New Blog Post: Dark Night

I have been having something of a dark night of the soul. No, rather a dark week(s). As Saint John of the Cross said the term “dark night (of the soul)” is used in Christianity for a spiritual crisis in a journey towards union with God. I can only hope that the connection with God or whomever, is coming because right now the journey feels quite dark.

My grunts and moans? Basically, no one is acting how I like, I am frustrated, I am quick to anger and tears, I am confused which way to turn next regarding changes I want in my life, and my mind is a very dangerous and dark neighborhood where I am not safe. I feel like I’m crap and I am reminding myself of it every day. However, the only person in this equation is me. Everyone else is leading their own lives, whether happy or not – my choices are mine to weigh in on and I will make good and bad ones just as I always have. Right now, it kinda sucks to be me, but only because I’m making it so. I need to hit a little bottom, not a big one, pray God, but enough of one to bounce back up with strength and love for myself and those in my life so I don’t lose any more people, and I seem to be very alone lately, even from those who don’t matter to me.

As a sponsor in Al-Anon I help others work the Twelve Steps. The first step is to admit we are powerless. The first exercise I give new sponsees is to make a list of all the things we have power over and what we don’t have power over. This helps put the extent of powerlessness into perspective. While it can be rather jarring, it’s also a relief when you realize that we really don’t have to do all the ‘trying’ we’ve been doing. We’re powerless to begin with so it takes a lot of the pressure off.

Basically, the only thing you have power over is yourself, and then, only certain aspects of yourself. You can change your hair color or style, you can try to lose or gain weight, and you can work hard to change your attitude, your acceptance of things and your understanding of things. Of course, if we could do this easily, a lot of pain could be avoided. That’s why we often need help from someone else, whether spiritual or clinical. Some people seem to have the ability to bend to these things easier than others and certainly some situations are easier to adapt to. But many are not.

Where does that leave the other list? The list we cannot control? Well, that would be everything else. The weather, other people, what other people think of you, whether other people believe you, how they treat you, how you respond to things (this can be improved upon, but often a first reaction is one of powerlessness), your kids and their actions, your spouse and his/her actions, friends, business associates, parents, other peoples behavior in absolutely every way, if you can get a job, keep a job, people dying, pets dying, your health (to some degree). Basically, all the big stuff. The rest of the world is out of your control. Rather intimidating. If anyone tells you have have control over another person or think you can manipulate them to do what you want and it’ll work for more than a short time, please send them to Al-Anon.

Lately, it has been very very frustrating to me that I cannot control what other people think. There are certain things that seem very clear to me and yet that’s all. I cant make anyone else see things through my eyes, feel things through my heart, think things with my brain. It doesn’t matter how logical I am, I have no control over anothers process of thought. I have been frustrated by my son’s behavior. Yet no matter how much I explain it or try and have him behave differently I cannot control him. He even says this to me – “Only I can change how I act” – well DO it I say!  Powerless over a five year old. Shouldn’t I have some say over him? Nope.

I cannot make people like me, even if I don’t like them. I can work on caring (less) about what other people think of me, but that’s all I can do and that’s always a process. Some people’s opinions matter, others don’t. I cannot make someone email me back, call me back, want to date me, act as I hope they would, apologize for their behavior, see things my way, do what I want. NOTHING. All I can do is truly accept that I am powerless over these things, get up in the morning and put one foot in front of the other, doing the next thing I need to do to get through my day. When something happens that affects me, I have to do my best to not react. If there is something I can do to make things better for myself I can try – and that’s all I can do. Try. I can do the footwork as they say but the rest is not in my control.

So, what is the ole serenity prayer? It really makes sense if you listen to it carefully -      God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things i can, and the wisdom to know the difference. It’s the last part that matters the most to me. It leads to a life with less battle inwards and out. With peace and acceptance. In my last week or so I have been starting at the beginning again. It happens to the best of us. After years in a program (or life!) we have to look at things all over again every once in while. We have to make apologies to ourselves, to others and get a new outlook on life as it is now. When I get there and I know I will in due time, I hope for a year much better than the last two, which were fairly awful due to circumstances I was powerless over yet did not always react well to. I could have done better but few in my position would have (believe me, the situations were life alteringly awful). That’s higher spiritual stuff I don’t have access to on a daily basis. I have to let things go. I have to let people be themselves and not let it bother me, I have to focus on myself and my life and find my happiness. I have to be fulfilled by my career and my personal life, make changes and focus. I have to put myself and my son first. I have to be happy. I have to be happy. I have to be happy. That’s my wish for myself and all of you – and I mean all of you – for 2013.

New Blog Post: Lindsay Lohan (a rant)

So, this blog post is essentially the annoying Lindsay Lohan rant I have in my head every time I see that she has been arrested again or done something stupid again or whatever her life consists of at this stage. I finally decided to put it down on paper, just so I can stop devoting any more mental time to this train wreck of a young woman who clearly has a lot of problems that she likes to blame others for and doesn’t have an honest desire to get well.  Knowing people who have been in situations akin to hers, I have some insight:

Another day, another Lindsay Lohan arrest. I used to be horrified and feel really badly for her. Then I stopped caring at all and now I have come back around to worrying bit for this person’s safety and well-being. Note: When I say ‘worried’, I mean a teeny bit more worried than I couldn’t give a shit, which is where I’ve been for a while now.

I was always a fan of Lindsay Lohan’s. Not a huge devotee but MEAN GIRLS is one of the best teen comedies to ever be written (thank you Ms. Tina Fey) and Lindsay does a great job in it. Is she this great actress that everyone claims she is? No, I don’t think so. But she’s not terrible and she’s had opportunities others in that Disney mold didn’t get because there were a little too terrible. So, she’s decent. And where she is is now is…almost decent.

I watched about 3 minutes total of her latest, “Liz and Dick” and it was awful. Plum awful. Her acting was terrible, her accent slipped in and out and she made little effort if any to try and convince the audience she was playing another person. How much can you blame her? Well, firstly, she is an actress so she should be able to help me suspend my disbelief. Secondly, not a lot, I mean, anyone taking on the role of Elizabeth Taylor is a fool. What did she think would happen? It was a train wreck from the very minute it was announced and sadly the producers were happy with that, hoping to cash in on people’s desire to watch that train wreck. Well, it did ok but she got slaughtered. Not a great way to make a ‘comeback”. On top of it all, throughout the filming she was allegedly difficult, had a suicide scare and caused all sorts of other challenges.  It doesn’t make one feel much sympathy for anyone even in a crummy TV movie when they can’t even act professionally while making it. Why does she have so much trouble with….life?

Poor LIndsay! Sad Lindsay. She grew up in what everyone can see is a terrible family, with an overbearing and likely alcoholic/stage mother and a grandiose and addict father. They have done her no help. None at all. We have read the stories of her mother partying with her and not putting up any boundaries. There was one management company I worked at who was offered Lindsay as a client and her mother came with the package and it was clear in the meeting that her mother NEEDED Lindsay. She wasn’t looking out for her daughter’s best interest, she was clearly making sure she was included in the profits as well. Not where you want your Mommy to be.

As for the Dad, well, he has, actually, some good intentions but he goes around acting like a dry drunk. That is, someone who is an alcoholic or addict and no longer uses anymore yet still acts like an alcoholic or addict.  He is right in wanting her to get the help she needs as opposed to the mother who denies there are problems, but he is so self-obsessed that he cannot get out of his own way. He needs so much attention himself to show the world that he is good that he messes up every chance he ever has to show his daughter that he’s the smarter of the two parents in how he thinks about her problems.  How Lindsay is so attached to the lies her mother tells and the way she perceives her mother being so moral is unclear to me. She may need to believe this purely for survival. In fact, I would beg to say that she does not believe this about her mother and the fact that she knows inside that her mother is a user is part of what makes Lindsay herself unable to get well.  We are only as sick as our secrets!

Here in lies the rub ole Lindsay, though I’m sure you’re not reading this right now, after having been arrested AGAIN yesterday for hitting a girl in a nightclub at 4am in New York City and getting ready to face now four criminal charges in court in the upcoming weeks. I had a rather crap set of parents too. They weren’t half as crap as yours, they were crap in other ways. Things they did and said fucked me up for a time and I behaved poorly for it. I never became an addict, it’s not in my blood that way, but I did other destructive things relationship wise, self-esteem wise and sometimes I just thought destructively, but it was bad. I know many many people who have two horrible parents who drank or did drugs or checked out as parents or did other awful things like beat them. Granted none of these people were in the entertainment industry, as a child star, another huge cross to bear as a child, teenager and young adult. Some teen stars do ok, many don’t. You are the poster child of those who don’t. But I’d say 98% of the people I know are living healthy, arrest free lives now. They work, they have friends, they are safe to themselves and others. They have recovery. Why is so hard for you to get it? I can vouch that it’s not fun or easy. It’s hard work and it’s painful, yet hundreds of thousands of people work at getting it every day. Why can’t you?

So, we’ve all had it hard at times and some of us have had it harder than others BUT no one can blame anyone but ourselves. Everyone in our lives did the best they could even if it was absolutely horrible and when the time came, we got out. We got to college or to work or we got married or we did whatever we did – we got therapy, we went to rehab, we did something to try and get ourselves straight. Maybe it took a few things and tries to get there but rarely did we have a rap sheet as long as a Compton gang member at age 26.

If you cared Lindsay, you could take the money you have and get real help. Not help we hear about in the tabloids, not moving to NYC because it’s not as threatening for you there, not saying you don’t drink but being out in a nightclub at 4am, not hitting girls because they talked to you or look different than you or were even rude to you. None of that makes hitting ok. Get real help that no one knows about and makes you a healthy person. That’s help that has to change your life. Maybe you can’t be an actress anymore. Maybe you can but you need someone to come with you whenever you leave your ranch in Wyoming and go on a tempting set. Leave behind the fantasies of your life because they are, for the moment over. More importantly, FIGURE OUT WHO YOU ARE AND TAKE CARE OF IT.

We all have troubles and we all have to decide whether we’re going to live with those troubles and be miserable and make people work extra hard to be with us and help us and alienate everyone and then moan about it, or we go and get humble and get help. I think  most people, if anyone really cares anymore, would like to see you, as a fellow human being, get some help. That means no fighting in rehab, that means, going to rehab for a long time. That means, separating from your parents and getting real about who they are and what they can really be for you.That means not believing any hype, getting help in erasing the hype and getting to a place where you are a real person. You are an alcoholic and drug addict and as such you CANNOT go to clubs until the wee hours of the morning. You MUST change your lifestyle. I don’t care if you like clubs. Too bad. You have been gifted with the gene of addiction and so you cannot go to clubs anymore. I haven’t been to a club in abut 6 years and my life is none the worse. We all have things about us that make it so we can’t do certain things. I love ice cream but if I ate as much as I wanted I’d be fat. It really is this simple.

Cheesy but as they say with addicts – you have to want to change. I know you are a drama queen and you love the attention, even if it means a video on TMZ of you being escorted from your car in handcuffs to a waiting police car. Somewhere in there you love it. The drama is here! That’s a tough nut to crack but you can – with help. You have some money. Use it in the best way possible. Not on a fancy apartment or thousands of dollars worth of designer clothes, get some help. A lot of it, with really qualified people who won’t put up with any nonsense. The best you can. Devote the next 2 years of your life to it and you will come out a whole person again. You may find out who you are in there and focus your attention on something else other than entertainment. You have to really try because your relapse rate is high. You have a lot of bad habits because you’re an addict – It’s not cool to lie to the police…ever. To have other people take blame for things you do, put other people in harms way. You are a pathological liar. That is fact. Your first impulse is to lie. That has to stop. You have to have a redo. Get out and get the help you need.

I care about this person as another human. I no longer think she has great talent or can do amazing things (not that I ever did, but definitely not now). Maybe down the line she can. She can pull a Robert Downey, Jr. His father gave him drugs when he was 11. He stuck guns in his mouth and slept in strange people’s homes. Now he’s Ironman and a clean and sober addict. But maybe you can’t – I know it’s a daily struggle for him and most addicts I know. What’s wrong with living a happy and peaceful existence somewhere outside of the main cities of the world that tempt you with excitement and drugs and bad people? I don’t think you want to die and I though you probably think it’s always the other person’s fault and the world is out to get you, somewhere you know you’re the one at the wheel (no pun intended). So, here it is. I know people who have been in your life in the past who have had to try and keep you alive on a daily basis. That’s not fair to anyone. That’s no one’s job but yours. Do you want it? Do you want that job because I hear there is an opening. Take it, it’s yours.

(I am) Stagnant

stag·nant adj.                                                                                                                Showing little or no sign of activity or advancement; not developing or progressing;            Lacking vitality or briskness; sluggish or dull:

Truly, though I love the picture and the quote above what I really am (besides the above) is  exhausted by how stagnant everything feels in my life right now.

This is a bit of a moany blog so if you’re full of rainbows and sunshine feel free to stop reading. Things will improve but for a while now I’ve been feeling rather crap. Today I ran into a friend who does amazing artistic work creating custom flooring for mansions and creative spaces. She has lived in LA for her entire life (more than 50+) years and she used the word stagnant today to describe the city and how she feels in it. It finally defined my world or at least my perception of it at the moment.

Work is slow. I feel unmotivated (hopefully no clients are reading this). Actually the ones who might be reading this – I don’t feel unmotivated by you but by some other things.  At the beginning of the summer several big projects that were really exciting and gave me gusto fell apart. It happens – they went away for various reasons and I was left with some really good projects and then the second tier. And really, I hate being a second tier kinda gal. So, work has been a bit hard to get up for but it’s going on and it will change and bloom again. That’s one thing to remember about everything – it always changes. That goes for when thing are going well too by the way – life has a way of keeping us on our toes!!!

Because work is slow and in a strange place so is money. Except money isn’t strange, it’s a necessity. Last year was plentiful and then something happened to take it all away and this stagnation is not helping fill the well.  I have asked people for help. Some have been very kind to give it. Others are unable and that’s absolutely 100% fine. It’s the people who can and won’t that I stick pins in a doll over. I’m not trying to be a brat but I have two friends who are multi-multi millionaires and one of them owes me many many many thousands of dollars and I asked her for some of it and she didn’t even respond. I think this is why these people are so rich! They don’t part with a dime. Anyway, I was in a fantasy land to think they would help but seeing as they have children and I have a child and there is a child in some trouble here I thought they’d see a little into their heart but that was, well, that was probably the stupidest idea I’ve ever considered.

Anyway, work, money…what’s left? People. This is my fault really because I’m just so damn blah right now. And honestly, one can only take so much of the blah. My son and I get along famously. He brings me out of the blah about 98% of the time these days, he brightens my life immeasurably.  But few others do at the moment and its making me feel lonely. I work on my own, I am a parent on my own and I am lonely. I feel it lately, not always but right now I need someone. There are no romances on the horizon though I do have a slight crush on someone on Twitter but he is married so off limits. My friends are all very busy with their children and their issues and though Teddy and I see them as well as single friends and male friends I feel only mildly and ‘in the moment’ rejuvenated by them. I guess it’s obvious I’m a little depressed. But I don’t feel terribly depressed inside – I feel that the world is stagnant – the economy is stagnant, traffic is stagnant, the weather is stagnant, peace is stagnant, and we are a world focused on The Bachelor and Kardashians. As someone said to me the other day, which I agreed with – this has been a year of a lot of stress and very little achievement. Not for lack of trying.

I’ll tell you what the positive aspect of this blahness is and this is important. People should pay attention to their negative emotions and not just sit in them and wait for them to pass, but when appropriate, understand that they need what I need and that is this – I need change. I don’t need a job to come along and make things better or more money or a boyfriend. Well, yes, I need all those things, I want all those things and those things would help any negative situation become better and will very likely happen once I get off my ass and do something about what I can control, and let what I cannot happen in it’s own time. What I can do with this knowledge that I am stagnant in this stagnant city is make change for myself.

I have been thinking about making a change for a while. LA is well, it’s just boring now. I’ve been here half my life and it’s a hard city to live in for a woman who is not a MAW (model/actress/whatever) and who is a single mom. It’s a disconnected city. I want weather, not a lot of bad weather but I can take a little change here and there. I want different creative people and to try my creativity in different ways. I want to meet new moms and dads and men and women who can contribute to my and Teddy’s life and commit to a real friendship. It’s always been hard to find people you give you anything in LA. I give a lot and I have always taken less. That’s OK as long as it’s worth it (as they say “giving is good as long as your getting”) but lately the LA crowd has been disappointing. I’m not a stereotypical LA person. I’m a New Yorker, a Londoner. I want a new set of four walls, Teddy is dying for a big beautiful garden to plant in. I cannot make that happen here right now even though we do have a little backyard with two dying plants. And I don’t know that I want to wait for it to happen here. Not as things are. Not in the stagnation. In America? I don’t know? I don’t want to idealize anywhere else and I don’t think that just leaving somewhere makes things better somewhere else, but it can help, especially when the city you’re leaving has so many real stereotypes attached to it.

I love what I do and I don’t want to change it but maybe alter it. I want my son to have everything he wants within reason. I want to feel safe and not scared. I want to be found attractive and desirable. I don’t know that all of that or much of that is available in Los Angeles anymore. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that Teddy starts Kindergarten in the Fall and it’s paid for so that gives me a year to sort out what move I need to make. I have a very small and very odd family so they’re not a necessary part of the scenario for me. Where can I go for a fresh start where I can serve myself and others, live comfortably in or near a nice city, find a handsome gentleman and give my son a proper garden? This is what I’m going to spend the next year thinking about and putting into motion, even as things become less stagnant, because just putting those ideas into motion for real helps loosen things up. It is of course an inside job as they say but it doesn’t mean it can’t be done in a new outside as well.

Letting Go

I am not very resilient. I love very deeply when I do and have, in the past, had trouble letting go of certain relationships: a boyfriend Nic when I was in my late 20′s who just didn’t love me as much as I loved him, and two friendships, one more important than the other, but both in their own ways difficult to let go. I’ve gotten a LOT better over the years but…. I am not resilient I tell you.

Without sounding too ‘out there’, the difficulty one has in ‘letting go’ is actually very much based in a reality we have all experienced. The pain of losing someone. Not through death but through disconnect, through pain and loss. It’s very hard when someone you love is out there, maybe loving another, but surviving without YOU! Whether it be boyfriend, girlfriend, friend, husband, wife, whomever…If we didn’t have trouble letting go we wouldn’t have the ability to love as deeply as we need to to live to our fullest.  OK, enough with the pop psychology –

Here are some thoughts about letting go:

To let go doesn’t mean to stop caring, it means I can’t do it for someone else.                  To let go is not to cut myself off, it’s the realization that I can’t control another.                  To let go is not to enable, but allow learning from natural consequences.                              To let go is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands.           To let go is not to try to change or blame another, I can only change myself.                     To let go is not to care for but to care about.                                                                     To let go its not to fix but to be supportive.                                                                         To let go is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.                                     To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes, but to let others affect their own outcomes.                                                                                                                    To let go is not to be protective, it is to permit another to face reality.                                   To let go is not to deny, but to accept.                                                                                To let go is not to nag, scold, or argue, but to search out my own shortcomings and to correct them.                                                                                                                        To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires, but to take each day as it comes.        To let go is not to criticize and regulate anyone, but to try to become what I dream I can be.                                                                                                                                          To let go is not to regret the past, but to grow and live for the future.                                  To let go is to fear less and love more.

On a Clear Day…..

On a clear day rise and look around you
And you’ll see who you are
On a clear day how it will astound you….

I have been abnormally tired lately and ended up taking a nap after I dropped Teddy at camp. When I woke up I had clarity about something important. It doesn’t necessarily make things easier but it’s a starting off point. Something to be clear about so I can move towards something else. I’m pretty sure it’s going to stick.

Ever have those moments where the answer to that question you’ve been wondering about, sometimes just before you fall asleep at night, or when you’re stopped at a stop sign, becomes clear?

I have a God Box, a box I’ve chosen where I can write out questions or thoughts that I need clarity on or answers to. I pray on it, meditate on it and turn it over. Let it go.             In time – viola! the answer appears. Sometimes.  Like today

And now for some musical accompaniment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz5DLO8fclA