Detoxing in Texas and a brand-new book

In mid-July I went to Texas for two weeks for work.  I knew ahead of time it was going to be vastly different experience that the Chicago trip, not because of the work itself, but because of me.

Externally it was very different. The temperature was hovering around 107 degrees and Irving, where I was staying, was not a walking city. Except for a Saturday when I took an early morning walk around the canal, I was mostly in the office, a restaurant, or my hotel room. Everyone I encountered was welcoming and warm, and it felt very safe.

When I went to Chicago, I ate. A LOT. I’d planned to use that three-week trip as a way to detox, get away from the bad food influences of home. Instead I grasped that I was one of those bad influences, and hence ate a lot and drank at least one liquor drink every day, though drinking makes me feel sick.

So this time, I was not going to let that happen. The other difference was internal. My state of mind. I’m calmer and happier. Though I’d been in a similar place for a good clip, Ivy and I started going to a new church maybe a year ago and it’s helped even more. I’ll go off on a tangent for a minute to say I’ve never been a religious person except for about 2 years from about 19-21 when I threw myself into Catholicism.

I’ve always been of the thought that we’re all connected, and should strive for happiness. If we expect people to be good they will be, and if we expect things to go our way they will. And if they don’t, there’s probably a good reason for it, like we got off our path and “someone” was making sure we got back on. There’s not really a religion for that. Except to my surprise, there is. There are a bunch. The one we landed in is the Center for Spiritual Living, a little place in a shopping plaza walking distance from our house. Many of the authors I’ve read during my life like Wayne Dyer align with their beliefs. The center’s library is filled with books I’ve already read or exactly the type I would if I had time. Ivy’s led a couple of sound baths there and it’s such a good community for us. I’m not going to delve into all the tenets of center but it’s been a good fit for me, and Ivy, and baby Trevie who loves the people and the music.

So when I got to Texas, in this happy and free state of mind, I decided to detox from sugar, soda, and TV. Instead of eating a pizza and a brownie in bed and binge watching something on the hotel TV, I ate out almost every night with colleagues (mostly healthy), and didn’t watch TV except once because it was Skinwalker Ranch and I had to see what happened. When I got back to my hotel room each night, having sworn off TV and fiction writing, I had nothing to do but read. Granted I brought my watercolors and painted a couple of pictures but it wasn’t what I wanted this time around. Watercolor of the waterfall outside my hotel room.

Each night I’d read Wayne Dyer’s The Power of Intention and feel good about his words because it’s how I was already living my life, though there were some new great tips in there. One night there was a chapter about writing down intentions. So I pulled out a notebook and started writing, things like: the kids can afford to get their own house, I continue to avoid sugar, my body is healthy…stuff like that.

I recalled something Dyer had said in one of the audiobooks, something he’d learned from someone else about water. Paraphrasing, it was “be like water. Flow. Water doesn’t force people to swim in it, or stop for people.” I’d been using that as a mantra for several weeks and it helped me not to try to control situations and people. So that night as I was writing I wrote, “I am water, a peaceful river, flowing, watching people, young and old, on the shore, living their lives, loving and hating, birthing and killing, consoling and torturing each other.” I kept going that night and the next.

On the third night, I typed it all out because my handwriting is terrible and I knew if I waited I’d never be able to decipher it. As I typed, I saw it was a long poem, with a message, and flow, like a river. I added to it, made an ending and all the while was envisioning I’d do pen and ink illustrations, like Shel Silverstein. It would be in hardcover and people would read it and smile and feel uplifted. I could picture turning the pages in my hand and smiling at the drawings. Just thinking about it, seeing it complete. brought me so much joy.

Once I got home, still soda and sugar free, and having gained no weight on my work trip, I was on a mission. I painted a cover, did my 40 illustrations, and painted a back cover. It didn’t matter to me that I had no idea how to market such a book or what it was really. Who was my audience? Spiritual? Self-help? Poetry? New age? Yes, maybe all of those. What matters is that I could see it published. Ryan cautioned me that I can’t draw, but I decided that wouldn’t stop me because I wasn’t going for realism. To save myself from redrawing, I decided to draw a back drop and use cutouts for the tress, people, etc. stuck on with putty. I really like the 3rd look and shadow so that will be a cool effect in the book. These pictures below will mean nothing without the context of the poem but here are some examples nonetheless. Now it’s six weeks later and I’m handing it off the Ryan to layout and publish.

A couple of weeks ago, Trevor’s grandfather died. Ryan and I only met him once the night before the baby shower, but he was kind, and until a year ago or so ago, healthy. Cancer exacerbated by other factors got him in the end. It drove home how short anyone’s time here can be and made me want to be healthier. It’s not about losing weight, it’s about getting my body as chemical free as it can be so if something does come up, it’ll be a blip I can fight. I’m still soda free going on six weeks and artificial sweetener free, and as of a couple of weeks ago, coffee free (mainly because of a COVID headache I couldn’t shake) then the realization that though coffee isn’t bad, the creamer I use whose main ingredient is corn syrup, and all the Sweet-n-Low may not be a good way to start my day.

I’m at a very peaceful, happy time in my life. Seeing Ivy everyday and watching Trevie learn new words and spread his happy baby love is intoxicating. Trevor is working full time, and Ryan is as always present and reliable and loving. Ivy has embarked on a doula career and is providing emotional and other support to women having babies. There are some/many people who are suspicious or resentful whenever anyone is too happy. Surely I must be hiding something, pretending…That’s kind of too bad for them because expecting to be happy, and then enjoying it when it manifests is a good feeling. Being around a lot of other people who feel the same way, it’s like a great hive of bees buzzing joy and happiness.

I hope you all are inspired by my words, and will be by my poem book and drawings.

Stay happy and expect miracles

Love,

Carly G.

Literally Cutting out the Past

For the most part, I recall events from the recent and far-distant past with great clarity. Sometimes events from way back don’t seem real. Instead they play in my mind like bad after-school specials or Lifetime dramas, viewed on a screen in my mind, but not as memories I was personally involved in. I don’t feel them. I merely have recall. And that’s better because I want to be separated from them.  Every second of my life, every decision, got me here. Deciding to disengage from memories of unpleasant situations or people is the equivalent of discarding a pair of ratty loafers whose soles fell apart. But if you have a tangible reminder, sometimes it’s not so easy. For some it’s a scar, or a tattoo, maybe a bad credit score. For me…it was breast implants.

For anyone who knows me in real life or through my eleven-plus years of blog posts, it’s clear I’m not one who fusses over my appearance. I stopped dying my hair, wear no jewelry except my wedding band and my smart watch. Once in a while I’ll throw on my favorite thrift store silver heart locket, but that’s as much as I can muster. I wear minimal makeup and prefer Chapstick to lipstick.  

So for many of you it may come as a surprise that I had breast implants. Husband #2 suggested them, many times. He didn’t force my hand; he’s not a monster, but he said more than once, paraphrased, that if I just got them I’d be enough. Not his exact words but that was the gist of it. I was furious, hurt, insulted. But I also wanted him to approve of me. Being older and wiser and stronger now it’s hard to admit to myself that I was willing to change so much for someone else. He argued it was for the better. I was thin when I met him, having recently lost sixty pounds on Atkins. But he also pushed me to lose my New England accent, because it made me “sound stupid.” He thought my nails should be painted, and my hair shorter, then longer, then shorter. I had the potential to be really pretty, he said, and he’d get me there. More than once he referenced Pygmalion. Were someone to say that to me now I’d run away immediately, not seven years in. But at the time…I went along with it.

It hurt. A LOT. The implants were uncomfortable, and fifteen years later I’d get occasional shooting pains in the muscles around them, muscles that had been sliced open to accommodate the plastic sheaths that were pumped full of saline. I tried very hard to figuratively embrace them, to accept they were part of me, part of who I was. Instead they were a daily taunt, reminding me of my choices.

Sometimes, I’d look in the mirror expecting to find the girl I was when I was with Arnie G.: a somewhat overweight girl in comfy clothes and chewed nails, and normal, natural breasts.

Instead saw someone I didn’t recognize. I was skinner than my high school weight, wore more makeup, painted my nails. And of course, the “additions.” Sometimes that made me happy. I was Holly Golightly and posed for many a picture at writing events. There are pictures of me all over the Internet if you dig. The two below are with the late Michael Palmer and author Heather Graham. I had some wonderful times with them back in the day.

But other times, I wanted the frumpy Carly back. I think all my years of yoyo dieting can be blamed in part on inner conflict. I don’t want to be thin and glamorous because that’s not who I was before him. But I don’t want to be fat and frumpy because it’s not healthy, and why am I STILL rebelling and trying to prove something? Nonsensically, my tack was: I’ll show him. I’ll gain all that weight right back, thank you very much. It’s taken me a long time to write this post, as each time I read it, I dig deeper and am more truthful about how much I’ve learned from this. Each tap of the laptop keys is giving me new insight.

After that relationship, I was perpetually self-conscious. Would they pop if I tripped over something? Would someone new think I misrepresented myself? What if a new prospect was anti-plastic surgery? I had no end of internal turmoil because I still based so much of my happiness on how others would react. This pair of albatrosses around my neck looked great but kept me from being strong.

It wasn’t only the soul pain. I also developed chronic neck problems. Countless chiropractor and orthopedist visits, physical therapy sessions, massages, and still my neck and back hurt all the time, for years. A couple of doctors attributed my neck issues to large breasts and I never mentioned to them that I’d willingly added the weight and strain to benefit someone who was no longer in the picture. I was embarrassed.

I’m not against body alterations per se, if it helps you feel like a more authentic version of who you are on the inside. But if you’re doing it for another person, or societal pressures that convince you that enhancements are needed, be warned that having something under your skin, figuratively and literally, will madden you, relentlessly beating in you, like Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart.  

Fast forward to early 2021. Right before COVID, right before the lockdown. After all those years, it occurred to me that I could indeed undo this. #Metoo was everywhere, and there was a call for women to stand up for themselves. A surgeon could easily liberate me from this daily reminder of a time when I sacrificed who I was to try to make someone else happy. The concept came to me one day and like most of my ideas, I jumped in with both feet, quickly. There’s no shortage of good plastic surgeons in Los Angeles. The price tag and recovery time for removal is much less than insertion.  Ryan drove me to the center, waited for me, drove me home. Always supportive. He was happy for me that I’d cut the last tie to that part of my life.

I want readers to know I’m writing this post not because I want sympathy or to villainize anyone. Things were different 20 years ago.  If anyone is to blame, it’s society, Cosmopolitan, and all the fashion magazines, TV shows of the time. People my age had parents born in the 30s or 40s and women were viewed differently then. Those beliefs were passed to us. I’m writing this post so others may know too that there are options, and you can say no if someone wants you to change. If it’s an accent or a hairstyle, or your weight. If they don’t like it, they can leave, but you don’t have to change. You can undo whatever you want, whenever you want. Contracts can be broken, surgeries undone, unassailable “truths” questioned. The only thing carved in stone is the cold, statistical details of your life, on your gravestone, and I’d recommend sorting things out before then.

It’s been almost three years since the surgery, and every day I wake up, happy that I’m in the body I want. My hair is very long and curly, salt and pepper. Everywhere I go, people come up and tell me it’s beautiful. No one tells me, “if only you…then you’d be enough.” If they did, I’d run away. I’ve earned my gray hair and I’m proud that my ratty, chewed fingernails, often have oil paint under them. I have no illusions about needing to look a certain way to gain acceptance from anyone. Not anymore.

It’s only as I make changes to what I hope will be the final draft of this post that I can admit that despite the removal of these three years hence, I was still holding onto anger towards Husband #2. I don’t know why but I do know that I’m ready to let go it. He was young and raised a certain way. I was young and raised a certain way. Those rather neurotic adults got together and followed a script they thought they needed to at the time. And now that story is over and like many others these events just play on a screen in my head, without hurt or judgement or resentment. Maybe I needed to write this out and publish it to help me finally cut out the past, once and for all.

In the words of the great Stuart Smalley, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”

Here’s to self-acceptance, the very long journey to get here, and being thankful for all the decisions I’ve made.

-Carly G

The Old Woman in the Shower

I have a lot of hair. There’s a filter in the shower but with the volume of hair that falls out as a natural progression, there’s an inevitable clog every few months. A couple of years ago I bought a snake from Home Depot, and every few months I use it in the shower. The first time I ever did it, back in the Massachusetts condo, I was horrified to find what looked like a giant black rat. It wasn’t a rat but a huge cluster of hair. Now I know to expect it and laugh whenever I clean out the drain.

Over the years I’ve lived in California, I’ve gradually dyed my hair lighter so it wouldn’t be jet black with gray roots. It was dark brown with roots, then medium brown, then light brown. The sun helped to lighten it too. And each time I’d pull out the clog I’d notice it getting gradually lighter.

Recently though when I cleaned the drain, there was a mass of gray hair. What the hell? I instantly thought of the woman in Stephen King’s, The Shining, the woman in the bathtub that scared the life out of me when I was a kid. I held it, confused. I was aware that I’d decided to stop dying it and let it go natural. The quarantine triggered this because I could let it grow out without seeing anyone at work. And honestly it’s been a relief. I used to be so insecure about my roots showing, and before any event I’d have to buy a box and dye it. Letting it grow out with its natural gray color is freeing. Because the underneath is black with gray, and there are stands of white, and light and dark brown, and crazy curls, it looks pretty cool. Whenever I go anywhere people compliment me. This always surprises me and makes me happy. Men, women, young and old, stop me in stores and say they love my hair. So that’s the good part.

But then there’s the reality of seeing it in a slimy handful from the drain. More gray than not. Old woman hair. When I saw my wedding pictures I thought, “Well, that’s who I am now. This is the real me, my real, fluffy, untamed hair.” There was one Facebook poster who said, “Dye your hair. You’re too young to look like that.” And it stung for a second but then I thought “WhatEVAH,” and instead thought of how happy I felt, finally, in my own skin. And anyway, I’m not too young to look like that because that’s what color my hair is, like it or not. And everyone else complimented me on the wedding photos because they DID look nice. The photo above is from a few minutes ago, what I actually look like when I’m just hanging around the house.

I got some new crayons yesterday and was drawing this evening since I can never resist trying out fresh crayons, reveling in the smell of them, the whoosh sound the paper makes against my fingers, the waxy smoothness as the colors transform a white page to a story. I drew this picture, a Carly in the box. Sometimes I feel like the picture on the front of the box, then, crank, crank, crank, BOOM out pops this old woman.

Ryan said it was silly and I don’t look like the Carly in the box at all and I have natural beauty. That’s why he’s my husband, because he’s nice like that. More and more though, I do feel pretty even without makeup, even when my hair is a little all over the place and gray. Before I moved out here, I would never, ever, leave the house without makeup. I remember my mom putting her makeup on before bed so my stepdad would wake up to her “beautiful” face. I never did that but more often than not would “put on my face” before Ryan got home from work. My exes rarely saw me long without makeup. It was part of who I was then, and my actual face was never enough, not for me.

Maybe it’s another side effect of the quarantine, but I wear makeup less and less. I used to see women without makeup in stores and think, “I could never do that.” But lately I wonder why. This is who I am, and this is my face, and my hair, and my body. I’m the same on the inside, that has never changed. I just feel better about the outside now. Maybe it’s my age, or Ryan’s acceptance of me, or the year-long stay-at-home order.

Maybe it’s the inner artist that has burst out of me, that’s caused me to feel alive and content in a t-shirt and shorts, a red bandana in my hair and grout caking my fingers. Why is it that I feel prettier and more fulfilled when I’m eyeing a giant mosaic on the outside wall, band-aids on my fingers from broken tile, my cheeks red from the California sunshine, than when I weighed a lot less, and had Clairol brown hair, lots of makeup, and fancy cocktail dresses?

I like this acceptance of myself. I’m losing weight to live longer and be healthy, not because I hate the feel of me. Not because I had more worth then, even if some people thought so. I’m not 100% anti-makeup of course. I have some insecurity, like a lot of people. I feel better with eyeliner and lip gloss. But I don’t feel ugly without it and that’s been a big step for me. This other picture is from earlier tonight. This is how I feel on the inside, most of the time. Even if my photo shows me different, this smiley girl surrounded with sunshine and flowers is who I am at fifty-two, just below the surface.

To loving who were are

-Carly G