Life in LA

Narcissism

The other night in my theory class a student did a presentation on Heinz Kohut's theories around narcissism and, to illustrate the concept, showed a clip from YouTube of a blogger called The Narcissist. It was basically just some guy's video blog. He talked about his new haircut and how he had some emails that had piled up that he needed to respond to. It was a pretty typically boring blog entry, done through video.

Everyone in my class jumped on it, calling him completely narcissistic. They were aghast at the concept of a person putting their whole life and their thoughts on the internet for anyone to read. How full of himself he must be, they practically shouted, he's an absolute narcissist!

I sat quietly, a vague smirk on my face. Being a blogger and being vaguely part of some kind of blogging community, I have a different idea of it all I guess. Of course it's completely self-absorbed and narcissistic in a sense but I don't think that's all it is.

The DSM IV classifies Narcissistic Personality Disorder in the following manner:

Diagnostic criteria for 301.81 Narcissistic Personality Disorder

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasty or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning in early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

(2) is preoccupied with fantasties of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

(3) believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

(4) requires excessive admiration

(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or indentify with the feelings and needs of others

(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her

(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

On Thanksgiving I had a conversation with my friends Jake & George about memoir writing and the self-absorbed nature of the genre. It ties right in with everything I've been talking about above. Both Jake & George are fiction writers and Jake, who was leading the discussion in some sense, began to stumble around a question he was trying to pose about memoir writing and I could tell that he wanted to ask if I thought it was self-indulgent but that he was afraid to ask, lest he offend me. It's COMPLETELY self-indulgent, I declared before he could stumble any further. He looked relieved.

And it is. I know that. I've been writing "creative nonfiction" for years now. Writing and writing and writing about myself and my life. And I don't really know what to say besides the fact that it's the only way in which I find that I can truly explore myself and my world and how I feel about it all. I've never had the impulse to write fiction. Why make things up when there's so much material sitting right in your own lap? I guess it just becomes narcissistic  when you start putting it all out there for everyone to read.

Yesterday, I read a NY Times review of Donald Antrim's The Afterlife in which the reviewer says about memoir writing:

The cultural imperative to confess, to share, to work through our troubles in public — in print, on television, in a blog — has had the effect of eroding the Tolstoyan entitlement to unique suffering, an ideal that it is the prerogative of literature to defend.

Which is not easy, since even the most powerful and memorable memoirs — Joan Didion's "Year of Magical Thinking," say, or Dave Eggers's "Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" — pass through the banality of common experience on their way to the higher ground of privileged insight. It's a thorny, boggy path, on which attributes like honesty and sincerity are indispensable (just ask James Frey) but also insufficient (just ask everyone else). The application of a skeptical intelligence or a pretty prose style to the raw material of real life can be an enticement to readers, but also a distraction, an evasion of the stark, suspicious questions that hover unspoken between author and audience. How is this any of your business? Why are you telling me this? And so, in a way that novels rarely are, memoirs are governed — and frequently constricted — by considerations of tact. The writer must judge how much the readers really want to know, and also assess how much exposure, of self and others, is appropriate.

Tact. How much to tell your readers. How much to disclose about yourself. The other night a friend expressed concern about being written about here and I assured him that he would not be. There is so much that I don't write about here, I said. I have a specific subject that I attempt to stick to: my parent's deaths and the written exploration thereof.

It's a fine line I walk. Using my own life as a creative subject. But really, I think we all use our own lives as creative subjects. Whether we mask ourselves in fictional characters or flourishes of paint, we cannot help but be there, somewhere.

My Genes

I had my doctor's appointment this morning. I hadn't been to the doctor in two years and requested a full physical. Sitting in the waiting room, fielding text messages and reading a fantastic short story by my friend George Ducker, I didn't feel very anxious. Usually I tend to feel a little apprehensive, a little emotional, when I visit the doctor. I spent ten years in and out of the hospital with my parents.

Even as I checked in - weight, blood pressure, etc. - I felt calm and composed. Even as I sat in a gown on the exam table waiting for the doctor I felt fine, my thoughts on this past weekend, this coming week. It didn't take long for the doctor to appear. She was young and calm and smart. It's always interesting to be a patient of any sort these days, now that I am a clinician myself. I observe such different things, the appraisal, the wording, the approach, the documentation. I liked that she didn't seem to be in any rush at all, taking a seat, making a lot of eye contact, letting me finish sentences. Ten years of hospitals have shown me that a great many doctors are generally lacking in these attributes.

Before long her questions turned to family history. Mother, cancer. Father, cancer. Aunt, cancer. Uncle, cancer. Grandmother, cancer. It always feels slightly dissonant to say those words out loud to a stranger. My parents both died of cancer. I'm an only child. She listened carefully, took notes, met my eyes. We talked about preventative measures, appropriate ages for appropriate screenings. It was fine. I felt calm, composed. I didn't even flinch when my blood was taken, watched quietly as the needle slid into the vein, as three different tubes filled with a rush of dark crimson.

When I left I drove to work, the streets wet beneath my tires. It rained last night. I woke at 6 this morning, the sound of rain against the windows. It was lovely, laying in the dark, warm beneath the covers, listening to the gurgle of water streaming through the gutters. I drifted in and out of sleep, dreams snagging against my consciousness, the cat purring lightly against my abdomen.

I haven't been at work for almost a week. The office was cold when I came in. I turned on the computer, my desk lamp, the overhead lights, the radio, listened to messages, checked email, sipped coffee. After a while I left my desk to walk up to reception to see if any referrals had come in for me. When I came back my cell phone was blinking. A missed call, an unknown number. I pressed the voicemail key hard with my thumb, lifted the phone to my ear.

It was the doctor calling, the one I had just seen. My stomach dropped. What could she have possibly found in the last hour? Nothing. She said that she had just been doing the paperwork for my file and decided that I would be a good candidate for genetic testing. She said that she understood that this idea might be a little sensitive for me but that she was going to go ahead and make the referral and that I could think about it. I immediately started crying. I stood up before I'd even hung up the phone and closed my office door. God, genetic testing. Fuck. I don't even know what that means.

I took a deep breath, wiped quickly at my tears and googled it. Genetic testing.

An accurate gene test will tell you if you do or do not have a disease-related gene mutation. Nearly everyone with the familial adenomatous polyposis genes will - unless he or she takes effective preventive measures - someday develop colon cancer.

My mother had stage four colon cancer when she was diagnosed. My grandmother had colon cancer as well but caught it early, had the tumor removed, and thirty years later is still going strong.

Persons in high-risk families live with troubling uncertainties about their own future as well as that of their children. A negative test - especially one that is strongly predictive - can create a tremendous sense of relief.

I don't even know if I buy that. I have seen so many bad things happen to so many people - not just cancer but horrific accidents and psychological trauma -  that I don't know if getting a negative test result would really make me feel less at risk for certain peril.

A positive test can also produce benefits. It can relieve uncertainty, and it can allow a person to make informed decisions about his or her future. Under the best of circumstances, a positive test creates an excellent opportunity for counseling and interventions to reduce risk. The prime example is colon cancer. When tumors are caught early, chances for survival are greatest, and screening potentially could prevent thousands of cancer deaths a year.

Okay. Maybe.

Psychological impact. First, there are the emotions aroused by learning that one is - or is not - likely to develop a serious disease. Many people in disease families have already seen close relatives fall victim to the disorder. The news that they do indeed carry the disease gene can elicit depression, even despair.

Right.

Few studies to date have looked directly at the outcome of gene testing for cancer. One study found that, after 3 to 6 weeks, the women identified as gene carriers experienced persistent worries, depression, confusion, and sleep disturbance. Even half of the noncarriers reported that they continued to worry about their risk status.

Right. Again.

Privacy. Our genes hold an encyclopedia of information about us and, indirectly, about our relatives. Who should be privy to that information? Will a predisposition for cancer, for instance, remain secret - or could the information slip out? The concern is that test results might someday be used against a person.

Wow. That's almost scarier than any other aspect of it.

I'll probably do it. I'm absolutely curious. Although I can imagine some unsettling psychological ramifications, I can't imagine them to be anything more than I'm able to handle.

Readers, feel free to weigh in.

Holidays

My friend Jeff has written me a couple of really lovely letters about his mother and his father recently and in his last he asked that I reply in turn. He asked me to write about my parents. I scoffed when I first read that. Write about my parents? That's all I do, I thought. And then I realized that it's not all I do. I write about my parent's deaths. I write about how I feel about my parent's deaths...but rarely do I afford the reader a view of my parents as they were when they were.

So, here goes.

My mother loved the holidays. Or at least she loved to make a spectacle of each holiday.

For instance, each year on St. Patrick's Day, she cooked a huge corned beef dinner, replete with carrots and pearl onions and mashed potatoes and rolls and butter. It was lovely. It was tasty. But really, the best thing about it all was that she dyed everything she could green. The mashed potatoes, the butter, the ice-water, the glasses of white wine. All of them green. And my father would groan and I would giggle and my mother would smirk all the way through dinner, all the way to the green grasshopper pie for dessert. It was ridiculous and wonderful and she did it every single year.

Valentine's Day was always filled with lots of cookies and hearts and balloons and cards. One year I got a hot pink hair dryer as a gift. I was in fifth grade. It was quite possibly the coolest present I'd ever gotten.

Easter was a total spectacle. Every year we spent an afternoon together dying Easter eggs, at least a few dozen. I think this was my mother's favorite part. She was an artist, a painter, but she liked things messy. She liked to get her hands dirty, liked smears and splotches and authenticity. She never, ever promoted perfectionism, in fact, quite the opposite. Our Easter eggs were always an amalgam of thwarted designs and accidental thumb prints turned art.

And each year, on Easter, she would make me the most glorious Easter basket. It was always enormous and filled to the brim with candy and toys and random gifts, each year its own unique Easter bunny. And each year she would deftly hide it somewhere on our property, securing its location with a clever path of no less than 30 eggs. And each year she and my father would stand on the deck or in the driveway or wherever with steaming cups of coffee, watching as I stumbled through the grass, searching under bushes and in between the roots of an oak tree for our colorfully painted eggs.

When I was younger this was a gleeful activity. I can remember holding up each egg triumphantly as I found them, can remember finally rounding a corner to find the enormous, cellophane basket glinting in the morning dew. As I entered my middle school years I became mortified by this ritual, grimacing at my mother with each egg that I found, scowling into the camera. One year I found my first training bra, balled into a large plastic egg inside the basket. It was something I'd been begging her for and I was overjoyed to finally receive it. There's a video clip somewhere of me opening this egg. You can see my face light up and then redden as my father unknowingly says, Whatcha got there, Claire? Hold it up for the camera.

She kept up with the baskets, all the way through my teenage years, all the way until I was eighteen, the last year of her life. There is a picture of me that year, in pajama bottoms and a white v-neck men's t-shirt, my hair dyed crimson, my ears dotted with piercings, my own cup of black coffee in hand, as I reach to pick up an egg from the grass. My basket that year was filled with the usual candy but also with nail polish and cds and a couple of books I'd mentioned wanting: Hesse's Fairytales and Anne Sexton's Letters.

And so the holidays went. Fourth of July, Halloween (you can only imagine), Thanksgiving (picture her serving the turkey stuck through with left-over Fourth of July sparklers, incandescent embers cascading down around her as she entered the dining room, and Christmas....Christmas was the biggest spectacle of them all. The wreaths, the tree, the creche, the gingerbread house, the food and the cards and the presents, the handmade stockings with each of our names on them filled to the brim and emptied in bed, all of us together, coffee and carols. It was endless and wonderful...completely wonderful.

And for years, for the last nine years in fact, I have attempted to replicate the wonder my mother created each holiday. I've assembled Easter baskets, made homemade Valentines, thrown pumpkin carving parties, dyed mashed potatoes green, hosted Thanksgiving dinner for 15, baked patriotic cupcakes for the Fourth of July, thrown Christmas parties with mulled wine and hot chocolate with homemade peppermint marshmallows, written out hundreds of Christmas cards, and bought and decorated nine Christmas trees. I've amassed a stunning collection of ornaments and decorations, have even taken to buying next year's Christmas cards in January.

And none of it will ever touch the delight and magic my mother brought to each holiday. My holiday creations have come from a place of grief and desperation for something lost. But for my mother it was something different. She simply loved a spectacle. She loved fanfare and magic and mystery.

I don't think I'm going to get a tree this year. Even though I think I'll miss it. I'll miss the scent of pine and the first night spent decorating and fawning over forgotten ornaments. I'll miss sitting on the couch in the dark while the tree glitters gracefully against the night.

But I think that this year, instead of trying to fill up that void with all sorts of decorations and parties and ornaments, I'll simply sit on the couch and actually let myself miss my mother instead.

Thanksgiving

This is a letter I wrote to my father three years ago on Thanksgiving.

It's strange to read now, three years later. In so many ways nothing has changed. I still miss my mother and father. I still feel completely disconnected. I feel unmoored, adrift in the world.

The only difference is that now, three years later, I am finally beginning to feel at peace with those feelings.

Last night I was walking home from dinner on Main Street with Liz. It was kind of late and I was walking alone on Pacific, hands in my pockets, hair blowing in the breeze, the streetlights glowing in the ocean mist. I knew that there would be no one waiting for me when I got home, that there would be no one there in the morning when I woke up, that there just isn't anyone anymore....not like that, at least. I pulled the belt tighter on my trenchcoat and I kept walking, I may have even smiled a little.

Mysterious

Last night in my group therapy class a couple of my classmates revealed that they find me really aloof and mysterious. It seemed so funny to me but I suppose it's true - in person, if you don't know me, I can appear quite standoffish and indifferent. I just don't think of myself that way. Especially when I know that my entire life is on the internet for anyone to read. No mystery here.

Today is a busy day. I'm headed to the Inglewood office this morning for my weekly supervision meeting and then my co-worker and I have to have a meeting with QA (quality assurance) regarding our productivity. Writing that sentence makes me want to gag myself. QA. Blech.

But then I'm off for the rest of the week. I'll go to yoga this afternoon with Paul and Liz and then Liz and I are going to dive headfirst and sweaty into the world of last minute Thankgiving grocery shopping before heading back to my place tonight to shuck corn, bake pies, and drink red wine. We're cooking a feast for 15 tomorrrow and I'm quite excited about it.

Mysterious. Ha.

Shame

I had an incredibly profound moment yesterday in my therapy session. I don't usually see my shrink on Mondays but we did some rearranging due to the holidays and yesterday morning found me spinning up Sepulveda, back on that same Wilco album, different song on repeat. Aside from my cold, I felt good, relaxed and confident. I was looking forward to telling her about the last couple of weeks, about the things I'd done and thought about and felt, about the latest conclusions I'd come to.

And I did just that. I spent the first thirty or so minutes filling her in on all the good things, the pure amazement I feel in the morning when I am standing alone in my kitchen, hair wet from the shower, grinding coffee, preparing for my day. I told her about the dark moments too, the days when I felt like I was drowning, the days in which it was hard for me to breathe. And I told her about other things as well, new experiences, new people, new ideas about myself.

And then I'd run through all the things I'd planned to tell her. And I suddenly knew there was more and I knew that I needed to say the things I was going to say. I began by very carefully telling her that I'd made a doctor's appointment. A pretty regular doctor's appointment, for a check-up, etc. But the thing about that is that I never go to the doctor. The few times I've tried or that I've had to I have been so fiercely overwhelmed by memories of my parents and of Julie and of all the times I took them to the doctor, or visited them in the hospital, their ravaged bodies impossible to avert my eyes from, that I am usually left feeling empty and destroyed.

I was speaking slowly and carefully as I told her these things. And I forget what the question was that she asked me, forget what the prompt was that led me to reveal how afraid of my body I am, how fearful I am of getting sick, of getting cancer, just like my mother did and my father did and like Julie did. I was crying at this point when I told her that I was sure that no man would ever want to marry me because of my family history with cancer, that no man's mother would ever want this kind of woman for her son, the kind of woman who may very well die early of cancer or pass it along to offspring. My voice was at a whisper when I said that I feel tainted and ashamed, infected and poisonous.

I could barely speak for the tears and she let me sit with it, she let the tears run down my cheeks, sat with me while I took in deep, seemingly endless breaths. All something I am learning to do with my clients. It is so difficult to let someone sit with their pain, to truly and simply just be there with them. You want to reach across the space between you, you want to touch, you want to comfort and calm, but you don't. Because this is what I needed. I needed to vocalize those things, needed to sit with them and let them wash over and through me.

Afterwards, I sat in my car, still crying, feeling as though I'd just pulled a dagger from my chest. And now, now. Now it feels almost embarrassing to admit that I felt such shame. Once I had said it, once I had released those words into the warm Los Angeles morning, I felt relief, I felt an immediate unburdening of something that had grown heavy only because I had carried it for so long.

Monday

I feel completely destroyed.

I came home sick from work and just spent the last two hours on the couch watching United 93.

Sunday Morning

I'm sick.

I finally got the cold that all my friends have had over the last couple of weeks. I was so sure that I was going to be able to avoid it. Even just yesterday morning I was leaving a voicemail for a sick friend and thinking to myself how glad I was that I never get sick. Ha. By late afternoon my throat was sore, my skin a little achy.

I went to bed incredibly early last night and I slept for ten hours, which was wonderful. But I woke up just now feeling congested and delicate. The pilot light on the heater went out again last night and a chill had settled over the house, making it nearly impossible for me to pull myself from underneath the covers.

The blinding California sunshine, prozac-blue sky day outside seems the antithesis of how I feel right now. I wish it were grey-cold blustery and dark out and that I could curl up on the couch under a blanket and watch movies and eat soup and doze in and out. Somehow this kind of weather makes that feel impossible. Instead of acting like a sick person I'll probably end up watering the plants on the deck in my bare feet, getting dressed and going to the coffee shop and then yoga and then stopping at Trader Joe's on my way home.

I really can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving. I really don't know where this year has gone. It has truly been one of the fastest years of my life, one of the fullest years of my life. I began my master's program the first week of January, literally stepped off a plane from Minnesota, where I had spent the holidays, and walked into my first class: Law & Ethics. From there it's been a complete blur of classes and homework and new friends and one absurd self-realization after another, an unflinching introduction to the screaming world of community mental health, to schizophrenia and OCD and major depression and two a.m. suicide assessments, to the experience of hearing myself tell someone that I'm a psychotherapist and all that comes with that, my first clients appraising me as I walk out to the waiting room to get them, the echo of dissonance in the click of my high heels.

It's been incredible. My entire life has changed. So much of it has had to do with the changes one must make in their life in order to take on this new role. There is a certain kind of space you must make in your life and within yourself, in order to allow clients in, in order to sit with these stories and this pain, these entire worlds you had no idea existed. I started at my clinic in June and shortly following I felt this innate need to clear space in my life.

I had dinner with one of my best friends last night. She's pregnant and due in just a few weeks and she was talking about all the changes she's made in these last nine months - the clearing out of friends that no longer make sense, the changing of her living situation, the taking care of herself, all in preparation to incorporate this new life. Something about it all sounded similar to me and the ways I've changed my life in order to take on clients.

I finally feel kind peaceful. It was an uncomfortable experience, to say the least. This clearing out of my life. But now I can wake up on Sunday morning, stretch myself across the length of the bed, push my way out from under the sheets and into my own sunlit-filled life, and have it be quiet, have it be quiet until I fill it myself with the sound of coffee percolating and the thrumming beat of music from the speakers.

Single

Jesus Christ. I really am single, aren't I?

That my house is empty and this is all I could think of that I needed:

Cat Litter. . .no explanation necessary
Water. . .young women need to stay hydrated
Ziploc Bags, Sandwich Size. . .for my boring turkey sandwich lunches
Foil. . .nothing specific but I remembered that I'm out
Wheat Bread. . .for my boring turkey sandwich lunches and for the late night drunken grilled cheese
Mayo. . .for my boring turkey sandwich lunches
Mayo. . .two for five dollars
Spicy Mustard. . . for my boring turkey sandwich lunches
Fancy Feast. . .for my little friends, Lily & Reynold
Turkey. . .do I really have to write it again?
Kosher Dill Pickles. . .I can't bear to write it again
Cheddar Cheese. . .for the late night drunken grilled cheese
Bananas. . .for breakfast
Three Bottles Cheap Red Wine. . .for dinner (and so I can stop opening good bottles simply because that's all I have)
Maker's Mark. . .because I realized that this may be the only thing missing in my fully stocked bar

My Day in Details

My program and my clinic both require that I be in therapy and so in April I began seeing a shrink. I like her. She's older and British and sharp and I like her office. I like the chairs and the light and the slanted ceiling. I see her on Friday mornings. Sometimes I'm hungover.

The subject that I spent the majority of our first 6 weeks talking about was my pending 28th birthday. I couldn't believe I was going to turn 28. It had seemingly come out of nowhere, and not in some apathetic, MTV kind of way, but rather I was genuinely shocked that I was about to turn 28. It seemed impossible and the more I thought about it, the less I could understand why this seemed so impossible and why it made me cry everytime I thought about those numbers. 28.

We spent quite a few sessions talking about it, my throat closing up as I tried to describe the feeling associated with those numbers. It's confusing, my therapist remarked, because usually people become anxious before turning 30. What is it about 28? Finally, and it's always interesting to me how the simplest things can take the longest to happen upon, I realized that 28 marked ten years since my mother died.

And, gradually, over the last 6 months, I've come to realize that when I was eighteen, it wasn't only my mother that died, but a part of me as well. Something happened inside of me. Something failed to continue. Some part of me just stopped. Stopped growing. Stopped imagining. Stopped becoming. I think that somewhere inside I felt that, without my mother, I couldn't possibly go on. I couldn't possibly continue. I couldn't possibly grow up, become a woman, do things that she would never know about, go places she'd never been, think things I couldn't tell her.

And so, still, right now, even today, there is this part of me that refuses to believe that I am the woman that I have become. And I can feel it sometimes. I can see it in a passing glance in the mirror, hear it in an accidental laugh, stifled and throaty, find it in a footstep, an echo in a hallway...suddenly there is this dissonance, these two parts of myself, then and now staring back at each other, wondering where the other came from.

I see myself this morning, my body twisted and warm beneath the sheets, the cat curled against my softly rising abdomen. The room is dark for the curtains and the alarm bleeps at 7:20. I watch myself roll over, my arm reaching to find the clock, one hand brushing the hair out of my face. I am remembering a dream. Something about comfort and security, something about being able to see it, but I can't have it. I take a deep breath, push the covers back in one heavy go and get out of bed.

I can see myself, 28 years old, walking into my living room, the warm Los Angeles sun already flooding the apartment. I'm opening the blinds, putting on music, making coffee in my little kitchen. I live here alone and it is Wednesday morning and I have to go to work. I am in the shower now, my head tilted forward, the water as hot as it will go, and then I am getting dressed, opening drawers, sliding closet doors aside, pulling on a pencil skirt, slipping on high heels, making the bed. And there is this part of me that stands back, aghast. How can she do these things? How can she just go about her life, putting on makeup, turning on her phone ringer, making lunch?

And then I am walking out the door, standing on the deck in the bright morning sunshine in my high heels and skirt. I'm locking the door and I'm walking down the stairs and I'm opening the garage and I'm getting in the car. I'm driving to work, jerking around the slower cars on Washington Blvd., listening to NPR, sipping coffee. And then I am parking in the garage and walking up the stairs into my building. I am unlocking the front door, heels clicking down the hallway, coffee in one hand, purse slung over my shoulder, binder pressed against my chest. Part of me wants to scream when I see this. Stop. Stop walking. Just stop.

But I can't. I can't stop her. She's unlocking the door to her office, flicking on the lights, the computer, sitting down, checking messages, hair pushed back over one shoulder, legs crossed under the desk. And there's nothing I can do. It's 9:30 and I'm joining my co-workers, my supervisor, for our weekly staff meeting. I'm still drinking coffee, eating a Zone bar, balancing a clipboard on my knees, nodding in agreement about a client. And then it's 11 and we're interviewing a candidate for our team. You said you're pursuing your masters, I ask her pushing my hair over my shoulder again, what are your long term goals?

And then it's noon and I'm eating my boring turkey sandwich, responding to emails, listening to voicemails, chatting with my co-worker, talking with my boss, printing a payroll adjustment form, reading about existential psychotherapy, and then it's three and I'm getting in the car again, spinning up Sepulveda. I'm tired at this point. And I'm sad. I want more than anything to go home, to crawl between the sheets and close my eyes. I want to turn it all off, the phone, the computer, my head, my awful screaming head.

But I don't. I park instead and I pull my yoga bag from the backseat and I see myself standing there at the corner of Westwood Avenue in my high heels and pencil skirt, yoga bag over one shoulder, hair in my eyes. I'm twenty eight years old. It's Wednesday afternoon. And then I'm off again, crossing Westwood, walking into the yoga studio, up the stairs, stopping to check in, Claire Smith, I say pulling off one high heel, then the other. In the changing room my bare feet feel good on the tile. There is another woman in there with me at first and as she leaves, the door swishing shut behind her, I look up at myself in the mirror.

And I see her. Suddenly I see her. This woman, this 28 year old woman. I am frozen. I know that if I move I'll lose her, she'll go back to being the girl I think I am, and I'll no longer be able to see this woman, this woman standing before me. And so there I am, frozen in front of a mirror in a yoga studio on Westwood Blvd in Los Angeles and it is 4 in the afternoon on a Wednesday and I am twenty eight years old and my life has in fact continued.