By way of a caveat: Soon, I shall start post­ing more reg­u­larly. Soon, too, I shall stop whing­ing about my neu­rotic mon­keys and instead whinge — or per­haps even talk — about some­thing else. Until then, however…

Almost a decade of ther­apy has given me the tools to be a calmer, less anx­ious per­son. If you’ve only met me recently, be grate­ful for that, and stand in awe of my hus­band and child who have seen me more freaked out than I get now.

I have become able to plow on thru life’s chal­lenges, and enjoy myself more. I have goals, dreams, and also the abil­ity to be con­tent. I am more ok with change than I have ever been. I like myself most of the time now, and occa­sion­ally I see myself across a crowded room and actu­ally feel a bit of love.

All in all, I fall down less and deal with things bet­ter than I ever have. I still have bad habits, like exces­sive guilt, cat­a­stro­phiz­ing and an over-abundance of shoulds, but I am learn­ing. As before, I try to make sure, when I am not capa­ble of han­dling some­thing, that I ask for help instead of wait­ing until the whole city is burn­ing and all I can do is scream and run in circles.

I still, how­ever, am as uncom­fort­able as always with con­flict and drama. Noth­ing knocks me down harder and keeps me down longer than those two things. The past week has been an exer­cise in keep­ing my head above their flood­wa­ters. This time, how­ever, I refuse to let con­flict OR drama make me fall back into my bad habits. A freak-out does not val­i­date or prove its source. I can­not let the angst of oth­ers lead me to make bad decisions.

For my own self preser­va­tion, there­fore, I am tack­ling issues (that are ALWAYS smaller than their cre­ated brouhaha) prag­mat­i­cally, not allow­ing myself to be caught on fire, and hop­ing that no one else gets burned in the process. I wish hap­pi­ness and con­tent­ment for every­one I love, but can­not be respon­si­ble for it. All I can do is make myself happy and hope that being a more pleas­ant per­son to be around, and a good psy­cho­log­i­cal role model, will help those around me (or away from me) be happy, too.

May every­one find their happy place.

She was Seki-chan when I met her in 1989. We were mon­keys together, both born in 1968, and her open­ness of heart, sense of humor, and Amazon-like beauty bewitched me. I loved her instantly. She could hold her own con­ver­sa­tion­ally, whether the topic was meta­physics, physics or farts, and in two lan­guages. She would try any­thing once if it pleased her, and would keep doing it as long as it did: there are pho­tos some­where of her climb­ing a rather high face in Joshua Tree in her wed­ding gown the day after her wed­ding, for Jeebus’s sake. Keath is fear­less, too, which is why Aaron and I knew they’d be good for one another. It is a source of both joy and relief for me that they did have one another. Had I been closer to her this whole time, I would have kept shar­ing her like the fine drug that she was. I know so many peo­ple who would have delighted in her, and will now not have the chance. I am sorry for every­one who didn’t get to weave her into the fab­ric of their being.

That’s what hap­pened with Miki: her being, her essence, either shed itself into or bled itself onto your life’s weft and warp, indeli­ble and knot­ted fast, no mat­ter the length or cause of your acquain­tance. The stripe of my fab­ric to which she added shows her color, strength and soft­ness. I wish it were longer and wider, but cir­cum­stance (on both our parts) and ill­ness (much more on her part but not absent on mine) made dis­tant friends of us, and now that length of woof seems short, too short, and with­out recourse. I am bereft, but not alone in it, what lit­tle com­fort that is. If any­thing, it means that there are many of us out there now clutch­ing at the parts of us she helped weave, Linuses in our loss.

There will be a falling down now, I’ve no doubt about that. Should-haves and What-ifs already have me slid­ing down, and the very idea that she will never know exactly how much she meant to me, or how much I loved her, shat­ters me to the core. I am guilty of some­thing, of many things, but most of all of not mak­ing sure that she felt my affec­tion com­pletely. I am try­ing to tell her I love her now, in as close to prayer as I can get, once for every tear. When the tears dry up, I will have to come up with another way. And, because it is keep­ing me sane, I will have to keep mak­ing myself believe, beyond my own beliefs, that any­thing I say at this point mat­ters at all. Is there any suc­cor to be found in the idea that she is no longer suf­fer­ing? I want to think so.

Strength to all you friends of Miki. If you need me, call. Because she’d want me to, I will try to make you laugh, or at least smile.

数ならぬ身となおもひそ魂祭り — 松尾芭蕉

I recently made the acquain­tance of some­one who lit­tered our week together with winks. If you have ever been in the com­pany of a habit­ual winker, you know, as I do, that very few peo­ple can wink this fre­quently and get away with not rais­ing the winkee’s nape-hair. Sim­ply put, poorly-done wink­ing is creepy in the same way as win­dow­less vans, sug­ges­tive eat­ing, and the use of “daddy” as a term of endear­ment between lovers: Unless 1) you are cer­tain beyond all doubt that you have the abil­ity to pull it off, or 2) you are affect­ing the thing in a jok­ing or ironic fash­ion, you should put the van/lollipop/“daddy”/wink down and walk away.

I know of very few peo­ple who can wink at me with­out mak­ing my stom­ach churn. My Uncle Tom is one. He has always been one of the most purely and effort­lessly suave peo­ple I’ve ever known. Noth­ing about his wink is any­thing other than the inti­ma­tion that he and his win­kee are shar­ing in an amus­ing secret. Gabe winks in a sim­i­lar way, leav­ing no residue of sleaze behind. Other per­fect winkers are Nells and Kris­ten, both of whom have the funny/ironic/overplayed wink down pat.

If you must wink, save it for jok­ing occa­sions, and play it up big. At least then it will not come across as smarmy. Any wink is meant to cre­ate a know­ing con­nec­tion between two peo­ple, so if it is done in response to a joke, and is plainly hokey and vis­i­ble to onlook­ers, it will not leave the win­kee stranded with you in a non-consensual wink-relationship. Any other type of wink­ing should be done only if the risk is com­pletely under­stood: If you are not con­fi­dent that your wink is going to be wel­comed, or are at all unsure of your abil­ity to wink with­out look­ing like the guy down the bar that keeps awk­wardly lick­ing his lips when­ever you look over to see if he is still star­ing at you, and who holds on lit­tle too long when he shakes your hand, just don’t do it. Leave the winks, the matress-mobiles, the rib bone mar­row suck­ing, and the cries of “papi” to those who wield them well, and join the rest of us in laugh­ing at the Sarah Palins of the world.