76. Beverly Hills - Rodeo Drive

Date: May 21, 1998
Age: 21

Happy 21st Birthday. You have certainly grown up to be a beautiful woman.
Love you,
Dad

When I unearthed my postcard collection, this is the one I was looking for. I didn't remember where it was from, but I remember receiving it. I was very skeptical about his sincerity, because I was angry with him, and feeling bratty. How does he know I'm a beautiful woman? How often does he see me?

I should have just given him a break and thanked him for the compliment.

Unfortunately this card was not with the bulk of the collection that I started going through last spring. One final search through basement boxes at my mother's house over Christmas, however, turned up another twenty(!) postcards, from 1993-1998. I think, with this batch, I have found the last of my dad's cards. There is no other place to look. I think it brings the count close to 400.

At some point in my early 20s, I decided to stop being angry with my dad and just start healing. Being angry wasn't doing me any good. It wasn't fueling energy to conquer some goal. It was just sitting inside me, causing pain and sadness.

Ten years later, I need to remind myself of my conscious efforts to move on. In the past year or two, I've had a lot to be angry about. Justifiably. And throughout the months I've successfully rid myself of a lot of it, or transmuted it into art. But it sometimes lingers, still. Sometimes it will stop me dead in my tracks and nearly knock me down, and I throw away the desire to do anything productive or healthy.

2008 was all about rebuilding myself after an unhealthy 2007. I came out of 2008 feeling good about myself, despite the occasional spells of anger. 2009 is for building upon that good feeling, and for that reason, I thought it was time to set some specific goals. For the first time in my life, I created New Year's Resolutions. And the first?

1. Let go of anger. While it's not going to switch off instantly, every time it creeps into my gut I need to reflect on my life now, which, after so long, seems to be going my way.
2. Get more buff. My illness of 'aught 7 shriveled my muscles down to nothing, and this year I have made enormous strides in gaining it back. I've set some specific strength-training goals to build upon this.
3. Run a 10k. My legs aren't as strong as I'd like, so this one will be accomplished as long as I achieve the above.
4. Finish the book. Over the summer I wrote a story that had been kicking around in my head for awhile, not knowing if I could even still write well after not doing it for about two years. It turned out to be the best thing I ever wrote, and people love it. All that palpable rage and grief over illness turned into something worthwhile--finally, anger had its proper say. I always felt that this story went beyond the telling of the fifteen pages it is, and so I just need to keep going.
5. Get the aforementioned story published. I'm working on it...
6. Find a good job. I should finish my MILS by the summer. Christ, I hope the job market isn't as bleak by then.
7. Get out of the country. Like my father, I have extreme wanderlust, and then for five years didn't have the opportunity to go anywhere. This past year I said "to hell with credit card debt" and went to Germany, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands. I don't know where I'm going next, but traveling--often alone--is when I'm at my happiest, so I need to get going.
8. Don't worry about being alone. I have many friends who are happily paired up, and many others who are single like me. I date, I have sex, and this is better than being in a bad relationship. If I have to go through this life without a life partner, I can do it without fear and have it be fulfilling. Feeling sorry for myself will not solve anything.
9. Don't abuse my body. This past year, I was drunk/hungover for a week straight (with many more drunken nights peppered in), and did drugs. WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING? I was given a second chance at having a healthy body, for fuck's sake, and I'm basically disrespecting myself and negating everything I've achieved by hurting it. No more of that.
10. Quit procrastinating. This is going to be the hardest one. I meta-procrastinate, for fuck's sake, by searching for various definitions of "procrastination" on the internet. Procrastination leads to me being self-critical.
    

Ten is enough.

As for my father--I'm still getting sentence fragments for e-mails with updates on his condition. So far as I know, he's "doing better."