June 27, 2012-Volume 72: Kicking Fear in the Ass

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl- Volume 72: Kicking Fear in the Ass

As I thought about ending the blog and what I would write in these last 4 entries, I began to reflect on how I had changed in the two years since my accident and the key things on which I am working to live a fuller life. I came up with four key themes and each blog will address one of those and how I have changed.  The four things on which I have progressed, and on which I continue to work are getting rid of fear, letting go and not worrying about the outcomes, trusting in God and the Universe and living my unlived life by letting my inner voice guide me.  In this blog I talk about how my ways of facing my fears has evolved and how the fears have abated.  But first……………

My WTF of the week is the attire that is now worn when going out on the town, to places like bars and clubs.  I am talking specifically about what women are wearing, are actually, not wearing. When I was out this weekend I realized I did not get the memo about barely covering your butt and boobs and wearing super high heels. Basically, what I call streetwalker wear, which I guess is the new chic. I saw so many short skirts and dresses and kept wondering how they even slightly bend over without showing the goods. I mean, what happens if you drop something. Actually everything is so tight they really can’t bend over anyway (well not until way later in the evening). There were also many low, barely there tops. I thought why go through the trouble, just get some of those round Band-Aids and you are good to go.  Women of all shapes and sizes (and ages) were stuffed and I do mean stuffed into these unattractive outfits. These are the moments in life when I am glad to be visually impaired. I have figured out why I do not get approached when I go out-I am wearing too much clothing (damn my self-respect).  So I thought, I could have just put on a little bandeau top and also put one around the bottom to cover the privates (barely). A Bandeau is basically a tube top gathered in the middle. I came up with a saying “Bandeau, Bandeau, and I’m ready to go”. Which then brings me to…..

This week I can’t get enough of the fact that much too early in the morning (let’s just say about 2:30 am) I wrote a song that went with the above saying. I would normally not suggest songwriting at this time of night because the lyrics were a little crazy and really explicit (as they should be).  Of course it is a rap song and it is not done yet.  I envision it in the satire of the Andy Samberg songs on SNL, although nothing can ever, ever touch D**k in a Box.  But in a way it could also become a huge hit (not).  Disclaimer: if you are easily offended, skip to the more mature sections of the blog. Also note there are even more explicit lyrics that I am not including here. All opinions expressed are solely that of the author. This song is in no way indicative of the other songs I have written, really and truly.

With my side boob rocking and my booty hanging low

Bandeau, Bandeau and I'm ready to go

With my high heels clicking like a streetwalkin' ho

Bandeau, Bandeau and I'm ready to go

Push it up, pull it in, I don't need to hit the gym

Bandeau, bandeau and I'm ready to go

You can grope me, grind me, get on up behind me

No please, I'm a tease; I don’t get down on my knees

No card, no cash, drinking all night for free

Bandeau, Bandeau and I’m ready to go

So the fact that I put my rap in this blog demonstrates that I have worked very hard these past two years to overcome fear.  I had fears of failure, fears about how I was perceived and especially, fears about abandonment.  I felt a need to be in control and when I felt out of control my fears made me physically ill.  I had begun facing my fears before the accident, after failed relationships and the birth of my child. I think in some ways having a child can make you really scared, but also causes you to try and get a hold of those feelings. Then the accident happened; an event so random and so out of my control. Then the financial burden and custody battle that happened immediately after, coupled with not knowing how much sight I would have, converged into a list of unbelievable unknowns and uncertainties. These took me to a place, really a decision point, where I could give up, lie down and end it all, or I could let go and realize that nothing was in my control and I had everything to lose, but nothing to fear. I did the latter.

The core of my fears stemmed from something with which we all struggle-the feeling we may be unlovable and if people really knew us and really saw us they would not like us and would leave. I had that fear, in spades. It caused me to feel insecure in relationships and lonely and scared when not in relationships.   I can say that almost all of that is gone. To choose to live in a new way and figure out how to accept my disabled self, I had to really love myself. And in doing that and realizing that I was a loveable person who deserved to have a loving partner, I felt good in the spaces, the long spaces now, where I am alone. And being alone is now confortable because I always have me and always have my connection to God.  In truth I can never be abandoned.

I also felt a fear of failure and somewhat of disappointing others and lived my life as sort of a perfectionist. The need for control stemmed from a need not to fail and to do the best. That is also mostly, if not all, gone.  The accident got rid if much of that.  In that second where my life changed, I realized there is nothing in life in your control and you NEVER know what will happen next. And in my lack of ability or in my different ability there was absolutely no way to be perfect, so I gave up trying to be. There was and only has been a way to figure out how to do things the only way I can, and sometimes I fail and sometimes I succeed, but I always try and my attempts are creative at their best and pathetic at their worst.  It is in the trying that I find joy and a sense of accomplishment.

Am I fearless now---no, and I never will be, but I do not face the overwhelming fear that blocked me from living my life in the ways I wanted. I think about, but do not fear, not being able to find a stable loving partner, given my life. I have the natural fears and worries that go along with being a parent. I think about finances and how I will make it.  But I know that I have everything I need, all the tools, all the gifts, to be able to be successful and the power to look for the clues that lead me to define what success means to me.  Because of the accident and the resulting physical state of blindness, I have more sight and vision about the way the world works through the realization that nothing is in my control, I have strength and power, I am loveable and deserving of love, and I have what I need to succeed. Those are things I did not see before I became visually impaired. Most importantly I have learned that the statement “there is nothing to fear but fear itself” is one of the truest things I know.

Keep Moving Forward,

Beth (BLOVI) Medlock

June 20, 2012-Volume 71: I Woke Up with a Song in my Head and Now Have an EP

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl-Volume 71: I Woke Up with a Song in my Head and Now Have an EP

About nine days ago I woke up with an idea for a song that formed quickly with lyrics and a melody. Since then I have written three more songs and have been living with them in my head and singing them.  I have no clue where they came from or if there are any more. My sudden and unexpected foray into song writing is the focus of this blog. But first……….

My WTF of the week is that there is hair returning after 7 rounds of laser hair removal. I thought the point of laser hair removal was that it is permanent. That is where I was wrong. I could not see, but started to suspect (by feel), that there were some hairs growing back, albeit thin and sparse. Then there was an unfortunate bikini incident which confirmed the presence of hair where there should be no hair. Should I have asked for the kind of hairy Sicilian package, which may have included more sessions? My next step was to use the epilator (that instrument of torture that rips out your hair like a million tweezers) on areas where no one and I mean no one should attempt to use an epilator, no matter what the sensitive area attachment and instructions say. So now I am checking for hairs, which are too thin and sparse for me to see, but which others can easily see, through placing my zoom camera on these areas-not for the faint of heart. This is too much work for me. So, I will now figure out how many more laser sessions I will have to do until the hair is actually permanently gone.

This week I can’t get enough of the NYC Housewives. I am unabashedly a huge fan of the NYC version as it is superior to the rest of the housewives. I like the three new women on the show. I love Aviva because she has a wonderful sense of humor about her fake leg. She brought an extra leg (a tanned one) to get a pedicure and has had some great lines like “my one leg is freezing”. I also love the morose Heather who loves to talk about her “issues”, as Ramona puts it. We are at episode three and I think I have heard about her son’s liver failure 25 times-way to milk it Bravo. And Carol is a shameless flirt who does not want to do commitment so I love her.  I wish I had her balls when it comes to approaching men. And this season Sonja just seems drunk all the time and Ramona has the crazy eyes look and strange tangential thought patterns. Luanne, who is my style hero and I may also rock her haircut in the near future, is so full of herself as always. I am looking forward to a great season as the New Jersey and OC Housewives have almost become unwatchable.

One of the main goals I had this summer was to begin reading through all the blogs I had written and turning them into a book. Having managed to avoid this task in May, I figured June was the month the book process would begin. But when I started thinking about the book I somehow could not muster up the energy to go through the old blogs. I thought I may just not have a book in me or maybe I am not really creative. In the midst of all this came the songs. They came after seeing some live music and hanging out with some singer/songwriters in Asheville, so maybe that is what inspired me. I had no plans to write songs, I just woke up one morning and the better part of a song with a melody was just there in my head. Half asleep I continued to write words and when I got up I made the decision to write them down. And there was a song. Interestingly it was kind of a country song.

I have written songs before, mostly in my 20’s. They were all angry chick songs and I likened myself to be the next Courtney Love or Kathleen Hanna or Kim Gordon. I rarely wrote the songs down. Pieces of them just came and went and seemed to make little sense later. I deemed them immature and amateurish. I even tried to learn to play the guitar so I could strum along with the songs. But that was just too much work.  So the song writing stopped as I got more mature and more responsibilities came my way.  That is, until now.

Once I wrote the first song another one came in the same day and by the third day I had three songs. A fourth came a few days later and when I wrote it down a fifth began to appear.  It is interesting that my songs sound country and folky because I do not like country music. The lyrics are simple and straightforward because I think and talk that way. They are brutally honest. I may have to write under a pseudonym so I still have friends and family who will speak to me.  So what do I do with these songs? Since I can’t read or play music (unless you consider playing the drums badly playing music) I need musicians to help me turn the lyrics and their melodies into a structure that makes a song. You know the verse chorus verse thing. I am not sure why I am making the effort now to do something with my songs. When I sing them I think to myself crazy stuff like, “I could hear Faith Hill singing this”. They actually seem like decent songs and not just angry immature crap. And I could be wrong. When I share them with other singer/songwriters, which I will be doing, they may think they are crap and also that I have no business singing. But I plan to sing my songs at an open mike in the near future and I am ready for the feedback. At this age, in this unplanned and unexpected adventure, what do I have to lose? I have everything to gain.

I think I should be thankful that, for some reason, the songs came to me. And I still plan to write the book. Maybe that will just come to me too. What I have realized, and probably have been preaching for months, is that it is never too late to do anything and sometimes you just have to go for it. To some it makes me seem scattered or all over the place. But to me it makes me feel open to new experiences and willing to take risks. What happens or does not happen with these songs will be fun to do and to watch.

Keep Moving Forward,

Beth (BLOVI) Medlock

June 13, 2012-Volume 70: Girls Just Want to Have Fun (on their birthdays)

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl- Volume 70: Girls Just Want to Have Fun (on their birthdays)

This year I took a much needed vacation on my birthday week. Originally this was supposed to be the Costa Rica Chickation (note that the OC Housewives took a trip this season to Costa Rica, which mas entirely my idea). So instead of Costa Rica I went to North Carolina (Asheville and Charlotte), to hang out with old friends and possibly meet new ones. I had a great time and realized I can still party and relax.  So, forgoing the usual blog format, below is a list of stuff one should do on a birthday vacation (at least this is a condensed version of what I did).

1)    Convince a childhood friend to go with you to someplace beautiful, Asheville, and stay at the best place there, The Grove Park Inn, just to be indulgent. Then spend a day at the Grove Park Inn Spa. It is amazing how many hours you can spend in the wet and dry saunas, going from the hot whirlpool into the cold dip poll (tingly) and relaxing in the eucalyptus room (which I am trying to recreate in my home). Then there are the many indoor and outdoor pools. I managed to get a tan, float while listening to relaxing underwater music and have jets and sheets of water hit all parts of my body mimicking deep tissue massage. And of course I had to get in a bit of exercise and swam 35 laps in the lap pool, which no one else was doing. But for me, swimming is relaxing. We were there about 7 hours with no phones or distractions or worries or cares.

2)    Eat some good food like the fried green tomatoes at Tupelo Honey, the fantastically huge shrimp at the Grove Park Inn, the super fresh sushi at Wasabi (where I drank my first cold sake), Turkish food around midnight at Intermezzo in Charlotte, and an awesome home cooked meal at the Gittings home. . We ate well and clean for the most part and no one had to cook.

3)    Shop for something awesome. I did some vintage shopping and bought a great long Carol Brady polyester skirt. I love the late 60’s look, so the skirt was a score. Having fun is trying on outrageous things and somehow thinking that you could rock them. A few days later I bought a super sexy dress from Bebe that I plan to wear on special occasions (with high heels).

4)    Listen to some great music and dance. At the Orange Peel we saw too fabulous but very different acts. A punk mariachi band called Mariachi Del Bronx and a group called the Tune Yards. The lead person in the Tune Yards sings over her own loops while playing percussion-mostly a base and snare drum. This gave me some ideas so there may be experimental music going on in my garage with the electronic drum set. Check them both out. You can do some good salsa moves to the Mariachi and some classic rave twirls to the Tune Yards. And of course the orange Peel in Asheville is a stellar place to hear bands and watch people.

5)    End up at an interesting Tiki Bar where you could not predict what will happen. We witnessed an almost fight which turned into a Bromance in less than 10 minutes (oh the joys of alcohol and the complexity of the male species) and met some singer/songwriters that had come over from a gig around the block. Part of my birthday present was having a conversation with a smart, no BS and passionate about his music singer/songwriter that you should definitely check out named Shane Cooley. I did not hear him play but when I got back and listened to his music and watched his videos I found that he was super talented and makes great music.

6)    Go for some perks using your birthday as an excuse. We managed to get a free indulgent buffet breakfast because an alarm went off at 2am the first night at the hotel and ruined my birthday (not really, but this was the speech my mom calling as her travel agent self  gave to the hotel to score us the breakfast). Being that several drinks were consumed the night before and someone was up until what seems like 5am there was not as much gusto and overeating that usually occurs at buffets, especially those that are free. But the food was good.

7)    Extend your birthday into a birthday week and hang out with longtime friends in Charlotte.  We did both the family stuff at a cookout and the going out stuff in NODA. That night we ended up at a pool hall/karaoke bar with some barely tolerable singers. I really wanted to do karaoke as it is on the bucket list and I was all ready to take the mike. But the book of songs was lengthy and I realized I would have to pick a song to which I knew all the lyrics because I could not see the screen with the words. Now, that was a challenged and we tried to devise ways to have someone feed me the lyrics when I got stuck but could not find a way to make it work (mostly because it was almost 2am and our brains were not so sharp). It was almost last call so alas the search for a song ended and no karaoke for me. If they would have had what I am currently singing in home karaoke, like Video Games by Lana Del Ray or Last Day of Magic by the Kills or Terrible Love by the Nationals I would have been up there. Next time I am there I am doing We Belong by Pat Benatar.

8)    Have some unexpected bizarre events happen. I had a weird out of town run in in a bar with someone-in this case the ex-wife of an ex-boyfriend.  I got into at least one late night crazy argument with my soul mate who has been connected to me in several past lives that ended up with an I just want to punch you moment and what are we trying to work out here. Them I missed a step at a pool and twisted my ankle while being surrounded by surgically enhanced 20sonethings in string bikinis. And I had at least one conversation discussing past lives astrals and avatars. These are the things that make life interesting.

So what did I learn here, when I reflect on the week. First, I have great friends. Thanks to Leonore, Amy and Rusty (who drove 4 hours from the beach to meet me in Charlotte). I found I like to kick back and have a good time and have some adventures. For a week I get to step out of my role as single mom, business owner and somewhat upstanding member of the community to be the other parts of myself which are fun and free. And I could have pushed it more. There was definitely one adventure I backed out of, regretfully. But I like being in places where no one knows me and there are no cameras recording what I am doing because I do want to be in some kind of politics later in life and don’t need skeletons in the closet. The week also reinforced that I need to commit to planning adventures (as much as you can do that) or just times to let loose and have fun into each week. The week convinced me, a person often described as unapproachable, that the right people with the energy I am looking for will want to hang out or talk or be with me in general.

Half my life is probably over, but I still feel really young and vibrant and energetic.  I think fun, freedom, creativity, and taking risks in a kind of “oh, what the hell” attitude keep me that way. Age is a number and that is about all it is. And there is nothing more powerful than being young at heart and open to new experiences, while having the wisdom, self-awareness and confidence that come with age.

Party On and Keep Moving Forward,

Beth (BLOVI) Medlock