rudderless (pt.2)

“hurry up, goddamn it! i don’t have all day!!”. i often yelled this and other expletive-laden commands at cars in front of me while running errands during business hours. it was partly a joke i had with myself – poking fun at my own impatience and self-importance. its true though, i was always on the run, under some kind of deadline and anxious to reach the next destination. about a month after my store closed, i found myself yelling “i don’t have all day!!” only to realize that i did, in fact, have all day. i had managed to salvage enough cash, along with unemployment, to give myself a few months cushion to decompress, recover and regroup. there were days & days in front of me with very little, or nothing, to do. owning your own business means never really leaving it behind, no matter how long or distant a vacation you might take. after 13 years of running in high gear, the sudden halt was a total shock to the system. it must have been 6 weeks before i could shake the daily 5:30 urge to call the store and see if we’d had a good day. i frequently found myself reaching for the phone to call and ‘check in’. its not surprising that about the time i realized once and for all i no longer needed to do this, i also began to realize how much of my identity i had lost. my personal relationship had imploded 4 years before the stores closed, and i had spent those 4 years totally focused on work. with that gone, i was staring down an unfamiliar emptiness. i’ve never been a person prone to utter happiness and joy, so this complete lack of direction, the total blank slate, combined with all-consuming worry about my long-term finances, left me in a frozen and dark place. a great friend offered me a part-time retail job that made a huge difference in my attitude – not only did it get me out of the house and connecting with the human race, the money helped my budget woes. on my days off, i continued making lists and plotting my time to fool myself into thinking something was going on. how could i come up with a new career when i was so busy rushing to the grocery store or searching out cd’s on the internet? how can you concentrate on the distant future when just deciding on dinner takes all afternoon? looking back, i see how i tricked myself into feeling busy and vital totally out of self-preservation. not only did i create the illusion of a schedule, it also served to distract – as much as possible – from the fact my head was spinning and unable to focus on my next move. i could berate myself now for not “bucking up” and immediately seeking out a future career. i could castigate myself for being a spoiled brat and thinking i deserved the time off even if it was financially irresponsible. but the bottom line is, losing a business you’ve invested with every ounce of yourself, and losing it almost overnight, is a body blow from fate that i don’t wish on anyone. i gave myself 6 months to decide what i wanted, but it was only at the 6 month point that the smoke started to clear, i could see any kind of path at all, and the real work of moving on could begin. (continued…)

sprung

i’ve been seeing little hints of it for the past couple of weeks: a few green sprouts peeking out of the dirt, the trees looking a little swollen and beginning to bud. its staying light longer, and in typical colorado style we’ve had hot, sunny days followed immediately by wet and snowy weather. but there were more and more signs that winter was fading. yesterday i parked my car, got out, and was hit with the overwhelming sensation that spring had arrived in full. i felt the heat of the sun, the breeze was damp and cool with green grass and a faint scent of blossoms. all at once my body told me, with certainty, spring is here. as always, i sighed and inhaled and felt grateful that i made it through another long, cold winter. maybe its because i’m a summer person, or maybe it’s my taurean connection to the earth (wait, did i just write that?), but the moment i first sense the undeniable presence of spring, i feel lighter and happier and more alive. i feel like i’m coming out of the dark tunnel of winter into the light. it always makes me hopeful.

indeed, i made it through.

rudderless (pt. 1)

“job security is a relic from our parents generation” said a wise friend. “it doesn’t exist anymore”. she was right, as usual. i didn’t need much proof of that after seeing several friends go from job to job – laid off, downsized, transitioned. so many people i knew had fallen prey to those politically correct buzzwords for “you’re fired”, some more than once. and here i was, among them. certainly everyone wonders from time to time if their job might come to an unexpected end, and as the owner of a retail store, i’d had more than my share of ups and downs. there were sleepless nights, stiff necks and headaches, mass confusion about what was wrong and how to fix it. there were also months, years when things were so right, so exciting and fulfilling and the sense of accomplishment so great it kept me incredibly stubborn to make things work when they were on the verge of breaking down. so even though i had closed one store and consolidated to a single location – which was struggling – i was totally unprepared when my landlord called a meeting to inform me my lease was being yanked. i walked out of their offices into the september heat completely blindsided and numb. in less than a month, in a blur of markdowns and bargains, the inventory and fixturing was gone, the remains of the office hauled to storage, and i locked the door for the last time. with that, 13 years of my life came to a close. driving home i was so overwhelmed by the void looming before me i had to pull over. sitting dazed beside the road, staring out of the car window, i saw myself standing on a mountain of debt with no earthly idea where to turn. well-meaning people, trying their best to be optimistic, cheerily said “now you can finally do something different!” as if that was something i had desperately been wanting. the fact was, in spite of the stress and struggles, i loved my business, and not even in the darkest times did i have more than a flicker of wanting something else. yet the rug under my feet had been pulled away, with a force that left me fighting to keep my balance. as with most of the monumental pivot points in our lives, i’d had no choice. it simply happened, and finding a way to remain standing was totally up to me. (continued…)

ten words

a couple of weeks ago i found myself thinking about rosie o’donnell, and something she said after she left her wildly popular talk show. she was being roundly lambasted for waiting until her show was no longer on the air to come out of the closet. when asked why she had never talked about it before, she said “if i was to describe myself in ten words, i would never think to include the word gay”. i’m not sure why this popped into my head, but it started me thinking: what ten words would i use to describe myself? it hasn’t been that easy for me to come up with what i feel is an accurate list. i can definately think of many things i am not (unfortunately “happy” made it onto that list, but luckily so did “tortured”). it is difficult to pare it down to the top ten and stay as objective as possible (and is it possible? can anyone claim to be absolutely unbiased about their own self-image?). you can make this exercise even more interesting by ignoring that old adage “what other people think of you is none of your business” and try to come up with ten words you hope someone else would use to describe you. chances are there is some overlap, and maybe imagining how you would like to be seen from the outside will help whittle down the list that comes from the inside. think about it. what ten words would you use to describe yourself?

letter to w.

the bus stop on broadway is still there, the one we walked to that day after class, the day i finally got the nerve to talk to you. when it happened, when the clouds broke, we stood on the sidewalk leaning in to one another, our words rushing out in torrents. one bus arrived and left, then another, as you waved them past. the air was warm and smelled of rain and new grass. spring was bursting open, and the soft breeze was about to sweep us into a new and unknown world. as i walked away that first day, everything turned technicolor, shining and bright and hopeful. how long had i waited for this to unfold? how many years of dark winter passed, while i searched for the sun? then, unexpectedly, it rose effortlessly before me. suddenly there was so much to discover, so much to say, never enough time for it all to be said. i remember clearly the days we would wander campus after class, or stop to sit in the sun, or driving you home in my car. always, always we were talking – streams-of-consciousness from subject to subject, broken only by laughter. i see us in my apartment, doors and windows open to the warm evening, and i can hear rickie lee, stevie wonder, angela bofill, joni mitchell. we would quote our favorite songs. yours said “if i can feel the sun in my eyes and the rain on my face, why can’t i feel love?” and mine, “all i really want our love to do, is to bring out the best in me and in you”. in my naivete, i believed i could teach you to love. is there a harder lesson than learning you can’t force someone to feel? in my memory the time is compressed, so it seems we were constantly together. its harder to remember the long hours we were not, days and nights when i longed to see you, hear your voice, feel you beside me. i forget the times i paced around the telephone, fighting and losing the urge to pick it up and dial, and the way my heart would sink if you didn’t answer. it still stings to think that in spite of our bond, our connection, the more i wanted the less you were able to give. is there a harder lesson than the one about making someone feel who doesn’t feel the same? summer came. the heat, the long and lazy afternoons, muggy nights where we drank tequila and listened to ‘mingus’. and then the words: you were leaving town. in the rush of days and time, in the veil of tears that followed, things began to blur – then you were gone. is there a harder lesson to learn than the one about letting go? there were years of writing letters, staying in touch sporadically, off and on. the distance grew, enough time passed, and we lost one another in the void between us. looking back now, over the ocean of time we have crossed, i marvel at that springblown day we met and the way it changed me and changed my path through the world. your shining dark eyes, the easy laugh, even the brittle pain when i couldn’t quite reach you, all a tattoo on my heart, forever.