Nuts

The assignment was the write about nuts.  Finally, a topic I’m fluent in.  Until I finish the paragraph…nuts, cashews, almonds, peanuts…

Nuts are my people.  They are my roommates in treatment centers and my co-conspirators in psych wards.  They are the reality speakers blinded by truth that join me in alternate worlds, none of us knowing how to slip back into the life we abandoned long ago.  Nuts are my people; the alternative clique donned in depression, anxiety, ocd, bi-polar disorder, borderline personalities, addicts, and eating disorders.  We carry cards of identification marked by psychotropic drugs and bonus points for seasoned veterans who have done stints at multiple sites.  There is a hierarchy among the sick with the incurable reigning as Kings and specialness determined by number of diagnosis. I can spot my people in a crowd, set aside by the disease of normalcy and self-sharing that induces listeners to scan for an acceptable escape excuse. 

We laugh at the stories of prom and all-nighters, silently adding our own escapades: ‘it was hilarious. When I was 16 and living in a locked psych ward while in an eating disorder program, Sarah and Megan were my best friends.  And we would play bunko every afternoon and paired completed crossword puzzles with hidden lunch scraps in the couch cushions.’  Snapshot: summer afternoon in Scottsdale Behavioral Health inpatient unit.  Four adolescent anorexics eating lunch outside with our warden/nurse.  Sarah, needing to gain weight to earn parole, next to Megan, whose only goal remained disappearing, gulped down her fish entrée while I watered the ficus tree with chocolate ensure.  Oh, we had some fun that summer.’

 I can do cocktail parties, holding my own in the vortex of weather small talk and extroverted talent. I can mingle while smiling pretty, but I hate it. I hate the awkwardness of moving on to someone new because I simply can’t handle talking about the weather any longer with my current conversationalist, half listening as I scroll thru acceptable excuses to move away, seeing as how ‘I’m bored with you now’ not so much making the list.  I hate the inevitable high school flash backs of lingering on the clique’s edge, emphatically not cool enough. Abnormal in a sea of my peers, my ears prick up with the hint of a fellow nut.  I catch the stammering explanation of late graduations or the awkward pauses when questions skirt perceived shame.  I sidle up; confident I have enough craziness to spread around, relieving the pressure off a more private compatriot. 

We’re all around, having swerved off the ‘Good Child’ track, leaving muddy tracks behind our trails of darkness.  We’re there in the midst of turmoil sure that a coat of concealer will magically transform despair.  It’s the lucky ones that show up after the rain has dried.  We come with tales of new lands and fresh eyes, comic adventures and epic bruises. Jealousy still creeps into my purse at these cocktail parties, wishing I had managed to stay on the ‘normal’ track.  I long for the Ordinary in these moments, and stuff my wounds in back pockets.  But there’s also the air of superiority among my crowd, tilting our chins down at the masses who haven’t been tested yet, haven’t had to sift through the meaning of life and claw their way out of cement holes.  We know trouble, and us lucky ones learn to weave crazy as entertainment, using scars as inspiration. 

These are my people, my nutty, crazy posse. If you want to chat about the weather or the latest Oscar nominees, I’ll stand there for a minute. Then you’ll see me scanning the room, searching for fellow nuts because as much as I might want to fit into the Normal mold, frankly I’m just bored…

Grown Up...ish

Teenagers: An 11 year old’s list

1.  Bedrooms resembling the aftermath of a tornado

2.  Screaming back retorts at sweet well-intentioned mothers

3. Becoming boy-crazy, meaning shallow, stupid and annoying

4. Caked in make-up, transforming adorable little girls into objects of ‘she used to be so little and lovable'

5. Having a phone implanted permanently, in the pre-cell phone era, with topics ranging from boys, make-up, clothing, stupid parents, and boys

6. #1 destination: the Mall

7. Shirking all parental affection, wounding loving mothers and fathers callously

8.  Morphing into an angry, prickly, crabby, unlovable almost grown-up necessitating survival from all surrounding loved ones

Death was preferable.  I caught the furtive glances at my parents as I celebrated my 13^th birthday, and listened closely to the messages behind the jokes of terrorizing adolescents.  Obviously, teenagers were nightmares of worry-causing trouble, high-pitched giggling beneath the eye shadow and shopping passion.  Teenage girls were petty and shallow, argumentative and boy-crazy. They hated their mothers and rebelled against their fathers.  They slammed doors while getting drunk, shedding sweet lovability in hallways.  They were dreaded beings that had to be survived and I wasn’t going to become one. I lurked in corners of adult conversation, jotting down ‘What not to be’, certain that with the right knowledge I could prevent the teenage stench and avoid being the object of parental weary sighs and eye-rolling frustration. 

Plus teenagers were just one hop away from becoming a grown up. 

A fate marked by mind-numbing routine, 9-5 jaunts serving solely to pay for the car to drive you home, the bed to crash upon, and the coffee to jolt you awake, rinse and repeat.  I was missing the appeal.  I couldn’t understand how they did it, these commuters hurriedly applying mascara at the red lights, the permanent brow furrows my mom sported while juggling hot dinners, Hebrew school pick ups, spotless floors and volunteering.  How did my dad wake to his 6 am buzzer, slip on his white lab coat and not strangle the masses with strep throat, diabetes, high blood pressure or loneliness that he tangoed with in rushed 10 minute consults?  Was I the only one seeing the futility in Grown Up land?  Was I missing the secret, the hidden purpose making it all worthwhile?  I studied my accessible adults: aunts and grandfathers, parents and teachers, sure there must be a redeeming prize hidden within the soft eye wrinkles.  Nothing. 

So I spent the next 15 years grasping at childhood straws, shrinking ounce by ounce in a thin attempt to maintain my kid status.  I was sure I wasn’t missing a thing, living my small life in my imaginative never-never land, definitely not a little girl but not even close to a grown-up.  I waited for my instruction manual, searching for Adult 101 in my course listings.  As friends got married and settled into independent lives, I watched with wonder, secretly jealous as I scoffed with disapproval over their Grown Up crowns.

What was happening? We were the kids, meant to be packing for summer camp and writing book reports, backseat residents and the receivers of bedtime stories. They were the grown-ups back then, high heeled in responsibility, absolute possessors of universal truths and magic kisses to make it all better.  They were adults, strong and confident, wise and fearless.   Titles of ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ superseding lingering childhood, they were the final answer, protectors of safety, and owners of life’s guidebook.  I watched her put on her make-up, superfluous to the beauty I saw early in the morning, as I tasted a glimpse of this ‘other life’, cast in moonlight skies and whiffs of Escada perfume. They were old, with kids and houses, jobs and responsibilities.  They had all of it figured it. They must! I needed to believe that these two tall figures knew exactly what they were doing, that they really could deliver the sun, and that soothing words erasing fears were based in reality and not merely placating an anxious daughter.  They were grown-ups; of course they had it all together. 

Except as I look at the pictures from her 30^th birthday party, it sinks in.  I’m 30.  Oh goodness.  Panic seeps thru confidence cracks as I ponder the two options:

1.   She had no more clues about life and parenting and living in her skin than I do now and was just making it up as she goes along, which induces the crumbling of childhood pedestals and notions of ‘when I grow up’ I’ll somehow be granted the missing key.

2. She was much more grown-up than I and really did have a life plan and know how to stand on her own two feet without peering around corners for approval and help. In that case, I am shockingly delayed.  Without the kids, house, or spouse, I have somehow stepped off of the timeline.

‘Grown Up’ has always been inversely defined by my two older cousins.  At 10 and 8 years older, whatever birthday they were celebrating immediately became fair game, un-adult, not old. They can’t old.  We’re still sitting at the kid’s table.  And my parents can’t be old.  They’re no different than they were twenty years ago, so as the years pass, I simply slide the ‘old’ marker up a few years, protecting those I love from having to dip a toe into the danger zone. But I look around and I know, secretly seeing it in my little cousin’s eyes.  I am one of them, crossed over into the grown up camp. I wish I could tell him the secret: I feel just like you, only with a few more stories to tell. We are adults.  We’re all in our twenties, thirties, forties, out living independent-ish lives, getting married, getting divorced, having kids, slipping on our own high heels. 

I’ll consider being Grown-Up-ish.  I’ll mull over the idea that this fault line following childhood might have been imaginary, and that adulthood just may hold some appealing qualities.  I’ll learn that adult doesn’t equal alone, and that interdependence is a perfect compromise between toddler reliance and hermit independence.  I’ll ponder freedoms appreciated and discover Grown Ups get to make their own rules, or at least add multiple amendments.  I’ll debate the merits of responsibility over the stress of bills, and laugh amidst days spent in pj’s. 

I remember my grandmother looking in the mirror as I fastened her necklace, caught off guard as if she couldn’t match her 85-year-old face with the young girl she was somewhere beneath the wrinkles. I’m guessing that’s how it goes.  We all skip and stumble, take risks and laugh through the falls. We do the best we can in the absence of instruction manuals, and we try to fill the oversized shoes left behind.  We banish monsters from the closet and kiss skinned knees, hoping that they won’t notice our own fears.  We are all kids playing as grown-ups, with sweet insecurities poking out as we build our Lego lives and pray that somehow it will end with ‘Happily Ever After’.  

I’ll concede to being an almost Grown Up.