How To Blow Up Your Life

(and Other Points of Reinvention)

How to Blow Up Your Life (and Other Points of Reinvention):

I remember when my friend, V, asked: “Honey, what do you need, for aliens to come and land on you in order to know it’s time to get out of there?”

We were sitting on a plush, cigar brown leather sofa, nestled within the buzz of a private members club in downtown Manhattan. I was on my second Moscow Mule. None of this (minus the Moscow Mule) represented my life at the time. I lived in LA and was couch surfing between an ex-boyfriends Beverly Hills mansion (I had until he returned from Sweden to find a new place to live) and a BFF’s grey canvas Pottery Barn sleeper in an apartment soon to be evacuated due to black mold.

Everything I owned (not much: my books, my grandmothers white leather chair, my costume jewelry, and a trash bag labeled Black Cocktail Dresses) was housed in scary storage; a painted replica of a 19^th century gold rush town built into a cavern underneath HWY 101.

The reason things were in storage was because I’d had to move out of my own studio apartment, where the echo of nearby gun shots was a monthly refrain, to short-term move in with my parents in San Antonio, Texas because I was scheduled for major surgery and couldn’t afford rent. After recovering, I’d catapulted back to LA despite unemployment, an empty bank account, or a home.

I wasn’t one to give up on my plan, ever, and so, yes V, I did need aliens to land on me before I’d release my white knuckled grip.

Eventual surrender was the scariest occasion of my life (and I’d concussed on a cliff in India, temporarily blinded from a waterfall jump in Hawaii, and leapt off the roof of my parent’s roof into snow covered bushes). But writing this now from the comfort of distance, protected by a decade plus, the lessons I needed are obvious:

1.     Denial’s real. When your life needs to change there’ll be evidence, and the harder you ignore the evidence, the louder and possibly stranger it’ll become.

I saw a healer to focus on a benign, but disruptive tumor. She placed crystals on my chakras, didn’t address the tumor, but said: “Your life will shatter in the next three weeks, and you’ll witness shattering around you.” Sure…That evening when I parked a BFF’s fancy SUV (she’d loaned it to me because my car wasn’t working) the back windshield exploded.

Shaken, I went inside to make dinner. My glass meal bowl broke in my hands. Hmm.

2.     Look away from the mirror and the camera: All those selfies of me smiling? All that time spent primping? I wonder how long that prolonged my disguise. 

 

3.     Your body knows when things aren’t right. To state what’s now common knowledge: you have a cold because you’re emotionally upset, de-hydrated, need more sleep; your stomach grinds because you don’t want to say yes to the event, the date, the sex, the job; and if you ignore these “quieter” messages, they scream and turn into tumors, disease, and mental debilitation.

Your body is a Goddess, it won’t be ignored. I know, I’ve tried.

Anais Nin has always known.

4.     Surrender. It’s not pretty or easy, but it’ll be specific, and it can be beautiful.

Here’s how mine went down:

      In my final days in LA, I lived on another BFF’s futon in her TV room. (There’s so much more to say about the supernatural blessing of BFF’s). I’d spent the previous two months filming a low budget project in India, and I’d self-imposed the end of that month as decision time: I’d either dig back in; round up employment, sign a lease, and keep marching in the direction of actor/producer; or I’d release into the unknown.

      During that ten-day period, a storm settled into my gut.

I was terrified. Night sweats. All the collected years of training, degrees, determination, and the pursuit of what I’d believed was my lifelong calling strewn together like incomplete sentences. My old dream didn’t fit anymore, and I didn’t have a new one. It would be years before I’d understand the depth of my heartbreak.

I’d exhausted the peers and family from whom I sought council, my body and intuition were numb, my prayers requesting guidance felt unanswered.

In the absence of any external evidence, the decision to either stay or go was mine to make with the diminished internal reserves I still possessed.

      On the second night of my stay, a feral cat gave birth to a litter underneath the TV room window that opened just over my futon bed.

My animal loving BFF and her girlfriend caught the newborn kittens and began the process of taming them in hopes of finding them homes. The baby ferals lived in the half bath next to my room. I slept and woke to the call and response of the mama cat calling for her babies from outside my window; and of her babies’ tiny meows from the room next door.

You’ll have a final straw. It may not involve a Cat Opera as the painful, but also beautiful soundtrack to your clarity.

And then you’ll leap.

I gave my mirror to Cat Opera BFF before leaving.

5.     Drive away. The subliminal cat messages became conscious, and I called my mom. She flew from Texas to collect her feral adult child, an action specific to her brand of love.

I picked her up at LAX, my car loaded with all the scary storage possessions, we cut our way through traffic to I-10 E, the downtown buildings crowded as witness to our two-person farewell; then we pushed east, into the desert wilderness, toward San Antonio, a place I’d never lived, where I knew no one other than my parents, and a handful of the congregants at the church where they pastored.   

Your “drive away” will be specific and unique to you.

Just enough room for a white leather chair and trash bag full of cocktail dresses….

6.  Grieve. Grief is a thing, and chances are high you’ll need to grieve your former self, or rather, your idea of your former self and all the hopes, dreams and hard work that went with them as you would the death of a most loved one.

7.     Feel like a loser. You’re not a loser. But come undone and let yourself feel lost, uninspired, inarticulate, small, useless. Again, you’re none of these things, no one is—but it’s ok to feel like that. (I felt like a complete loser for three years, unable to verbalize what I was doing or why, and it sucked, but those years were important and ultimately lifegiving. More on this later.) On the other side of loser lostness, space and possibility are waiting.

*BIG FOOTNOTE HERE: Feeling like a “loser” is not the same as falling into depressive despair. Depressive despair requires essential medical and therapeutic aid. Even more on this in future posts.

8.     Refuse goals. (At the time I didn’t realize this too was a goal.) But sometimes you don’t need a list, or vision board, or box to check; what you need is to allow everything you know and expect of yourself to fall away. Then see what remains.

9.     Rest. You’re likely weary. Get a whatever job that doesn’t require your full capacity or do what you need to do to cover the basics and just let yourself be.

I was privileged to be able to move in with my parents (for three years!) who are exceptional people (another privilege and divine blessing). I did what I needed to do to cover my bills—nothing that held an ounce of passion or the purpose of my previous pursuit—I didn’t focus on building community, I attempted to date, but not really; I slept, watched TV, cried, journaled, read, went to church, did yoga, none of this with any structure, but mainly I fell silent; like biblical, wandering in the desert eating locusts and sobbing to the sky quiet.

It was horrifying.

It was something I’d been unable to do the in the heat of my chosen cities (LA, NYC) in my chosen career, and even despite my glorious friends—all sprinting towards their goals in inspiring and encouraging ways—I’d never been able to achieve this level of petrifying quiet so close to the flame of my desires.

Silence was what I’d needed for years and what I’d been hell bent on ignoring with my “only aliens can stop me” level of resolve and ego, blinded by my attachment to results. None of these are particularly bad qualities, if in proportion, but like anything, if unbalanced? Nightmare.

I had no clue who I was without a vision for my life, I’d worked so hard towards the one I’d had— it’s one of the many messages we’re fed in the United States, right?

And I’m not blaming it on that, the “you can do anything” mantra is cellular level in good ways too; it nurtures us to find our joy and talents, and to contribute to the world in a meaningful way, but if you’re wired like I am, and if you have amazing parents who’ve modeled what it means to “be called by God” through the example of their near perfect, open, loving—still driven, but also selfless—lives and vocation, and you’re not like that, well, some deprogramming is required.

Hence, scary silence, essential.

10.  The time spent wandering is not lost. I promise. It might feel like parts of yourself have disappeared, but what needs to remain is hibernating, giving space for growth. And when the moment is right, all that time you’ve spent lost in the wilderness, aquatints itself with your initial grit and vibrance, and the most magical occurs: YOU.