Again? Seriously??

He looks at me with those deep, innocent eyes. 

No wallet. I’m gonna smack him. 

This little “casual dating” experiment is not going well. 

What’s the harm?? I said. What could possibly go wrong?

Yet here I am, on the hook yet again for another dinner. I will try not to point out how he just spent thousands on a new gizmo… where did that come from? Weirdly, he has very expensive tastes, yet isn’t overly fond of picking up the tab. The money isn’t the point, it’s going out, then suddenly shifting the responsibility to me. I mean, a hike and a couple of sandwiches is damn near free, why not do that? It’s another Dude incapable of coming up with any ideas. So, here I am, once again paying for an hour with Mr. Entertainment. There’s a sucker born every minute, but does it have to keep being me?

It’s not the money. It’s the time, the distraction, the monkeywrench tossed in my brain, not being able to totally focus on what has become my three driving forces. And the reason it feels okay to go on an occasional date is because I am making quite a bit of progress on the Big Three, a precious three nuggets sparkling in the pan after endlessly swirling the mud of a thousand ideas. 

 I write out notecards for a future book.  An awesome musician friend starts parading me around to events all over the Actual City that gave birth to Big Suburb. He even lands me an audition with a high-level band from Bigger City of Three Million. One of the other singers in this band was a backup singer for Aretha Franklin and another backed up some other famous person whom I completely forgot as soon as he mentioned Aretha Franklin. I’m extremely intimidated, but my version of Lady Marmalade still nails me a part as their sub, and I am elated. I won! Little victories like this are starting to pop up, green sprouts in a formerly dead landscape. I am coming to life, slowly but surely… a formerly dead body Frankensteined together from the limbs of past lives, electrodes on neck showing the first sparks of electricity…SHE’S ALIIIIIVE!!!

And then, once a week or so, there’s Lastdude. 

I am “casual dating”, that theoretically harmless purgatory of someone you know in your gut will never be The One but allows a few dinners while you wait… Or maybe you kiss him one time and he magically turns into Prince Charming? I wouldn’t know, it never worked for me. Maybe I should have called him Substitutedude? Or Tempdude? Or Monicastillhasn’tquitegotitdude?

So anyway, there’s this guy. 

It’s the music that got me. 

Possibly the best bass player in the state, with a reputation for practicing hours longer than anyone (especially me), to watch him play his instrument is to watch the precision and artistry of Baryshnikov (dust that pop reference off, Monica, it’s an antique) and it’s just pure magic, and well at least we have THAT in common… and… and… 

This guy is a solid maybe, and I know it. I think even HE knows it, probably why he’s always talking about his ex. She was this, she was that, how could she leave? And a big blowup that ended in a fit of depression in someone else’s world somehow winds up on my plate. 

Coach doesn’t think it belongs there. He’s calling me out on this guy. 

Monica… Quit wasting your time on a maybe. What you want is a HELL YEAH!!!

Okay, Mr. Coach, but does a Hell Yeah for me even exist? After all of the angularity in my life, and my personality being a wee off the beaten path, do you even really think this guy is out there? 

And Coach finally confronts me with the question of the ages, an Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything statement that leaves me reeling.

Coach:

Look, Monica. What if you knew today that you would never meet the right guy, never have a significant other, just live your own life pursuing your own dreams for the rest of your life, could you be happy?

Oh, hell no! 

Why is he even asking me this? Asking me to give up the cuddles, the kisses, the shared time, the… the… the…

Is ANYONE happy alone?

I mean, I guess I have known people who are, but I’ve always thought it’s weird. Who doesn’t want another person there throughout every day, through all the events, holidays, weekends, cold winter evenings when your toes are cold and you want to stick them under some warm legs?

Is it really possible to be happy the rest of your life with a vacancy on the other side of the bed every night? 

He has presented me with a dilemma. I have shaken free of the wheelbarrow, but as long as I feel I can’t be happy alone, I’m going to think I’m somehow incomplete without someone else looking at me across the kitchen table, even though it may only be because he’s bitching about the bacon being overdone.  

Ant that’s why I’m tolerating Lastdude, because there is juuust a little bit of batter left in this bowl of desperation, something only the spatula of a life coach could have discovered, one last aching need in the vessel of my life that keeps saying I won’t REALLY be happy until I find this elusive guy. 

And I can’t unsee it. From here forward, I realize there is a foundational problem with the way I view my own completeness that is driving me to tolerate what I should not. 

I start thinking about the people I know who are happily single. 

I know a widow… actually several of the widows I know say they wouldn’t want to be married again, and it always surprised me. They happily take care of their homes and read books, watch movies, get together with friends and go to bed in peace without the snoring partner next to them Dutch Ovening them all night. Hmm. 

I know career women who are tired of the dating-go-round and decided to leap-frog the whole scene in favor of a mission no one can interfere with, not having to support someone else’s endeavor and having to sacrifice their own, but instead driving forth to build their own empire. Hmmm…

I know twentysomethings who don’t do the dating frenzy like back in my high school days and opt instead for planning an incredible life of travel, adventure and freedom, self-driven and able to turn on a dime… hmmmm…

I start examining tip to toe, this need I seem to have. Where did it come from? Why do I still want some little piece of relationship? What will it take for me to let go? 

And then I found out. 

I strut my leather-clad legs in spiked boots out onto the stage, mic firmly in hand, shoulders back, chest high, ready to kick some musical ass. The crowd is wild. The steamy summer air of the last four days has left a humid electricity in the air, and everyone is ready to cut loose.  The electric guitar starts screaming and now there’s fog everywhere. I toss a ridiculous pile of hair back and forth, channeling Dee Snider circa 1984. I’m a deranged Gollum running around onstage, standing on the amps, kicking, wailing. I blaze down the vocal line in an inferno of notes. I get to the money bit of the song and I arch my back and belt it, a banshee siren over the shrieking guitar. I leap out into the crowd…

 I prowl the stage at TedX handing out my fifteen minutes to the world. I am giving an impassioned talk about how you can do and be so much more than you think is possible. I am on fire, passionately and dramatically telling my story, and I can see their faces as it dawns on the crowd that maybe they can indeed actually change their situation for the better…

I am in the middle of a podcast with the team I have built. The guest today is hysterical, I have a waterfall of material to work with. Maybe I should have her on a second show. We have callers waiting on the line to ask their questions, I’m never going to get through all of them. This is an improv show designed for entertainment value, and thus have no need to do anything other than, well, entertain, so I am having an absolute blast. Next caller, please…

I am on the side of Mount Fuji, and my harness is chafing a bit as I go into hour 3 of climbing this sheer wall. I’m having a tough time finding any holds, nevertheless I look out at the beauty all around me and the canyon yawning beneath, and am grateful…

Welcome to the art of visualization. The more I learn, the more it  seems difficult to get anywhere without it. I think we all do some iteration of picturing what you want to be. During my awful span of school years, I wasn’t exactly what you would call cheerleader-popular, so I spent those lonely years  singing endless songs into a hairbrush behind my closed door, rewinding cassettes over and over until they became completely warbled. I gave that bedroom mirror the performance of a lifetime, again and again. When I get up on stage now, I’m pretty  comfortable because I’ve been there a thousand times already, in my head. It’s a powerful thing. Conceiving something before it is reality can convince your brain that it’s possible, and the neurological response is similar whether it’s an imagined event or a real one. And how exactly can something exist if you don’t think of it first, anyway? 

Visualization is not only powerful, but dangerous. People suffer when they can’t stop envisioning disaster.  It’s too easy to live in a state of constant fear, haunted by endless pictures of catastrophe. You have to fight it. My heart breaks for those trapped in this paralyzing existence, it’s not a good time.  

But I’m doing the opposite. 

I am systematically replacing the old life I had been living with the one I want. Call it This Old House, but it’s a life remodel.  I call it eclipsing, when the vision of who you want to be becomes bigger than who you are now. You keep that picture vividly in your mind each day, and your life will absolutely change. I will make the life I want so much bigger than who I am that the vision becomes my life. The new person eclipses the old, and eventually the old one winks out, a burnt out bulb replaced by a laser. 

I have a problem, though. I have too many directions, wayy too many things I want to pursue. My brain is not cooperating, it’s overwhelmed. This firehose of ideas has filled an Olympic pool in my brain  with m&m’s and every single candy coated and initialed piece is a different goal. 

I need help. I ask a group of people from Miami who have been staying in touch. 

They say I need a coach.

The phone dings out an electronic melody.  It’s Lastdude, my delicious distraction. Junk food, here I come. 

And I am off, going to meet him, even though he lives in another city, a time consuming venture at best. But what’s the harm? I hug him close and twine his long hair and inhale the smell of oil and exhaust. 

I know, I know. You’re going to do this again?  But I have myself convinced this is no biggie, a little sidebar, someone to hang around with to ease the alone time. It’s not like before, I’m not giving up anything… am I?? Every time BAD IDEA crosses my mind, I stomp on that sign and cross it out, saying this is just casual dating, what harm can it do? 

LastDude is the guy who kissed me in the rain, a romantic Velveeta visual straight out of a Hallmark movie. He’s an amazing mechanic, and an equally spectacular bass player. Mentally, I’m using these things to gloss over the fact he has little else to offer. I usually pay, he’s always stringing along, I am the one to schedule anything we do, in fact I’m fairly sure that if I stopped calling him, this would just end. Total maybe guy. Maybe he’s the one, maybe this will work out, though the blackened toilet in his unkempt apartment screams NO MONICA THIS WILL NEVER BE YOUR GUY. 

Come on, Monica. You know you can do better. He’s a decent guy, but a terrible match for you. 

But somehow I still don’t cut this off entirely. We aren’t exclusive and there is no commitment, so it feels safe. I still go out with my single friends, I’m maintaining my own direction. Lastdude talks constantly about a long-lost ex, which is kind of annoying, but I still get to go on dates with him and I’m having fun. 

This is fun, right? 

Having convinced myself this is harmless, I ignore the nagging feeling and begin searching for a coach. I am puzzled as to what kind of mentor to get. I’m going in a thousand directions, and for a moment I snicker at the visual of a whole room full of coaches, packed in and overflowing, one for each and every idea. 

In the end, the right person emerged out of the ether. In the group of folks I met in Miami, one guy stood out, an ultra marathoner with the energy of a squirrel on crack. This guy was going places, FAST,  and darned if he didn’t turn out to be a life coach. 

It was expensive. 

It was also totally worth it. 

I started my first high-energy rapid-fire conversation with him in the middle of winter, when in Wisconsin, we are just hibernating and waiting for it all to be over. January and February turned out to be the perfect time to overhaul everything, and I turned over all of my ideas to him. What was so priceless? 

I fed a thousand ideas into his little hopper of a brain, and he managed to help me get this hot mess narrowed down to three solid directions. 

THREE! 

I can do three! 

We’ve pared it down to performing music, business, and writing. As I work with him, there’s one little detail I fail to mention, never really bring up, I mean, is it really important? It’s nothing serious, just casual… until one day I let it slip. He has identified that I have a logjam with my time, and in his effort to help me succeed I finally fess up what I didn’t think was relevant, information I felt was unnecessary for a life coach to know.

Okay, fine, I’m still seeing a guy. Okay, so I don’t seem too excited about it. No, I’m not sure if this is going anywhere. 

He’s a solid Maybe. . 

Coach is not impressed. 

Then he asks one question that turns out to be the key to everything. 

My hair is flying in the wind. 

I’ll never get the tangles out, and give slightly less than two shits. 

I peel down the road in a rental car fetched in Miami, a white clone of my own yellow Jeep. The particular road I am peeling is the legendary Tamiami Trail on my way to Naples, straight through the Everglades. Interesting birds, alligators, trees adorned with massive garlands of moss, and lots of water line the little highway, and my only regret is the lack of time as I fly by signs advertising LARGEST ALLIGATOR IN THE WORLD!, TAKE OUR AIRBOAT TOUR!! and COMIDA PARA FIESTAS PAN CON LECHÓN, but I don’t have time to visit Samson the 12 Foot Alligator or see the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters so I can find a Yeti. 

Thoughts of the last few days spin through my head. The second day we spent a lot of time practicing body positioning, and I must admit it really is kind of amazing, how great you feel when you walk around like fucking Superman all day. As I practice my new posture, I begin to understand something. 

When I would sit at the bar, or wherever I happened to be, and have my head tilted down, eyes looking up, I was giving a message to everyone around that I was a victim. I effectively communicated a strong nonverbal signal to the more balanced people around me that I wasn’t very confident, and telegraphed to the players and the predatory that I would put up with anything. 

I think back to the time Fundude called me a “Wounded Fawn”. I now know exactly what he meant. Oh, look at me the poor helpless girl and BOOM here sweeps along a crafty fox to take what he wants. Only this isn’t about Crafty Foxdude, it’s about me, and I never really understood what was  happening to me, or the fact that I had control over it all along. I was manufacturing Dudes by the dozen in the way I was handling myself, and one single exercise we did at the conference blew the lid off the whole thing in a way that ensured I would never be the same again. 

An exercise he had us do, was to introduce ourselves to another person as if you feared rejection, and be aware of exactly what we were portraying. It was difficult introducing myself to another woman this way, as I am accustomed to being confident in that situation, but when I had to introduce myself to a man, Wounded Fawn waltzed in, all ready and decked out for showtime. I got all coy, head tilted down, shoulders forward, looking timid and meek. 

WHERE THE HELL IS THIS COMING FROM???

 Subservient, bashful, pathetic. Well, this explains a lot. This was most likely leftovers from training in the stricter churches, the ones who didn’t allow us women to do much of anything other than make her man a sandwich and breed. 

Something shifts and clicks in my mind. I can’t unsee the way I’ve been doing this. I never realized how this came across. 

Right then and there, I resolve to NEVER introduce myself this way again (I really never did).

In a single moment, I transformed from wounded fawn to apex predator. 

And NO ONE fucks with an apex predator. 

I had been living like roadkill, come along and take what you want!… but I am no longer even Monica the Phoenix, risen from the ashes. 

I am becoming Monica the Lion DO NOT FUCK WITH ME.  

Or Eagle, love love love the idea of flying above, aware of everything, above the noise, able to see all that is going on beneath. 

Okay wait, I’ve got it. I’m a Ligle, a flying lion! It’s perfect! Hear me roar up in the sky…

I determine where to go. 

I decide what happens with my life. 

I don’t have to allow anyone in my life who doesn’t bring something to the table. 

And now I know why I’ll never wind up in the wheelbarrow again. 

NO ONE carries away an Apex predator. 

We really do have more control over our lives than we ever think.

Tony Robbins, with the books, and the lifestyle, and the helicopters, and the following, standing here telling 13,000 people how to make their lives amazing…

…was a fucking janitor. 

Well, shit, if he can do this… suddenly I realize that my mind is the only thing that has ever been limiting me, and ideas explode into existence. In a stark moment of clarity, everything I have been through, from my somewhat abusive past to the church, to the divorce and the loss and simply the all of it, has a purpose and a meaning. 

I’m going to tell the fuck out of my story. 

The rest of the conference is a whirlwind of inspiration that leaves me knowing the things I want. I feel amazing, and stick around for only the beginning of the fourth day. Tony Robbins is no longer present and there are just some weird pseudodoctors promoting expensive things that sound suspiciously like top-shelf snake oil. I call bullshit and I’m out, and march my Superman self out the door into the blazing sunshine. I want to do one more thing before I leave Miami.  

I want to run. So off I go, through various upscale neighborhoods, over bridges and through tunnels, but there’s one that stuck out, a gem in the already opulent landscape.

I run across a bridge onto Brickell Key. 

This is a triangle-shaped island packed with luxury condominiums, most with a spectacular view, very expensive (Well, except for the tiny place I found for 1300 per month that had one teensy hitch– no windows. Not kidding.). It’s beautiful, but here’s the thing that got to me. 

It’s manmade. There’s a guy who actually created this little Paradise island, a guy who’s no better than me and has the same 24 hours in a day. 

Maybe it’s just because I just left a conference by the original go-get-it Guru, and this isn’t my goal at all, but I guarantee you people told this guy it was impossible. 

So, I’m going to set out to do the impossible. If he did it, so can I.  

I return to my hotel, shower and Uber to the car rental place, and I’m off to Naples, directly across the peninsula. And that’s where you find me  at the beginning of this chapter, fucking up my hair with the wind and thinking about all that has happened. 

I pull into a bougainvillea-lined driveway in Naples and check my messages… one from my daughter, a few from clients I will have to respond to in the morning… 

… and one from Lastdude. 

He kisses me, surprisingly hard. I flush with excitement and kiss back. I can feel his hands on my back, my lower back… my backside…watch it buddy…and I am suddenly aware of something odd.

His tongue is long. Weirdly long. Gene Simmons long. I’m going to choke to death right here on the hot Miami asphalt. And this odd realization somehow snaps me back to reality. I have to be up in four hours. Okay, Monica, say goodnight to the hot Cuban gentleman and go to bed. And I do. Numbers exchanged, both knowing this is a total act of futility, since I live several states away, but nevertheless there sit the ten new digits on my phone. It was a delightful evening chatting with Mr. Hot Guy who works in finance. 

I card into the now empty lobby, and purchase a two a.m. snack from the medicine cabinet of a mini store, and saunter back to my room, spent and happy. My balcony door is wide open. Warm, balmy air wafts through my room, as I crunch a few pretzels and gaze blankly over the city, deep in the thoughts that happen at two in the morning after a new experience. 

The night life in Miami is prolific, and it was stupid easy to find a neighborhood bar to tumble into near the hotel. I quickly discovered there are so many visitors to Florida that outsiders are common, and quite welcome. Right off, I  made friends with a few of the gaggle of businessmen invading the bar and spilling out onto the pavement, one of whom I particularly connected with and found myself kissing in the wee hours of the morning.

 I love the open air feel everywhere in Miami. Open doors, open windows, open late, all with this magnificently steamy sultry air breezing through. It makes me want to take my clothes off and run around like a crazed maniac, a naked dancer in the moonlight praising the god of Humidity. I sip water out on my balcony before climbing in bed, and when I finally do, I am grateful for my own company. I thank the Universe, God, L. Ron Hubbard, whomever I can think of for this incredible contentment I feel. (I’m kidding about L. Ron. No hate mail, please.)

The great advantage in being alone is your own thoughts, your own guidance, your own everything. You can become your own best friend, which is great, because that way, your very best friend and confidante is always with you. I recall learning about self-comfort, a skill learned early on by psychologically healthy children. I have to point this out so y’all don’t think I’m nuts (I may be, but that’s a different story.). I learn to encourage myself, comfort myself, I even talk to myself in second person: ”You did a great job on that, Monica, go, girl!!” “ Come on, Monica, get up, you have hit that snooze button eight times now!” “Get the black one, the red one makes your ass look weird.” “Monica, do NOT get involved with that pothead at the end of the bar.” I feel I’m learning this at last… at 50. 

Even as I am writing today, I am alone in my own apartment, and it’s pretty great. Sunlight streaming in, fuzz throw, leggings, sweatshirt, slippers. With trusty sidekicks Laptop and Sunflower Coffee Mug by my side, I tap tap tap out my life story. It is a lovely day, worthy in every way of Bill Withers’ vocal dedication. 

I wake up too-soon later, and jump out of bed in excited anticipation, in spite of my late night shenanigans. As I shower, I consider last night, chatting with lively folks at the bar, talking, laughing, being a part of humanity. As the steam rises around me, I’m thinking of the rather beautiful gentleman who kissed me at the end of the night. Quite a nice kickoff to Monica’s Mad Miami adventure. I towel off and step into Layer #1.

Having been forewarned profusely that it is sub-zero chilly at any Tony Robbins event, I am probably more prepared than most for this event, in possession of all my Wisconsin layers and winter gear. Folks, we know how to do cold. 

The hotel lobby is already bustling with people getting ready to go to this event. I invite myself into the conversation, and quickly make friends with a smoking hot redhead. She is a businesswoman looking to expand her AirBNB business, and we are fast friends, chatting instantly about the impact of this event on our relative businesses. I load ten much more useful digits on my phone than last night, and we grab an Uber over to a massive stadium on the coast… who plays there again? Miami something…OH wait. Indoors-it must be basketball. There’s a giant meteor looking thing in the middle… HEAT!!  Miami Heat. Apologies to those of you who are offended I had no clue who this was (Yes, I had to look it up). It’s a massive stadium, there are 13,000 people at this event, and we make our way to the nosebleed seats. 

Tony Robbins… is doing well. 

After two hours of cheerleading preamble by his minions, he is finally onstage. Say what you want about him, there was a ton I learned that day… business, confidence, presenting yourself to the world, making your life amazing. The session was an ample thirteen hours long with a few short breaks, and by the end we were kind of whipped into a frenzy (my pal the hypnotist would have had a field day studying the psychological aspects) and at  one AM, thousands of people poured out into the hot Miami evening to do his trademark walk across hot coals. 

Catwalk runs of glowing embers are everywhere outside. He had spent the last hour explaining how it works, and how to do this without the risk of becoming Darth Vader. I am excited, and a bit apprehensive, as I approach the burning coals. The run is about twenty feet long, but it’s twenty feet of orange coals. It’s not fake, I can feel the heat radiating from them as I watch person after person in an ever shortening line in front of me do the Walk of Fire. My stomach flips in a jumbled combination of excitement and panic. 

It is finally my turn, and, as instructed, I look straight at the volunteer standing in front of me, beyond twenty feet of what looks like is going to fry my feet. Monica, it’s what’s for dinner. I count with her “One…two… THREE!!” and not running, but not exactly standing still either, and in this bizarre pumped-up weirdly adrenaline-powered state of Zen, I steadily walk the twenty feet of hot coals. 

I feel nothing. 

And this gets chalked up in Bizarre Experiences I’ve Had That Make No Sense Whatsoever. It’s the strangest thing, I could feel the heat before I stepped onto the coals, but felt absolutely nothing as I walked directly on them. Some people have burned feet. There’s some crazy mind-over-matter shit going on here, and it’s rather fascinating, though I don’t have a lot of time to consider it. I am in a sea of thousands, a waterfall of humanity pouring out of this event at last. 

Released into the wild, bearing a jam-packed brain oversaturated from fourteen hours of mental drinking from a firehose, I climb into my Uber, complaining to my driver that everything will be closed soon. I’m wayy too pumped up to go to bed. He laughs, and brings me good tidings of great joy, the bars in Miami are open till five.  

God Bless Miami!!

Miami is everything I was hoping Los Angeles would be and absolutely wasn’t.  When we took our ill-fated journey to L.A. so many years ago, there was little I liked about it, and thought Florida might be similar. Nope, not at all. 

 I disliked L.A. just as much as I’m adoring Miami at the moment. I feel like I’ve come home. I tell the Uber driver to take me someplace fun, and he takes me on a tour around the places he says have the best night life. We drive past club after club, flashing lights, thumping subwoofers, and barely dressed women with breasts wayy bigger than mine and faces far more expensive lining the pavement everywhere. I just wanna dance away my sky-high energy after spending all day listening to the Big Guru speak. I see people spilling out of a bustling nightclub: “Drop me off HERE!!” and I walk in totally faking that I belong here, and wave, and smile, and order a drink. I chat up the people at the bar. They are friendly and awesome. For a while the music is typical club music, but after a bit, the  music changes to delicious syncopated Cuban rhythms, and I sit in awe as salsa dancers take the floor. I watch for like two minutes before I am begging them to teach me to salsa. 

For years I taught what I thought was salsa in group exercise classes, and one thing is clear. 

I most absolutely and definitely have no idea how to salsa. 

I always did this hippy-swingy thing, but the motion is a lot more subtle, and higher up, just under the ribcage. I spend over an hour in my futile attempt to make my ribcage move correctly. I never do get it right. These people have double-jointed backs, I’m sure of it.

It is four am and day two of the conference is fast approaching. 

I Uber to the hotel and collapse in bed, my head swimming with the day’s events. 

I am exponentially stronger. 

I will already never be the same. 

…and this was just the first day.

I lift the crystal to my lips and sip dry white wine. It was a fabulous visit with my long-lost friend of forever ago. She got herself a giant pickup, and we had a few precious days of good, old-fashioned redneck fun in the Appalachian foothills. I’m so happy to have her back. 

Na Zdrowie! A Polish cheers to myself in a bustling North Carolina bar, as I watch families haul gaggles of children and diaper bags larger than the kids, businesswomen hustling along with their Vuitton bags as they click clack on their way to somewhere expensive, guys in hoodies and the mandatory accompaniment of earbuds that are surely grown to their ears by now with backpacks that are unquestionably wayyy too stuffed to be anywhere near acceptable size. How the hell do THEY get allowed on the plane? I like to imagine they have to stand there in front of God and everyone and offload seventeen copies of Fodor’s before they can embark, but they are probably allowed through, according to the number of yak-sized backpacks I see hauled up to the overhead bin. All taking the space I wanted for my petite suitcase, which now has to be checked and shipped to Peru.  

I sit and consider the final Dudes I left in the snow as I flew away to restructure my life. 

As I was in voluntary self-confinement, rebuilding myself, I wrote a song called Rapunzel’s Tower. The word picture was an escape to a safe tower, followed by chopping off my hair so no one could come up. A protective, self-inflicted exile whilst I figured out how to defend myself. And I can’t leave till the hair grows back. Okay, so it’s pretty fairytale, but so is fucking Stairway to Heaven. 

It kind of reminded me of when my kids were little and fighting over toys. I would put the toy itself on time out, now no one gets the toy. So many used me, and I would tolerate, and let them take what they wanted. 

Now no one gets me. 

I banished myself to a time-out in the tower until I learned my lesson, and my hair was long enough to climb down.  I was severely in need of some alone time to rebuild my own life. Plan, learn, grow, create.  

My new, much higher walls of the Tower kept the relentless Dudes at bay. It’s getting better. 

There’s Guitardude, a guy who was doing some recording with me. Then he wanted to kiss me. Then he confessed he was extremely married with a teenage daughter and a wife who had no idea he was unhappy. Fucker. These guys never seem to get their shit in the right order. 

There was the crush on Musicdude, a guy I was working with in a band, but didn’t pursue because of my mental exile. He was flirting, flirting, flirting with me, and complaining about being single again, though I did wonder why he never really made a move. The entire band thought he was single, and were kinda waiting for us to connect. While tearing down after playing a larger festival gig with him, his twelve year old son came bouncing up, dark haired woman in tow. Who is this? I introduce myself, are you watching his son? Child care provider? 

Nope. 

Fiancee, as she proudly held out her hand with the cheap solitaire, one of the kinds that attempts to make itself compete with an actual diamond by packing together a bunch of little diamond chips. He told exactly none of us who knew him that he was engaged. Never even mentioned a girlfriend. How in the hell is THAT marriage supposed to work? She deserved a better ring, and a better man. What a little shit. But it just makes it even easier to sit in the tower and do the self work as my hair gains length with every passing moment…

I had been friends with DownerDude, a guy in the local bar who constantly complained about his job and life situation. I wasted precious hours listening to his negative diatribe. He, too, fell by the wayside as I sat in the tower deciding who would get to spend time with me once my hair was long enough to exit the thick walls of stone. 

I left potheads behind who never have the energy to accomplish anything significant, I left flirty guys behind who constantly had the hope that they could sleep with me without a relationship (PLEEEEEAASE can’t we be friends with benefits? Benefits to whom? I want to read a good book and go to bed. Wanna do the dishes,  read to me and rub my feet? Now THOSE are benefits.). Guys who dangle the promise of satisfying me like no one ever has. Satisfy?? They have no idea what women really want. Well, maybe someone does, but not this one. 

I think men underestimate how exhausting staying up for hours of whatever they are calling “satisfying” you actually is. Are ya done yet? And I know there are millions of women with sore knees, jaws, nipples, and a severely chafed netherplace that would concur. It’s rarely worth it. Most guys who talk about “satisfying” you wind up being remarkably selfish in bed, and wearing us out till we want to send them home to their mother’s basement so we can just get some sleep. These Dudes need to learn something more, well, satisfying. 

In the tower, I have clarity. I can see the scam behind the curtain. They call out, hawking the shell game, tempting me with the goodies that come with a great relationship, yet once the shells are scrambled around and one is lifted to reveal its surprise, there is nothing and I invariably am left with empty pockets and disappointment. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. And I’ve been fooled so many times, I no longer even cast a glance at the games, I know the con, and it’s over.

There is absolutely nothing under that fucking shell, ever. 

The only one remaining is LastDude, who seems like he miiight be worth it? But unlike before, I don’t get in his wheelbarrow. We casually date, here and there, but I`m holding him at arm’s length. He’s not in the tower, and he’s not affecting the direction I am ordering. 

This time, I’m the one who’s not ready to commit. 

So, when my hair was finally long enough to leave the tower, I climbed out the window, rappelled down the stone wall carried by my own golden locks, hopped on my horse and galloped riiiiight past the stunned looking gentlemen who had been waiting outside. 

Sorry, Dudes, I have a plane to catch. 

And, clad in a Little Black Dress and spike heeled boots, I sip my overpriced wine in an ostentatious bistro in the Charlotte airport. Blonde waves hang by my face, as I’m flanked by business travelers at the sleek, backlit marble bar. This is more like it, rocking Monica with her ideas. I have been journaling miles of plans for my life, and ideas churn in my head, gradually thickening into precious gold. “Standing room only?” the two gentlemen nearest me are striking up a conversation. Oh hell, why not?  Part of the  suit-clad brigade at the bar, they do business in tobacco, and are headed to Antigua to possibly purchase some kind of production machinery. I miiiight have been eavesdropping.

Wait, no, the one guy is selling to the other guy. I get the feeling he thinks I can add a little butter to the conversation. Already this is way more interesting than chatting with Dudes back in Big Suburb. 

As I quickly discovered back at O’Hare, there are distinct advantages to traveling alone. 

Traveling with another person, or a group, you have an obligation, a social commitment. You need to speak with that person, with that group. You really aren’t free to pursue a wild hair.

Traveling alone? All bets are off, and this social butterfly is airborne, flitting here and there, the sky the limit (literally, today) to with whom I can communicate. Hell, I could trade in my Miami ticket for a one-way to Bali and stay there indefinitely with the swipe of a credit card. Right now, today. Such are the advantages of the single, and one appreciated by me wayy later than I ought to have, but now I can’t unsee it, and I intend to advantage this to the fullest. 

I and the two businessmen finish our drinks and we go our separate ways. I find my gate and line up in the crowd of impatient everyones, waiting their turn to scan their ticket DING! and board the plane. I am on the plane and about to get in my aisle seat, when I notice two rows back the two businessmen in aisle and window seat, both looking desperately uncomfortable as a Costco-sized gentleman attempts to wedge his ample posterior between them, into the dread middle seat. 

I was made for moments like this. I barely hit 5’3” on a good day, and am perfectly comfortable with room to spare in airline seats. 

“Sir, would you like an aisle seat? I can trade with you.”

Andre the Giant turns to me, looking very surprised at anyone willing to make this clearly one-sided exchange. “Thank you! “ he says with great relief. I note smirks of gratitude on the businessmen’s faces as I tuck myself neatly into the seat between them, leaving room to spare for their elbows, and cozy in for the ride.

‘I believe you’ll be buying my drinks.” 

And they did. 

Such is the life I am living now. I have hit my stride. Being alone is totally fucking underrated. 

Each day, I’ve been determining my own destiny, deciding what I want and going to get it. I watch movies I want to see, I read nonstop, I go out when I want and stay out as late as I like. I drink, or don’t drink. I come home and cuddle up in my heated bed with seventeen thousand pillows, I wake up early if I like, sleep in if I like. I have created a fantastic world for myself, and am on a mission to make it even better. 

We chat, joke and laugh, and it seems seconds until we are already landing in Miami, and the friendly banter continues on as we land and allow the others to wait in a pointless line of impatience. We finally all collect our things, my luggage gratefully hauled by Business Guy #2, and tumble off the plane. 

 I am instantly, irrevocably, madly in LOVE. 

Nothing to do with any guy. 

A warm, pillowy, delightful semitrailer of intoxicating balmy Florida air runs me over while I’m still in the tube leading from the plane to the airport. I’m not even outside yet and I have finally found my soulmate. Florida! Where have you been all my life?? The three of us decide to catch one more drink at their hotel bar, and we sit, and sip, and cheers to the onset of vacation time, though all of us still have a purpose in the morning. 

We exchange business cards, and I fetch an Uber to carry on to my hotel, a very nice Aloft on Brickell, close to I don’t know what. I know zero about Miami, except for knowing I already love it. The door to my room opens with a click and I am here. 

Monica’s world. 

I slide open the glass door, which remains open the rest of the time, and peek outside. There are interesting looking places everywhere. 

I consider calling Lastdude, but decide to just shoot a text. There’s nothing serious going on here, and I have no obligation or commitment. 

I stand on the balcony and gaze into the night. 

It’s late, yet I hear music, traffic, banter, everything. 

I grab my key and exit, hearing the door close behind me with a satisfying CLICK, but I’m already down the hall. 

There just has to be something exciting going on in Miami at midnight. 

RING… RING… RING…

The phone trembles in my hand as my mind drifts back to a vivid scene 15 years ago, stuck on an indelible repeat loop in my brain.

She is SOBBING. Her makeup lies in ruins, zombie pools in the hollows beneath her swollen eyes. 

 I am relentless. You simply can’t get divorced in the church! 

And that’s how I rationalize the cruel abandonment of my very best friend back in Chapter 22, left alone to pick up the pieces by herself after we, the church, assisted in shattering her life by making a conscious and deliberate decision: if she proceeded with her divorce, we would be leaving her behind on the way to the Promised Land. 

She did proceed. I parroted the company line, squawking loudly in the church bandwagon parade, making sure she was properly snubbed. 

God, I was awful. 

“Hello?” 

“Hi, ummm….it’s Monica.”

Dead silence. I should hang up, this was a terrible idea. But then she pipes up, “Oh my Goodness! It’s so wonderful to hear from you!”, her instantly familiar Texan drawl bringing the warmest of greetings. I didn’t expect this. It’s absolutely not what I deserve. I instantly choke up at her unwarranted kindness. 

I suck. 

We pick up the conversation like separated twins, rapid fire catching up, how have you been, what are you up to, how is DX… then I drop the bomb and blurt out my confession.

 I, too…am now divorced. 

This time there is a much, much longer pause. 

I interrupt the silence with tearful apologies. I’m babbling, I’m sputtering. Fifteen years ago, I stood in her house, a statue of self-righteous judgment, condemning her for getting divorced. 

Fifteen years later, I’m hanging my head in shame, understanding the suffering I put her through all too well. At the time, of course, I was absolutely convinced I was doing the right thing, admonishing the sinful to a better path, stern and unforgiving, carrying out what I saw as God’s justice, a ruthless nun in a habit of spiked steel. But I was wrong, ohhhh I was so, so wrong. 

And my dear priceless friend, who could have been my trusty sidekick for the last decade and a half, is full of forgiveness I absolutely do not deserve. 

She forgives the person I had become in the church, willing to sacrifice our relationship for an ideology. She forgives the ridiculous conversation I had with her that windblown October evening I sat in her living room, trying unsuccessfully to convince her not to leave her husband. She even forgives me having abandoned her at a time she needed support so desperately. Her abundant forgiveness makes me feel even worse for what I did. In spite of my groveling, we still have that instant friend chemistry, and we connect, and catch up, and talk, and laugh, but there is a deep regret in my soul. We missed out on years together, years that were wasted because I was so adamant that divorce was WRONG WRONG ALWAYS WRONG. I still can’t believe I did this to her. 

 I had to fix this wrong in order to proceed with my life. I can’t just ignore wrongdoing on my part, not if I’m going to be the kind of person I want to be. I can’t just do the fun stuff, I need to actually be a better person. And I absolutely needed to address 

this grave error from my past. After the conversation, and the tears, and reconnection, I’m mentally exhausted. I need to run, let the wind blow through my mind.

KOOSH KOOSH KOOSH my feet crunch through piles of leaves, excited about my renewed relationship with a treasured friend, and ready to proceed with this new life direction.

I, having abandoned traditional shoes for those ridiculous neanderthal Sasquatch-ass Vibram FiveFinger toe shoes, am dancing through piles of leaves as I run, and with every leave I crunch, I plan. In my determination to create my own path, I want to go places I’ve never been, do things I’ve never done. But that’s just stuff. I also want to repair relationships, mend fences, maintain boundaries, develop a strong inner circle, figure out who the hell I wanna be when I grow up. Transform my life. 

ALONE. 

I read Jack Canfield. I read Robert Kiyosaki. I read Napoleon Hill, Jim Rohn, and allow Martha Beck to help me find my North Star. I read about improving your luck (yes, you absolutely can) and being Codependent No More (thank you, Melody Beattie!) I read about self-discipline (should probably review, heh heh) and the Year of Yes. I read about how to get what you want, and I read about how to protect it from The Sociopath Next Door (would have saved me a ton of pain in my church days). I read about The Secret, What the Bleep? and the art of visualization. I read about how to keep it all organized with minimalism and cute little Marie Kondo, whose ideas are great, but wayyy too time consuming for this  free spirit. I skip Martha Stewart, I have no patience for making homemade fig ganache in a pan forged in my backyard. 

And when I say I go on a binge of self recreation, I mean I have almost 400 titles in my Audible account, not including the many more I lost track of in my Scribd subscription. 

I am a mad scientist over my life, counter laden with beakers and Bunsen burners, what’s she gonna make now? And I’m stirring it all together like a crazy lady, frizzed Einstein hair bobbing as I excitedly mix this with that, checking chemical recipes to see what will react with what. 

 I watch enough Ted talks and Tony Robbins videos to make Eeyore reimagine himself a white stallion. 

But this is going to take more than just listening, it’s going to take action. 

I search for life-transformative experiences. I mine the stories of the successful for what helped them have that elusive Eureka! moment that changed everything. And I discover a common thread for many. 

There are quite a few who went to some rather heavy duty training with Tony Robbins.  

Yeah, yeah, I know. Go ahead and roll your eyes before you continue, but it is a fact. 

It could have been a different conference, the important thing was the action I was putting into developing myself as a person. And his conference involves walking on hot coals. COOL! Just the kind of crazy shit this wacko mad life-scientist is seeking. I want drastic, bombastic, crazy nuclear-ass life fusion right now. 

I sign up for the stupidly expensive conference. In Miami. I’ve never flown alone, and I’ve never been to Florida. Fuck it, this is how you develop new skills. 

 I’m going to make a stop in North Carolina to visit my wonderful long-lost best friend who just forgave me, an in-person reconnect that has me so excited I’m finding it difficult to sleep. 

On the way back, I’m going to visit new friends in Naples. 

Sorry, Eric Carmen, you were totally wrong. Being All By Myself can be pretty fucking awesome.  Hey, If you’re great company, why wouldn’t you want to be with you? I’m gonna rewrite that ballad as a rock song jamming electric guitars ALL BYYYY MYSEELLF….I wanna be…. ALLL BYYY MYSELLLLFF cuz I’m PRETTY COOOOOLL!!!!

And if you’re not great company, then why can’t you change yourself until you are? 

But every good decision will be challenged, and challenged it is. 

As I’ve been developing the musician facet of my life, I have been communicating with all of the musicians I can, and in the melee, I manage to hone in on one who lives a couple hours away. He’s a fascinating person, and an exceptional musician. We decide to meet for coffee.

I should have known better.  We talk, we connect, we laugh about all things music, and we decide we will top off this great conversation with dinner, which is just down the street. 

It’s pouring outside. 

We run from awning to awning in the dumping rain.  Abruptly, he grabs my hand and spins me around, and in a yellowed page ripped straight out of a cheesy Harlequin Romance, he kisses me in the rain. 

And just like that, Lastdude is born. 

It’s HER.

Of course it is. I just about facepalmed when I read it. 

Makes perfect sense. She was behind it all along. My hand trembles as I read the message and cower, wondering if she’s going to come after me, who she’s going to poison against me now. She’s been after me for years. I’d better call her, apologize, grovel, beg for forgiveness and ask what she wants me to do for penance. I’ll also need to  shut down my progress and acquiesce to what she wants, appease this person who is so absolutely appalled at everything I do with my life…

Nah. 

That’s absolutely not what I’m going to do this time, though that’s probably what she thinks would fix this for her. 

Many chapters ago, ch. 37, I had a stalker. 

Ages later, enough time has passed that I could probably carbon date the hate mail that once stuffed mailboxes all over Tiny Town. I stare at my phone in wonder that anyone could possibly obsess over someone enough to message them more than ten years after an event. Back in the day, an anonymous someone had been mailing flyers about me to God knows how many people in Tiny Town, detailing what a shitty person I was, emphasized by bright, colorful memes of Obama and Willy Wonka. I had no way to identify the mystery person who haunted me, and, absolutely terrified, I spent a year living in mortal fear of this unseen foe, an extra year in my marriage, an extra year without changing anything I wanted to change. I was held captive by my own terror of this nameless boogeyman who held the power to ruin my reputation in the church world. I was a puppet and I could only see the strings attached to my limbs, not knowing who held the wooden controls.

 But now, long past my life having been blown up and well into the rebuild, living in a different city with entirely new friends, I receive another angry message, another torpedo of vitriol aimed at me, hoping for mass destruction. Only this time the author makes no attempt whatsoever to keep her identity hidden, and the name on the torpedo is printed right on it in massive block letters. I finally know who was spending copious amounts of time bent on my destruction. Back then, I thought maybe it was Joe Sham. He may have played a role, but he definitely wasn’t the mastermind. The mask finally falls to the ground, and the instigator is revealed at last. I am spectacularly and immensely… unsurprised. This is like finding out Elon Musk is behind some of the weird UFO lights in the sky, or that one of the crazy conspiracy theories surrounding Bill Gates is totally true, or discovering there is no actual chicken in McNuggets. Not surprising, right?

 The one person who would send letters all around town to make sure I stayed in my place. The one sending me anonymous hate mail, letters telling me I was one pitchfork-tail short of being the literal Antichrist, and that the rest of my days would be best spent groveling in a pile of horse manure, begging for the forgiveness of the vast humanity I had damaged. 

Mother fucking Superior. From Chapter 23.

I had to respect the tenacity. I mean, who even has the time? This part of it always baffled me. In order to accomplish this, she had to create memes, hunt down addresses, type and print out letters (See, if I were the mastermind, this is where I’d run out of toner and give up.), buy envelopes, BUY STAMPS, and take them to a post office that didn’t betray your location? I mean come on, when’s the last time anyone even sent out an actual letter? On PAPER??

… But this is over a decade since. I just assumed I’d never really know who led the anti-Monica mailbox campaign. I’m extremely surprised she even took the time for one last blast at me. I suppose she had so much control over me previously, she may think some of that control is still in existence. But it’s not, and this time I read her rantings more bemused than anything. This poor woman has wasted precious years of her life being obsessed with me, instead of building her own world. She had an incredible singing voice, and was ridiculously smart and skilled, with a sharp wit and contagious laugh, yet she wasted a bunch of time focusing on things she couldn’t change. There are so many lessons in this. 

Allow me to back up. How do you create a stalker? 

Back in my church days, when I was the main worship leader and director, I did the scheduling, public speaking and singing, sometimes even part of the sermon. I taught harmony parts. I taught Bible studies. I led the youth band, the drama team, community events, team building events… but there’s something I wish I would have been prepared for at the time. When you are making a difference, doing something cool and extraordinary, others will want to hijack it without putting in the work, without becoming the type of person who does these things.

Coattail riders. 

Anyone reading this who has accomplished anything significant knows exactly what I’m talking about. 

She wanted my position. She wasn’t qualified for it, but she sure as hell did want it. And she wasn’t even the only one. This happened with others, those who would sidle in, posing as friends, but through the thin veneer was an ulterior motive. Predictably, either time I was fired, the second I was evicted from my position, these “friends” slid right into my still-warm chair, gleefully taking over what I had built. 

She also had a controlling streak worse than Britney Spears’ dad. I, totally compliant Monica at the time, mistakenly thought I had found a fabulous new friend and commenced spending a ton of time with her. I thought she was good for me. At least I didn’t have to figure out my own life, she would do it for me. Easy. She would tell me what I should be doing, and I would nod and smile, a little kid complying to the projected direction of her Mommy Dearest orders.

Her life was off the rails, why not control mine instead?

 It’s a very common theme. It wasn’t until I was learning about boundaries that I was able to do anything about it. Then, in one particularly nasty car ride, it was over. I was riding along, listening to her wax lengthy and eloquent about the things I should be doing on the worship team as I stared out her passenger window with tears rolling down my cheeks. I was hopelessly receiving the latest tug of marionette strings at my wrists and ankles, when I decided I was done. I abruptly stopped spending time with her, effectively shredding those hateful strings and placing me back in control. 

She wasn’t a fan of my new border installation. She liked running free, tearing apart my flower beds because they weren’t to her liking. Problem is, if your neighbor is accustomed to coming over and drinking all your lemonade while they sit in your hammock, they aren’t going to be very happy when you put up a fence and shut off their supply. The seeds of disgruntlement were sown, and she began resenting me. 

 I was still somehow the one three years later who received the afternoon phone call from the police department (Do you really just get one phone call? I hope I never find out.) telling me there was someone who wanted to speak with me. At the moment I was baffled, until I heard her brassy, sharp voice; a drunken lunatic on the other end of the line. 

“You arreeen’t lissening to me. Wassa maddr with you? YOU’RE. NOT. LISSNING!!!”

She yelled at me for a solid twenty minutes, a vodka-driven diatribe about how I wasn’t doing this right. I was eventually able to interpret the slurred insults, which turned out to be a request to please retrieve her children from school, as she is unavoidably detained, having flipped her car on her way to pick them up. I took her verbal punishment, and went and got her kids, and farmed them off to their friend’s houses without a word, a question, a hint of calling this a problem. The church had trained me well.

After this debacle, she became more and more of a problem, until there was a point at which she was pulled from leadership, which apparently made her hate me enough to start looking for any way possible to get rid of me. I mean, I guess she kind of succeeded. 

Yet, here I am, ten years later, and it must not have been enough for her that my church career was forfeit, that I lost everything, that I left town, reputation ruined and judgment executed. She had to hunt me down for a last laugh, ages after I lost everything and left Tiny Town. 

I’m kinda surprised she even remembers who I am. But remember she does, and here I am looking at this dumb message. I had her blocked for years, but she found a loophole and messaged my business page. Brilliant. Well, she never was stupid. She had many meetings with the powers that be leading up to Pastor Jock firing us, and now that I know she was likely the main person who was behind the smear campaign, I realize she was also the driving force behind the first time we were fired.

But why bother thinking about it now? It would accomplish exactly nothing.

I do feel a bit sorry for her not finding something better to do with her time for the last ten years. 

I see the damage it does. Either time we were fired, I, too, had the extremely tempting possibility of taking up a similar mantle, one meant to hurt, one that lives for vengeance, that lies in wait to see the person who did me wrong fall, who can jump on their ashes SEE I TOLD YOU SO!!! 

… but I know that in every case of vengeance, it destroys the person seeking the vengeance far more than the recipient of their justified anger. If I had pursued the path of vengeance, I would have been far too obsessed with everyone who had done me wrong to have any time at all to build a future. 

Many a man is destroyed by their obsession with those who did him wrong. 

NOPE. Not gonna do it. 

But there is another, less obvious lesson here, as I set down my phone with its bombastic message. 

It was a very, VERY good thing that I cut her from my life. Could you imagine the difference if I hadn’t? If I had stayed in relationship with this incredibly controlling person who wanted to tell me who to be?

I have read repeatedly that you are the product of the five people you spend the most time with, and in my consideration of this rather extreme example of how just letting anyone in the door of your life can damage you, your life and your direction, I resolve another thing for Monica 2.0.

I’m done spending time with people out of obligation. The problem with this in the church was the expectation that you be everyone’s friend, like them or not. NO fucking thank you! I’ve spent time with people who made me want to fake my death so they would leave me alone. I could be actually dead and buried and they would still attempt to dig up the corpse so they could tell just one more story. I’m through with endless listens to every crazy who wants to enter my world.

 My resolve strengthens. 

I am only allowing people into my life whom I enjoy, who support my big dreams, who encourage and lift up, value-added people who bring something to the table. 

Because I will no longer be the only one bringing all of the everything to life’s buffet. 

I’m fairly sure it’s here that Monica’s Cardboard Box Theory is born. 

“And, what is Cardboard Box Theory, fine lady?” you ask with a horrible Cockney accent. 

Here it is. 

MONICA’S CARDBOARD BOX THEORY: 

You can be in a seven-star hotel (yes, this exists, though I marvel at what makes a hotel seven stars. Do they wipe your butt for you with only the finest cashmere?). You can be on a thirty-seven foot yacht, or in the back of a limousine headed to a thousand dollar a plate event. Doesn’t matter how spectacular, how expensive, how over-the-top luxurious. 

If you are with shit people, it will suck and you are going to be miserable. You can’t cool-stuff your way out of awful relationships, but I see people attempt it all the time. From friends you’d rather avoid, who should be relegated to acquaintance status, to a significant other who chronically annoys you, to the very worst…a spouse who causes you to constantly walk on eggshells, the wrong people in your life will make you more miserable than damn near anything. I lived this in the church, and saw it all the time dating, the person with a ton of possessions and no personality.

But let’s flip this. 

You can have a simple cardboard box, and have the right people with you, and you will make the box into a Cantina, make margaritas and have a fantastic time building windows, and stairs, and anything else you can figure out to create together. Bottom line being, you can be in almost any situation with the right person, or people, and find enjoyment in it. Life revolves around who you’re with.

Good relationships are paramount, and with this latest message, I decide another upgrade is in order, beyond just getting rid of wheelbarrows. 

I am going to find the best people to hang around with. 

Because I am determined to become the best sort of person with whom you would want to hang around. 

And, in spite of my propensity to end sentences with a preposition, I totally believe I can do this. 

I’m going to start by walking on fire. 

SHIT!

A light blue splat hits my jeans. I frantically wipe it away and keep moving, brushing lightener rapidly over soon to be formerly known as dark waves. I’m actually doing it! (PSA: Tempted to go blonde at home? First watch any of the million or so bleach disaster compilations on YouTube. Blonde isn’t much fun when it’s off your head and lying in the sink.) Yeah, it’s just hair color, yet this baby step feels like a leap off a cliff. NO ONE likes this idea except me, and making a small decision for myself – one as popular as New Coke, or mom jeans that compete with your bra strap for purchase of real estate on your body – feels uncomfortable, yet essential. 

 I have to start practicing my own life decisions somewhere. 

I, on my own and having consulted exactly no one about this small but renegade decision, am in a remedial pre-101 class about self-determination, AKA what I want to be when I grow up. I sit and wait, head full of blue glop waiting for the darkness to show itself out. 

I’ve been obsessively mining through books about finding yourself, and as I wait for the hair magic to happen in my latest episode of I Think I Might Be Having A Mid-Life Crisis, I listen to an audiobook about relationships. I don’t recall the title of this mostly unmemorable work, but amidst the usual Raise your standards! Don’t settle! You’ll Find Him When You Stop Looking! and a million other worn-out hole-in-the-knee cliches was one significant paragraph on its way, lying in wait and about to monkeywrench my brain. The chapters click along and suddenly, a beacon on the horizon, a realization, raw gold dropped in my lap. A fact I had missed, a thought that had never occurred to me. I back up the recording and listen again. Still there. And I rewind again. And again. A  massive puzzle piece clicks into place. 

Too bad I can’t tell you what it said. 

Kidding, kidding. Here’s what happened… 

Way back when I left the church, I knew I needed to build my own life, to be my own person. I was already doing this, so what kept going wrong? Why does the wheelbarrow keep creaking back around the corner, ready to haul me away? I just couldn’t seem to stop. I would meet someone, fall back into old habits, and give up the life I was building to focus on them. As my hand opened to reach out to them, it would invariably release the string within. The problem with the dropped string, is that it’s attached to my own golden balloon, and off it would go, haplessly sailing away with my life in tow, smaller, smaller, gone. And as anyone hankering for that lunchtime cigarette, the 5-o-clock glass of wine, a midnight bowl of ice cream, or that 2 am toke in the garage, our human habits are notoriously difficult to change. 

I had been hardwired early on to sacrifice myself for other’s desires. Throw yourself on the sword, turn the other cheek, others are more important than you, relics of my Catholic upbringing in which you were taught if someone asks you for your coat, not only should give him your coat, but your shirt as well, no questions asked and no concerns about trying to go about life naked and unprotected against the elements, unable to enter even the Stop n Go on the corner. 

Isn’t that how relationships are supposed to work? Aren’t you supposed to “cleave” together, and give yourself away to this other person? That’s even how they say it. Giving yourself to matrimony. That’s what I was doing every time I would meet someone. When I was married, I thought I simply had the wrong person. Turns out, my entire concept of how to negotiate a relationship with someone is totally folded, spindled and mutilated. This giving up of yourself and the life you have constructed, giving up your essence, simply does not work.  

I mean, even Jesus at some point had to seriously disappoint his Nazareth neighbors who had REALLY wanted HIm to build that cool entertainment center. Nope, sorry, I know my mission and calling is to save the world, you’re going to have to build your own bedroom set. 

I need to stay just as faithful to my own life’s mission, guarding it like a fortress, protecting and defending its precious calling, and not allowing any takeouts. I’m pitching my Tupperware, no more of anyone hauling pieces of me away in their flimsy plastic to-go containers.

I’ve already gone through a very necessary divorce, moved to a new city where I knew no one, built up a business in a fresh location, and done a ton of things by myself, only to have my direction inevitably derailed by my latest Flavor Of The Day whom I was just positive was my knight in shining armor. Only the armor turns out to be a rusty, bent tin can every damn time, bearing a frog who refuses to turn into a prince with every desperate slimy kiss. I’ve done great at my own life direction until Prince Charming comes and waves his wand (wand, heh heh), and magics me back into the dreaded wheelbarrow. Suddenly I’m following their life direction, not mine. Then they leave, and I’m nowhere. I already figured out I need to make my own life concrete and big enough that it doesn’t fit in someone’s wheelbarrow, but why does this particular vehicle keep showing up in the first place?

Let’s return to this audiobook that’s droning on as I bleach my hair. The author is teaching about a strong single life, which is kinda funny because he has a wonderful relationship with his wife, who turns out to be an amazingly perfect person for him. Oh, please. The book is largely about how he found himself during the years he was single before he met her, yet then he proceeds to talk wayyy too much about their annoyingly great relationship. Geddouttahea with your success story. The book is a waste of tree pulp so far, and it’s actually something he says in passing that drops the bomb on my brain. 

It was in the Q and A section at the end. Honestly, I could have missed it super easily had the additional material after the actual book not rattled on, and believe me, if I wasn’t tied up painting bleach on my head, I probably would have shut it off long before. 

But it just droned on, and wayyy in the last maybe ten percent of the recording, someone pops out of the ether to ask him a question about this apparent goddess of a wife he is sooo in love with: “so…when did you really HAVE her?” 

You know, have? When your partner knows you will adapt to their life, their idea of what looks best on you, where you should live, what they want for dinner, what kind of sandwich you should be making for them, how your life should prop up theirs? So, when did you have her?? When did you lock this shit down, knowing she would be your dearly devoted for the rest of your days? 

His answer shook me. 

“I don’t. I never will have her. She is her own fascinating person with her own direction, and I’m still in pursuit, day and night. I always will be, because in a great relationship the fascination, and the chase, never ends.”

WHAT??! 

And it suddenly all shifted into place. You don’t EVER get to the point in a healthy relationship that you’re giving up who you are for the other person. YOU stay YOU, they stay them. You may journey together, but you each have your own life created, your own vehicle. And it’s self-guided, not a damned wheelbarrow.

The wheelbarrow cranks on in the distance… I chase it down, golden hair flying free and arms pinwheeling like a crazy derelict, bearing a stick in one hand. I jam the stick between the spokes of its front wheel, and it careens wildly to the side, then loses its grip on the path. End over end it tumbles, down the steep path, and over a cliff. I don’t see it land. I no longer care. Buh-bye.

I never have to get in a wheelbarrow again. 

I have myself. I hug myself. I AM myself. 

I am creating exactly what I want to be, and I GET TO KEEP IT. 

That’s what I was missing. 

My head starts to swim, an enchanted pool swirling with glittering possibilities. Choices to be made, forks in the road, directions to run in. 

Musician. Author. Dancer. Business owner. Comedian. Fitness instructor. Passionate. Motivational. Caring. Compassionate. FUN.

All possibilities. All choices for me to make. NO ONE will fucking derail it this time. You can’t derail a rocket.

 And I started with something as basic as blonde. 

Blue paste runs in a river down the drain, carrying the darkness with it. 

Blonde Monica. HA! Love it or hate it, I simply can’t care what you think. It’s what I chose for myself. 

Very basic decision #1 made, all mine. I own the decision, I own any consequence. My hair is, gratefully, still on my head. 

IN the midst of my reverie, I receive  an extremely angry text message.  

And at last, I have the answer to a mystery I’ve been trying to solve for a very long time. 

WHAAAAAAT???

get up? as in out of the wheelbarrow? 

“…Can… I…?”

“Of course you can!” She’s laughing now. Thanks, me. 

I consider how long I’ve been stuck here. And why I keep getting back in. I have been on this endless loop, a continual recycling back into this stupid tin can with a wheel. I’m convinced there’s a bungee cord sewn to my posterior that keeps snapping me back to the same place. 

 I have Stockholm Syndrome. Or at least something like it. I suffer from a terminal case of I’ll Give Up My Life Direction Because I’m Just Sure You’re My Soul Mate. HELP WANTED, seeking wheelbarrow-pusher. I listen to others around me, while neglecting the most important opinion about my life of all, MINE. But I don’t understand what went wrong this time, I was doing so well, doing all of these woman empowerment things, I just don’t get what went wrong. 

“Come on!”

She’s apparently not going to allow me to just sit and contemplate why. She wants action. 

I’m still entirely baffled as to who or what exactly this is. I know it’s me, but why the difference? I mean, where’s HER wheelbarrow? And her skin is goddamn glowing, not the rust and dirt I’m enveloped in at all.  WHO IS THIS?? 

She reaches out her hand to me, and I touch it, feeling her warm, smooth grasp. 

She’s pulling me out of the wheelbarrow.

But if I leave the wheelbarrow, what will become of me? How will I get anywhere? I have an unhealthy but steadfast relationship with this damned barrow. I know I need to leave, and yet can’t seem to do it. I’m attached, like the story of the morbidly obese lady whose skin became one with the very upholstery of her favorite couch, the comfortable security blanket of fabric destined to do her in. It literally killed her. Likewise, the wheelbarrow is familiar, my body knows just how to curl up against the bends of the oxidized metal. I have become comfortable in this surrounding, just like I did in the church, wearing an ill-fitting mantle that represents not at all what I want to be.  

It’s occurring to me that in order to change, I’m going to have to become very, very uncomfortable. 

What happens to people when they stay in a miserable job? Or in a miserable relationship? The door’s right there, but we are such Godforsaken creatures of habit that we tend to stay right on our one-way, dead-end road. Get up, pour coffee in the same room into the same cup from the same carafe, put on the same clothes from the same closet, eat the same breakfast sitting across the table from the same miserable fucker you sat across from yesterday. 

Drive the same car behind the same dingdong staring at the phone in their lap going an infuriating 45 mph, get to work the same amount of early, on time, or late as always, clock in the same, unlock the door the same, turn on the laptop the same, then grunt away for eight or so hours running the same hamsterwheel…

Only to somehow get behind the same slow dimwit on the way home, same route, same road, same journey, same music, getting back to the same house on the same street with the same annoying neighbors to have the same dinner with that same fucker to watch the same Netflix binge or root for the same team yelling at the same TV before either lying next to the snoring fucker or, very commonly, sleeping in a different room than the fucker because you’re too damned stuck to change any of this bullshit!

Until you do. 

And it turns out, it’s actually possible. 

I look at the wheelbarrow one last time. It’s so familiar, I know every nook and cranny, every creak and moan of its moving parts. I whisper to it… goodbye wheelbarrow, grip tightly to what is weirdly my own hand, and step out. 

My legs are cramped and sore, and at first my knees want to give out. “Come on, you can do this!” 

I’m weirdly being cajoled by myself. 

I set my second foot out, and hoist myself up. “There you go! Now straighten up.”

I hold myself up. “TALLER!” 

Sheesh! I’m being rather intense. 

But I do straighten up, and imitate her stance, tall, chin up, shoulders back. This feels better already. 

“Let’s walk.” 

And we head into the field in the direction from which she arrived. I turn back for one last glance, pleased to note that I do not turn into a salt pillar. I see the wheelbarrow, crusty and pathetic. How the hell did I even fit in there? And I startle with the awareness that I have already changed.  Just in the act of exiting this godforsaken vehicle, I am now too big to get back in. I’m a bit panicked about this, but I can’t go back, I no longer fit its confines. 

Okay, time to figure out what the hell is going on. 

“What the hell is going on?” I ask. 

“You don’t know who I am, do you?”

“I mean, I’m pretty sure you’re me…. but how? And why??”

I glance back, and now the wheelbarrow is just a speck in the distance. 

She stops us a moment, turns to me and grasps my hands. 

“Monica, I am the possible you. I can be the future you. You can choose me, or you can choose another version of me, but you need to know that this is what’s possible. I’ve come back to tell you… I am your future possibility.”

I am in awe. Wait, I can be…. this?? She’s a heroine, a goddess. The wind is still rippling her hair as her determined form fights the breeze, looking like the queen of the world for the way she stands straight and strong, superhero of the meadow. 

“And to kick your ass for not doing the things you need to do to get here.”

I protest. 

“I don’t get it. I quit dating. I’ve been knocking things off my bucket list right and left. I bought my dream car. I do all kinds of cool shit by myself. It’s not my fault I still wound up in the same place.”

“MONICA! Yes, lots of people use new experiences in an attempt to fix their lives. Jumping out of airplanes, ultra-marathons, cool trips. Nice experiences, but that’s not what’s going to create me.”

I’m getting annoyed with myself. 

“I TRIED EVERYTHING”

“NO. You didn’t.”

“Okay, fine. What didn’t I try?”

“You are doing, not being.”

Please. Bullshit philosophical statement if I’ve ever heard one. Pretty sure I’ve read that statement verbatim in one too many pamphlets. 

“excuse me?”

“All you’re doing is fun activities and buying some cool shit you didn’t have before. But who are you? What gets you out of bed each day? What are you actually creating with your life?”

I’m still stumped. And irritated. 

‘You know what I’m going to ask.”

“‘What do you want?’” I ask, in an irritating singsongy neener-neener voice intended to irritate myself back. 

She fails to get annoyed, which I find annoying. 

“First of all, you’re still making decisions based on what others think. Let’s take something super basic. Your haircolor. What is your favorite?”

quietly… she knows my damn answer already “…blonde…”

“And yet everyone else likes it dark, so you haven’t even tried it.”

“Well that’s pretty minor…”

“The little things ARE the big things, Monica. you know this already! What happens in the small happens in the large. Why do you still care what anyone thinks about your decisions regarding your life?”

“AND, what are you doing with this life? Are you writing the book you wanted to write? How’s your business going? Are you doing all the music you want to do? Do you look how you want to look? Are you creating the life you wanted?”

“Staaaaahhhhp!” I complain, sulking at this rather pushy Monica. Never mind about the goddess, she’s kind of a bitch. 

“You are missing the point. The reason you keep being hauled away is because you have not yet made your own construct so big that you’re immobile, your direction so strong that it can’t be moved. You need to become so solid in who you are and what your direction is that no one can convince you to take a different path. You see that gravel path?”

I look back once again, but it’s gone! It’s all gone. No gravel path, no wheelbarrow. I panic…

“W-where’s the path?”

“YOU DON’T NEED A FUCKING PATH!”

“W-well, how do I know where to-”

“YOU MAKE THE PATH! You are the pathmaker! You decide! But you can’t just do random fun things, you need to create a path for yourself. YOU get to decide who you want to be, YOU decide where you go, YOU become who you want to be! And once you decide, you have to create yourself so concrete that you barrel in the direction you have determined, unstoppable.”

And suddenly I get it. I look at Monica, my eyes blurring with the salt of tears, and she says softly “I am who you are going to become.”

I sense a shift, and I feel a path under my feet. I am standing upon a path of glittering gems, sparkling wildly in the afternoon sun, which is now present. (Hey, my vision, my choice. Think it’s cheesy? Create your own damn vision. Kind of the point, really.)

“I will see you again, sooner than you think.”

She steps toward me and hugs me, and then melds into me until she is gone inside of me, because she IS me, the possible me, the me I am going to create. 

And now I see something in the distance, an incredible skyline that would put the Emerald City to shame. It shimmers in the distance, and I fully understand now, this is the life I am about to create. 

I take off down the path, running for my life. 

The creaking is definitely getting slower. 

creakcreakcreak creak creaaaaaak…

The wheelbarrow trundles to a stop. At least I think it’s stopped, an unsettling sensation after having traveled so long. What’s wrong? Why did it stop? And where? 

I unfold my crumpled form and survey my arms and legs. Flakes of rust and dirt dot my limbs, a bizarre rash, an allergy to this ancient barrow I’ve been inhabiting far too long. My body is sore, hair limp and knotted. I hazard a peek over the rim. A meadow, not sunny, not shady. Just a neutral meadow. All I hear is moving air, a stiff wind carries dead leaves that came from somewhere. I feel nothing. I feel dead. Am I dead? Only the complaint from my limbs crammed into this inappropriate vehicle and the constant ache in my heart remind me I’m still quite alive. 

I sit up and look around. Where the hell am I? What is this? There doesn’t seem to be anything except a path, a grey ribbon leading into the horizon. When I was moving, the stony crunch sounded oddly satisfying, at rest it’s too quiet. I sit in the rusty wheelbarrow and wait, abandoned. I look forward and peer into the distance, squinting in a vain attempt to see farther, but the gravel path just winds into the horizon, nothing to see here, move along, ma’am. 

I look behind, but as I strain my eyes to see farther, I fail miserably in doing so, noting the same dead end at the horizon, the same lack of any activity, the lack of anything at all, save the eternal grey strip of path winding forever. There’s nothing at the end of this Mobius path, in my heart I know there is no destination at the end of this road. 

I have been left in this field. I sit puzzling, not quite sure what to do, wondering whether I am in a good or bad situation. I contemplate. I debate. I have tried so many things, yet still I keep winding up hauled off in this damn rusty wheelbarrow. An awful vehicle, you go nowhere unless someone comes along and pushes it, and then they take you where they want to go, your destination forsaken to the control of the driver. It really is a dreadful method of – WHAT IS THAT?!

I can just make out a shimmer in the distance, a speck on the horizon. Not on the path, but approaching from the side, from within the field.

I am scared, but intrigued. Friend or foe? Someone coming to push me on this endless road? Thieves? MURDERERS??! 

The form is approaching, and has a sort of iridescence, a twinkling, a glow. 

Okay, I’m definitely dead. 

It’s now an inch on the horizon, which means nothing without context… okay, more like a half inch if you pinch your finger and thumb together at arm’s length. I’m starting to panic, anxiety welling up in my stomach, thoughts of what the hell is going on here turning it in flips of the unknown. 

The form is still approaching, and my muscles tense, ready to run. 

But as the form comes closer, I become perplexed. There is something familiar here, as I start to see the gait, the quick steps. 

It’s a woman.

I can definitely see now, and she’s approaching quite rapidly. Her gait is strong, yet relaxed. 

Squared shoulders, back straight and tall, head high. Brave, intense, sharp gaze, long waves whipping in the wind. And she has this iridescent glow (no, not a vampire. Shut up, Stephanie Meyer.), a sort of other-worldliness. Her entire demeanor sets me at ease, my panic is calmed. I’m dead, this has to be a goddess of some sort. Or a princess, or wizard lady… or… or…

OH My God. 

I know exactly who it is. 

My own face gazes at me with compassion, and a broad. knowing, triumphant smile crinkles the corners of her eyes. 

“Get up, Monica. You’re done with this.”