When
you think about it, life is a tangle of trade-offs, a karmic tit for
tat that is paid with every choice we make. While I try not
to think about my trade-offs too much – dwelling on them only makes
them seem worse – lately I can't escape them. Maybe it's because
the older I get the clearer I see that my life has been shaped by the
trade-offs I've made and, as my gal pal Carrie Bradshaw would say, I
couldn't help but wonder if I made good trades.
Two
years ago I left my full-time workaday “normal” life and
skedaddled to the beach to be a writer. These dreams, of being a
beach babe and writing, had been festering under the surface for
years until they finally spewed over and I made them my reality. I
loved that life: walking the beach and having things to write about
hit me like seagull plop; being nurtured by Mother Ocean when I felt
lonely; my days bookmarked by coffee sunrises and wine sunsets,
flowing in between with the rhythm of the tide; the wild swings of
weather and writer mojo. And I hated it too. The disappointment of
winter finding me even at the beach and the sting of receiving
rejections, or worse yet no response at all, to all my writer efforts
sapped my spirit of the joy of living my dreams. Even though I lived
a modest beach existence, the teeny cash cushion I had from my recent
divorce dwindled into the danger zone, my lottery tickets were all
losers, and my writing cost money in contest entry fees and postage
for submissions while never earning a dime. I had shot my financial
wad. Plus I missed my sweetie DMan. It was time to give up the beach
babe dream and go home.
So here I am once
again living in land-locked Missouri. Sure, there are lakes close
enough that I can be near the water, find some peace in the splish
splash of ripples hitting the shore from time to time. But visiting a
lake can never match the mighty roll of Mother Ocean's waves, the
serenity of soft warm sand on bare feet, the cooling of the beach
breeze while the sun melts like butter on my skin.
Good
trade or not? Was I right to go and experience my dream life even if
only for a short time, store up memories, and short-circuit the
regret of never having tried? Or would I be better off to have never
lived the beach life, never realized how perfectly it fit me and that
I felt home
finally, and never be missing it all the more now because it was
my existence, my reality?
I
let go of the beach life so I wouldn't be homeless and starve, but I
couldn't give up being a writer. There is a scene I love in the movie
“Thelma and Louise” when the ladies are contemplating giving up
running and Thelma says, “It's like something's crossed over in me
and I can't go back, you know? I just couldn't live.” Yes, I do
know. I couldn't fathom going back to the spirit-sucking
eight-to-five grind and not having any time or mental mojo left to
write. So I took a part-time job at the library, at first shelving
books and later checking them in and out. The work doesn't pay much
and offers no benefits. My body feels rode hard and put up wet by the
time my eight-hour shift ends – despite what folks may think,
library work ain't for wussies; it's a full-body workout of bending,
squatting, lifting, pushing heavy carts and walking – but when I
clock out, I'm done. No work or worries to take home that would
interfere with my creativity.
Sounds
pretty great, huh? It is. And it isn't. Fear gets a grip on me every
time I have an unexplainable pain, every time my allergies flare up
and I'm headed for asthmatic bronchitis again no matter what I do. I
have no insurance, no extra cash to pay for a doctor. So I worry,
concoct my own over-the-counter cocktail of remedies, and hope that
someone in my family ends up with bronchitis, too, so I can bum an
inhaler and breathe again. Even though I know it's coming, my gut
clenches when my car insurance bill arrives in the mail, my oil needs
changing, or my brakes need work. Some other bill (or food or my OTC
arsenal) will have to wait in order to cover the extra expenses. No
car = no getting to work = no money, period. My life buddy DMan would
help me out financially in a heart beat if I was in dire straits, a
blessing many in my situation don't have. But I already feel like
Freida Freeloader, relying on him to cover the majority of our rent
and household expenses. For an independent woman like myself, that's
a choking chunk of pride to swallow without asking for even more
help. The faint light at the bottom of the poor-me pit is the
MegaMillions lottery ticket I buy twice a week. I kiss it, tuck it
under the hot pink Myrtle Beach magnet on the fridge, and say a
little prayer: Come
on, Baby, be a winner. Roni needs to go to the dentist; Roni needs a
mammogram.
Good trade or not? Is
the freedom of part-time not-all-consuming work, which allows me the
time and energy to write, worth the constant fear of what-ifs that I
can't afford or control?
Speaking
of work trade-offs, I have a friend who has worked in the insurance
industry for 30-plus years. The job is demanding, but he gets paid
well, gets to travel and enjoy perks like a company car. He is very
good at his work and seems to like it fine most days. Yet my friend
cannot wait to retire and counts down the weeks even though several
years remain. He's not pining for the big pension checks or free time
though. He
can't wait to smoke pot again.
Yes, you read it right. His retirement nirvana is to be free of drug
tests and fire up a big old joint any time he wants. Now I have never
been a big pot fan (if you've read “Who The Hell Am I?” already,
you'll understand why), but it seems sad to me to devote all your
working life to a job which requires you deny yourself something you
enjoy so much that you can't wait to retire to be able to enjoy it
again. That is one whopper of a sentence but it nutshells one whopper
of a tit for tat!
Instead of feeling sad
for him, though, I imagine the huge grin on his face as he fires up
his first post-retirement Cheech-and-Chong-worthy doobie and inhales
deeply. What I can't imagine is how he will score some pot after
being out of the “scene” for 30 years. Will I spot him hanging
around outside a middle school looking like a grandpa while he's
trying to spot the “heads” with a dime bag to sell? (Which is
probably 50 bucks now, considering inflation.) Will he be googling
old partying pals to see if they are still alive and, if so, do they
still have pot or connections? Or maybe I should look more closely at
the “herb” garden he's been cultivating all these years. There
may be way more than parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme in there. No
matter how he gets his dream doobie, I hope the trade was worth it
and the high is the best of his life.
If I thought giving in
or giving up dreams made for tough trade-offs, that is nothing
compared to the minefield of tit for tat in intimate relationships.
Could this be the reason break-ups and divorces get so explosive? You
make what you think are good trades for the sake of love, then when
the relationship goes bad you're resentful as hell and feel like a
sucker. You want back what you traded, but there are no
takesies-backsies in break-up-land.
I'm reminded of a
scene from “Sex And The City – The Movie” when the ladies are
lamenting about their men troubles after Carrie got jilted by Big at
the alter. Samantha Jones, the original I-only-want-men-for-sex Ms.
Independent who had now been in a five-year relationship with hubba
hubba Smith Jerrod, opens up to the gals:
“As long as we're
going down this road, I can't believe my life revolves around a man.
On what planet did I allow that to happen?”
Sweet Charlotte, who
believes in love at any cost, says, “But you love him.”
Samantha continues,
“Does that mean saying his name 50 times more a day than I say my
own? Does it mean worrying about him and his needs before me and
mine? Is it all about the other person? Is that love?”
Now, besides being the
girlfriend, Samantha is also superstar actor Smith's PR person, so
that brings a whole new tangle to their relationship tango, but she
makes valid points. It's those little everyday “tits” that can
stick in your craw and go sour. Like always saying “he” or “we”
instead of “me.” Like making sure he has 2% milk for his coffee
because he won't drink your soy milk. Like yawning every other breath
through “Jay Leno” – who you find so NOT funny – even though
you're dog tired because he likes to stay up late and fall
asleep together while you much prefer falling asleep when you are
sleepy, even if alone. Like making yourself watch golf or baseball or
Nascar on TV yet again – and being bored out of your gourd yet
again – in order to spend time with your man while a fabulous book
you're dying to read lies unopened on the coffee table right in front
of you. On the flip side, my sweetie DMan has silently suffered
through several viewings of “Sex And The City – The Movie” and
listened patiently as I pointed out my favorite scenes (what scene
isn't my favorite?!) and quoted the dialogue out loud when I know
he'd rather be watching golf, baseball, or Nascar. Even The Weather
Channel. Anything but “SATC.” And those trade-offs are nothing
compared to what he puts up with when I fall into one of my black
funk depressions! I've often thought the man must be a saint. Or
sometimes I think there's some deep, dark karmic debt he's paying off
by being with me. That makes me feel better about being such a pain
in the patootie to live with.
Back to the issue of
living together: what about giving up soloness for togetherness? For
some folks, that would be a dream come true. For me, it's
another tit for tat. DMan and I often pined for those extraordinary
ordinary shared moments that you miss when you live apart: a
spontaneous dance while we clean house together listening to 70s
tunes; seeing a cardinal land on a snowy branch outside the kitchen
window as we unload the dishwasher on a dreary day; a giggle-fest and
water fight erupting while we wash our cars side by side in the
driveway. So we moved in together. And now we enjoy tons of shared
moments, but besides those moments, work, the news, weather and “what
kind of wine shall we drink tonight?,” we don't have much to talk
about. I miss that “I can't wait to see him to tell him something
that happened” feeling. I miss craving him. I miss getting that
jolt of tingles when he pulled in my driveway because I knew in a
minute he'd have his big hot hands all over me. I miss the urgency,
the intensity that comes from missing him.
If piddly things like
these stick in your craw and go sour, the big things can eat at your
craw like battery acid until eventually they devour you completely.
Big things like moving somewhere you don't want to live, making a
home in a place that doesn't feel anything like home so he can take a
promotion. Important things like having kids because that's what
couples are supposed to do, then finding that your whole life
together revolves around the kids' lives and, besides braces and
soccer games, you have absolutely nothing to say to each other.
Monumental things like leaving your career to be a mom and wondering
when your oldest graduates high school whether you'd have made
vice-president by now, or finally getting the huge partner office
with a spectacular view and your gut aches when you have nothing to
hang on the wall but diplomas and certificates. Those are some big
tits to have to live with, no matter how good the tats seem.
But the ultimate in
trade-offs comes with death. Or life, and the choices between the
two. Because Mama and I are what she calls “prayer warriors,”
always exchanging names of folks in need of prayer, I am constantly
bombarded with details about these folks' serious health problems,
surgeries, treatment regimens, and prognoses. The ones that get me
the worst have cancer. What kind of choices are they given?
Should they choose to
fight and, in doing so, mangle their body with surgery, poison their
cells with chemo, and burn their flesh with radiation; accepting
indiginities and suffering as part of the battle in the hope they can
beat the cancer and win? For how long? At what cost?
Or should they
surrender to the havoc of cells gone crazy, to an unknown path that
may meander through pit stops of organ failure, bloating, wasting,
suffocating, and dementia; accepting indiginities and suffering as a
condition of armistice with the Big-C in the hope that it will
miraculously retreat or mercifully kill them quick. How long will
they wait to know their fate? At what cost?
In my mind, there is
no question of choice. I've pondered long and hard over the years
about what I would do if I got a cancer diagnosis – either a
natural side-effect of praying for so many with cancer or I am one
just morbid chick with too much time to think – and, unless the
invader is something small and easily removed, I will
surrender. Screw surgery. Screw treatments. Whatever time and health
I have left will be spent laughing and celebrating with my special
peeps; playing disco music too loud and dancing until I collapse
satisfied; eating, drinking and smoking to my heart's content; and
spending every last buck I've got to scratch off every last
want-to-do from my bucket list. Since life for death is the final
trade-off, I'm going to be sure I make every trade I have left a good
one and hopefully make peace with the not-so-good trades I've already
made along the way.
My terminal tit for
tat. Hope I get it right. Or better yet, hope I get hit by a big-ass
bus and . . . SPLAT! Just like that, the end of me and tit for tat.
(P.S. I don't know what happened with the type changing sizes; it was not intentional and I couldn't figure out how to fix it. Sorry!)
