The Holidays, 2019

Well, I guess family time always brings up a lot.

I guess this is somewhat of a journal entry but I felt like writing to an audience...

No expectation of you to read, but fun for me to send... it's just a stream of consciousness.

When I turned 30, I thought I was marrying Joe and starting a family with him. We sat on the beach on my 30th birthday in Tulum, and journaled about our plans for the next three years. I felt his love, but deep, deep down I buried my intuition and shut my denial in a closet. "There was something off with him, but not with us," I told myself. "He's just told you how much he loves you, don't complain." Instead of him picking out a ring from the website I texted him, he was fired, became a yoga teacher, changed his name to after an Osho ceremony in India, and started dating one of his facebook Instagram friends who I didn't even know he knew, and now is somewhere in Africa with her. So much for him selling his car and contributing to our futures. So much for that time, we sat down at the bank, looking over how we improved his credit score after paying off all his debts. So much for the "committed" reality only I was a part of. Grateful 2020 is almost here.

This year, my dad got married and I have a new stepmom and brother and sister in law. I feel like I floated through the year after being diagnosed with the pituitary tumor, applying for jobs daily, trying to change my mindset from the coaches of my friends' houses, trying to understand, what on earth was going on. What is this universe and higher power everyone is turning towards and how do I?

I have a new family, and about 90% of the time they are complaining and qwetching about the problems in their small worlds, how life is such a struggle, complaining about money and how to save it like their lives are not abundant. Familiar? I'm sensitively aware of their use of language and negative mindsets around how life is a problem to be solved, and the overall lack of gratitude for the amazingness of what is the gift of every single day.

If we were running out of gas on the highway, my dad would be furious about my lack of responsibility and how dangerous that is... Joe would be like, "So amazing, I wonder what will happen! The universe will decide..."

I'm neither of those. 

I feel deep loneliness in my experience of the world when I'm with my family. What have I absorbed that I no longer want to be part of me? What more can I take responsibility for?

I love my stepmom, Miri, and it's also super strange and uncomfortable sometimes to see her interact with the man I love most, my father. Sometimes my body screams at me to run away, and other times I enjoy her company. She speaks Arabic and French, and is a beautiful, fierce 70-year-old upper east side Jewish woman who is always dressed to the nines with thick black eye-liner. She has bought my dad a bunch of polo T-shirts and cares about how he dresses, and my dad has only ever owned like ten shirts his whole life. There is no bigger smile on his face than when he tells you he wears his running T-shirts until there are big holes in them, because it gives him pride how long he can wear them as he stretches his running miles every morning, year after year. He doesn't care a damn about material things, as Miri does. She cares about status, which makes sense. She was in two arranged marriages and was born in Egypt. This is her first marriage of choice, for love, in her 70s! She's living the rich, American dream. She's "made it" by marrying my father, an incredibly kind, humble man, who has dedicated his entire career to curing cancer and science, whose parents died young and came from nothing in Israel - a classic tale of pulling yourself up by your own boot-straps. He cares about science and the pursuit of knowledge above all else, a most classic philosopher-academic.

Miri replaced his Toyota with an Audi, and complained about the $5,000 couch having wrinkles and that it needed to be returned and I went to the bathroom to silently scream into the mirror, my eyes filled with tears, my deep longing to be at Joe's family's Chanukkah party - or anywhere but listening to the "problem of the couch wrinkles." My dad loves nature and hiking, and conversations about the intricacies of life, and I see the expression on his face that means, "holy fucking shit I don't care," even when the words coming out of his mouth are, "Yes Miri'i thank you for taking care of that." 

My dad went to the apple store and complained about his apple watch band magnet not being strong enough. He's had it for three years and insists that "Apple needs to stand behind their products, this was expensive." He sounds like a 15-year-old boy qwetching to the customer service rep, and then her manager, that the band needs to be replaced. The familiar feeling of shame and embarrassment comes over, and I smile extra friendly to the manager, wondering out loud if maybe, "The band just needs to be cleaned?" on his behalf. The manager returns later, with a new band for my dad, and just replaces it. Turns out the magnet was actually broken, out of place, at a slanty-angle, which shouldn't happen. My dad says, "See, Apple stands behind their products."

We order Chinese take-out to eat while watching the democratic debates. Miri and my dad argue, in very loud voices, over how much tip to give a deliveryman. They argue over three dollars. I try to smile and think to myself, "be grateful, be grateful, be grateful, life is gift, this is funny tara, this is funny!!!" but really I'm crying and I feel like my chest is tightening and I want to run away and hold Jordan's hand and instead I sit there silently, hidden in plain sight. They decide to go for the tip with the extra seventy cents...

Miri is also incredibly thoughtful and loving. My dad is 72 and still runs four miles every morning, even at 25 degrees Fahrenheit outside. One morning he came back from his run, gray hair ablaze, and she was frantically googling to buy him a windbreaker to protect him from the cold. The moment I arrived and walked into the apartment door three days ago, she asked me if I had forgotten anything in Boulder. And I had, I had forgotten to pack gloves... Turns out she had a gift waiting for me... black gloves... How did she know? She gifted them to me within two minutes of my arrival.

On the phone with my new grandma, Miri's mom, I was trying to speak in Arabic. Miri's mom is 93 and I love trying to speak in Arabic with her. We laugh and giggle and make my dad kind of cry-laugh by screaming into the phone in Arabic. Miri whispers what to say and then I kind of yell the words so my new grandma can hear me and I don't understand anything she's saying. I say, "I love you!" and "shukran" and all sorts of things. I'm going to spend Monday with her in the nursing home, and I'm so excited to practice more Arabic with her, she's a doll of light.

I arrived in NY Monday night and saw Jay Tuesday morning. I brought him his jacket he had forgotten in Boulder in Grenich village and we had an over-priced breakfast together. A bagel with some stuff on it for $16, really? We die laughing together, or at least I do, every time we hang out. We can make fun of ourselves, his business, and just about anything together, and also have moments of somewhat serious professional respect for one another's perspective and point of view on what is happening to our economy and how the internet is impacting our lives. I believe in this silly entrepreneur, but my intuition also tells me to remain totally detached from his lack of availability and vulnerability to show up for me. He tells me about his family struggles back in Omaha, and the automation of jobs and the economy. I can tell he loves his family. He's going to bring back baked-goods from NY for them, and he likes to take his grandma to the movie theatre, and you can hear the tenderness behind his mask of masculinity when he states that he does that. He makes fun of his mom's meatloaf and mac n' cheese, and then throws in a side-comment about obesity issues in the midwest, and then proceeds to explain how he stays fit - will be saving half of this meal for later, for example. He's near broke it seems but going to get a job in the new year, thankfully he works in technology, and is ultra-hireable. He knows it, too, and yet, he's immersed in the hustle. I have a story that his family is honest and humble like Joe's family, and that their negativity if any, is actually realistic, and not a generationally-imposed-scarcity-trauma mindset. I miss the joy of Jordan's family. They have nothing and then again, absolutely everything, at the same time. I can laugh at myself now, the me who lived in fear of the drugs and counting down the days until three Rosenbergs died of their addictions, desiring to do something, anything, to control the outcome... I have a kind of compassion for what I did not then know or understand... ironically, how incredibly rich they are with love for one another no matter what, from a place of true gratitude, no matter the extent of their pain. I'm grateful that I learned that from them. I love them all so much, it's truly bizarre to even try to explain. It just is.

I made it to the final round of the interviews for this job in Denver. I spoke with a board member, Tania, who ate me for breakfast - just grilled me on the phone. My adrenaline took over 24 hours to subside. I could hardly speak at dinner with my parents and step-brother because I just kept replaying the interview in my mind. It's hard to be a finalist and detach, I want the financial freedom so badly, I want to stand on my own two feet so badly so I can show up more fully and from a place of love and accept the family I am given. I don't want to depend on this negative energy to survive, I feel like it permeates me and shifts how I see the world, consciously or not. I mean, just look at the language I've used in this email alone!

I feel like I'm dancing with my relationship with my intuition. Is it Joe and being immersed in his family of addiction for three years that has fucked up my trust in my own knowing, or is it my attachment to that story, or has it always been the lack of family of my own, the "world's a place to survive" mentality and lack-of-abundance mentality, scarcity mentality, of my well-to-do family? Is it that I'm always in my head and escaping from living from my body? The Jewish-trauma-mindset... It's so subtle, and so not subtle, and so gross. There are all types of trauma that shape us, and I experienced some of the more well-understood ones - from major surgeries to non-consensual sexual conduct - but I really think family matters so much in how we experience our worlds. I miss Jordan's carefree attitude, his love for every single day no matter what happens, I love the freedom he bought for himself by weaning off my generosity to create the life he always wanted. I wanted to go with him. He taught me what it means to be rich, and now I feel poor, and not because I can't pay my end of year taxes.

I can hear them, my dad and Miri, arguing about some problems in the next room. They're always planning things for me - right now they're discussing how I need to take the subway to my happy hour - like I'm 15 years old, someone to be controlled, incapable of taking care of myself. I'm saddened that I'm not seen as an adult. My mom does this to me, too. They think they're being helpful, it crushes my soul.  Ya know, I'm not "married, not partnered, not employed, not worthy." It's like Asian parenting, but ten times worse. It makes you feel gross inside, unworthy of love... How ridiculous.

I feel like I inflicted this mentality on Joe, the pressure to get a job, to support me because I had supported him. When he got fired, I tried to get lawyers, to coach him, to take over, to control, to demand more from him. I didn't love him unconditionally, I was attached, I had expectations, I was not living from a place of possibility. It's not that I'm still beating myself about it, still, but it's like a lesson that is steering me in a new direction of knowing how I am different from my family of origin, so I can stand true in knowing myself. I don't want this perspective or way of being to be part of who I am or my life, and at the same time, I want to be grateful for who they are, my family, otherwise I'm just stuck in the same nonsense of life being a problem-to-be-solved...

I'm reading the Art of Possibility. This is the mentality nonexistent in my old and new family... Diagnosis, achieved. I want to live in that space and surround myself with people who live in that space. According to the author you can't change other people, you can just change relationships based on how you show up. I love that and think it's beautiful.

My last reference check for the new job is today at 4:45pm MST. It's my strongest reference, Tammy. I hope it's enough. She worked in sales. I prepared her well with a phone call, a bullet-point list of things to consider about me. I want freedom in every part of my body, I feel like I'm dying for it... And yet, I know, what I really want freedom from is the feeling of wanting/dying for anything.