51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life (29 page)

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Authors: Kristen McGuiness

BOOK: 51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life
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My father has been asking me to visit him down on that South Texas farm. And I keep telling him to get settled there, and I will come. But as I listen to Siren tell me about how she cannot call her father back, that she just isn’t ready, it hits me that we might never be ready. And if I want a chance to love my dad, this might be the only chance I’ve got. I know I will call him when I get back. I will make the reservation.
 
I take Siren to an old jazz club, and as we settle into our seats I realize what a perfect night this is. Siren and I walk through the West Village afterward. Down the empty, cobblestoned streets, laughing and holding hands. There is so much magic in the air that I love the city as though for the first time.
 
We go back to our historical apartment and wander the halls of the Chelsea Hotel. Some say we’re born alcoholics. Others think we become them. I think it all comes down to
The Shining
. When Stephen King wrote his famous book, he was in the grips of addiction. And in the story, the Jack Nicholson character decides to take the job at the hotel because he is running from his own drinking problem. And I think that in a way, the Shining is alcoholism. It can kill us. It can brutalize the people who love us. It can turn otherwise lovely, charming people into monsters bent on destruction.
 
And so as we sneak around the hallways that comprise the Chelsea Hotel, I am not surprised when we stumble upon a photo of Jack Nicholson on the shoot of
The Shining
. It is the scene where he sits at the bar talking to the phantom bartender. And in that instance, my own chimeras call out to me. The ones that tell me that I too can have a drink.
 
But I don’t. Because that night in New York, I get to cross the cobblestoned streets with my friend. I get to have dinner with my mom. And I get to appreciate every moment of this city I left after that fateful September day years ago.
 
39
 
Date Thirty-Nine: The Condors of La Cañada
 
Last Thursday my wheels fell off again.
 
It all started when I went to a new meeting in Pasadena. Noelle had asked me if I would house sit, and since I have adopted her golden retriever Rocky, I quickly agreed. Plus, Noelle’s house is exactly the house I want to have one day when I grow up. Noelle lives in the now-suburban enclave called La Cañada. Back in the day, La Cañada was known for its sprawling farms and rather staunch conservative ranch folk. It was a bit like Texas, but to the west of Pasadena. Since that time, new money with newer Priuses have moved in, but there is still an independent air to the town and horse crossing signs at nearly every intersection.
 
Noelle’s house is nestled into one of the foothills of La Cañada. It is an old Spanish-style hacienda with brightly painted walls, a large backyard with a swimming pool, and books upon books about mysticism.
 
I figure that my extended stay in La Cañada also gives me a great opportunity to try some new meetings, and maybe even meet some new men. And that’s when the shit hits the proverbial fan. Because as I am sitting in one of those new meetings, the secretary gets up to make announcements and I feel like I have been hit by a lightning bolt. I have been waiting years to feel that full body tingle again, that time-space continuum of
Who is that
?, that great, big, powerful glimpse of love at first sight. I see this man whom I do not know and because I am so mesmerized I do not even hear his name.
 
There is a smoke break and since I don’t smoke anymore, I could easily go up and talk to him. I could ask him any number of questions. I could ask his name. I could at least act as though I notice him when he is standing five feet away from me talking to someone else from the meeting, but I don’t. I am terrified. And even though he is by no means the hottest guy in the room, all I can think is that he will not be attracted to me, and so I freeze. I freeze. And I hate myself all the more for it.
 
That weekend Mimi comes out to La Cañada for a hike, and while we are walking through the neighborhood, I tell her about my issues with talking to Mr. Pasadena.
 
Later that night, Mimi and I go out again because she is determined that I practice my flirting skills. She tells me that once I see someone I like, I just need “to keep my eye on the prize.” We go to a bar up the street from my apartment in Silver Lake, the one with the sober bartender I think is hot. Braden is still there, but he’s not sober anymore. I explain to him my flirting problems.
 
“You know,” he says as he leans across the bar, looking pretty darn sexy, even for a relapsed alcoholic, “it’s as much what’s behind the eyes, as how you look at people.”
 
I look up, and Braden is staring at me, and we lock gazes. We’re incredibly close, and I try desperately to bring it forth. To show him what’s in there, but I can’t, because for all the fire and feeling and passion I have in me, I cannot expose it in this moment with him. So I drop my eyes, and for the rest of our time there, he flirts with Mimi. And I know why. Because Braden is wrong—it’s as much how you look at people. What good is it if I got all this behind my eyes, and I won’t share it?
 
I wake up the next morning more depressed than ever. Because I am thirty and single and now, apparently, don’t even know how to flirt. Not good. Not good at all. I feel like getting some rope and finding a sturdy limb. Depression takes over with a heavy hand, and all I can see or feel is my loneliness and rejection and the fear that there is something very wrong with me. I get into a huge fight with both my mom (who tells me, “Well, sometimes you do talk too much, and when you start telling a joke, you just can’t stop. It’s like, K, enough!”) and my grandmother (who tells me, “Well, you
can
be gorgeous.”), and herein lies the problem. Because as much as I can intellectually state that I am smart and kind and funny and attractive, when you put me in front of someone I like, I think I am having one of those days where I am not gorgeous and that if I open my mouth, I will talk too much and go on for too long. So I shudder a smile and shuffle away. Like some strange combination of Pat from
Saturday Night Live
and
Shrek
—one part androgynous misfit, one part ogre.
 
I explain this to Lidia when I see her the following week. The night before had been my second chance to talk to the Pasadena man. At the break I saw him go outside, and I sensed my opportunity, but I got nervous and decided to go to the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror instead. I left the bathroom and confidently walked down the stairs. So confidently, I even smacked the ceiling in the place where it was low enough for me to reach it. That’s right, I got it. I hit the landing, looked up, and Mr. Pasadena was right there. He was staring at me. He was also in the middle of talking to an attractive girl who was around my age. I could have smiled. I could have stood up tall and said hello. I could have kept my eye on that prize as Mimi had tried to train me to do, but I didn’t. I think there might have been a small spasm around my mouth, but before it could resemble anything like a smile, I put my head down and hurried past.
 
“What are you thinking in that moment?” Lidia asks. God love her for recognizing these experiences as real challenges to wholeness, and not just some dumb girl complaining about some dumb dude. And I remember the moment clearly, remember my thought in it, “She is skinnier than me.” That girl to whom Mr. Pasadena is talking, and she is skinnier than me.
 
Lidia and I go through what age this all comes from, and it’s pretty clear to both of us that this sounds like preadolescent anxiety. The middle school years, where I was undeveloped and unpopular. Also, the years where my grandmother and I really went at it. Where whatever chance I had to feel good about myself was always undercut with the sense that I could be “better,” “cooler,” “more gorgeous,” but that I just couldn’t make the cut.
 
These wounds are old. I wish I was done with them, but when I can’t even lift my head and smile at someone I like, they’re obviously still getting to me. I go to choose a stone before lying down, when Lidia begins telling me a story. Years before, she had been in Peru, hiking as part of her training with the Shamans. She was on a three-day vision quest and between the small amount of food she had, the torturous climb she was doing, and the altitude, she had begun to feel that she couldn’t make it back to the camp.
 
“I was petrified, Kristen. I couldn’t move. I just stood there, clutching the wall of the cliff I was climbing down. Terrified that I didn’t have it in me to take the next step. And then a miracle happened. A condor came flying out from the side of the cliff. And he flew around me three times. Back and forth in front of me. So close that had I reached out, I would have been able to touch him. Do you know what we pray to the condor for?”
 
And I do know because I have been doing this for long enough with Lidia to have begun adopting her prayers as my own. “The big picture,” I answer.
 
“Exactly,” she says, smiling at me. “In that moment, it was as though I could see the world through a bird’s-eye view. Our struggles, our fears, they’re only as big as we make them. And we can let these little things stop us from reaching our potential, or we can see them for what they are and keep walking.”
 
“I want to keep walking, Lidia. I am trying to do the things to just keep walking.”
 
And then I tell her how on my way to her house, I called my dad, and I told him I would find a flight to visit him.
 
“Really, K?” he barely whispered.
 
“Really, Daddy.” Because I know that I can blame Nana or my dad or that little girl inside for all these fears and failings, but the truth is until I make them right, I can only blame me. I look down at the stones Lidia has laid out for me, and I choose a small crystal in the shape of a snake. Lidia tells me it’s perfect.
 
“Why?” Finally, after months, I get up the courage to ask.
 
“Because it is the stone that allows you to find the truths that you keep hidden inside.”
 
Before I lie down, I tell her, “Lidia, I feel it. I feel that my preteen self knows so much about this. That she holds the answers.”
 
And so we go in to find her. Lidia begins by holding a crystal pendulum above me to gauge where the energy is flowing. And though neither of us can explain why or how, the pendulum begins moving with a momentum that would be scary if I didn’t feel like I was the one causing it. And then I am in a full vision: I am in a maze, holding my middle school self, and she is vomiting it all out. All the nasty words and insecure thoughts and unnecessary fears. She falls back on me, and I continue to hold her. My real body is practically levitating with energy while I do this, and I can tell that something in me is fully turned over to this work. I don’t know if it’s real or not, but I don’t care. I need it to be in that moment. I need to heal these wounds. And so far, this work with Lidia seems to be doing the trick. It seems to be showing me things I haven’t been able to see before. It seems to be giving me a hint of the big picture.
 
“She wants chocolate.” I come out of it and can feel my teen self desiring something sweet.
 
“Chocolate is often the reward for magic, like in Harry Potter,” Lidia informs me.
 
“She also wants to go to the arboretum.”
 
“Then, take her.”
 
Later, I get a chocolate milkshake from McDonald’s, and I look to see if there is an arboretum with a maze anywhere in Southern California. There is only one, and it is in La Cañada, home of Noelle and my future life. On Sunday I go to the arboretum, and when I ask the sweet Eastern European lady working there where the maze is, and she takes me by the hand and leads me to it, I know that this day is charged with magic. Even though I can see above the hedges, I still let myself get a little lost. I get to the middle and follow Lidia’s direction, “Sit in the middle of the maze and imagine there is a spike of energy going from the top of your head through your first chakra.” I get to the middle where there is a donor memorial—stone tablets on the ground with the names of people who have passed away. Smack dab in the middle is a stone that says, “In memory of Nana,” and a shiver so strong bolts through my body.
 
I sit on that stone, and I channel that energy. And then I open my eyes and look around, and I know that someday I will not do this alone.
 
40
 
Date Forty: Archetypes Away
 
“We are not on a date, Henry Monk!” I shout. But we are standing in line at the silent movie theater, and he is buying my ticket. As I hit the relatively nice button-down he has dressed himself up in, I know, that whether I want it to be or not, I am definitely on a date with Henry Monk.
 
And it’s really no surprise. Henry and I have known each other for well over a year, and started a 7:00 a.m. Friday meeting together last spring. He is a poet, a father of two, and an incredibly cerebral man. He is also in construction, is as big as a bull, and looks a lot like Bruce Willis. It’s not that I don’t find Henry attractive because in certain instances, I do.

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