One important thing about me and my life is that, like the Phoenix, I somehow always manage to rise from the ashes. Which is a good thing--except the "going up in flames" part kinda stings.

The recurring theme of my life is "starting over." When I was a child, my mom and I moved all the time, so I was always the new kid in school. Having no siblings, and being terrifyingly shy, these were always traumatic transitions for me and it seemed that just when I finally made some new friends, we'd move again. (Between Kindergarten and High School graduation, I went to thirteen different schools. For Grades 5 and 6 I changed schools FOUR times between Arizona, California and Oregon.)

When I look back on Friday, 5 April, 1991, I'm not sure now that I look at it as a date of "starting over" as much as a date of just starting. It was the day that my life ended. I felt the first flames flicker about me during the day as I was having intense pain in my wisdom teeth and decided it was time to have them out. I tried at least a half-dozen times to phone my mom to see what her schedule would be so I could schedule the surgery for a time when she could drive me home. Every single time I picked up the phone to call her, I was interrupted. Later that afternoon, when I was trying to drive home through Southeast Portland, a freight train was blocking the streets so I had to drive back into Downtown Portland and take a different bridge to get home. I felt at the time that forces were keeping me away from home, but couldn't understand exactly what was going on.

I got home and noticed that the curtains were drawn (I had moved back home about 8 months prior to help mother out with expenses and such). My mother needed daylight, so the fact that the curtains were closed was very odd. I parked my car in the garage, listened to the last lines of REM's "Losing My Religion" and went inside the house. The radio was on (we turned it on for the dogs whenever we left the house). I saw a bunch of cash and mother's bank card on the kitchen counter and some notes with my mom's handwriting on the kitchen table. I picked up the first note; it was addressed to me.

"I'm sorry to ruin your weekend, but I can't go on..."

At this point, I only remember bits and pieces of the note. In fact, there were two notes to me and the snippets may be bits from both. "I'm in the room in the back of the garage. DO NOT GO IN THERE!" and something like, "don't go through it alone, find someone special..." or something like that. Really, that's all I can remember.

I still hadn't really connected the dots, or maybe I didn't believe the picture that was forming. Disregarding my mother's instruction, I went to the room at the back of the garage.

I'll skip the gorey detail and go straight to the coroner's report: "A self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head."

For twenty-six years and fifteen days, my identity was so intertwined with my mother's that no one (not even mom and I) knew where one of us ended and the other began. Some time between 10:24 a.m. (the time stamped on the ATM receipt when she drew out cash that morning) and early that afternoon, we found out where one of us ended and the other began.

No, wait.

When I found my mother, I felt her little .22 under her legs. My first thought was, "I'm coming with you, mom!" But in that same second my instinct took over and I knew at that moment that it wasn't MY time to leave (nor was this going to ever be the way I leave this world). It wasn't so much that I chose life; I think life chose me.

THAT'S where mom ended and I began.

The intervening 14 years have seen more new beginnings: A move from Portland to San Francisco, job changes, new relationships, etc. But over the last six months, I've really felt the flames turn up. As my 40th birthday approached, I saw myself reduced to ashes once more.

So much of my life is just not working right now. I have no bitter complaints about my job, except for the fact that I am so ill-suited for customer service work (and those cracks have been very evident, lately). And just about all of my relationships have come under question because I'm feeling like I've made some false assumptions and misjudgments and I've just felt very confused. My art has become a disaster and it's taking every bit of strength I've got to just get through my two classes this term.

The last 8-12 weeks have been very very difficult. Everything good I've tried to do seemed to have the opposite effect: I'd reach out to people but end up alone (and lonely). I'd go out to do a photo shoot only to have my equipment let down, and I'd somehow find a way to screw up my technical calculations for composition and lighting. Oh yeah, and I very foolishly fell for someone and thought this time I might "game the system" because I fell for him for all the right reasons (none of my attraction was--is--superficial): I got clobbered Big Time on that one. I withdrew into myself at work and school, was a road-raging bitch in between, and at night, cried alone.

In the last day or so, though, I've started to feel the stirrings of life again. I'm starting to feel some of my strength and (inner) fire coming back. I think a big first step forward was an experiment I tried last weekend: Self Portraiture. One of my photography class assignments is to do a portrait, but I'm uncomfortable asking anyone to take their photo right now. I did some test shots with my digital (in b/w mode), and for the first time in over a decade have some photos of me that don't make me recoil in horror. I'm not sure if it's that I'm feeling more comfortable in my own skin, or that I'm (re)gaining confidence in my photographic skills. Or both. Whichever it is, I'm going to try to ride the momentum and once again be a spirit-in-motion.

Fourteen years ago life chose me. It's about time for me to choose life.