Dear Mom...

I miss you all the time.

I dream about you. Twice in the last week. Usually about not being able to save you. About being terrified you would die. And then I wake up and remember...you did. A year ago on Friday.

I tell myself the dreams are normal. It's grief. It works that way. Still... I hate waking up. Dreaming is the only time I still get to see your face.

It's going to be a long, long life without you in it.

How it is now...

This is how it is now.

Iris' only make me think of my mother. Eucalyptus..my dad. I put both at their grave on holidays, birthdays, and on days when Trader Joe's had a flower sale. I plan on tattooing both on my right arm along with lilies for my grandma, a red rose for grandpa, white orchids for Greg and tiger lilies for Leslie. It's a lot of loss to look at every day, and I want it to be pretty.

Things have changed. Healed. Stayed scarred. What matters most is more internal now. It's as if losing all of my anchors forced me to become my own weight in the world. Oddly enough, it's the best I think I've ever felt. I am not afraid to be alone. I can eat by myself without texting everyone in my phone book.

I don't keep busy. I don't clean the house every week. Sometimes I let the dishes pile up. I leave the house without make-up on. I don't worry about who sees me...I like what they are looking at.

I don't return most phone calls. I stopped writing letters back when I'm too busy. I don't do people favors and they get mad when they don't appreciate it. I just don't do them in the first place. I don't resent not being in charge 100% of the time. I still like to be the boss though.

I eat what I want. I still feel guilty after...but I do it anyways. My hair is long and red again. Like when I was 15. I'm all curves. It's been years since I could count my abs. I still want those back. but not enough to be hungry or sweat it out in the rain when it's 32 degrees outside. I have acknowledged my deep and abiding hatred for gyms that don't look like spas. I live in the same house I grew up in, and have stopped telling people where I'm headed next.

I met most of my heroes from when I was young and met most of my teenaged self's goals. I have new goals. I care less when I don't win. I still like to win though.

I love being in a strong marriage and grateful for it every day, although I wish it was legal in my home state. I am planning a wedding anyway. I can't afford anything fancy and am struggling to accept that It might not be perfect. I seem to have downgraded from Type A to Type B+. I'm happy about it.

I cook. All the time. I read again. I work. Some days are good and others aren't. Little things matter less. Most things are little things. I get excited when something gets me excited. I have less desire to breed and a bigger wanderlust than ever before. I want to see Africa soon. And Tokyo. And Greece. And maybe Peru.

I still want more money. I have more straight people who own beige everything in my life than I ever thought possible. And I genuinely like most of them. I feel like a grown-up. Real Age.com says that even though I'm 30 I'm really only 22. I think it's because I lied to the computer.

I don't pretend to like yoga anymore. I like stretching and it is totally different. I like yoga pants. I'm over the actual yoga though. There are lots of friends I let go of. I still love them. I just don't make any effort. The connection has been left to wither on the vine and disappear from lack of care. I'm suddenly comfortable throwing stuff away. I donate things. Often. I have less and worry as much as before. Which would indicate that I am a worrier...and that getting more won't help.

I still want to write a book. But know for a fact it won't happen this year. And I don't feel bad about that. I run the heater when I'm cold. I run again. When I run, I think of my mom. I am hopelessly in love with my very best friend and playmate in the whole entire world. Sometimes I still wonder what she sees in me. But I don't think she's going to leave. I don't think I will either. Not ever.

I feel lucky more than I feel like the universe has it in for me. Most of the time I am hopeful, bordering on content. Sometimes I wish for things I shouldn't want and feel bad about it. I don't worry about missing out when I stay in. I I don't miss New York. I want LA in my life more...but am not ready to move there just yet.

I love my family. I am learning to let go of being angry. I am still really angry at fewer and fewer people. I wish I could afford hypnosis to speed up the forgiveness process. I am finally old enough to understand why everyone was so worried about me as a kid.

Everything is uncertain and for once I am okay with it.

How I want it to be... is going to change this year... just like it always does. I am not keeping score.

My main resolutions this year include indulging. Like burning the expensive candles I buy instead of "saving" them. The same goes for drinking the good wine that is sitting in my pantry. And buying flowers for myself when I bring them to my folks.

They also include donating money to charity without thinking about stuff I wish I had. Spending my time in fulfilling ways. Running marathon #2 for the other parent I lost. Making Mau and Rawr real. Continuing to please myself first. Enjoying every day. Learning new cooking techniques. Taking a ballroom dance class to remember my grandparents who took each other dancing every Friday night their entire 80+ years. Working where I am, not wishing I was somewhere else. Traveling. Pulling together the fragments that are still scattered. Loving the people I love as hard and unapologetically as I can. Loving myself the same way.

As far as lessons learned and hopes for the future, this is the first year of my concious life that I have decided, for now, to just let it all be. There are hopes, and stuff was learned. And it is not going to move me forward in any meaningful way to make checklists out of my life.

For today at least... it was enough to just do a couple things I needed to do, then go for a run, drink coffee with cats and wait for J's smiling face to get home. Not bad 2012...not bad at all.

Letting it all hang out...

For most of my life I have made people around me sigh and shake their heads before dispensing their personal list of Too's in my direction. Everyone seems to have this list of unsolicited advice for me. I'm too open, too sexy, too aggressive, too trusting, too impulsive, too free, too outspoken, too opinionated, too fat, too skinny, too trashy, too uptight, too forthcoming, too honest... too much.

And I never know what they are talking about. Usually because I don't remember much.

My memory of the last 15 years is a jumbled mess. San Francisco is a whirl of rooftop photo shoots, other people's boyfriends, punk shows, Joey's couch, before-they-were stars gays, knives in boots, pretty girls I was afraid to talk to and booze and crazy haircuts and roaming the Mission pre-dawn waiting to run into people I knew I would find. I never called anyone back then. I remember that I never made plans.

Austin came next. Desert and cockroaches and being all alone, cowboy style. Driving across the country in my little ford ranger and stopping at every truck stop I could find. Te city itself is a whirl of clubs, music, Miss Marla, Boys before they were Boys, fights, drunks, bats, punks, bikes, drag clubs, chickens, Kinky Friedman and Willie Nelson, TV studios, cigarettes, pickup trucks, cameras and pretty bois. Well, I guess there was that bartender. And the tatted up marine I loved. And the fashion model. Oh yeah...and Dallas Inequity. Okay, so Austin I sort of remember. But I took pictures constantly. That helps.

In New York I put down the camera so the rock star and I could go on tour. I was skinny and modeling for lots of things and it was always 3am every time I looked at a clock and I was always in heels and always had a cocktail. There was lots of kissing and not much else. I was sick a lot. Everyone was beautiful in an ugly way. Everyone was nice and it threw me. That and it was dirty. And friggin freezing. I remember finally figuring out that the entire city wanted something at all times and it was too much. The hunger and desperation of people trying to Be Somebody.. it was too damn cold for that. That's what I remember about New York.

When I tell stories about my life people tell me to write a book. I wish I could. Every time I sit down to sort it all out it just jumbles up in my head. Becomes a blur of colors and a circle of head shakes. I start to get the Too's. Is it too much? Does this make me sound slutty? Or stupid? It's too focused on feelings or events. it's too hard to explain. I sound crazy right? moving to a new city for a girl I didn't know? What about naming names? Is that too much? I usually give up pretty quick. It's a mess when you realize that other people's opinions of you have become so ingrained that they don't need to lecture you anymore...you lecture yourself. These days though...with the owners of most of those voices dead and gone... little cracks have started to appear. Little places to shove away all of those lists ringing in my ears. Cracks are great for things to fall through...and I am systematically giving all those too's a nice little shove.

J says I should care less what people think. Someday, I tell her..when we're rich...I promise I will cease to care entirely. Until then...everyone is a threat. Every Internet photo...of me...taken by me...every blog post (it took me from July til now to get up the guts to start posting again after a work conversation about having no expectation of Internet privacy)... every review of a project and every post to my Facebook looms over me..a life lived openly in a list of Too's just waiting for someone to judge it. And that's the thing isn't it? Everyone does it. Everyone has secrets and adventures and debaucherous nights. The rule I keep breaking is that I don't seem to have the sense to be ashamed of it. Or to hide it. Well...most of it.

i have secrets like anyone.

The funny part is, I set it up that way. Deliberately. I still remember sitting my mom down when I was 18 and trying to explain to her that part of the purpose of that first tattoo was to keep me from ever becoming one of those sad women in the suburbs who keep their glory days in the past while hiding every amazing thing they every did from the neighbors and their kids. I wanted to wear my crazy life. I wanted to own it. To be proud of my adventures. And for the most part...I am.

It was for the same reason I never censored the pictures people took of me or my name on the racy ones I took of them. I made art...much of it provocative... for most of my life. It's what I'm here for.

Then, when my dad died. I stopped. I worked for Republicans and hated my job. It made sense to be miserable. It made sense to have a boss that hated me or yelled at me. The world was over. My dad was gone. I wore gray suits. I had a government job and a health plan and was home every night by 8pm. I did that for 2 years. In Sacramento. In the suburbs. Every morning I woke up, covered up the tattoos, put my hair in a ponytail and went to work. I jogged. I wrote. I worked. And I dreamed about New York. I dreamed about the day I would go somewhere that I wasn't a freak and get to Be Somebody.

Fast forward past the blur of art loft, club kid, touring, spit, glitter, peaches, boozy breakfasts and and stunner style, cold feet, dirty floors, and stuff I left behind. There are 8 million just like me all over New york. Every one of them amazing. Every one of them waiting for someone else to tell them so. I hated New York by the time we left. the slime of it. The grating rub of taxi horns and sirens and constant Look At Me's overwhelmed every sense. The city is something to be survived. And I did. But barely.

I left New York and all the things I had been dreaming about to come back to Sacramento. This time, it was my mom who was sick. When she died...it started again. I got a corporate job that I like but where I'm not exactly free. It's not creative and I'm not in charge and I worry constantly about pleasing the people above me. I wake up every morning and cover up all the tattoos in shades of gray sweaters and blue jeans. I pull my hair into a ponytail. I go to work. I come home by 9pm to feed the cats and kiss my wife who I love more than anything. I fantasize about buying our house outright. Owning it and filling it with kids and watching them grow up.

And I dream about LA. And the beach. And money. A jobs where I can show up in a ripped t-shirt and giant earrings ad tell someone about the great photo of J and I on last night's party.com instead of praying no one sees it. Some part of me still feels a pull to that culture. LA, I think, Is New York lite. All the drama with more sun and sand and bars that close at 2am so everyone can feel like a rock star when they shut it down. I dream about making things for a living. Making movies or TV. Pushing scripts I like, production whatever...just MAKING stuff that I care about. I guess there are probably millions of me there too.

SO I stay in Sacramento. I stay in my little house in the suburbs and worry about the bills. I look for a way to change the cycle. I keep the gray sweaters handy and try not to annoy anyone. I don't go to parties or protests and I don't take pictures. Somewhere in there though is this tiny little spark. The little part of me that dyed my hair Jessica Rabbit red this year. The part that sent a totally inappropriate text to a high school crush 12 years later...just for fun. The part that wants to marry J again, this time in cowboy boots with a tranny accordion player and some really amazing Leslie van Stelton and Maro Hagopian photo shoot in the barn afterwards.

That part of me still likes my job. Still loves my house in the suburbs and desperately wants to keep it. Still thinks my idea of fun is just fine thank you. Still has opinions and takes amazing photos...when I bother pulling out my camera. Still wants to write that book someday. Still has no idea what the next step is.

After two years of illness, and sadness and saying goodbye here I am, feeling myself inside the shell I made...kicking my way out with no direction. And it's funny...because the people I met in the last two years...look at me like I've lost my mind. They only ever met gray sweater girl. They call me mousy. They think I'm soft. They tell me I'm too trusting. Too scared. Too sweet. Too innocent. Too vulnerable. Too people pleasing. Too concerned with what people thing. too quiet.

How bizarre. I think, what is happening, is that 15 year old me and 30 year old me have finally just come to an understanding. 30 year old me gets up and goes to work on time, does her job well, speaks respectfully to people she doesn't like, can do amazing things with a line item budget and a team of cranky creative creatures and owns a house in the suburbs and likes it. 15 year old me gets to pick the hair, the parties, the pictures, the dates and the clothes. We are sorting it out amongst ourselves. And it is a work in progress. 15 year old me wants a creative gig. 30 year old me wants lots of money. They both want to be the boss someday. 15 year old me always wanted a gay best friend and life of fabulous queers. 30 year old me has more than enough of that and wants a straight date just for kicks. They both want to make art and take pictures and have kids someday. One of us thinks someday is soon. Both of us love being invited to fabulous parties. neither of us really like rules. 30 year old me has finally learned to follow them though. Most of the time. We both want more than there is time enough in this life to get. And we both want to try anyways. We both still like to get naked in public...although 30 year old me keeps her clothes on and instead lets the world just read her diary. 30 year old me still has a totally innapropriate sense of humor. About everything.

And sometimes, it is all just too damn much. But it's beautiful. And I am grateful for every second. And for the first time in a long time it feels like me again.

Time Flies When You're On The Floor

When you are grieving for a lost loved one, the whole world seems to be telling you that any type of behavior is acceptable...for a time. Then one day, you are supposed to just know when, you are expected to pick yourself up, dust off the shroud of feelings you have been in encased in, and just Get On With Life.

I have been lying on the floor for six months.

I get up to go to work. I come home to eat badly, water plants occasionally and lay for hours on end watching bad TV.

It's been six months since she died.

It's time to get up.

Inertia is a weight that rules me. I put away the whiskey without thinking about it months ago. I still of pizza as a food group though. True Blood on Netflix can still steal two complete days from my life without a second thought.

I am upright. I am writing this. I went to work last week. I had a BBQ recently. Somewhere in there healing is taking place.

I am not the same though. I don't know who I am now. I have anger and passions and beliefs that are all new to me.

And it's time to do something with them.

On the days I can get off the floor.

The Last 30 Years....

With such a milestone birthday coming up next week I though I should take stock. This is what I have come up with so far.

In the last 30 years I have:

Been the angsty teenager mother's worried about.

AND the homecoming princess.

Run away.

Come home again.

Gotten a tattoo. Or, a few.

Pierced my own ears.

Screamed so load at the Gilman I lost my voice.

Inhaled.

tripped. all over myself.

Made mistakes. Big ones. Some of them I learned from.

Skimped on the sunscreen.

Smoked.

And QUIT :0)

Learned to drive stick. In Kansas.

Seen the sunrise in Appalachia.

Fallen in Love. With many people.

Stayed with one.

Dyed my hair red, black, pink, striped, blue, purple, blond, and some weird shade of candy.

Read the newspaper with my father every Sunday.

Loved Jon Carroll, The Sex Pistols, Riot Girl, The Clash and Etta James.

Learned to cook.

Grown my own food. Had politics about it. Gave them up. Still grow it.

Worked for Republicans and Homeland Security.

While voting Democratic.

Learned to love my mother for exactly who she was.

Helped both my parents die gracefully and with love.

Held each of their hands when they went.

Got a college degree.

Got a Master's Degree.

Been broke.

And loaded.

Met celebrities.

Had an affair with a married man. Loved him. Left him.

Owned it.

Traveled to Galapagos, Mexico, Canada, London, Ecuador and driven across the US 10 or 12 times.

Sometimes alone in a pickup truck.

Picked up hitch hikers.

Made a lot of friends. Some of whom...I am blessed to still know.

Done a lot of yoga.

Run a marathon.

Read the entire fiction section of the Fair Oaks Public Libray. Really. Except the Westerns.

I befriended my siblings.

I have cared for 1 dog, 7 cats, 1 bird and 3 junkies.

Been to Weddings. Seen my friends have children.

Lived in a warehouse full of dirty art kids with one bathroom.

Celebrated in the Rivington penthouse.

Lived in New York, Austin, San Francisco, Oakland, Washington DC, Santa Rosa, San Diego and Sacramento

Snuck in to Soho House...on 2 continents.

Had art shows.

Thrown parties for 5000+

Thrown a party no one attended.

Spent a Christmas alone.

Been published.

Made stuff that went on TV or in theaters.

Written hundreds of love letters. Saved Evry. Single. One. that someone wrote me.

Had a lot of crazy sex. Sometimes with people I did not know well. Or at all.

Been fat. Been skinny.

Sizes 0-14 to be exact.

Not said things I should have.

Asked for forgiveness.

Started fights.

Been cruel.

Gone out of my way to be kind.

Got engaged.

Got fired.

Poured beer on a customer. On purpose. Poured Olive oil on another one. On accident.

See above.

Cooked Thanksgiving dinner for 20.

Lived in a warehouse loft with one bathroom for 9 people.

Been evicted.

Watched someone in trouble and didn't help.

Helped someone no one else would touch.

Drank Miracle Grow.

Took piano lessons and never learned to play.

Was a ballet dancer for 15 years.

Was a photographer for 10.

And a newspaper editor.

And an Art Director in New York City.

Where I had an apartment in Chelsea.

Had a drink named after me.

In the Next 30 Years I Want To:

See Africa. And Tokyo.

Party in Beruit.

Get pregnant.

Have a baby-without drugs.

Get married. To the person I am engaged to now.

Learn to dance in public without fear.

Start a country band.

Buy my family home.

Buy an apartment in a city I love for summertime stays.

Take vacations.

Run another marathon. This time for my mom.

Finish that novel I keep working on and get it published.

Give workshops.

Get promoted.

Make upper-middle class money.

Keep my friends.

Make more.

Take walks. Keep cooking.

Sing in a country band.

Do Korean Kareoke.

Wear Chanel to a party.

Own hats.

Paint. Draw. Journal. Write more love letters.

Eat for life and love.

Live expansively.

Learn to fight.

Travel for work.

Be an Art Director Again.

Get a PhD in Sociology.

Take business classes.

Learn the trapeeze.

See my siblings happily married.

Help a baby be born.

Spend more time in Texas.

Let go of old heartaches and bad habits.

Forgive myself for everything I did wrong in the first 30 years.

Be open to whatever comes my way.

Accept Grace.

Give Love freely and Accept it without reservations.

Play hooky.

Learn to stuff an artichoke.

Celebrate every day on this earth and every blessing that comes with it.

Milestones... 2/13/11

Today is exactly one month since Mom died. I am sitting at a desk in what used to be her room. Typing where her bed used to be. Staring at all the Get Well cards on the wall I can't bring myself to take down. Leafing through Post-Its that remind me to pay off more final bills and cut up old credit cards and file the mountains of her paperwork we keep finding in every corner of the house. One lone yellow Post It reminds me that rooms must be painted this week so as to finally get them advertised for rent.

I dream about having enough money to stay home for weeks, do nothing, and cry. Then maybe go to Alaska. I've never wanted to go but I promised Mom I would take her last year... she wanted to see the glaciers before they were gone she said. Never in a million years did either of us think that they would outlast her.

I still can't really lose it for long periods of time. Work and stress and fear and a driving desire to keep our family home together and operation prevents all out hysteria. Still, it's like walking around in a fog. I remember when Dad died that it was June. My next memories are from August. I think I'm in that part of the process.

The sleepwalking part.

Being me, I'm a little more manic than most. I'm cooking again and heading to the gym and trying hard to burn away some of the panic that starts to rise every time I let t Really Sink In that Mom is gone. Dad is gone. I live in their house. My life is totally defined by what is missing. By who is missing. And how it happened. And what it means.

I have decided to produce a series of workshops for people my age on how to prep to care for their dying parents/grandparents/spouses etc. It won't cover children...that's the one thing I think could be more horrible than this. I can't speak to it. I'm not really sure how it will look yet. Basically an advocacy program of sorts. How hard it is, how little help you get, how much it changes you....and why it's totally worth doing anyways. And how to survive it.

I had thought I would hole up and write this whole time but it turns out it took us a whole month just to move a desk and set up the computer so I think, as with most things, maybe I was being a little overly ambitious. At some point this year I will start again. Until then...everything feels clinical and has some kind of metallic aftertaste. It's removed from me. It requires peeling...and I'm not ready to do that yet.

Workshops, work, renters, the house... there is plenty to do in the meantime.

There are still occasional cards and calls. The visitors are gone. Life is drifting into the new patterns formed by gaping hole between us all, left by my mother's absence. There is nothing to do but wait and see where the dust settles.

Soooo... it's starting to feel a little bit like this.

Wondering what comes next.