Back From the Dead

It's been a while.

I would love to regale you with tales of new sexual exploits, fortunes won and triumphs achieved ... but the real reason I haven't posted in more than seven months is one long, boring, mundane, never-ending

MID-LIFE CRISIS.

I started out 2011 unemployed, and that was both a blessing and a curse.


But it was nothing compared to rejoining the workforce.

I got a job. A job that I didn't want but took anyway because it was the only bus in sight to hop on. Riding a rickety bus filled with bad smells and vagabonds seemed smarter than joining meaner, smellier vagabonds in a homeless encampment under the 10 freeway.

So I sucked it up and trudged into a dirty, claustrophobic office that reminded me of my dad's hoarder house. To distract myself from the monotony, I started blogging again ...

... and then it hit me. If I scratched out the name of the company I worked for at age 24 and substituted the name of the new company, every career lament I'd written 15 years ago still rang true. As did the constant theme of loneliness and disappointment.

Life at the new job was bad.

Turning 40 was worse.


Forty forced me to face what I didn't want to face:

• Still single. 
• Never married. 
• Never pregnant. 
• Nearly 12 years past my last serious relationship.
• Five-and-a-half years past my last roll in the hay.
• And in a job that seemed precisely as awful as my first real job out of college.

So I did what I always do when life seems hopeless ... munch on Snickers and Cheez-Its.

And look for a new job, since I now change jobs almost as often as I used to change men.

Flash forward another few months.

Lucky break! Another new job.

I built the new New Job up to be the Second Coming of Jesus, like I used to do with every new New Boyfriend.

I used it as an occasion to end life as I knew it. I left my apartment of seven years, said goodbye to 15 years of trendy West L.A. foolishness and moved to staid, laid-back La Canada Flintridge, where people talk about their kids and football instead of their auditions and plastic surgery.

I hoped I'd meet a NASA/Cal-Tech nerd, fall madly in love and live happily ever after.

So far, I haven't.

I've just worked a crazy amount of hours, availed myself too freely of the free M&Ms in the office kitchen and gone through my annual deep, dark, holiday depression.

So I'm back in familiar territory. Working too many hours. Trying not to be a bitch, but not quite succeeding. Popping thigh seams in my yoga pants as the pounds pack back on. And wondering if I'm really going to grow up to be the little old lady (or big, fat, diabetic old lady) who dies alone surrounded by cats.

Fortunately, the other side of this familiar terrain is being good at eventually climbing off the pity pot and putting myself back together:

• Antidepressants. Makes me queasy and flatulent, but better than the alternative.
• Yoga. Hard to do downdog when you're 50 pounds overweight and farting, but I'm showing up anyway (whether the person on the mat next to me likes it or not).
  
• Meditation. Forcing myself to count 20 breaths and think at least one happy thought that doesn't involve premature death.
• Weight Watchers. Eating three times my daily Points allowance, but at least I'm keeping track.
• Creative expression. I've decided it's time to stop moping and write.

I'm resurrecting myself, and that means resurrecting my blog.

Next installment in the High-Score Diaries coming soon...

Two Forgiveness Techniques That Set Me Free

Writing about Conspiracy required heaping tablespoons of forgiveness – both for him and for the young woman I was when I dated him. In fact, I often began each writing session with a forgiveness visualization.

Most often, I would imagine myself facing Conspiracy, with a cord of light running from my solar plexus to his. I'd picture a sharp object cutting the cord that bound us together. Sometimes, it would be a giant pair of scissors. Sometimes, it would be a huge rotating blade, the kind that cuts down trees.

I would imagine my half of the light of rope coiling back into my body, as if it were being spun back in place like a vacuum cleaner's electric cord. The cord represented all of the power, all of the mental and emotional energy, all of the parts of myself that Conspiracy had taken from me, willingly given or not.

Then, I'd imagine his end of the cord flowing back into him. Giving him back all the energy I'd stolen from him through thinking about him, bad-talking him, dwelling on him, fearing him.

I'd imagine both of us with our own energy back, and nothing but space between us.

I'd see white light surrounding me. Healing what was once broken.

And then, I'd picture the light around him. I'd say a prayer for his ability to be happy, loved, successful and understood. And then I'd watch him disappear into the light, into a life that no longer included me in any way.

On other days, I would use a different technique aimed at forgiving the 20-year-old girl who had gotten herself into this mess. I would imagine that I could talk to my younger self. I would tell her that as bleak as her life appeared to be, she absolutely would have a happy ending. That I was living her happy ending right now.

I would explain that the happy ending didn't entail perfect outcomes. That she wouldn't end up with the husband, the kids, the fame or the fortune, but she would end up with peace of mind. I would let her know that she ended up happy with how she turned out.

Doing these processes as part of my pre-writing meditation helped me move the bone-deep gunk out of the places where it was hidden and write from a place of open-heartedness.

If you have a person or situation from the past that still haunts you, maybe one of these techniques can work for you, too.

Conspiracy Diaries Parts 1-25 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)

 Conspiracy Lessons Learned Part 4 of 4 (1 2 3 4)

---

Please "Like" Don't Be a Slut on Facebook or follow on Twitter.

Does my blog scare you?

I've had some interesting conversations lately with people who know me and read my blog. My sister confessed that my blog is grossing her out. She asked – with a trace of hope in her voice – if I was embellishing any of the details for dramatic effect.

A friend and former co-worker told me that she couldn't make it all the way through some of my posts, and that knowing the person I am now, she couldn't believe some of the harsh stuff from my past.

Another friend asked me how in the world I got through this dark time in my life.

The answer I gave this last friend was true, but not complete. I said that things were bad for another 8-10 months, but then I started rebuilding my life, and I slowly began to heal.

What I couldn't quite put into words is that I believe that God carried me through, even at the height of my own self-destruction.

At some very deep level, I've always believed that somehow, someway I would be ok ... that I was ordained to do great things ... that somewhere out there in the magical future, all of my dreams would one day come true. And that future fantasy was enough to sustain me, even when my life was at its bleakest.

But future fantasies are no longer enough.

Over the last year or so, I've started to develop a more mature relationship with God, one that doesn't hang false hope on a someday that's better than my today.

For example, I no longer believe that if I say 10 zillion affirmations and surround myself with rosy visualizations, I'll find myself on a movie set or walking down the aisle in white. Law of Attraction be damned, I just don't believe in The Secret anymore.

Because that magical-thinking mindset is part of what made me so ripe for the pimping 12 years ago. I desperately needed some big event out there to validate me, and I thought that the only way to bring about that big event was to curry favor with an all-powerful man or on-high deity.

Today, I'm in the process of learning that who I am is enough. That God doesn't love me any more or any less when I'm happy vs. depressed, skinny vs. fat, succeeding vs. failing, celibate vs. promiscuous.

Because inside, I'm always the same person.