De-Pathologizing the Human Experience

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There’s been an article floating around Facebook lately, that I’ve found myself afraid to link to it, even though reading it was one of the most gratifying things I’ve done for myself lately. I’ve been gathering courage and other necessary emotions, so here it is:

What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital

Although some of what is referred to in this article rests on a more serious side of the spectrum of mental illness, something clicked when I read this that I hadn’t really been able to articulate until now.

Yeah, I thought. What if there’s nothing wrong with me and there’s actually more RIGHT with me because of how I feel -- and how much I feel?

As far as “mental illness” goes, I’m not even on the radar. Yes, I’ve dabbled with depression. Yes, I know and have dealt with addiction and mental illness in others, and a lot of even deeper shit of my own that I’m not interested in getting into here. But to the average person looking at my life, I look pretty normal: I am a 32-year-old freelancing woman who is building a life that can be as nomadic or stationary as I wish, battling demons both quietly and out loud here on my blog, and dealing with—I have discovered – many things that many people feel. I know this because very often an invisible audience member will peek up briefly to tell me that what I write applies to them, and that they admire my ability to say it out loud.

Anyone who’s been reading my blog at all has probably noticed some themes. Please don’t hate me for being different; let me try to explain why I do this is one of them. The deeper root of this is an even simpler sentence: please tell me I’m not crazy for being this way.

There’s a lot in my head. But you know what? There’s a lot that’s NOT in my head, invisible audience, and that article pointed it out. I have thought I was crazy because I could not make myself happy with the things that we’re told we’re supposed to be happy with. In our society, there must be something wrong if you have everything anyone could ever want — shelter, food, family, relationships, vacations, even! — and yet you still find yourself restless, nomadic, deeply introspective and unable to rest within the role you’ve been given. But what if — WHAT IF — that lingering depression, the melancholy that comes after spending an evening with people discussing things you don’t care about is your entire being telling you not that you’re crazy, but that your real responsibility in this lifetime lay elsewhere? What if those niggling feelings of doubt and fear and restlessness were your psyche trying to tell you that there was something more for you out there, outside of the existence of “having it all,” when "all" is a predefined notion set by someone else, with no regard for the yearnings you have in the middle of the night, when everything is quiet and you're exhausted beyond all belief and surrounded by all you've created, but you can't help but dream of something different?

This is where I have arrived, invisible audience. I am done arguing. I am done explaining. And I am done trying to justify my actions in a way that makes them sound not crazy. Because there is no fighting the cloud that makes me feel crazy. It is a non-entity just as invisible and strong as gravity, and the trick is not to fight it, but go dive into the ocean, where the rules around gravity are different; where I have always known how to float when others sink.

I have been really angry lately. And that anger is a new feeling. It’s not polite, you see; it will not follow the social norms I have been taught about respecting my elders and not interrupting. It would make me look crazy if I let it erupt out of me, but you know what? As far as that spectrum goes, my craziness is already established. I burned some shit in a pile in my yard the other day just for the hell of it. I’ve been standing naked in the rain a lot. I have shut the door to my bedroom for more privacy in a house I live in alone. I’ve been singing loudly and badly on purpose on walks, and I have given up on trying to explain my reasons for anything. Because sometimes I don’t have reasons, invisible audience. Sometimes I am simply sad, followed by being simply angry, followed by being simply and profoundly grateful that underneath all this gunk, I have found that feeling ME is not as crazy as I was led to believe. 

So instead of scrambling around trying to rid myself of the half of the feelings on the spectrum that I learned were signs of a problem, I’ve decided to acknowledge that they are signs from myself that something needs to change: something is not working, and something else can take its place. When I’m tired, I take a nap. When I’m angry, I snap at people. When I’m happy, I whistle, sing and dance in my yard. And when it’s all over, I am me, all of me: all a human is supposed to be. 

Love and wholly human kisses

Morgan

The Truth of the Matter

Her: “Who told you that you were a big woman? You seem pretty normal sized to me. You might want to consider letting go of that idea, especially if it isn’t serving you.”

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Me: “I wish we’d had this conversation much earlier.”

Him: “Why?”

Me: “Because I somehow had the idea that you would be critical of what I believed or thought if my ideas weren’t based in science, and it kept me from telling you things about myself.”

Him: “I tried to disabuse you of that idea. More than once, in fact.”

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Her: “I don’t believe in THE truth. I believe in MY truth, and that my truth is going to be different from others’ truths, even if we’re recalling the same situation or moment.”

  ~

Oh Jesusfuckingchristonastick, invisible audience.

So it turns out that reality IS what you make of it, and over the last couple weeks that’s become so apparent, it’s like someone has taken a baseball bat to my reality and beat it repeatedly until I saw stars through the cracks of what I always believed to be true.

I’ve talked about this a lot, but it turns out that I’ve actually been injecting meaning into conversations that wasn’t there, because finding proof of the reality I had built was much more important than hearing the truth of what the other person was saying.

I recently sat down with a woman who asked me to tell her my story – my life story; what had brought me here, to this point in time. What I told her was basically what was in the book I’ve been writing, in the same way I told it in the book -- a book that I now could care less about publishing.

She listened, quietly and respectfully, and said, “You did a great job. Now, I want you to tell me that story again, but I want you to retell it so that, ever time you chose something different, you claim responsibility and credit for it instead of claiming you were a victim that was forced from one part of your life into another.

“For instance," she said, "Instead of saying, ‘I was drowning in depression and felt like my only option was to move to Panama,’ what if you said, ‘I chose to break a pattern that wasn’t working and move away, and because I am adventurous and resourceful, I knew that it would work out and I’d be able to take care of myself, because I’d done it countless times before.’?”

I thought a long time about it. She sat patiently and waited.

The new story that came out was jilted, lumpy, and hesitant. It took me four or five times before I could say it with any sort of fluency. I could actually feel the new pathways trying to form in my brain; trying to pull out of the paths they’d been in for so long -- paths that had cast me as an unwilling player in this game of life -- and reform me as a courageous woman who had managed to make a monstrous change despite deep fear; a woman who somehow knew under all the other chatter that the unknown held much more freedom than the predictable.

That new story has freed me, invisible audience. Not only that, but many subsequent conversations have made it clear how deeply I had subscribed to the reality of the victim, even as a braver, wilder part of me would sneak out every now and then – but with more and more frequency – grab the reins, and yank them to a new, thornier and incredible path, away from everything that had ever been and into uncharted territory.

Now that I can own my story, I can see that that person was me.

I have realized that I took the words out of peoples’ mouths and twisted them into stunted little beings that would better fit into my idea that I was worthless. I realized that I have discounted the many, many ways I have been shown that I am loved and sought signals of my mundaneness in others’ eyes, looking right past the sparkle that came over them when they looked at me. I refused to see the magic, invisible audience, because there was no way to explain it, and it didn’t fit into an idea of reality that I’d picked up from others; a reality that has nothing to do with how the world actually works for me.

I have a magical existence. What I need shows up when I need it. The people I love show me that they love me in the ways that they know best. When I keep that in mind, I see huge, fragrant gardens where before I only saw dead, barren landscape.

All because someone helped me see that my story was writing my reality, instead of reality creating my story.

Love and choosing your own reality kisses,

Morgan

Taking Up Space

A couple of weeks ago I bought a box of Kleenex. Not a knock-off version, not the small box, but a big ol’ box of name-brand Kleenex. You would think that this is hardly worth mentioning, but it has become a symbol of sorts in a drastic shift in perception that I’m still trying to wrap my head around.

I can’t even tell you the last time I bought a box of Kleenex, because ever since I have had control of my own finances I have chosen to skimp and save – why buy Kleenex when toilet paper works just as well? You’re just going to blow your nose into it – or, especially recently, sob into it – then throw it away.

For that matter, why buy half the shit that people do? Nice lotions, hand soaps, aluminum foil, good knives, new shoes, jeans that fit, bras that enhance rather than just suspend breast flesh?

All of these are things that I have denied myself in the past. I can still tell you how much money I spent on Victoria’s Secret bras when I finally broke down and bought a bunch. I feel better when I wear them, but some part of me can still take that amount of money – $200 – and turn it into how long I could have eaten on that same amount, or how many nights in a hostel it would have bought me. To some extent the ability to be a spendthrift is helpful, especially for stretching funds to live longer abroad, but there’s also a point where enough is enough.

Invisible audience, enough is enough.

My dad loved his work as an orchardist, but the orchard never did much more than break even, so when we tore out the trees – still one of the most heart-breaking days of my life – he considered himself a failure, despite years of patient and diligent work and hundreds of bins of beautiful fruit, not to mention the happiness it brought to him to do his life’s purpose. My mom, on the other hand, is an incredible nurse but was always in it for the paycheck – she used it to buy all the creature comforts any of us wanted, but would come home exhausted, spent and hating her job.

I thought that growing up with this difference in career strategies led me to fear seeking my dreams less than I would otherwise (taking my dad’s view) but I think that I internalized some pieces I wasn’t aware of until now. Now, looking at how much I have proudly denied myself in search of my dreams, I think that I learned that you either 1) made money or 2) followed your dreams. I learned that the two sides were mutually exclusive, and that perhaps the only way to know that I was really following my dream was to allow myself to suffer for that time and effort.

It stretches far beyond actual income, however. With this unconscious mindset, I have allowed myself to work for less than I have ever been worth; I have worked for others when some part of me knew it would not ultimately work to my benefit; and I have settled for less than I deserved in both the amount I earned and also the work I did. Some part of me embraced this as part of martyrdom: see how much I’m doing below my capabilities in the name of my dream? See how I’m suffering? See how I embody the starving artist? Because all artists must suffer, you see: it’s the only way to do it; there’s nothing to make art about if you aren’t suffering.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve been sick. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been letting go of so much. Perhaps it’s because of all the soul searching I’ve been doing, but suddenly I have no more patience for denying myself.

I have suddenly realized that although there is pride choosing where I spend my money based on what I really want, it is actually detrimental to deny myself basic comforts and experiences just so I can claim that I live on $800 a month.

I deserve more than this, invisible audience. I deserve to live well, to believe in myself enough to keep searching not just for the type of writing that makes me feel alive, but also to find the way to make that fun, fulfilling and amazing life experience into my life’s work – work that will support me, too. This feels different than making a decision that I HAVE to make money off my writing and more about finding work that makes my heart sing AND brings me a paycheck. On top of that, it is finally deciding that I am WORTH the kind of money that will not just support me, but make me financially stable and comfortable, and living a lifestyle that may not necessarily cost a lot more, but will feel a lot less like denying myself for the bragging rights of living a small existence.

Does this make sense to anyone but me? I’m still trying to wrap my head around what I mean, but I guess that part of it is letting my talents sing instead of hiding them, waiting for someone to accidentally stumble across them. It means taking up the space I have always denied myself –letting go of the idea that I have to hide or apologize for being different, and also, once and for all, letting myself live as largely as I deserve. This isn’t necessarily about living in a mansion, but it IS about being less apologetic for my differences, and embracing the lifestyle that I have nothing to apologize for, and in fact can be proud of. If I’m going to be proud of myself, it’s important for that to be reflected in how I act: buying the jeans that fit, wearing the bras that give me confidence, and wiping my nose with Kleenex, simply because I’m worth the extra effort, the extra time, and the extra money to do so.

Around the same time I bought the Kleenex, I started wearing earrings again. I started wearing my hair down. I got new tennis shoes. I took some effort in my appearance, because I realized that I felt better when I did it, and when I felt better, I acted like I was worth more. And if I act if I’m worth more, I am treated better, not necessarily because other people see me differently, but because I see me differently and in turn I demand what I deserve instead of being apologetic or trying to fade into the wallpaper.

There’s a quote that I keep seeing on Facebook. Of course I can’t find it now, but it basically says that you aren’t doing anyone any favors by playing it small. I guess that’s where I am now. It’s time to take up the space I deserve, and stop playing the humble martyr who gives away all she has in the name of some undefined ideal that she no longer subscribes to, especially since the original subscription was unconscious. Now that I’ve figured it out and given it a name, I can’t abide by the feeling or the lifestyle it has given me: one of self-deprecation, denial, and apology for the smart, sensitive and wonderful person I am. When I’ve seen it in others it’s made me impatient with them; it’s no wonder the same thing in me made me want to punish myself by denying me everything that I have ever been worth, both in terms of connection, intimacy, love, and basic creature comforts. No wonder, invisible audience, I have felt so diminished trying to hide myself.

Until now.

Love and living large kisses,
Morgan

Letting Go

When I first moved to Panama nine months ago (!!) I sent an email to an author I knew who told me that after self-publishing his own book, he eventually got to the point where he had to have the majority of the stock destroyed because it didn’t sell.

When he told me this story – as we were sitting at a Farmer’s Market and I was trying to sell my cookbooks – I remember being astounded that he could admit it so easily and without any self recrimination (it was years later, mind you, and he did admit it was a really humbling experience) but I also remember having a sense of envy that he’d been able to let go without it being a sign to him that he had failed.

Somewhere along the road, I started to hate my cookbooks. There are many reasons for this. One, they never made me any money. Two, for the first time in my life I was (and am) in debt because of them. Three, I felt like a fake when it came to talking about wine; I learned a lot about local wine from writing the books, but it was also the part that I needed the most help with, and I felt like a fake pretending that I knew anything. Four, and most importantly, it felt like the books were tying me to North Central Washington when everything else in my body was telling me it was time leave: that my destiny and my heart lay elsewhere. Cookbooks were never what I wanted to write when I quit a corporate job in Bellevue to write a book, but there was a niche and I had the skills to fill it. Even if I didn’t know a lot about wine, I did and do know about layout, design, cooking, project management; I had just spent a year researching the publishing industry for books closer to my heart, and of course I knew how to write and edit. I also knew the people in the local wine industry. All of this made sense, but it didn’t really make my heart sing the way that other writing did.

Before I go any further, let me say that I know this is a skewed perspective. When my first cookbook came out it was invigorating; I was on a high and I loved it. It was only later that the cookbooks began to weigh me down, and that I realized I had veered off of the path where I had originally wanted go. Obviously I learned a lot from writing the cookbooks, and any experience that teaches you what you don’t want is just as important as teaching you what you do want, so I don’t consider it a complete loss. All I am saying is that I am finally processing some things that I pushed down and out of the way in the process of writing the books because what I was hearing and experiencing from everyone else didn’t jive with what I was feeling internally.

Anyway, when I first got to Panama I sent an email to this author, asking him how he had arrived at the point where he could let go of his books and simply move on. He gave me some simple yet profound advice: they will be important to you, until one day they aren’t. That day, his advice implied, you will finally be able to let go.

That day arrived about a week ago. In the midst of being sick, I have started to really look at my life: what I’m still carrying around that doesn’t serve me and the things that I keep to myself that cause me to be alienated. My cookbooks are something that I have wanted to let go of for a long time.

So I did. Without much ceremony besides a post on Facebook and some emails, I put them down. I deleted the Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest accounts that I only had because of them, I started selling them at cost, and I completely let go of what I had been holding onto, because it was no longer important.

Invisible audience, I have not felt this free in a long time.

I’ve been doing some SEO marketing work for a freelancing blog lately, and one of the final nudges I received was from this blog post. It talks about how many of the most successful people in business today never finished college, have never really followed all the rules, and that they know when to let go and move on.

It made me realize that not only was it ok to let go, but it was actually the BEST THING I could do: put down what wasn’t working to make room for something new, something that DOES make my heart sing, doesn’t feel like a drag and will make me money. Not only that, but I realized that with every other big life-changing decision I've made, I have had to leap first, and THEN the net appeared: with my cookbooks I had been waiting to pay off my debt before letting them go, instead of trusting my intuition and past experiences that told me that it was ok to let go first and find another income source to pay off the debt in the new space I'm creating.

It also made me realize that, as much as it appears I don’t follow a lot of the rules, I can actually disregard the rules entirely. I see a counselor here, and many of the conversations we have are comprised of me telling her something that I think is true and her asking gently, “Whose voice is that?”

The number and depth of these “rules” that I have internalized is staggering. I am selfish for moving far away from my family. I am selfish for wanting to take the time to figure out my own emotional issues and try to heal them when I should be focused on a career or starting a family. I am worthless because I’m not making more money. I am unsuccessful because I don’t have more to my name. That if I possess a skill, I am required to use it; if there’s a niche I can fill, then by God, it is my moral obligation to fill it. That there is something wrong with me because I write a blog like this one, where I share the parts of myself that should be kept quiet. There is something wrong with me because I need a lot of alone time; that the thought of the white picket fence “American dream” existence literally makes me want to run; that I will be burned at the stake for admitting that I am not Christian or atheist, but pagan. That no one will love me if I finally let go and admit that there is a growing part of myself that I have kept hidden for too long that is fascinated by a divine feminine power, astrology, the phases of the moon, tarot, energetic healing, and herbal remedies. 

There. I said it. All of it. And you know what? This is not new information. It is simply information that is no longer important to keep to myself. I have finally let go of the idea that I can control anything that anyone thinks about me by hiding the parts of myself that are most sacred for fear they will be trampled on. If you’re going to think I’m a failure because I gave up on my cookbooks, there’s nothing I can do to change that. If you’re going to think I’m loony because I would rather celebrate the solstice than Christmas and because I feel more connected to God, the Goddess or the Universe on a hiking trail or with my feet in a river, then you’re in the wrong place, invisible audience member. I have already let go of you, and you are welcome to let go of me.

I am letting go, and in that process I am making room for better things to come along: opportunities, people and situations that make my heart sing instead of making me want to hide my head in the sand; adventures that energize me instead of those that suck the life out of me and make me feel like I have to hide who I really am if I want to be loved.

So here’s to letting go, and the lightness of my new existence outside the rules.

Love and light kisses,

Morgan

Release: A Poem

Hello invisible audience,

I'm not feeling well. I've been sick, and it's taking a long time to get better. Nevertheless, it has become clear to me that it's time to show an even deeper part of myself here and hope that this is a safe place to do so -- to face the fear that I have discovered I always unconsciously feel. I fear that the world I live in is not actually safe for me, and I want to choose to live in it fully anyway.

In her TED talk, Brené Brown talks about the power of vulnerability: to open up to others to create a connection, and how the root word of courage is coeur: the French word for heart. To act courageously is to act from the heart, and move forward despite the fear.

I am not physically threatened. There is no one threatening to punish me in any way for what I do or don't do (well, within reason). And yet somewhere deep in there, there has always been a fear that if I truly show who I really am, no one will get it, like me or accept me. It is only in realizing how deep this fear goes that I have realized how inauthentic I truly am when I operate from this idea: that I present only the parts of myself that seem palatable, instead of all of me: all of my geeky, caring, cheesy and sensitive nature. 

I write poetry. I have since I was really young, but I rarely share it. I've been writing more of it lately, and some of it is howling in grief and pain, but much more of it is simply howling: it's loud, insistent, and tired of playing the responsible girl that lives by the rules, letting myself be held back and diminished by some idea I learned somewhere that I should be seen and not heard.

Despite the fact that I feel physically diminished at the moment, laid flat by a series of maladies, I recently found myself doing a papier mache project that perhaps is the physical embodiment of this poem. She's not an award winner, but she's mine nonetheless, and her heart is out there in the air where anyone can see it...just like the me I'm trying to be.

So here's a poem for the week that I wrote a couple weeks ago. If you like it, well then, that's great. If you don't like it or don't get it, well then, tough shit. Please keep your thoughts to yourself, or at least don't share them with me.

Release

By Morgan Fraser


I am violent and vibrant in my glory:
The blind see only muted greens and docile smiles,
while within I have burst into flame.
It will not be long before I do not belong
it will not be long before the flame seizes the air I give it
and with a
WHOOSH
ignites the dry crackling tinder that is my past
It will not be long before the grief and sorrow
I have shouldered
feed the flame and turn to ash
as I am consumed finally by a blood-red heat:
a heart-led fire
its sound becoming deafening in my ears
as it builds to bonfire heights
and my dreams are carried skyward in the smoke, where they belong.

My arms raise to the full moon
to the stars, pale in comparison
the wind biting and invigorating
as I howl as loudly as I can
No longer the trapped wounded wolf
that has considered gnawing its own leg off to escape,
albeit forever maimed, to freedom
but the warrior with her war cry,
who has finally unleashed all the restraints put upon her,
shed her burdens, picked up her glistening blade
and cut deeply into her own chest,
to expose that beautiful beating heart to the air
so that she
and finally others, too
can hear that its rhythm
matches the waves that beat against the shore
because they are the same rhythm, you see:
the one brought about by the silver pull of the moon.

Love and rythmic kisses,
Morgan

Sex, or Something Better

Author's note: I could write a whole blog post on the process it took to decide to actually post this on my blog. At first I just sent it out to a handful of people via email, but somehow it didn't feel right to do that, for a few reasons: 1) Like most humans, sexuality is an important part of who I am, and I know the struggle I reference in this post is not something that only I have dealt with. 2) I have found that the fastest and easiest way to realize that I am not alone is to voice the reasons that I feel alone, and therefore open myself up to the possibility of hearing others tell me that they feel the same way. 3) There is nothing authentic in hiding this part of me. If I'm going to write a book that is all about me and my life, I have to practice showing all parts of myself, including the most vulnerable parts. It's a practice, and I'm practicing. 

All that being said, WARNING: Adult Content. If you prefer not to think of me as a sexual being, I suggest you don't read any further.

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“Morgan, can you please take off your sunglasses and look at me?”

I shook my head, snapped my wallet shut and got out of the taxi. I busied myself pulling my groceries out of the back seat, but I made the mistake of looking in as I did – right into the liquid brown eyes of Irving, a young cute Panamanian who had just asked me on the bumpy ride down my driveway how long it had been since I last had sex.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I had said, staring out the window at the mountains surrounding my home in the mountains of Panama. I was uncomfortable, and yet I was the one who had brought up the conversation.

The last time I called Irving to drive me home, he showed up with a woman in his front seat – a possessive, jealous woman who had her arm across the back of his seat, creating a wall. She didn’t say a thing to me or my friend Jemma, and Irving, usually so talkative, said nothing to me either. We rode in silence until I started up a half distracted conversation with Jemma, and tried to pretend that there wasn’t enough tension in the car to cut with a knife, or perhaps, more appropriately, with a Panamanian machete.

I had just finished telling Jemma about the Panamanian taxi driver who had a crush on me and had recently asked me if he could bring over a pizza sometime to eat on my deck. When he showed up to pick up Jemma and I with a woman in his front seat, I wanted to laugh. It made me feel better, actually, because I really thought he was a cute "kid" – he’s 24, I’m 31 – and I enjoyed getting cheap rides and talking to him, but there was nothing more I wanted. I thought that would be the end of it – that this woman, whoever she was, would put the kibosh on him giving me rides for discounted prices. She was definitely possessive, and he was cowed in her presence.

The next day I got a text, that for fault of the Panamanian cell service, arrived 12 hours late.

“Hey, I can still give you a ride, but I wanted to let you know that I have to pick up the mother of my daughter (read: baby mama) and take her home.”

Aha. I wrote back.

“Just got your message. She seems to be a lot more than just the mother of your daughter. Thanks anyway for the ride.”

He never got it, so he says. Even if he had replied, I didn’t figure out for a week that my message inbox was full and that I wasn’t receiving new messages. Then, yesterday, he sent me a message.

“Why haven’t I heard from you? You don’t need rides anymore?”

So I called him to take me home after a grocery run. I brought up the subject of the woman in his car.

“That’s why you haven’t called me? Because of her?”

“I figured it would be a bad idea. She seemed incredibly jealous.”

The conversation progressed. I told him that either she didn’t know they were only friends, or that he was still sleeping with her. He assured me that the latter wasn’t the case. He asked if I would act the same way in her situation, and I said no; that it showed a lack of trust. She obviously didn’t trust him, and that if they really were just friends and co-parents, that she didn’t know that.

What I should have said more clearly is that she seemed the type that would blame the woman and not Irving if something occurred that she was not ok with...even something as simple as regular rides home in his taxi.

Somehow the subject of friends with benefits came up, or, as they call them here, “friends with rights.”

And of course, the conversation turned to sex from there.

“How can you stand it, living up here all by yourself? Don’t you miss it?” he asked.

“Miss what?”

“Sex.”

“Of COURSE I miss it.”

“So what do you do?”

I gave him a look, that in retrospect he probably couldn’t see through my sunglasses.

“What do you think I do?”

At first I didn’t understand what he said, although the word is basically the same in Spanish. Perhaps I didn’t want to. Suddenly we had crossed a line I wasn't sure I wanted to cross.

“You masturbate?”

“Yes. Yes I do. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Well congratulations,” I said.

“It’s normal, everybody does it,” he said.

“I’m glad that’s true in Panama, too.” I said.

By then we were bumping down my driveway, and he asked The Question.

“When is the last time you had sex?”

Oh God, I thought. It’s been so long. I tried not to wail. I tried to pretend it wasn’t an important question; tried to pretend that it didn’t matter, that I didn’t lay in bed at night, wanting not just sex but for someone to hold me; to run their hands down my bare arms and take up some of my space in the bed. I tried not to think about it, and I answered as breezily as I could.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“A long time, huh?”

“Yes. Too long.”

A pause.

“Why are we even talking about this?” I asked.

“I know. Talking about sex turns me on.”

“Exactly. Let’s stop talking about it.”

He pulled to a stop in front of my house. He asked me something else about sex, I don’t remember what, but suddenly I realized I was really close to inviting him in. I realized it at the same time that I realized that I didn’t want to, for no reason I could fathom in the moment. I handed him his money and he gave me change.

“Morgan, what’s the matter? Will you take off your sunglasses and look at me, please?”

I got out of the car. I stood with the back passenger door open, and talked to him through it.
“I can’t be that woman.” I said.

I had to stop and look away. He was looking at me with something more than naked need. He was looking at me like he really saw me for what I was: a mature woman, with needs, damn it. A woman who needed someone to LOVE her, for crying out loud.

I looked back at him.

“You have things that you need to figure out with your ex-girlfriend. You are either more than you say you are, or at the very least you are still sleeping with her.”

“No,” he said. “No, I’m not.”

“There’s something.” I said.

By this time I had grabbed all my bags out of that side of the car. Instead of reaching in further to grab my backpack and risking the chance he would touch me, I went around to the other side and opened the door behind him. He reached back and held it open for me.

“There’s something you need to figure out with her. I don’t want to be that woman – I can’t be that woman.”

He interrupted me.

“What?”

“Can I come inside so we can talk about this?”

“No, because I know the real reason why you want to come inside.”

“You don’t want to have sex?”

Of course I do. Of course. I didn’t say it out loud. I didn’t even really allow myself to think it. Of course I want your skin sliding over mine, the rasp of your tongue on me. Of course I need this, of course I am not built to be an island.

Of course I want this, I thought, but not with you.

“I can’t be that woman,” I said again. “I don’t want to be that woman.”

He stopped twice to yell something at me as he backed out of the driveway. He sent me three texts in succession: all this talk has made me horny; I hope you won’t stop calling me because of this; I’m sorry. I didn’t answer any of them.

Instead, I tried to decide why I had said no. It took awhile, but I realized the truth in what I had said to him, and that I had left out one part of the sentence: I don’t want to be that woman anymore.

As far as I know, I have never dated a married man, although there was one who might have gone back to his ex-wife before he officially broke up with me. I have never been a mistress, and yet I have often picked someone who offered me less than what I was worth. As much as my skin was crying out for a man’s touch, as much as I was thinking of booking a second session with a local massage therapist/acupuncturist purely because it felt so good to have a man’s strong hands on my back; as much as I took the bus sometimes simply because the money taker’s feline grace made me want to take my clothes off and he called me his “queen,” I am no longer ok with accepting less than I deserve. I am no longer ok with taking what’s there instead of waiting for what’s better. I am no longer interested in what will suffice, I am interested in what will make me sing…or scream in ecstasy.

I was sitting outside in the mist after he left, and I finally realized what had stopped me.

“Something better,” I said out loud, to my little quiet yard, my casita, the thunderclouds, the chirping birds.

“My choices are this, or something better.”

I got up and went inside, aware that I had just made a choice, and my choice was different than any choice I had made about men so far. I chose to wait for something better.

Love and better than sex kisses,

Morgan

Choosing to be Authentically Me

“I read your blog. I loved it. It felt so real; so authentic. You talk about the things that all of us experience and yet no one really says out loud. It’s wonderful.”

My new friend Jemma and I were sitting at a restaurant on Boca Brava Island, on Panama’s Pacific coast. We were eating yucca fries and drinking fresh tropical juices. As it always does, it made me incredibly happy to hear that someone had read my blog and enjoyed it; even more so that it sounded authentic, because that has recently been an important part of what I write here: that it presents me: the truly, deeply, unequivocally human Morgan.

I thanked her, and I told her something that I have felt hesitant to share, and yet have been telling people anyway, as if my mouth has attached itself to my heart instead of my head.

“I’ve been writing my book as fiction, but the truth is it’s going to be based on my life, whether I present it as fiction or not. It’s starting to feel important to me that I write and present it exactly as it is: my life and experiences, as I have understood them.”

Of course, she said. Not as simply as that, but that is what I heard, and what surfaced in my mind as I explained to her. Of course it has to be a memoir. Of course the only way I can even pretend to live authentically is to present my story authentically. Of course.

As I step further onto the path I have sought for myself, the easier it seems to be to consider this possibility. The more space and time I have to think about what I want and need, the more it becomes clear that my need is to tell my story: all parts of it, the joys and sorrows; the large and small everyday miracles; the pain, anger and betrayal; the realizations that came along with each of these emotions, and the eventual ability to let them go.

This realization could not have come without my final decision to stop worrying about what people think, because that is the only thing that has stopped me from writing this book already: how others will react to what I have to say, about myself, and about them as part of my story.

I am less worried about what others would say about me, because it is my story. I can take responsibility and appreciate that not everyone is going to agree with what I say; what I have learned; what I need for myself to feel fulfilled and joyous in my existence. I have learned that the hard way, and I am not letting go of the lesson.

What worries me more is something I have only imagined I have any control over: how others will interpret what I have to say about them as part of my story.

I have often wondered at the courage that Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) and now Cheryl Strayed (Wild) exhibited by writing such raw accounts of their lives in their books. To me, it seems that they were able to discuss their relationships and interactions in a way that made it clear that they valued and honored the people in their lives, even when the lessons they learned from them were hard ones; even when heartbreak was the result. I’m not sure how those actual people feel about what was written about them, and yet I find myself compelled to try for the same idea: to present the things I have learned from people without laying blame at their feet.

This is important for two reasons. One – and most important – because I don’t blame anyone for what has happened to me anymore. That would make me a victim, and I am tired of giving away my happiness and power to others by making them the reason for my actions. Two, I have realized that every single person in my life has been put there to teach me something. Often it was not the lesson I wanted to learn, and rarely was it the way I wanted to learn it, but all in all I have come to the point where I realize that I can take what I have given and use it to make my life what I want it to be, or I can hold the pieces up as excuses for why I’m not somewhere else. I feel more empowered by the first option: it allows me to take responsibility for myself and own who and where I am today.

I have to let go, invisible audience. I could write the most loving, amazing account of someone and they could be insulted; I could rip the same person apart and find that they thrive on the attention. I can’t control that. All I can really control is myself. I can only hope that my humanness will come across in my writing in a way that will show I am not out to hurt anyone; that being included in my story at all means that you have made a deep and lasting impact on me that I found worthy of sharing. I have to remember that it is my story, after all, and I have a right to tell it.

I have decided to write authentically, in first person, telling my life as my own, and I have to trust that if I do it from the heart, from a place of love instead of a place of revenge or victimization, the people that it is supposed to touch will be touched. As much as I wish I could keep anyone else from reading it, anyone who would not understand, there is only one way to do so: to not write it at all.

In my search for authenticity, there is no room for that kind of silence.

Love and authentic kisses

Morgan

This, Or Something Better

I have had to come to terms with something lately that is more than a little uncomfortable to admit: I can be very manipulative.
Although I don’t necessarily do this on purpose, I will often present only enough information to make me look good. I fail to mention the pieces of the puzzle that will show that I have very little money, that I am afraid, or that I am not as happy as I think I should be in any given situation.
There is a huge difference between maintaining a positive attitude and drowning in your own hidden anguish. More than that, however, there is a very important difference between being authentic and  hiding the parts of yourself that make people wonder why you’re taking the hard way if it doesn’t seem to make any sense.
I have moved off the island, invisible audience. For all the positive things I presented that were my daily reality, there were many I didn’t mention. By themselves, they hardly seemed to add up to a legitimate reason to leave, and yet when I finally decided to go, I couldn’t even bring myself to stay one more night.
The decision has been coming for awhile, even as I wrote about the wonders of living there. I found myself agonizing about whether to stay, not because I thought I should be there, but because I wondered how on earth I would explain my need to leave.
Then I realized what I was doing.
I was walking around, scratching the bug bites on my legs and arms until I bled, waiting for the worker to show up to take me to the mainland for hours past when he said he’d be there, spending more money on transportation costs than I expected, and having less access to fresh fruits and vegetables than I needed. I kept thinking, “How will I explain this to all the people that I have painted such a beautiful picture for? How do I unspin the web I have spun?”
It’s my money, my time, my dream, and yet I was gathering courage to ask your permission, invisible audience. As much as I appreciate you, my decisions should have nothing to do with you. It is none of my business what anyone thinks of me, remember?
I have to admit that it’s hard for me to not incorporate other peoples’ opinions into my decisions. The volume seems to be turned up on hearing what others say, and often it drowns out my own ability to hear myself think. For this reason, I need more physical space than most; I need more time alone than many, purely to let my own voice fill the silence around me.
Part of my agreement with myself about coming here was to stop with the double speak and learn to live more authentically. It’s not easy, invisible audience. Its seems I’m going to have to keep practicing, but today is a large step in the process. Today, I will tell you that I am living in a hostel. I’m in a dorm room with 10 other people because it’s cheaper. I am searching for another place to live. I am hoping to find something that fits my needs: cheap, quiet, inspirational. I already have some leads, but no real idea on how it will all play out.
Before I left the States I went to listen to a speaker. She talked about how a friend tried to explain to her what life should actually look like; that God – or the Universe, or whatever you want to call it – wanted to give her what she wanted. “He doesn’t want you to suffer, Ellen,” her friend said. “Your choices are this, or something better.”

Boquete, Panama

I am now in Boquete, in the mountains near Panama’s only volcano, in a coffee-growing region. It is beautiful here: there’s a river that runs straight out of the mountains and through town. There are no bars on the windows – a rarity in a Central American town – and a lot of expats. I am not clear how my future will play out, and I’m slightly uncomfortable with this. At the same time, I am tired of staying somewhere, suppressing my desire to move away from anything that doesn’t serve me, simply because it will be hard to explain. I am experimenting not only with presenting myself authentically, but following my heart where it leads me, without fear or hesitation. In fact, I have found that when I leave others out of it, the fear and hesitation stay away, too.
So here I am, invisible audience. I’m not sure how long I’ll stay. All I know is that for now, it feels good to be here. Today, I’m going to choose this feeling, or something better.


Love and better kisses,
Morgan