Dear Middle Sch…

Dear Middle School Girl:

Heads up: Everything I’m about to tell you is probably going sound like one big eye-roll-inducing dorky mom cliché à la, “Just be yourself!” or, “Don’t take any wooden nickels”.  You may be tempted to insist that I cannot possibly understand what your life is like because I’m not in your shoes, and that my old-fashioned words of wisdom, while certainly poetic, simply no longer apply, considering that today’s world is vastly different from the world in which I grew up.

But here’s what you need to know:  I not only understand what it’s like to be you … I AM you.  I am you as an adult and I’m visiting from the future by way of … like, this … sort of … advanced time-bending … hologram … Star Trek-inspired technology, only recently discovered by extremely brilliant scientists and discussed at length in numerous TED conference talks, but not yet widely … nevermind … I’ll spare you the boring details; you have enough on your mental plate between the memorization of complicated algebra formulas and the demographic study of world maps.  The point is that I’ve come to share some really great, important and life-changing stuff with you.

My motivation here is partly selfish; I can’t count the number of times I’ve recently said aloud, “If only I’d known then what I know now!” while almost literally feeling the great weight of remorse on my shoulders;  a heavy regret about not having realized my own incredible personal and professional potential in a more timely manner.  Remorse, for the record, weighs about a hundred and twenty five pounds, which is a lot when it’s sitting on your back.   I do not want that for you.  I want your arms to feel light and yet strong, like the wings of a bird, so that you may soar through the open sky that is life, unfettered and happy and free.

If there is only enough room in your middle school survival kit for three tools, here are the ones I recommend insist you choose to pack:

1. Authenticity

What do I mean when I tell you that you must be authentic, or genuine, at all costs, and why is it so important?

Here’s the deal:  In a sea of total confusion and turbulence that is the world of pre-adolescence, it can be extremely difficult to center yourself, to figure out exactly who you are, where you fit, who/what to spend your energy on and what your feelings mean.  You’re juggling schoolwork and friendships and family obligations, all while learning how the world works and what’s expected of you now that you’re no longer a baby.  You’re experiencing hormonal and other physical changes, most of which are uncomfortable and awkward, not to mention exhausting.  You have to adjust to your new life as a contributing member of society and there’s a lot of pressure that comes along with growing up.  There’s just a lot going on all at once, and everyone in your peer group is feeling it, too.  That’s why sometimes kids aren’t very nice to each other, or aren’t able to be as supportive of one another as they might otherwise be.  And that is why it’s so very important to stay true to yourself in the face of all this adversity.

I know it’s easier said than done, and it’s not entirely easy to explain to you HOW to do this, how to keep your head on straight and to stay resilient and to believe in yourself under all of this pressure.  But I can give you a few things to think about, and to focus on, things I think might help you through this time.

I promise you that every single kid you know is also feeling a bit unsteady and insecure, even the ones you think have it all together.  You are not alone in feeling that you don’t entirely fit in and in wanting to be liked and accepted.  But the really great thing is, whatever it is that you feel is “weird” about you is actually what makes you unique and special and interesting and will ultimately be the key to later success if you take ownership of and cultivate these defining aspects of your personality.

Take pride in your quirks and interests, even if other people don’t seem to understand them, and don’t let anyone tell you that you aren’t perfect the way you are.  Don’t ever change how you act, dress or feel in order to please someone else.   If someone is teasing you, it’s because she is struggling with her own insecurities and confusion; not because there is anything wrong with YOU.

Listen to and trust your own inner voice.  Act accordingly.  Do not try to be someone you are not.  Do not for a second think that anyone else is any better or cooler or more interesting than you are.  No one is perfect, but everyone has something wonderful to offer this world.  The point is not to be the coolest, most attractive, best-dressed kid in school; it’s to be a kind, thoughtful, responsible and compassionate human being.  It’s integrity and positivity and self-love and confidence that make you truly awesome and beautiful, I swear.  Besides, you will eventually have your braces removed, grow into the body parts that don’t seem to fit you right now, learn how to make the best of your unique physical attributes and you will end up to be a very attractive woman.  For now, hang in there, stop being so hard on yourself and keep practicing kindess, cultivating your mind and focusing on developing your wonderful sense of humor.  Though you may feel completely awkward and alienated now, your wit, intelligence, sensitivity and ability to connect with others will someday make you a big hit.

2. Self-Esteem

Most of us want to be liked and accepted, and for people to think we are nice.  And I know you care so much about others that the last thing you’d ever want to do is hurt anyone’s feelings.  In fact, one of the most admirable things about you is your empathy and compassion, your willingness to defend the underdog–one of your teachers even sent you home with a letter adorned with a gold star sticker to your mother, praising you for having stood up for an autistic child when she was mercilessly teased by a popular boy.

It’s wonderful to be a kind and loving person, and so important to speak out against injustice and cruelty.  But it’s equally important–vital, even–that you treat yourself with the same respect and compassion that you show others.

Of course you would never be intentionally unkind to anyone, but often in an attempt to avoid hurting someone’s feelings or risking someone not liking or approving of  you, your tendency is to people-please and to put the needs of others ahead of your own.  You give too much of your time and energy to people who wouldn’t do the same for you or who you simply don’t actually really like being around; you compromise your own integrity; you put yourself in situations in which you are not comfortable and in some instances, you actually place yourself in potentially dangerous situations.

What makes your feelings any less valid than those of the kids you spoke up for?  And how can you be equipped to protect others when you aren’t making an effort to protect yourself first?  You can still be a kind person while setting healthy boundaries by speaking up when you are uncomfortable, walking away when you are being verbally attacked or feel otherwise unsafe, and saying no when you are being asked to go along with something you don’t agree with, or even simply when you are invited to participate in an activity in which you have no interest in investing your energy.  Those knots in your stomach are trying to tell you that something is out of balance and that your actions are in conflict with your feelings.  Pay attention to that knotted-up feeling and honor it.  You may come across some resistance from people who feel threatened by your confidence, but remember, people will treat you the way you allow them to treat you, and those same people will only respect you more for having been strong enough to set higher standards for yourself.

3. Persistence

Remember a few years ago when your dad bought you that guitar for Christmas?  Well, guess what.  That guitar still sits somewhere in our garage,  covered in dust, strings broken simply by having disintegrated over time, having never been touched.  Your parents were also generous enough to have paid for private piano lessons for you.  You ended up being very adept at playing the instrument, only you were SO BOOORED with playing scales and you dreaded the obligation of having to meet with your teacher one dark winter night a week when you were already exhausted from the school day and the homework you always left until the last minute, so you quit.  Not wanting to be pushy or to force you into doing something you weren’t truly passionate about, Mom and Dad lovingly gave you permission to quit.  You subsequently also quit playing the violin and the drums.  You quit dance, horseback riding and gymnastics.  As soon as you’d start to make real progress with any of your extracurricular activities,  you’d become too hard on yourself and you felt discouraged and stressed out and you’d give up.

I can’t tell you how much I regret that, as I have found a passion for music in my adult life, and now desperately yearn to be a proficient guitar player, yet struggle to learn to play it.  When I was you at the age you are now, my brain was a willing sponge, effortlessly absorbing the fundamentals of music.  As an adult, it is now over-saturated with decades of acquired information and is now wired to over-analyze everything.  The result is that I find it much more difficult to understand concepts that seemed simple when I was young and in a pure enough state to accept more complex ideas without my mind being boggled in an attempt to make sense of it all as it relates to all of the other stuff of which I now possess knowledge.

Also, you know how you spent the entirety of last summer doing nothing but riding your bike and reading books and watching, “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” nearly every single day with your best friend?  Well, keep this in mind.  Quality free time is an elusive thing when you must spend your days working and staying on top of the house cleaning and errands and bills.  When you’re an adult, there’s lots of fun stuff you get to do and I personally love the work I do so it’s not as depressing as I’m making it sound, but unless you’re a teacher, there are no summer breaks.  It’s difficult to be consistent about practicing the guitar with so many distractions and I constantly find myself wishing I’d understood how important it is to stick with whatever it is you are drawn to, even when it seems tedious, and that I had used all that beautiful free time to cultivate my creative talents.

No one who is truly good at anything became good at that thing without lots and lots of practice.  As my mother always told me, “There’s no free lunch”.  Everything worth doing takes a good deal of effort.  Even fun things require dedication and focus if you want to be able to do them well enough that you may be able to turn them from hobbies into things you can do to make a living.  So if you are drawn to and really interested in something, be prepared that it will take work and will not always feel like fun, but it’s going to be so worth it when you put in the energy and let go of that negative belief that unless you can do it perfectly right away, it’s not worth trying.  Stop being a perfectionist, let go of the fear of failure, keep your eye on the prize and just DO IT!  How can you improve if you never make mistakes to learn from?  No successful person ever made it to where they are without having had the courage to stumble along the way, get up and keep trying.

So promise me that this summer, instead of lying around in the sun listening to your walkman and writing angsty love letters to your boyfriend in Florida the whole time, you will go into the attic and take that guitar down and ask Mom and Dad to sign you up for guitar lessons.  Listen to your walkman, but with the intention of becoming inspired to emulate the artists you admire.  Take those letters and turn their heartfelt, unabashedly emotional words into song lyrics.  And practice, practice, practice.  Please do this.  In doing so, you will save us the pain of having to endure years of unfulfilling, uncreative office jobs.  Talk about BOOORING.

The last thing I have for you is not a piece of advice, but a few words from the heart:

Hang in there, Baby.   You got this.   I love you.

With Jaws Wide Open

Staring at this blank canvas, this formatted window, hoping that if I look into it and through it long enough, the words I have yet to write will reveal themselves to me the way a man’s face is supposed to materialize if you stare at the photo of the coffee beans long enough.    Being here, filling this space with words, is important.  It’s important because writing is something that I spend more time thinking about doing than actually doing.   And if I continue to live a life in which I merely think about doing things rather than ever actually doing them, I will become a very remorseful old woman.  So putting words here, whether they are interesting or entertaining or profound, or in this case not yet any of those things, is an exercise in forward momentum.  It’s the brain equivalent of weightlifting.   Nothing worth having comes easy.

I need to find a focus, so I close my eyes and open a book to a random page and when I open my eyes, here is what I read underneath the place where my finger has come to rest:

“She didn’t answer, so I opened the door, because she always leaves it unlocked, even though I don’t think that’s safe, because sometimes people who seem good end up being not as good as you might have hoped.”

This is not my ideal topic.  But the challenge of the exercise is that whatever words my finger lands on and that I subsequently read, I must use as a launching pad, whether I like it or not.

I don’t like to talk about the pathological liar I naively took under my wing, the girl who told me she was dying.  Dying of AIDS, which she’d contracted through oral sex with her girlfriend, who’d gotten the HIV virus from a blood transfusion received in South Africa.  Dying a slow death by way of kidney failure, enduring weekly dialysis treatments.  Dying, like her ex girlfriend, the love of her life, had died, the one whose lifeless body she’d found after the poor girl committed suicide because  … she had cancer.  Dying, and she wanted it to be me who called her mother, the mother who’d abused her and then disowned her, to break to Mommy Dearest the terrible news of her daughter’s passing, whenever that day should come.  Dying, and she was scared.  So scared, she said with tears in her eyes, that she wished she’d never even told me about it.

I don’t like to think about it, because when I think about how easily this person was able to hack into my internal network, how she so easily slipped through the gaping cracks in my personal firewall, scrambling my perceptions and manipulating my relationships with others, I am appalled by what was my utter lack of self-preservation instinct.  Thanks to my still-intact suspicion meter and some shockingly revealing Google search results, I discovered that this person had been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and had wreaked such havoc on those in her life that she’d had to relocate from state to state to escape the corners she’d painted herself into.  It’s frightening to think that this person was so mentally ill, yet so highly intelligent, that she was instantly and effortlessly able to locate my emotional jugular vein with laser point accuracy and prey upon my compassionate, loving and accepting nature.  But, as it turns out, that is the way of the sociopath.

Though I’ve since installed personal security cameras in every corner of my brain and wrapped barbed wire around my heart, hand-picking who I hand the wire cutters to, it sickens me to think about how vulnerable I left myself then, how I walked around for years with loose stitches where thick skin should have been, my guts peeking through the holes, and how simply by sheer luck, I was not at any point completely eviscerated.

I will continue to be a compassionate person.  I will never stop rooting for the underdog.  I will always find delicate beauty in that which is flawed.  But I will carry a pair of x-ray binoculars, and when I arrive at Grandmother’s house with a cake and a little pot of butter (sure to cure any ailment!) and hear a faint growl coming from down the hall, I will look through them before opening the bedroom door.

Pork Rind Wishes and Mobile Home Dreams

My discussion with Cecelia about why, though we’re up to our necks in debt even though we work an exorbitant amount of hours, we shouldn’t be the ones to win the lottery:

Cecelia:
Why not ME?

Shannon:
You have too many teeth, first of all.
When was the last time an attractive young Jewish
mother living in a lovely house with an actual picket fence
in upstate New York and taking her baby to Mommy and
Me classes weekly won the lottery?  If she did, it certainly wasn’t
publicized.  It’s always a 100 year old woman
with facial whiskers and on her deathbed,
a dentally challenged redneck in a terry cloth robe
and prickly plastic hair curlers stumbling drunk and bewildered
out of her trailer, or a big fat burly truck driver
wearing a mesh hat and a Confederate Flag/lightning bolt
T-shirt with pit stains chomping on a gloppy wad of chewing tobacco.

Cecelia:
Yeah – and you never hear about the struggling VO
artist in LA winning and being able to pay off her
debt and focus completely on her career. Nope , it’s
always someone whose dream it is to own a Winnebago.

****Not that there’s anything WRONG with wanting to own a Winnebago . . . I kind of want one, too.  But I’d use it to house poor orphans and abandoned kittens, for the record.  I’d save the WORLD with that thing.

Shit My Mom Says: Volume One

I’m going to pick up a clay cooker from a guy on Craigslist. Dad was going to come with me but he isn’t feeling well so I’ll go alone. In case the guy, Russ, (details left on desk by the kitchen phone) hacks up my body & feeds me to the ducks, I want you to know that I love you very much. And if it comes to trial, I think Dad should get the $15 back that I’m paying for the clay pot.

The Update:

I wasn’t murdered, after all. I arrived at an apartment complex (not good) and when I knocked on the door, I heard two men talking. The door opened, revealing SUCH a handsome man and who introduced me to his friend, Jack, who just dropped in to chat. I hesitated to go in but all was on the up-and-up. The handsome creature, Russ, was obviously moving out as the apartment was empty (another bad sign), but both men were friendly and nice and I came away with a new Schlemmertopft clay cooker, and The Dreamboat got $15. I couldn’t have been in the apt. for more than 1 minute. I almost asked for Russ’s age, marital status, and reason for moving but then decided I should just leave while the getting was good. OXOXOXOX

My Parachute Is The Color of a Rainbow

Him: “What do you want to DO?”

Me: ” … I don’t know.”

Him: “You see?  That’s the problem. You can’t not know.  You have to know.”

He was getting all kinds of rabbit-hole deep, the way people do after a night of bar-hopping, pot-smoking and ocean night swimming in 40 degree weather.  I didn’t want to talk about my lack of focus at 3:30 AM; I preferred his original suggestion that we just stand there in the driveway and hug for a long time.  Besides, the whiskey buzz had worn off now and I was no longer able to indulge him by expressing a genuine understanding of his scattered, spoken-aloud thought bubbles.

He was not off-base in his analysis of me; my entire life has been comprised of a string of aborted efforts to find the one thing I hoped I’d stick with, that Thing that might define me.   I’ve been a horseback rider, a drummer, a violinist, a piano player, a dancer, a singer, a writer, an actor, a fluent French language speaker, a jewelry-maker, a personal-trainer-in-training … and my attention to each of these pursuits has inevitably waned as soon as I’ve begun making any sort of real, significant progress in any one of these areas of interest — I’ve always been terribly commitment-phobic.

When I first read this excerpt from Sylvia Plath’s, “The Bell Jar”, my heart raced with a sense of recognition and affinity:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.  From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.  One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.  I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.  I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

So while his insight was appreciated and in general an excellent piece of advice well-suited for the formerly lost Me, I found myself protesting.  I explained it like this:  When I was younger, I constantly asked myself, ‘What are you doing with your life?’.  I felt that I had to answer this question, to identify my ‘Greater Purpose’ in order to make sense of my existence.  I put all this pressure on myself to be something greater and more impressive than who I am, to have attained tangible achievements, to be able to answer the question, ‘What do you do?’ in a single word.  I now realize that this constant searching is a waste of time.  All this focus on the future has taken away my ability to enjoy the moment, to be present and appreciative of where I am NOW.

What do I want to do?  I want to do THIS–all of it.  I want to stand here in the cold and hug for a long time.  I want to drink coffee at an outdoor cafe with my best friend and talk and laugh and feel the sun on my face.  I want to act.  I want to hike on Sundays.  I want to play guitar.  I want to cuddle with my cat.  I want to watch movies.  I want to be inspired by music.  I want to read and never stop learning.  I want to write.  I want to take road trips.  I want to spend time with my niece and remember to see the world as she does, through her baby eyes. I want to be a good friend.  I want to love and be loved.  All of these things I am doing.  And that finally feels like enough … Almost.

I’ll never stop striving to attain a sense of ultimate satisfaction–to find a reliable and stable source of income which will allow me more free time and resources to devote to creative pursuits and travel, to get my professional acting career back on track and to get out of debt … but if I focus only on the things I don’t yet have, I’ll fail to appreciate the things I do.  I’m not giving up, but I’ve learned to let go, to stop setting myself up for disappointment by chasing the elusive, to hold on to what’s mine and embrace it.  I’ve always been a Grass-Is-Greener sort of person but now I know that I’m ALREADY on the Other Side and it’s beautiful here.

Everything But Everything

I’d taken a break from you, only I’d tricked myself into believing it was more than that–no, not a hiatus; rather a firm and final act of protest!  I’d tried my hardest to allow my logical mind to override the stubborn female nesting instinct thing, to Zenfully open my mind in order to see it your way (with the side benefit of appeasing my own restless and rebellious spirit), but it turns out it’s not easy to brainwash yourself–you’re smarter than you think.  I had to go-you left me no choice.  I knew you wouldn’t chase me; you already told me once you never fight for love, that you’ll never selfishly hold someone from being free of you if that’s what she needs.  You said that you can love without needing.  How terribly well-adjusted, progressive and non-codependent of you–Dr. Phil would be proud–but I want something real, not just the illusion of something real–and a love like ours is something I would fight for if I thought there were a chance of winning.

In that almost-a-month I stayed busy.  I worked too much.  I went to the gym and read books and watched movies and plucked away at my guitar, making progress.  I regressed, indulging the crush of a far-too-young-for-me musician who dedicated songs to me from the stage, and I chose not to correct them when they called me his girlfriend.  It felt good to hear the word, to be Acknowledged.  Though I dreamed of you more than I ever have, I was too busy loving myself to concern myself with loving you.  Only once when I’d flipped over the photo of us in a frame, planted it face-down, and came home to find that the housekeepers had propped it back up, did my heart squeeze a little too hard … well, only once until a few days ago when I texted you to pick your brain about Canadian musicians, and you called and made me laugh, and I missed you.

So on Sunday afternoon we hiked and we talked, as if I hadn’t just gone through a phasing-you-out phase, as if you hadn’t noticed any time lapse at all because the whole time, you’d known I’d come back.  You hadn’t been waiting, but you had been expecting me.  We hiked and we talked.  I didn’t listen as much as I wanted to; the iced double espresso rendered me attention-deficient.  I rambled.  I tripped over rocks.  I delighted in the sunshine and in the familiar smell of your hair.  It was as if there were only Us in the world, the way it always feels in The Moment.  The Moment is the ruse that dupes me into believing that what we are is safely mine and can be counted on. It tells me to trust in this, to forget the rest.  It says, “All that matters is now”.  It convinces me that the wearing of blinders is a perfectly acceptable solution to the problem of knowing more than I want to know. I listen, and pretend to agree.