What Are You Waiting For?

I found this pink note from 7-year-old me in my mother’s apartment after she died and have kept it next to my desk for six years. It’s an attempt at prayer in my best second-grade cursive.

“Dear God!

Please make me strong. So I can endure everything. I feel miserable! Everyone here is in a rotten mood. I am bored. Life isn’t fun anymore. Please change this!!!!!! Please make it so Papa finds work. Make Mama feel better, and that my brother won’t have so many tantrums anymore! Amen!!!!!! Yours, Juliane!!!”

For at least 35 years I’ve been waiting and hoping for situations and people to change

I rarely thought about what I needed, what I wanted, what I could ask for

Other than to be made strong enough to endure

I’ve spent my life waiting

For my dad to stop drinking

For my mom to be happy

For my crush to notice me

For my employer to value my work

For the weekend, for bedtime, for summer

I’ve waited to go swimming until I lost such and such amount of weight

I’ve waited to text back because I didn’t want to seem needy

I’ve waited to get pregnant and to give birth and for the baby to sleep through the night and dress herself and get a job and graduate high school and come home safely on Saturday night

I waited for things to get better

But really, I waited for them to get worse so they could get better

In my mind, there was always a price to pay for something good

So when things did get worse, I kept waiting, because I was definitely this close to things finally getting better

But sometimes things just keep getting worse

Waiting doesn’t make them better at all

Because time does not heal all wounds

Sometimes waiting turns the wound red and angry

Festering and spreading yellow-green rot up and down my body

Sometimes only bad things come to those who wait

But I never know, so I sit there in pain, hoping the break will fuse

While wondering if I’ll always walk with that limp, reminding me that I shouldn’t have held onto hope

But what kind of life would that be

I don’t know how to hold on to hope without holding onto the other stuff

The denial, the illusion of control, the fear. Always the fear.

I can’t count the times I waited and called it hope

When it was fear

When I was terrified of making a mistake

To lose something or someone

Or myself

I waited for things to change

But really, I just thought I could force them to go back to the way they were

I waited so long that opportunities passed me by or decisions were made for me

Or, sometimes, I rushed into them because I couldn’t bear the uncertainty

I’ve called it patience when it was a lack of self-trust

Deferring my life to someone else’s authority

Making decisions by committee or not at all

I’ve waited for someone else to act so I’d have something to respond to

Then I could complain about the outcome without taking responsibility for my choices

Even when I thought I was making a deliberate change

What I really did was anticipate someone else’s actions and preplan my response

I used to think I was good at dealing with change

But what I was good at was surviving in unpredictable chaos

Erratic movement isn’t change

Witnessing other people’s erratic movement isn’t change

I’m not judging myself for the times my survival was based on responding to people who had power when I didn’t

When I had no option to act, only to deal with being acted upon

But I’m not a powerless child anymore

Or an immovable tree, rooted in place

I’m learning that waiting can be about self-trust, or the lack thereof

And you can’t tell from the outside

But I can tell from the inside

Waiting is not the problem

Hibernating in dark caves or being liquified in tight cocoons or lying as a barren field in the frozen quiet is

Time for rest

Space for transformation

Self-protection and survival and solitude

It’s the opposite of waiting for others

It’s true patience, waiting for myself to be ready

I’ve been going to 12-step meetings for over two years now but a few weeks ago was the first time I said the Serenity Prayer out loud while standing in a circle, holding hands. I thought this is culty and dumb and I don’t believe in god.

But I do believe in love

God Love, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change

Courage to change the things I can

And the wisdom to know the difference

Culty and dumb was my resistance speaking. It had nothing to do with god.

I just didn’t want any serenity or courage or wisdom

And I most certainly didn’t want change

There was no singular moment

No specific rock bottom

No sign

Just a slowly growing sense that I no longer want to be frozen or frantic

That it’s safe to come out from under the bed

Every time I see my knuckles turn white, I breathe and try to loosen my grip ever so slightly

Every time I feel the urge to do something, anything, right now, now! I put my feet on the ground and cup my hands over my heart to keep it from exploding out of my chest

In labor with my first daughter

I was worried I wouldn’t know when to push

I was standing up when that first bearing-down contraction came

After 11 hours of labor, I still had no idea, I was still trying to manage, to hold in or rush along, bracing against the waves, unsure

But that push was not a push at all

It was a gravitational pull, so strong I thought my legs would buckle and collapse and my insides would get sucked down into the center of the earth

Magnets pulling together with such force, there was no thought of resistance

Or any thought at all

Although it was painful, it didn’t feel like pushing or efforting or making anything happen

It felt like finally letting go

Like stepping into a wild river allowing myself to be carried along by the current

There was no question in my body that it was time

There was no procrastinating or rushing

There was only my shaking flesh and pulsating blood and a hot, heavy sun pushing hip bones aside and knowing exactly, precisely, without a doubt what to do and when and how

I don’t have to re-learn this

I just have to remember

That I already know

I will not have to wonder if it’s the right time

The knowing will bear down on me with inescapable force

I will know that I’m the same but different

That I’ve outgrown the cocoon

That it’s time to come out of the cave

A tender, green shoot punching its way through clumps of dirt

Maybe I’ve just been waiting for the eternal Zen smile of enlightenment to gently usher in change

When I need a thousand pounding hooves shaking the earth and vibrating through my body

Maybe in the future, the knowing will feel like softness, like peace

But today it has to be an earthquake in my hip sockets making space for new life

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Success!!

CONGRATS to Sally Schwartz who sold the essay we discussed in the Unputdownable class to my guest expert Noah at HuffPost!! I'll be sure to send the link out to everyone once it's live.

CONGRATS to Dani Sumner who also got interest from Noah on her pitch and is currently drafting her essay.

This is huge, you two! Noah said in a different class he accepts only a handful of essays from batches of hundreds. Way to get after it! I'm so damn happy for you 

If you missed the class you can get it here:

Based on your survey responses, you want more support writing the damn thing, so let’s do it together:

If you want to take the class without knowing the exact curriculum which I’m still working on, because you're certain I will over-deliver, you can sign up at the early bird pricing of $250 (which is what one personal essay will bring in on average, so if you do your homework, you can make your money back at the end of the intensive, plus there are PRIZES, because I need incentives and, well, it's just fun)!

And then a class about donuts, sort of:

PS: Okay, it's not really a "donut," it's a German Kreppel and the most delicious-smelling thing ever to come out of a bakery. When I'm homesick, these fried, jam-filled, sugary little fuckers are what I miss.