Defiance.

Is it a sense of security, of home, or money? A job, a career even, a lucrative one? A cozy place to live, a comfortable relationship?

 

What keeps you were you are? What’s your personal “Magic Feather…” the thing(s) without which you KNOW certainly wouldn’t be able to fly?

 

Anchoring and groundedness are excellent goals. Ones for which I strive. I realized a few years ago I was looking to Things and Stuff for reassurance that I was OK, that I was doing well, that I was successful. Most of my life’s been a struggle for something or other. Love, acceptance, recognition, work, you name it. I strove to get “IT” in myriad forms in the hopes that it would make me feel good about myself. I remember dressing for the first day of school and hoping that my shiny shoes, the velvet-skirted dress, perfectly fluffed hair and highly marketable smile would be up to the challenge of getting everyone to love me.

The problem with waiting on other people for that approbation is that it is frighteningly difficult for me to see and absorb whilst in it. At my fifth High School reunion I remember chatting with some of the people who had indubitably been in the “Inner Circle.” (The Inner Circle being a clique so self-aware that 1) Its members referred to it thusly and 2) Were actually the drafters of  Venn Diagrams, drawn up in semi-secret, displaying where various people fell in this social solar system.) I suddenly flashed back to having seen a rare, surreptitiously Xeroxed copy of this clique’s members in junior year and being relieved that I was even on it, let alone in a couple of overlapping circles of cool. My friends laughed “Are you kidding? Everyone loved you.” I was genuinely flabbergasted because I’d not felt that way for any consistent duration. Sure, doing theater garnered the attention and coolness that it can bring, and I loved that. But I was always sure to hew close to the behaviours of the cooler kids because I didn’t want to be spun out of the gravity of the Inner Planets of the cool kids solar system, left to freeze on the outskirts of the system or worse yet, to be a mere moon orbiting another, greater figure who absorbed you into their own gravitational pull until you became a satellite. A hanger-on with little intrinsic value. I think most people feel awkward in their teen years. In retrospect? I gave myself weight and gravitas beyond my years back then. Somewhere, that eroded away, leaving raw nerves. We are building that back up, one shiny layer at a time.

 

I can’t say I have totally outgrown the need for the comfort of acceptance, of inner circles, of security. But I’ve been trying. Some of my attempts to cut loose of the illusion of security have looked pretty nuts. And some only looked crazy to me even. The security of an alcoholic haze, of a relationship that seemed like a safe bet, a high paying job, a beautiful rent-controlled apartment, a city I love…

 

…and I’ve left all of these behind.

 

I’m unemployed. I’m legally and technically homeless. I’ve little in terms of emotional ties to any one place. I’m in the odd throes of new emotional waters in my relationship. I got to this place by not settling for the comfort of life, of choices, of partners who were so noncommittal as to erode the foundations of our relationship.

 

Freefall.

 

This has always tempted me. When I was a kid I used to hold tightly to pillars in the subway when trains came into their station with blattering roaring clatters of warm stagnant air. My Mother attributed this to my usual fucking weirdness until I told her it was so I made sure I didn’t jump. Not because I wanted to die, because I don’t. Didn’t . But because I wanted to know what that second of fall felt like. The observation decks at The Empire State building and 2 WTC (rest in peace) held the same vertiginous sexiness. I loved even the idea of that sensation…because I knew I’d never jump,. Because I found living too fascinating, gave me the freedom to imagine.

There is a reason The Fool is my Tarot card. I don’t think I’ve ever had a reading where that fucking card didn’t show up. Leaping, falling merrily from a precipice with his faithful dog, Luck, following right along.

 

I jump. That is what I do. And, as my Mother used to sigh and my teachers used to scold, despite my haphazard lopsided mismatched approach, I stick those landings.

 

Is it easy? Fuck no. I’m sick with anxiety when I have to make these decisions. Even when they are inevitable, I worry. Surface ripple worry, really. But I know I will land successfully.

 

And in the off chance I stumble? Fantastic. Gives me a shot to display grace and resourcefulness in adversity. What’s not to love about that?

 

Not long after first starting in on negotiations with The Dominant Guy we were having a discussion and, at one point, he insisted he wanted to play a song for me from one of his favorite musicals. OK yeah I know this sounds kinda awesome and sensitive and shit but you have to know my secret here: I am NOT a fan of the vast majority of contemporary musicals. And don’t ask me about Sondheim. I’ll just hurt your feelings and I’ve had to negotiate carefully with some of my dear friends to avoid this conversational swamp. Yeah I’m lookin’ at you, Missy Fuschia Hair. So I sat there thinking “Well, this is kinda awkward. What if I hate it?” but smiled to myself and sat on the phone listening to a fairly standard musical theater song about something or other. I got his point and it made sense in this conversation but…yeah. I didn’t like the song itself very much. And that’s the problem with musicals…when too much stress is placed on a song as plot movement you wind up compelled to CRAMASMUCHINFORMATIOASPOSSIBLEINTO5MINUTESORDIE and that bores me to fuckfuckity fucko.

 

But.

 

I digress.

 

He sent me the file for the song and I dutifully uploaded it to my iTunes. Didn’t give it much more thought.

 

Today though I was exhaustively and inexorably working my way through my music collection as I had many hours of extra time at the airport. I was midflight desperately trying to avoid seeing the Justin Bieber movie (Really, American Airlines…Justin Bieber?!?) down to the shit I almost never listen to when I hit the song he’d played and sent me months and months ago. “Well fuck it, why not…” so I tabbed on it. And even though I still don’t love the rather bland arrangement and the overly polished musical theater girls singing it, and though it still makes me smile and shake my head that he loves this stuff, lyrically it hit me today is that this song is exactly about where I am right now.

 

Saying goodbye to things I thought I wanted…or even needed…in order to be happy. Taking a path and making choices that may or may not lead to an easy process, but is the only way to be true to myself. SO this one goes out to ya, The Dominant Guy. To my friends who reminded me that I am never alone, and who support my flights of fancy. Today I too am “Defying Gravity.”