Living As All of Me

[HannahOne]

I just stumbled on an Alanis Morissette duet with Brandi Carlile.

Flashback. I could feel myself in the late 90s, Y2K I was so full of myself, stomping around graduate school, heels clicking around my office, all my papers (we still used a lot of paper back then!), my special red pen, my computer my chair. So young. So much energy. So much hope. Such big plans. So sure I would make it. It was a belief with eyes closed, sheer willpower, immigrant bravado. Give the firm handshake, look them in the eye, make the deal. Who was that person!?? I feel a million miles from that now.

But that was me!  "I'm broke but I'm happy, I'm poor but I'm kind...I'm young and I'm underpaid, I'm tired but I'm working... and what it all comes down to (ooo-ooo!) is that everything is gonna be fine, fine fine..."

And it is. Weirdly. I mean, horribly, at times. I lost two jobs. $50,000. A book. A future. A house. A fetus. 1/4 of a lung. My mind. My career. Hung onto the man, barely. We can still see the whites of each other's eyes, at least. We're in another house. We had more babies. Made another $50,000, and another and another. Made new arteries to carry oxygen around the dead spot. Wrote another book. Made a new future. I got another job, kinda. Here we are.

What a ride.

I want to bring that me... she'd be depressed by my present, LOL, so I won't bring her here.... I want to bring that me, her energy, her fearlessness even as she was in fight/flight, her vision...bring that me and this one together somehow. She was blind to a lot and took some big risks, not all of which worked out. Had some terrible luck. But she was honest. And overall, it worked out fine, fine, fine.

Even then I knew the upsides had a down. I knew I was going against the grain of generational trauma and dysfunction. I was walking a tightrope without a net, in heels and an ill-fitting suit. Alanis, "Isn't it ironic, don't you think? It's like rain on your wedding day, a free ride when you've already paid, the good advice that you just didn't take....it's like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife. Meeting the man of my dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife...."

This is all part of me, part of All of Me. I don't want to forget. When I get down on myself for how some things turned out, I have to remember what I went though to get here. And that was just my 20s and 30s, LOL. We aren't even talking about the toddler years, the teens, Frank have mercy.

New playlist unlocked. My teen has never heard of Alanis Morissette. WHAT?! Where have I been all her life? ALEXA, PLAY ALANIS MORISSETTE! ALEXA, LOUDER! ALEXA, VOLUME TEN! I taught her how to head bang and we are having a mosh pit in the kitchen. Luckily dinner was light so we can stomach the jumping and hair-whipping. Here we are. Still here, still alive.