The Talking Trellis

(A letter to my younger self upon the arrival of our thirty ninth year)

Forgive my interruption, I am twenty years ahead of you right now, and thought it best to address a few of our issues. I’ll try to be as brief as possible, well, no not really, for if you cannot be winded with yourself, who else will ever listen?

You have been out of high school for almost a year now, more then likely you are working a shift at The Wherehouse where you are too young to be a manager. I know you are doing a good job, you are a hard worker and way too stubborn to admit the job is beyond your maturity level. In fact, in a few days, on our golden birthday, you will be wearing a t-shirt with your full broom stick skirt (I am sorry I wasn’t able to get to us sooner to stop the broomstick skirt phase) that commemorates our birthday as the release date of Depeche Mode’s Violator album. I know you are contemplating sharing with Martin Gore how much their song, Somebody, has meant to you since junior high, it is a wise decision not to share, I am proud of us for that, just as it was a wise decision to stock the manager’s office with bottled water. You will save several people’s lives on our birthday, including the members of Depeche Mode. Trust me, though your boss will be too egotistical to give you the props we deserve, Alan Wilder’s appreciation will make up for it in spades.

This birthday that you are about to face is going to be a tough one, there is no way I can sugar coat this information, you’ll just have to face the truth. I know you would rather retreat into your journal (relax, I know you are near the last page of that beautiful journal your parents gave you for graduation, the one from 84 Charring Cross Road, the gift they got so right. I promise there will be other journals, just try and find ones that lock, this will safe us a lot of grief and despair) and wonder the days away, wishing our world was still under Oberon’s rule, yet I need you to face some facts. You are on the eve of discovering how your life will be on every birthday for many, many years. Our golden birthday is just the starting point. You are going to cry, and let yourself, it is a good cry and needed and will cushion our future birthdays to come. Your family will forget that you do not like chocolate cake. Your family will order pepperoni pizza, despite our being a vegetarian since our fifteenth year on earth. Your family will give you presents that make no sense, and they will wrap them in a plastic trash bag. I wish I could say this was a metaphor for something else, I am sorry, it is not; though its image serves well as a metaphor for our birthday next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and the year after that, ad nausea. You will pull yourself together and find the strength to celebrate the way you want to, good for you! Frenzy is playing at Gazzari’s, and do me a favor, listen to Charlie Sheen when he tells you where to get a tattoo, the experience is one of our best experiences ever, you’ll mark my words.

I know you are trying to decide if you should go to Europe, do it, do not hesitate. Stop worrying about money; it will be there when you need it. Speaking in German with the Japanese Mime student in France will be a pivotal moment for you, for us. As will be: getting recognized as your great grandmother’s descendant on a tour bus in Holland, sitting illegally (shhh, you and I do not get much better about following the rules, I’m afraid) on Dionysius’ throne in Greece, chipping away at The Berlin Wall, hearing the Irish end their sentences with, “love”, being harassed for sitting down in the train station in Rome, picking up litter in the Vatican, earning the nickname- panini bambino, staying up all night on the ferry from Brindizi to Greece, and seeing Mr. Zentis in the Louvre. (I am sorry, this last one made me cry. It will be the last time we see him before HIV takes him away and before we get the chance to tell him how much he meant to us, how much we learned from him. Cherish that conversation on the stairs, about the molding, on the building, that holds some of the world’s finest art. We will replay the lesson from this talk over and over again, especially when someone tells us that details do not matter.) If you can, for me, go and meet that young woman at the Van Gogh Exhibit, missing that date remains my one regret from our time on the continent.

I am pulling you in for a hug now, because I know about the two main things that are on your mind. First- When you did that favor for Helen and the object of her affection found you attractive, attractive to the degree to want to have sex with you. This will happen again. It happened before, we were just too dense to realize it, and it will happen again, many times, I promise. I wish I could tell you that our denseness goes away in this regard, however, it doesn’t, though it does add to our charm. (That, and a good pair of fishnets, so you may as well stock up whenever you can.) Besides, you are only a few months away from successfully sneaking back stage after The Indigo Girls play The Wiltern and when Amy Ray smiles at us for the first time. Second- How you would like to tell Aleks that you two are the same, yet there is a nagging difference that keeps you quiet. You, my sweet young self, are struggling with that difference. It is going to take you another decade to really work it out. All I can say is to embrace your attraction to masculinity. Eventually you’ll discover that you do not have to be masculine, that you will find the women who own it and one in particular that will set your, our, heart on fire.

The twenty years to get from golden to me, us, are not going to be easy. You are going to have to face many hard obstacles, hardships, and hard truths. You will do so mostly with a smile. You will hold onto things that matter so tightly you’ll scare some people. You will let go of things that no longer serve us, things that were woven tightly into us as intrinsic for survival. You’ll find a happy medium and set up some good boundaries. You’ll make a lot of mistakes, and you won’t listen to me when I tell you they are all worth it. Your family may never fully understand our favorites, yet, they not only love us all the same, they like us an awful lot too.

The twenty long years it takes you to get to me, will go by in a flash. We will carry on together, still making some uncomfortable, still standing up for what we believe, still laughing everyday. We’ll not see ourself as a strict black and white model of our ideal. Instead we will allow us some space to grow and change and evolve; to fully become our conscious self. I’ll need to borrow your youthful enthusiasm to help us get over some of the damage we have amassed. In turn, I will constantly remind you of how far we have come, as I gently, with kindness and warmth, envelope you with the magic of how we learned to love us.

Sincerely,
me

Internet surfing for various random topics can sometimes be dangerous. Dangerous in that- look out you may discover something you need to know but don’t want to face- sort of way. The other day, I set out to back up a silly non consequential fact and ended up discovering a major set back in my well being: physically, emotionally and conscientiously.

Over a year ago, after much kicking and screaming, I was tested and diagnosed with hypothyroidism. The result made sense and answered a lot of questions the “collective we” had concerning my health and, interestingly enough, the state of my physical body. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been with me and this blog from the beginning, as one of the reasons I started this blog was to discuss and navigate through this diagnosis with the feeling of a cyber support system cheering me on. Whether or not this was real or imagined, the cyber support system, made no difference to me- it was and is what I need to keep present and mindful about what is happening. However, somewhere along the way I stopped writing about this topic, and in truth, ceased writing as regularly as I envisioned I would be. Life happens, now is not the time to beat myself up about that.

After my diagnosis, my DO and I had a discussion. She advised me to cut out eggs and cheese and take fish oil pills. I shared with her that those two foods were not on my staple list whatsoever and asked if there was a vegetarian option for fish oil. She asked me what my diet consisted of and when I shared with her my staples, she gave me the same look everyone gives me when they learn I am a Vegetarian or see/hear what I eat. It is that look of, “you should really not look the way you look if that is what you eat- so clearly you must be lying.” My diet consists of mainly cruciferous vegetables, soy and roots. This has been so prominent in my life for over the twenty three years I have been a Vegetarian that my father once told me if I didn’t tell him what I wanted for my birthday he was just going to give me a pound of broccoli! A gift that suited me fine, as broccoli has always been my favorite food. My DO then amended her advise to state, “Yes- eat as much broccoli, cauliflower, leafy greens, spinach, tofu as you can and throw in a ton of flaxseed for good measure.” I ran with it. I was working on my trust issues with the medical industry and by all accounts this advise sounded just.

Turns out, after a night of frivolous internet surfing, I shouldn’t have been trusting. I should have followed my gut and kept researching and questioning, for that advise was not sound, medically or otherwise. If one is diagnosed with hypothyroidism, one needs to stay away from goitrogens- which are comprised of two major categories: Cruciferous Vegetables and Soy Related Products. Cue brain explosion and tears! In addition, omega threes are essential to introduce into the body, especially DHA and EPA- flax seed contains ALA which can sometimes be converted inside the body to DHA & EPA as long as one is incredibly healthy, not obese hypothyroidic red heads named Shawn Marie! Can you hear the bombastic Cosi Fan Tutte measure that is vibrating through my brain? Surely that is loud enough for everyone to hear, right?

I spent the rest of the evening in a shock with tears off and on as I found more and more data to back this up. Evidence states that one with hypothyroidism should avoid goitrogens, especially in raw form, eat foods high in iron and enjoy lean meats and seafood as their staples. Did I mention I have been a Vegetarian for almost 24 years? I spent the next day in denial and avoidance, losing myself in En Vogue videos on youtube. I spent yesterday coming back into the awareness while simultaneously doing tasks that took me away from thinking about it, and researching what to do about it all now. I received lots of advice after posting my dismay on facebook and from phone conversations with my parents: Mom, “That’s easy- Just add seafood.” Dad, “I wish it were easy to just add seafood.”

Therein lies the crux of the issue for me. I can get over accepting and following bad advice. I can even try to stop punishing myself for doing so. I can regroup and move forward. There are lots of ways I can approach this and even ways that do not mean I have to stop being a Vegetarian. I know this, and yet I still feel as if I made a wrong turn in the guise of following my conscience with, what was to be believed, healthy side effects. This has me shaken to the core. I am a Vegetarian because I believe in its merit and rippling good efforts, actions and outcomes. I have not ever been a preachy one, I have always known what works for one may not work for another, yet I have been a tried and true Vegetarian all the same. I have the knowledge to back up what is good and right and just about being a Vegetarian, for the individual and the world at large. I simply never thought it wasn’t good for me. And this has me heartbroken.

There is still processing to be done. I can see a better health coming my way, I can see this as an answer to so many doubts and concerns, I truly can. Yet, right now, I am still sad and need to allow that time to ruminate and churn and eventually become something less sad, something a little more optimistic. I will get there, and I will keep you posted, for now though- I am introspective about a huge part of myself that perhaps was never meant to be. And nothing about it is easy.

Dan the Man!

Hope it is a swell Day and joyous New Year!