Episode 38: The Work That Cannot Be Done Alone

ME VS. AN ALMOST 30LB TURKEY!! Necesito café. CONVERGENCES!! … So why can I do that with LOVE!?! It’s the end November and NO ONE IS DOING OK. ENLIGHTENMENT! The emotional pain body. A WHOLE LOT OF THE CURE, the band not a cure for anything unfortunately. “Please Don’t Promise Me Forever” The Hallmark Book. & A+ effort scares the bejesus out of me TBH. 

Excerpt 1:

“And you’re back for more of the music that made me. 

Remember in one of the last shows I was like… “And I just know something will happen to restore my faith soon. Blah blah blah.” Yeah. That’s just not happening. And ohhh god do I wish I had better news, something more exciting to say. But alas. Me and the universe seem to be at an impasse again. And I was going to do a fun and sexy episode about my young adult years, and play you a bunch of music that was, FUN. But you know what? To be honest, a lot of those years were also super devastating. Dating people that kept just leaving me, or leaving and coming back and leaving again. It was not great. And that was a very real part of it too. Just me staring at my tumbler (off that’s a throwback, anyone else starting to feel like we’re getting older? Anyone?) and listening to bon iver, over and over again. I mean how do you think I ended up covered in leather and blasting the ramones in the first place. I mean commmonnn. Anyways so, what happens when your life doesn’t turn out like a romcom, and you’re just an adult, going through the motions, staying on the straight and narrow, soberly dealing with one thing after another, working really hard. And well, a lot of my normal flair and pizzaz (god I hate that word, why did I just use it) are nowhere to be found.  And you know, with covid, and you know, not drinking, and well just being me, and maybe also you know doing an entire radio show about my love life every week it isn’t all exactly a great recipe for romance… it is however a great recipe for sitting alone in my room with my dog.  

And everything lately has been unshockingly unromantic. I mean shockingly so. I can’t even get it up for like, creating my own romance, which I’m normally pretty good at, taking myself out to dinner, waking up early and drinking a cup of oolong and writing as the sun comes in the windows sideways. I can’t even manage that. So I worked. What I do when I can’t seem to pull myself together is throw myself into my work. It’s definitely an old pattern, I’ve almost worked myself to death more than once. But it keeps me focused at least on something outside of myself. Easily attainable goals: make the gravy (literally and metaphorically), just keep moving, just keep washing dishes, keep combining flavors, attention to detail, the flowers aren’t quite right, is my hair tied up properly, the left napkin is off by 2 centimeters. And so that’s what I did this week. I made a bunch of money doing what I do best, taking all my skills and using them in one place. Cooking. 

And for a moment in time, everything else disappeared, and it was just me versus an almost 30lb turkey and a room full of people paying me a lot of money to make their day special. You know, something I’m good at that not a lot of other people are good at? Timing. It reminded me that my brain, can not set a timer, cook a freaking gigantic bird in a weird oven I have never used and just know, that it will be done, exactly 5 minutes before dinner is scheduled to hit the table. But it really was down to the wire. A nail biter if you will. 

And maybe that’s part of it. There is this part of my consciousness that is tapped in to something, that flows with the universe, and talks to it even. Begging for another 5 degrees in the next 5 minutes, and the universe begrudgingly obliges. And everything is like a dance I have mapped out, between timing and fate and luck. And there I am, pulling it all off, exactly the way I see it in my mind. 

So what can’t I do that with love? 

And boy has it gone poorly when I’ve tried! I mean, this show was born out of just one of those incidents. 

And sometimes I have these moments, let’s call them convergences, where everything collides perfectly and I stand in wonder, awestruck by the perfection of the tapestry before me. Heart full to the brim. How strange to have found myself here, how wild, how beautiful. But honestly, the last time I felt that way about love, I was 18 and standing behind the copper countertop of the cafe I was managing, and a boy wearing a t-shirt three sizes too big with a giant wolf on it came over to the register and said, “Wait, you’re Olivia right? We met when we were children, we sat at a picnic table outside of the Steiner School and talked for hours. I’m M.” And the rest, well, the rest is what I talked about last week. The Buddhist social worker whose parents were artists who I fell head over heels in love with, with everything I had inside me. Only to watch him turn away, form well, everything inside of me. And I didn’t just lose him, I lost a family, a home, a whole version of myself. One that was gentler, one that believed that things worked out. That people were meant for eachother. And it took me a long time, to get that faith back. And I can solidly say, the candles burning low, and there’s but a shred of my old self in sight. And it’s been quite a while, since I’ve felt one of those convergences of energy. I feel more like a ship, out on open water, unmoored, with no compass and not a lick of dry land in sight. 

And I have this intense feeling like if I let it, this grief, this loneliness will somehow consume me. Why is it that I feel this way?

Eckhart Tolle describes grief as an activation of the emotional pain body. 

That estrogen based bodies have a straighter shot at enlightenment, because once a month, the entire emotional pain body is activated and laid out in the open for us to hold witness to. Our cycles, are what ties us, to our awakening. 

We are challenged, by our own pain, monthly. And it brings us faster, quicker into the depths of self-understanding. 

But along with these cycles we also glimpse our other cycles, our stories that have kept us stuck in patterns repeating. 

So I’ll tell you a story. One I’ve been trying really hard to not relive. Right after this brief intermission, where we listen to some music. Because it seems that sometimes when we remember who we are, it encompasses all of it, the good and the bad. The rebel and the fighter. And the girl laying on the floor of the pantry at M’s parents house, in the dark, crying so hard she thought it would break her. Watching love crumble to ruins. Watching something unimaginable happen, the inevitable ending, of a story that felt limitless. 

So here’s stubborn love, a song I’ve maybe listened to over a thousand times since I was a teen. And I’ll try to keep my head up? Because if I don’t, I’m afraid this will swallow me whole. If I don’t keep running, keep getting up, the compounded heartache will make me in reachable — a ship with no radio com — and I’ll never get out of bed. But would that be so bad?! Who ever said falling apart every once in a while was a bad thing?! I mean my boobs are HUGE, 2 sizes bigger than they normally are, and all I want is for someone to hold me and feed me chocolate. I mean IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?!? Falling apart seems like the voice of reason talking here. I mean, how else are we supposed to realign our emotional intentions so that they line up with our more practical priorities? So if you need me, I’ll be out on a metaphorical ship somewhere, listening to old music, trying to remember where on earth my faith went and why.

So here’s to the music that made me.”