What I Learned from Falling in Love…

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“Gamble everything for love, if you’re a true human being. If not, leave this gathering. Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty. You set out to find God, but then you keep stopping for long periods at mean-spirited roadhouses.” Rumi

You can try to avoid love all you want. You can decide you’re not ready to date after an OkCupid meet-up gone horribly meh. You can hole yourself up in your house, working like a fiend, watching reruns of Frasier, reading Fifty Shades of Grey and Rumi, eating buttered noodles and asparagus, and love will come knocking on your mother-fucking door anyway. Literally.

“Knock-knock, Motherfucker.” Or… in my case: Ding. Dong, Motherfucker.

Once you’ve opened the door you have to just let it in. Grab that dusty toolbox from the garage and keep those pliers handy because you’ve got to keep your heart open. I don’t care how often and deeply your heart has been broken in the past. I don’t care if you’ve been married twelve times to raging, abusive meth addicts. Those exes are not this new guy. No projection. No clamming up. No shutting down. Take those pliers and pry your heart open. Clamp it with a cold metal speculum. Use duct tape if you have to. Keep your heart open when he doesn’t text. Keep it open when you’re getting mixed signals. Keep it open when he’s reminding you of your past dudes. Keep it open when it feels safer to lock ‘er back up.

All relationships will hurt. Even if you’re dating Mister Rogers of the neatly folded sweaters and soothing carmel-coated voice. You still might trip over his well-placed black dress shoes. He still might tell you he’s feeling conflicted and unsure about the depths of his love for his ex; the utter opposite of you on the human scale. He might decide that your lack of sheep’s clothing, abundance of tattoos, and devil may care attitude aren’t for him. The fact that you jump in rain puddles might freak him out. Your adventurous spirit in bed might send him running to a shower of holy water and bended knees at the altar.

Connections may not mean to him what they mean to you. You may see the magic and wonder in your meeting. You may be floored by the way you’re already finishing each other’s sentences and have the exact same favorite food and how you orgasm at the exact same nanosecond. You may feel the tingly bits of electricity when you touch, you may marvel at this soul that feels like a comfortable, worn-in pair of Converse that you’ve walked in for a thousand years. Honoring that connection and being fully present in the gifts of connection may be totally lost on the other person. Or, they make recognize it and give a voice to it but, let me tell you, it takes a certain size of balls and ovaries to give yourself over to that connection – to ride it out. Taking the comfortable road of known paths, free of briars and brambles, with a topological map may feel more safe for him. The fact that you’re wearing your purple galoshes and a blue peacoat, standing on the edge of a precipice so you can jump when you hear the call of the wind doesn’t mean he’s willing to do the same.

All relationships will end in hurt. Forget the connection, forget the love, forget the feelings. Let’s even say you reside in the relationship for fifty-plus years. Eventually one of you will die. It could happen tomorrow. There are no guarantees. There’s no “100% organic, certified safe” stamp on a relationship. Whether it lasts ten days or ten years or ten decades it’s going to end in hurt. If you’re trying to protect your gonads with a dixie cup you’re gonna fail. If you’re trying to play it safe in case it doesn’t end well, it’s still going to hurt. As Mirabelle Buttersfield says in “Shopgirl” it’s a simple choice, “Hurt now or hurt later.”

Once the connection is severed and the relationship has inevitably ended in hurt and pain there are a few things that are vastly helpful in getting over it.

  • Now that you’ve let go and are out of the haze o’ love think about all the reasons you’re not right for each other. Suddenly remember how utterly perfect the Universe is – how it brings people into your life as a mirror. Stare hard at the reflection. Note the water spots. Learn. Grow like a stink weed. Be grateful that this person who didn’t work out, didn’t work out. Sappy, yes, but everything happens for a reason.  As Lissa Rankin says, “You may be asking the Universe for a Pinto when the Universe is trying to give you a Rolls Royce.” Aren’t you glad the Universe didn’t let you keep that Pinto? That shit blows up when you hit the backend even slightly. You don’t want someone who can’t handle a bit o’ rear end action. You don’t want to end up with someone who crumbles at the slightest ping of life. Right? Of course, right.
  • Thank him for breaking you open. Thank him for ringing that mother-fucking doorbell because the fact that you opened it means you’re ready. It means you’re not dead, cold, and entering the beginning stages of rigor mortis. It means that love is still out there for you. It means that despite the reruns of Frasier, buttered noodles and asparagus you can still feel deeply.  You’ve been shaken loose. Be grateful. Be YOU at the expense of loss. Get clear on what you want and then embody that. Attract someone with the hugest set of balls you’ve ever seen. Find someone who honors connection.
  • Listen to music, particularly Sade. Cry over love songs. Revel in the feelings of heartache. Read Rumi. Watch sappy romances. Fantasize about Johnny Depp. Join a trapeze class. Wake up. Love YOU more than you loved that other person.  Hold yourself tight and drink in the gorgeous soul that is you with your unique traits and attributes that someone else will someday truly appreciate. But… you don’t need that. Appreciate you yourself. Fall in love again. With YOU.

Whatever you do, keep those tools handy, you never know when love’ll come ’round again.

With a crowbar,

Melanie

Birthing a New Me

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There’s a change a brewin’ in me, folks.

And… it’s felt about as fluid and graceful as when Jim Carey of Ace Ventura fame was birthed from a large, plastic rhinoceros arse. My facial expressions and utterances are the same.

I’m on the lookout for something different; something big. I’m waiting to embrace change as enthusiastically as I’d embrace the return of the buoyancy of my breasts.

Trade Winds

You see, I haven’t felt very connected as of late. Hell, I haven’t felt connected for a good seven plus years. It’s more like I’ve been sort of floating around, willy-nilly, on a trade wind from the Caribbean. But, you know that feeling I’m talking about, right? When you feel that indescribable joy, feeling of connection, and clarity of purpose and path in every bone in your body; when you just know you’re onto something big and it swells you, you feel lighter, and you physically see more clearly?

I was talking with a friend about this feeling of connectedness recently. I told him that I haven’t felt that feeling since I moved to Cleveland. I was trying to noodle out with him what that was about. I think it started with an emergency surgery I had for my Stage IV Endometriosis. I was married to a wonderful man but we just had nothing to work toward together. We didn’t have much in common, we were just sort of going through the motions of existence, neither happy, nor sad, but simply content and comfortable. I hadn’t been happy for the last six years of my marriage. I think that surgery and subsequent recovery awoke something within me – a will to live; a will for more than just existence and comfort. I left my ten year marriage, I left my family and friends, I left my home and traipsed across the country with 30 boxes of books, a twin mattress, and a couple of bookshelves. I had never felt more alive. It’s as if my vision, normally 20/40 had returned to 20/20. I’d never felt more clearly set upon my path nor more full of joy.

Blowin’ About

It lasted for a good three years too. During that time I traveled to Europe, New York City, South Beach, Folly Beach, Ottawa, Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, Pennsylvania and a few places I can’t even remember. I dove out of a plane. I learned to snowboard. I got up on a surf board. I went to hundreds of concerts and met thousands of people. Literally.

What my friend and I decided was that when you’re taking risks, when you’re stepping out of your comfort zone, you’re naturally more connected. When you’re shaking things up in your life you’re truly living in the NOW. You’re not focusing on the past or the future. I challenge you to take your first dive out of an airplane while retaining thoughts of Aunt Hester smacking you as a child with her bejeweled ruby handbag. It’s not possible.

It’s the same for travel. When you’re in a wholly new environment you’re bombarded with new senses and sensations; things you’ve never seen, heard, or felt. It’s difficult to focus on the mundane or worry the past or future when you’re in a new setting. I think this may be why folks are addicted to extreme sports. Who has time to worry about the state of their stocks and the market when they’re barreling down a mountain on a piece of wood?

There are other ways to stay in the NOW but my meditation pillow is musty and I’m no Deepak Chopra. Yet.

Turning the Fan on Low

For now, I’m making baby steps. I’m not just sitting around waiting to be blown about by that nor’easter. I may not be moving 2,000 miles away, jumping out of a tiny plane at 11,000 feet, or traveling to Bali, but I’m doing what I can.

For example, since I was fifteen years old I’ve had long hair. Why fifteen? Because that’s how long it took to grow back after my mom decided I would look adorable with a Dorothy Hamill haircut for my entire childhood. I loathed it. It was like a bowl cut, only with a gargantuan bowl. Detest is probably a better word, in fact. Every time I sat in that stylist’s chair I cried big, fat tears and my tiny heart would break thinking about Julie Wood and her long yellow tresses. I swore that I would never have short hair again. And now, at 41, I’m seriously thinking about chopping off my hair. No, not a Dorothy Hamill. Something funky and chic and different. I’ve oft wondered if hair holds memory and toxins. If it does mine is full o’ guilt, shame, Jaeger and Beam. I want to lighten my load. I want to shock myself. I just hope I don’t cry while I’m in the chair with visions of Dorothy skating through my head.

Next up are three tattoos. Big ones.  Not like the little heart with a ball and chain that I got on my ankle when I was 19 and couldn’t commit. My second, back in 2002, was a piece of art I fell in love by a Japanese artist. Since that time I’ve fallen in love with various pieces of art, some of which I’ve gotten tattoos of, but until 3 years ago they were in more inconspicuous places. Now I have a large upper arm piece but I want more. So I’ve searched high and low to find the right artist here in Utah and these three super meaningful pieces of artwork will soon be on my chest and arms. It struck me the other day that I’m going to miss this body when I pass on because of all this gorgeous artwork by some of the most amazing tattoo artists around.

I’m also searching for a Yoga retreat that I can steal away to calm my monkey brain, get a tad of Zen, try to stretch my unused muscles and pat the must out of my meditation pillow.

Is this stuff superficial? Outer reflection? Surface?  Yup… but it’s the only place I can think of to begin to express what’s brewin’ within. I can’t seem to crack the inner. The deep. The buried. Yet. But I can feel it in there. Waiting. Biding its time to become. Birthing a new me, head first, from that proverbial plastic rhinoceros ass.

Seeing Red: How to REALLY Deal with Anger

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I have been full of rage lately.

Unexplainable-chili-pepper-hot-blown-out-of-proportion anger over trifles.

I’m pissed about burnt English Muffin toast.

I’m livid over the fact that I unsubscribed from HBO right before season 2 of Game of Thrones began.

I’m fuming over abysmally written novels that I’ve wasted half an hour on before I toss them out of my third floor window.

I want to mentally throw lukewarm Red Ginger tea in the face of folks on Facebook who act completely fake from the person I know them to be in the real world; people who write incessantly about helping others but don’t actually lift a manicured finger to do so.  Peeps who write about the importance of friendship but suck at it. Read more

On Death & the Next Grand Adventure (Oh, and Bilbo Baggins)

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I had an epiphany this morn. Like a choking on a slurp of my Ginger Red tea kind of epiphany.

I am Bilbo Baggins.

It all started with this

There was a study released recently that you are what you read. A scary proposition, eh, and I don’t know about you but I’m not particularly keen to become anything like Pap Finn, Iago, Sauron, Satan, Voldemort or Grendel. Plus, unlike Bilbo, I’m really not short. I don’t puff on a pipe (though I did once when I was fifteen and having a nicotine fit.) I do, however, shave the little wisps of hair on my big toes, but I most definitely don’t have hair in my ears. Yet.

I don’t know if I was Bilbo before I read The Hobbit or after. But, there’s really no question that I am Bilbo Baggins. Bear with me and I’ll explain. Read more

“It’s Not You, It’s Me.”

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Ever heard this line? – “It’s not you, it’s me.”

I’ve heard it many times myself. In the past my typical response was usually, “Bullshit, you dick. Grow some balls, coward. I’ll do better. Fucker. Liar. Please don’t go. Bastard. Stay. Asshole. ” These utterances were usually followed by a week or so of tears, some cuddle time with Ben & Jerry watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie, a few tattoos so that I could feel the pain inside in a tangible way on the outside, the eventually donning of my Superwoman cape, heading out with my friends, my first few laughs post break-up, tequila, Jagermeister, Beam, Stoli O and cranberry juice with slivers of an orange, flying kites in thunderstorms, swimming in fountains, stealing tractors, sweaty soul train dance parties, and Journey concerts. Hey, everyone has their own personal process. Read more

Soul Mates: Fact or Fiction?

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I need your guts.

Ladies.

Gentlemen.

I need your gut instincts, your intuition, your introspection on a subject that keeps coming up for me.

Soul mates. Fact or fiction?

You see, I met a guy about ten years ago. I had no interest in dating at the time. I had just left a ten year marriage and was sewing my wild grains with a top o’ the line industrial sewing machine, threads of sinew, and my liver.  But I felt inexorably, inexplicably drawn to this person. We went our separate ways after our first meeting but we kept running into each other. Over and over and over. It was like “moth to a flame” shit. I would think about this Dude. Every. Single. Day. And… according to him, his words, his experience was the same.  It made no sense to either of us. When I looked into Dude’s eyes I was lost in some time-space continuum of I don’t know where or when. But our relationship was rocky, dysfunctional, messy, overwrought, too much. It was like Disney on an icy glacier after a couple bowls of meth.

During one of our last meetings we were trying to sever and separate and, looking into each other’s eyes, the pain was unbearable. He walked away, his black leather jacket reflecting lights. He turned around and came back. He said he couldn’t handle the look in my eyes anymore. He left. We saw each other a few years later. He had moved out of state and was back in town. He carried pictures of us. He spoke the words again, “I think about you every day.” We cuddled on a random couch, spooning, sleeping fitfully. He left the next morning. For good.

Fast forward a few years.

I’d been reading the work of Dr. Brian Weiss, specifically “Many Lives, Many Masters” and decided to do a past life regression. It sounded fascinating and as I got deeper and deeper into the meditation I began to lose control of my body. Tears streamed down my face, my arms and legs twitched, my chest convulsed throughout. During the regression I saw a series of flashes. I was a young man, my hands and were HUGE (Kudos, to me, eh? You know what big hands mean.) I was sitting on a wooden dock, fishing.

Fast forward.

I was in a house made of light gray and tan rocks with dirt floors. My wife was standing in front of me. Beautiful. And I loved her so much it was hard to breathe. When I looked into her eyes I saw Dude.  (As in, thee Dude from this life.) I don’t know how to explain it but I just knew it was him. In her. His soul. We had a small son. Maybe two or three years old.  My son, when I looked in his eyes, was my Grandpa in this life. Again, I just knew. It was a feeling. It was the eyes.

Fast forward.

Our son drowned in the lake where I fished. And this changed the whole course of my life with my wife. Our love died. We never really looked into each other’s eyes again.

Fast forward.

We sat at the kitchen table, our eyes dead, our hearts broken, our love gone.

Fast forward.

We sat at the same table. Our eyes still dead, hearts still broken, love still gone.

Fast forward.

At the end of the regression my Grandfather came to me in his form of this current life and royally bitched me out. We’re talking screaming, cussing, hand gestures, all telling me how I had thrown away this great love because he (as a toddler) had chosen to leave the world. It was “HIS CHOICE,” he screamed. “HE DECIDED for fuck’s sake!”

I learned two valuable lessons in that regression. One was in how I view death. It has nothing to do with me. It’s not about me. Each of us have our own paths, or own choices to make in this life. And. . . we decide when it’s our time to go. It’s fine to grieve, it’s fine to miss that person who has chosen to go, but it’s still that person’s choice and the fact that I threw away one of the greatest loves of all of my lives was a sad testimony to that. Secondly, that I had known Dude in the past and shared a love so strong that it made it difficult to cope. And apparently that has carried over into this life.

So, my conundrum is this. Is it all bullshit? Was he “just not that into me?” Was my ego telling the most entertaining story ever of princesses and princes and “twu wuv?”

I don’t know and my ego and soul battle it out like a bad episode of Iron Chef with secret ingredient: Heart. And it’s made even more difficult by the guys I know who scoff at this. Who say things like, “if he had wanted to be with you, he would have been.” It’s so cut and dried and logical.  But my girlfriends all commiserate and say “he just couldn’t handle the feelings he had for you.” And the guys laugh at that. “Whatever. Dude just wasn’t that into you.’” And I sit here.

Confused.

Confuddled.

Curious.

Like why do I still think of Dude. Every. Single. Day? Why do I have dreams about him? Life-like real-feeling dreams where I wake up in physical angst? Some where he’s been a total train wreck. Some where he’s content and comfortable, yet longing. For something. Anything. I can’t deny the past life regression. Unless I’m just the best story-teller in the land. But I also can’t deny the fact that we’re not in each other’s lives; that the sad semblance of relationship we had was just completely fucked up and straight-jacket crazy.

Here’s the thing. It’s not like I’m crazy-obsessed-longing every day. He just pops up. In my thoughts. In my dreams. Out of the blue. Out of nowhere. I think of him with kindness. I hope that he’s happy. I hope that he’s blissfully married with a passel of dark-haired Catholic children. I’ve had/will have fulfilling, loving relationships with other men.

But what I really want to know is this:

Was it all a dream?

Am I the best storyteller in the land?

Am I continuing to tell these fantastic stories because, as a species, we thrive on stories; because stories are our air? And… if that’s the case shouldn’t we be able to write our own ending?

. . . He lived happily ever after with an adoring wife, 2.5 children and a dog named Buck and never thought of her again.

. . . She lived happily ever after traveling the globe, writing in coffee shops, and died at 93 from drinking too much tea and never had another thought or dream of him again.

Was he just “not that into me?”

Is my ego wreaking holy havoc trying to deprive me of restful sleep and contentment in general?

I need to know, ladies and gentlemen. I need your guts.

Glimpse of a Life Through Lyrics

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So I speak to you in riddles
‘Cause my words get in my way
I smoke the whole thing to my head
And feel it wash away (1)

Words speak and choose
make sense and lose
capsize the tall tale, but always fail
words speak and choose, make sense and lose
forfeit the tall tale, I always will (2)

I am colorblind
Coffee black and egg white
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am taffy stuck and tongue tied
Stutter shook and uptight
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am fine (3) Read more

Battery Power Low! Otherwise Known As God’s Little Voice Box

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I don’t want to freak you out or anything but God has been speaking to me through my fire detector.

It’s true.

Some people have vivid, colorful dreams of weathered hermits riding royal purple Yaks and wake up feeling inspired and motivated around their life purpose. Others make an omelet and see the face of Jesus in the burnt, crusty bits of Gouda and head out on a pilgrimage. Moses had the burning bush.

But, nope. Not me. I have a Kidde fire alarm. Read more

Confessions & Quests: Finding my Tribe

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I have a confession to make and I feel pretty damn vulnerable putting fingers to keys around it.

(No, I haven’t been watching The Bachelor.)

You ready?

I spent almost two decades of my life wishing I were Native American. What’s more is that, for many of those years, I didn’t consciously recognize it.  Essentially I just wanted to be of this culture as part of a tribe of a people and history that I looked up to.

Instead, I was born into a family of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) which traces back to my 4th or 5th Great Grandparents who lived near Joseph Smith and, upon his death, traveled with Brigham Young to Utah. While my family is amazing, the garments just never fit me and I’ve been searching, studying, and “trying on” different religions and different types of spirituality since I wore a retainer and a turtleneck with frogs smattered on it. Read more

The Gift of Clearing Clutter

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I’ve never been more in love. Since I was a tiny tot I’ve been an organizational freak and used to line up all my patent leather Mary Janes with level precision so that I could hide crackers and Halloween treats in them. My shoes are still lined up, though I now keep the crackers in the cupboard and the Halloween candy has its own drawer, so when I saw this 2012 Declutter and Organize Calendar on mysimplerlife.com I nearly passed out with joy.

Why is this the #1 gift you can give yourself in 2012? Well, I wrote about it a bit here but suffice it to say that when you’re surrounded by heaping mounds of crap it affects so many areas of your life; your spirit, your mental health, your ability to get stuff done, your energy levels. There are even health benefits in decluttering. Clearing your space of clutter opens you up energetically to expand (and even to receive more – though do you really need another pair of Jimmy Choo’s?) Read more