I won’t get all long-winded about the backstory like I usually do but, in the last week, I’ve really been struggling with a haunting from my past and an unclosed door with a broken-heart situation and how it relates to my current life and what I’m doing that’s wrong in it and all that noise. It’s been really attacking me, actually, and gave me a hell of a depression spell for a few days.

And then I realized that, in order to actually, totally forgive myself, I have to stop giving a shit whether or not anyone else does.

I’m starting to think that basic life principles need to come with footnotes for those of us who don’t automatically realize the implied intricacies.

Recently, I gathered all the mix CD’s and tapes I’d been given since 1999-ish just to see what sort of crazy compilation I could throw together from them. Standing in mesmerized awe, I realized that I own more than 40 customized mixes, not even including the dozen-or-so I’ve collected from significant others. (I’ve tossed most of them but still have a few CD’s I keep meaning to transfer to MP3′s so I can be rid of the tangible reminder.) That’s roughly four every year! For a decade!

A little less recently, I whittled down my Facebook Friends List from 900-ish “friends” to [an ever-increasing] 350-ish friends I find worthwhile enough to keep up with. (Once I achieved my petty quota of validation from learning that the douchenozzles who tormented me in jr. high grew up to be bloated, drunken, bigoted trust-fund kids, there was really no need to keep them anywhere close to my present life.) I took that time to look at the people I’ve been lucky enough to know personally and then back up and look at the whole motley crew objectively. I found myself laughing out loud at the absurd joy of my life as evidenced solely in the company I keep.

One of my friends is a singer/songwriter/siren who dominates rooms, disables jawhinges and makes people feel validated as humans simply by looking in their general direction. I have a friend who is an artist/performer/genius who lives in an old post office that he’s converted into a palace where he throws lavish, bohemian parties and plays his musical suitcase. One of my friends is an international celebrity who’s televised in dozens of countries on a daily basis to the amusement of 3-6 year-olds who cheer wildly as he steps off private planes. Two of my friends are writers who legitimately have the potential to revolutionize modern literature. One of my oldest friends is a gorgeous chemical engineer who listens to punk rock and plays alongside guys in male-dominated sports. A friend I’m sure I’ve known for a couple lives is an empath/healer with a cutting, brash tongue, a vast, uncompromising soul and a giggling mischief that pulls the disguise off his undeniable compassion.

Ooo! And I know an enigma! A real one! She’s beautiful beyond reason and quirky and complicated and when she laughs she opens the soul of the room she’s in and turns it over in her palms and hands it back to us. And she’s wild with passion and love that’s infectious and controversial and makes people love her emphatically [unless they’re scared of that sort of person and then they often choose to hate her for no reason.] I can remember a point in my life when she had three suitors who were all close friends and who lived for her every word and she knew it but she didn’t realize it and she held it all in a way that you couldn’t really envy her as much as share in her giddy, confused, confident laughter. And for God-only-knows what reason, she loves me and when she goes out of her way to let me know it I smile for weeks and feel unique and safe and special, unlike with anyone else.

I have an ever-self-sufficient friend who is a Republican bellydancer with a laugh that’s infectious and a rapid wit that is hilarious to watch [but hell to suffer] when in “Attack Mode.” (Despite her political leanings, we have yet to have a conversation where we don’t agree with 90% of what the other is saying… so she still has a perfectly-intact soul.) I have a wildly-creative, artist friend who is an effortless medium and who was everywhere that was awesome in the 1960′s (except Woodstock; she was in Daytona that weekend) and loves and knows me better than I know myself most of the time. I have three friends who look like tall, curvy, dark, bold-faced goddesses and would be terrifyingly powerful/dangerous to men and women alike should they ever meet. (Two of them live in NYC and I’m positive they should become besties, like, immediately.) I know world-travelers and political aides and a pure-hearted genius/prodigy who cleaned dishes with me with the same intensity that he implemented while working in international think tanks.

I know brilliant musicians and gorgeous models and driven geniuses (with souls! Those are the best kind of geniuses!) and revolutionary comics/playwrights and refreshingly unique entertainers and groundbreaking visionaries and neo-feminist SAHmothers and fucking phenomenal chefs (two are quite successful and both are female! score!) and recovering addicts/alcoholics with the craziest stories I’ve ever heard and bohemian artists who’ll never be understood but don’t seem to mind and incarcerated convicts who send me the condescending Christmas cards their relatives send them every year, marked with hilarious commentary and a stripper who is now teaching home ec in a schwanky jr. high and daring, colorful Burners (oh, how I long to be one of those) and crossdressers of both genders (both non-professional and professional) and founders of incredible non-profit movements and Broadway singer/dancer/actors and farmers/hardcore gardeners who make me want to sell everything and live off the grid starting tomorrow and the male, punk rock version of Mama Cass and feminista bloggers and quite possibly one of the greatest actors on the planet at the moment and two aerialists and a documentarian (who’s putting together a project that’s just going to be epic once released internationally) and the guy who was ranked one of the top trumpet players in the nation and a female bodybuilder and a powerhouse editor who fights for small businesses with a daily news syndication she runs by herself and young, rad, relatable missionaries who are going to revolutionize how the world sees American Christians and DIY crafters who are going to clothe the world, one hand-knit sweater at a time and people with the balls to immigrate to where they dream of living and a sweet Muslim model who very patiently answers all my idiotic questions about Islamic holidays and schoolteachers who are going out of their way to challenge the status quo (and call attention to the rampant apathy that rules our public school system) and freaking triathlon addicts and a designer whose stuff is now sold at Nordstrom and opera singers and a gorgeous, free-spirited woman who has been inadvertently and gradually coaxing me out of my shell by her inspirational lifestyle and mindset and…

And I get to be in the middle of it.

I honestly always thought that I’d have to be wildly famous or insanely wealthy to know as many uniquely radiant people as I do. And if I were ever to be surrounded by so many unnaturally dazzling characters I would never have assumed that they’d be the types to call themselves my friends.

And I’m not saying all the above-mentioned are in the “Nearest and Dearest Pile”. In fact, only about 3/4 of those could be considered “friends closer than acquaintances”, but I’m glad to be important enough to these busy people to have garnered at least one greeting in the last year from each of them.

However, I’m still unbelievably humbled when I review the list and realize how many I can call honest-to-God “close friends”. (You know. The ones who don’t ever judge and will take a phonecall from me at 2 a.m. and will blatantly tell me when I’m being an a-hole but don’t use that as a means of flat-out rejection and who’re happy for me and my little accomplishments.) So, it looks like my mom was wrong about that whole “You’ll only be able to count your close friends on one hand.” by at least a couple hands.

Anyway, To Whom It Concerns: Thank you so so very much. I hope I’ve let you know how much I appreciate you being in my life.

I realize how weird it sounds to be freaking out about turning 27. And, although a lot of my favorite musicians have joined The 27 Club, a fear of keeling over in the next year isn’t what’s driving my hyper-anxiety.

The reason for my general thematic weirdness is two-fold (and don’t worry; this isn’t going to be one of those “Wahhh, me.” posts. It has a positive spin. I’m getting to be pretty talented at those, actually. So here’s Exhibit Seventyleven.) although they’re directly correlated, so I’m not going to break them up, bullet-point-style.

The thing is that a LOT of the people I admire were doing great things by this point in their lives. Yes, okay, I know I’m not supposed to live my life based on what everyone else is doing, Mom. And I’m definitely using this as fuel to propel myself forward. (My friend said something to me that I’ve plastered to my mental bathroom mirror: “Don’t get jealous; get better.” That’s now one of the twelve mantras I repeat to myself every morning.) But there’s a big part of me that’s wondering what it is that’s causing me to take so effing long to get started already. And then I start to worry that I am “started”, which really bothers me because I simply don’t want to settle on a life that’s just mediocre.

Please don’t take that last statement to mean that I somehow loathe my present lifestyle or that I’m ungrateful for all the things that’ve been given to me – I’m certainly not. On a personal level I’ve been given such an incredibly rich life full of awesome people and experiences that I still have trouble believing that I deserve it. However, on a much larger scale I’ve started awakening to the knowledge that I just may not be One of Those People who revolutionizes anything or changes anything or makes any sort of permanent mark on humanity. I know not everyone can be Gandhi or Jim Henson or MLK or Mukhtaran Bibi but there’s always been a part of me that really believed I was going to be some sort of incredibly world-altering human when really, I’m far more likely to blend in with the status quo. I do my best to be great in that role (I help people, I work on bettering myself, I give outwardly, etc.) but something about being nondescript in The Grand Scheme and eventually forgettable really has started to bother me. And I could clamor around and make a bunch of noise and try to make myself important or outstanding but that’s ultimately hollow and demoralizing. The truth is, I feel like I’ve never had an original or revolutionary thought or action in my life and it makes me wonder what the hell my life’s effort is going to matter at all.

However, I’m not going to use my complete lack of unoriginality as a means to hide out and not make any use of my life; if anything it gives me more freedom from Fear of being misunderstood or flat-out rejected [which - again, I know - shouldn't dictate my actions to begin with but onethingatatimepeople.]

The other thing that I’ve gotten so caught up in during this pre-27 era is the realization that I’ve wasted so much tiiiime. 26 was an incredibly revolutionary year in terms of liberating myself from the mental lurch I’ve been lodged in since I was 13 but now, just after resurrecting myself and finally rinsing off all the slop I’ve been carrying around for ages, I’m aghast at how much tiiiime I wasted. I wasted time hating myself and hesitating because unimportant people told me I should. I wasted time sitting around being depressed because I didn’t have the balls or the knowledge to get treated (something I’m hoping to help combat publicly in the next few years… more on that later). I wasted 6-ish years being completely monopolized by an on-again-off-again abusive relationship with a genuine idiot who was never worth a second look (all realized in retrospect, of course.) I wasted years and thousands of dollars on substances to cloud my mind enough to suspend me in that miserably comfortable mental state and prevent me from moving forward. And that’s just the big stuff I wasted that pretty much manifested in a mind of mush and a rearview muddied with carnage that I’d have to waste even more time in therapy and sobriety trying to salvage and repair. All of that instead of actually getting out there and having a damned life.

I’m trying not to waste time being embarrassed by all that wasted time. Or kicking myself for what I “coulda” been doing instead. (Writing, getting better at guitar, getting into shape, traveling, getting my Master’s degree, avoiding mental hospitals, etc.)

So the way I’m [choosing to] see(ing) it is that my life is being played out in [rough] 13-year cycles. The first 13 years were pretty amazing with the ideal childhood in the blissfully adorable small town. Then the next 13 years were spent with soul-draining bullshit (some external, most internal) that I got to wade through and destroy myself within and then dig myself out of and rebuild my Whole Self in the wake of. And, at the end of 26, everything is miraculously in place to start the next real Chapter. All the loose ends are tied up, all the years of psychotherapy have produced permanent functional tools to combat my chronic chemical mental problems, while my self-inflicted mental problems have been sufficiently quashed, and, finally, all the inner turmoil and self-denial that has just been an inherent part of my identity since I was 13-ish has finally (FINALLY) dissipated.

I’m in a really really good place. Finally. Emotionally, spiritually, physically, mentally… I am well. And I am happy. And I think that’s the first time I’ve been able to say that for a very very long time.

So I’m taking this renewal and this bag of tools I’ve picked up in the last decade-and-change and using it to fund Chapter Three. Oh sure, I’m still going to have a handful of neuroses and Fears (who doesn’t?) but I’m using those to drive me forward instead of sitting around dwelling on a past that I’ve already cured. (I did say “FINALLY”, right?) Those Fears and neuroses are the ones I’m choosing to keep in my pocket instead of ones that involuntarily anchor me in place. I think that’s healthy. Natural, even.

In Chapter Three I want to be strong and healthy. I want to have clear goals and actually achieve them. I want to stay true to the principles I know in my heart to be Right and motivated by Love. I want to live a life I’m proud of. I want to continue to keep myself motivated by Love and I want to continue to recognize the things that have made and continue to make me genuinely Happy. I want to remain grateful and gracious. I want to continue to pursue a lifestyle of serenity.

For my 27th birthday, I am giving myself the daily pledge and reminder to “Be Better Today.” I can’t wait to see where that puts me for Chapter 4.

Happy Birthday to me!

I’m taking a Tyler Durden mental approach to this business thing, more from necessity than from wanting to seem hip.

For me, this sugar scrub business is a lot of fun (well, the developing-of-products is moreso than the filing-taxes-and-paperwork), but it isn’t my passion. It’s a great product that I’m proud of and would encourage anyone to buy if they’re in the market for that sort of thing because I really think it trumps a lot of the competition for exceptional quality and price (except Skin and Tonic. She’s got an amazing product, fantastic, innovative scents, great prices and a sparkling, rad personality to boot. I’m glad we’re friends or I’d be terrified of her as a competitor.), but it’s not what I want to spend my life producing or working to share with the world. I don’t stand behind quasi-pricey bath and body products nearly as strongly as I stand behind so many other things.

I’m going to have to go into detail with this in another forum because my personal opinions about capitalism and consumerism shouldn’t be made public when I’m trying to launch a business, but my plan/objective is to make the scrub company successful enough to support our life’s dreams. I want to go back to school, my husband wants to start a company and we both want to take the Bear to see the world and own some land and work to live off the grid eventually. Ideally, the company would become a wild success and I could sell it for a bundle of dough and spend my life going to school and writing and wandering the globe with my family and working wherever I want to, but for right now, my goal is to make it a thriving side-project to my main agenda that will eventually include everything I just mentioned.

Like the Paper Street Soap Company, Yum in the Tub is only serving to fund something much bigger and more important, although I’m not planning on blowing anything up.

The Bear woke up this morning with a fever of 104.1 (F… duh.) We had a tepid bath, some aceteminophen and went downstairs to try out some juice (to no avail.) During WordGirl (8:00 a.m.) she was at 100.3 and doing okay and was still alright by Sesame Street (10 a.m.) – only a little lethargic and curmudgeonly – so I went into the kitchen to unload the dishwasher while she watched the TV from the couch. Ten minutes later, I poked my head into the den only to find that she’d crawled onto the floor, curled up in a little ball and gone back to sleep. I put her back to bed and kept checking on her at a manic every-5-minutes. The temperature started escalating again, so I called the doc, flung the Bear in the car and drove 30 miles to my pediatrician (I have my reasons for going this far.) She was just pitiful in the waiting room and completely unlike herself; she was curled up on my lap with her eyes half-mast (but not sucking her thumb), her eyes were downcast and red and she made little whimpers whenever I tried to move her. I would talk to her and she would repeat whatever word I emphasized (“We’re going to the doctor.” “Doc-tow.”) but there was none of the incessant babbling I was shocked to realize that I missed. She’s diagnosed with strep throat, we get some antibiotics and well-wishes, we drive the 30 miles back home and we plunk ourselves down to rest and watch more “Pooh”.

This may sound terrible of me but I secretly loved what happened for the rest of the afternoon. From 3 until about 6, the Bear laid against my chest, curled up and drifting in and out of sleep. (She was usually disturbed by my incessant temperature checks.)

Ever since she was little, I’ve never been able to get her to go asleep in my arms. Not ever. Not when she was a baby, not when she was teething, not when she’s been about to pass out at the end of the day. It’s one of those things that tears me up inside as her mother but, because she relies on me for so many other things and shows adoration in other ways, it doesn’t bother me too much. However, my mom can always get the Bear to settle down and fall asleep and there’s a really stupid, petty, catty side of me that’s been envious of that, even though my mom never does it to spite me.

Today, she laid in my arms for hours and didn’t move until just after 6, when her fever jumped to 105.1 and we had to plunk her into another tepid bath. (did not like.) Afterward, I took her into her bedroom and rocked her in the rocking chair for longer than she’s ever let me. When I thought she’d fallen asleep, I let the arm that wasn’t supporting her drop to my side a little. Immediately, she reached up to my shoulder and ran her hand along the outside of my arm, pulling it around her again. She didn’t even open her eyes.

I leaned in and whispered, “I love you, Bear” and I heard her say – very, very quietly – “Ah yahzz yoo, Mama.”

Today might be the best day of my whole life.

I kinda hate how being charitable has become a bit of a trend in that people will buy things just because the manufacturer claims that .05% of the proceeds go to curing dyslexia in chimps or something. I like doing things for people but only when I feel like I’m actually DOING something. That’s not to say that I have to get a Thank You note from everyone at St. Jude’s just because I send them an annual Christmas donation… I just like knowing that when I do something nice for someone else, it’s actually going to directly benefit someone. This is why I give blood to the Red Cross, for example. Because it’s far less likely for someone to embezzle my Type O+ than my spare change.

ANYWAY. Christmas always makes me get extra bloody-hearted and, in addition to sending my Compassion sponsored child a little something, I always kinda go a little nuts on the overzealous giving. (Except with the Salvation Army because those bastards won’t help anyone without legal immigration papers… ‘Cause that’s what Christ was about, apparently: shafting kids from decent Christmases because their parents brought them into a foreign country without proper documentation… grumblegrumblegrumble…) And I tend to get a little preachy about the need to share love with other people, even moreso than usual.

So here are my Top 3 Picks for Nice Things You Can Do for a Real Person 2009:

Help The Vereen Family
After developing preeclampsia and HELPP Syndrome during her first pregnancy, Katie Vereen had to give birth to her twin daughters at MUSC (Charleston, SC) after only 24 weeks in gestation. Randi Katherine and Hayden Marie were born on November 27, 2009, both weighing little more than 1 lb. each. Although in need of immediate intensive care, the girls were joyful arrivals for Katie and husband Jon. Despite fighting a hard battle, Randi passed away on December 2. Hayden and Katie continue fighting for full recovery and are staying strong thanks to prayers and love from friends and family. The Vereen Family Fund was created to help pay for medical expenses as well as gas for Jon to drive to and from the Vereens’ home in Myrtle Beach to see his wife and daughter as often as possible.

All proceeds made at my Yum in the Tub shop from December 11-18 will go directly to this foundation and I’ve even marked down prices to $9 per jar or 2 for $15.

However, if you are interested in donating directly to the Vereen family without making a scrub purchase, please contact me at liz.ps@live.com.

Make a Soldier’s Wishes Come True
Get your head out of the gutter. I’m talking about filling a wishlist for a soldier of any gender who is stationed overseas during the holidays. On AnySoldier.com soldiers post requests for things they’d love to have filled by a Good Samaritan who may be up to the task. The requests from gals abroad range from practical things like toothpaste and tampons to more fun items like mascara or scented lotions which can be a real luxury while working in the trenches.

Send a Stranger a Christmas/Holiday Card

While finding a random address in the phone book to send a card to is always fun, there are people out there who are genuinely grateful to get holiday greetings. A popular organization I send cards through from time to time is MakeAChildSmile.org that allows volunteers to write cheerful mail to seriously ill children to read while they’re being treated. There’s also HugsAndHope.org and Post Pals that are similar in concept. I’ve only gotten a few responses, which is expected with these kids’ busy schedules and general weaknesses from treatments, but it only costs a couple bucks to pick up a coloring book and some crayons and give a kid something to do instead of staring at hospital walls.

Also, being a fan of writing to incarcerated women, I always find 5-10 inmates on death row to send some holiday-season cheer to through WriteAPrisoner.com. (No, I’m really not kidding.) Through the website you can see what they’re in for, what they look like, whether or not they’re soliciting money or legal help from strangers, etc. I’ve always chosen straight women (as opposed to men or women interested or looking for other women… like I need that kind of drama) on the other side of the country incarcerated for life sentences, who aren’t on the site for any other reason than because they’re lonely to say “Happy holidays!” to and have only gotten grateful responses. (As opposed to negative ones.) It sounds weird and off-putting, but these are the people who are most often forgotten during the holidays and some of them really have become different people in the slammer. (Although some definitely haven’t, which is why I write to people far far away.)

It probably wasn’t noticeable from the exterior, but 2009 was perhaps the most monumental year I’ve had in a little more than a decade as far as my mentality and resulting general life course goes. I know that sounds terrible considering I had a child in 2007 and got married in 2008 but honestly, 2009 is when everything about who I was and what my life was about during the last 10-14-ish years drew to a close.

See, around the time my mind started messing with me in a clinical sense, some people that I deemed “Important” began to make me believe these negative things about myself that weren’t true. As the story goes, these beliefs lead to more profound false beliefs which fueled actions to back up the initial beliefs and then allowed me to believe more lies about my identity handed to me by predatory self-loathing idiots and it all just spiraled out of hand and turned into this huge mess in which I had successfully morphed myself into this godawful person I never actually should’ve believed I was in the first place. Since 2003-ish when I first started realizing what a mess I’d gotten myself into, I’ve been steadily trying to pick up the pieces, refigure everything out and clean up the catastrophic messes I made. (I’m not saying I’ve been successful the whole time since then, by the way. In fact, I spent the first couple years after that continuing to inadvertently botch things out of sheer habit and blurred vision.) And, in the last couple years or so, I’ve finally gotten to a place where I’m consistently happy and [relatively] stable enough that I can really look back on all of it and go “Okay, since this is the most sane I’ve ever been, let’s see if we can figure out exactly what the hell actually happened with a [relatively] clear perspective…”

Okay, looking back on things and overanalyzing them is nothing new for me. In fact, it’s been pretty damned exhausting hauling that neurosis around with me for over half my life. However, this time when I took a second (or a week) for retrospection, I actually felt this incredible sense of closure and profound relief.

No, it’s true! In the last year I’ve finally gotten over some people and events that not only don’t exist and/or don’t matter anymore but really never did matter to begin with. (Yes, I’m still a bit embarrassed that I built such a huge framework for my life out of complete bullshit, but I’m certainly not about to waste any more time feeling sorry about it or worrying about what I could’ve done differently.) A few months ago I even performed a little one-person ritual in which I identified all the lies and false authorities on which I’d built my self-worth and discarded them formally. (There was a lot of candle-lighting, stone-charging, body-cleansing and meditation involved.) And then I sat down and identified all the truths about myself and my life that I’ve always known and that people who love me have always been willing to support. And honestly, it felt like a complete mental molting of sorts.

But wait! That’s not all that happened this year! This year I finally (FINALLY) was able to make all the amends to people I’d hurt that I’d been needing to for many many years. I honestly never really wanted any sort of response or forgiveness from these few leftover people (although forgiveness is always welcome) but I just needed to know that I did all I could to at least deliver the genuine apology that was deserved, no matter how past-due. Somehow, not only did I get this knowledge of successfully delivered messages, but I was honestly listened to and respected by the recipients, my apologies heard and taken seriously. I was even granted forgiveness, which was the icing on the cake and the ice cream on the side. The feeling that I don’t owe anyone else an apology for anything is an incredible novelty to me and makes me value and choose my actions with impeccable care. (This is not to say I’m not going to offend people or step on toes ever again – I do it at least monthly. I just don’t make offending others an objective anymore.)

And, in addition to being liberated from this completely invisible fear-based “prison” of false beliefs I’d crafted around myself based on the opinions and actions of people who are worthless AND finding closure from my unbelievable cruelty in the past, I also was able to finally get away from Myrtle Beach/South Carolina, (which really turned out to be more of a symbolic liberation than a physical one as I’d finally gotten to a place where I adore(d) the people I’d chosen to surround myself with there.)

With all of these genuinely life-and-mind-altering events combined I was finally able to look at my life objectively and see – without guilt or denial or refusal – all the truths and blessings that are lying in my lap, this great existence that kind of just happened upon me and the realization that, if I don’t go and screw it all up (again) I have the potential to do whatever it is that I may want to do. (Figuring that out is another issue altogether.) And I have more loving friends than any human deserves cheering me on, so I kind of owe it to everyone who bothers to have faith in me as a human (including myself) to point myself in a direction and quit making whiny, self-loathing, fear-based excuses as to why “I can’t”. And now that I’m not wasting all my time hurting over the past and the idiots I let dominate it/me or trying to therapanize (new word alert!) my brain into normal, everyday functionality, I don’t really have any excuse not to.

So it seems like my reevaluation and life-participation in 2010 is a bit more important than usual. This being said, none of these completely-invisible-but-totally-important changes I’ve made in 2009 were on my Resolutions list, so I’m not going to base the rest of my existence on some list I scribble down in the next few weeks. However, with all the shit I’ve been able to throw out of my daily life in the last year and where that’s put me right now, I know I’ve got a lot more momentum going forward than I have in a really really long time. It excites me to dream about what that will allow me to do between now and 2012 when the world/existence comes to a screeching halt.* I’d better get started.

* No, I don’t believe that crap.

The thing about being one of those people who doesn’t believe in mere coincidence is that it makes it impossible to ever ignore my current circumstances. This Thanksgiving, to my terror, I took a second or seven to zoom out and get a screengrab of The Big Picture to find that it was painfully obvious that I’m exactly where I am because I’m destined for something effing massive.

Whoa, hang on. Don’t think I’m getting all egomaniacal here because this actually applies to you, too. However, being that I can’t speak on anyone’s [mental] behalf other than myself, I’m limited to a self-reflective angle from which to pontificate. Surprise surprise.

Let’s look at the bare facts:
Literal millions of people have worked for thousands of years to give me the life I have right now. Suffragettes were beaten and imprisoned so I can vote. Architects spent years smoothing out designs to give me affordable housing. Agriculturalists of every type have spent decades providing me with access to fresh, top-quality food of every variety from around the globe that is delivered within moments of my house. Thousands of hands have worked to create pretty things for me to hang in my closet. A bunch of crazy radicals who’d just had enough of their oppressive theocratic home country climbed aboard a tiny boat and moved to North America and begat a whole other group of crazy radicals who waged a grassroots war and started a whole new country so I can have the right to choose my own religion and say whatever the hell it is I want to say. Scientists and their research assistants spent decades perfecting treatments for potentially deadly diseases so I could be treated for various ailments and make it to the age of 26 without any major scares. Some dude sent his intern out in a thunderstorm with a key tied to a kite so he could learn about electricity so I can have refrigerated food and pay my bills online and can stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Hell, another guy tried 3000 times to make a light bulb so I can see what I’m doing at night. Someone else built a bed for me, someone else (the guy with the key and the kite) decided to give everyone in my country a free education, someone else invented an automobile that would take me across 2,000 miles in just a couple days, someone else researched the inner workings of the human mind and developed a way to talk it into functionality, someone else invented a system of symbols that would allow me to communicate with other people on a sheet of paper, someone else figured out how to boil wood and turn it into paper… The list goes way way on. And it’s pretty damned staggering, actually.

If I stop and look at all these incredible luxuries that have been provided for me to exist from day to day, it’s kind of overwhelming to think about how many people spent thousands of years slowly molding the world around me to be exactly right for my life at this exact moment, all wrought with comfort and access and privilege.

And then there are the more specific, “luck”-based facts of my life. I live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world where even the homeless can find a meal and even panhandlers can make $50,000 a year in small cities. I live in a time where communication with the globe is second nature and a wealth of information literally sits in the palm of our hands every day. I live in an era where women are taken seriously in the workplace and as intelligent beings (except to idiots, but who gives a shit?) and people of all races live among each other. How convenient.

When I step back and think about the odds of my having arrived right here, right now, as this person, with this particular life, I can’t help but note how incredibly small my chances would be of rolling the same die again.

But I really started realizing something was definitely up when I zoomed in a little closer and looked at my Specifics. I was born into a middle-class, Southern family with two college-educated parents who are not bigoted in any regard and were – for the most part – able to teach me morals, manners and compassion. I have three siblings whose intelligence has been tested in the “Above Average” zone since kindergarten and who have always remained healthy. I have survived numerous insanely dangerous situations, including a botched suicide attempt and a handful of evenings where I drove or attended shady parties/events by myself while in a days-long drunken blackout. I accidentally became pregnant while in the only healthy, sane, happy relationship I’d ever been in. I was approached and “adopted” by my AA sponsor when I was 20 years old, thus giving me the tools to combat my penchant for constant overembibing at an early enough age so that I didn’t ruin my entire existence. And frankly, I never had a traumatic childhood. I mean, yeah, there’s dysfunction I’ve seen that I can speak candidly about but there was no dark familial abuse, no alcoholism or addiction in my immediate family… in fact, I never once rode the school bus to or from school and my mom was still packing me a lunch in the 12th grade. Suffice to say, things were alright for me on a fundamental level. (We’re leaving out all the mental fuckery and how I used to habitually screw up all sorts of good things because of my self-sabotaging needs for now, enkay?)

I seem to have a good deal of luck on my side.

With all of this genuinely incredible evidence sitting in front of me it slowly started to sink in that maybe the Universe had “conspired to shower me with all these blessings” (as repeated repeatedly in Rob Breszny’s Pronoia) for more than just show. I mean, seriously, what are the odds?

And no matter how I might sit around and doubt myself and get all whiny about my abilities (which I still believe may be severely lacking outside my knowledge) and my pathetic floundering with self-worth, the evidence that the Universe isn’t paying attention to my petty excuses and has already clearly decided I’m worthy of Importance and a Big Purpose is unavoidable. And for someone like me who focuses so much on the “Attitude of Gratitude” (ugh… AA cliches) it would seem incredibly hypocritical not to recognize these gifts for what they are and maybe not squander them.

This is not to say I know exactly what this Great Purpose actually is at the moment but I really should trust that if the Universe helped me out so much up to this point, it obviously will let me know what The Plan is when I need to. And I’d be a real shithead if I said, “Yeah, thanks for all the awesomeness you’ve worked for thousands of years to surround me with, but I’m really just not up for whatever it is you have in mind as a way for me to return the favor. Thanks, though.”

So this year at Thanksgiving, the list of Things I’m Thankful For really became more of a “List of Reasons Why I Should Push Myself Toward Excellence with the Reckless Abandon of Someone About to Die.” I even sat down and wrote a massive list of things I’m genuinely grateful for that are even more reason why I shouldn’t settle for mediocrity and why my life is honest-to-God Important in a big way (heaps of these reasons coincide with others’ but, again, I can’t talk for err’body.)

Sickeningly, like a crazy postmodern gag-gift from God, the rush of warmth, comfort and incredible motivation I found from this List of Gifts was the thing I’m most grateful for this year.

Oh, the aftertaste of saccharin and sentiment.

I’m not one of those people who tends to fling myself wildly into trendy causes or mass events. I don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day (because I’m not Irish and I don’t get wasted anymore) or Cinco de Mayo (because I’m not Mexican and I don’t get wasted anymore), I don’t donate money to anything claiming that they’re “stopping global warming”, and I kind of have emotional qualms with Talk Like a Pirate Day. (Honestly, why are we promoting pirates as a cool thing!?! I just don’t like glorifying people who were into raping, murdering and robbing people. If anyone who claims to be a pirate fan actually ran into a pirate from any era, you’d be none too happy about it. ::Sigh:: /tirade)

But this year a new grassroots event has sprung up and caught the attention of millions of people [thanks to the magic of Facebook-word-of-mouth] that I actually stand behind and am more than willing to support and perpetuate. To Write Love On Her Arms is a group who initially started out to earn money for a friend who was struggling to pay for her rehab bills after dealing with depression and addiction. They began selling t-shirts with the words “To Write Love On Her Arms” (which was the name of a short story one of them wrote about depression, addiction, self-mutilation and suicide) and found that the story and their cause really spoke to a lot of people. From that, they have worked to create an actual day dedicated to promoting awareness about depression and the other associated issues in which they ask participants to simply write “love” on their arms as a means of showing support for victims/survivors of depression.

Alright. I know this is something that a lot of kids are doing because cutting has somehow become a weird social trend in teenagers (BOTHERSOME) and because this group of people are relatively young and can make cool stuff like t-shirts and get popular musicians and celebrities on board it’ll have a very fad-style following at the beginning. So I know I’m totally flinging myself on a youth-perpetuated holiday that may be trendy as hell and very well may fade if the organizers get tired of working for the cause. (I pray they don’t.)

However, as someone to which every issue of TWLOHA’s mission applies, I feel that this sort of awareness-promoting holiday is long long overdue. I mean, we have an entire month for breast cancer awareness, which, while necessary and beautiful, doesn’t apply to nearly as many people as addiction and mental illness does. The truth of the matter is, there’s no reason the old stigmas of mental illness still exist. Because nobody knows how to publicly discuss it like any other health problem, our society has become completely schizophrenic about it, overmedicating some people who are just suffering from real life, while those who desperately need help don’t seek treatment because they’re still under the impression that it’ll make them appear crazy. Sadly, the latter of these two types aren’t inaccurate in their predictions as there are still tons of people from slightly older generations who perpetuate said stigmas constantly. (When my husband and I were talking to a health insurance agent before we got married, I calmly told the agent that I had a long history with depression and had been hospitalized twice for it. He kinda chuckled nervously and asked my then-fiance, “You sure you want to marry her?” Yeah, we didn’t buy shit from that guy…) There’s just not enough information being discussed in logical, mature settings to change the mindsets of those people who don’t bother to understand mental illness and addiction and so, we’re left with those ignorant outsiders believing that depression is just something people need to “snap out of” or addiction is “all about self-control”, which adds a whole new layer to the struggle of those who suffer from these very real illnesses.

When someone tells friends and family that they have cancer, nobody tries to tell them that it’s all in their head; they rally around the friend, actively helping them seek treatment or earn funds, etc. This doesn’t happen for mental illness patients. When people are hospitalized for mental illness, there are no cards and flowers, there are no fundraisers to help pay for medical bills, there isn’t an outpouring of love and concern. Friends and family of the mentally ill are often so confused and clueless as to how to go about dealing with these people that they say nothing at all out of their fear, which only adds to the victim’s belief that they’re not worth the time and energy to save. A lot of times, they take this a step further and criticize the judgment of the victim/survivor, telling each other that this person is doing what they’re doing for attention or that they’re too crazy or unstable to be bothered with anymore.

This is something I have experienced firsthand. I experienced being belittled and ignored when I expressed my very real symptoms of depression to those around me when it started in my pre-teen years and I felt the confusion and ostracization from those around me each time I was hospitalized. These outside influences and social mentality allowed me to continue believing that my self-destructive behaviors and self-loathing beliefs were based in truth. It allowed me to feel isolated even further from the people who were supposed to love me unconditionally. It allowed me to feel hopeless and it took the momentum out of my new actions for recovery. My story is not unique.

So I’m adamantly in favor of this holiday, organization and entire movement. I don’t care if that makes me look like I’ve mindlessly climbed on board some new trend; this is something my heart really stands behind.

There have to be more discussions about how to care and show love for the people who suffer from this very real problem. Mental illness education has to be put on the health class curriculum in schools. People have to start listening to facts and changing their minds about depression and addiction to create a society that supports and promotes recovery and hope. This movement has to happen if there’s ever going to be any sort of hope for the mentally ill.

As an Addict and Mentally Ill Patient in Recovery, this is something I both need and want to see succeed.

Today I’m painting “Love” on my arms. I’d like to invite you to do the same.

Earlier today I wrote a blog post in which I addressed my 13 year old Self, hoping to pass on a little hope and wisdom to her years ahead. Although it wasn’t anywhere close to my best work, I found it to be healing and significant nonetheless.

This afternoon, I went to the local DMV to finally apply for a North Carolina drivers license. When I was filling out my registration, the agent mentioned that I was already on file from 1996, when I received a government ID in order to fly alone, which I had forgotten about until that moment. A freaking HOUR later, I sat in the chair and tried not to look dead-eyed for my license photo (Unsuccessful.) When the agent took my picture she glanced at the screen and kinda snorted before giving me the universal “Heh. Come here; you’re gonna love this” hand signal.

I turned the corner and was instantly stunned into paralysis, while the same brace-faced, clueless 13 year old girl I’d only just spoken to earlier today smiled back at me from the screen. (Apparently, they never discarded my photograph for official documentation purposes.) Her face, full of monobrowed, padded-headbanded glory and aching insecurity sat directly beside the image of my immediate Self, who appeared calm, suitably groomed and a bit more sure of herself than she actually is.

And for a moment, there at the Sanford DMV, it was just the two of them staring at me and the two of me staring back. And none of us knowing what it meant but all of us knowing that we understood.

Later, I asked my husband if it sounded crazy to wonder if my sentimental message of hope and love released into the Universe in hopes to reach 13 year old Me actually did have any sort of effect on how I was able to maintain a glimmer of hope in the times between 13 and 26 years old when there seemed not to be any left at all. He said it didn’t sound insane to him, but then, he’s used to obliging my Crazy – so long as it’s of the harmless variety – so I’m still a little leery.

Something about directly conjuring her image last night and admitting to myself that I did love her, I do love her, I always have loved her and writing it all down and sending that love and forgiveness and hope for her out into the Universe (via blogosphere) only to be directly confronted with her in the physical realm later that day in a completely unexpected situation that was just a random occurrence… her image taken at that exact, crucial age, during the Autumn, in a place I would never expected to encounter her again… It all just seems like a bit more than coincidence, given the specifics and the time frame.

I’d like to believe I received a “Thank you”, sent from a Self I was many years ago. Suddenly, I feel connected to this Self again with the realization that we’ve healed from each other. I’m not busy hating her and blaming her for her inevitable flaws because I see where this rugged, nearly insurmountable path has lead me, with her as my guide. And she doesn’t have any more pain from my abandoning and betraying of her at every opportunity I had, mostly because she sees how it is helping her grow, (even if it’s not her first choice method.)

Whatever insane, metaphysical energy shift that just happened, I do know that this tiny event/coincidence will warm my heart far longer than any other relationship’s resolution has.

I wonder what our reunion will look like when I am 39.