5...4...3...2...1

5 events I am totally looking forward to in the next few weeks:

5. Houdini exhibit at the Skirball

4. Tim Burton exhibit at LACMA

3. Mother's Day picnic on Sunday with the family

2. Going to Magic Mountain

1. My friend Anthony's comic book signing next Wednesday

(yes, I'm aware most of those events were definitely nerdy in nature)

4 things I recently bought and I could not BE happier:

4. I'm not a purse person, having bought exactly two in my life, but here's the purse I just bought and I am in LOVE. I never thought I'd like an inanimate object so much in my life.

3. These four Beatles prints. They are gorgeous, and I find it hilarious how clearly they show just how useless Ringo Starr really was to the Beatles. Benni and I found album frames at a craft store and hung them up in our dining room, over our record player (Vinyl FTW!)

2. Tank tops from Target. They are $8 and they go with everything. I don't think I need to explain this one much more...

1. $1.29 daffodils from Trader Joe's. How many times can you say that something you spent a $1.29 on made you blissfully happy for an entire week? But flowers just do that.

3 of the best things I have read lately:

3. The Happiness Hypothesis - amazing, incredible, very non-new Agey, very practical and scientific exploration of happiness. Best book I've read in a very long time.

2. A Short History of Nearly Everything - hysterical, makes science absolutely fascinating, and makes you giddy just to be alive.

1. This commencement speech by David Foster Wallace, which is heartrendingly beautiful and inspiring and I try to read at least once a week. (It's floating around the internet under the title This is Water)

2 books I WANT to read so badly:

2. The Good Book: A Humanist Bible

1. Unbroken: A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

1 funny story about LA:

I'm sitting in my car in downtown Hollywood, waiting for the light to turn green, when a homeless man carrying a sign that says "Love One Another" ambles over to my open window. I'm not going to be rude, and I have a strict policy of treating homeless people like humans, so I smile as he comes up to my car.
"Excuse me, ma'am, do you have a hundred dollars you could spare?" he asks, eyes kind and smiling. I burst out laughing. Surely he knows how ridiculous this is, right?
"No," I said. "I'm sorry. I have no hundred dollar bills to give you today."
"That's okay," he says, still grinning. "I'll take a fifty if you have one."
Again, I crack up. "Nope, no fifty's either."
He shuffles from foot to foot and pretends to look confused. "How about a gift card to Best Buy?" he asks. By this time we're both laughing.
I look him straight in the eye and tell him, "Man, if I had a Best Buy gift card to give you, I honestly would."
"Next time," he says, and we fist bump, and all the other people in all the other cars can see me laughing and are rolling down their windows to give him money and the sun is shining and life, life my friends, is very, very good.

the kids are alright

I know that last week I wrote a deeply personal post about what I'm going through right now and then just sort of left people hanging - I didn't mean that to be the intention, but sometimes, when something FINALLY gets out of your system, you just sort of sit back and let the arrows hit what they must. As a result of my post my family is now going through some pretty dramatic changes, none of which I feel the least bit sorry about. It was change that needed to happen because it was the sort of change that happens when the truth is revealed, and too many families with experiences similar to mine drown under the weight of what is not being said, what will never be said.

A couple people emailed to ask how I was doing, and my very honest answer is: I'm doing great. I'm doing better than great. I feel freer than I have in ages. And I have many of you, both my personal and blogger friends, to thank for that, as your support and love and kindness and understanding has traveled through the wires and onto the keyboard and into my heart. Thank you, each and every one of you: thank you so much.

Although I would like to ask some of you who called me amazing and incredible and strong and beautiful that you know I once closed the refrigerator door on my head, right? Right then, moving along. Nothing to see here.

Some of your comments were so incredible, in fact, that I am writing another post in a few days just so I can directly address them. But I wanted to write a quick "Hi, I'm alive and well" post first so y'all didn't worry.

Before I take off, quick anecdote on how to tell if you're an A-Type like me:

I got food poisoning late Saturday night (did you know that you're not supposed to eat a bleu cheese burger with mayo after it's been left in a hot car for four hours? Why didn't anyone tell me this? Sometimes I'm such a guy) and as I'm leaning over the toilet, knowing that I'm about to lose my stomach any minute, I notice...

...that my toilet is way too dirty to throw up in. So (and I am not making this up), I grab the toilet brush and promptly scrub down my toilet and then clean the seat with some moistened toilet paper to get it all pristine-

- before promptly throwing up in it. A girl's gotta have standards, people.

I'm feeling much better now!

Tracy: 1 Mayo: 0.

riot proof

Well, here we are.

Apologies to all of you who, when I wrote that I was prepping for some serious change in my life last week, were thinking, ooh, haircut, yeah! while I was thinking more along the lines of ooh, unveiling my emo drama that I don't even talk to my closest friends about...yeah.

I'll just come right out of the gate with the fact that I'm much, much, MUCH better now.

I came to a realization a few weeks ago that I was Very Not Okay. I suppose you want the back story; I suppose you want to ride along with me on the journey. That's okay, today I can do that. Not many days can I let myself take people's hands and say let me show you all of it, the whole big mess, but today is different and the sun is shining and last night I fell asleep feeling brave. Today I have strength enough to outshine the stars.

I am a victim survivor of sexual molestation. It started when I was young, very young, long before I knew what words to call it but the wrongness of it still settled in my tiny body and troubled my small heart. It continued on and off during my teenage years with a relative of mine, until my situation changed and that relative no longer had the same amount of access to me. It took me until my freshman year of college to call it by its true name and start learning to take the anger and numbness that had built inside me like a wall and start dismantling it, brick by grieving brick, and turn it into tears. It took this girl physically taking me by the hand my senior year of college, after three years of public meltdowns and panic attacks and nightmares, to get me professional help. Lira, thank you. You saved my life.

I am not on any medication. I exercise 2-3 times a week to keep the darkness at bay. Most of the time the endorphins are enough. Sometimes they are not.

I have confronted my abuser, who is now getting on in years. Each time I tell him what he has done, he is humbled, he apologizes, he says he is a changed man, and that he is deeply shamed. I do not doubt the genuineness of his remorse, but what I doubt is the capacity for this man to change. For here is where it all goes even more wrong.

Each time we have a conversation where I inform him of what he has done to me and then politely and respectfully ask him for the only thing I have ever asked of him in my entire life - to simply be left alone to live my life in peace - a couple months of silence go by. And then the phone calls, emails, and letters resume. Why aren't we talking? they all beg. What did I do wrong?

Turns out, this person wipes their memory clean of any conversation we had regarding what was done to me. I relive, again and again, my loss of innocence while my abuser conveniently forgets what part he played in it. Again and again, we did our hellish dance, abuser and survivor, me reminding him, him apologizing, then him forgetting and picking up right where he left off, trying to get me back into his life, the never-ending persistence of phone calls and heart-broken letters.

So I ended the dance. I stopped responding, I stopped playing the game altogether. My sanity was at a breaking point, my heart was heavy, my appetite non-existent and my sleep occupied with terrible, terrible nightmares. In order to survive, I chose me over him. I've never regretted it.

But I still protected my abuser - from himself. I stopped confronting him and instead let him name the terms and try to step over boundaries while I turned myself into a ghost, drifting this way and that to avoid the inevitable confrontation that gives no closure, only opens the wounds that cannot heal because he will not ever let them close.

I am done with that too, now. Because what drove me to the edge and parked me on the cliff, what made me stare down into the deep, dark pit of what I'd created for myself, given my non-existent ability to say no and to keep letting others walk all over me, is that my tormentor found my blog.

And he began reading it and sending me emails commenting on it and telling my family about the pictures he saw of all of them on it. Every time I sat down to blog I felt like a piece of tape was over my mouth, knowing that whatever I wrote he would read, and I would feel violated all over again - hunted, trapped. Angry. Very, very angry. Fucking furious, you might say.

And here we are. Backed into a corner yet again, I contemplated flight, I contemplated shutting this blog down permanently, I considered turning it private (with Blogger that's a pain in the ass) and I considered moving to Hawaii where no one could ever find me ever again. (Okay, not that last one, but that's because of my budget.)

Or I could stand and unfold myself. Because here it is, here's the huge thing I was missing, the perspective I was so badly lacking:

I am not a child anymore. I am not backed into a corner because there IS NO FUCKING CORNER. There is only huge sky and I'm the one with wings, not him. Trapped down there by his own limitations with his limited view of the world, stuck in the past ... I'm not down there with him unless I choose to be. And I choose not to be ever again.

Childhood trauma hurts us in so many ways, but the way in which it hurts the most is that we can be 47 years old, eating cereal one morning, and someone can say one thing and suddenly we are four years old and helpless all over again. The trigger is pulled and the gun goes off and we are so, so small and wounded and helpless and angry about all of it. And that feeling doesn't go away until we let it. But we are never trapped with those triggers, nor do other people have power over us, even if they once did. I used to think that only death would give me peace.

I got it so wrong. Love gives us peace.

Love of self, love of others, love of this stupid gorgeous world and how incredibly beautiful and ridiculous it is. I have never sought revenge, never meant to hurt this person anymore than they set out to hurt me, but it is not my job anymore to take care of him at my own risk.

So I'm changing the way I look at things. If I'm not trapped in ANY thing I do, how much power do I really have? I don't have to be in relationships or friendships that suck... I don't have to feel trapped by a job or a certain situation... I don't owe anyone anything except to take care of myself.

I just got that. I just got that for what feels like the first time in my life a couple days ago, and I feel so old and so young at the same time because I want to laugh and cry.

It's all going to be okay, people. I promise you - it's going to be okay.

happiness: a collage

Some days I feel a little defeated, a little discouraged, and like I'm running out of breathing room. There's anxiety I can't shake, bad dreams that follow me throughout the day like smoke clinging to my jacket, and frustrations that I can't just empty my life of, like tipping a trashcan upside down. The trash is still there; it's just changed venues.

Today might be such a day - so instead of blogging and swimming in the cesspool of negativity (dude, totally my next Rockband group name!) I went to Google and put in "happiness" and then clicked on images I liked.

Since a lot of them were images of people throwing up money in the air and looking doofy (Google is a shallow mistress, apparently), I also added some images from my own personal preferences. Enjoy - and if you're having a crappy Monday, by all means, I invite you to do the same. And please, let me know if you do - I'd love to look at all the things that make you guys happy too. :) (Pssst: click on any of the images to make them bigger.)

photo credit: I got it here

photo credit: I got it here

photo credit: I got it here

photo credit: I got it here

photo credit: I got it here

photo (and website credit): I got it here

photo credit: I got it here

cartoon credit: I got it here

photo credit: I got it here

photo credit: I got it here

photo credit: I got it here

photo credit: I got it here

photo credit: I got it here

photo (and website credit): I got it here

let the sun shine

Well, it's not exactly sunshine-y outside, but it's less pouring rain-y than it was last week, so I'll take it. Although I'm happy that more showers are headed our way tomorrow, because, let's face it: SoCal needs all the rain we can get. Although we also need to figure out a way to trap this water, make it clean, and then use it while we're in a drought. But I digress.

I wanted to say thanks for everyone's very cool and incredibly supportive comments on my last couple posts - my 2009 post was a little bit brutally honest and I was really worried that my 2010 post was going to scare the crap out of most of you. And then, of course, there was my Haiti/suicide post, which I'm sure livened up everyone's day. So I'm letting the sun shine back in for this post because even though a lot of us get the January blues, there's still plenty of love and laughter to go around.

There's also some really good news too - if any of you had a chance to vote for the first online suicide prevention network in Chase's Community giveaway, it came in third place and won $100,000! They also now have over 7,000 volunteers who want to help make I'mAlive a reality. Writing that post about my acquaintance's suicide was tough - but I got through it, and a lot of that was because of all of your incredibly kind and brave comments. You guys all rock.

On a more personal blog note, I am very grateful to announce that I won a blog giveaway hosted by the adorable Carissa over at The Lovely Dove. She's been blogging for just over a year (and I just got to meet her in person at the SoCal Blogger's Brunch, so I feel twice as blessed) and to celebrate she gave away a beautiful desktop calendar, a cute little journal, and a very cool handwoven bracelet that I'm pretty sure I'm never going to take off. You can check out the stuff here and please, if you get a chance, do stop by Carissa's and say hi. And tell her I sent you :)

And finally - the beautiful Jo over at Jo Knows gave me the Happy 101 award -

it looks like this:

...and the mission, should I choose to accept it, is to pass it along to three other bloggers and write ten things that make me happy. And since we're all kind of fighting off the January Sucks, I thought I'd make a happiness advice list so that everyone can try these Get Happy tips.

1) Have an impromptu picnic - grab your favorite food to-go and eat it in in a grassy park with your socks and shoes off. Don't put on your Ipod, that's cheating. Just enjoy the sunshine and people watch in the park.

2) Smile at five complete strangers for no other reason than the fact that we're all in this together. If they scowl instead of smile, rest assured that three hours later they will feel like an idiot for not smiling back.

3) Celebrate Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day - it's today, Monday, January 25th, and no, I'm not making that up - by pouncing on some bubble wrap that you have lying around and popping it until you feel better about life. Or until you run out, whichever happens first.

4) Buy your friend, roommate, girlfriend, boyfriend, mom, dad, favorite sibling or mortal enemy flowers for no reason at all, and have them sent to the office to brighten his or her entire week.

5) Loan a friend a book you think they'd like. Tell them why.

6) Let someone have the right of way while driving. Even if you're 100 percent sure you had the right of way and that the person you let in might be a total idiot. Let them in anyways. Then breathe deeply.

7) Blow bubbles. I promise you that blowing bubbles with a $1 bottle of bubble solution is one of the fastest and cheapest ways to get happy.

8) If you feel safe enough to do so, buy a homeless person coffee and a muffin. It's what I do instead of giving cash (which I usually don't have anyways) and homeless people appreciate the human interaction, even if they can't always show it.

9) Forgive someone. Even if they don't deserve it. YOU deserve it. And no, you don't have to tell them.

10) Go to the dog park. Bring dog treats and watch your popularity skyrocket. (Just make sure the owners are cool with you spoiling their dogs' appetites!)

And I pass along this award to three of the most upbeat people I know:

Gwen, over at Confessions of a Control Freak;

Irenicineri, over at Harmonious Grub; and

Eeeno, over at Eeeno's World.

I adore all three of these girls for their upbeat perspectives on life and how awesomely kick-ass they are in their own ways. (Come to think of it, two of them know martial arts and a third probably boxes like a pro. Coincidence? Probably not.)

So here's to a shinier Monday, everyone!



photo credit: I found it here.