It was 10 years ago today

These old ladies just about mom’s age, they’re like fans, sort of. Every so often they come up to me with slaps on the back and congratulations on the fortitude it’s taken me to stay single all my life. This was unthinkable in their youth and a status they’ve only attained and relished in later years (after HE kicked off). There’s a tacit admission into their ‘old girls’ club, like I’m smart enough to be one of them - like I’m strong or something.

I love these ladies, Pat, Marie, Cathryn, etc. I don’t deserve quite a lot of the good fortune in my life but this especially I cannot take credit for. Maybe it was an accident or a miracle, but independence certainly wasn’t in my plans. A life of feminist-self-determination wasn’t my fantasy. It was a by product of living in a time when I could take steps to make sure that all my romantic faltering did not get me pregnant. I wasted quite a lot of energy planning and hoping only for a life of being loved and cherished despite my not really having a marriageable character. Nuala was right about me.

Going through my old photos and attempting some sort of literary reconstruction of self from these images has taken up the past couple weeks efforts at this keyboard. I look at pictures of sisters, dogs, parents and grandparents, stringing it all together, focusing on one image by one image like working a rosary. It’s a meditation in empathetic family forensics, but empathy is not enough. What has being a female at the turn of the millennium meant to me and how have old and new ideas filtered into the example that is my life? Why don’t I play fair and look at myself for a change?

I can’t believe I actually wore a skirt like that. Must have still been shaking off a bit of the art-school hippie factor when I bought that long, crinkled affair with the loud pattern and put the rope bracelet around my ankle. I paired it with a coral t-shirt, possibly to hide a bit of belly. Must confess, still do that. I’m 23. I’m poised on some rocks at the harbor of Salem, MA, like an odd Venus just washed up out of the icy waves. Behind me lay just ocean, some ships in the distance and blue sky.

Oh yes, I remember that girl. She’s on a date with the first of many hostages. I was making precious little money with the work at the theater company and none as an intern at Chedd Angier. But that guy, André, had a knack for catching me eyeballing something in a store and handing it to me later. I had to learn to stop looking at things if I wasn’t quite serious about owning them. Recently, I visited the self-constructed library that I left in storage 5 years ago and retrieved one item Mr. Butterfly (yes, that is his name) handed to me after a visit to the MFA store in Boston. It’s a book full of color plates showing ukiyo-e woodblock prints by Yoshitoshi: Thirty six ghosts. Stunning work. I’ve since expanded the collection with Yoshitoshi’s Women and One hundred aspects of the moon. See there? I remember the gift more than the giver. How’s that for a nice girlfriend? But the fact is I liked having someone who would drive all over to see me, pick up the tab and give me stuff.

Right there I stepped out onto a slope what slips straight into marriage and babies despite all of the books I’d read in college and the consciousness raising groups where I had noisily voiced my independence. I simply failed to hit the mark in my slide. The credit for that doesn’t go to strong mentoring on how to be a modern woman. It goes to Jack Daniels.

That girl in the photo has already been drinking hard for over ten years. That girl in the photo has the emotional maturity of a twelve year old despite having the parts of a grown up. She wants to be loved best while she gives nothing away. She thinks people are disposable, starting with herself. She’s in the midst of a period of controlling the drink. One day soon, though, reason enough will turn up and the genie came back out of the bottle. André? One day she’ll just never pay him a call back. That’s that.

Some car just went by outside with the radio turned up and I could hear the first few guitar strains of Sgt. Pepper’s. “It was twenty years ago today…” Paul’s voice trails off down the alley. The only time I listened to that album stem to stern I had drank some of this and smoked some of that and I had to lie down because I couldn’t keep the music out of my eyes. The walls were breathing. I sit here thinking about that intense hallucination and the sense that I had opened a door, stepped out of a limited self into a field of color and sound.

You know, it was never about how much more (or less) intense the intoxicant of the day made things seem… it was about the dreams and feelings I couldn’t enter without hiding behind a chemical mask. It’s about those doors I couldn’t open without the artificial gateway past fear. It’s about finding a way past the lies. The conflicting fairy tales I bought regarding what it is I should achieve as a college educated woman and what I should want by virtue of being female are just lies. Lies and crap. But knowing that doesn’t change the fact that there are aspects of both I would very much like to cherry pick. It’s taken me longer to realize that these fruits are merely the by-product of the much longer process of self actualization (a word waffle I’m still figuring out). Happiness is not a goal at all. It’s a side effect of right living; of being my own cherisher and finding ways to give the rest away.

My latest theory is that there is a person I was put on this planet to be and a voice I’m here to express, however small. But that girl in the photo is not even close to finding the right road toward actualizing such a role. The universe had to get my attention because it knew I wanted it to. It sent in something so I’d have to slam on the breaks and change direction. It sent me Jack Daniels. I thank Jack for beating me into a state of reasonableness. I thank god that Jack didn’t kill me.