You Hit Eternity You Will Be Set Free

Dawn, who I have nicknamed “She-Ra Sunshine” because of her amazing ability to go through so much crap but still be strong, happy, and positive, had her BIL recently pass away. The post she did today was so positive because she felt still connected to him. Like he was still all around them. Signs that he was there and still looking after them have been all over the place. This totally reminded me of my own deeply felt losses in my family and how I have experienced moments that I know people who have passed are still around.

One such moment I experienced when I was 19 and home from college over winter break. My grandfather and I were very close when I was a child. He died when I was 13 from lung cancer and diabetes. By the time he died, it had been 2 years since he was actually the grandfather I knew so I don’t remember the last two years of his life. I feel that this is because I have blocked it out. That my 11 year old brain couldn’t handle it so it just let the images of him as a sick person float in and out of my consciousness.

Anyway, I have great memories of my grandfather. My grandparents had a house in Long Beach Island, NJ and every summer my mom and I would go down for the whole month of August. When I was a child, I used to get up from bed without actually fully waking up in the morning and go downstairs to where my grandparents were having their coffee in the living room. I would crawl into my grandfathers lap and go back to sleep. There are pictures of this ritual which helps me recall what it looked like but I still remember how he smelled. Mainly of cigarettes and Old Spice. I sit here even typing this now with tears in my eyes being able to recall the scent but not actually able to recreate it. It’s weird how you can recall a scent but not actually ever smell it again. It just sticks in your noggin, doesn’t it? Anyway, he also used to sing this song in the morning when we would sit down to eat breakfast, I can’t remember what the actual lyrics were but it was something about “Ham and Eggs”. I can literally picture him in process of sitting down in one of the yellow chairs at the dining table singing this song.

So, you get it, I have a lot of memories like that. To describe what this man meant to me as a child sums it up in what I said to my mom when I was 4 and didn’t have a clue what marriage meant. I told her that when I grew up I was going to marry my grandfather. Then she had to explain to me that it doesn’t work like that but the sentiment that I loved him so much that I wanted him around me forever is what you need to remember. We had a special bond.

Back to Winter Break 1994, I was dating Stumpy and had just pledged a sorority but I was kind of down because I had just switched my major from theatre to psychology. The stage fright had just sort of taken over and I didn’t know what to do so I had to switch. I remember being so sad that this was the end of my dream. I wanted to be a singer and I really thought that was what I was meant to be. So I just felt lost and afraid that if I didn’t sing then I would have to be this totally different person. I guess I sort of defined myself by singing and without it, I no longer had a definition.

I remember crying in my room one day, like one of those uncontrollable sobbing moments that make you exhusted so I ended up falling asleep. I think somewhere in it, I asked God for help. Help came in a form I did not expect, my grandfather. I dreamt about him and in my dream he just kept telling me over and over that it was ok. That I was going to be ok. Those were the words that he used but the feelings I was getting were that I wasn’t just my good singing voice, I was a person who other people loved and it wasn’t important what I did, what was important was who I was as a person. That was a feeling but he didn’t actually say those words. I remember waking up and feeling better, like a weight had been lifted. I thanked him, told him I loved him and never said a word about the dream to anyone lest they think I was coo coo for co co puffs. The next evening our family sat down at the table to eat and my brother who was 9 asked my mother very abruptly “Can you talk to people that are dead?”. My mother said “No John I don’t think you can, why?”. He then replied “Well, I thought I was talking to Grandpa in my room and I asked him if he was my guardian angel and he said “No, I’m Debbie’s”". I almost choked on my food. My brother hadn’t even really known my grandfather. He was 3 when he died. I told my parents about the dream I had the day before and the only expanation that any of us could come up with is that this had to be him letting me know he was still around. That I was not alone and he would always be there. My parents are not big believers in the supernatural or any of this coming back from the dead to give you a message stuff so their admission that they believed it was actually him was like an awesome validation for me that there was something to this life after death thing after all.

The only other communication from the other side that I can recall was much more subtle. My grandmother passed away when I was 23. She was as important to me as my grandfather. I was her only granddaughter and let’s just say, I got some more attention because of that. My grandmother was much more reserved than my grandfather so it’s kind of funny that his communication was on a much grander scale than hers. Although I do have to say that after I got the news that she had died I prayed and asked her not to come to me as a ghost or anything(I’m serious, I did). So maybe that was part of why she hasn’t shown up in such an obvious way. I believe my grandmother shows up through my great aunt. My great aunt is her older sister, she is 91 and still truckin. My great aunt gives me a $100 every year for my birthday. $50 from her and $50 from my grandmother. She also seems to know when I need help monetarily without me ever having to say anything at all. My grandmother helped pay for things that I really wanted to do without me knowing that she was the one paying for it. I got to go to Europe with a school choral program when I was 17 because of my grandmother. I was able to pay for my school books in college because of my grandmother. When I am really in a bind financially, no one can actually “bail me out” per se, but when there is an opportunity that I want to take but need some extra cash to do it…Aunt Greta is ALWAYS there to help. I would NEVER ask for it but every once in a great while Aunt Greta is there with a check to help. These aren’t big sums of money, let me point out. She’s not Donald Trump or anything but it’s just a enough to help me take the step I need to take. I believe that my grandmother is actually behind my aunt’s strange tendency to know when things in my life are going to take a turn and I’m going to need some extra help. The giving is all Aunt Greta because that is just the kind of generous person she is but the timing of these gifts is all my grandmother. This is HER way of coming through. No flashy dreams, no appearing to my brother in his room because her way would be something like this. Helping me out without me knowing it was her who did it.

There is one more way she has come through and perhaps this is the most meaningful way for me. I sang “Amazing Grace” at her funeral with my aunt. I tried to get out of it but my mother told me my grandmother would be so happy that I sang because she always loved my voice. I sang the song without any hesitation or stage fright. I felt completely at peace standing in front of this large group of people. I have never felt that since but I will never forget how nice it felt to sing and not be scared. I believe she guided me through it.

So those are my evidence that there is a thing called life after death. They are good enough evidence for me, I hope that you have had some of your own.

Men Aren’t Like Women-Thank God

When women are younger and we get confused about men we sometimes turn to our mothers for an explanation. Usually we want to know why one doesn’t like us or why they do so much that they won’t stop calling even though we have never called them back. Our mothers typically just say “because they’re men” or “that’s just the way boys are”. For most of us, this explanation is not enough. We are SURE there is more to it than that. The answer seems too blase, too simple and too generalized. What we dismiss as our mother’s bitterness towards the male gender or her complete disregard for one’s individuality is actually based on totally relevant experience. We forget that this woman has more knowledge of the nature of dealing with the male gender than we do. We think she must be scorned by her own background with men so we immediately chalk up ourselves as being different from her and therefore try to understand the opposite sex in a more “modern” fashion. Many an author and psychologist have made loads of money off of women’s fascination with decoding the thoughts and actions of the male of the species. Do you think hoards of men made “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” a bestseller? No, of course not. Women did. Persuing the ultimate goal in understanding men. The problem is, what we don’t realize as teenagers and young women, men are really much more simple. Our mothers were right.

Now, by “simple”, I don’t mean stupid or dense. I mean uncomplicated as compared to their female counterparts. Are there exceptions to the rule? Probably but very very few. We, as women, are taught to examine everything. Examine our feelings and actions. Do they match up? Are we in connection with ourselves? Men are not taught this. Even with the millions of single mothers bringing up little men, they are still not taught to study their feelings. Which is fine with me. Frankly, the sight of a man crying uncontrollably in public makes me more than a little uncomfortable. I know that makes me sound mean and extremely hypocritical given my mostly progressive views. If I thought that men would be ultimately happier exploring every feeling that they have, I would put up with the public sobbing, hell, I would cheer it on. I don’t think men or women would benefit from being the “same” emotionally just as we are not the same physically.

Here’s why. If I had someone deciphering my every action, trying to figure out how that action reflected my feelings towards them, I would lose my ever loving mind. Frankly, sometimes I wonder how Jason doesn’t start axe murdering people in the street out of sheer frustration. Seriously. I can’t believe sometimes how I haven’t driven the man insane. Then, it comes to me. It’s really easy to figure out. Without us, men would never know what they are feeling.
You know how every guy in his 30s has that unmarried guy friend that acts like he is still in college? The eternal frat guy? The guy that you can’t ever see with a woman over the age of 25? This guy never has to “delve deep” because no woman has ever made him do it. If they have, he’ll freak out and run like hell in the opposite direction. You’ll spend your days greeting every 23 year old he brings to your place while wondering where that cool down to earth 29 year old went to. She won’t be back. Stop wondering. This guy will never find a girl that you will be able to have a discussion comparing Cosby Show to Growing Pains with. She won’t even be able to pick out which Beverly Hills 90210 character she was most like or know who Zack Morris is. This because, at 23, most girls are still reading self help books and trying not to “scare guys off” with their pesky “feelings”. You did it at 23, after all, didn’t you?

As you grew older though and got more “hands on” experience, you realized you can’t understand men in the context of being a woman. There are fundamental differences. You find instead of wondering why they can’t articulate how they feel about every stinkin thing that happens, you find you are GLAD they don’t. Sometimes you just want to take things at face value too. Sometimes you get tired of trying to get beneath the surface of everything. If you do feel like digging, most likely you’ll call one of your girlfriends to help you. Then you’ll curl up on the couch with your significant other to watch “Lost”, have him grab your boob a couple of times and all of the complications of life fade away.

Men can resolve their emotional issues without having to decipher why they felt the way they did.  Men usually have four avenues of doing this: sex, sports, drinking and eating.  We have a multitude of avenues but if we use them in excess(like eating too much or buying that sweater we just had to have but couldn’t afford), we are remorseful.  Which brings on more negative feelings.  So, in turn, we eventually have to figure out why we filtered our emotions into whatever distructive thing we did instead of “dealing” with them.  Men don’t question, unless forced, their avenues for dealing with emotions.  Sometimes they don’t even know they are feeling anything at all.  It’s as simple as women look at life through an emotional glass that men don’t have.  They don’t see the world through this glass no matter how much we try to force them to do it.  They are neither taught nor born with this emotional glass so how can they be like us?  Why would we want them to be?

I, for one, love men.  I always have.  I have always had guy friends and I dated a lot.  It’s always funny trying to get guy friends to analyze your relationships with other men.  For one, usually your guy friends want to sleep with you.  The exception being if they are gay, which I have to say gay men are the best friends to women.  It’s like having the other teams plays before the game starts.  They will be honest.  They don’t care if you will sleep with them or not after they tell you that the guy you think is in love with you is just trying to get in your pants and he doesn’t give a crap about your involvement with Greenpeace.  The hetero male friend though…this is where it gets sketchy.  There is a fine line between an insight into the male netherworld and a plan to erode your feelings for the man in discussion.

My relationship with Jason is actually a perfect example of this.  Jason and I were friends since we were 16, but didn’t become a couple until we were 25.  Now, this isn’t the movies, so no, he was not in love with me since we were 16.  He didn’t have deep rooted feelings for me the whole time we were friends, plotting our future together.  Of course he didn’t.  He’s a man, baby.  I have no doubt in my mind though that he probably wanted to sleep with me that whole time.  Which, as you know, is not the equivilent to being in love with someone.  Anyway, from the time he met me until I was 22, I was obviously deeply infatuated with Wolf.  So, Jason and I would have many discussions regarding Wolf and his “mysterious” behavior.  One day, Wolf was all about me, the next, he was running 1000 miles away, not to be heard from for weeks.  Jason would attribute his behavior to being “a guy who wanted to sleep with me but not date me”.  While I think he was right, Jason would damage his objective credibility on the subject by calling Wolf “Art Garfunkel”(Wolf had a fro when he was in first grade and unfortunately for him, a first grade picture of him was placed in the senior high yearbook.  I thought it was possibly the cutest thing I had ever seen but then again, I was very blinded by hormones) and proclaim that I was “an idiot to like this loser who would never see how wonderful you are”.  Jason would make fun of him and instead of seperating what I knew was true(Wolf wanted to sleep with me but not date me), I would discount the whole discussion.  Purely based on the fact that I knew that Jason was male and driven the same way Wolf was, by sex.  I should have seperated the good insight from the male defense mechanism(i.e. trying to diminish the other guy’s grasp on my emotions by belittling him).

In there also lies the second problem, even when we do go to our guy friends for the answer to our quandry, the answer is again too simple for us to comprehend.  How can it be that simple?  Girls, because it is that simple.  Accept it and move on.  Guys are easy.  Think about how it is for them.  Holy Jesus.  Thank god I am not a man.

No I Haven’t Stopped Blogging

I just haven’t had time.  This last month has been a whirlwind.  It hasn’t really hit me yet that I am leaving Los Angeles for good.  I’m sure it will when I come back from Philadelphia (I’m heading out there on Thanksgiving to bring the pup back to my parents while we do our cross country trip) and all of our possessions are gone.  I wish I didn’t have to fly with her.  It’s causing a lot of anxiety because once when I flew with her they made me put her in cargo instead of letting her travel in the cabin.  I am praying I can get her into the cabin with me.  Due to her size, it’s questionable.  I have pulled out every stop though.  I got her a bag that is a little bigger and the groomer has cut her hair so short that she appears smaller than she does with her usual fluffy coat.  Cross your fingers for me, people.

Due to all the moving preparations I really have nothing to talk about except for boring ass address changes and the fact that my car smelled like burnt ass last night (there was some smoke also).  Did I mention this is the car we are traveling cross country in?  Fabulous.  Since I am having writer’s block due to stress and other Wordpress related retardedness, I am going to continue my 100 things.

79. I want to see Antarctica before I die.  Seriously.  No joke.

78. I am hoping to volunteer for the Red Cross after I get my masters in psych so I can go to disaster zones to help as a trauma counselor.

77. I never thought about what I wanted my wedding to be like until Jason and I were dating for about 3 years (never thought about as a kid).

76. People. I am a good dancer.

75. Jason is not.

74. My brother is 10 years younger than I am.  I was more like his 2nd mom than his sister which was no fun for him.

73. My IQ is 130.

72. One of my most favorite places in the world is still my old bedroom at my parent’s house in Philadelphia.

71. I have always been insanely close to my mom.  A little codependent actually.  Since I moved far away from her though, we have a better and more balanced relationship.  I love my mom.  She rocks.

70. For about a year I took ecstasy quite a few times.  It was the best drug I ever experienced but as soon as I saw the MTV special with the girl who had brain damage from it, I stopped.

Packing Cleaning Panicking Packing

The panic attacks are now down to one a day. Whoo hoo! Progress, people, progress. If you have ever had one, you know that is still one too many. I’m exhausted most of the time these days. Let me tell y’all, anxiety is fricking tiring. I have a panic attack and then I feel like I could sleep for a week.

This weekend was spent packing and cleaning. Friday night, Jason and I did go out on our “date night” to see The Departed. Um, great flick. We both walked out saying that this is Scorsese’s Oscar. So good. With Matt Damon, Marky Mark(I can’t help it, I still call him that), and Leo DiCaprio in the cast, well, it was nice to look at.

On Sunday morning, I got to hang out with my friend Mike that I don’t see very often anymore. I miss him. It was nice to sit there with Mike and Jason and just goof around. They both make me so happy. We ate out and I didn’t have a full blown attack! Progress at every turn. I’m a little less crazy everyday (well, sort of).

Since my allergic reaction I have been getting up at 5:30am everyday to make a little eggs and toast to take my steroids. It sounds strange but I believe that I just happened to wake at that time when I first started taking them. Anyway, I have been taking that time every morning to kind of meditate and pray. I lost aspects of my religion when I left my comfy suburb of Philadelphia and I couldn’t quite reconcile what I had been taught and what my experiences were. So, instead of trying to reconcile it (cause that takes thought and effort) and form a solid belief system, I just kind of turned away from God entirely.

My Christianity is not something I discuss on here often, largely because I don’t agree with the fanatic Christians that seem to take center stage in the media these days. I feel like being a Christian has become a dirty word or that being a Christian makes me naive and stupid. In reality, I have thought long and hard in the last few weeks about the religion that I was more or less born into. As with any religion people can mold it into anything they want it to mean.

I can’t buy that homosexuals are going to hell. Sorry. I can’t buy that my Jewish future husband won’t be joining me in heaven either. Not so much. I don’t see God the way some Christians do I guess. I see him as loving more than punishing, I guess.

So every morning since the reaction I have been getting up and praying as the sun rises. It’s nice. I feel like since I am having these panic attacks about dying that maybe part can be alleviated by getting a sense of what I really believe will happen when I die. I long for that belief I held as a child of the eternal afterlife party in the sky. Maybe I do still believe that a little, maybe I don’t. I feel like once I get a clearer sense of it my fear won’t be able to overtake me anymore. Of course I won’t know until I really do die the truth of it all but at least I can have some faith that no matter what happens, I will be ok.

Talk is Cheap

My friend wrote a comment today on a previous post that made me think about the fact that I write much better than I talk. For instance, if you would have asked me how I was doing the day I wrote that post, I probably would have told you that I am “good”. I probably would have told you about my plans for my move or the Jamaica vacation or the cross country trip. If you emailed me that day, you would have gotten a response very close to the post I wrote. For me, writing has always been the best way to express my feelings. The deepest ones. If I tried to say what I say on this blog in a conversation I probably would be nervously laughing and trying to gauge how you are feeling about me the whole time. In the end, I wouldn’t say half the things I say on here or in email or on birthday cards. I think when I speak; I am way too busy trying to assess how the other person is receiving the info than what I am truly trying to get across.

In junior high, I started a journal. I found my outlet for everything I held in. Back then, we still wrote letters and mailed them instead of sending emails across the ether. When I was angry at people, my mother would tell me to write all my feelings down in a letter to them and then put it in a drawer somewhere. Whatever I did, I was NOT to mail the letter. Unfortunately, I never did get the hang of that. I ALWAYS mailed them or gave them to the people. Sometimes that was a moronic thing to do and I would learn a lesson but sometimes it actually helped. I could never keep how I felt about people around me to myself. Thankfully, most of the time I was writing how much I loved them not how much I wished they hadn’t kissed my crush behind the cafeteria at lunch.

There have been moments on this blog where I wanted to praise people in my world. I haven’t because I don’t want to name them on here. It’s enough that I am exposing Jason to the world without his participation. It’s a whole different ball of wax to start writing about friends and family who get more than a little freaked out even thinking of any of their business being broadcast for anyone who googles “deb deborah cheat on my husband”. This is why my exboyfriends all have goofy names (I know one would KILL me if he knew I had a blog and was talking about him at all). I have even given a few of my friends pseudonyms to protect their identity. There are moments though that they strike a cord with me so much that I want to tell the world how awesome they are. How thankful I am for them. How selfless they can be. How without them I wouldn’t be who I am. How sometimes I just wish they lived down the street so I could tell them this funny thing that happened to me that day or cry to them about how I am so confused all the time.
Then there are the people I have lost touch with. The ones that let me go or I let go because at the time, I thought it was the right thing to do. There wasn’t any animosity or anger; it was just “time” for us to part ways. There are a few who I think about today and know I shouldn’t have let them go so easily. I should have called and called until they picked up the phone. I should have told them how much they meant to me when they finally picked it up. I know that some would have gone away no matter how hard I tried to keep them near but it doesn’t make me miss them any less. There are moments when I am feeling alone and I know one of them would have known exactly how I was feeling. They would have been able to relate better than anyone else, after all, they were my friend for a reason. We related.

My family is even more difficult for me to talk about on here. One reason is that my mom could be reading it. Even before I told my mom about it though, I have never delved back into my family’s past (except maybe for a mention of something here or there) or my childhood. It wasn’t exceptionally good or bad. As with everyone there is one glaring thing that every therapist latches onto for dear life as soon as they hear it because it’s so obviously traumatizing. I don’t want to get into that on here though because it just doesn’t seem relevant for me at 31 years old. Did I learn some bad habits from it? Do I struggle with coping mechanisms that are terribly outdated and overused? Sure but they are my problems. Not my parents or family. They did the best they could and they love me. They always have, I have always felt their love and that is something not everyone can say. So I try not to expose their lives too much on here.  Plus, we have the same last name; I can not hide them with goofy nicknames.

As time goes on, hopefully I will find a way to praise the people on here in a way that they are comfortable with.  I hope I can do them justice when I finally do.  For now, I guess I’ll just go back to saying “thank you” to them in birthday cards and email.