The Brilliance of Resilience

I'm no fanatic but I do like, "My Favorite Murder." I have spent many road trips alone in the car listening to the details revealed by two women that know where empathy and humor find their place in relaying these events to a captivated audience. Now that there is almost definitive conviction of The Golden State Killer, Georgia and Karen seem to be working through their feelings about how this person terrorized their towns and their state and what it meant to have that pall cast over portions of their own history. Both of them, because of their proclivity to be interested in topics like these, have deeply-rooted ideas about how these unsolved cases change the landscape and remove the safety from behind every collective corner. When I went to see Georgia and Karen live it was interesting to see the collective gasps of the crowd when gruesome details are revealed - but not many gasps came or will come from me. When I think about how people are surprised at the things that...

I went to visit my college roommate a few weeks ago and we were chatting about all of the things that we don't chat about via text message or email. One of them was my current search of understanding why I cannot really bond with people. That because now that I am not worried about my constant survival, I can think about things that were, "nice-to-haves." Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, she commented. When I googled this pyramid image, I laughed to myself about the realities of my journey. About how long I have been on the road to the mid-point of a triangle whose pinnacle is touted and boasted by every selfie-loving yogi Instagram can hold. I guess, maybe, I have this level of gratitude that I can think about this at all. I feel that there is this sense of having the luxury to be self-reflective and only a truly privileged turd would lament about being able to be so safe to be so utterly self-aware. And yet...here I am (this is the part where I would bow deeply and...

I have been an inpatient in a mental health facility three times in my life. All times I was put there at my own request. These hospitalizations have cost money and they've ultimately cost credibility and respect. When you tell someone that you've been hospitalized or if they find out on their own, two things happen. First, they tell you how brave you are for dealing with your issues head-on and creating a better life for yourself. Second, they shift uncomfortably in place and immediately register you in the "loose cannon," category in their head that is usually reserved for street wanderers and senile elderly relatives. You become and brave liability. You could snap out at any given moment. People that have never spent time in a mental health facility have somehow become the experts of how it works, too. Armchair Psychiatrists will spout the latest thing that they've heard or read - and they'll pander to the idea that mental health disorders are a sig...

The snow has been relentless in the last few weeks and I have spent more time in one place that I have for years. I finally unpacked my bulky vintage cosmetics case that I lived out of for two years and at first it was a momentous occasion that seemed to signify that I was laying roots, but the more I find myself in residential West Virginia without a destination for an afternoon of gallivanting or burning calories in the sun, the more I realize that I must face the realities of my own geography and its imprint on my way of thinking. And how there are many binds here. The idea that I received a DNA test as a gift (as many people have) is interesting to me because it turned into more than just a fun way to find out if the rumors that you are Native American are true (my rumors are not substantiated, by the way. Got Dang Mitochondrial DNA!). Ancestry found that I had a first cousin that I did not know in their database. It didn't seem completely out of the ordinary that the bastard...

I got my parents out of the house on budget-priced Tuesday to see the newest adaptation of, "Murder on the Orient Express." My mother loves Johnny Depp. My father doesn't like to be left behind. I love Hercule Poirot. How I felt about the film is kind of irrelevant to what I was thinking about after it was over. There's a scene in the very beginning (and I really wish that I could find the exact quote) where Branagh's Poirot talks about how maddening it is to instantly see every detail about every situation and know what is right and what is wrong. It is a foreshadow to his eventual walk from the train and from a group of broken people complicit in a murder. Although David Suchet's portrayal of Poirot's moral choice in the Masterpiece Theater version is, in my opinion, so much more devastating - I understand Branagh's rewrite of a more blatant emotional ending for (to be honest) less emotionally sophisticated audience. Poirot's moral conviction...

When I was a pre-teen I watched the 1954 Marlon Brando film, "Desiree," and didn't realize that I did. That happened to me often while watching a Saturday afternoon film. I didn't realize I was watching, "The Godfather," for the first time until I was at least an hour into it and wondered why I couldn't keep my eyes off of the screen.  I was hardly interested in the weirdly overly-hyped but unrealized love affair of Napoleon Bonaparte and Desiree (what a little turd, amirite?), but was taken totally with Michael Rennie's portrayal of Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (known historically as Charles XIV John of Sweden). This film isn't great (the costumes are wonderful to see when you're living on a farm in rural Pennsylvania, though), but I found myself thinking of this character days after the film ended. I think I felt that there was this sense of injustice regarding the lack of acknowledgement of the nature of this character and the...

I went to a meeting a few weeks back where I met a myriad of people that I had only previously worked with via phone. And when they would see me, there was this brief pause at my face, my appearance...until finally one of the said, "You look so young to know so many things." WORD . I get accused of serial youth at least once a week - with estimates pegging me often a decade younger than I am - the teenage girl painting my nails, the co-mixees at the stuffy mixers, the men I flag down in parking lots to take photos of their vintage cars...just whomever, I guess. It has made me fascinated by the idea and perception of youth. I usually give a flippant response about looking young because I do not have children but that cannot be it. Women of all ages have children, right? I want to grill these givers of compliments and understand their motives and reasoning. I want to look a gift horse in the mouth. But then, are they compliments? Or, do I give the air of naivety or immaturi...