a place that is very good
today i woke up in what appears to be ‘the bad place’ of life.
in the tv show ‘the good place,’ which is about a kind of, false heaven, there is an equal and opposite ‘bad place’ that reflects the truly grossest and worst traits of humanity.
last night i fell into a fitful sleep, after joining a Discord server of fellow Monopoly players, for which I was so excited, but where I experienced some truly awful things.
after inviting my fellow players to the game, when one started losing, he threw a full-on tantrum by holding up the game to repeatedly mortgage and unmortgage all of his properties until he had no money left - then accused me in the Discord of cheating and having an alternate account!
in the end, i won the game, but i felt quite dirty.
i had only wanted to engage in wholesome play with fellow monopoly lovers!
but this was really an engagement with one of humanity’s darkest cess pools:
internet trolls.
the reason why i played monopoly yesterday at night is because i had finally given up on the day i had hoped to have had, which was meant to be one of cleaning.
i woke up feeling optimistic and excited to deep clean my home and prepare for a week executing a crisp, perky, precise schedule working on my rewrite + financial life.
but then i fell into a cosmic whirlpool of jenny slate’s new book: LIFEFORM.
and i allowed this cosmic whirlpool to subsume me whole.
i allowed the book to force me to look at the lives i really wanted,
to grieve my years of debilitation,
and to get into such a tizzy of my own unmet desires and disappointments, by evening,
i asked my partner to break up with me.
under the premise that i was too broken to be loved. i wailed.
but secretly, i felt that if he broke up with me, i could then run off and pursue all of my unanswered dreams, unencumbered by our ongoing relational tensions.
because my life’s problems are not at all inside me, but are definitely, 1000%, uniquely and only because of him. and only him! do you understand?
well, he would not break up with me.
he said that i actually seemed a lot like a child who had spent too long at the beach and needed to be taken home Right Now.
so, today we are still together.
well today i thought it would feel horrible to wake up in my own filth, i thought this would be like ‘the bad place’-
but in fact today it feels more like my secret mess. the mess that is only mine. which is delicious.
i do not need to rush to clean it, for anyone but me.
it’s like a few years back when i walked into my bathroom and saw the book i’d been reading and an empty ginger beer by the bath and thought, oh, darling, that is so you. how nice it is to spend this life with you. (my self)
i’m growing experienced enough to not stay fully overwhelmed inside my patterns, to allow new patterns to emerge. today is the crossroads of patterns old and new.
old: i am overwhelmed by life because i am The Most Broken and do everything wrong.
new: this is my process, it’s normal for artists, and i can manage it one step at a time.
still, because last night i was a wailing goblin, my partner called me today while driving back to LA from Texas to lovingly offer to help me with the structure of my day, talk through my goals, and encourage me to meet them. i know him: he would be willing to even hold my hand so to speak, via phone connection, while i did my little tasks and give me treats of praise.
as i write this my heart sparks and face tingles, because: how sweet.
but today there is a stronger Beast inside me.
so i gracefully declined his offer and said i need to be with my own dreams.
while yesterday i was subsumed by internal disorder,
today i enjoyed finishing reading Jenny Slate’s book over my coffee,
and felt edified and clarified by her own dedication to pouring forth innate goodness.
i suddenly understood, deeply, that i had needed to rest for 2 days, and so i did so with jenny’s book.
after reading, i stood up and started putting the clean dishes away, so that i can wash the dirty ones, so that i can make a breakfast. you see, an internal logic kicked in.
and while ‘old melanie’ would have considered the external mess indicative of some ‘problem,’ the more mature melanie has sunk into the understanding that, well,
this is simply melanie’s process.
if i am entering into the depths of a screenplay inspired by my life traumas,
i will need to create some external chaos.
if i travel for an enchanted two weeks in woods and sea, and come home,
i will need 3 days of nearly nothing to process and putter before continuing on.
and since i did not give myself that, those 3 days upon arrival,
those days have seized themselves, about 12 days later.
*permission to pause*
yes, there are some maggots in the sink. but i sure know how to kill maggots,
and there are no guests coming over this week at all.
it is just me and my cat, with our delicious and secret mess,
that, i actually do know how to clean up, after all.
before i left for my trip, i was rabidly obsessed with removing any icky scent from my home. any hint of the litter, the kitchen trash, the little mildew smell that creeps up.
i even made homemade deodorizer out of Everclear and Rosemary Essential Oil.
and now, i do dislike the icky smells.
but, i am also not a full-time housekeeper.
i am an artist who writes, but also feels everything, everywhere, all. at. once.
and as i learned from the Netflix tv show “The Secret World of Cats” -
you would not ask a ballerina to be a scientist.
just as you would not ask a disinterested cat to jump through a paper hoop.
but if the cat is an adventurous diva and a show off,
she will gladly learn to jump through that hoop.
i am not a ballerina, scientist, or a cat.
i am definitely a writer who enjoys an airy, sanitary, yummy-smelling home.
but as one of my writing teachers used to say:
the woman with the clean kitchen never finishes her novel.
so, no, i do not need to be supervised.
i just need to allow my own messy process of creativity to unfold.
and the people who want to love me through all that, well they are the ones who will be allowed inside.
so this is not the bad place, after all.
this is, in fact, a place that is very, very good.
thank you to jenny slate for her courage in shining so brightly in her career and gifting us all this new book, LIFE FORM, which kept me wild company for 2 days.
