jewel mlnarik

Another one from the archives. 3.26.08. Funny how fast we grow and life changes in a year. Would be embarrassing if it weren’t honesty.

when i was 8 i wanted braces – i’d make my own with paper clips.

when i was 10 i wanted contacts – i’d suck on ice and put it in my eyes.

when i was 12 i wanted to be an alcoholic – and get caught, and have someone to fight with me, for me, love me, save me, hold me. instead i hid a bottle of whisky in the basement and counted bug bites and scars with my sister – we each wanted to have it worse off than the other.

at 12 i started smoking – under the bridge under a church, and cried when we got caught and lost our limousine ride.

at 12 i wanted, finally, boys instead of to be one, a boy – i wore showy clothes until a sketchy man followed us on a bus for days: she has a sweet ass. until we rode with mom who talked of target practice and our black belt tests and he never followed us again.

when i was 14 i wanted something to stand for: no war – beads in my hair, hacky sack circles, pot, green beret, red and blue lennon glasses. i’d smoke on the roof of the school and write my own basketball diaries.

when i was 16 i wanted to die, i lied. i wanted someone to discover me and find me worth loving, saving, holding, helping and tell me life would be ok. instead i found my sister and fought for my brothers.

at 28 i’m a perfectionist at 12 times 4 and want time to fu¢k up, with someone, a safety net, to catch me.

From the archives. 2.3.08

if i’d have known you as a Saguero, i’d have hunted for your flowers at night: suckled stamina, swam in scents, and kissed each sweetly good night – before they close in morning (for eternity?)

if i’d have known you as a Vampire, i’d have been seduced into the quagmire of dead love – dived from the tallest sky ledge: a gyring peregrine to battle blind bat – no blood required for a beatless heart.

if i’d known you as a Gladiator, i’d have given you an iron mask to bask in the crowd’s glory before watching you die.

if i’d known you as a Man, i’d have held your hand, your body and your mind: loved you in every particle and antiparticle, vast as sand and rings of saturn – and let go.

This has turned out to be a doozy of a week. First, a client of mine laid off all contractors and cut back employees. Very sad despite how much cut backs were expected.

Then I received a letter from ODS saying that I was declined the health insurance I applied for over a month ago, because I answered “yes” to having ever gone to therapy. In the box provided, where they wanted to know what ailment I suffered from, I wrote: “trauma. somatic theraphy – not covered by insurance. not sure this is even applicable here. call me with any questions.”

I figure most of us have had a traumatic childhood or past at one point or another, so it seemed like an OK answer. I haven’t been diagnosed with any mental illness, learning disorder or personality disorder which is what I figured they were going after. I just want to learn new behaviors so I’m not stuck in the mind of a freaked out, frustrated and bitter 16 year old for the rest of my life.

Now I kick myself. I should have known to lie: “Nope, never gone to therapy. I don’t believe in a person’s ability to mature emotionally, nutrition’s role in physical and mental ailments or one’s right to better their experience of life.”

Really?

Apparently, their take is that people who seek out support and guidance are more likely to get sick or need a doctor or file a claim. Only my experience has been quite the opposite. Take, for instance, a friend who suffered from chronic headaches and muscle pains (she had an arm like Dick Cheney). She went to doctors and no one knew what was up. She then took a week long meditation retreat and “magically” the pains went away and she could move her arm again. Or a friend whose severe migraines stopped recurring after a few months of therapy. No more doctor visits, copays or claims needed. Hmmm…

I’m utterly confused. When will this country get its head out of its arse?

9.

I’m in my 9th year in Portland. And it doesn’t seem quite right. I remember giving Joe his birthday present: 23 Reasons Joe Rocks oh, a couple of years ago. So how did he just turn 30? Nine years, really?

If I take liberties with time (which I can as a writer in this moment) that puts me in 4th grade for the second time around. (In this second counting I’m a Libra, having been born in Portland Oct 15, 2000. And riding through the gorge near sunset was an amazing birth! But I digress.) Only now I don’t have to learn about dinosaurs or how not washing my hands after going to the bathroom counts against the 9th commandment, which is about sex and not cleanliness though you want to be clean to have sex. I still live across the street from a high school, and next door. I’ve seen their production of Our Town in their old gymnasium, which was more fun to perform in than to watch, and can safely ignore the quarter-till bell.

Time is fluid and dances. It does not walk.

Even today I take my snowboard to the mountain for day 7. It’s my first season and experienced skiers and boarders dart, zoom and zig zag gracefully and forcefully around me. In the whirlwind I easily lose track of what I’m doing. I’m heavy, catching all the edges, and embarrassed. I get up quickly from falls until I stomp my forehead down. I really wish I’d found the perfect helmet by now.

Fourth grade will rock my world. I will walk a short 2 blocks to the nearby school where I will be the youngest person in the building. My dad will court a woman who’s enrolled her 2 children in a rival town and school while she gets a divorce. I will start practicing how to disappear and get entangled in an emotional cancer that takes years to discover and diagnose. School is formal and a safe house that can never last too long. I will run fast and farther than the girls and some boys.

Multiple universes can co-exist in parallel or encased in each other.

Starting out on the bottom can be tough, especially when only a short year ago you were at the top of another mountain/social structure/career. It can be helpful, then, to keep time and space fluid or shift your perspective. The bottom of a ski run may be the top/start of a smaller one. You can be 9 and 29.

On the mountain I remember to breathe. I shift my weight and lean into my boots and I can feel the ground again. Exhale the fear and turn gracefully. Inhale confidence and follow the curve back around. Exhale fear and turn on my toes. This is an incredible feeling!

And I wish I could report that was it. End of story. But that’s not how learning goes.

Soon I can sense the people flooding in around me, I’m aware of my speed and can only focus on one thing: how to slow down and I know this one. (Pick me! Pick me!) I fall spectacularly.

Nonetheless, I’m stoked. Fourth grade is going to rock the second time around.

Today culminated with a resounding reminder and notion: Ask and Ye Shall Receive.

It’s not a novel concept. Even as I write it, the old hymn from church lulls me back to the days when I loved singing in church. I could be loud and still unseen, lingering in a place where no wrong and no right exist. “Ask, and it shall be given unto you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you…”

Ehehm. I remind myself I’m not in church anymore and I’ve long since put my Catholicism in a shoe box in a larger box in an attic or basement shelf. Still, minus the goddiness of the flashback musical, the reminder calms me. Cogs that had been grinding and getting stuck are now churning with their counterparts effortlessly. (Like that transition period from a stressful day at work to a warm embrace with your partner and the notion that this is what life is about. Or watching a child (or cat) play with sunlight dancing on the floor. And your brain shifts out of the overstressed, poorly greased life-is-complicated gear into the silent hum of autopilot and life-is-simple.)

Calm, I think back over the past few months as I’ve practiced the art of asking for what I want. (Be it a home made dinner, a quiet night alone, for you to listen or for you to shut up.) And how uncanny it is that my success rate of getting what I wanted shot through the roof.

Think of it like being a passenger in a car. You can either sit quietly in the back seat and just hope the driver goes where you want them to. Or you can call shot gun and do a little “front-seat” driving by asking the driver to take you where you want to go. Yes, they can still say no (and likely will if you insist on telling them exactly how to drive vs where to drive). But your chances just got a heck of a lot better than when you weren’t saying anything at all. And you can be your own driver. I imagine being Joan Didion as Maria, driving fast in my convertible down the freeway and feel my lungs expanding to take in the fantastic freedom and exhale both serenity and anticipation (a delicious cocktail).

So when (and how) did I fall out of the practice/convertible’s front seat without knowing it?

Damn, it feels good to be a gansta. (I’m really digging this driving a convertible feeling!) It’s not that I don’t want to spend hours/days/weeks trying to figure out why I’m afraid or forgot the art of asking. I just don’t want to clutter the moment. (And, until I thought about it, I was happy to not have the hymn still stuck in my head. “Damn, it feels good to be a gansta…..