Are You Perfect?

I was driving home with my boy today when a strange question popped into my mind, a question that I think has been percolating just beneath the surface of my gray matter for years. I asked it of him and now I'm asking it of you: What do you imagine is the difference between being a perfectionist and trying to be perfect? Do you think there is one?

I do.

For most of my life people have been telling me that I'm such a terrible perfectionist. (Side note: that's such a strange phrase, "terrible perfectionist." Does it mean that one sucks at her perfectionism? Or, does it mean that being a perfectionist is terrible? Or both? End note.) Anyhow, people have been telling me that I'm this terrible perfectionist. My response has always been to look at these people askance. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a perfectionist.

What I am is a mess. An utter, fallible, complete and total mess. I can barely get my socks to match everyday.

At the same time, nonetheless, I am trying to keep this world, my world, from falling apart. And in this respect, I am trying so very hard to be perfect. I am clenched and tightened and holding my breath. I want so badly for everyone to be OK and so, if you need for me to do it so that you can be OK, I will do it. If you don't know what it is, I will set to finding it out. I will worry and I will weary and I will try. I will keep on going and I will never mind because I will never notice. Just you don't fall apart.

I will be perfect if you will promise to be OK. I will keep this all together.

I imagine you sitting there, reading this, eyes bugging out, especially those of you who know exactly who I am, even as I poorly mask my identity, thinking, whoa. This is not good.

And it's not. If we were sitting here together I'd make a wry, pithy joke and try to let us off the hook. But here's the thing: I think maybe I'm just extreme in my trying to be perfect. We're all trying to control this life, this shit. We're all trying to find a way to know that it's all just Chicken Little, so even though it might seem like the sky is falling, and even though all the evidence points in the direction that the sky is in fact falling, it's just a big trick and everything is really OK.

My method is trying really hard not to make any sudden moves, taking responsibility for things that never were mine to own in the first place, and all the while trying to be chill, an act that nobody buys because I'm wound as tight as a new mattress from Sears. Other folks got their ways -- and this laundry list is too long rehearsed. Shopping. Drinking. Eating. Whatever. I judge ye not.

I'm just saying to you this: the sky is falling. I don't know how fast. If it seems like you can't get that corner straight, I'm guessing you can't. I'm sorry it hurts. And I'm going to pass on what my boy said to me.

He said, "You try to be perfect because you want to feel safe." That's right.

It's hard to feel safe when the sky is falling. Keep breathing. I don't know much, but I know that helps. And I'm learning, day by day, that somehow in the midst of too damn much, we're finding a way to be OK.

Fear and Reprieve

When I was in high school, I played basketball. Lots and lots of basketball. It was hell. In elementary school and junior high school it had been great -- and egotistical though it may sound, I hadn't been three-quarters bad -- but in high school it all went away. My stomach still sinks when I think about it and, shoulders shrugging, I'd still like to know what went wrong. Somewhere inside I still feel bummed. I had these plans, see. These plans to go to college on a real scholarship, to make the varsity my sophomore year, to be the point guard, to play.

But it didn't turn out like that. Lots of my life feels that way when I think of it. I watched a lot of the movie that came out at Christmas a few years ago, The Polar Express, with tears in my eyes, because I understood what the little boy meant when he said, "Christmas just doesn't work out for me." I feel that way. Life just doesn't work out for me.

Starting, I suppose, with basketball. I guess the problem must have been me (am I not supposed to say that?), maybe I wasn't so good anymore (it seems like I was, though). Perhaps the chemistry with the first coach, who left after my sophomore year to be an assistant at a big college, was a little bit off? Certainly I had no chemistry with the coach who came after her, who made me feel terrible about me and who I still bitterly wage war with, deep in my heart, far back in the lost places of my young girl's mind.

Some wounds seem like they shouldn't matter as much as they do. For me it's this basketball thing, but only in part. Only in part because I'm starting to think that life doesn't work out all that well for anyone. We all seem so sure it's working out well for the other guy, but the more I talk to him, the more he keeps telling me how great I seem to have it, or if not me, then you. I'd be a pretty sad sack of potatoes if I thought I hoed this row alone. It'd also be a pretty good farmer's market if basketball were my only potato, or if that one coach were my only foe. But I've blundered more than that, and in my mind I've got my finger in quite a few faces. Plus, let's don't forget I'm battling some actual, tangible enemies. Endometriosis, I'm talking to you.

Back to basketball. I remember there was one game when that coach came down extra-hard on me. Told me on the way to the locker room at half-time that he couldn't see any reason why he should let me play anymore. We were playing one of the less-than teams in our league, and we were not playing them very well. But I was trying as hard as I could. I've never been the sort of person who responded well to more pressure. I never, ever need more pressure. Looking back, that was part of the chemistry disconnect. If I ever would have thought for one second that he really believed I could do it, I'm sure we both would have been surprised by the results. But I always knew that he expected me to fail. It was a crushing burden to bear.

I really have no idea what happened in that game, if we won or if we lost or how much I played in the second half. But something happened that night for which I will always be grateful. I got home and it was winter in Idaho, and I put on my sweats, and my headphones with my old Walkman tapeplayer, and I went out to run. It was a black, black night. I don't know if my parents were home or if they even knew I left. I just remember that I went out to run.

I ran so hard, and for so long, and I remember that there was a point at which -- for just a moment -- I didn't feel scared. I didn't care. I didn't feel the pressure. I knew it didn't matter. I just ran. I lived in the same house for nearly every day of my childhood, and so every one of those streets was familiar. It was dark, but I wasn't lost. I realized that night that I know how to be alone without being lonely. I realized that things can be so hard, but you can still be there. That's it. You're still there.

For just a few minutes I was with me and I wasn't scared.

There are so many reasons to be afraid. It is good to be afraid. It means you understand what you're up against. But it is good to know that you can be counted down and out; you can, in fact, be utterly powerless, and still find your way in a cold, black night. Nothing got better after that run, not for a long, long time. But that run was still a good thing.

It is good to be afraid. Good, too, are moments of reprieve, even when they come in the dark.

Both at Once

Haven't posted in awhile. Can't say why. Just haven't quite been up to it. Things get hard. Words fail. Finally I write.

I've been talking to my husband a lot lately about how life can be "both at once," both good and bad, yin and yang, shitty and wonderful, and realizing that it's a really hard concept to wrap your mind around. I guess I'm lucky because it's not so hard for me. I laugh as I write that because I wonder if I've had so much shitty that I've always been scrounging around for the good, like little Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, insisting against all of the odds that, goddamnit, I will find the golden wrapper, I will, I will, I will... Even when there's no reason to believe it's possible, I'm somehow sure that if I just hang in long there enough, Grandpa will get outta that bed and come with me to the rivers of milky-sugary-wonderfully-chocolaty-brown. What's so great about that story, of course, is that when Charlie does find the golden wrapper, he finds it because first he finds the money -- the money to buy the chocolate bar. And where does he find that money? In the gutter.

The beginning of the trip to the chocolate factory started in the gutter. That's from the book. Nerdy kids like me always got the real story out of the book. I think in the movie he might get the chocolate bar at his birthday party. His family had saved and scrounged to get it for him. But in the real story, in -- gasp! -- the book -- he gets the money in the gutter. And he goes in the store, and he buys the candy, and he opens the bar, and he sees the golden wrapper, and pandemonium breaks loose, and he has to flee for his life. Poor little pauper Charlie goes from gutter to glory just like that. Both at once.

And then in the end Willy Wonka gives him the factory. The whole damn thing.

What do we get? I get this endo on my liver that doesn't go away, even after that awful surgery that left me living on the line between what felt possible and impossible for months. I got some other stuff that I don't write about but that busts me down to my knees way worse than any ol' abnormal growths on my abdominal organs. I got insecurities that I can't even deal with. I got questions that don't got answers. I got this loneliness deep inside that wells up in my throat and makes me think that a person has never felt more vapid than me. I got mistakes, regrets, losses, painful losses. I got things I understand that I wish I never learned.

But I got this boy who keeps coming home everyday. He drives me crazy, you know. He does. When I tell him that it's both at once, that we're just like Charlie, he tells me that all I see are daisies. It's absurd. Nobody, and I mean nobody, but that guy thinks I'm an optimist. I do like those daisies, though. They're part of the both at once, and so is he. I'm running better and faster everyday. I'm learning not to let my heart beat so hard and so fast, and that makes everything better. I'm writing again. I'm reading more. The world is full of books and, holy shit, it's so much better than filling my eyes up with all of that TV. Music, glorious music. My few friends who showed up when I was in the hospital, showed up when I came home, showed up a month later when it still hurt, showed up last week when I felt discouraged again. October baseball.

Fall, sweet fall, when summer heat fades away.

Both at once.

In the academic life, especially in the social sciences, we talk about the Enlightenment, and those white dudes who wrote about Progress, and the forward march of society, and how gosh darnit things are getting better all the time. And after we learn about that, we learn about how to critique that, and it's fun. We ask the simple question: When we speak of this progress, about whom are we speaking? Who's reaping the benefit? In academic circles the answer usually is those same white, property-owning dudes who seem to see everything getting better all the time. But I suspect that at the end of the day even their hearts break. I know plenty of them who've gotten sad a time or two. (Plenty of non-sequiturs could get launched here, that would take me off track, that even I could launch at myself. Let's don't.) We don't live on number lines where we walk forward for a bit and then get thrown back because we've been cheated. This is not a game of input output. God knows we try so hard. I try so hard. I get so angry because it isn't enough.

It isn't enough, because we're just little people in a really big world, and the really big world is smarter and faster and slyer than us all. The world fucking cheats, too. Denying that just makes you annoying. It's doubly annoying if you're not a cheater. However.

We live both at once.

It's true that some people seem like they have a lot more glory than gutter. Lucky bastards. Hard not to hope they trip.

Hey, what can I say? I'm still struggling with both at once and feeling safe and realizing that I can't always do more than I'm doing.

Bleep, bleep

I've been doing something on my runs this week that I hate doing: I've been wearing a heart rate monitor. I hate doing it because it forces me to calm the fuck down. I normally run hells bells, all out, demanding that I hit a pace that's at least under nine minutes a mile, usually much closer to eight.

Eight minute miles are about what I used to average during high school cross country practices. Probably a little bit less, but not a whole lot. High school was a long time ago. Like, before endometriosis. Hip pain. Graduate School. Insomnia. Age 30. Plus.

Just saying. Eight minute miles are pretty fast for me now, but I push pretty hard for them. On training runs.

Until I strap on the heart rate monitor, that is, or I should say I'm starting to think. Heart rate monitors make me realize that running can bring out the bananas in me. At least that's what all the bleeping seems to imply. I strap the thing on and the next thing I know the damn thing is shouting out absurdities like 171 beats per minute, 172, 176, 178, 181, bleep, bleep, BLEEP. Is this thing even working right?

The first time I used it this week, I was on a treadmill. I warmed up at a 10 minute pace, no problem, 138 beats per minute. Went up to 6.2, 143 beats per minute. Up to 6.5, 150 beats per minute (that's about a 9:13 pace). I should have held there, but I was thinking -- I'm not kidding -- I bet my heart rate won't even increase if I press my pace up to 7.0 (within a minute I was at 163). Now, here's where all rationality went hasta la vista, baby. I actually had the following conversation with myself: "I know why my heart is beating this hard. Since I'm not getting tired, my heart is over-working itself trying to go this slow. I better up the pace."

I amped the treadmill up to 7.5 (an 8-minute mile). My legs were whisking along beneath me, proud and strong, and I knew that somewhere out there Paula Radcliff herself was aware of my graceful prowess. I made sure to relax, concentrated on my form, took several deep cleansing breaths just to make sure I was as calm as possible and looked down at my watch.

192.

WHAT? I'm not even breathing hard, I thought to myself. So I looked down again, legs still galloping beneath me, in their seemingly effortless stride. 194.

Fine. Whatever. I pushed the buttons down, first back to 7.0. This only got my heart rate down to 176, still in the watch's "emergency" red zone. Also, the treadmill at my gym automatically syncs with my heart rate monitor, so it had started warning me, too. Giant red letters were scrolling across the machine's screen, "Urgent! You are exercising too hard! Reduce effort immediately!" It was awful.

I turned the pace down to 6.5. Now even this was too hard and only brought my heart rate down to 168, 69, 68, 69. The watch continued to bleep, the treadmill continued to lecture. I was completely dismayed. I still didn't feel tired. I was still not even breathing hard.

Down to 6.4. This got my heart rate down to 160, which at least settled down the treadmill, but the watch was still unhappy. (I had programmed it to encourage me to hold a pace between 147 and 157 beats per minute.) I couldn't get down to 157 at 6.4, a lousy 9:22 per mile. I punched the level down one more time, to 6.3. I finally achieved a rate of 155 beats per minute, running a pace of 9:31.

9:31! I'm embarrassed just to write it down. That's barely even anything. Who runs 9:31?

Well, me, I guess. Because, the thing is, I ran that pace, for the most part (I did allow myself a pick up for the last one minute), and the run actually wasn't awful for once lately. I didn't need to collapse at the end. I still had something left for the pick up at the end, when I could run hells bells, and most runners know that pick ups are really important, because they teach you to finish strong, run hard, go all out when you're tired.

But most important, I held the pace. I just ran. I wasn't working so damn hard, I was just lost in the running, not doing more than I really can do. God, that's so how I live my life, constantly doing more than I really can do, demanding that I turn up the pace, no matter how damaged my insides are, there has got to be a faster pace that I can find a way to hold. Truth be told, I've been running more on treadmills lately, and I think it's because I haven't wanted to admit that I can't run as fast on the open roads anymore if the pace is left to me, and the treadmill can force me to do it. The belt can make me go, and before the heartrate monitor, I would not turn it down. I would run those nearly 8-minute miles, no matter how my liver hurt, no matter how my diaphragm begged, no matter how my pelvis ached. I would do it, because I used to be able to, and so if I can't do it now, it means that I am losing.

Losing what? I don't even know. I know that running used to be smooth and easy for me, something that I just did, not to prove something, but because it existed, and I existed in it. I wish sometimes that I would never have found out that I was relatively good at it, because sometimes in finding out that we're good at things, all the grace and beauty gets sucked out. But I did find out and, anyway, that was a long time ago.

Now maybe I'm not so good anymore. This makes me sad. I identify strongly in being able to run farther and faster than can lots of other folks. But you know what? My arrogance in that ignores the fact that there have always been lots of folks who could run farther and faster than me, that I've always been getting older, and that I've always been trying to outrun so many things that were bound to catch up with me at some point anyway. Now I have to face the truth. My liver grows this stuff it shouldn't grow and it grows it right next to my diaphragm and it hurts when I run too hard. I had a really big surgery not so long ago. Maybe my heart is saying, we're sad, me and you, and we need to go slow. We're not like we were before this happened. We have to live in the after. We have to hear the bleep.

There were bleeps in the hospital, too. Bleeps when I pressed the button for more pain medicine. Bleeps when my blood pressure dropped too low. Bleeps when we called the nurse because the pain was so intense I was hyperventilating. Bleeps for things I can't even remember anymore.

But even though I know all this, I'm not so good at slowing down. Not in my running, and not in my life. I want this to be over. I want to run like I did when I was fifteen. But I have to admit that the running feels better when I'm not pressing so damn hard. Everything feels better that way. I feel so stuck.

I want this to be over, but that's not a realistic want. Like I've said before, this is something I'm under, and I'm gonna be under it for quite awhile yet. There's not a pithy wrap-up or an easy lesson. I can't promise I'll never go hells bells again. I know that I will, maybe even tomorrow. But at least I know when I do, there'll be a bleep-bleep going off somewhere deep in my head.

Or maybe even on my wrist.

On Kindness

I've been thinking a lot lately about kindness -- the kindness of strangers, the kindness of friends, the kindnesses we trust and the ones that we don't. I believe that being kind is the most honorable of traits and yet its presence is so quiet and unassuming that it often gets taken for granted. We forget that the counterpart to kindness is sacrifice because kindness requires submission: Submission to the other, to the moment, to the loss of the material goods you really intended to keep for yourself.

To be kind is not the same thing as to be nice. Many people are nice but very few are truly kind. Niceness wears thin and comes with limits. Kindness sits with you in the dark, cold night when you shiver and hate and demand to be left alone. Kindness finds a way to let you be, but neither does it walk away, because your troubles are not too much for kindness. Kindness also tells the truth when your wallowing wears thin, but does so in a way that continues to be about you, your needs, your life, your hurt, your potential and your possibility. Kindness says, get up, let's go inside, let's try a new space for awhile. Kindness offers chocolate chip cookies underneath an old afghan on a worn-in sofa. Kindness fits. Kindness waits. Kindness hopes on your behalf.

Kindness. Sometimes it hurts. At least sometimes it hurts me. It drudges up the times that I tried to trust in its presence and pull that afghan up underneath my chin, only to discover the blanket was fraying in my fingers and the cookies were all burned. To recieve kindness, one must flirt with the possibility of disappointment, because nobody, no matter how kind, can come through on every occassion. This sucks. And to be human in this wild world is to desire distance from the chance of getting let down... again.

I just don't want to be disappointed again.

It hurts so much. To know and to receive authentic kindness is to risk a great deal because it means walking into the kitchen, taking the cookies, sitting down on the sofa and knowing -- damn it, knowing! -- that hurt is going to follow. The only question is, how big is the hurt going to be? I think this is why so many of us enjoy so much accounts of the so-called kindnesses of strangers, anonymous gestures of incredible munificence that come without explanation and leave us speechless in their plentitude. We aren't just mystified and grateful for the magnitude of the gift. No. I postulate that we are also relieved. We are relieved because the gift is really free, unfettered of the requirement of reciprocation or, often worse, the humility that can come in knowing who helped you and not being sure of whether you're worthy or why why they did it in the first place. Instead, the question of, "Why me?" goes unanswered, as do the needs for direct payback or syruppy, sycophantic thank yous.

Known kindness improperly executed excoriates its recipient. An act meant to help can cause immeasurable harm. This is the unseen but utterly felt dialectic. This is the rub with kindness, and this, I think, is why kindness is so difficult to trust. Kindness can be very demanding. How do I know, if I take your cookie, that you won't make me feel forever indebted? How do I know that you're giving me your best and not just your crummy leftovers? How do I know that you will receive my pain in dignity and hold it with grace? How do I decide not to just do it myself? My way might be imperfect, but at least I'll be free to cast blame. If you offer me your kindness, and I end up getting hurt, will I have to hold the hurt, because you meant it in your kindness? No thanks.

And yet we are stuck.

We are stuck because of the loneliness. Because it hurts so much to never depend on anybody. Because it makes us so sad. Because even though we fail each other so readily, most of us don't mean to, at least not most of the time.

And maybe because in my life nothing has felt quite so good as a second chance.

Because I've been learning lately that I suck at making it on my own. Every time I get close to hauling my own ass up to the top of the mountain, the endo does its thing and I'm back on the Vicodin. Again. On the Vicodin (I swear it isn't just an hallucination) I realize I got boosted up the mountain anyway. And I need a cookie. And a couch. And a blanket. And somebody to say, trust me, I'll sit with you, you're ok, let's wallow for a bit.

A Letter to My Students

I've been teaching a class to highschoolers on newswriting the past few weeks. The final assignment is a column -- a chance for the kids to shine and leave us all with some thoughts to remember them by.

I promised them that I would go, too.

Here's what I'll have to say. We'll see if they like it.

A Letter To My Students

When I was a senior in high school my English teacher gave me an incredible gift. Actually, she gave it to our entire class, in the days leading up to our graduation, and now I am passing this gift onto you.

Her endowment came in just a few simple words and they went like this.

Dear students, she said, you are being told that these are the best days of your life, and this is such a great lie. These are not the best days of your life. Most decidedly not. Not even close.

I remember receiving her declaration like a lifeline, my lungs expanding like balloons beneath the walls of my chest. I had gone through my high school years fearing that I had missed out somehow, that the good things had passed me by because I was not terribly popular, pithy, pretty or rich. I didn’t wear the right clothes. I rode the bus to school. I liked to read too much. My elbows were too bony. My shirts never fit quite right. I tried too hard. I knew that I was missing out.

Our school presented a musical my senior year – if I remember right it was Grease – and the excitement of the performances stuffed up the hallways of my high school in the days leading up to opening night. I wanted to go and see. No one invited me to go along with them. I asked my mom to the Saturday night show, and we went. When we arrived at the auditorium, some of the other kids talked and laughed and made jokes with me. It was fun. My mom said I could go and sit with them if I wanted to, that she’d be fine sitting alone. But I knew I had to sit with her. No one had asked me over to the chairs next to them.

And so I feared with all my heart that the best days of my life were such a terrible bust. Then came Mrs. Coehlo’s wonderful words. These are not the best days of your life, she said. She promised. She promised and I believed. Whether or not you’re the lead in Grease or the skinny girl sitting next to your mom, it doesn’t matter, because it gets so much better than this.

You must go forward into the great unknown and come to understand that there are love affairs to be had, children to bear, countries to visit, mountains to climb. There are things to study, colleges to go to, people to meet, dreams to behold, songs to learn, friends to cherish, jokes to laugh at, and dances to groove.

You must still go out there and live in your first, very own apartment, with the leaky faucet and without the dishwasher so that you can grow mold on your cheese and fur on your tomatoes and slime on your turkey. You must feel so proud of this accomplishment. You must promise yourself to eat healthy and immediately fall off the wagon and survive on Dominoes Pizza for a week. You must hurt sometimes, because hurt – if you let it – can become an incredibly instructive and you will watch as your ennui blossoms into possibility and you flourish. You must simply trust me on this point. Someday you will know exactly what I mean.

You must get your first job, your first true love, your first broken heart, your first taste of justice, and your first whiff of the amazing expanse of whatever you know to be grace. You must become your own friend, and when you do this, you will have accomplished an incredible feat. You must learn to recognize what this feels like, because you will probably have to do it again, and again, and again. We humans like to turn on ourselves, and the knives we throw in our own backs cut hard and deep.

You must learn to do this less. You need your own companionship so much.

You will go forward and you will remember these days, some of you more fondly than others. Remember this, too, though. You can tell a lot about a person in their later years by how much their adolescence still means to them. Life is a journey toward what is ahead. And so –

Take risks, but make them smart ones. Don’t get yourself killed doing dumb things, like drinking and driving, taking too many drugs, having reckless sex, or just being stupid with guns. Know that whatever happens to you and however hard you fall, you can get up, somehow. Bear in mind that getting up is easier if somebody extends a hand in help. Be a hand for somebody else. Hope. Always hope. Don’t worry so much about looking foolish. Remember it’s always better to learn than to know. Laugh. Dance. Be.

After all, the music, the moment? You know that you own it.

The Truth

I've been blocked and busy and so haven't written much. Then last week I went into a local used bookstore and picked up a collection of poems by Philip Schultz under the moniker, "failure." (Of course I picked this book up. How could I not?)

I opened, by accident or maybe fate, to a poem called, The Truth. I knew the instant that I read the poem that soon, very soon, the book would belong to me.

You can hide it like a signature
or birthmark but it's always there
in the greasy light of your dreams,
the knots your body makes at night,
the sad innuendos of your eyes,
whispering insidious asides in every
room you cannot remain inside. It's
there in the unquiet ideas that drag and
plead one lonely argument at a time,
and those who own a little are contrite
and fearful of those who own too much,
but owning none takes up your life.
It cannot be replaced with a house or a car,
a husband or wife, but can be ignored,
denied, and betrayed, until the last day,
when you pass yourself on the street
and recognize the agreeable life you
were afraid to lead, and turn away.

To add anymore would be to tell you what to feel, what to think.