Life is flooding in. I am doing an NYU thesis film- for free, but it is on 16 mm – not that I know what that is, but I get the feeling it’s cool. I’m getting experience and I am feeling esteem from taking estimable actions.

I’m auditioning to sing backup with a wacky band based around a prima harpist. I’d better learn to sight read – fast.

I went on a print audition today which, if landed, would pay scads of much-needed dough. I’m not holding my breath. But I heard myself saying to my dad, on the phone, “I’m taking the actions, and letting go of the results.”  Thank you AA.

I have sought a friendship with a woman from my recent acting class. She will be my first new friend in fifteen years. She is not in any 12-step program and actually asked me, “Really??? You can’t even have just one glass of wine?” I had already told her my life story. I have no small talk.  She writes me epic emails reminiscent of the 10-page hand-written letters I used to receive in high school. My new friend obviously agonizes over them and probably edits them for grammar.  She tells me that if she takes a long time with a reply, it is because she wants it to be a thoughtful one.

Really cool stuff.

Tonight at an AA meeting, Jimmy shared about how it used to be. Around 7 am he would begin to panic that he had no more booze to last until the liquor stores opened at 10 am. And sometimes he’d find a pint tucked away and it would be like he had won the lottery. I related so much that I actually laughed out loud. I laughed with sickening identification. I used to cry with relief when I would find 4-5 nips behind a cupboard door which would get me through to 10am.  I don’t have to do that – just for today.

If I did, my friend and my fledgling steps to joy would crack like ice and melt away.

Grateful.

Share and Enjoy

I am scared to write. Like something nasty will come out. Just like when I couldn’t bear to journal. I tried “Morning Pages” once and got uncomfortable. I don’t know why. The same this is happening with blogging. So I am blaring out a few words to jump start the engine.

Share and Enjoy

Most days I’d rather not go home.

My mother is living with us. My beautiful, loving mother. I would cut off an arm for her.

But she is living in our attic. We had plans to make the basement habitable for her, with a separate door and her own coffee pot. But we have no more money. So she is always around, shuffling about, looking like she doesn’t know where to go.

I’m so sad for her. She doesn’t have a friend. What’s worse is that she doesn’t want a friend. She doesn’t have an interest and she doesn’t want to find one. Her passion is her grandchildren. This is a beautiful thing. But when she presents herself as a person unworthy of clothing or interests or a clean space in which to live…it is heartbreaking to watch.

Day in and out, she sits on the couch, folding load after load of laundry, watching whatever show catches her eye. I become resentful. She reminds me of the lousy role model she was for me when I was small. And I have to fight against it. I have to force myself to wear pretty things. The phone weighs a thousand pounds, but I MUST have friends. I must want to walk outside and mingle with humanity. I must have something to talk about besides my children.

She and my husband treat each other with polite hatred. Since she is MY mother, and ever present, and has a million habits which contradict my husband’s irritating requirements – I must run around like a wild cat: cleaning up her messes as she obliviously drops them while walking from one room to the next.

I become enraged easily. I cannot control other people. But my ears are sore with the whispers of my mother in one ear and my husband’s in the other, asking me to intervene with the cleaning of the counter; the feeding times of the child; the gawdy pink dress which my mother bought joyfully, but which my husband loathes.

I have a tenuous relationship with my husband and my mom’s disdain and omnipresence makes it even more difficult for me to show affection for him. This creates a phenomenon which my son describes as an “angry-hate-spiral.”

Things are going to shit. But I have no money to fix anything. I can’t buy my mom a house, I can’t afford to fix the basement. And I will never ever abandon her.

If I were drinking, they would have a common goal.  Since I am sober, and trying to thrive, they are both stuck in a muddy shoeprint.

I just have to take it one step at a time, and shake off the mud.

Share and Enjoy

They were late, so I had a chance to meander in and out of all the Broadway theatres, swinging a metaphorical hammer to the head, and bemoaning my lost years.

We went to Amy’s Bakery and my friend was just as acerbic as ever, but I got to have a few belly laughs. My other lost buddy has married a major Broadway producer, and I wanted to scream, “This is just a mean joke; has EVERYONE made it but me???”

Later a program fellow said, “Well, how fortunate for you that if you’d like to have a go at regaining a chance at a theatre career, you’ve reconnected with influential people.” I don’t buy it yet. I’m still blistering with scalding resentments.

The best I could do was look up out of myself and try to care about their hurts and trials and happiness. It worked at times, like when my scary friend pulled out about 12 pills with his lunch that he must take to stay healthy.

After Scary left for his show, my benign buddy walked me to the subway and we made a playdate for our children. Maybe his wife will take a shine to me.

Or perhaps I can just rejoice that I have some fucking friends again.

Share and Enjoy

Or maybe I just have a crappy image of myself, and he likes me and whatever blasts out of my mouth.

Over the years he developed AIDS, overcame a Meth problem, and works occasionally in a children’s hospital.

This may have softened him. Or hardened him.

What anyone else thinks of me is none of my business. But I want him to like me.

Share and Enjoy

I’ve come up with a plan to extinguish my night eating. I won’t say what I have, because it is shocking in quantity and content. It is a ritual which I have performed for many, many years. When I try to go without, well….. I can’t.

The nightsnack is a pretty hefty haul. It contains a couple of this, a few of these, a chunk of the other, a smattering of a third, and on and on.

I’ve decided to rail against the addict mentality of, “I want to fix the problem NOW, ” and address the issue very slowly, by imperceptibly eliminating one item for 3 weeks and adding a positive behavior. Then eliminating another. And so on.

M’lady told me a story about her son. He had a security blanket 4 miles long, and he would drag it everywhere. It became a huge pain in the arse for M’lady, and a little odd as her son began to grow older. So one day she cut the blankie by a 1/4 and sowed it up nice and tidy. He didn’t know the difference and merrily dragged away. A few weeks later, she lopped off another bit, and again, he was none the wiser. This was repeated a few more times until eventually the blankie was the size of a sample swath of fabric. Her son would stuff it in his pocket, until one day he forgot about it completely.

Ah, nighty…. I hope I shall slash you until you are a mere scrap. Then I will forget about you like a tattered rag.

Share and Enjoy

On the way to an OA meeting yesterday after having visited M’lady, I saw a person lying flat out and still, in the middle of 25th street. I stood there and gawked because a couple of people kept checking his pulse. They would check, nod to each other and look around for the ambulance. Then they would check, look worried, and search for that damned ambulance. Check, nod, search. The ambulance took 15 minutes to get there and the EMT’s AMBLED  and moseyed.

The guy was obviously homeless; he had bags of nothing and ripped up shoes. Perhaps that explained the ambling and the moseying.

Then I went to the meeting and afterward had a Fat Witch Bakery Blondie, cuz sometimes the world sucks. Also they taste good. And sometimes the world doesn’t suck. When I got home, I snuggled my boy and watched the original Batman on the VCR we discovered in a cobwebby eave. And I held his hand and felt his pulse beating strong and steady.

Share and Enjoy

The time has come to register my daughter for kindergarten. This school is the same one in which my boy, J., said to  his principal,”You are a motherfucking droop faced sonofabitch; your office smells like shit, and no one will ever ever like you!”

I side with my boy. He can read a page in 9.1 seconds and tell you every detail. Her school was too stoopid to handle people like him. They told him he was bad. Now he goes to a great place in Manhattan, where every individual is treated with respect and empathy.

Today I have to go see the “Motherfucking droop face sonofabitch.” Until my daughter’s test scores are revealed and other options open, I have no choice.

I will bring a nosegay in case her office still smells like shit.

Share and Enjoy

“I  been in this program 24 years and I got one day back,” says the beaten man, Al.

Says the person next to him, ” I got 23 years sober. I met Al when I was terrified to walk down them long stairs to AA. The guys were headed to the diner after and Al says to me, ‘Ain’t ya comin’ Joey?’ ‘

“I says, ‘I ain’t got a dime, Al’ and Al says to me, ‘Kid, you get whatEVER you want. I’ll take care of ya.’”

After Al shared, Joey says,”Al, I’m here for you buddy. You  know if I can do it, anyone can. You saved my life, pal.”

Al gives Joey a moist-eyed look and mouths “Thank you,” and punches him in the shoulder. Love.

Share and Enjoy

Gross.

This is how I feel about myself. I came out of M’lady, M’therapist. Whenever I cross the threshold of her book-strewn office, she, at 70-something-years-old, whips out her pom-poms and does cheers for me. She had just given me a speech about how I had literally stepped out of the darkness and into the light by singing on that bright stage. After the appointment, I sailed on silver skirts over to Chelsea Market, where I was to meet Francesca.

I waited at the entrance with the cool stone walls and as she walked in, I almost ran. She is so beautiful that it is hard to look at her.

We sat and had tea before we went to an OA meeting together. She was impeccably dressed in very expensive clothing and had just come from an art opening. She sounded serene as she stared across the table at me with her enormous eyes. I have been told that I am a lovely woman, and I feel….as though… that might be true, BUT Fucking Francesca is like, 15 years younger than I am. And I sat there feeling my skin start to sag and my eyes begin to bulge, like the queen in Snow White when she disguises herself as the old hag.

Frannyfoo rolled her lil’ ol’ fancy cigarette as we made for the door. I felt like an idiot. Like I should just run and say, “thank you very much, but I have decided that you are far too fabulous to help me recover. Not to mention that biologically you could be my daughter, so really – what the hell do YOU know?

I called a close OA friend about the situation. She said all the slogans like, “Don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides,” and “Fake it til You Make it.” And then she said, “Besides, Catherine- she is no more beautiful than you. You take my breath away when you walk in the room.”

Third Step Prayer ( I think of Love as a substitute for God):

God, I offer myself to Thee -
to build with me
and to do with me as Thou wilt.
Relieve me of the bondage of self,
that I may better do Thy will.
Take away my difficulties,
that victory over them may bear witness
to those I would help of Thy Power,
Thy Love, and Thy Way of life.
May I do Thy will always!

Who gives a shit about the Fanciness and Faces? And Fran. I’ll call her “Fran” now.

Share and Enjoy