Awkwardly Social

Summer has finally arrived in Los Angeles.  This morning as I walked out into the muggy, rain speckled morning, and felt the weight of the air, I flashed to summers spent in the mid-west, playing cards in the basement with my sister and cousin, riding bikes to the corner store to buy pop-rocks and blasting through a huge stack of novels.  I had a special childhood in many ways, a charmed life, I have so many good things to remember and summertime brings it all flooding back.

I felt very sad about not getting pregnant in June.  I was so sure I would.  I boo-hooed about it for a day then I read an article about a study conducted that said women without children are far happier than those with.  Even worse, women with children are the least happy when they are physically with their children.  I’m sure there are about a 100 other studies going on right now to figure out why that is true or if it is untrue, and I can guarantee it has something to do with this new theory I’m forming about the bill of goods sold to women of my generation and (I expect) the generations following.  The bill of goods that says you can have it all, you can be whatever you want, you can find the man of your dreams, you can live the picture perfect life and not only that, if you don’t - if you aren’t all of these things - a mother, a college educated career driven woman, and a wildcat in the sack with your loving devoted husband - you aren’t trying hard enough, and you’re a failure.  Hard to believe women would be unhappy when we’re expected to do all of these things and the men of our generation are promised that we will be all of these things - and they don’t have to do one damned thing different except not open the door for us.  It’s a theory I’m still fleshing out, but when I start to really think about it, I start to really get pissed off.

Mostly though, the past few weeks have been spent trying to respect myself.  I learned something about this in therapy.  I spend a large part of my day finding fault with myself.  The part about therapy that really started to get me down, was that I was expected to wallow in the failures of my upbringing.  Wallow in the ways in which I could blame everyone around me for why I am the way I am.  Why I don’t like being who I am a lot of the time.  I want to be perfect.  I want to be thin, funny, smart, talented, productive, positive and loved.  I’m working on the productive and positive parts.  I can admit I’m smart, I can admit I’m talented, I have been praised for my comedic timing, I believe I’m loved and even though I want to be thin, I can at least recognize that my body dysmorphic disorder is often in overdrive and I’m learning to love my shape.   But I want it all.  I want to be able to do the triathlon - but the fact that I have to skip the swim upsets me.  I won’t be perfect.  I’ll be pussing out for part of it.  I am working on forgiving myself for this.  I’m working on forgiving myself for not taking care of my body while I’ve been nursing my depression and my stress.  But moreover - I’m trying to accept the fact that I’ll likely never look like an athlete/model/actress.  It helps that I get to laugh every day with my friend who sits directly across from me at the work, and my Seth who sleeps next to me.  I’ve started running again, after my injury time off.  My ear was bothering me so much that I didn’t want to get out of bed, much less work my ass off trying to keep up with Seth.  But now I can and it feels so good.  Blazing down beautiful streets at dusk with the dude and the dog I love.

I am a lucky girl.

Every night we sit on our front stoop with Lula between us, watching the Hasidic Jews walk by, drinking a tall glass of ice water and basking in these special days we have here together.   In 25 years I’ll look back and have these to add to my long list of nostalgia.  And I’m so very glad.

The internet has been on sappy letter writing spree as women write (figurative) curlyqued cursive letters to themselves in their twenties.  Oof, we bloggers are a drippy feel-good lot.  And since I’ve been in a bad mood since I left the womb, I’m giving you  a letter to 20 year old Tamara that she would actually listen to, not some love song to a time gone by that 20 year old Tamara would have flipped the bird to.*

Dear Idiot,

1. Get rid of the overalls.  You are not a farmer.

2. Keep the Doc Martens, you are going to miss them when you’re 34.

3. No, that guy is not giving you mixed signals, asshole, he thinks you’re a chubby 20 year old who gets ugly drunk.

4. That guy too.

5.  None of those boys like you.

6.  Stop pining.

7.  And while you’re at it, stop eating fast food.  You are getting fat.

8.  No really, you don’t look good.

9.  Oh god, slam poetry?  You are so fucking embarrassing.

10.  Keep writing that stuff in your journal, though, it’s hilarious when you’re 34.  Like, seriously?  You thought boys just didn’t get you?  Believe me, they got you, you desperate embarrassing idiot.

11.  You will lose that freshman 15 weight in your 30s, but it will be hard because you’ll think you remember a time when you could just eat fast food 3 times a day, forgetting that you were fat when you did that.

12. If you stop wearing the same jeans every day, you’ll be forced to see what size you really are, and that size will make you unhappy, and you will lose weight.  Let’s get on that.  Before your metabolism takes a dive.

13.  That guy doesn’t want to marry you.

14.  Don’t worry, he doesn’t either (THANK GOD).

15.  Seriously, give up on the boys.  You’ll be fine in your 30s when you stop fucking caring so goddamned much.

16.  The no bangs experiment goes on too long.  Just let it go.

17.  And finally, it’s going to be ok, asshole, don’t panic.  Crying makes you look terrible.

Love,

Future You

*I haven’t forgotten the Ode to my 20s I wrote when I turned 30.  So, I was a little sentimental then.  Whatever.

We were staying in an apartment we rented from a stranger who solicited us in the train station in Prague.  We took the subway from a station 2 blocks away from our apartment to all the must see places listed in our Berkley guide to Eastern Europe in the Prague section.  That day we were supposed to meet Lara at 7pm at an Irish pub before we went out dancing with some cute ex-pats we met at an American bar watching the NBA finals. That morning we heard about OJ Simpson and his car chase.  We missed every frame of it.  We had no idea what our mom was talking about.  It sounded so… unimportant.

We were in an Irish pub when Ireland beat Italy, when Lara finally met us, 2 hours late, and said, “Y’all, we were robbed!”  Surreal?  I don’t know.  I remember feeling at the time that it was an important thing to be doing and experiencing, so far away from home, so grown up, so fucking clueless.

I’ve been listening to NPR in the morning and they’re doing a feature on people’s World Cup memories.  Mine are all about that summer in Eastern Europe when I was just a kid, traveling across countries I could barely point to on a map a month before.  Watching a sport I hadn’t cared about since I was a kid on the AYSO team, the Burros.  One time, as a Burro, we were told our uniforms didn’t fit with AYSO uniform standards because our team name was printed on the front of the uniform.  We, both girls and boys, stood around doing stretches and warming up, without our shirts on while our mothers hastily patched over the team name.  I distinctly remember feeling like it wasn’t fair that the boys didn’t really care that they weren’t wearing shirts, and we girls, did.  I remember wishing I could crawl under the grass so no one would look at me.  Shirtless.

Will I remember anything about this World Cup?  I hope not.  I want this one to remain as uneventful as all the others since 1994.

Seth and I are walking down the wide hallway of the ICU.  On the right a control station, serious looking nurses watch giant screens, people’s stats roll by like a stock ticker.  On the left, patients lay in beds, tubes and wires connecting them through the walls to the monitors and the computers and their heart beats are streaming across the screen.  Ahead of us, Seth motions to the man with a black stocking cap who looks 90 years old, “He’s been having trouble all day, I think his people are saying goodbye.”

We visit with Seth’s dad, we say stupid things and make dumb jokes.  We talk about the Lakers and the nurses and the monitors and Marshall’s heartbeat ticks by on the screen and we watch while Seth rubs a popsicle on his father’s lips.  We say goodnight but not goodbye.

I cry out in agony when the alcohol hits my inner ear canal.  I’m curled in a ball, and Seth touches my back.  We’re on our way to the emergency room again, I’m shot through with pain on every bump.  I try to keep my head still and breath through the stabbing jarring impossible pain.  I sit alone on a bed in the ER.   I have a prescription for pain killers and $100 ear drops.  The nurse sits on the bed next to me and explains my medications.   Her body is touching mine, I almost move away, but she’s so nice and she’s just handed me a pain killer, I like having the contact. Seth is finally allowed to come back and sit with me.  I tell him my news, burst ear drum, I can’t hear on my left side.  I’ve had two doctors look with astonishment at my inner ear and I just want to be home in bed.

We get home and I am glad to hear that his dad is doing better and will be leaving ICU.  Seth walks through our bedroom.  “You remember the ancient guy with the black stocking cap?”

I picture the old man at the end of the hall and nod.

“He died last night.  He was 30.  He was there, now he’s gone.”

“Where did he go?”  A sad smile and a nod to the movie we both cried during a few weeks ago.  “He was that young?”

Seth walks to the end of the bed and looks at me, “I don’t know why I thought of it, but I can’t get it out of my head. I just keep thinking, we were some of the last things he saw, stuck in that bed, staring down that hall.”

I don’t often think about the end.  We will get there when we get there and I’m ashamed that there are days when I wish I could get there sooner, but most days I am glad I’m laughing and crying and strong and weak and here.  It’s so short.  We’re here so briefly.

Seth’s dad is back in the ICU again tonight, and we’ll go back to the long hallway with the monitors and the hard cases, the serious nurses and the young doctors.  All I can think is don’t go anywhere, please stay here.

It’s so easy to look at a tv show and give notes.  People make livings doing that.  They get to sit there and say what could be done better.  And then we, the people doing the behind the scenes part, have to make it better.  It can be really hard to do that, because sometimes you’re not sure if what they want is actually making it better.  But also it can be really great to have someone who’s not completely entrenched with the material just sit back from their safe distance and say, “Don’t need.  Lose this scene.”  “Story not tracking until Act 3.” or, “Not enough sexy, let’s add some fun into act 2.”

I was thinking about how I would hate to sit through a notes session on my own life.  How there would be complete sections that someone would say, “Lose, doesn’t move story ahead.”  Or, “Why is this scene here?  Repetitive.”  Or, “This is your A story?  Why is it being introduced at the end of Act 2?”

If I look at my life like a 4 Act, 22 minute 30 second episode of reality TV, I would have a lot of story notes myself.   My story is tracking right, it’s just not tracking quickly enough.  I am trying to get pregnant right as I’m also trying to get my career into full swing.  That gives great potential for conflict, but I actually have to live this life, not watch it on TV.  I spend a lot of time looking at story outlines on neatly typed 3×5 cards on huge corkboards, and I’m starting to realize I might have fucked up my act breaks.  That I’m pushing too much story into Act 3.  That Act 4 is always the shortest act and that Act 3 needs to bring the tension to a head then have some fun with it.  That the way I’ve designed my story it’s all leading up to this great Act 2 act break, and if everything goes as planned in the field, Act 3 will have great drama and conflict with a really awesome Act 4 resolution.  The thing is, I have no idea how to get there to that act break.  I cannot control when I get pregnant, or get a job.  Not to mention once I get to Act 3, I have no idea how to balance work, family, creative life, social life and still have time to ride bikes with Seth on a Sunday afternoon.

I don’t regret my act 1, and even though my act 2 took a story detour for a while, I’m really loving this second half of it.  I just don’t know how it’s going to work.  I don’t see a lot of people in my business, at my pay level, being able to do the things I’m going to want to do.  Which means, I’m going to have to sacrifice something, and I hope I manage to figure out what to sacrifice before it’s too late, because from what I’m seeing, the way it’s designed is that people with kids don’t have both parents working 10-12 hour work days.  And I sure as hell am not giving up my 10 hour work day.  I actually like what I do.  I like being there.   And, yes, everyone seems to think that will change once I have a baby, that I’ll want to be home more, but what if it doesn’t?  What if I still like 10 hour work days?  Will my children be ADHD monsters who date hitters (or worse, actors…) because mom liked work better than them, and dad is dead because mom married someone 21 years older than her? Or fuck, what if I can’t even have kids?

These are things I guess I should have thought about while I was dorking around in Film School.  It’s so embarrassing now to think about how much time I dorked around there.  Or god, how much time I was obsessed with getting shit faced drunk in crap bars in crap parts of Los Angeles with crap boys.  But these are the things I can’t change.  This is the story line that’s being shot.  I’m just going to have to make it work in the cutting room.  I hope there won’t be too many notes, and I hope they mostly say, “More sexy,” or, “Up the fun here.”  Those are my favorite ones to get.  And they’re ones I know how to address.