How to Grow Up by Michelle Tea

Author:Michelle Tea
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-01-11T16:00:00+00:00

8.

The Baddest Buddhist

Sometime after my epic breakup, when I was still seething with resentment, I visited with my family in sunny Santa Monica. We were among a horde of people wandering toward the promenade, a public space lined with stores and odd, often sad street buskers, like the man playing a violin with an empty soda bottle, or the “psychic cats”—malnourished felines in Ren Faire garb trained to grab a scroll of psychic hoo-ha for a spoonful of wet food. As we pushed forward, I noticed a man in the crowd who was walking funny and spouting fury. Others moved to give him space lest he suddenly become violent; we did the same. As we passed him I caught a glimpse of his face—reddened, tortured, full of rage.

“I did everything for you and you did nothing for me! I did everything for you and you did nothing for me!” he chanted. The people moving by him looked scared, or disturbed. Some laughed at him; some looked briefly compassionate and quickly moved on—the various coping mechanisms we develop to deal with the sight of one of our kind losing it in public. Beneath all reactions, even the cruelest, is a bit of There but for the grace of God go I.

That afternoon I felt especially close to the freaking-out gentleman. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had put in a lot of time with my rapper ex, taken a lot of shit, worked really hard, and all for nothing. I’d cared for this person emotionally, financially, even physically, and for what? Eight years of my life, gone. I did everything for you and you did nothing for me! The only difference between me and the dude in the street was that I kept my grudging fury on the inside, while he had lost that ability. There but for the grace of Stevie Nicks higher power go I.

Remember that 12-step slogan I mentioned, about how resentment is like drinking a glass of poison and expecting the other person to die? I had a churning pit of bitterness and anger in my body, but my ex seemed to be having a great time bouncing around town with his new girlfriend. No matter how much I stewed and sunk, he appeared buoyant, remorseless. I knew I had to do something about it, lest I turn into a woman muttering aloud in public shopping centers. Writing lists of everything I was grateful for wasn’t soothing my angst; spending an extra twenty minutes on the treadmill didn’t exhaust it out of me. My regular stable of self-help tools wasn’t cutting it. It was time to get a serious perspective injection, to declare spiritual war on myself. It was time to get Buddhist about it. I’d long sought solace and wisdom from the occasional Buddhist read, but my current state of mind was pushing me toward a deeper interaction with the ancient discipline. I’d thought Buddhism would save me from hating my ex, but instead it helped me grow up a little more.

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