Gina

Dirty Thirty. Wow.

I am happy and relieved to finally say good-bye to my twenties. But it’s not “good riddance.” It’s more “fond farewell.”

I have learned SO MUCH over this past decade. Also, let’s be real: I have accomplished a really impressive amount of cool stuff over this past decade, both personally and professionally. I’m not even gonna play at being falsely humble or modest here: I’m totally awesome and I kicked a lot of ass in my twenties. I was brave and forthright and honest and bright. Sometimes I made really stupid decisions, bad mistakes. Sometimes I was way too hard on myself.  

But sometimes I was really good to myself. Sometimes, I was bloody spectacular.

So many moments over this past decade were formative. Everything from leaving a horrible abusive relationship at 21 to starting Girl Talk at 25. Graduating college at 22, getting one of two Master’s Degrees at 29 (and being very well on my way to getting my second in May). Starting not one but two manuscripts. The shitty meaningless boring jobs and the work that I loved, the work that fed me. Getting published a lot, teaching a lot, performing a lot. Touring and doing college gigs. Meeting so many sweet people. Making friends who have become beloved family. Building towards actually making a living as a working artist. Bad awkward funny-story sex that still taught me a lot about my body and my boundaries. And the best sex of my entire life, the kind of fucking that left me humming and panting and alive with the utter possibility of the world. Falling in love a few times and becoming a better person for it. Learning so much every time my heart broke open.

But what it all boils down to is this: The biggest thing I learned in my twenties is How To Have A Body. That is the lesson that made all the other joys and discoveries possible. At 20, I was glassy-eyed and constantly underslept, anoretic and running on fumes. To say I was completely fucking dissociated is an understatement. My consciousness floated about 6 inches above my head at all times. Over the past decade, I have gone, slowly and painstakingly but surely, from floating above my head to actually being in my body all the time. To actually listening to my body.

Sometimes I want to send a picture of myself now to my 20 year-old self. She was so small and scared, so trapped and cornered, so hollow. I want to feed her everything she wasn’t letting herself take in — food and rest, safety and love. I want to give her a soft place to land, to remind her of what she deserves.  I want to say “Bella, abundanza. Look. Look. Look who you’re going to be and what you’re going to do. You’ll leave all of this behind and you will be so much better and happier for it. You are so brave.”

I’m looking forward to growing into my bravery and bad-assery in my 30s. And I wonder what 40 year old me will want to say to 30 year old me. What that picture will look like.

I bet it’ll be really good, whatever it is.

Read More

Looking at my old journals tonight, I ran across an entry I wrote almost exactly a year ago (March 11th, 2009), where I talked about Things I Needed & Wanted. At the time, the list felt scary to write, because the things I wanted meant a major shift from where my life was. A year ago, I was working at a non-profit part-time, working as a PA part-time, doing sex work very occasionally, living with a housemate, fitting in writing/performance/teaching where I could, fitting in activism where I could, and fitting in dates and time with friends where I could.

This is the thing: I was mostly happy. There were many good things about my jobs, I was still able to do writing and performance and activism, my housemate was a dear friend, and I had supportive lovers and friends throughout that whole period. 

But I was also burning the candle at both ends. I was exhausted all the time. I was burnt out on my gigs; I needed to make writing, performance, and teaching my top personal and career priorities, and I was scared to take that leap. I was hella craving solitude and a living space that I had total control over, and I was sick of the neighborhood I’d lived in for four years. And I was nursing a pretty serious broken heart from a break-up that January.

The list of Things I Wanted was pretty simple. To paraphrase me from a year ago: I want to: Continue to live in San Francisco, live alone, go to grad school, have a cat, write a lot, bike along the beach every week, travel frequently for writing/teaching/performance paid gigs, travel for pleasure where I can.

A year later, I’ve accomplished all of that. None of those goals seem difficult or grandiose any more. The only thing on that list that I haven’t been consistently doing is the weekly beach bike ride. But I ride my bike a lot, and I get to the beach a fair amount. ;)

It’s amazing to me that the life I have now felt so uncertain and full of “What if?” and “Can I really afford this?” and, I think more to the point, “Do I deserve this?” If you’d told me a year ago that I’d get a great scholarship & loan package from the perfect school for me, a series of awesome college gigs, an astoundingly cheap & rent-controlled studio in an amazing neighborhood, a great freelance gig, a foster kitty, fig & nectarine trees in my backyard, and some new & wonderful sweeties & friends, I don’t think I would have believed you.

Reflecting on my list a year later shows me how much I’ve grown, and how much power there is in saying what you want and really going for it. 2009 was a lesson in trusting in myself and my intuition; taking giant leaps of faith. I’m humbled by how abundant and awesome my life is, how happy and settled and right things feel. I can’t wait to see where I am a year from now.