In a Blinding Flash of Light

This is Not Really That Much About L.A., I Promise

Something happened to me this morning as I finished Eve Babitz’s Two by Two, both completely enthralled and also in a little bit of agony. Enthralled because Eve’s writing is enthralling, and in a little bit of agony because her books are all basically a love letter to my own beloved L.A., but I’m not there anymore.

The politics going down in L.A., going down in the world, when I moved, I knew were my hill to die on. I was never going to be able to look past the facade barely covering the biggest scam I’m sure I’ll never see the likes of again in my own lifetime. Not that it was just L.A., but L.A. was backing this B.S. like its new fake best friend. And so I left.

Leaving L.A. for me was like leaving a lover—the one you knew you’d be so happy with for the rest of your life (the one, as Eve would say, you didn’t mind too much) if you could only put up with their philandering, but you can’t, so you leave. Only it was never L.A. itself that was a problem, it was these sinister people “in charge” of it, so I guess it was more like leaving the lover you knew you’d be happy with forever if only their awful family didn’t interrupt your life and your lover didn’t put up with them so much that you had to leave. But a place can’t kick out the bad eggs I suppose, so in the end it isn’t in any way the fault of L.A. itself, and I miss it dearly. But I’ve talked so much about loving L.A, about leaving L.A., written so much about it; it’s not that I ever think I’ll get over it, it’s just that it’s what it is. Which is entwined with, but not exactly about what happened to me this morning, which is that I saw and understood something about myself I’ve honestly never seen or understood before—which feels like it’s a majorly pivotal point in my life.

In my life I have felt consistently as if I should be different: more “together”, less “all over the place”, more “contained” and
dignified” or “respectable”or something. Instead I was always leaking all over the place, trying not to be leaking all over the place, trying to be less obnoxiously different than I should be, trying to fit into these attractive boxes that always tore or bent out of shape or got all soggy from my leaking out of them as soon as I got in.

But enough suspense. Here’s what it is that happened this morning:

In this one moment of clarity, because I could see it in Eve, I could suddenly see it in myself: I’m not a mess, I’m passionate. I’m in love with so much of life. I’m not defective, I’m beautiful.

I find myself sobbing out this lifetime of thinking I’ve been a side-eye, people whispering about how I wasn’t quite fitting in. And me taking on the job myself of trying to fix myself so I could be how I was supposed to be but wasn’t.

**To be honest, I want to be a little bit pissed that no on told me I was okay a long time ago. But you know what? I can think of a lot of people who did just that. But I couldn’t see it (I’ll get to the bottom of that in a sec). Maybe people who I wish would have seen me when I couldn’t just bought into my own view of myself—I guess I can’t blame them for believing me—who knows more about themselves than…them? And you know, I think lots of people want you to think something’s wrong with you so that you don’t live your full life, so that they, in their own insecurity, feel like at least they’re doing better than you are. But really and truly, I could start naming people who saw me and loved me and celebrated me exactly as I am, but then someone I didn’t name might feel left out. Anyway, thank you to those of you who actually do see what I couldn’t. Til now.**

This essay (this “thing” I’m writing at this moment) is a great example of how much I’ve thought of myself as a mess. As too much. As too little. Just about every time I write about something personal, this voice shows up: Why should I write about myself? And why should I think anyone would be interested? How conceited, how self-centered, how messy, how embarrassing, how…wrong.

All of this probably comes from my poor mother, who was never acceptable to herself. Who couldn’t bear to look at the monstrosity that was her childhood long enough to have a proper decade or so of crying and to get past it so that she could let herself live, let herself be, and stop trying to be someone more acceptably-1950’s-perfect—to fit some mold and being so angry that she couldn’t quite do it—and pretty upset that I wouldn’t fit in it ether. No blame.

But check this out:

Understanding myself as a passionate person rather than a mess makes every puzzle piece fall into place.

It’s why I fall in love with everything and feel so much. It’s why I can’t learn enough about everything I love. It’s why I don’t ever want to let L.A. go, not fully. Passion is messy. Sometimes it’s loud, it’s leaky, it’s a lot of crying and laughing and everything in between. It’s not contained or dignified, at least not all the time. Sometimes it’s very quiet. Sometimes it doesn’t want to talk, or do anything—passion takes a lot of recovery time, especially if you’re an absolute introvert like me—and sometimes it loves jabbering and doing all of the things it thought it wouldn’t ever want to again just yesterday afternoon.

Passion has its challenges. But I don’t think they need to be fixed, I think they need to be embraced. This is the moment I realize I will probably never have perfect “balance” in my life like I’ve always tried to have and failed miserably after feeling super “soft life” for three days in a row. I’ll probably never be the person who’s super consistently “together” in a traditional way, because as soon as I understand something, I’m ready to move on, or take it further—I’m always in a state of learning, a beginner, in a way—so I’m never really that put-together person who appears to others just so wise and teaching the same mastery class for 30 years in a row. This is the moment I realize I’ll never look or be “perfect” in the way people appear in magazines or some books (thank God not Eve’s books); as a commercial actor, I both made fun of that and also tried to BE it. I’ll probably never be consistently consistent at anything but being passionate about what I’m passionate about, which is a lot, usually all at once. Which is often frustrating, because you can’t do and have and be everything at once, particularly because a lot of it is mutually exclusive or at least contradictory. I often want everything at once, I want to experience everything I want to experience, which for the first time, I don’t see as embarrassing, or too much or self-absorbed or wrong. I just see it as how I’ve always been and as okay as any other way to be.

I’ve always wanted to read every book about crows or plants or whatever else, and every book by whatever author I’m into at the moment. I’ve always wanted to live in small sanctuary-y places, make them beautiful, and in them paint, laugh, sing, dance with people I love, and also by myself. I’ve always wanted to be with plants, to touch trees, to sit in grass, to play, to work hard, to love my kids and my home and my pets and plants and friends and family and clients in my own way. But I’ve never felt entirely free to be entirely myself unless I was alone, without guilt and shame and self-recrimination ruining my day. And while the guilt and shame and self-recrimination may persist as echoes of everything I’ve been through, those voices now become background noise: thinking I or even any of that should be different stops today.

No longer is that person that I am unacceptable to myself. No longer will I try to fix her, change her, reign her in or tell her she shouldn’t be exactly who she is, no matter how painful how I am sometimes is for me. No longer will I believe people who sigh exasperatedly down at me from atop their high horses. (Ride away already, folks).

I can appreciate the ways in which I am consistent, where I show up, such as a parent, or in my work, as a professional—but as a parent and a professional who is always interested in and pushing into new content, into new ways of being, into new insights and not embarrassed to admit that even though I’m really good at one kind of thing, that I’m also always taking that further and branching into new ways of teaching and learning. I think my kids and my clients benefit from this. I can appreciate where I’m organized (which I very much often am and love to be), where I’m steadfast, and where I’m very much not a mess, because I’m certainly all that as well. I’m all of it.

**Here’s where that over-used quote about “I contain multitudes” (or something like that ) would go but I refuse to put it in here.**

I think over the years that integrity has become something that is the basis of everything that means anything to me. Whenever I catch myself out of integrity, which I certainly do, I do my best to right the ship and the situation as much as possible. But I think I didn’t see that by judging myself so harshly for who I am, who I can be at my core—a passionate person, with all that entails, was actually so far out of integrity.

Eve herself might have been shocked at what I’m going to say next, and I’m pretty sure shocked was something Eve wasn’t very often. What I’m going to say is this: I have Eve Babitz to thank for being willing to (and being unable NOT to) be anything but unapologetically Eve Babitz. And for bringing all of her into her writing. *And to her editors for not neatening her up too much*. In all her craziness, her messiness, her wildness, she was, I’m going to dare to say, integrated. I could explain that, but I won’t. And because I could see her, in all her whole-hearted-life-feasting, in her imperfect-ness, her enthusiastic extreme messiness, in her leaking all over the place, her fierce independence, her huge love of life, mixed in with her intelligence, her consistency, her goodness, strength, her honesty, her hard work and her talent—all of it together—as extraordinarily gorgeous, I could suddenly, in a flash of light, see myself that way too. And what have we been comparing ourselves to anyway?? For how much I’ve seen myself as so vastly different from Eve, I suddenly see that our similarities are even more striking. And Eve and I, these passionate women that we are, we’re just fine.