Reflections – Episode 2 on Vimeo

“Let’s dance it out….but in our minds.”

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Reflections – Episode 1 on Vimeo

Tegan and Sara start a video blog while on tour in Europe. Let the hilarity ensue…

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Laundry Thoughts

Various thoughts run through my head while I do the laundry today. Our new place is a brutal walk to the laundry. All of 200 steps or so my feisty little pedometer loves to report.

As I trudge the distance to the ancient laundry room, I’m struck by an endless stream of questions. Have I reached my zenith at age 29? Is thirty really the new twenty? OMG, what is that woman wearing? Why did that changeling of a child not say excuse me when she pushed me out of her way in this laundry shack? Who raises these little pre-teen beasts? Was I a pre-teen beast?

The answers continue to dog my post-drinking fatigued mind. I worry about that. It is no secret that I drank a lot these past ten years. But I was by no means a daily alcoholic. I was just your stereotypical twenty something hard core party gal. Every weekend, sometimes twice, sometimes three times a week. Out we went, drunk I got. Go home. Four advil, glasses upon glasses of water. Sleep. Headache. Work and or school. Repeat a day or two later. No big deal. But I sometimes wonder – how many brain cells did I delete all of those nights? Was it worth it? Really? Hard to say. Doubtful. One thing is for sure, no drinking partying means earlier nights for me. But its okay. I have become that person who leaves the party early before the really fun and zany things happen. The crazy shit that cool kids always can recall afterwards. And opps, you missed out because you’er a sober sister and left at eleven- thirty versus the usual three-thirty am departure of the real “fun” kids. I have to try and stay later at parties. I really don’t want to become that lame’o. But I fear it is inevitable.

I read recently, that a new study revealed that the human brain reaches its pinnacle at age twenty-two. Twenty-two!? Then once twenty-seven has hit, the brain begins a slow decline into aged oblivion. Yikes. What was I even doing at age twenty-two? I just transfered from junior college to grown up college. The world was my oyster, I was on my own, finally! No parents. No curfew. No limits. It was amazing and so very fleeting.

The closer I get to thirty, and the closer I get to fulfilling my promise of a year entirely without alcohol, the more I realize the words of Joni Mitchell and later Ms. Jackson, were so blatantly true – “You don’t know what you got, till’ its gone.” But – and I continue to strum this thought through what is left of my tiny brain synapses – the true purpose of giving up my one huge vice, was to indeed “Know” what I have. At this very moment. At this very minute juncture of life. Because I remember things now. At parties. During conversations. It is both sad and pathetic to find joy in such a banal and mundane fact of life, but it is something I definitely could not say during these last 9 years. I like remembering. I like having a conversation with someone at a social function and really paying attention to what they are saying. It’s nice.

And as I walk to and from the tiny little room, stuffed with coughing and spluttering washers and dryers, I continue to wrestle with this question: When someone – who has been stricken for decades with a gene that makes them susceptible to the kind of hard living lifestyle I have lived – rejects this genetic defect and fights it – does the energy spent fighting this addiction count? For something? For anything? Or is just an assumption – that sorry honey – this is the life we were given and no one promised it would be easy. The latter is true. No one said it would be easy. I get no special prize or handshake for a job well done. I’m doing what I should be doing. Living life. Appreciating my brain cells. Not deleting them with every binge and saying fuck you to god, because I don’t care enough about your gift. I’m going to just drink it away. Anyway – it is a challenge to remain in the fray and not above. Immersed in it, rather then holding everyone at bay.

As I walk by my immigrant neighbors, with their ten kid per household quota, all of this rushes through me and I can’t help but feel a mix of jubilance and sadness. Jubilance at having finished my laundry. Sadness that although it was super fun pondering the state of my neurosis, I am still right where I was three hours ago when I started my ten loads of laundry. Still confused at my neighbors fashion sense, and horrified by the twelve-year old girls that seem to run the sidewalks of the La Ramada Apartments, with their giant cups full of soda, sipping and spewing insults at each other and everyone else. It takes the remaining energy I have left, to avoid their steely little eyes while I pass them on the way home to our cozy little bungalow. Owell. The questions that rack my universe will not be solved today. My only hope is that next week, when my laundry adventure is repeated, I have the common sense not to stare and gasp at the frightening frock’s my neighbors choose to wear on these mean streets of Anaheim. One can only hope.

Anytime…

Anytime you interview for a job where they tell you they use different applause to encourage their clients – and one of those applause’s is “We Will Rock You” by Queen – that is a job you want to have. And I do.

Here Goes….

After a long absence, Maya throws herself back in the ring today. Here goes. Let’s do this!

why I love Rachel Maddow

So smart, it hurts.

The Walk

So this is the Santa Ana River Walk that my girlfriend and I try and walk weekly. Although lately, it has just been me, walking the long 3 and half miles up down the trail that has become my routine path. I have lived in Orange County for almost 8 years, and it wasn’t until 2 months ago that I actually discovered the simple peace of walking amongst the various birds, squirrels, and lizards that call the riverbed their home.

It is amazing how calming it is to be surrounded by nature, even if it is just a small bit of it, amidst the urban sprawl that is East Anaheim.

I usually enter at Glassell Ave. and walk to Lincoln, then back again, this time passing Glassell and going until I reach the rail road tracks, half between Glassell and Tustin. The trek comes up to about 3.5 miles. I walk this path because there is a utility dirt trail that runs right on the river’s edge. I prefer walking on this side versus the prescribed “official” walking trail that is pushed back towards the fence of the river. In other words, you hardly see any water or birds walking that trail. To me what’s the point of walking the trail if you can’t see the ducks and crane-type white birds that swim around in the river. Doesn’t make much sense to me.

The trail is partial to bikers because of the nicely paved road that runs the entire length of the river. The walking/biker trail runs from Corona/Anaheim Hills, all the way to Huntington Beach. About 15 miles I believe total, but I could be wrong. Not a bad way to spend an hour or two.

The best part its free and relatively safe. Although, I have seen a homeless person or two. But they’re usually just sleeping or enjoying the scenery like everyone else.

Just another way to get some much needed free cardio and a suntan, simultanousely. Yup, there is a reason people live in So Cal.

People aren’t perfect.

I guess our brain is hard wired to hold the mirror out and beyond, rather then in front and up close. It is painful to self-reflect. We see thing’s we don’t see when we conjure up an image of ourselves every moment of every day.

As my poor mother says – “Mija, you have to accept people as they are”. This is difficult to do, isn’t it? And why is that, I wonder? Why do we always inflict our beliefs onto others. As if our lives are so perfect and dandy to begin with. It is odd to think that just because we live a certain way, and haven’t succeeded in breaking our own necks or breaking someone else’sneck, we convince ourselves that our way of life or our way of believing, is the only way to happiness or gratification. I guess its about ego or superego. Take your pick.

The older we get the more set in our ways we become. I am not sure if it has something to do with a laziness on our part to impede nature’s own way of transforming our bad or negative behaviors into good ones or if it’s just the simple knowledge that because we have lived so well up until now, we MUST be doing something right. Therefore – we all should be elected supreme judges of all that surround us.

I state this because I am one of these judges. I judge freely, willfully,and merrily. I banter on and on about how society should do this and that and how people should live this way or that way.

I guess our brain is hard wired to hold the mirror out and beyond, rather then in front and up close. It is painful to self-reflect. We see thing’s we don’t see when we conjure up an image of ourselves every moment of every day.

Before I got on this work out kick. I did not have an image of myself as fat. I really didn’t. I mean I would be reminded once in a blue moon, when I saw a picture or a video. But I would always rationalize away, by noticing my great smile or my superb hair. I never lacked self-esteem. I was blessed with a mother that pampered her only daughter and instilled such a deep feeling of self-worth, that if there is nothing else she feels she accomplished in this life, she can rest assured her job as a mother was fulfilled. She gave her daughter self-esteem. A gift that never stops giving.

But I digress. Back to not seeing the fat. Or unease. Or discomfort. Subconsciously, I knew I was overweight, but every time I looked in that mirror I didn’t see a chubby young woman, I saw a smiling, albeit out-of-shape, young woman who maybe needed to loose a few pounds. Ah the wonders of rationalization. It cure’s all ills, denies nothing, and give’s away absolution like no religious figure ever could.

I never saw my real reflection. It took events and actions that I had no control over to prove to myself, that I needed to make a change. Like drinking – I could no longer rant and rave about my own core beliefs. My core had failed me. Quite literally in fact. I was, am, fast approaching the age of thirty and I don’t want to be a fat thirty year old. I don’t want to be a skinny thirty year old either. Or necessarily “healthy”. Although that goes without saying.

I want to be an authentic thirty year old. My path to authenticity requires me to ditch a few of my imperfections. Namely alcohol and exercise complacency.

But you know what? More then anything – I want to be proven right. I want to implement the changes I’ve made in my own life and still rant and rave with a degree of  genuine authenticity. In other words – I want to be able to do what I have always done – give my opinions about life and struggle, but this time, I will have actually lived the struggle.

I won’t just be speaking through hollow arguments, but through actual hard fought, gritty, truth telling. Hard to do. Most people don’t do it. They speak and speak but nothing ever comes out. Because they haven’t lived it.

But then again – I may fail entirely. I may not reach my goal of  60 pounds by June 26, 2010. If I do fail or fall short. Oh well. Life happens, people stall or make mistakes. We are not perfect animals. I may regress. I may turn around all of the change I’ve accomplished thus far. But at least I’m trying. That is all anyone can hope for. And you better believe I will still talk trash about the person who doesn’t try.

After all – people aren’t perfect. And judges still judge.

Everyone has something….

It is a funny conundrum to be bored of the bottle, but then consequently, when you are off of the bottle, the bottle calls and wants to hang out.

Everyone has something. A phrase I have often heard spoken. Everyone has their chosen poison. Their vice. Some people like to smoke pot. Some people smoke cigarettes. Some people eat. As for me, like the three generations that came before me on both sides of my family, I drink. Beer specifically. Nothing like a cold frosty beer to make everything seem just a little bit better, make everything, seem just a little bit brighter, make that someone you barely knew 30 minutes ago, seem like the funniest, coolest person you’ve ever met. Alcohol does that. It makes the razor sharp realities of life just a bit duller, and as a result, a lot less painful.

Ever since I turned 21, it was as if alcohol was just easy. Easy to get, easy to drink, and it made everything easy. With a few drinks, suddenly, everyone was no longer scary in a social setting, suddenly you weren’t caring about what you looked like or how smart you were, you were just fun. And it was easy.

Since that June 26th in 2001, I never looked back from the sober days of before. No, I just kept going and going. Drinks flowed, parties happened. It was a way to find friends and keep friends. It was the extra push that let you go, and just be free, if only for a few short hours, late at night, away from your parents.

Before I knew it, drinking became a good stand by. Even if it wasn’t necessarily becoming a problem. If I hadn’t come from a long line of hard drinkers, maybe I wouldn’t have had the tolerance that allowed me to down 6 pack after 6 pack. If only 3 beers could be enough. If it could have, I wouldn’t have any trouble. Three beers would have been my night. I would never wake up hung over or not having remembered the conversations before.

When the black outs started becoming more a habit then a rare occurrence, thats when it gets scary. When you feel like you have to drink to order to have a good time. When you wake up in the morning after a hard night, and realize your head feels like its going to explode, your heart is beating a mile a minute, and frankly, you know you’re getting just a little old to sleep it off. Then, finally, you wake up one morning, and realize, you’re almost thirty, and its not cool to drink til you drop anymore. Or at least its not cool for you.

You start looking forward to that next happy hour, you start drinking when you’re bored. Then finally, you’re always drinking a beer, even if its just a few a night.

Then you get to the point when you drink, and you drink, and you drink, and you wake up, and its Christmas morning and you can’t for the life of you remember how you drove home last night. You don’t remember getting into bed, and you don’t remember how many beers you really drank.

Thats when you realize things have to change. You realize maybe 28 is a good age to try and go dry. Maybe 2009 can be the year where you don’t rely on those 6 beers to be your social forcefield at parties. Maybe 2009 can be the year where you celebrate every significant celebration completely and utterly sober. The summers are the worst. The summer is the best time to drink. Period. It just is. Summer will be tough for me. It already has begun. Summers mean birthdays. My birthday to be exact. But I know I can do it. 

With the exception of a few, I don’t think the majority of my friends really understand why I’m doing what I’m doing. I think they think I won’t stick to it. I think some of them think I’m going over board. After all, I’ve never had a DUI, nothing crazy like that. I am pretty sure I was on my way. It’s okay. I probably would have had the same thoughts a few months ago too.

I don’t know if I will quit alcohol for life. The thought of never having another beer, is frankly, not  a thought I like to have. A lifetime is a long time. I can say I’m trying to make 2009 a dry year for me. After that, who knows. I certainly have no intention of going back to the way I was before 2009. I know the future for that Maya, and it wasn’t a good future, at least not one I want. 

And I’m by no means perfect. Nor am I suddenly becoming a health fanatic. It’s still a struggle to eat right and to exercise. I figure those things will come. They have before. I can only quit 1 thing at a time. You have to have something, right? I mean everyone has something….

To be continued…

This is Maya. Signing off.

Can I do it?

This weekend I began training to become a helpline counselor for 

an LGBT youth crisis and suicide prevention helpline. The training lasted eight hours on Saturday, and eight hours on Sunday. Two full days of lecture, role playing, and evaluation. Suffice to say, it was emotionally exhausting.

The interesting, and really surprising thing is, the entire process was a lot harder then I initially thought it would be. Naive, huh? I mean, in the beginning, when I first applied and became interested in becoming a helpline counselor, the only thing that I really “heard” was counselor.

Counselor, meant, counseling. As in, MS in Counseling, which really translated to grad program at Cal State Long Beach. In other words, I didn’t anticipate what I was really in for. 

Don’t get me wrong, intellectually, I knew what a crisis and suicide “hotline” was, and who it served. If you were feeling suicidal or crazy, you called this magical hotline that somehow came up with some great thing to tell you, and suddenly, poof, you were cured and no long suicidal. I mean, I knew this wasn’t actually what a suicide prevention helpline did, but  in the back of my mind, I wasn’t thinking about how the actual suicidal conversations went between caller and counselor.

So, this weekend, when we actually began training, it was rough. It was difficult to just use vocal inflection to connote my every empathetic emotional feeling. There was no body language, there was no eye contact, just my ability to convey my empathy and/or sympathy to the caller who was on the other end of the phone. Suffice to say, this was extremely difficult to do for someone who is used to using body language and eye contact to reflect back feelings and emotions to whomever they are speaking to. These are valuable tools in interpersonal communication and trust worthiness; take these away, and you are left with only one tool to communicate with, your voice. Challenging to say the least.

We participated in role plays where our “trainer”s, i.e. helpline veteran counselors, acted as callers, and we took the role of counselor. The interesting thing was how life like and realistic the trainers made their calls. They cried, sighed, and mumbled, just like a real caller would, had they been in crisis. They nailed their performances. I was taken aback at the severity of the problems facing these “young” people. They were in pain. They were hopeless. They were angry. Some, were indeed, suicidal. 

It’s jarring to here real desperation in someone’s voice, and trying just as desperately, to say the right thing, that one magical thing, that will make it all better, that will take all the negative feelings, and destroy them forever. In effect, that is what the callers are asking, sometimes begging, the counselors to do. They want their pain taken away. They think, that killing themselves will do just that. But something inside them, as small as it may be, wants them to try again, and not give in to that pain. 

So they dial that number, and they reach the counselor on the other end of the line, the one person, who that moment in time, has the power to really help this stranger, this human, existing in their own private hell.

It is a unique and powerful experience, while simultaneously, becoming a terrifying experience for the new counselor, who maybe isn’t sure what the hell to do. The responsibility is breath taking. Literally.

So this is what I’m struggling with. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I forget to ask the question? What if I forget the follow up questions?

“Are you thinking of killing yourself? “Have you thought about killing yourself in the past?” “When have you thought about killing yourself?”

Try saying that out loud. Its hard to even say to yourself, let alone some person you’ve never met, that might have a gun in front of them, and is just waiting for the excuse to pull that trigger. What if I can’t empathize enough? What if I’m literally screaming in my head how much I want this person to live, and how much I care about them at that moment, but I just….can’t say it. What if I….just…can’t go there. 

I’m not sure what’s going to happen. We are selected to be counselors. It is not automatic assignment. If at the end of this training, the trainers feel we just aren’t ready, we won’t be asked to began taking calls. Simple as that. Of course, we are given the option to try again, and go through another training course, or volunteer in another aspect for the organization, but it’s not the same.

Then again, it could be a good thing. Not everyone has the ability to put themselves that doggedly and obviously, in another person’s shoes. It is one thing to empathize by nodding, meeting eyes, and saying “uh huh, uh huh, tell me more”, and it is quite another to say over the phone,

“That’s horrible. Your best friend shot himself last week because he was gay and now you don’t want to live, lets talk about that. How did you feel about your best friend?”

It is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, because you have the ultimate responsibility of trying to help this person save their own life, at that exact moment in time.

Frankly, it scares the shit out of me.

We have more training in the upcoming weeks. It is far from over. I will remain hopeful. I know I still want this. I have to remember Carl. I have to try, if anything, for him. I have to just keep trying.

This is Maya. Signing off.