This wasn’t a regular cry. This was one for the record books. Huge crocodile tears filled my eyes and plopped down to the floor. One of those Viola Davis Doubt*, streams of snot ran down my nose.  My body shook.  I even got those crying kid hiccups, you know the ones they always try to talk through but end up sounding like they have a severe stutter. I was deeply sad, and I let myself be there until I could figure out why. My eyes were  just at swelling, and my gullet jam packed with Mike and Ikes when it occurred to me that in that moment, I wanted someone to take care of me. I wanted a male somebody to come in and make this shit right. I then did the other thing I do when faced with an internal crisis (I mean beside glutting myself with dime store candy), I wrote.

My writing put me in touch with something I didn’t know was there.  I’m tired of being the strong, smart, independent one.  The one that puts things together, or figures things out. Compound that with me not being one of these dainty little women that men tend to want to take care of and on most days I feel like a female Grizzly Adams.  I didn’t have a father, while I love my brothers dearly they are fairly useless in the area of handy-mandom, my romantic relationship … what romantic relationship? Anyway, the bottom line is that the times in my life when I felt protected and cared for by a man were few and far between.

So I stewed for a bit, swallowed the sticky wad of Mike and Ikes and tried to “activate my faith” (phrases like that tickle me ^_^).  I thought about times that I had been loved and supported specifically by men, in ways that were non-sexual. What I discovered is while those times are scattered, they are there. I have been loved and wonderfully cared for by men in my romantic relationships (even the sucky ones) – in my family (my Grand Pa always came through with a happy meal when I needed it most and my brothers  effectively kept me dateless through my teens for my own safety.) –and in my male friendships (these are men who have “dated” me, danced and laughed with me, given me emotional and financial support without  any expectations).

The more I wrote and thought and cried and chewed, the more I realized how skewed my perspective is. There is nothing I can do about my past life experience. Nothing. So there is no need to let it make my current existence  miserable. My history with men is just that, HISTORY.  I can make new choices, shift my perspective,  find new mistakes to make and  new lessons to learn. I can only do these things if I choose not to fall back into old patterns, which is what I was avoiding by destroying my bedroom in the first place. See. Full circle. Don’t you love how life works? I know I do.

Rosie.

*the magic happens at 1:11.

Being a woman of duty can be particularly sticky. For me that stickiness presents its self in the conflicting need to be engaged in the romance of a life-time while at the same time saving the world with my pen. Blame it on the excessive number of Hollywood Golden Age films I watched as a kid, my sometimes diminished self worth, but no matter the source I wish like hell it would go away. I get stuck in these hopeless “relationship” cycles with essentially the same guy in different skin. Never asking for what I really want or need afraid that he’ll “go away”.  In the end, he always does. That’s when I look up and months or even years have passed, and my life is a mess. Never mind any overall duty, the BASICS aren’t even done.

A dear, and I dare to say clairvoyant friend of mine sent me this note of inspiration that arrived as most inspiring things in my life do – just when I needed it.

“It’s not a matter of whether or not you have enough time. It is more a matter of timing. That anxious feeling you have may cause you to want to rush or force the process. Please don’t. You are so deeply and richly gifted that we cannot afford to have any part of what you are diluted.

Keep your vision as sharp as possible. Resist the urge to return to any vice that clouds your judgement and KNOW this like you know your own name: YOU WILL COMPLETE YOUR DESTINY. Remember, timing is more important than time.”

Oh, how I love you dear Stacey. I love your candor and your energy and that you fight tooth and nail for humanity. That’s who you are. You bring the future here by not letting the rest of us forget the past, all while living in the present. Not an easy assignment my Dear. However, you are not among the faint of heart. You are equipped for your calling.

I was amazed and honored by what she shared with me. They are things that I instinctively know but often forget. I forget that it’s not all about me and my desires. It’s how to serve others by being the best person  I can using the abilities and talents I was given. Corny, but true. I strive believe that my needs and some of my wants will get met, if only I do the next right thing for the right reasons.

Living a principled and meaningful life isn’t easy. I have and  will again stumble, but I will never fail to keep trying because the world is relying on me .

Rosie.

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The hardest part, as I had already been told by others, was getting the clothes off; followed closely getting acclimated to being naked outside (burr).  It wasn’t long though before I was chatting casually with him about mortality, artistic relevance, and other shit artsy nerds talk about as he snapped away giving minimal direction. Even sitting on the cold and moldy log in the middle of the forest (or as much forest as one can get our quickly developing city), I was notaware of my body. I  felt the cold, the wet of the ground, but I could not see myself in that world.

It wasn’t until we’d gotten back to Starbucks and he’d began to load the photos on to his computer that I actually got to see myself.  It was odd initially.  It’s very hard for me to look at myself in pictures. After awhile though, thanks to his magnificent talent  for capturing beauty exactly has he sees it, I began to see myself. I saw myself as a part of that world and a part of the world; a beautiful extension of all that was around me. Then I’d began to see bits of me that I glance over on a daily basis, but never really look at.  Like a scratch that lives on my left knee.

I’d gotten that scratch while doing what I did best as a child, trying to keep up with my older brother.  We were wild ghetto chaps, jumping up and down on a mattress that had seen its better days. After one particularly profound leap into the atmosphere I landed with substantial force on a spring that had escaped the holding of the mattress. I remembered being so shocked that I didn’t cry.  I just glared at the ever swelling bloody crescent shaped scar forming on my knee, and thought about how disappointed my Nana would be with me for damaging my skin. She had a thing about my skin, me being light skinned, and preserving the integrity of it .

Anyway, in the noticing of that scar I once again felt the  exhilaration of being light (in body) and tiny propelling myself in the air as if by magic.  It’s funny what photos can do.  They grab you, hold you and put you in touch with that which you’d forgotten to remember.  I’m truly grateful for that experience, and cannot wait to get butt naked in from of a camera again .

Rosie.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present the extraordinary eye of Sr. CHD:WCK!

My requisite breakdown is probably based on that universal sense that we should have done abc by xyz, and is based in nothing relevant to my actual life situation.  My life is pretty awesome.  I have a lot to be grateful for, and have lived through things that have killed countless others. It’s those things I focus on when in I’m in the bowels of despair leaning into my friend’s bosoms and adding the salt of my tears to the fried pickles on the table. As to being on the “wrong side” of any age, the only wrong side is the side that equates to me not being alive. As long as I have another day, I have another day to craft the tale.

Here’s to the next 365! Forty, I’m coming for you bitch, and it won’t be pretty!

Rosie.

And remember kiddies … Always stay young at heart!

First off let me say that I don’t view marriage as the ultimate yard stick by which one can measure the degree of soundness of a romantic relationship. See: The Real Housewives of (insert city here). I do believe in marriage as a symbol of commitment to a life with someone else based in non-material reciprocity.  Marriage, for me, stripped of all it’s culturally conceived glitz is simply saying ‘I do’ vow to go through all of life’s bullshit with you. To try not to hate you when you get on my damn nerves, and to while doing all this, love you for exactly who you are, as is. A simple but tall order. One that I have at one end or the other struggled with for most of my life.

I have given an over abundance of myself to people who either couldn’t or wouldn’t reciprocate. I have given with self centered expectation and been hurt when I didn’t receive the expected results. The relationship ground on which I walk on is pretty shaky but better than it used to be because I am now aware. Once I became aware, I couldn’t not become unaware which makes it that much harder to practice the behaviors I used to.

Love in abundance is coming. I don’t have to fight for it. Scrap, beg or borrow. I just have to be patient and honor the lessons I’ve already learned.

<3 Rosie

Guess what? That man negotiating million dollar deals on the 54th floor of your nearest sky scraper, is smoking crack in his office after board meetings cause he can’t take the pressure.  Your son’s 3rd grade teacher that is always so great with getting him to do his daily reading, is tweaking meth while her class is on the playground. Not convinced?  Sigmund Freud was a damn coke head! Addicts are everywhere and the sooner we start acknowledging addiction as a disease like diabetes or heart disease, the better off we’ll be as a society.

For starters, addiction has more to do with obsession and compulsion than sheer sloth. It is a disorder of the brain, and it’s treatment often consists of a multifold approach.  My own course of treatment has included: outpatient rehab, 12 steps, meetings, prayer, meditation, and therapy (and that’s not even everything.)  You see, contrary to popular belief one does not pop into rehab, pop out after 28 days and go on living their lives normally. Recovery from addiction takes work  and a lifetime of work at that. How is it then that we expect people who are in the lime light to “get their shit together”. I can barely shuffle my shit into the same building much less get it together after two years clean, but I’m getting better .

When I heard of Whitney’s death, I was in a room full of recovering addicts. We talked, some cracked inappropriate jokes ( laughter being the 2nd cousin of fear), some sang songs, but the sentiment was the same: She was one of us, and she never “got” it. It saddens me when I see the requisite apathetic tweets and facebook updates after tragedies like these. “She/He brought it on her/hisself” or “Yeah, but A MILLION people are dead in (place 3rd world country here)”. I challenge these types of people to take a good look at what addiction has done and is doing in THIS country. Incidents like these are opportunities for us to take our own inventories, not platforms for self righteousness.

Ain’t it the American/Human way. We dress people up, call them our “darlings” and when they stray from our expectations of them we seek their complete annihilation.  Fame is so dangerous in that way.  Just for today, I’m good with being regular assed Stacey R. from Elizabeth, NJ trying to piece together this thing called life with a lil’ help from my friends. If any good can be said to come from the recent deaths of Amy, Etta (the wear and tear on her body was drug related y’all), and now Whitney is my resolve to stay and live clean, is  that much stronger.

Stacey R.

11/10/09

A steady stream of bitchin’ and moanin’ about LOVE. Just in time for Valentine’s Day!

Life happened and one of my actors opted out of a show that we’d all been working on since October, the Thursday before it was due to open. I have journeyed through an array of pleasant feelings including but not limited to: shock, rage, hurt, disgust, anger, disillusion, sadness, and lonelines. Each phone call, email, or question about the show  flings me back into a bottomless pit of despair (ain’t I the drama Queen ). I’m realizing somewhere between setting my script on fire (okay I didn’t but I wanted to) and a phone call about a pile of abandoned sand remaining from our premature strike (damn high concepts!), that I was grieving.

It sucks.  It sucks to have something that you work so hard on just NOT happen. It seems to be a pattern in my life right now as another project I’ve worked on now looks like it may or may not happen.  I’m waiting on grad school responses.  My son and I are fighting for his education. I’m at a stalemate in my romantic life.  Nothing feels certain, and I’d better get used to it, because nothing is certain.

“Life turns on a dime.” “The only thing that is certain is that everything changes.” Slogans I’ve either heard or read along the way that don’t leave me with the warm and fuzzies, but which truths can’t be denied. My discomfort is from my non-acceptance of the cards that are dealt. What has helped is focusing on what’s in front of me like waking up, brushing my teeth, bathing, eating a meal. Every now and then a flash of light or a moment of clarity provides me with things to have gratitude for, like the process.  The work I’ve done on each of my failed/in limbo projects have helped broaden my perspective and grow me as a human being. Then the gratitude ebbs and I’m left with my feelings, except now the likelihood of me picking up that lighter is just a little lower.

I hope this makes sense.  I hope this helps someone.

Rosie.

He and I had been toiling away for most of the day in front of computer screens, eyes melting, caffeine fueling our every keystroke. We’d wrapped for the day.  He dropped me off at a meeting and went to pick my son up from class and drop him home. (He is a loving and considerate thing I tell you.) Anyways, by the time Eric picks up my son and drops him home, he is ready to “eat his fist”.  Eric is currently watching what he eats for health reasons, so naturally he chooses to go to Captain D’s, like any health conscious person in the world would.

To his credit, he decides on the baked fish and rice meal. Sensible. Down right healthy. The she chimes in:

She is his inner Precious. The living breathing manifestation of his insatiable hunger. (Which I like to picture sitting in the passenger seat right beside him.) Inner Precious (IP) alerts him to the the fact that the baked fish and rice meal was indeed not enough and that he’d better damn well re-up on a south style fish sandwich, it was only 99¢ anyway. He fought with IP a little and eventually caved. He ordered the greasy delectable, drove to the window, payed for his food drove about 500ft then stopped. IP suggested that he check the bag. Sure enough, no greasy delectable. The drive thru was completely barren and he could have easily gone around again, picked up his sandwich and drove off, but IP decided that this problem needed a personal touch. She sent him inside.

After some mild aggression, and an apology (I’m taking dramatic license here based on how I think the interaction went), Eric got his sandwich, got in the car and drove off.  IP decided that it would be a good idea to eat the sandwich on the way home. He stood his ground, and the southern friend fishy snack remained in the bag. (It is here that I like to picture him slapping IP on her chubby chocolate hand as she makes repeated attempts to free the sandwich from it’s wax wrap binding).

The two make it home, and Eric decides to take one last stand against old IP.  He eats his baked fish and rice. He’s sated, and comfortable when:

*****DRAMATIZATION******

He says his inner precious leans in and says to him, “You know you want that damn sammich”.  Her bearesque aggression renders him useless. He proceeds to devour the artery clogging masterpiece in a few short bites. His stomach is heaving. His head is pounding and IP is staring at him …

… basking in the after glow of her conquest.

The take home lesson or what I saw to be useful from his experience, at least for me, is that we have to name our demons. That way we know what we’re up against thereby making it easier for us to see them coming. The next step is to embrace them. The old adage “you get more bees with honey than vinegar” applies. It takes so much more effort when I combat my demons as if at war, than when I embrace my IP’s fat ass and tell her lovingly “No bitch, we don’t need a sweet potato pie with that salad.”

Rosie.

My mother was a DIE HARD Giants fan. She has the ulcer to prove it.  (Seriously) Season after season I would battle for my mother’s attention with various variety showesque routines. I would sing, dance, or story tell my heart out  as I stared into my mothers thick round spectacles hoping to divert her attention from the blood bath unfolding at Giant’s Stadium or wherever they happened to be getting their asses kicked that day. No luck. The only thing worse than when they were losing, was when they were winning.  This is the only time in my childhood that I recalled witnessing my mother praying … sort of.

She would get on her knees and lean off the side of her bed, hands firmly clasped. I’d watch play after play unfold in reverse across her lenses as she muttered that age old mantra I’d become intimately familiar with “Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. DAMMIT!”  (She also used said mantra when her ’74 Duster wouldn’t start in the mornings. It had a 50% success rate.) Years of this roller coaster ride with the boys in blue proved not so good for my mother’s gut. She went through a period where for a year she could barely eat anything at all and lost a tremendous amount of weight. Now granted, I’m not naive enough to believe that my mother’s illness was completely the doing of the New York Football Giants, but dammit they were at least accessories to the crime.

It took time, but gradually my mom got better.  She never quite cheered the Giants in the same way.  I watched her as tonight’s game approached.  I could sense her underlying excitement about the whole business, but she couldn’t bare to watch. To be honest, I kinda missed the intensity with which she adored the G-Men. I’ve not seen her quite as excited about anything else ever since.

Rosie.

Satan thy name is Bill Parcells!