Posts tagged with self acceptance

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January 6, 2010

My Resolution This Year Is 1440 X 1024 Pixels. And Also, To Write! Write! Write! (Which Kind Of Sounds Like The Start To A Word Nerd Anthem)


(Photo credit: jppi@morguefile)

“Why did you start blogging again?” she asks.

I am tempted to answer that I’m obviously a masochist. “I enjoy the time suck,” I imagine saying, all cavalier-like. “Really, it’s fun to spend my free hours agonizing over word choice, stressing over subjects and predicates.” Imaginary me continues to explain that, You know the dream where you’re in a public place and everyone is gawking cause all you’re wearing—save for the birthday suit Mom gave you when you were born—is a pair of hideous, holey, girdle-style underpants? Well, I intone, arms thrown up on either side of my head in a flesh-colored, ligamental field goal, blogging makes that dream a reality!

“Just press PUBLISH,” I say, “and your life’s stories—the shameful stuff about your adulterous ex, the bloodlust for babies, the troublesome bout with writer’s block that’s flavored with a homoerotic tinge—it’s all laid bare, metaphorical stretch marks and all, for the Internet to judge. And the Internet,” I say, lips pulled back to expose an oily reptilian smile, “will judge … either by clapping with comments when the content is deemed funny or touching, or by reacting—a stifling winter blast blowing through the strawberry fields of assumed literary awesomeness—with cold, ego-crushing indifference.”

I want to say these things, but instead I answer my inquisitive friend in the way I do with all impossible questions. And that is: by tilting my head, shrugging my shoulders, raising an eyebrow, and crinkling my nose; so many small movements just to say one simple thing, which is, honestly, I have no earthly idea.

I’m not sure why 2009 marked my return blogging, except one Wednesday last September I woke up—my organic cotton pintuck comforter stretched tight around my shoulders—with a story inside me. That morning, sitting bolt upright in bed, I exclaimed (of the creative monster stirring in my bones), It’s alive! This outburst startled the slumbering cat curled up in a fluffy gray pouf on my pillow. And when the felicitous story willed itself from my rapidly firing brain onto a page in my pristine white macbook, I too was startled!

And then I did a funny thing. I continued to write.

And suddenly it’s like I have flowers popping up in my footsteps. I am ablaze, abloom. I am positively effervescent!

But I am also: afraid, aghast, ripe for a tizzy.

Confession time. This blog is not my literary endgame. It is my dream to write a novel, but I’ve never pursued it because I am a cowardly lion. The fear of rejection, the opportunity for failure, these things—because so much of my self worth is tied up in what I, as a creative person, produce—petrify me, like I’m a piece of ancient wood.

And so, in 2010 I’m going to actively work on my craft.

*Gulp*

I am resolved to read great writing. I was gifted a subscription to, and am going to study cover-to-cover, The Atlantic Monthly, whose contributors have included American writer royalty; storytellers like Mark Twain, Henry James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Walt Whitman, Martin Luther King Jr., Helen Keller, and Garrison Keillor.

I was also given Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft. The cover says it’s “part memoir, part master class by one of the best selling authors of all time … a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have.” Sounds tasty.

I am resolved to seek critique in a classroom setting. Though I have studied grant writing, business writing, science writing, and essay composition, I have never taken a creative writing course. That changes this year. Starting January 27, I will participate in a 10-week personal essay workshop at Inprint!, Houston’s leading literary arts organization. Registration is limited to 12 people, and rumor is that each student will have a dedicated hour where their work is picked apart by classmates—like the tender flesh of a succulent roast chicken stripped clean from its carcass—to be critiqued for what was done well and what needs revision. I won’t lie. I don’t “do” rejection. This constructive criticism thing terrifies me.

I am resolved to persevere. A few weeks back I read a post that resonated with my struggle as an artist. The message was that for some, art comes easy. There are people who are born burbling poetry, who can write music before they know how to read, who can draw amazing landscapes without any lessons. These people exist, but they are freakishly rare. “Why then is there so much amazing art in the world?” the author posed.

The answer? Perseverance.

I am not a fast writer. I am slow. Like slow as molasses. Like slow as a stubborn bottle of ketchup.

Sometimes it takes hours to spit out a paragraph, so when I tell you that I’m committed to delivering a new post every week of 2010, that’s a big deal.

52 posts this year, yo.  (Plus an additional 100 or so at Yummery). I hope you’re stoked … cause I’m kind of freaking out.

—-

… AND because this has now officially become the LONGEST POST IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, I’m resolving to end this thing. Like right now. (You’re welcome.)

Oh and one more thing …

HAPPY NEW YEAR LOVELIES! May 2010 bring you all the love, hope, peace and prosperity your little hearts can handle, for better or worse, in sickness and health, forever and ever, amen.


(Photo credit: Nicmcphee@flickr.com)

16 comments

December 2, 2009

30

Hanni 5 birthday

See the girl in that picture? That’s me. I’m celebrating a day that’s a lot like today, except it was 25 years ago. I was 5. I had fewer teeth, bigger dimples, and a lot less candles on my cake. My favorite TV show was the Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour, followed closely by Knight Rider and the Dukes of Hazzard (check out my sweatshirt). I had just learned to tie the shoelaces on my clunky, kid-sized Caribou boots, and was very proud that my bed—now that I was a “Big Girl”—was stripped of its protective, plastic sheets.

The day I turned 5, I remember my smile—like a watermelon in winter—was wide. At my party, I was Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt; instead of red grapes, I was served a Duncan Hines chocolate cake coated with canned frosting so sweet, it made my mouth ache. Before we cut the cake, Mom asked that I make a wish on its flaming crown. I filled my little lungs and puffed my cheeks. I blew for all I was worth, dousing the candles with a not-so-mighty wind and spray of spittle.

“What did you wish for?” Dad asked.

“World peace!” I cheerfully replied, mimicking something I’d heard Luke Duke say on TV.

My father snickered, and within moments the entire table was laughing at my precocious distraction. As I had hoped, no one was any wiser about my REAL wish. My secret wish, my true heart’s desire was that every day could be a birthday … that every day could be filled with friends, fun, and cake from mix … that every moment of my life would be so charmed. And also, I wished for a pony, even though I was scared of their stumpy legs and overly-large eyeballs.

…

Flash forward to today and suddenly: I am 30 years old.

I have gone to sleep and woken up 10,958 times. Since my birth, ticking clocks have counted down 15 million minutes. And if my life’s breaths were dollars, I’d have more than a quarter billion.

I have—as my 5-year-old self wished—lead a favored and felicitous life. I have many friends, an amazing family, money in the bank, and business cards with my senior title emblazoned across the front. I have hiked Mount Fuji, biked the Texas hill country, and survived nights spent at sleazy, Canadian hostels where the aged windows busted and shattered when wedged shut. I have witnessed great beauty in blizzards of cherry blossoms and in raindrops that transform when white-sleeved snow gowns are donned. In the faces of my cherubic nieces and nephews I have seen God, and because of them, I know He is gracious.

Save for my marriage to a troubled man who told so many lies—to myself and to his mistress—he lost track of all truth, I have had few sorrows. And even in sadness, there were always lessons learned. Since my divorce, I have pledged to love deliberately those who deserve it. And to those who do not? I now know to distrust a heart that’s so bowed it can’t break.

For my next 30 years, I’m wishing for babies, a house, a second shot at being a bride.

And if all those things come true, then the next time I do this assessment—when I’m 60 and smile lined—the only thing left to wish for will be the pleasure of a posture bra and sensible shoes. And maybe a pony, assuming I’m over the eyeball thing.

Happy birthday to me, xoxoh

7 comments

November 23, 2009

On Gratitude

It is the fifth time in so many days. I pull my white, scoop-back chair up to the chocolate Parsons table where I do my writing. I flip open my laptop, flex my fingers and place them on the keyboard; I’m ready to impart something profound to the blank page, but when the cursor blinks, I freeze and then the something that happens is: nothing.

I am stuck.

A creative-type Brer Rabbit, my words are suddenly entrapped in a thick tar of psychological block and self doubt. No matter how desperately I will it, the stories won’t write. And the thorny thicket of free and easy creativity—that laughing place which holds my escape—it’s as elusive and mystifying as the literary dots I can’t connect.

Frustrated for the 50,000th time, I force myself to sit and punch keys for three hours. My perseverance is rewarded with a page full of blank and a headache the size of Texas. Resigned to artistic failure, I flutter my hands to my temples in a white flag of surrender. A sob chokes my throat. I bite my lip. Pull my hair. The head theater starts, and in the coming days of confounding self-flagellation, I do all but rent my clothes.

—–
I plop my items on the conveyor: bulk spices, organic apples, hemp milk, free-range eggs. Though I am physically present at the Whole Foods on Woodway and Voss, my mind is somewhere else entirely. I am sitting on a white, scoop-back chair. I am telling myself I suck. I am saying things like I will never be able to write anything worthwhile again. I’m like, you’d better get used to this Hänni; this block you have is permanent now, like an ugly scar, like a contract you can’t break. And I imagine the disappointment, in myself and for others, when my triumphant return to blogging proves to be a fluke … proves that all the frenetic posting pre–writers block was just a flare up before the inevitable fizzle. I blanche.

“Ma’am, are you OK?” the cashier—all dreadlocks and tattoos—inquires.

Suddenly I’m awakened from my angsty, self-involved stupor. I tell him I’m fine. But the way I say it, with my voice rising at the end of the sentence, it sounds like a question and not a statement of fact. Dude lifts his eyebrows, unconvinced.

“Your total is $42.67,” he intones. “Oh, and by the way, whatever it is, it will all work out.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I say, lying through my teeth.
—–
I don’t want to jinx it, but I think my writer’s block is on the wane. And just how did I banish that importunate beast? By brandishing my shiny sword of gratitude.

For all the nights it’s kept me awake—the molasses of my creative malcontent stewing even as I lay my head to sleep—writer’s block has thrown into sharp relief all the things that ARE working in my life.

I am healthy. I am happy. I am loved.

And also, I am gainfully employed as a writer. Even when I can’t string two sentences together for this blog, in my professional life the words are steadfast. Sure it’s unsexy drafting technical content for enterprise software solutions, but my fulltime job guarantees a tidy, bi-weekly paycheck … writer’s block or no.

In this season of thanksgiving, I am appreciative. For writer’s block, its lessons learned, and its quick departure thereafter, I am eternally grateful. Thanks.

yellow thank you
(photo credit: nateOne@flickr)

8 comments

November 2, 2009

Love Stories

heartbike
“Do you think you’ll remarry, Hänni?”

“Yes, I think I so,” I said in answer to my inquisitive friend. “If there really is such a thing as ‘The One,’ Andrew is it. Someone once convinced me I was nothing, made me think I was a hard rock. But really? I’m a gem. Andrew knows this about me, that I’m a treasure, and he treats me as such.”

“That’s good,” my friend replied. “And also, I agree. You two are kismet. I can see it in your actions, your laugh, the way you write—you are changed, and I mean that in the best possible way.”

And then together we marveled at the miracle of only having had to kiss very few frogs before I found my handsome prince.

—–
Hot and sloppy, my first kiss was with Ian. I was 16 when I met the boy I’d spend the next three years crawling into bed with … and promptly falling asleep alongside. I’m not sure why we fought our biology, how we resisted the ever-present urge to explore each other fully inside and out, but we never made it past third base. For us, sex stopped at fumbled bra straps and belt buckles. To be sure, ours was not a great love, but it was a first love.

The last day I had with Ian, we drove through California in a stolen car. His father would be angry when he returned the Lincoln, a little worse for wear and with 1000 miles—the driving distance from Seattle to San Francisco—added to the odometer. But we didn’t care. We were young and restless and ripe for adventure. But we were also, despite ourselves, and with college looming in the near future, growing up.

“I think you should go away with me to Ottawa for university,” Ian said, carefully maneuvering through the redwoods that were eons more ancient than he and I were. “I know you’re set on Virginia, but it’s so far way, and it would be difficult for us to stay together … and uh … um …”

There was something desperate in his voice. I felt my guts buckle, and not because the Lincoln trembled as we curved through the forest.

That fall Ian went to Ottawa. I went to Virginia. Within the year we had both lost our virginity, just not to each other.

—–
I was 22, the year we laughed all the way to our wintery retreat about the presents our friends had made for each other. Newly engaged and ready to nest, for Christmas Aaron had gifted his bride-to-be a vanity. Enola, for her groom, had crocheted a quilt. How sappy! we bellowed. Let’s never get married! I roared.

In retrospect, it would’ve been wise to heed my advice, at least as it applied to the boy sitting next to me.

Blake had something unspeakable inside of him, part of me already knew. The too many times I’d cried myself to sleep, it was merely a specter of things to come. Nonetheless, within a few hours I would become Blake’s fiancé; within the year, his bride; before our second anniversary, his betrayed. As I waded through the emotional wreckage of his eventual affair and our ill-fated pairing, I couldn’t help but think our “love” as we had come to understand it—as a test in control and complacency—should’ve met it’s demise years before its dissolution became a legal matter.

—–
29 now, almost 30, in my life’s manuscript, the chapters for first love and worst love have already been written. In two days Andrew and I will celebrate our second year together. We will dine by candlelight. I will wear a pretty dress; he, his shiny shoes. I’m cautiously optimistic. This very new, very precious love? It kind of feels like forever.

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October 8, 2009

A Letter To My 16-Year-Old Self, From Myself Today

heart letter

Dear sweet, 16-year-old Hänni,

I want you to know, your worries are warranted. You know those suspicions you have—the ones that make you so afraid? The ones that keep you up at night, bartering with a nebulous God, your allegiance for his sweet solace? “Dear Lord,” you pray, “If you give me friends, I’ll be a good Christian, I swear.” And you think you could keep that vow, if only God would answer you in the way you want. That is, if God waved his magic wand and gifted you the perfect partner-in-teenage-crime—someone to trade snack packs with and pass notes to in Mrs. Lawton’s nerdy Honors English class—it would mean you aren’t what you think you are.

It would mean you are just like everybody else you grew up with in that tiny, strip-mall of a town.

It would mean you are not, as you have felt for some time now,
D I F F E R E N T.

That is, all the many small cruelties inflicted by others your age weren’t really acts of rejection, but rather misunderstandings. The jocks who, unprovoked, poured a 2 liter of Pepsi down your neck? Accident. The popular boy who screamed through the halls that you were a bitch because you wouldn’t give him your lunch? Misheard. The girl with the mullet who was your only friend until she decided not to be, she perceived you as so uncool? Case of crossed wires.

Yes, if you had friends, it would mean you belong. Because being different means a lifetime of loneliness in Wasilla, Alaska, that frozen place where you were raised. At least you think that now that you’re 16.

But guess what Hänni? You *are* different. And it’ll take an exchange student interview and a transcontinental flight halfway across the globe to realize it, but you will be changed. And you will feel better.

Because in Japan, that strange foreign country where sushi is a staple, you will meet incredible people who are wayward and feisty, just like you. These square pegs—kids from Vermont, Wisconsin, the Netherlands, and Canada—they will become your best friends … maybe the best friends you’ll ever have.

And you’ll miss them so much. Oh my God, you’ll miss them. The day you stand on a platform, waving goodbye to your best friends, fellow teenage expatriates, Bliss, Justin, Michiel, Anne, and Ian, that will be the first saddest day of your life. Many years later you’ll mention this on a thing called a blog. You’ll do this in hopes that your 16-year-old friends will find you and let you know they are well. You want them to know that you are well too.

Because in the interim between 16 and 29 you will have lots of good times, as you embrace your quirkiness and surround yourself with others who do likewise … but there will be some very hard times as well. The second saddest day of your life—the day you say goodbye to the friend who pledged to love you faithfully til-death-did-you-part, but who bedded another while your heart was still beating, as yet unbroken—that will hurt. But you will survive. You see, Hänni, the most important thing you need to do is learn to love yourself. Once you’ve done that, everything else will fall into place. I promise.

Oh, and one other thing: you should also go ahead and dye your hair purple—If someone doesn’t accept you into their life or program because you have punky-colored locks, then you’re better off without them. Trust me. You will be a published writer, just like you’ve always wanted, and you’ll do it on your own terms.

–keep writing
–keep rocking
–keep wearing rainbow-colored socks

And lastly, dear 16-year-old Hänni, you need stop worrying about growing up. Mostly because, you never will.

xoxoH

9 comments

October 1, 2009

On Becoming What I Never Wanted To Be

The other day an old friend called, asked how I was doing.

“Married? Kids?” Dan inquired.

“Divorced. Cats.” I replied.

You know, growing up I believed I could be anything. One crisp and crunchy fall, fascinated by the change of seasons, I decided I’d become a scientist. My life’s work would be to explain why birch leaves turn from green to yellow, (the answer of course being that they were magic). At times I also fancied becoming a librarian, a novelist, and a grocery store clerk—the latter of which inexplicably intrigues me to this day.

When I was 15, I decided I’d become a World Traveler. I applied for, and was accepted into the Rotary Youth Exchange, a highly competitive program that thrusts goody-two-shoes like me into the far reaches of the earth. In my case, that meant Japan. Konnichiwa.

When I was 19 I worked the halls of the United States Senate as an intern for the Alaskan Senator, Frank Murkowski, and shortly thereafter I became the first graduate of Wasilla High School to attend a small college in Blacksburg, Va. called Virginia Tech.

I always believed I could be whatever I wanted because my parents never let me know any better. Not once did they place limitations on me … except for that time I declared I was going to be a nun. Impossible! they said. Mostly because we weren’t Catholic.

One thing I never wanted to be was divorced. Truth be told—though he forced my hand, refused to end the affair even after I said I could forgive, refused to break it off even after I caught him half-dressed in a hotel with Her, and still could forgive—I don’t think Blake ever did either. At our dissolution hearing he gifted me a Tiffany bracelet, the one I’d begged for every Christmas the seven years we’d been together. I guess prior to our divorce, I wasn’t a worthy recipient, he respected me so little. In that sad courthouse setting, the silver chain with its heart-shaped charm sparkled. It was amazing, the bracelet’s splendor juxtaposed amongst the heartbreak rubble of room full of people who became—at a judge’s sentencing—something they never really wanted to be.

Tiffany2

So here I am today, divorced with cats. And you know what? I’m loving what is. My days of caring for an ungrateful and disinterested spouse over, I wouldn’t change a thing. Truly.

Plus now that I’m single, it’ll be way easier to join a convent. I’ve just got to work on that conversion.

20 comments

July 29, 2008

Butterfly Queen

In another life I was married. And in that life, late one night, I received a phone call. “Hello,” said the woman’s voice, “I’m calling to tell you your husband is my boyfriend. All those times he said he was working out of town, he was with me. I was with him on Halloween and then on New Years. Thanksgiving he spent with my family. We were together on your birthday. And I was with him last night when you called. I just thought you should know.”

—-

Grief.

I plunged my head underwater. The tears kept falling even though I was facedown in the tepid tub. My only wish was not for strength or solace-for things that would make me well-but that the water streaming down my face would fill my lungs instead.

—-

Hope.

“I went a whole day without crying,” I told Susan, my therapist. “This marks a shift. I’ve been noticing a lot lately that I’m not who I used to be. I don’t blog any more-I don’t even think to do it. I spend more time praying than I ever have. I don’t have any favorite TV shows and I never watch movies. I have replaced my sneakers with spike heels and sweatshirts with designer denim. My circle of friends has gotten very small. Six months ago I was hysterically talking to anyone I could. Most days now I only talk to Mom and I am disappointed when I call and she’s not there.”

Susan, ever the professional, merely nodded a response. Her eyes betrayed her clinical demeanor though–I saw a flash of happy in them.

—-

Healing.

About a year ago I started to come out of my depression. I had accepted my circumstances-that my marriage was over and I was truly alone for the first time in my adult life-and I embraced it. In a journal entry I wrote that I was beginning to think that I’d reached the light at the end of the tunnel. For so long I’d prayed that God would let me feel good again, that I’d get out of the black and back into happiness. I cried, I wrote, because I’d finally gotten there.

In another life I was married. And in that life, late one night, I received a phone call. And for that call-for the awful catalyst that transformed me from a dull, complacent pupa resigned to the false security of a wedding band and suburban dwelling, into a beautiful butterfly queen, determined to walk by my own light, living and loving deliberately-I am eternally grateful.

To borrow from John Mayer, I’m in repair. I’m not together but I’m getting there.

Butterfly Queen