Contemplating My Navel (Personal Blog)

Champaign Dreams and Resolution Wishes

Becky Sarwate1 Comment

map_of_champaign_il

To say that I did not enjoy my undergraduate college experience is a huge understatement. When I was working with my therapist, Dr. T, I referred to September 1996 – August 2000 as “the lost years.” Ones full of missed opportunity, regret and dangerous behavior.

There are many reasons for the crushing depression that overtook me as a young adult attending classes (sometimes) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For the sake of brevity, I’ll mention two. I’d spent most of my childhood in a constant state of distress and/or high alert. I had precious little time to process the abusive, neglectful upbringing I’d experienced and frankly, I’m not sure I could have survived long enough to actually leave home if I’d stopped to let it wash over me. But when I found myself dropped in the middle of corn fields and farms, a quiet place where there were few immediately threatening distractions, I came silently unglued.

At the same time, I severely underestimated the climate shift from pulsing, vibrant, stimuli everywhere you turn Chicago, to the slower, muted lifestyle of Central Illinois. I didn’t know enough to predict the tremendously negative impact this would have on my energy and intellectual curiosity, though in retrospect of course it couldn’t have been any other way. I recently watched an episode of Sex and the City. The protagonist Carrie Bradshaw finished a conversation with a handsome sailor, and then observed in voiceover: “If Louis was right, and you only get one great love…New York may just be mine.” I feel the same way about the Windy City. It fascinates, frustrates, challenges and beckons me. I am Chicago and Chicago is me.

So there I was in Urbana/Champaign gaining weight, phoning in my English Literature degree with Psychology minor (with a complete and ironic lack of self-awareness), drinking, taking drugs, hanging out with townies. I can admit now to a disgustingly passive death wish, but what bugs me the most about it is not the risky conduct itself. Risk I can do – always have in some form.

It’s the indifference, the lack of agency with which I dithered. It’s not who I am. I utterly, completely lost myself on the flat plains of the Midwest. I didn’t care about much. I’ve learned to forgive myself for most of it because I clearly had issues to work through and didn’t know any other way to cope. But still – sometimes it gnaws. The “best” years of my life flushed away with little to show for it except a degree I know I didn’t really earn.

I’ve spent 15 years pulling myself together and today, I’m rather proud of the life I’ve built. I have a talent (words) and I make a diverse, fulfilling career of it. I am healthier – mentally and physically – after many, many hours spent in individual and group therapy. The volatile, unstable parents are out of the way for good and amazingly, my sister and I came away from the experience holding hands in unshakeable solidarity. I live in a good home full of adorable animals and the perfect partner. I have a large network of talented, supportive friends.

And yet…

In my dreams, sometimes I still go back to Champaign.

It’s a few days before graduation and I haven’t completed a class. I won’t receive my diploma. And then they’ll come for the Master’s degree I earned (the right way) from Northeastern. I can’t have the latter without the former.

My father is badgering me for money and he’s in pursuit as I run through a monstrous, Gotham-like version of Campustown.

Bob doesn’t love me anymore. He’s leaving, and he’s driven us down to Urbana to break the news, leaving me behind in an empty dormitory.

I still grapple with nightmares. And they often occur within the context of four years a part of me will always want back up and redo.

In late April, Bob I went to Urbana-Champaign for the weekend. He ran a marathon and I wanted to support him, despite my trepidation. The experience was positive and cleansing in a number of ways, but most importantly for me, I no longer recognized the place that has been demonized by my subconscious. Like so many of my beloved Chicago neighborhoods, the towns have experienced the frenzied build of gentrification. Where once stood empty cow pastures near Memorial Stadium, there’s now a Houlihan’s restaurant attached to a large hotel. I also spent the time engaged in healthy activities utterly foreign to the emotionally stunted self of the late 1990s – writing, running a 5k, and notably, in the company of a man who has earned my complete trust and confidence.

The frequency of the dreams lessened afterward.

Tomorrow morning, Bob and I will pack the car, drop the dogs off at Grandma and Grandpa’s house (Bob’s parents) and make our way to Central Illinois once more. His friend’s wedding will take place at beautiful Allerton Park outside Champaign. Bob bought a new suit, I’m bringing my favorite gown and I already know we’ll have a splendid time. We always do. With every healthy return visit to a patch of earth so pregnant with personal trauma, the demons incrementally recede.

I expect to sleep soundly.

Thicker Than Blood

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“You can kid the world, but not your sister.”
– Charlotte Gray

“An older sister helps one remain half child, half woman.”
– Unknown

As the oldest of two in my immediate family, I fantasized often about having an elder sibling. Brother, sister, it didn’t matter much. The point was that in an unstable, unhealthy environment, it was a warm reprieve to imagine an older, stronger, loving person whisking Jenny and I to safety. Like Charlie Salinger from Party of Five.

It’s not that I resented being my kid sister’s de facto protector. Quite the contrary. I relished being the one dependable person she could always turn to, trusting I’d never leave her defenseless. But sometimes, many times, I needed an older, wiser hand and was left wanting.

As I grew up, I found surrogates that subsidized many of the lessons and unconditional support I lacked. In high school, my academic decathlon coach and history teacher Mr. Smith and my best friend Christian’s parents were vital adult influences. Mr. Smith once buried a quarterly absence report because I’d cut a class and he knew about the embarrassing, unpredictable wrath of my father. Christian’s mother Marnie took me to a nice salon for my first manicure, invited me frequently to family dinners and vacations and to this day, uses the instant connectivity of Facebook to remind me of her consistent pride and love. It’s an incredible, enduring gift.

I have a number of close friends with whom I enjoy some form of brotherly or sisterly relationship. But until I met Andrea through work 18 months ago, that secret yearning for an older sibling someone to love and look out for me, to understand, support and admonish me with equally passionate involvement (because it’s for my owned damned good), seemed just that. A quiet wish that must go unfulfilled.

I’m not exactly sure how it happened – only that the bond formed easily, quickly and robustly. Yes we share complicated upbringings, acerbic wit and a mutual love of sightseeing, but it’s more than that. I trust Andrea like I trust myself. It’s often the case that I don’t need to articulate my thoughts and feelings. They are intuited before I can form words.

Knowing that I am generally cold in temperatures below 90 degrees (tough way to live in the frigid, Windy City), I opened my mailbox last holiday season (Andrea is Jewish, I’m Protestant turned Hindu turned atheist) to find the longest, warmest, prettiest scarf ever knitted. Andrea made it herself. I’m able to wrap this thing around my head and neck five times with length to spare. It can be used to lasso errant co-workers, be folded and fluffed into a makeshift pillow – all of these variations have been successfully tested. Someone loves me enough to want to keep me warm from across the country.

I will be wearing this scarf when I greet Andrea in the baggage claim area at O’Hare Airport this evening. I haven’t seen my adopted sister in a full year. A lot has happened and I’ve missed her. I look forward to hugging her close and relish her baby talking to my pets while I answer questions. Am I getting enough beet juice? Do I like my new job? Is Dino not the sweetest snuggle sandwich on the planet? (The answer is “Yes” to all). She will finally meet Bob, who was not part of my life when Andrea and I were last together tromping through the streets of San Francisco. I am eager for them to love each other the way I adore them both.

And for the next few days I’ll let go – just a little bit – of the constant need to manage (fill in your favorite noun or activity here – like a Mad Lib). I’ll relax, overeat and entertain a whole Saturday that as yet still has no definitive plans. It’s ok to wing it. My big sister is on the way. She’ll know what to do.

Whining and Wine: Hell is an Address Change

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There are two tasks on this planet that make me, as my good friend Beth offers in metaphor, lose my bones. You know when something is so tiresome, boring and awful, you feel like you’re actually turning to jelly and slumping to the floor, as if the cartilage in the body instantaneously decided it can’t offer support against such an onslaught of tedium? For me, the two activities that cause this childish collapse are cooking (or really food preparation in any form) and moving.

I don’t mean literal motion. I mean the act of packing boxes, renting a U-Haul, filing address changes with government entities and other places with which one does business, cancelling the cable service. Under the most pleasant of circumstances, like the present set, the arduous work of changing homes is joyless. It’s time, often lots of it, spent doing something dammit, that should be simple. Time I’ll never get back. Each time I relocate, I swear it will be the last. And how the hell did I accumulate so much stuff anyway!?

When Bob and I started dating in February, it didn’t take long for either of us to understand that this is it. At some quick point we verbalized our mutual, peaceful satisfaction with each other. We’re off the market. It’s a wonderful, surprising certainty heretofore totally alien. I am a writer. We thrive on gray areas. It’s where we live and obsess. Great, painful products result. With Bob, I get the great without the painful. Huh. But this revelation came at an awkward winter housing moment. We were in love but so new. And then a renewal for my current lease arrived. I signed it. It seemed too soon to talk cohabitation.

By early May, I had my own set of keys to Bob’s condo and wasn’t going “home” (already the word was dissociating from my Rogers Park apartment) for more than the feeding and maintenance of Dino. To grab a few things that I needed in the love nest.

In early June, Dino relocated entirely. The act was infused with more than the simple transplant of an old, four-pound ball of fluff. Dino is my baby, at the time my only furry boo. We had a full, independent life before we met Bob. We were the dynamic duo that ate cheese in bed together. We couldn’t imagine a reason to improve upon perfection. We didn’t know we could have more than enough. So when Dino was released from his cat carrier into a new environment, with a warm man to cuddle and canine siblings to tease, I knew we’d reached a tipping point. The five of us were all in.

One thing you have to know about Bob. He’s quiet but that should never be mistaken for weakness or lacking in passion. Others have made that error at their own expense. His is one of the strongest personalities I’ve known. It’s part of why I love him. Supportive, solid, funny – without the noise and drama. Bob doesn’t make more work for anyone – including himself – than is logical. Combine this fluid, yet determined sense of purpose with my innate aversion to drudgery, and it’s probably no surprise to learn that it’s mid-October and I’m still not out of my old place.

I no longer sleep, eat or shower at the bachelorette, beachfront studio that served as a personal healing and growth bunker for four post-divorce years. My mail is forwarded. The furniture has been donated. There’s just boxes of memories left. I have no emotional attachment to the rooms where I recovered from cervical cancer surgery alone, or responded to knocks on the door from the police after my alcoholic ex came home from another night of binge drinking. The place has been done for me for a long time. And even if I hadn’t met Bob, Dino and I had been inching toward a fresh environmental beginning. Maybe it’s because of the literal and metaphorical baggage of the place, compared with the light warmth of our new home with Bob, Meko and Jude, that returning there to retrieve my photos, yearbooks, awards and trinkets feels so passé, a trip to another era that I am ok with leaving in the past.

But it’s increasingly clear, in the best, most comforting way that it’s time to bring this business to an end. The only sensation to rival my distaste for cooking and moving is an absolute hatred of loose ends. Bob and I (it’s all “we” now) are spending money on two homes. In increments we have merged our utility and grocery expenses, but the waste involved in delaying a complete domestic unification grows more oppressive. It’s not even something we have to discuss. It hums between us, a frequency that speaks: “I’m with you. There’s nowhere else I can be. Nowhere else I’d want to go.”

So tomorrow morning, we’re finishing what we didn’t realize we were starting in February. The natural second and final act – living together contentedly until death does us part. I will whine, rush and verbalize my displeasure with every second of the work. Bob will shift into focused task mode, silently doing the heavy lifting, pausing only to give me a kiss or ask what to do next. His legs will grow sore from all the trips up and down both sets of third-floor walkup stairs, but he’ll never complain once. That won’t stop him from smiling when I do – profusely. Then we’ll look at all the boxes in our living room, open a bottle of wine and I’ll be home. Never to move again.

Wait ‘Til…Now?

Becky Sarwate2 Comments

Wait Til Now
1984

The Chicago Cubs are Division Champs! I’m six years old, my father not yet 30. Two kids jumping around the living room. We’re living in our old apartment at Byron and Leavitt in the North Center neighborhood. My grade school and maternal grandparents are a reasonable walking distance from our place, and there’s still six months left before the wheels completely fall off my immediate family’s functionality wagon. I don’t even know it’s coming. I have never seen my daddy so overjoyed, so euphoric and full of hope. I will again during other manic moments – later – but for now the whole North Side of the city has the fever. Cubs fever.

The Cubs led the Padres 2-0 in the National League Championship Series, but go on to lose three straight – and a trip to the World Series. A ground ball got by first baseman Leon Durham during a disastrous Game 5. Durham was one of daddy’s favorite players. How could he do that? This is the first time I ever remember seeing my dad fight tears. It takes him days to recover. I sit next to him helplessly, knowing something tragic has happened to Chicago. Daddy says it’s not the first time, and unlikely to be the last. This seems horribly unfair.

1989

The Cubbies are Division Champs again and I’m the perfect age – 11 – to truly appreciate the wave of excitement that once again sweeps the city. By now I have the 1985 Bears Super Bowl Shuffle under my experienced belt. Let’s do this. Daddy’s out of work again and the house we bought is trashed, but if the Cubs win the World Series (oh my god!) everything will be ok. Dad will be so pumped. We’ll all clean up together and he’ll be in such a good mood. Go Cubs go!

The Cubs lose Game 3 of the NLCS to the San Francisco Giants when reliever Les Lancaster gives up a two-run homer. The Giants take a 2-1 series lead and the Lovable Losers are unable to mount a comeback. Daddy is upset. But it’s not his mood that’s crushed me. One of the post-mortem sports shows plays a video montage against the backdrop of Peter Gabriel’s mournful tune, “Don’t Give Up.” I feel like I’ll never stop crying. The disappointment literally hurts.

1998

I’m a junior in college, sharing an off-campus apartment with Theresa. With interesting classes, a decent part-time job, a recent breakup behind me and a new set of friends, Champaign feels possible for perhaps the first time. And Sammy Sosa’s record-setting home run derby with Mark McGuire has been a lot of fun this season. Just a few years away from the 1994-1995 Major League Baseball strike that hugely disappointed my father. Said he’d never been more ashamed of the sport. I try not to talk to dad as much these days. It always leaves me upset, but I’ll definitely call him if the Cubs pull off an upset.

The Cubs lose the National League Division Series to the Atlanta Braves, 3-0. A few years later we’ll all learn that Sosa was juicing. Another huge black mark for the sport. Eh. The Cubs didn’t really belong in the playoffs. I’m sure dad knows that too. There’s always next year.

2003

I’m a married woman now and all season long I’ve forced Mark and my long time best friend Gary to watch, really watch the games. Like almost all of them. I believe. I’ve made them believe. I know every player, follow every nuance, injury and farm report. This is fucking it bitches. Cubbies! I see my dad and talk to him now and again. He never seems to be quite on track, always has his hand out for more than he gives, but we agree on this. Now.

Game 6 of the NLCS. The Cubs are five outs from the World Series. The city is electric. It’s our time. Moises Alou. Bartman. A man’s life ruined and I don’t need a Game 7 to know how this ends. Finished. More tears. I avoid my father. I don’t want to listen to his tirade. I just want this self-inflicted loserdom to be done.

2008

Marriage number two to the dashing, distant Eddie. He’s more of a cricket fan but I manage to get to him. The Cubbies are in the playoffs for the second year in a row! I still don’t understand why Piniella removed Zambrano early in Game 1 of 2007’s NLDS but no matter! This is going to be it. Finally. Eddie works a lot, even on the weekends, and needs quiet time. So I’ve been to a few games on my own. I like what I see. I pretty much avoid Gregg (I don’t call him “dad” anymore) like the plague but I don’t have to talk to him to know how he feels. For me personally though, if the Cubs choke again, I’m out. I’m starting to believe what they say. Wrigley Field – the world’s biggest tourist attraction. Not the home of a serious baseball team. Prove me wrong guys.

The Dodgers sweep the Cubs 3-0 in the NLDS. I cried again last year but this year? Furious. I actually talked Eddie into going to Wrigleyville with me to watch Game 3 from a bar. Eddie rarely likes my entertainment ideas. Fooled again. But I drank so many PBR tall boys and I am pissed in every sense. As Eddie and I walk home, I decide that every orange cone in my path gets it. To my surprise, he even points a few out for me. This whole evening has been surprisingly supportive. But this girl? Done with the Cubs.

2015

I enter the park for the first time in years. The story goes that it’s because my company paid for the tickets. But in reality, Bob has been working me for months.

During the long break I took from Wrigley Field, I also evaluated, ripped up and rebuilt a lot of other destructive patterns in my life. The result, a good man by my side in a Cubs jersey, both of us happy and feeling excited about our future together.

Gregg’s out of my life but I know he’s somewhere rattling off statistics in that encyclopedic way of his. The fortunes of a baseball team no longer bind us.

As I repeatedly declare my hard-earned skepticism, Bob momentarily checks his mild manners. Tomorrow is the Wild Card Game. “Shut up and enjoy it Waldorf! I’ll be surprised if Jake Arrieta doesn’t throw a perfect game tomorrow. Cubbies!”

And somehow I know that even if the Cubs make a muck of it like they always have throughout my lifetime, I will enjoy it. 

There You Are

Becky Sarwate4 Comments

So I haven’t posted any personal reflections in awhile – seven months and a week to be exact. In early March of this year, the blogging platform with the built-in audience where I’d been publishing for years unceremoniously shuffled off its mortal coil. This created several weeks of existential panic. How would I recover my work? Where would I find a new forum for the personal therapy which blogging has become? And once I return, will anyone care?

The answers: Blessed be STEM friends with IT credentials, my own branded website, and who knows? But here I am. Once the dust settled and my legacy work was archived, I benefitted from the wisdom of several female champions who offered a provocative challenge. “You’ve been writing for years. Aren’t you ready for your own site? All your work collected in one place?”

And so for the last half year plus, my team and I (redundant, as the rest of the squad includes my sister, life partner of 35 years) have been building beckysarwate.com. When Jenny finished collating the posts last week, I needed a moment. There it was – all of it, all of me, in one place, with my name on it. All 610 of the theater reviews, magazine and website articles, political columns, feminist rants and yes, blog posts that represent the bulk of a six-year career. With each piece I was convinced it was the last. Every time I hit “publish” would be the death of my creative spirit. I’d run out of things to say. This site is evidence of that fear’s misguidedness.

2015 has been an eventful year – even by the whirlwind standards and pace by which my life is usually measured. The launch of this site, a change in 9-5 day job that has brought greater satisfaction and financial security, travels, a new elected office and forum switches for publishing my freelance work.

But what I want and need to write about today is Bob. My dude. My lobster. The biggest 2015 revolution of all. It’s no secret that romance has long been a rocky road for this woman. Divorces, partners with addiction issues and my own catastrophic struggles with co-dependency. As I recently wrote in a piece for About Women, my romantic world was an endless repetition of the broken dynamic I “enjoyed” with my parents: “Dominate me, make me feel small. In silent martyrdom, at least I know who I am.”

Fucking gross right? So after my last long-term relationship exploded in early December 2013, I took a long overdue break for reflection, individual and group therapy, for celebrating my selfhood. I wasn’t a nun but I kept it light as I strengthened bonds with my family, cherished friends, saw more of the world and cultivated a new identity. No longer the exhausted serial monogamist, I started to enjoy a revision of myself – the unattached bon vivant, the adventurer, the woman who actually believed that if the right man wasn’t out there, that might be just fine. I had Prosecco to drink, Spanish wedding songs to sing and tap dance lessons to take (loudly).

Toward the close of 2014, a sweet younger friend of mine who regularly affirmed, “I love your life,” nonetheless started to work on me. Maybe she suggested, I could keep having it all AND find someone with whom to share it. Someone who would appreciate me, embrace the quirks and support my commitment to ambitious, constant evolution. I scoffed of course. Ridiculous. She’d heard about the divorces, the colossal failures of subsequent relationship forays. It wasn’t meant to be, and I was no longer sure I minded. So there.

But she was persistent, and when it’s abundantly clear that someone has my best interests at heart (a phenomenon I’ve not enjoyed often enough), I will often relent. So we struck a deal. She’d create me a Tinder profile (“What? Tinder??!! I am 36 years-old missy and not that kind of woman. Ok, maybe I am but I have heard horror stories!”), and I had to give it a few weeks of swiping. However, if you’ll refer to my parenthetical objections, it follows that I acquiesced in my own way. There were ground rules for this trial period.

  1. No swiping the profile of any man who was: overtly religious (I’m an atheist, so let’s just avoid the tension), holding a gun, shirtless or standing proudly next to a car in photos (siphon off some of the douchebaggery), living in the suburbs (I don’t own a car, don’t want to and will never leave my concrete jungle again) or adamantly seeking a wife (you’d be surprised).
  2. Upon first contact, the man in question had exactly three exchanges to say something intelligent and/or humorous – or I was out.
  3. To those who got past the first two gates, I would offer two chances to meet in person. Occasionally shit happens, so one cancellation earned a pass. But I am a busy woman so a second flake was the limit.

This system worked fairly well. I didn’t meet anyone terribly exciting, but no serial killers or furries either. Eh. I tried something new, right?

Just before the conclusion of the trial period, I came across the profile of a cute, slightly younger man with a stated passion for running, books and dogs. It was early February, typically Chicago’s cruelest month and Dino and I were sick of the cold. This man’s profile boasted a picture of a fluffy, warm looking pup frolicking in the snow. So I messaged him in my typical blunt fashion: “Hi. What’s your favorite Sedaris book?” If he gave me an uncertain answer, I’d keep moving.

Messaging led to a first date at a BBQ joint. Major plus. Over drinks and conversation, Bob informed me that he lived in a condo across the alley from my grade school. In my tipsy state, I wanted to go, right then, sneak into the playlot where my Lutheran primary cohorts and I jumped off the geodesic dome. Bob was game. And then I met the dogs: 10 year-old Meko and 8 year-old Jude, both large black rescue beasts who slobbered all over me with love and joy. I started to feel my heart ignore orders to play it cool.

Seven months later, Dino and I are happily ensconced in that condo across the alley from my grade school. My name is on the mailbox. That existential panic I mentioned when my old blog crashed? None of that here. After 25 years of pushing romantic boulders up the hill, the work stopped when I met Bob. I told him recently that I lacked words (ironically) for this level of comfort and certainty. The best I can offer is this. After a few weeks of developing a bond that is now the strongest I’ve known with a man, it felt like: “Oh there you are. I didn’t know I was looking for you. But thanks for arriving. Now give us a kiss, a glass of wine and a pat on the bottom.”