Living like a wife, Loving like a mistress

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Upon rising from my daily routine of prayer, meditation, and letting the screeching cat through my closed bedroom door, I was hit by a lightening bolt of insight. I have been living my life with the beauty, humility, and grace of a woman any man would be lucky to be coupled with but loving as if I only deserved to be a mistress.  Taking the miniscule bits of affection I could get, swallowing every compliment, kiss, phone call, and  text message as an unholy communion. Ignoring grave inadequacies of the relationship for fear I would lose the scraps I was getting, even when I was married. I have been living like a wife, but loving like a mistress.

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.

❤ Rosie

Hello, My name is Stacey and I’m an addict.

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I have officially broken my own anonymity per the 12th tradition of all 12 step programs. I broke it for the need to speak freely about what addiction is and isn’t and what recovery is and isn’t per my own experience.  Clearly I’m writing this because of the recent passing of Whitney Houston, but it’s been bubbling up in me since the passing of Amy Winehouse.  It nags the shit out me to see the joke addiction is made out to be in this society, as if it is some signifier of inferiority that only the weakest of society are afflicted with.

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

The Show Must Go On … or not.

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This is the first time since 2007 that I do not find myself in the throws of a production during my son’s and my birthdays (February 10 and 15 respectively). It feels wrong, and it’s not like I’m here of my own doing, so I also feel as if I’ve been robbed. I realize this sounds a little selfish/self centered, but it’s the way I feel right now.

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.

Precious be still.

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My dearest companion Eric is a never ending well of comedic insight. His latest moment of round about Zen goes as follows:

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.

Foxhole prayers and Giant dreams.

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You would think I’d be a football fan.  My brother and his classmates were the pride of our city in 1983. They were Elizabeth High School Minutemen. State champions. College bound. Full ride scholarships and all. Except, my brother is 10 years older than me which means I was 8 … and a girl. I was over football by the time I was ten. Oddly though it was my mother’s plight that sealed football’s fate in my young psyche.

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!

Emotional Herpes

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Here’s a neat way to look at your past relationships!

Yes, even yours grandma!

You ever feel like you’re always dating the same douche  in a different body?

You ever find yourself  stuck on the proverbial one that got away, sure you’d missed out on the single opportunity for happiness life would ever offer you?!

Then you’ve got a raging case of emotional herpes! Valtrex won’t help this, you’re actually going to have to figure out your:

Father issues!

Mother issues! (biological or religious)

Your sex issues! (yep, go ahead and figure out who or what you want to be doing it to.)

while you’re at it you might as well delve into your internal issues about:

Your drug/alcohol problem.

The job you’ve been on for a decade that you despise.

That mole on the back of your left ear.

Your cellulite.

That weird uncle who always demanded you pull his finger.

The fact that you pulled it every time he asked.

Your unnatural attraction to your 2nd cousin.

…AND WHEN YOUR DONE!

You’ll probably still date that douche in a different body again. You know why? Because we’ve ALL got emotional herpes. It’s a world wide epidemic since … ummm … I dunno … THE DAWN OF TIME?! When whatever it is that you are supposed to learn kicks in, when enough truly becomes enough, something incredible happens; The universe slathers you with emotional herpes valtrex.  All the blisters and legions of the past heal, and you move on to your next “lesson”.  Least that’s what I’m hoping ;).

Rosie.

A note of inspiration

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Once upon a time before text messaging, email, and God forbid facebook; students would make great sport of sneaking messages scrawled on haphazardly ripped pieces of notebook paper to their fellow classmates.  The messages were called “notes”. Constant care was taken to navigate the note through the right channels, e.g. you did NOT want to pass the note to the kid that picked their nose, or the one who was too much of an airhead to be discrete, and definitely not the one who was always kissing the teacher’s ass as discovery and exposure was assured.

Call it nostalgia. Call it me getting old, but damn kids now just don’t know how to have a good time!  We lived and breathed to push information behind enemy lines during that french class while Ms. Whatserface (yep the memory loss is already setting in) would slash out french verbs with violent vigor, silver hair jostling to the rhythm of her wiggling body, only to have her protruding belly render them a smudge of chalk simultaneously. Looking back, most of that covert information was utterly meaningless. It was all about connecting. Getting what you had to say to someone else without anyone else finding out. It was a gratuitous ritual of our time. Which is alas, gone. *sniff, tear*

Being the fantastic semi-pro hoarder I am, I happen to have kept one of these precious relics.  This one was special and one that I have referred to over the years whenever I needed a tiny dose of confidence.  It was written about me by James Blair, a boy who waited on the school bus with me everyday while I was in elementary school. It’s always make me chuckle a little. Here, have a look … but don’t tell anybody, it’s top secret!

 

 

 

Rosie.

 

WAR | RAW

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Ain’t it a shame that most of the “pain” we go through is self inflected bullshit that we blame on others? We’re like robots set to self destruct that have to tear into their inside parts in order to disable the bomb.  The trick is not to do so much damage in the disabling attempt. It’s been a peculiar day of small victories and minute defeats in my somewhat peaceful war against me. Bleh.  I’m going to bed.

Rosie.