I Sold My Car

Today marks the first day of my vacation. I'm taking a vacation. Some old buddies from my days in the Atlanta improv scene threw together a reunion show. We've all since moved to different states, kept in contact, but not all been together since Matthew and Carol's Wedding, and not everyone made it to that. Of course, not everyone is making it to this either, but it's as good as any reason to head to the Atl.

Chicago is moving ever closer to winter, and as it does, so too does my soul. My dark, deep, troubled soul. I'm better, but I'm trepidatious. I'm keeping my head up, though. I've been biking the past few days...days merely, after about a month long break, and I've been feeling this intense level of uplift in everything. Despite a brief moment of loss of control right around the worst days of my lady cycle, the days leading up to the last have been easier than ever. And A LOT has happened. 

I've been weeping and gnashing my teeth over my recent gumption to move into sales at my current job. I'm good at working with people and getting people to trust me (like a fox), and since I actually genuinely try to be an actual trustworthy person, it's kind of easy for me. The hardest part is getting the hell off my own back and ass. 

I've been trying to figure out what this damn demon creature at my heels has been, this anvil tied to my ankle and dragging me down into darker waters. I've been fighting it, like a warrior princess. 

And just like every warrior princess, I've had to solve a problem....not like Maria.....like Caroline. If you've never seen Spirited Away, change the status of that. Put it on your list. It's a great example of the maze of trials I've been tripping along these past months since December, when I couldn't shake the feeling that I wanted to die. 

The story is universal, like a fairy tale...but the kind that hasn't been altered by religion, by dogma. The kind that empowers because it forces the hero to solve a problem, to meet with the hag, and to obey her commands without complaint. To do the work. 

When the problem is solved, the hero has succeeded and receives that for which she has been fighting. In the case of Spirited Away, the hero's parents have been turned into swine, and she must complete the tasks to solve the problem and to return her parents to their human forms. 

People want to help, and people do what they can, but she has to turn the levers, choose which doors to open. 

I think somewhere along the line, whether it be white male supremacy or capitalism.....or is white male supremacy just a small bi-product of the inherent nature of capitalism (I'm more inclined towards this)....we stopped appreciating having agency over our own lives. We stopped being taught what that meant, and I'm talking about all of us.  

I always imagined I'd send my old 1999 Honda Civic off into the sunset with a final road trip, but the girl wasn't having it. The clutch needed to be replaced. 

I called Triple A, and to send me back to Chicago, they sent the guy that took me to the mechanic I had to visit in Indiana, where my girl gave up the fight. He was a big man with a long white beard. He had a step-daughter with him that told me about her boyfriend's recent arrest within the first minute of meeting me, and we all piled into his old tow truck. 

I finally hit that wall of "how much money do I want to keep putting into this car," namely because my dad hit that wall a while ago. I spent the better part of my day in a tow truck, with this unique family who loved Linus, of course, and discussed the basic realities of living life with me, which is a lot to ask for from a day, and I didn't ask for any of it. 

At one point my chariot driver turned up an old country song on the radio and started singing to Linus as we chugged our way into the belly of the beast of Chicago rush hour. Every time someone honked at us for running red lights, the man and his daughter would yell at them as loudly as they could...from Indiana, but speaking that Chicago road rage language that you really can't appreciate until you realize how many assholes own cars in this damn town. 

She regaled me with stories of her "old man" and how his ex has been making their live's a living hell since he started dating her. Which reminds me. I want to challenge all women...and all men with this: no one can steal your boyfriend or girlfriend. Everyone has free will and the ability to make choices. Don't ruin both of your lives by trying to get someone that didn't choose you back into your life. Choose your life over that nonsense. 

I said this, or some version of this out loud in the truck, and my driver, in between drags from his cigarette, leaned forward and pointed at me to affirm my musings. We also smoked a joint in the truck, once we were in Illinois, and it wasn't a crime; he didn't because he was working and driving, but his daughter and I partook and he told us about driving a tractor trailer coast to coast for years. "It gets in your blood." 

He drives a tow truck. He also drives a limo, wears a suit or a tux, depending on the event, but if he can drive his beat up tow truck, he'd rather do that, meet people, buy old cars and work with his neighbor to fix em up and resell them or sell them for parts. It made me think: don't do what you do because you need a job. Do what you do because you HAVE to do it....even if it's driving a truck....do it because it's in your blood. I mean...do what you have to do to get to that point, but don't ever stop trying to get there. Success has many faces, and contentment is not always what you expect.  

I had respect for this man, and I think he shared the same for me as he helped me swing myself from the cab onto the flatbed to grab something out of my trunk. So I sold him a monument to my past, parts of which I continue to leave further and further behind each day that I wake up believing I have inside of my little frame everything I need to take care of myself, and if I don't know how to do it yet, I'm open and excited to learn because if I never stop learning, I never stop living. (and you're welcome for that sentence)

I do a lot of things that make me nervous, that make my heart race. Sometimes getting out of bed is that thing, and sometimes counter offering a price $50 higher than my potential buyer's initial offer makes me feel like I'm going to throw up. I did it anyway, and he said yes. So I got my stuff, and I said goodbye to my girl. May she live in our hearts forever. 

 And I keep looking forward. I have a whole vacation to enjoy. 

Ol' Emmie, Dec. 1998 - September 2016. Photo Credit: Apryl Cox-Jackson

Uh.....There's Way More than Two Roads in this Wood

Yes. I am fickle. I promise you love and devotion, and here it is, a full year and a few days since I've even looked at you. How do I expect anyone to ever trust me? As I've learned over the past year, I trust most just as far as I trust myself, which is not much further than I can throw myself, which, and I just tried this outside, isn't too far.

I understand why you're afraid of the cold now, friends. I don't blame you. I never knew what winter was until 2014, and 2015 confirmed my suspicions. I am a glutton for punishment. I've never really seen things from a Russian's perspective until now, and I can't wait to relive Chekhov's classics in their true light as riotous comedies. 

Family, I am a depressed person, but I am not lost. I just don't trust myself, and I really need to be able to do that in order to do, well, anything else.

So, I dove deep into the darkest parts of my own ocean. I stared into the abyss. I cried a WHOLE lot. Sometimes openly, like a big baby. But I was never lost. 

However, I did more than cry while I was staring deep into the inevitability of my own obsolescence (yeah. we're DOING this). 

I listened. I watched. I noted. I tried. And I failed 99% of the time.

I went to Target the other day for Oreo's and left with an area rug and a poster of Wonder Woman. The rug was marked down from $99 to $29, so, OF COURSE, and who cares how much the poster cost, look at it:

                                                 I digress.

The tiny one percent of the time I didn't fail was when I pictured myself as Wonder Woman in that poster, in her stance, fists clenched, legs apart, no possibility of a thigh gap, (because I've got linebacker thighs, I'll crush you) and I kept going.  

I've been so angry for so very long. Why did no one tell me there was someone like me that I could look up to? Why did everyone around me tell me to be quiet, that the best women were the meek women, that behind every good man was a good woman? And why were they all so surprised when I finally lost it? Why did no one tell me that I could be my own hero, and not in that tweaked out Matthew McConaughey I'm my own hero kind of way?

I learned to research in grad school, to read and re-read and to underline in the library books in pencil, and to remember to recheck them out when they were due, once every three months...or was it six...Dammit!

I also learned the hardest part of it all: starting to write it down.

So here we go...again.

But don't worry. Life has been teaching me how to handle it. Nature, in her own violent beauty, is reminding me how hard I must work and how capable I am of doing that work. I learned a great many lessons in the woods.

I find myself in the woods sometimes, but in my head. I summon my Wonder Woman strength, shut out all the sounds around me, and remember how faithful they are, year round. How much I learned of life and death from the micro-movements of the forest floors. How free we were, Linus and I, and how free we still are. How freedom is relative. How peace is a state of mind. How I have all the answers right here.

And how I never would have found it without the people who love me.

Most people don't know the crushing reality of Robert Frost's beloved "The Road Not Taken," that the road itself made no difference at all. Reality dictates that we make a choice, one way or the other.

         And both that morning equally lay
         In leaves no step had trodden black.
         Oh, I kept the first for another day!
         Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
         I doubted if I should ever come back.

We only ever get one chance to be alive, and one way of living is no better or worse than the other. The points don't matter. In fact, and tell everyone you know what I'm about to say...............................no one is keeping score.

Remember the people that love you. Take them with you everywhere you go. They are the most important parts of your life.

You can go any way you want; you will learn how to get through it as you move forward.

So go.

I'll be here when the weight isn't too much for me, talking about myself...like a lunatic, summoning the strength of Diana.