closer to fine

what a blessing to be alive and well, nearing my 40th year of life, making peace with releasing my first half(-ish) to welcome in what’s next.

what do you take with you into the next decade? what do you leave behind?

all year i’ve soberly explored this concept.

there’s a jar above my stove filled with dried plants from my childhood home.

torch it or keep it?

i don’t yet know.

become a rabbi?

get a poetry MFA?

try to sell my TV shows?

become a mom?

make an indie feature film?

make more indie shorts?

apply for more labs, workshops, grants, network, network, network, network?

surrender the promise of botox for facials because the homeopathist said.

commit to finally live with the love of my life who isn’t Jewish and drives me batty but our fingers entwined are pure magic and when we make music it literally opens a portal?

stay in my semi-haunted rent-controlled apartment in LA of 15 years?

move to a small town where it’s easy to feel big?

move back to NY to be near my brother’s family?

repair with my complicated father?

protect myself from toxic people?

join Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families?

start to make real money…again?

start my own Jewish business?

figure out how to celebrate this momentous birthday after nearly a decade of chronic illness - how do I properly punctuate this epic experience of survival and recovery,

the overwhelming gratitude in my heart and soul for this redemption -

a true second chance at life?

to be with the fact of my recovery is overwhelming.

to be with the fact of my recovery is the key to whatever’s next.

because how can i know who i am, and what to do, after such a mind-blowing experience if i don’t take the time to integrate and metabolize it fully?

do i burn twenty years of my journals, or archive them properly?

do i fight against ICE, or show up for Scrabble club? or just alternate Saturdays?

do i freeze my eggs, or embryos, or get pregnant before i’m ready…or all of the above?

do i become a decluttering coach?

will i divine all the answers if i write my morning pages, stay off of reddit until after Yom Kippur, record my dreams, and light daily candles petitioning my ancestors?

how do we introduce our cats to become brothers, if his has relational PTSD (just like we do), and his cat hisses at mine through the door?

pray, pray, pray, pray and pray.

prepare for the Jewish super bowl, Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year - the day of atonement, this Wed-Thurs.

show up in white clothes, wet eyes, defiant jaw, hungry heart

to meet your (my) maker.

face my flaws, forgive my foibles, own my desires, petition to fulfill my destiny.

remember:

“If God confronts Rabbi Stein, the question She would ask is not why he was not more like Moses, but why was he not more like Rabbi Stein.”

this year be more you, (not)Rabbi (Wein)Stein.

yes, this Jewish new year,

be more you, my dear reader. my friends.

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now, i know some of the answers to the above questions.

they are not as open-ended as they all often feel,

marbles of possibilities clattering around in my brain.

i have been learning how to slowly but surely make choices before i’m ready, hear my own gut despite how often it gets twisted and confused,

trust the glitters i feel in my face when things are good,

to know and trust the feeling of goodness,

to feel my own hunger, fullness, and cravings,

to listen to my inner pulls and discern the best next north star - even if it’s temporary.

because all of these choices are temporary, aren’t they?

a portal to the next path to the next mountain to the next spiral set of stairs.

and maybe everything i wonder about will happen in this lifetime,

on their own times, and when they do -

i’ll realize it really was not worth my energy to worry.

because everything happens in its own time.

so if you, like me, are searching for what to do this year, too -

if you’re ever mired in uncertainty:

please, join my hand through the screen.

we can dance our way through the never ending questions, arms wide open to the sky,

one breath,

one shimmy,

one booty shake,

one choice

at a time.

this 5786, let’s be courageous enough, and gracious enough,

to allow ourselves to humbly, once again,

live our way to the answers.

walking one another all the way home.

---

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There’s more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
Closer I am to fine, yeah

-Indigo Girls

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Like the Indigo Girls’ Closer to Fine, The Medium Time from Girls5EVA is more spiritual to me than almost any Jewish liturgy.

in gratitude to Amy + Emily (Indigo Girls), Greta Gerwig (Barbie director) & Meredith Scardino (Girls5EVA) for helping to weave narratives that comfort me most.

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And Shana tovah to you. <3

melanie zoey