Some of the most dazzlingly beautiful moments in life are when I’m making amends for past bad behavior. Perhaps because I was in trouble often as a kid (at school, at home, at friends’ homes, in public) I’m more comfortable with being in the wrong than others. Of course, this comfort has made me both terribly antagonistic and great at apologizing. I admitted in an earlier post that I used to be an incorrigible mean girl, treating my classmates horribly from elementary school on up through the grades. In fact, I only stopped the two-faced, shit talking, exclusionary cruelty when a colleague I was trying to make into a friend recoiled in horror when I tried to start a mean-spirited gossip sesh about our coworkers. I was twenty-two and getting much too old for that shit. It was eroding my soul, isolating me with my demons, leaving a trail of hurt feelings and broken friendships in my wake. Bad karma was everywhere, and my life was low-level, grinding misery, even when I permanently dropped the mean girl act. And then, I was unexpectedly presented with a second chance to do the right thing. Continue reading
Second Chances To Do The Right Thing
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I knew I’d blown the interview as soon as I’d said it. My prospective employer asked about my biggest challenges, to which I replied that a therapist once told me my personality at work was like wild horses that needed to be harnessed and brought into line together. I watched as the interviewer blanched and slightly recoiled from me across the table.
Continued from Tuesday…
The way I knew to do relationships was to find the least available, most aloof, detached, disinterested person in the room and fling myself at them, a full-court press. I dazzled them with my attention, affection, caring and consideration. The more they ignored me, the more I wanted them. I would make myself into someone they wanted, prove to them my worthiness. I would do this by showing great interest in their experience, asking about them and listening intently, remembering details. I would do this by showering them with thoughtful little notes and gifts. I would do this by making myself completely available to them, their whims and fancies. I would do this by giving them anything I perceived them as wanting, and asking for nothing in return. The lengths that I would go to…just to prove I was worth loving. It was extremely dysfunctional, it didn’t work, and I got hurt a lot. I scared people off with my relentless pursuing, or attracted the wrong people. I went along this way for nearly the first three decades of my life before I realized I was going to need to make some major interpersonal changes if I was going to have the kind of life I wanted. This was the way I attracted Borderlines to me.
I visited Carlsbad Caverns over an August weekend, and there’s nothing like exploring our National Parks system for instilling a sense of wonder, history and gratitude. Just when I think we’ve destroyed all of nature, that we’ve polluted the entire world, slashed and burned and dumped and drilled the environment into oblivion, I get outside and see we haven’t quite. Not quite yet. Which makes me realize that for my strong identification as an urbanite–Manhattan being my spiritual home, the place I feel most alive and centered–I need to sense the natural world. I crave the astonishing beauty of 
Boredom is my greatest foe, sneaking up and overpowering me, trapping me, pinning me down. Once it has a hold on me, it’s nearly impossible to shake loose, inertia setting in. What do you want to do? I don’t know, what do you want to do? I’m bored. If I don’t get up, get out and do something, I won’t. And if I stay trapped too long, it’s only a matter of time before I slide down that slippery slope to depression, ass first. And once I’m down there, forget it. Anhedonia rules the day, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to get interested again. So I have to stay on guard. 
candid uprising 