1.113 2012-02-13T10:14:00Z 2012-03-10T09:07:51Z This isn't about Kodak. It's about music, and a dream, and the end of something really important.I didn't think I'd be posting something again so soon, even though I've been saving this one for some time. I didn't know what... Amy
I didn't think I'd be posting something again so soon, even though I've been saving this one for some time. I didn't know what I was saving it for exactly, it just seemed like as soon as I made the decision to write it, I couldn't make the connection. But now I know that if I don't write it today, I may never write it at all, and now suddenly that connection is there. Probably for the last time.

I have Paul's camera.

When I went to Oklahoma for his funeral, I borrowed my dad's car to get around town that week. The day I met my mom at the church to meet with the minister, I was already on the road when I decided to search for a radio station. I went through a few of them before I hit on one that was playing music from the 70s and 80s. Specifically, they were playing "Rosanna" by Toto. That song was a big deal to me when it came out in 1982. I LOVED it. It came out right about the time everything was drastically changing in my life -- I had moved six hours away, my dad was getting married again. And for some reason I heard that song every time I came back to visit him that year, so when I hear it today, it brings back a ton of really important memories and very vivid emotions. It's still a big deal. It reminds me of going home, at a time when I needed to go home the most.

When I heard it that day, I felt body slammed. Nothing had affected me like that before, not even that song. I didn't know what was going on. Not until the next song came on, and then it was unmistakably clear.

Just remember I love you, and it'll be alright
Just remember I love you, more than I can say

I lost it. I lost it all the way to the church. It was Paul. And I've been connected to him that way ever since.

He loved to talk to me about music. He loved Pink Floyd and The Eagles and all kinds of bands. I started taking piano lessons last March, and he started the same soon after. And now he was gone, and using music to communicate with me.

When I came back home after the funeral, the first thing I did was find a similar station here. And I've been listening to it ever since. I even changed my alarm from obnoxious beep to radio. Anything to hear him say something, anything, if he had anything to say.

It's amazing how much you can tell someone just using Eagles songs. They were his favorite band. But he hasn't limited himself to that.

One Saturday not long after the funeral, my mom and I were talking on the phone about Paul's camera, among other things. She had given it to him for Christmas a few years earlier. I was there when he opened that present and I have to say, I was pretty impressed. It's a Nikon D60 and it even came with a telephoto lens. She told me she wanted me to have it, because it was another interest we had shared. But she couldn't give it to me because his son had taken it, along with a lot of other things he took without telling her, while he had stayed with her at her house right after Paul died. Things she didn't know were missing until after the funeral, after he had gone home. But that was something she had given Paul as a gift, and in my family, the gift giver gets first choice when things start getting divided up.

One of the other things we talked about that day was the movie Ghost. After death communication. We were sort of joking around about it and sort of not joking. We weren't sure what we were getting into but we already knew that this death experience was going to be different. At least I knew. I had lost all four of my grandparents long before and it was already very different than anything I had ever felt in my life.

That was the day I realized that Paul was listening to our conversations. Because after I hung up the phone, I got in the car to go get something to eat, and before I got out of the apartment parking lot, "Kodachrome" came on.

I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away

I laughed out loud. I really did. That was totally his sense of humor, teasing me about taking his camera away. Like he could still use it! But what came on right after that song really blew me away. It was "Unchained Melody" by The Righteous Brothers. You know, THE song from Ghost.

As soon as I got home I called my mom again and told her he was listening to our conversations.

Since then she has gotten the camera back and given it to me. And he has kept talking to me. He uses Eagles songs a lot, but not exclusively. There have been days when I have been really high strung and stressed out and I would get in the car to go to lunch, and "Take It Easy" would come on. One day they played "Hotel California," and the DJ even said it was dedicated to Amy. He always thought it was really cool that I followed my dream and moved out here.

He's even used music to tease me. I have a friend at work who is quite a bit younger than me, and we go out and eat wings every week. He and I have been doing this for probably a year now, or close to it. And at least twice upon leaving the Wingstop and getting into my car, right after Paul died, I turned on the radio and heard "Mrs. Robinson."

Very funny, Paul.

One time he was trying to tell me something very serious, and I didn't get it for a long time. I went through a few weeks right after he died trying to figure out if there was more to his decision beyond just his health issues. Something else in his life? His relationship with my mom? I really wasn't sure. And all through that time I kept hearing "Margaritaville." I know this is going to make me extremely unpopular with a lot of people, but I can't stand Jimmy Buffett. I just can't. That song came on so many times right after Paul died, I actually thought he was doing it to tease me. I heard it ALL THE TIME for weeks. That damn song was playing almost every time I got in the car. I kept saying, "Paul, why do you let them keep playing that song when you know I hate it? Why? WHY???"

And then one day I heard the words, I really heard them, and I felt like such an idiot. It was SO OBVIOUS.

Some people claim that there's a woman to blame, but I know
It's my own damn fault

I was in the CVS parking lot and I remember yelling, "I get it! I get it! God I'm such an IDIOT!" And I think I've heard the song maybe twice since then. In about six months.

But whenever I wondered if he was around, or just needed to know he was still looking out for me, I would hear "Kodachrome." That's my favorite. One night I was lying in bed wondering what he was up to, if he was still around. And the thought occurred to me that it would be cool if he sent me that song to let me know. Sure enough, I heard it when I went out for lunch the next day.

And I heard it again right before Christmas. I had just cleaned my house and when I dusted my radio, I screwed up the volume without knowing it. So my alarm went off the next morning and I never heard it. But I still woke up on time, and since I'm not a morning person (understatement worthy of its own entry), that's a miracle. I realized what had happened pretty quickly and readjusted the radio. And you know what was on? "Kodachrome."

Right after Christmas I got a really bad cold. I took a day off from work. The day after that, I was lying in bed feeling not any better at all, trying to decide if I should try to go in. Then the alarm went off, and "Take It Easy" was playing. The Eagles again. I said, "Okay, Paul, I'll stay home. Thank you!" And I did.

You might be wondering how I know the difference between just a song on the radio, and a song from him. It's hard to explain. It just seems to get my attention at just the right time when I need to hear it. Just the right words. It gets my attention in a way that the others don't, as if I somehow know I'm supposed to listen more closely at that moment. I can't really explain it any other way.

About a month ago, I had a very vivid dream about him and that camera. There were two clear messages in that dream. One I had already suspected but wasn't sure of, and the other I was sure of, but I dismissed the urgency of it because I didn't want to believe it. It was a visually beautiful dream, like all the dreams I've had of him. He brings me some awesome scenery, because he knows I like to take pictures.

This time I was living in a house with him and my mom. Not a house I've ever really seen before. Paul was there somewhere but he was someone I couldn't figure out -- one minute I felt like he was right there, alive. The next, he was there, but not for much longer. And the next, he wasn't there at all. My mom was there for sure and she was walking with a cane and limping. There was a distinct feeling that we didn't have much time left. None of us did. Like we were all going to die, except I remember thinking of death and how I suddenly wasn't scared of it. I just didn't understand it the same way anymore, so I couldn't be scared of it. And yet, the urgency was there. Time was running out.

My bedroom had my old doll house at the head of the bed and a glass wall on the opposite side of the room. And out that window was a view of whatever town we were in. But it was completely destroyed, like from an earthquake. Debris everywhere, gray and lifeless. But just beyond the mess, in the yellow haze, was a carnival. I could see the top of the swings catching the sunlight in the distance.

I had to grab that camera and take pictures of this. So I grabbed it and ran out there. First I took pictures of the destruction. Then I got beyond it and found the carnival. I wore the camera around my neck, and I went around taking pictures of the rides in the gleaming sunlight. But every once in a while I would look down and find the camera missing. Then suddenly, it was there again. Then I'd move to the next ride, and it was missing. Then I would find it. This kept happening until I got to the last place I wanted to take a picture, and it was gone. I didn't even remember picking it up to take a picture the last time. It had just disappeared from around my neck and I knew I wasn't going to find it again.

I was devastated. I went back home, thinking there was no way I could tell my mom I had lost that camera. I went face down on the bed, trying to figure out a way to break it to her. Then I turned my head to the left, and I saw it on the floor next to the bed. And Mom was standing at the head of my bed, next to the doll house. She said, "Paul wanted you to have that camera, as a reward for following your heart."

I had this dream on January 15th. I wanted to write about it immediately, and as soon as I made the decision to do it, it was as if I had lost the connection I needed to get the words down. I haven't been able to do it until now. I wanted to write about "Kodachrome" in particular, and the camera, but wasn't sure I should. And right about when I was thinking that, I woke up one morning and heard Elton John singing, "And you can tell everybody this is your song." I knew what that meant, but I still didn't feel the connection strongly enough to do it. I've felt like that ever since, like he was still here, somewhere, but not so close. Not close enough. I assumed he was spending more time with my mom, or his family, because they probably needed him more.

Today, I got a message from my gifted friend back home that Paul had come to her in a dream last night and told her that he wasn't going to be here for much longer, that he was at peace and he was ready to move on.

I wish my dreams were that clear. I get visual metaphors. She gets conversations. But then again, I don't sleep all that well.

At my mom's request, I copied my friend's message into an email and sent it to her. When I did that, I turned on the radio. And I listened to "Peaceful Easy Feeling" while I wrote the message. That's when I knew it was true, and I really lost it. And I haven't really recovered.

I always knew this day was coming, and I always knew it would be exactly like it turned out to be. I've been a mess all day. It's like I'm losing him for the first time. I can't talk about it out loud without getting emotional. I grabbed the camera and went to the beach today, and I talked to him all the way there and all the way back. I took lots of pictures of waves. It was cloudy and about 50 degrees. The surf was rough and I got slammed trying to run from it. I walked a mile back to my car soaking wet all up the backs of my legs. But I had to go out and spend a day with him, somehow, "make the best of it" as he would say, while I still had the chance. While he could still hear me.

He was the first person I ever climbed down those stairs with to the beach below. Labor Day weekend, 2009. Come to think of it, there's only one other person I've ever taken down there with me. Usually I just go alone.

I told him I don't know about this weird superpower I have. It's so hard to interpret sometimes. The default is to think that a message I'm getting is about me, if it's not clearly about something or someone else. And today that really upset me, because obviously that image in the dream was about him and I had missed it. I had thought it was about me, telling me things were about to get better for me. Maybe that's true in general, but that carnival was about where he was going, and it was going to be soon. What else had I missed, or misinterpreted?

I talked to him about that all the way to the beach. And I started feeling pretty sorry for myself, thinking I had been so self centered I had maybe missed some of what he had been trying to tell me. But he didn't let me do that for very long. I snapped out of it as soon as I heard "Mrs. Robinson." It made me laugh.

But I didn't want to miss anything else. I told him, "I want to know about you. You already know about me. I don't want our last day together to be about me. Tell me about you, while you still can, while I can still listen."

I didn't know if I would get anything I could actually understand. There was nothing clear while I was on the beach. "Peaceful Easy Feeling" was very clear when I had heard it, and maybe that was all I was going to get. If so, that was fine, but at least I had tried. I got all the way home, soaking wet, and was about to turn toward the apartment when I decided I wanted a Jamba Juice. Yes, I actually wanted to walk into a freezing cold Jamba Juice store, and get a frozen strawberry something, while wearing soaking wet jeans. It defied logic, so of course I did it. And as I turned into the parking lot, I got exactly what I had been waiting for. One of my favorite songs of all time: "My Sweet Lord" by George Harrison.

I don't have to tell you what that's about. But I knew right then, he's going somewhere great, and he wants to go. And we have no right to hold him back.

While I was at the beach, my mom had taken the message pretty hard herself and had taken a nap. Before she went upstairs, she turned down the TV but left it on. When she came back down a couple of hours later, the TV was on a music channel and it was up very loud. I think he's telling her to listen as best she can, while she still can.

I don't know how much more time we have. Tuesday is Valentine's Day, the anniversary of when Paul proposed to my mom. I feel like he'll stick around for that. But after that, I don't know. I'm pretty sure I know what's waiting for Paul, but I'm not sure what's waiting for me. This weirdness has been going on for me since before he died, and yet I feel like something is about to go dark. I just don't know how dark. I wish I did.

I guess I'll know soon enough.
]]> The Comedic Value of (Redacted) tag:blog.artful-i.com,2012://1.112 2012-02-07T19:24:34Z 2012-02-07T19:30:07Z I don't write about work very much because it's difficult. There are vast amounts of rules and regulations to follow about what I'm allowed to talk about and what I'm not. For instance, I can't tell you what movies we... Amy
I can talk about the DreamWorks culture all day long, like how we had funnel cakes last Wednesday afternoon. And then on Thursday, Groundhog Day, we had them again. And how I think whoever arranged the funnel cakes had seen the movie Groundhog Day too many times and thought they were being ironic. Not that anyone complained, of course.

But when it comes to the specifics of what I do, it can get tricky fast. There's not much I can say. My job is already pretty funny sometimes. But without the context that would get me fired, it's downright hilarious.

I've been working here for two and a half years now. My first contract is almost up. In fact, it would be up at the end of this month, except we're in the middle of a show and they want to make sure I stick around until the end. So I've been extended at my current position for another two months, and then they say they'll draw up a new contract for me as a production lighter.

I told someone that today and they said they didn't know what a lighter was. Fair enough. So I'll explain it as best I can without getting myself fired.

When we get a shot to work with, it's dark. So we put in these computer-based lights and position them, color them, tweak their brightness and shadow-making capabilities, and then render it, which is the process that turns all that 3D information into a 2D frame. Then you can see things. If you've done your job correctly, you've also created the correct mood, and lit things in such a way that the important things in the frame get your attention before the less important things do.

It's amazing what can go wrong in a shot, especially during the setup phase when other departments are still finishing their work. I also don't realize sometimes how funny even the most mundane tasks are, until I say them out loud.

Pretty much anyone: "What did you do at work today?"

Me (actual response #1): "I set up a shot with a bunch of animals stuffed in a cannon and then I turned off all their butts."

Me (actual response #2): "I asked my TD to figure out why there are 20 rat eyeballs sitting at the origin of my shot, completely unattached to any actual rats."

Me (actual response #3): "I turned off the front pig."

Me (actual response #4): "Someone from surfacing came by and showed me how to pick the colors of my rats!"

Me (actual response #5): "I spent most of the day trying to figure out why some guy's pants weren't around his knees like they were supposed to be."

Me (actual response #6): "I lit a zombie frog and a giant swamp cookie."

Me (actual response #7): "Just wished they would finish with Shrek's kilt already so I can stop staring at his butt crack."

I'm really not kidding about that last one. Too. Much. Information.

I'm currently working on a shot that has rats in it. I probably can't tell you why the rats are there or what they're doing, but they've been real troublesome over the last few weeks, as most rats are. The good news is, that shot is finaled, which means very soon I will no longer have to give a rat's ass about rat asses.]]> Break tag:blog.artful-i.com,2012://1.111 2012-01-10T10:16:54Z 2012-01-10T10:25:43Z I guess the dam broke.I hit a bottleneck around the beginning of October. Paul's death had really made me think a lot about my life, about how short it is, and about what I really want. It made me think... Amy
I hit a bottleneck around the beginning of October. Paul's death had really made me think a lot about my life, about how short it is, and about what I really want. It made me think about what I want and then think again about what I had actually given myself permission to have. When I looked at it that way, it wasn't as much as I thought.

I've been writing a lot about relationships lately because this is one of the things I thought the most about. As much as I have said in the past year or so that I was ready for another serious relationship, it turns out that I was carrying around some really old anger from my childhood that was holding me back from actually allowing myself to have it. I had never actually given myself permission to want it. I had only allowed myself to not want something casual and shallow, which left "serious" or "alone" as the default alternatives. I had been trying to live against what I didn't want, instead of for what I did want.

That being said, it's not something I'm desperate to have. I'm fine. I'm not in a hurry for it. I sleep better because no one is next to me snoring. I know exactly what's in my refrigerator at all times. There's nothing sticky on my bathroom floor because someone can't aim in the dark and won't turn on the light in the middle of the night. You get my drift.

And as much as I talk about all these projects I want to work on, I'm not sure I've given myself permission to do much of that either. Although I'm not convinced it's a permission issue so much as an energy issue. I've been working very hard for the last few months at work learning how to be a lighter. It's not as steep a curve as it could be after two years at DreamWorks, but it's steep enough while keeping up with my regular job as a TA that I come home pretty worn out sometimes. And occasionally late. So more often than not, I find myself sitting there trying to decide which project is the most important, which one deserves what little time I have to spend on it at the expense of the others I want to work on. And I end up working on none of them because I can't choose.

In fact, the only real creative pursuits I've allowed myself in the last year are piano and NaNoWriMo. It could be the fact that I'm paying for lessons that keeps me going to piano more than anything, although I always feel better about everything after I've practiced a couple of hours. I just never seem to remember that until I'm done.

All this valuable thinking, all these things I wanted out of my life were stuck behind a wall of anger for months, not coming out, not being written or talked about, not doing anything.

I remember the night Paul died, when I was driving home from my friend's house in the city. It was very late. He didn't want me to drive home but I insisted, because I needed to talk to Paul. And I needed to be in my own space, alone. I got in the car and the song playing was "They" by Jem. I had been playing the CD on the way out there, and it stopped in the middle of that song. When I started the car to leave, it hit me like a sack of bricks.

I'm sorry, so sorry
I'm sorry it's like this

I said back, "You'd better be." And on the way home, we had a talk.

I told him that I didn't know how this grieving process was going to go, but I knew there was an anger stage coming. And I told him no matter how angry I got, ultimately we would be okay. But that it would probably happen and not to worry, because it wouldn't last.

It did happen, but not the way I expected. As it turns out, I never got angry at him. I'm not angry at him. And I've come to the conclusion that I'm not going to be angry at him. I get why he did it. I get that he felt like he had no control over his life, his health, his future, and he hadn't for a long time. This was the only way he could take control. To have any power at all.

But I definitely got mad. Not at Paul, but at the fact that I was dealing with it alone. That's not to say I didn't have friends. I have a lot of very supportive friends. But I had spent almost eight years in a serious relationship, where I was used to having that one person to run to whenever there was a tragedy. That one person you lean on the most, who knows you the best, who is there with you every day as you work your way through it, beginning to end. I was angry that something like this had happened and I didn't have that to help get me through it.

That's what got me started thinking about what I really want in my life and all the roadblocks I had created against it. By the time Christmas came, I had made a few good decisions, taken myself out of some unhealthy situations where I found myself chasing people who no longer had room in their lives for me, and put myself in better situations where I was able to make new friends and give something of myself. It was a good start. I had also written a script for a short animation about me and Paul. I finished it in late August, and then didn't do anything else with it.

I was angry before I started the script, but I think I was more angry after I finished it. I didn't know why for a long time. I started to see ways to remove some of those old roadblocks, but they weren't easy. There's something about taking yourself out of an unhealthy situation that is empowering and yet angering at the same time. You wish you didn't have to do it. You wish you hadn't been driven to walk out that door. And if you leave the door open, you have to get pretty far away from it before you stop being angry that no one followed you through it. Sometimes you have to get to where you can't even see it anymore.

I always leave my doors open. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but I do.

My anger at going through all this alone eventually transformed into anger that I had to make myself even more alone before I could have what I really wanted. I understand why, I know it was the right thing. And I'm a lot better off not having to watch what goes on without me like some kind of forgotten spectator. But it was only today that I figured out what was making me feel stuck there, like nothing was ever going to change.

I had written this script for Paul, called Break. It's a cyclical narrative, like a lot of my work back in grad school. The main character starts in a particular place, goes through some stuff, comes full circle back to the same place but better for the journey, ready to go on. Changed somehow, maybe just enough. Stronger, for sure. Sounds reasonable, right?

Except in this one, this little girl in a swimsuit and an inflatable floaty meets this giant, funny, gentle lifeguard wearing a funny mask and pulling an IV bag on a pole behind him. He leaves her to tend to the dam, but it's leaking in too many places and out of control. The dam breaks and he's taken away, only to reappear as an angel that lifts her above the deluge until it passes. She feels the loss after he leaves, shatters like a ceramic doll, and then reappears ready to bury the pieces in the sand and go on. She ends up better for it in the end, stronger, even with brand new water wings. But she still ends up alone.

Tonight I changed the ending. She buries the shattered pieces and smooths over the pile, when a large hand print appears in the sand. She puts her tiny hand in the print. And then another tiny hand is placed upon hers. She looks up and finds a boy sitting right in front of her, wearing his own floaty. A kindred spirit. Someone who will stay with her for the rest of her journey.

Now I think I can work on this. The dam broke for me over Christmas, when I finally stood in that place where Paul died, when I finally got mad enough over all I had lost, and I haven't been able to stop writing since. I feel like now I'm starting to see a way out of the maze. I can't say for sure that this will be the last entry for a while but it might be, because I think I know where I'm heading now. The anger is gone, and all the doors are still open, no matter how far I've walked away from them. I can still use all the friends I can get. I just have a lot of work to do.
]]> Sex and the City tag:blog.artful-i.com,2012://1.110 2012-01-06T10:00:34Z 2012-01-06T10:30:07Z On New Year's Eve, I tweeted that if I wrote about that night at all, it wouldn't be in my blog. But I do want to put down a conversation that's been on my mind ever since that night, because... Amy
Not only that, but I've been sick at home for two days with a vicious head cold and my brain is turning to mush.

Simply put, I wish people would quit assuming that because I'm attractive and single and live in The Big City, that I want exactly what they want. I don't. I never did. And I'm sick of seeing that look of shocked pity when they find out I don't, and I'm sick of explaining myself to people who would rather think of me as some kind of old prude who can't have a good time rather than actually listen to the reasons why I've made the decisions I have.

When I first moved here, I had lunch with an old friend who had lived here for a while. One of the first things he told me was that San Francisco was "a great place if you're single." I hadn't been single for some time before I came here. I was focusing on my own life in a way I hadn't in years, and I wasn't really interested in dating at all. Besides, when I thought about what dating really meant to most single people my age, I have to say I didn't really look forward to it.

I'm "single" and I really don't consider this such a great place for someone like me. But I suspect San Francisco isn't much different than Dallas was, it's just that when I was in Dallas, I was in a relationship and insulated from the realities of "the single life." In fact, when I got into my last serious relationship, I really hoped I would never have to be a part of that life again.

But here I am. And I'm not participating in what everyone else seems to think I should be. Because apparently I'm supposed to be all kinds of excited to be here just because I'm "single," and likewise I should be foaming at the mouth and looking at San Francisco as some kind of free for all hookup buffet with all fun and no responsibility to anyone's feelings but my own.

"Single" doesn't just mean you're not in a relationship anymore. "Single" apparently means, looking for a hookup and ready to party like a twenty year old. To me, "single" still means, not in a relationship. And that's all it means to me.

I went out on New Year's Eve with a couple of younger friends from work. I had a blast. I heard some great music and saw some very interesting things (some of which I could have done without). I got relentlessly hit on by a guy named Mauricio who incidentally was the first man to call me "beautiful" since 2004. I drank some wine, but I didn't get drunk. I decided early on that I didn't want to. And when I left that night, I felt great. It was 4am, I was wide awake, I didn't feel sick and I hadn't done anything I would feel embarrassed about the next day. I was easily able to drive home. I dare say I was in far better shape than my younger friends, who were just a little over half my age and yet exhausted from "letting loose and having a good time."

I had a great time because I did it on my own terms. Despite the fact that I was grilled by one of my friends about why I wasn't drinking more, why I didn't do drugs, and then berated because I didn't want to pick some random guy and go home with him.

"But Amy, I would be happy for you if you found someone to go home with."

"But I don't want that."

"But why not?"

"Because I don't believe in using people."

"But they want to be used!"

"BUT I DON'T!"

Why is that so hard to understand?

When I got the eye roll and heavy sigh, I was done talking about it and so was he. He wasn't going to understand. But for some reason I was left feeling like the outcast, the one who should be judged for her behavior, or lack thereof, instead of him for his, and right after he told me what he wanted to do to that girl who just walked by and in how many rooms he wanted to do it. And that wasn't fair.

Why do guys think we're impressed by that crap? I'm certainly not. In fact, the more you spread yourself around, the less attractive you are to me. I don't care if men have free reign in this society to act like selfish oversexed dogs with no consequences for their behavior. If you treat women like toys that were put here just to entertain you, then you disgust me just as much as the women who act like those toys. Period.

I ended up thinking about that conversation for the next two days. And I came to the conclusion that maybe I envied those kids their freedom. That there was a part of me that wished I could throw caution to the wind, not worry about about the other person getting hurt, not care one lick about my own self respect, and just go out there and "have fun."

And then as soon as I thought that, I was over it. I don't want that at all. What I really wanted instead was to be respected for my decision and then be LEFT ALONE. Or maybe what I really wanted was to be loved for it. Ultimately. I wanted to be seen as something special rather than something to be pitied or talked into something I clearly didn't want.

Sure, I've had guys tell me they respect me for who I am. But they usually tell me that as they're walking away, and usually toward someone else. They tell me I'm classy when we break up. Well, thanks. Thanks for telling me I'm exactly what I always wanted to be, and that you have no use for it.

Your loss.

Because this isn't a game, and soon I started to realize that I shouldn't give a damn how anyone else feels about it. The only reason I did was because I was pushed to defend it, and I really hate having to defend the decisions I make for myself that aren't even anyone else's business. I didn't make this decision because I thought it would get me something specific from someone else. I did it because I have to feel a certain way about myself, and I did it many years ago, long before I moved here. Because if I go out there and start using guys to fulfill my own selfish desires and then throw them out like garbage when they ask for something back, then how dare I expect any better for myself?

That's not to say I haven't ended up with the occasional douchebag anyway, but at least when I figured it out, I walked away.

There are too many people out there who think they're entitled to get their physical needs met whenever they feel the urge. Period. And like my twenty-something friend, they think it's okay as long as the other party says yes. Yes means they don't have to think about their actions at all, that they're totally off the hook and doing nothing wrong. In some cases, maybe it really is okay. Or does it just mean that neither of you respect the person you're with instead of just you?

Either way, it is not attractive.

People tend to expect this behavior when you're twenty, or if you're a male of any age, but it doesn't make you any less accountable. All it means is, people really don't expect much from you in the first place. And that's pretty sad.

But I expect a lot from myself. Because I have to be what I ultimately want in a relationship. Someone who can be trusted. Someone who sees the other person as more than just the sum of their parts. Someone who wants more than just a shallow experience for a night or a month or two, knowing there's always another one waiting around the corner if things get too serious. I have to be brave myself if I want someone to be brave for me. I have to respect them AND me if I want them to respect me at all. I don't deserve to have what I want if I don't treat others the way I want to be treated.

People are not interchangeable body parts. You can't take all your memories of someone, all the parties you went to and the things you did together, all your intimate moments and then just hand them over to the next person in line like they meant nothing, reliving them all with a newer model in place of the old. You can't do this over and over again and then expect to find someone serious and caring and trustworthy just sitting there waiting for you when you're ready to settle down yourself. You want a good person, you have to be a good person. There is no other way.

So I'm going to continue to live what I believe I deserve from people, and walk away from what I don't. And I'm going to continue making new friends and living my life for someone other than just myself. I joined a volunteer group recently that's allowing me to meet some really good people outside of work, people with more going on in their lives than just hanging out in bars and getting drunk on the weekends. I'm not doing it to find anyone in particular, but I do know now more than ever that I need friends outside of work and closer to my own age. And who knows, maybe there will be one guy in there who's not so busy trying to prove he can still keep up with the twenty year olds that he might actually know a good thing when he sees it. Just one friend like that would be worth it.
]]> Government. We'll help so you don't have to. tag:blog.artful-i.com,2011://1.109 2011-12-31T09:40:58Z 2011-12-31T11:28:40Z Obviously I'm using this week to catch up on the blog. I've been bottling up a lot over the past few months, and filing things away in my brain when my emotional state made it difficult to know what would... Amy
I find lately though that I have a lot to say. I always have something to say when I come here (or else I wouldn't), but there was a lot I was trying to say with the novel, too. Fiction is difficult for me, and maybe it's the difficulty that's most enjoyable. I used to draw mazes as a kid, and writing fiction is like building a psychological labyrinth, at least if it's the kind of novel I really like to read. I still don't know where I want that particular maze to end, so while the idea simmers a little further, I'm catching up here and reading novels like crazy, because the more I wrote in November, the less I felt like I knew what I was doing. And unlike the first time I participated in 2007, this time I cared.

This is a topic I've been saving up for a while, and fiction won't do it justice. Unless I try to write another Animal Farm or something like that. Not likely. But I'm starting to think someone should.

I keep seeing this picture pop up on Facebook, and I'm going to write this now hoping that when I see it again it will better enable me to keep the friends I have left, because I will have finally gotten this out of my system. Because I'll tell you this: The last time I saw this picture, it almost got really ugly. REALLY ugly indeed.

socialism.jpg
My friends like to make it clear to me when I raise a fuss that this is directed at only the truly greedy, poor-hating conservatives out there, not to ME personally. Okay, so let me get this straight. You're telling people that don't believe in socialism that they're greedy and anti-Christian for that very reason alone. Well good for you, because you're making yourself look damn clever in the process, with that whole Jesus thing. Hitting them right where it hurts. Isn't that selfish right-wing conservative bastard's face red now. But at least you're not talking to ME. Great, thanks so much for the clarification.

Wait a minute, are you also telling me that you have selfish right-wing money-hoarding conservatives who hate poor people as Facebook friends? No? Then please tell me again how posting pictures like this on Facebook is effecting the change you so desperately seek.

Yeah, see, that's what I thought. It's not change you're looking for. It's validation. It is Facebook after all, and that's the reason we're all there. That's fine, we all need it from time to time. Just be honest about it. But don't expect to get it from everyone.

See, the thing is, you ARE talking to me, because I don't believe in socialism. I mean if you're so self-assured as to post something like this, might as well grow 'em big enough to follow through and own up to your intended audience. ALL of it. But this isn't about me. This is about what socialism is, what Christianity is, both in my own opinion (because this is a personal blog), and why hating socialism doesn't necessarily translate into hating thy neighbor.

In fact, I believe socialism discourages charity. Which means socialism is not an example of how to follow Jesus nearly as much as it is discouragement from following Jesus at all.

In my opinion, Jesus' teachings were a model for how to live our lives as individuals, not as governments. The Bible is not a government document. It is not a constitution for a new country. This is why it's possible to be against socialism and philanthropic at the same time. Government gets involved because church and charity can't keep up with everything. I get that. But it shouldn't take care of everything either. It can't. It is not efficient. The fact that it keeps trying creates as many problems as it solves by burdening the productive class to the point that it is no longer productive, which causes them to give less or even turn away from being charitable altogether. Not out of greed, but out of necessity.

Wealth redistribution is an implied judgement against the productive class that they don't deserve what they have, for the sole reason that not everyone has it. Burdening productive people with the obligation of supporting those who are not discourages that productivity, because it's like handing out participation awards to those who ran the race as well as those who just showed up. Why run at all if the rewards are equal? Or at least that's the goal, right? Economic equality?

For example, I had a freelance job when I moved to California. The taxes here are so high that when I put that together with the double federal taxes I was paying for being self employed, after less than a year I decided I would actually rather move down to a one-bedroom apartment and put most of my belongings in storage than work 18 hours a day and weekends and still be rent-poor. And that's exactly what I did. I'm just as rent-poor now, but at least I can sleep for a full night every night and have some time for friends. How many others have made the same decision, to be satisfied with less because an increase in labor doesn't equate to an increase in disposable income?

And why is it selfish to expect such a thing?

If that sounds like a child throwing all his toys in the sandbox and leaving, maybe you're right. Call me immature all you want, but all I got from that endeavor was exhaustion, fewer friends and decreased language skills, because all I knew how to say was, "I can't go, I have to work." When increased ambition and harder work results in little to no increase in your standard of living, because you're being taxed to death to raise someone else's standard of living, exactly what is the point? Why should you keep doing it?

The answer is, you don't.

On the other hand, if you actually see the results of your labor as increased income, and you don't expect the government to take care of your neighbor on your behalf, you are more likely to choose to donate some of that income to a cause that means something to you. You're more likely to take that responsibility for helping your neighbor yourself, which I believe is what Jesus taught. Generosity out of the kindness of your heart is its own reward. Forced generosity through taxation and inefficient distribution is not. And yet there are many out there who believe that merely being "liberal" and believing in "socialism" makes them charitable people. But they're actually the least charitable people out there, because they do little to nothing on their own. They don't have to. Why should they when that's the government's job?

This is exactly what bothers me about socialism. I'm a huge believer in personal responsibility, and socialism discourages that. People who believe the government should be responsible tend to abdicate their own responsibility for others, and then still call themselves charitable because they support socialist programs. Yes, it is important that people in need get help, no matter where it comes from. But the question is, what kind of person do YOU want to be? Can you use Jesus' teachings to berate others when you don't follow them yourself? Joe Biden made over $300,000 a year around the time of the 2008 elections. He donated an average of $369 a year. I make less than $60,000 a year and I donate about $100. When I made that same income in Texas, I was able to give more. Know why? Less taxes and a lower cost of living. Having more made me want to do more. I have more of an excuse now to donate nothing than he ever had to donate $369, and yet I don't believe in excuses for such things. I do it because I believe I have that responsibility when I'm able, and I certainly don't believe the government is there to follow Jesus for me. As long as I can afford a social life, an occasional set of Chicken McNuggets, or some new software for my computer, I can certainly do that.

I find it ridiculous that anyone would use the Bible to support any government economic policy, no matter what it is. In this case, what exactly is Christian about letting the government be charitable for you? At the end of your life, will you be able to look back and say, I made a difference? Or will you only be able to say, I supported my government making a difference on my behalf?

And as long as we're talking about what it means to be a good Christian, please also show me where the Bible says economic superiority is a sin but intellectual superiority can come at any cost, especially when you can appear clever at the expense of those who disagree with you. Can't find that one? Then maybe you should find another picture.

superior.jpg

]]> Chasing Amy (instead of the other way around) tag:blog.artful-i.com,2011://1.108 2011-12-29T13:12:50Z 2011-12-29T13:13:44Z It's 3:50am and I'm wide awake. Because I'm on vacation. I have five days left. It will only get worse. But now that I'm on a more normal sleep schedule (for me), I'm all kinds of productive. Today I loaded... Amy
I have five days left. It will only get worse. But now that I'm on a more normal sleep schedule (for me), I'm all kinds of productive. Today I loaded up the bike on my trunk rack and took it to the shop for an overdue tune up. I took out my car radio and installed an iPod adapter. I attached picture wire to the back of a door so I can hang it on the wall after I paint something on it. And then I put on the first coat of oil ground. I hope I only need one more coat. I hate oil ground. It's nasty, sticky, terrible stuff that never dries.

I remember when I lived in Texas and I had... rooms. A house with rooms. One of them was the art room, and I could just shut the door and the cat would have the run of the rest of the house. Not so in a one bedroom apartment. Maybe this is why I'm still awake. It's almost that time of night where she gets some invisible B12 shot and runs around like a cheetah, tearing up my bathroom rug along the way. Picasso once said that if you get a hair from your brush stuck in your paint, paint a bird's nest. He probably never woke up to find a cat-shaped furball with green bath rug yarn in his painting, and I hope I don't either.

Not that I've figured out what to paint in its place yet.

But it's not just the sleep schedule motivating me, or the fact that I discovered tonight that Comcast plays 70s music on channel 953. (They do!!!) There's a very dark cloud that's starting to move away from me, just a little. Maybe just enough for now. Partly because of me, because I work hard at not staying in dark places for any longer than necessary (with varying degrees of success). And partly because of a very small but significant gesture from someone I didn't even know was paying attention.

The last two posts have been about finally learning that I'm worth making an effort for. It seems like an obvious thing to say, but it's something that has never been obvious to me until very recently, which is why the revelation came through a lot of anger and hurt. There is a much bigger picture than just what one person did or didn't do in my life. Much bigger. There is a history of making the same choices, picking out the same people, but most importantly, a very long history of me doing the same things, setting the same patterns in motion over and over again. And that's the most important thing, what I've been doing.

The fact is, when I get into a relationship, I assume that I will have to do all the work. I assume that they will not make an effort with me. And so when the door is cracked open, I go barreling through it, slamming it against the wall and knocking my new boyfriend unconscious. And then I do everything, all the reaching out, the appreciating, the compliments and the affection and the communication and the pushing things forward. All because I don't trust them to do it, and all because I never thought I was worth it.

It's not that I keep picking selfish guys to date. Some of them are far from it. It's that I don't give them the chance to show me that they're not, because I'm so afraid I'll find out they are... because it tells me yet again that I'm not worth it. And so the cycle continues. Or at least it has, until now. There is a reason for this that is many years old, that I don't want to get into here. The bigger picture. The first person to not make an effort with me, and put all his effort instead into another relationship, teaching me that I must be lacking something important.

It taught me that there must be something wrong with me that I wasn't worth the effort. But Paul, and a boyfriend from long ago that I didn't pay enough attention to at the time, taught me that I am worth it. And in the process, I learned that I have always been worth it. That the problem was never me at all. And all I need to do is start acting like it, and give someone a chance to be awesome.

There have been some bad relationship choices in my life, no doubt about that. Pick a guy that's not really into you, and you have a challenge on your hands. Some people like a challenge. But many who pursue a challenge are doing so to rewrite history. Because if you can win the love of this emotionally distant, somewhat indifferent, not-so-into-you person, you can prove to yourself that you're so worthy of love that you can create it out of thin air. You can prove to yourself that all the hurt you got before really wasn't deserved after all. Your personal history says that it was you, but if you can perform this miracle, you can rewrite it, and finally have a reason to love yourself.

But if you choose someone who loves you, appreciates you, is loyal and can be completely trusted, then your personal history can't be rewritten, meaning it will probably repeat itself, and it's unbearable. You must have deserved the hurt you've been given, and you have no chance now to prove otherwise because there is no work to do. Not with someone who already loves you. And if your personal history stands, you certainly don't deserve such happiness that comes so easily. And how long until they figure this out and leave? Because surely they will. Sure, you may enjoy the attention at first. But if they're too good to you, you eventually get bored, get uncomfortable having what you don't deserve, and leave.

And maybe you even go back to some unhappy ending you were still hanging onto, keeping you at arm's length from that real love, back to some unresolved challenge where you may have a chance to perform that miracle and rewrite your history. I say this because I've done that too, and it ended in disaster. But that's another story for another time.

The point is, most suffering is self-induced. The need to replay the same relationship over and over until we get a different ending is a need to prove to ourselves that we never deserved that unhappy ending in the first place. And we need to prove this with hard work because nothing else gives us a reason to believe we deserve better except a miraculous result. What you have to do instead is just decide to believe it, without proof. That's it. And then start acting like you believe it. That's the most important part, acting like it, because that's what makes it true. I have nothing to prove to myself anymore. I don't need to rewrite a history that never actually existed, right? Because it was them, not me. Never me.

It doesn't keep happening because you deserve it. It keeps happening because you keep looking for it, so you can change it. But once you pursue a person rather than a challenge, and you stop trying to prove something to yourself, the whole world opens up, and you finally get out of your own way.

Chasing the challenge is something I've done more than once. Sometimes I chose a really bad person. Other times, I chose a really good person at a really bad time, because if I could change someone's entire direction in life, I could prove to myself that I wasn't powerless after all. I also assumed he wouldn't work at it, because I knew what I was getting into, and so I never gave him the chance. Because I had to do all the work. That's the only way I knew how to prove to both of us that I was worth it, which my past made desperately necessary.

Making all the effort to prove your worth effort you will never get, because you're making all of it and not giving them the chance. That's a mess. That's what gets you taken for granted, replaced and maybe even cheated on. And it has, all of the above.

I don't have anything to prove to myself anymore. And so I'm not trying. I'm just leaving the door open for that guy who already knows how awesome I am to walk through himself. Now THAT is a vacation.
]]> Buried tag:blog.artful-i.com,2011://1.107 2011-12-26T10:48:38Z 2011-12-27T08:18:31Z I would say it's Christmas night, but since I'm on Mountain Standard Time, I really can't. I haven't been able to say it truthfully for half an hour, and probably much longer by the time I'm finished here. I'm not... Amy
Altitude is a weird thing. There is no humidity here, and little oxygen. Denver is a mile high and that's enough to cause us sea level people some trouble. Add 3500 feet to that, and that's where you'll find me, in the basement of a three story house, unable to breathe, feeling as though I've been hit by a truck. But there's snow. Lots of it. And enough animal tracks to make you wonder if hibernation is an urban legend.

For months after Paul died, I was afraid to come back here. The night he died I remember wondering how I could ever be of help to my mom knowing I could never set foot in this house again after what had happened. Over the last couple of months, I've somehow lost that fear. It went away on its own, replaced by a mild dread like a ringing in my ears, imperceptible when busy, deafening when quiet. It wasn't a dread of coming here but rather of feeling something I had barely managed to put behind me. I'm one of those rare people who is usually comfortable riding emotional waves, because you can't shut yourself off from the bad and still have the good. (At least not without using people.) And because they make life interesting. Waves keep you moving forward, learning, and going on to bigger and better things as a reward for your bravery. But this is one of those waves that I just really didn't need to ride again, and what's worse is, I didn't know how big it would be when I finally got here.

Fortunately it hasn't been too bad, all things considered. Because he hasn't left the house.

Christmas is like a relationship. It can be easily ruined by unreasonable expectations, causing anger and depression to everyone involved. To me, Christmas hasn't been the same since I lost my grandparents, particularly my grandmother. She added something to the holiday every year that I can't really put my finger on, but I definitely feel its absence since she's been gone. Every other year or so I go back to Oklahoma to try to get it back, whatever it was, and sometimes I can get somewhat close just by being near the house with the screen door where I would stand staring at the night sky, nose pressed against the cold glass, thinking every red airplane light was Rudolph's nose. I think maybe this year is the first time I've really accepted that that's as close to what I loved about Christmas as I'll ever get again. And I guess it's okay. It's not the biggest loss I've had this year by far, so it feels manageable. Unlike others that I am not quite resigned to just yet.

Things are not right here, but not for the reasons I expected. The house feels like a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing, the holes being filled by pieces from another puzzle altogether. They cover the space but don't quite fit. But that's just stuff, things Paul added to our lives that were taken after his death because we had no legal right to them. Because that's what matters you know, at the end of things. The things. Well, that's fine with me. Paul is still in the house, and I would rather have him. His spirit. He chooses to be here. I know this because my superpowers lean toward the empathic, I know what "gone" feels like, and this isn't it. Not yet anyway.

"Gone" doesn't feel like what's surrounding me in this house right now. What's surrounding me here is warm, and soft like a comforter. "Gone" feels like indifference, and I feel more of that from some of the living than I think I ever will from Paul, no matter how far away he goes.

I can say without any doubt whatsoever, he loves me. For real. Even now. I can't say that about too many men in my life. The living will say in so many words, I'm here for you. I want us to be friends. They'll say what makes them look good, what alleviates their own guilt, what they think you want to hear. Whatever they think the right answer is. And then when they get something going for themselves, they'll disappear and hope you don't notice, if they even think enough of you to hope for such a thing at all. If they ever thought enough of you to make an effort in the first place. More likely, they were saving that effort for someone else, that special someone they let you think you were for about five minutes, who you can rightfully assume has come along and taken your place when things go inexplicably quiet. Today, I got a Christmas present from Paul, something that he bought for me many months ago. He's been gone for six months and still I know when he is thinking of me, and today I was reassured yet again that he always thought of me in life as well. He is nothing if not consistent.

I'm finding that to be an incredibly rare quality.

It still makes me sad that he is more willing to make sure I know he is thinking of me than someone who is alive and better able to do so. And it also makes me angry. But you can't force someone to grow up. You can't force someone to be what you deserve. You can only walk away when you finally figure out that they will never, ever try. I guess he knew that better than anyone, and I guess that's why he is the one who has taught me this lesson. Having had a few people in his own life who rarely made an effort, he was certainly the best man for the job.

Paul may be the only man I know who was never afraid to love me back. Not for even one second. The only one who didn't run because I cared about him, as if he thought he couldn't live up to it. He knew he could, and he did, and still does. Because he knew deserving love was a choice, not something he was either born into or not. He's the only one (save my own father) who was brave enough to stick around for me, even after he was gone for good.

His greatest gift to me this year is being that guy, and showing me how low my standards have been for the living. How much I've put up with when I deserved so much better, something I may never have learned had he not given me so much better to compare to. That lesson is what has led to other losses that I'm still trying to reconcile, but that were necessary. Because if there is one thing I will no longer tolerate, it is someone who takes me for granted. Who does nothing to reach out to me. Who does nothing to maintain a relationship, because he assumes that I will always want it bad enough to do all the work for him.

There is no relationship on this earth that I want that badly. Not anymore. Paul knows I've made that decision and we both know I'm better off for it. But for the time being, the decision has left me alone. Raising your standards will do that, for a time anyway, until the universe can work out its next move on your behalf. And so here he is, keeping me company, making the house warm, making sure I get those sterling silver earrings from Tiffany's, filling the empty spaces with an invisible hug. And for now, that's enough for me, because I've adopted an all or nothing attitude. I can honestly say that I am fine with nothing if the alternative is less than I deserve.

Today when I got up, I went looking for my mom, carrying her present in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. I found her in her bedroom on her bed, watching TV, looking like the excessive house cleaning before my arrival had left her for dead. I knew where I was. I knew what had happened in that room. And I walked in and sat on the bed far more easily than I ever expected I would.

I looked around. A lot. But there was nothing there.

Hours later I went back and I stood there, where he fell. I know exactly where he fell. I know where the gun was lying when he grabbed it. I know about where the bullet hit the ceiling. I know more than I probably should for someone who wasn't there, and certainly enough to have not gone in the room at all. But I had to stand in that place, alone, to figure out why there was nothing there, and I did. I stood where he stood, and where he fell, and that's when I knew why there was nothing there. Because he was not there. He was never there, not in a tragic way. He did not suffer, and so there was nothing left to feel, no lingering pain. He never even hit the floor, because he was gone before gravity even had a chance.

What did hit the floor was no longer him at all.

That's why the room is okay, and why the house is okay, and why he can be here now. That's why the house is in complete disarray and yet still full of love, and not tragedy. There is no tragedy here. If anything, there is peace. Not quiet, but peace. That peace you always hear people talk about on Christmas but never really feel. I feel it, and it's all his.

The Christmas gift from him, specifically, made me emotional. It's always emotional when you feel love from the last person you expect it from, and know it to be real, when you're so used to being brushed aside for something you didn't even know you were competing with until you lost the game. And the truck that's hit me today is my own, a snowplow pushing all this loss back into a giant pile where I would rather it stay.

Or maybe it's not a truck at all. Maybe it's an avalanche.
]]> Birthday Presence tag:blog.artful-i.com,2011://1.106 2011-10-24T06:48:55Z 2011-10-24T08:57:18Z Technically I should be planning a novel right now. So I'm going to write about my birthday instead. Because most of the fun of writing a novel is thinking about writing it. And then putting it off by writing something... Amy thinking about writing it. And then putting it off by writing something else.

Yesterday I turned 41. Big. Fucking. Deal. No, really, I don't care. As far as age goes, I'm fine with where I am in life. I'm 41 and I look, well, younger than that (although this year has definitely aged me). I'm 5' 8" and I weigh 123 pounds. I'm in the most creative and spiritual part of my life thus far. I have the job of my dreams. In live in one of the coolest places on the planet. I have a few very good, reliable friends, who give me as much as I give them. So really, I'm good. There's only one thing left that I want for my life and it continues to elude me. I'm not desperate for it, but I want it a lot. And since I keep failing at getting it, I've started to think it's because something is wrong with me, and I've started to attack myself as my latest overachievement to make myself worthy of it. Because if you're not getting what you want, you must not deserve it, right?

That's why Paul showed up on my birthday. To knock some sense into me.

At the beginning of last week, I wrote to a good (gifted) friend that I was under a great deal of pressure. Physical pressure, as in, it felt like someone was sitting on my rib cage. It was a new feeling but not an unexpected one. I keep losing the same thing over and over again this year. And this latest loss really dragged me down. I was feeling bad already. And then suddenly I was feeling crushed. Literally. Crushed.

It lasted a couple of days and then subsided. I didn't think anything more of it, because the sadness underneath it remained and I assumed that was the real issue.

Then yesterday morning I had a dream. I was in a large wooden cabin with my mom. There were long wooden tables inside the cabin. It almost looked like something you would find at a day camp. Outside this cabin was very bright sunshine, so bright you almost couldn't see through it. The door was open and I was looking out the window. There was a body of water that went to the horizon and an orange mountain sticking up from it on the right side of my view. My mom was on the phone with Paul, and I had a sense that he was somewhere on the other side of that mountain. It was as if he were still alive but had left because his health was failing and he knew he was going to die. In the dream, this seemed like a good reason to leave. It made sense.

I don't know what they said to each other. And then she handed me the phone.

I asked him how he was doing, if he was ok. I got a weird answer that I can't remember word for word. But the gist of it was, no he wasn't ok, his health was failing. This wasn't a nice vacation for him, you know? I didn't feel he was angry at me at all, just unhappy with the situation that caused him to be where he was. Very much like one of the very last conversations I had with him before he died.

I woke up thinking that I must have had that dream because he had been on my mind. My mom had sent me a ring for my birthday, one she had made from the logo he had designed for himself and always used on all his work. I had worn it all the day before so it made sense that I would be thinking of him.

Then I read my Facebook messages. I had one from that same gifted friend I had written to earlier about the weight I felt on my chest. She had also had a dream about Paul that night. Except he spoke directly to her in her dream... about me.

He told her that the weight I had been feeling against my rib cage was him. He was trying to communicate with me. He was trying to show me by putting that pressure on me that I was putting too much pressure on myself. He said I had to pull back, "withhold all the stir crazies" in my head. Then he told her a joke, but it was too long for her to remember. That's typical. Few of us could ever remember his long-winded jokes, no matter how funny they were.

They were always funny.

When I read that message I realized, my dream wasn't just a dream either. He was showing me that he is communicating with me. And my mom. Even if we don't understand, he is talking to us and trying to help us. Not only that, but he's actually been telling me this for some time, and I've known it. He was a huge Eagles fan when he was alive. Since he died, I've been listening to a radio station that plays a lot of music from the 70s. And whenever I'm my most stressed out, confused, over-analytical self, the same song magically comes on the radio.

"Take it easy, don't let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy." I always knew it was him. I just didn't always know what to do with his advice.

I almost didn't make it to the Puss In Boots family screening on time after I read that message. I had to call my mom and tell her, and I had to think about what he meant. I had to recover from the emotion of finding out that although I haven't heard from him in a while, he is actually still here. What was I doing to myself? I really wasn't sure. I felt like everything about my life this year has been about loss and abandonment and my soul was just tired. It hadn't occurred to me yet that I was causing a lot of that pain myself. Not until Paul told me.

I got to the movie just in time, and I watched it with this question in my head. What am I doing, and what do I do to stop it? I didn't know yet. I watched the entire movie unable to let it go. And then when the movie ended and the credits started, I felt a punch in my heart and I started to tear up. I remembered on this exact weekend last year, I was watching Megamind with Paul and my mom and the rest of my family. It was the first feature I had ever worked on. It was a big deal. But I didn't tear up.

The moment passed. Then my name came up in the credits and I felt the punch again, and this time I could barely keep myself from crying. I really, really had to work at holding it back. That's when I knew what it was. It was Paul telling me he thought the movie was great and he was proud of me. He was there. He had watched it with me.

I managed to get myself back together and get out of the theater and back to the car. And I started thinking again, what was he talking about? What am I doing? I stopped for tacos and thought about it. I went home and sat on my couch and thought about it some more. And that's when things started to make sense.

I've been wasting a lot of energy giving love and friendship to people who don't want to give it back, as if the more I give, the more they will want to give me. When has that ever worked? Never. Somewhere along the way I had also decided that if I wasn't getting what I wanted in my life, then I hadn't earned it yet. So at some point I started trying to earn it. I started trying to be "better." Stronger. More classy, more mature, more honorable, more trustworthy, more generous, more in control, and therefore, more deserving. Supposedly.

I had gotten myself into the same mindset I was in a few years ago in my last serious relationship, where I felt like I was broken and needed to be fixed. I thought, if I wasn't getting the love I wanted from this person, it must be because there was something wrong with me. He would love me more if I were less broken. So I set myself on a path to fix whatever I could find. It gave me a false sense of control over the outcome. And it drained me completely, because it was never my fault to begin with. I did snap out of it on my own and I gratefully thought that was the end of it. And yet here I was today in the exact same place.

Somewhere in the last 12 months I had decided that I didn't have what I wanted yet because God didn't think I deserved it. And when I figured that out, I realized that can't possibly be true. I already deserve it. Making myself the problem doesn't give me more control over the outcome. I don't have it yet because it's just not right yet. It's just not here yet. That's all.

That was the pressure I was putting on myself. That's when I let it go. Paul's birthday present to me.

But perhaps the most startling revelation of all was when I realized the following:

If a DEAD man has more of an ability -- and most importantly, willingness -- to show me the love and attention I deserve than some of the people in my life who are STILL LIVING, then I am DEFINITELY putting my energy into the wrong things. The wrong people.

I'm very bad about making excuses for people when I give to them and they don't give back. "He's busy." "He has young kids that take up all his time." "He's got a girlfriend now." "He only wants what he can't have and I'm not enough of a challenge." "He lives 50 miles away." "He lives 9000 miles away." "He doesn't think he deserves love." "He has issues."

Whatever.

A DEAD MAN has shown me more love this weekend than a few of the live ones in my life have shown me in the last year, and in some cases, ever. The greatest gift of all was the realization that THERE ARE NO EXCUSES for these people not returning the love that I have freely given them. Whether it's romantic love, the love of a child, or just friendship. You don't let one side do all the work. There are no excuses for that. None.

So my birthday present to myself is this: No more pouring my effort and my love down a black hole. No more making excuses for why the hole is black and in the process, giving it permission to stay that way. If the black holes in my life ever decide to cough up a little love or attention in return for all I have given them, I will be here. But I can't waste my energy anymore. I don't care how anyone really feels about me deep down. If you don't show it, it doesn't matter. There is NO EXCUSE for caring for someone and not showing them, not telling them. If DEATH is not an excuse, then there is no excuse in existence. And they are no longer getting any excuses from me.

From now on, I only return the love I am given. Happy birthday to me.
]]> The Occupy Brain Movement tag:blog.artful-i.com,2011://1.105 2011-10-15T01:48:10Z 2011-10-15T13:44:03Z Motivation. I finally got me some. I have no idea where it came from, but fall tends to do this to me. Good things happen to me in the fall. The new fall shows start, I crave cookie dough, I... Amy
NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. You can't start until midnight on November 1, and you have until midnight on November 30 to finish. Then you upload your "novel" to their web site, the words are counted by a program and then it's immediately deleted so it's not hanging around on the internet where people can laugh at how bad a writer you are. What do you win? Not much. A certificate, some web badges and oh yeah, a first draft you can edit to completion, if you like. And a sense of accomplishment. I'm all about that. It's pretty much an honors-system thing. I'm good with those.

The point is to get it all down without editing yourself right out of the project. I've only done this one other time, in 2007. I got my idea within a couple of days of the start, so I did no planning at all. The main character was based on me as a senior in high school. The true story is rather interesting, because my mom got a job in Austin that year and I stayed in Richardson with people I didn't know until graduation. Cool, huh? Well, it was until I started to write about it. I had also just broken up with my first boyfriend at the beginning of that year, was immediately replaced with another Amy (yes we have the same name), and let's face it, I was pathetic. Oh man was I pathetic. So pathetic in fact that by the time I finished my 50,000 words, I was completely annoyed by everything the main character did. I didn't even care what happened to her anymore. I was looking for fictional buses to put in her path. Maybe a falling piano on the sidewalk. I couldn't wait to finish. I just wanted her out of my life.

The cool thing was, I actually wrote 50,000 words in 30 days. So just think what I can do with some actual planning and a main character that doesn't suck.

I decided I would do this again just a few days ago. And the other night after much mental struggle, I got my idea. Of course the main character will be based on me again, but the trick will be to change her enough so that I actually find her interesting and don't want to kill her by Thanksgiving. Yeah. She'll be cooler than me.

The plot (so far) is to take this cooler-than-me person out of her awesome film job in San Francisco and move her back to Oklahoma to take care of her completely delusional grandmother when her mom, the only caregiver, is sent overseas. There will be side stories, probably involving men, and I have to be careful there. I've learned a lot from my relationships but there are people I don't want to spend another 30 days with, even to write about them. In any case, the delusional grandmother will ironically be the wisest person in the novel. This is the part I'm looking forward to.

There will also be weather. I hope there's weather. I miss weather.

Break

This is the animation I want to do in honor of Paul. I've already written the script and done a little work developing a rendering style. I've even talked to DreamWorks about legally letting me work on this project and put it in festivals. They want to see more of it before they can draw up the contract, but it is officially in motion. Slow motion, actually. It's going to be a while before I can do a storyboard and some render tests. Definitely after November. The concept is a little abstract (and personal) so it's hard to describe without giving away every detail. Suffice it to say it does him justice as someone who genuinely cared about me. And then some. And if the technique I've come up with actually works, it's going to be beautiful.

Piano recital

Yeah, I'm actually going to be in a piano recital on November 19. With maybe two other adults and a bunch of kids. I'm doing two pieces, so I have to keep practicing regularly (perhaps even obsessively) until that time, while planning my novel until October 31, writing 1667 words per day starting on November 1, and oh yeah, working. For someone like me who never does anything the easy way, November is a beautiful thing.

Empathetic Mirror

This is something I came up with at SIGGRAPH this year. What if I could create interactive wall art that took your picture, "read" your emotions and then showed you an artistic portrait of yourself based on what it saw? Yes I actually do have an idea of how to pull this off. Really, I do.

Obviously I'm going to need an energy boost to get me to December. Cookie dough anyone?
]]> Reinvention tag:blog.artful-i.com,2011://1.104 2011-10-02T04:50:37Z 2011-10-02T10:28:01Z A few weeks ago, my web host had a power outage. Apparently nothing they had in place to prevent the disaster this would create actually worked. The hardware was hosed. My site was obliterated and so was my blog. So... Amy
I started without any idea of how the blog should look. All I knew was that I had been looking at the same design since 2008, when I was trying to get a job in animation. Well, that happened in 2009 and I just left things the way they were, with very few updates to show new artwork on the home page. When I started the new design I went straight to my carnival photo collection and there it was, the Tilt-a-Whirl. Kind of a metaphor for life when you think about it -- the more you try to control it, the less it moves, the less fun it is. And this blog has become much more than the work-in-progress tracker it was intended to be. The work-in-progress went from my demo reel to myself, and the new structure and design better reflects that.

The new categories are:

  • Career: Anything to do with work or working in the animation industry
  • Dreams: A relatively new category I created because some of my dreams are awesome, some teach me more about myself, and some are premonitions
  • Love: General thoughts on the subject, particularly the fear and bravery involved in finding the real thing, and how easy it is to chicken out
  • Process: Any artistic work-in-progress I have to talk about
  • Random: Whatever doesn't fit anywhere else
  • Sixth Sense: My weird, totally random and completely unrefined superpower
  • Soapbox: When I really get on a tear about something -- doesn't happen much
  • Stupidity: Funny stuff, or just what I write when I'm feeling goofy
  • Transition: Anything to do with change
I've also added a php redirect to the home page of the main site that takes you directly to the blog, because I really have no idea what I want to do with that yet. But I envision something completely artistic, since I no longer need a web site to find a job. Obviously such complete freedom is paralyzing and I must procrastinate for as long as possible.

And yeah, I know how to back up this puppy three different ways now. So don't even go there.
]]> Beach umbrellas at the end of the world tag:blog.artful-i.com,2011://1.3 2011-08-19T05:20:00Z 2011-09-22T07:33:16Z Me: You gotta see this picture from Vancouver. It's not right. The light is weird. Mom: Yeah... it's like the sun is too high for it to be that dim. Me: That's it. It's that weird northern light. This was... Amy You gotta see this picture from Vancouver. It's not right. The light is weird.

beach.jpg
Mom: Yeah... it's like the sun is too high for it to be that dim.

Me: That's it. It's that weird northern light. This was taken at 6pm but it just doesn't look right to me. It looks sort of apocalyptic.

Mom: ... What?

Me: I had a dream that looked like this. It was a beach and the light was weird, just like this. It had red and white striped umbrellas. It was at the edge of the world. I knew if I walked to the water, I would fall off the world.

Mom: ... ?

Me: Because it was at the very top of the world and you couldn't go any farther. Wait... the top of the world is pretty much north of here, isn't it?

Mom: Yeah, pretty much... when did you have this dream?

Me: Years ago, like high school or college. I'd never even been that far north, how would I know what the light looked like? I haven't ever been that far north... until last week!

Mom: You scare the hell out of me. ]]> "You're on your own." tag:blog.artful-i.com,2011://1.5 2011-08-16T00:35:00Z 2011-09-16T00:32:31Z I've decided to add a category to this blog called "dreams." I have them once in a while. Not as often or as vividly as I used to, thanks to a certain furry alarm clock who likes to comb my... Amy
I'm not going to write about the most personal ones or the dreams that aren't either beautiful or meaningful in some way. I'll just write about the ones that tell me something about myself, about the future (rare), or just look really really cool. I usually don't recognize the ones that tell me the future until the future comes, so that will be a crap shoot. And that hasn't happened in a while. I don't think it has anyway. Honestly, I'm still trying to figure out if there's a connection between this dream and something that happened later that day, or if it was just visually coincidental. I actually think it's the latter.

I woke up Saturday morning around nine. It didn't take long for me to remember what I had been dreaming before I woke up. It was disturbing enough that it took me an hour to get back to sleep, and yet on my last possible sightseeing day I was determined to do that. I had to sleep it off if I could. I slept a little after that, but it didn't help. The dream added a weird apocalyptic filter to the rest of my day, making me anxious, angry, and unwilling to be alone. It didn't stop me from doing anything that day, but it made me weirdly detached from a lot of what I did. And pissed that I was having to do everything that day all by myself, and pissed that I was pissed about it because I'm not usually a needy person and it's the last thing I ever want to be.

It went something like this: I was on the first floor of a brick office building. I worked there. There were about three floors above me. There was a bomb threat. They were evacuating the upper floors but for some reason they couldn't evacuate mine. We were just going to have to stay there and hope it was a hoax. I wasn't standing for that, so I left. I left the rest of my coworkers there, although I think they could have come with me if they had wanted to. Not sure. It was almost as if I'm the only one who knew we could leave if we wanted, no one else knew how to save themselves. I got as far away as I could and looked back, and the building exploded. I remember the smoke in particular as the building collapsed. It was thick but faint, like from a great distance, almost like dense dust. I went back to the building to see if anyone was still alive. Everyone on the first floor was still alive but crushed by the floors above, moaning, screaming for help.

Today I saw a video of the stage collapse in Indiana, which happened the same day I had this dream, and the dust rising after the stage came down on top of those people looked eerily similar. People getting crushed by a large structure also looked eerily similar. But I don't think that was the message I was meant to receive.

After the building exploded, I went back. I was my usual calm-in-a-disaster self, assessing the situation but with an obvious sense of urgency. I looked around and realized no one was there to help, no first responders of any kind. I called 911. And then everything changed: I was hysterical, terrified, screaming on the phone for someone to come help as soon as they could. The response from the other end was a frustrated female voice saying, "We don't have anyone to send out there right now. DO NOT CALL HERE AGAIN."

I woke up afraid of the images I had seen and mad as hell. I tried to go back to sleep but it took an hour and then I only slept very lightly. It never went away. But it wasn't hard to figure out what it was really about.

A disaster had occurred. Victims were everywhere. There was nothing I could do to help and no one was coming to help them. And no one was coming to help me. Probably because I didn't think I needed any help. It was all for everyone else.

Anger is a normal phase in the grieving process, and I always expected at some point I would start getting angry at Paul for how abruptly he left my life. And yet the anger I feel right now is not at him. It's not at any one person. It's at the fact that I am dealing with this by myself and for some time now, I've been past the point in my life where I want to be alone. Of course I have friends, good friends. My best, best friends are back in Texas and can only be here for me so much. In California, I have people in closer proximity but they're mostly acquaintances. The difference between a friend and an acquaintance is this: A friend says, "I'm here for you" and is there for you. An acquaintance says, "I'm here for you" and is there for you if he doesn't already have other plans.

The friends I have, and even many of the acquaintances, deserve a lot of credit and appreciation for what they have done for me over the last few weeks. What I'm talking about is a problem I think I've created myself by being as independent as I am and having a history of not asking for help with anything. And by worrying too much about other people to even be a temporary inconvenience for my own sake. I'm an only child and I've handled everything myself for 40 years. I keep thinking there's no reason why I can't handle THIS, and THIS, and THIS OVER HERE all alone as well. And then I end up like I am right now. So maybe I'm wrong. Or something.

When people ask me how I'm doing, I say "ok." It's possible that I need to revise my definition of "ok." I figure as long as I'm getting up in the morning, sleeping at night, eating regularly and going about my life in a relatively normal way, I'm "ok." Except that I'm unbelievably angry now that I can't really talk about what's happened and what's still going on. I am so afraid of burdening the people I care about the most with the darker details of what I've been dealing with, I just refuse to bring it up and then bring them down with me. A small piece of the story will escape here and there -- probably out of necessity -- but except for one close friend I work with, most don't hear more than that because I usually squash it and change the subject immediately. I refuse to lean on anyone too hard or for too long. I refuse to say "I need to talk about it" because I don't feel like I deserve to be heard by people who are normally happy and don't need to be brought down. I'm scared of what will come out of me and what it will do to my friendships when others become uncomfortable with what they don't understand and can't relate to. So I say very little. In some cases, nothing at all. I guess when someone says, "I'm here for you," I don't really trust it. Because I don't really believe they know what they're getting into and as usual, I take on the responsibility of protecting them. From me.

And so I'm looking at the victims of this disaster screaming for help, and not even realizing I am one of them. That's what the dream was trying to tell me. I am one of them and I need 911 to respond to ME. But unfortunately 911 is already occupied with something else. They already had plans, prior commitments, because I led them to believe I was already "ok." What else were they going to do?]]>