Serenity Prayer

I talked Joe's ear off yesterday about makeup. The basic female condition of makeup and botox and carting around huge suitcases full of clothes and hair dryers and straighteners and creams and scales. I don't like it. I almost fear it. Maybe I do fear it. 

Nobody Panic podcast did an episode on how to get a wax. I have never managed my pubic hair apart from trying to maneuver a razor to clean up the crease of my upper leg. I feel unsophisticated in this. But I've been satisfied with my sex life so far. I haven't minded wearing little board shorts as swimsuit bottoms. And I've grilled each man who's seen me in the buff, at knife point, as to whether he thinks it's okay. So far I've gotten the all-clear. (Although, I tend to only hook up with men who are nice, possibly in part because I don't want to hear the true answer to this question.) 

Stevie, NP podcast host, says that waxing is painful and expensive and she feels unfeminist for doing it, but if she doesn't get it done she feels dirty. The mental struggle over it has gotten very boring, so she just gets it done. My mental struggles around the point have not been enough to inspire me to action. 

I would like to occasionally give myself a new face. That seems like a big benefit of makeup. I could signal to everyone, Oh, fancy Amy is out tonight. Or edgy Amy. Or #girlboss Amy. Or just Amy who's taken this night seriously. But that shit takes time and makeup and experimentation. People figure out their look over the course of years. 

Getting older brings the spectre of more extreme procedures: botox, fillers, laser treatments, and whatever they think of next. It feels like penance for the crime of aging. You're doing something morally wrong by rounding into your 40s. 

I was telling Joe about my sense, even at a young age, of getting away with something by rejecting the work of trying to be beautiful. It felt, it feels, like breaking the rules. The core of it came to me -- less noble than feminism -- something that you could needle point on a pillow. I like to think of it like the serenity prayer: 

Lord, may I experience love and affection throughout my life without having to do anything too expensive or uninteresting to me. 

Single Gals

This has been on my mind. I went home to Colorado for my friend, Jessica's wedding. I grew up with Jess as part of the camping group, a group of around seven families that would go pop-up camping together every summer. We've gotten to the stage in life when some of the parents in the camping group have started to die. Glen Hoit died last year of pancreatic cancer. His wife, Terry, is one of the matriarchs in the group, maybe the matriarch. She's tough and brassy and, more intimidating than that, she's funny. Glen's death and absence is felt deeply by everyone, but especially by Terry of course.

She had to have someone sell Glen's truck when he died. She re-did the entire inside of her living room. She's an honest person and hasn't hid her feelings of grief. (Although anything she says usually has a laugh or a joke hot on its heels.) 

The camping group, like my parents, doesn't really believe in divorce. Only one couple of the seven got a divorce, and that was late in life, once the kids had all gone to college. I am going through something of a divorce. I went home to Colorado and was around the camping group without my husband for the first time. Terry pulled me aside. She said, 

"Have you noticed that, as a single gal, there are all these men waiting in the wings ready to help you out? They just come out of nowhere, dying to fix your problems." 

The attention is different. I have noticed that. But the thing that stuck out to me about what Terry said was that she put the two of us in the same category. "Single gals." She lost her husband to cancer. I've sort of aimlessly squandered mine. But she put us on the same level. She said, "You're with me." 

7/23/23

I am driving myself from Los Angeles to Fort Collins -- ALONE. It's been fine so far. Whenever I feel fine, though, I have this ironclad optimistic sense that I will feel fine forever, and when I have another one of my spirals it takes me completely by surprise. This morning, in a hotel room in Beaver, Utah, I was reflecting on how it's going to be important for me to keep doing the things I do in crisis mode to make me feel better. Keep getting enough sleep. Keep stretching and exercising. Keep free writing or blogging. Keep working on my projects everyday to keep me grounded and distracted in something outside myself. The work to stay well is kind of a drag, even when it's nice. But yeah... I'm going to go back into the dark places a lot. So I can't just assume I'm free and clear and drop all the things that seem to help. 

The other night, like I talked about in my last post, was a bad spiral. At one point, I was crying and lying in bed with Joe. I had felt a little better, but I could feel my mood crashing again. That feeling of the bottom dropping out invading my chest and the lightheadedness in my um, head. I spasmed and grabbed onto Joe. (The spasming sometimes happens, like an electric shock has run through my body.) I was on my way down. Joe said it was okay. I could hug him as hard as I wanted, that he was going to lay there and I could do whatever I wanted to him. I hugged him tightly. And then I thought about kneeing him in the balls. Would that help, kneeing him in the balls? I had never kneed anybody in the balls before. I asked him about it, "What about kneeing you in the balls?' The thought of it was cheering me up. It made me laugh. It was actively pulling me right out of my downward spiral - the slapstick, the forbidden. I forget what he said about it. I kneed him in the balls.