30 Days of Honesty -- AT LAST!

Day 30 :: A letter to yourself. Tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself. Pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable while I sing my own praises.

Dear Gal,

OK, I've known you for a long time, so I'm in a unique position to tell you all the things that make you lovable.

1) You're complex. Contradictory. In a good way. There are a lot of layers to this onion. You're extroverted at work or among friends, but once you get home, you don't care if you don't go anywhere or speak to anyone all weekend. You have an organized mind and are a fan of logic and linear thinking, yet you can't manage to put your groceries, shoes or paperwork away. You're a realist with a great imagination.

2) You're loyal. Your oldest friend has been around for a staggering 48 years. You've been hanging around with John for more than 30 years (which is amazing for more reasons than one). And once you have loved a man, part of you always loves him. The more I hear women complain about all the rats they have been with, the more I treasure that about you.

3) You're compassionate. You hate bullies more than you hate nuclear war. You have tremendous empathy for kids and critters. That's a good thing.

4) You're evolving. Whether it's just now discovering Marcia Ball and Dusty Springfield, or deciding to take Spanish, or just working on your temper, you do keep trying to stay open to new things and improve yourself. And, as your minister pointed out, God doesn't expect us to succeed, He expects us to try.

5) You're funny. You crack you up.

6) You're tough. Not as tough as some people seem to think, but tough enough. You, Girlfriend, are not going under. It ain't happening. Yes, you have wrestled with depression, but you're not desperate. You hurt, and then you heal.

7) You're passionate. Yes, feeling things this deeply exacerbates your packrat issues. But it also makes you enthusiastic, sentimental, and good in bed.

There, that covers it. I hope you have all enjoyed examining the wonder that is The Gal Herself!

30 Days

Day 27 :: What’s the best thing going for you right now? My outlook. I'm suffering with sadness right now, but it will pass and I'll be OK. Because just now my cat Charlotte checked in on me, carefully grooming my right thumb, and it made me happy. As long as the little things still lift my spirit, I'll be fine.

Day 28 :: What if you got pregnant, (or got someone pregnant), what would you do? This question annoys me because it assumes I'm both sexually active and young enough to get pregnant. We're not all potential breeders, about to board the ark in pairs, you know.

Day 29 :: Something you hope to change about yourself and why. My laziness and complete lack of discipline. Because it gets in the way of my happiness and contentment.

30 Days of Honesty

Day 25 :: The reason you believe you’re still alive today

Day 26 :: Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?

I lumped these two together because both answers point to Faith.

I am still alive today because God wants to be. As my friend John reminded me last weekend, we "tore up" and "did some damage" in quite a few Chicagoland bars and restaurants in our party days. I drank a great deal and did coke and poppers. My judgment was obviously clouded and bad things could have happened to me. John was beaten and mugged once in those days, and he's a foot taller than I am. Yet I'm here, healthy and not addicted to any of the substances I played around with.

My heart has been desperately broken on more than one occasion. There are times I have hurt so badly that I would do anything to make it stop. And yet, I have never seriously considered taking my own life. I have discussed this at length with my oldest friend, who explains her unhealthy attraction to all things related to Michael Jackson's passing because at the time of his demise, she was praying for her own death. She was having health problems, romantic problems, problems with her children, and truly believed it would get no better and death would be a relief.

As much as I hurt, and as alone as I may appear to the outside world, I know I am never truly alone because I have the Lord. He gave me this life and He will decide when it's over. And I also trust completely that tomorrow has the potential to be better than today because He gave me free will and the ability to see the bright side, the humor, and the small miracles in even the ugliest day.

One day, when I was as miserable as I felt I could be, when the entire world felt gray and rainy and deeply and profoundly wrong, I was running across the street to go to Walgreen's, and out of the blue, one of my favorite songs came on the radio and through my headphones. It made me smile for the first time in days. I will always believe that was God reminding me there is always something in life, no matter how small, to make us happy, to "get our hearts ringing in the key that our souls are singing."

30 Days of Honesty

Day 24 :: Make a playlist to someone and explain why chose those songs. (Just post the titles, the artist and letter)

For my best friend ...

While you are forever ready with wisdom for me, often delivered in your best "I really mean it" dad voice, you seldom face your own questions or try to find answers in your own search for peace and satisfaction. You try to stay in the moment, putting one foot in front of the other, until you find yourself confused, half a gameboard away from the "start" square, wondering how you got here.

I don't know what you want, so I don't know where you can find it. But I do know you deserve to be happy and content. You are a good man and you take your responsibility to the family you have built very seriously. I admire that enormously. That's why I hope your heart finds happiness.

100 Years -- Five for Fighting -- It's not just you, you know. Every time I hear this song I'm struck by how closely it tracks with your life. "I'm 45 for a moment; the sea is high and I'm heading into a crisis; chasing the years of my life ..."

Ooh, Child -- Five Stairsteps -- You gave me this song once, when I was blue, remember? Now I'm returning the favor. "Oooh, child, things are gonna get easier. Oooh, child, things are gonna get brighter ..."

Badlands -- Bruce Springsteen -- A healthy ambition is one thing, Sweetie, but you should know where you're going and why. You have your own gifts and talents, and while following them may not deliver you to the place your neighbors and family feel you should land, you may just end up happy. "Poor men want to be rich, rich men want to be king, and a king ain't satisfied until he rules everything; I wanna go out tonight, I wanna find out what I got ..."

Fine Line -- Paul McCartney -- The older we get, the more spooked we become and making wholesale changes to our lives becomes more difficult. So if you want to do something, do it now, before you turn 50 or 60. Or make peace with the choices you have made (and acknowledge that these are choices you have made). "Whatever's most important to you, well that's the thing that you got to do; whatever's most important to be, well that's the view that you got to see ..."

30 Days of Honesty

Day 22 :: Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life I have mentioned this before -- I devoted entirely too much time and energy into a relationship that didn't give me anything positive (but delivered a great deal that was negative) in return.

Day 23 :: Something you wish you had done in your life Oh, hell, I don't know. There are many things I probably should have said, but didn't, over the years. There are also many things I shouldn't have said. On balance, I have learned from these experiences and try not to hurt others if it can be avoided.

30 Days of Honesty

Day 20 :: Your views on drugs and alcohol Everything in moderation.

Day 21 :: (scenario) You’ve gotten into a fight with your best friend and an hour later, he’s in a car accident. What do you do? The very thought of this creeps me out. I worry about my best friend so much, especially that he might be injured or ill and no one will think to contact me. Since he lives in another city, I would figure out how to get word to him that he is my thoughts and prayers. I would talk to his family or, if he's in the hospital, the nurse on his floor. I would help in any way I could. Any battles we'd had would be irrelevant.

30 Days of Honesty

Day 19 :: What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics? A quick and easy answer to a complex question -- Nothing is more important, or as personal, as faith; while not quite as important as religion, little has a greater impact on our neighbors than our politics.

30 Days of Honesty

Day 17 :: A book you’ve read that changed your views on something Saving Graces by Elizabeth Edwards. Before I read this book, I thought that I was helping my friends by being self-sufficient. I never understood that it balances the scales of a relationship to ask for help every now and again. This book is unsparing, even scorching in its honesty. There were times as I read how she dealt with the death of her son that I had to put the book down. I was embarrassed for her when she admitted she went to the cemetery and read Wade his lessons so he could keep up with his classmates. I cringed when I read how she questioned, fought with and finally came to a new acceptance and understanding of God and faith. But by the time I was done with the book, and her journey, I understood the courage it took for her to share that horrible vulnerability, and how doing so helped others cope with heart ache and loss. I know her personal life has become controversial, painful and untidy. But to me, she remains a great lady. She wrote in her next book that she finds the lyrics to Leonard Cohen's Anthem inspiring, and I remember them whenever I think of her: "Ring the bells that still can ring/forget your perfect offering/there's a crack in everything/the light behind to see."

Day 18 :: Your views on gay marriage According to the Bill of Rights, each state has to provide equal protection under the law to everyone. So to me this is like interracial marriage -- controversial now, but in 40 years, schoolchildren will wonder what the fuss was about.

30 Days of Honesty

Day 15 :: Something or someone you can’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it Caffeine! I need my red cans of Coke every day. If I didn't have any in my refrigerator, I promise you there ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no valley low enough, ain't no river wide enough to keep me from replenishing my stock. Come to think of it, I wonder if I should live without it. After all, headache medicine routinely includes caffeine.

Day 16 :: Someone or something you can definitely live without Madonna. Or Kathie Lee Gifford. About the only two things these two women have in common is how much I cannot stand them.

30 Days of Honesty

Day 14 :: A hero that has let you down (write a letter)

Dear Mr. President:

Every time I think of you, that old Laura Nyro song starts playing in my head. You know the one, "BILL! I love you so, I always will ..."

And I did and I do. But you broke my heart.

It wasn't the infidelity that bothered me. Hell, I'm a Kennedy girl. I grew up believing we can and should separate personal behavior from public performance.

It was the way you allowed your good ol' boy horndog behavior to seep from the personal to the public that makes me nuts. You did a young and emotionally vulnerable girl in the Oval Office! How did you think you were going to get away with that? And I don't for a moment think you cared for that poor kid. You saw more interesting, more attractive women every day on the rope line in front of the White House (remember, this was before 9/11 when we could tour 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue). You chose her simply because she was there, and you did her simply because you could. And then you not only lied about it, you demeaned her ("I never had sexual relations with that woman ..."). The imbalance of power between you two and your fates appalls me. YOU were the most powerful man in the free world, YOU were the one with a wife and daughter (a daughter not that much older than your mistress). Yet today you remain one of the most popular men on the planet, and she's a punchline, a synonym for oral sex. How is that fair?

You're a good man and you have done a lot of good. But you had the capacity to do more and be a great man. I believed in you, and you let me down. You let the nation down. And you let yourself down. Every account of your presidency will include the phrase, "impeached by the House of Representatives."

And yet ... and yet ... When you talk about the Clinton Global Initiative, I'm transfixed. When I watched you walk Chelsea down the aisle, I got misty. Every time you have a health problem, I say a little prayer.

So even though you broke my heart, I love you so, and I always will.

30 Days of Honesty

Day 13 :: A band or artist that got you through some tough days (write a letter) If you can't guess what follows, you don't visit here often

I checked libraryonline.com (addressing people of title) for how to begin a letter to a member of the peerage ...

Dear Sir:
I love you the same way I love blue skies and cool breezes. Because while I remember with clarity the moment I first fell in love with you during that historic February, 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, I don't really recall what my life was like before you, and contemplating it without you is like trying to conceive of no more blue skies or cool breezes.
You have always been there, always soothing me with your voice. I remember listening to "And I Love Her" as my wobbly propeller plane made its way over the Gulf of Mexico because I somehow knew I wouldn't die while listening to you. When I suddenly became terrified as I dressed for my high school graduation ceremony because it not only meant the end of something I hated, it also meant the beginning of something unknown, I played "Get Back" over and over again. I have turned to "My Brave Face" when my heart was breaking and "No More Lonely Nights" when it was soaring.
I fell in love with you when I was 6 years old because you were so damn pretty with those bottomless brown eyes, impossibly long lashes and perfectly straight nose. And because your voice sounded exactly like it should, coming from that little rosebud mouth. I'm grateful that now, as you have passed your 68th birthday, I can see that I cast my lot with a man who has turned out to be worthy of such devotion. You and your first wife enjoyed a touching love story, sticking together through good times and bad and raising four kids who grew up to be productive adults (who all somehow managed to avoid brawls and rehab and the other pitfalls that plague celebrity children). You overcame career adversity -- finding yourself unemployed with the demise of the most famous band ever when you were just 28 -- and reinvented yourself. You could rest on your considerable laurels but you don't, still making new music and working harder than you need to with your live shows. You have lost both your parents, the Lovely Linda and many of your boyhood chums, and your second marriage was a humiliating debacle, but you have never gone under. I have come to realize that your real beauty is your talent, dignity and strength.
Thanks for sharing it with us.

30 Days of Honesty

Day 12 :: Something you never get compliments on My pretty face. Because I don't have one. Even my own mother said I was "cute but not what you'd consider pretty."

30 Days of Honesty

Day 11 :: Something people seem to compliment you the most on My presentation skills. I am enthusiastic and think fast on my feet. At this job, it almost seems as though my ability to sell the work is appreciated more than the work itself. OR, among people who don't really know me, my green eyes.

30 Days of Honesty

Day 10 :: Someone you need to let go or wish you didn’t know
My oldest friend's daughter. I believe she's a nice girl, deep inside, but she's running amok, and I'm sorry I know about it. A high school freshman, she began smoking pot and cigarettes over the summer, has been making out with other girls, and posts comments like "Itz Halloween motherfuckers" and "u r a fag but my fag" on her Facebook page.

I have mentioned to my oldest friend that her daughter needs a tighter leash, that more attention should be paid, but to no avail. I realize that since I am a barren spinster, mothers don't appreciate my parenting tips. I plan to "unfriend" the girl if things don't look different by the end of the month. Reading her words and learning of her activities bother me, and there's nothing I can do about it, so knowing it serves no purpose.

30 Days of Honesty

Day 9 :: Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted
I have a completely adorable friend who I haven't heard from in a year. And shame on me! For a guy who is such a guy (100% Oscar without a touch a Felix), he is so sweet and thoughtful. His birthday is coming up and I am going to celebrate it with a card and a call/email. So help me God.

30 Days of Honesty

Day 8 :: Someone who made your life like hell, or treated you like shit When I was in high school, one of my relatives molested me. Since he was newly widowed and "depressed," my mother actually encouraged me to have dinner with him one Sunday. Soon he had his hand between my breasts and his tongue in my ear. I insisted he take me home, but I initially didn't tell anyone. My mother was so distraught over his wife's death that I was afraid she couldn't handle it. This emboldened him, and every time we were in the same room he spoke dirty to me. His perverse game continued for more than 2 decades, when I was 38. During a family gathering -- with my toddler niece, my mom and my grandmother right there -- he leaned in and asked me how I masturbated. He knew I wouldn't make a scene and he got off on it.

A switch inside me was flipped that night. I vowed he would never speak to me that way again, and I haven't allowed it to happen. My mom and my sisters now know what he did to me. It isn't so much that they don't believe me as that they wish I'd just get over it already. It was so much easier before, when I just went along and kept the peace.

He's very old now. I wish he'd just die and get it over with, because I often wonder how I'm going to handle his funeral. A pillar of the church, many of the out-of-town cousins think he's aces, a patriarch worthy of respect, and will undoubtedly wonder why I'm not at his wake/funeral. I have too much respect for death and God to pretend a grief I won't feel, I don't know that I feel like covering for him, and I don't have the stomach to dredge it all up and explain to the cousins.

And it pisses me off that I suffer all this agita over something that never was my fault.

Gee, this was cheery, wasn't it?

30 Days of Honesty

Day 7 :: Someone who has made your life worth living for. Jesus. This life is my gift and testament to Him. I am imperfect -- too often selfish and lazy -- but I really do try to be the woman He believes I can be.

30 Days of Honesty

Day 6 :: Something you hope you will never have to do When I was younger, the answer to this would have been "food service" because I don't have the temperament to be a waitress and I'm sure I'd be miserable. But now, my response is more serious. I hope I never have to take care of my mother. She values her independence, and I value mine. But as she gets older and has an increasingly difficult time remembering things and making decisions, this is where I fear we're headed. This is, of course, one of those times I'd love to be wrong.

30 Days of Honesty -- Playing Catch Up Again

I didn't post this yesterday because I didn't want to take away from yesterday's peaceful Blogblast. But today I'm honestly trying to come up to date on this challenge:

Day 4 :: Something you have to forgive someone for. There are those who feel it's time for me to let Steve Bartman off the hook, but the furthest I'm willing to go is to stop calling him "Fucking Steve Bartman." Instead I think it would be better for me to forgive Crazy Old Neighbor once and for all. He continues to take up too much space in my head. This is going to be a long process, though, since neither prayer nor therapy seems to have brought me closer.

Day 5 :: Something you hope to do in your life. Remember how Wilbur eulogized Charlotte? "It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both." If someone can say that of me some day, I will have enjoyed a life well lived.

30 Days of Honesty -- Playing Catch Up

I was turned on to this meme by Snarkela. Since I began this blog as a snapshot, an honest chronicle of who I am at this moment, it seems like a good idea.

Since today is November 3, I'm going to answer 3 of the questions now so I can face tomorrow, all caught up.

30 Days of Honesty

Day 1 :: Something you hate about yourself. Laziness. Sloth. I think it's a manifestation of my immaturity, because if a task or topic truly interests me, I can hold it in my teeth like a terrier with a sock and shake it until it's exhausted. But if I'm not motivated, I can just sit on the sofa, doing nothing, filling myself with self loathing.

Day 2 :: Something you love about yourself. I am hopeful. Maybe not about the resolution of a given situation, I can be rather hopeless about some things. But about life itself. I know every day is full of little joys and miracles and I'm fortunate that, no matter how bad my day is, little things like the soft feel of a feline ear or a favorite Motown song on the Oldies Station always somehow find their way to my heart.

Day 3 :: Something you have to forgive yourself for. I stayed in a bad relationship with the wrong man for entirely too long. He did unspeakable things to me and I allowed him to. Because I had confused drama with love, I even baited him into our ugly battles at times. This relationship left me with both physical and emotional scars. I have own the fact that I allowed it -- that I valued myself so cheaply -- so that I never let it happen again. And then I have to forgive myself.