New York University, Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies

Total acceptance. After a storm. Crashing back to NYC, my neurology in haywire, coming to understand I was acting like an idiot, swerving around ghosts, energy forms, bad memories. The ghost of Barbara Harris slowly getting up, back to standing, ready to kick ass once again if necessary. The one true ghost that just might exist, Barbara Harris. Thank you for your assistance and continued spiritual guidance. Dave Chappelle, too. One of the greatest psychics that has ever lived. Super Dad, to me. He got me out of some rough spots back there. Psychic jokes aside, as these male psychics that came into my life were so so nuts, I had to come to a place of total acceptance. The comics of NYC handing me soup, a blanket, lol, lidocaine patches. To ethereal “oohhh” music, the type that would accompany a fairytale, I began my tale…“I was in a sex scandal,” lol. I can’t help but laugh because I appeared on that stage, not knowing what the fuck even happened. Like, was I? They didn’t know what to say. They thought it was true, by the way. That’s what it sounded like to them, as I had to speak out loud in public, to make a kind of transition… I am here, I exist. In the real world. Thanks to Hannah Arendt, I was able to do, a kind of, psychomagie, if you know Jodorowsky, though there were no tarot cards involved, or divination, which I am not into. Arendt, the political theorist, she believed the world was a real STRUCTURE, she began by conducting a psychological analysis on the life of a Jewess, about 150 years before Hitler. “What happens when someone can’t appear in the world?” That was her first question. As it concerns oppressed groups. She saved my life, basically. Jodorowsky was the experimental filmmaker, famously the subject of DUNE the documentary, that Sacha Baron Cohen should parody. Anyway, he invented this mix of psychology and tarot, called psychomagie. It involves the person performing some kind of healing act., sometimes in public, too. So the comedy stage was that, for me. I wish I did that, at 17, just stood up there, gone to some open mics, spoken out loud, because, in the real world… I am only ONE, in a field of many. To the real world, “oh, one of these…” That story even specialized me, strangely, made me “special,” when that’s sort of delusional. The utter delusion I ended up in, going into my 30s, the seeds were always there, and being watered by Romantics, theater artists, the world I moved through… it was, all sentimental bullshit.

I just sort of got here at 40. I had to start over. I had nothing to show for my life, really. No career. No man. Which to Angelita, I can’t help but laugh, because we’re back in touch, THIS was not good. But to her, I’m still young. I just can’t believe, at times, that I’m this person. Like, my life just started. In all honesty, I wish I never went to theater school. That was, a strange place. I’m sorry. Like, this theater professor I got close to, that was mean to students? He encouraged me to act like a trinket in some Romantic dream. I prefer the real world. It just wasn’t the right environment, the right group of people, I just mean, college, for me, didn’t assist me in any capacity. Not with the problems I had. It was this sort of “in-between” space – between family and the real world – and I got treated as if my story wasn’t real; I became enchanting or something, or magical, which people didn’t understand; ethereal = not real.

In a world today, speaking with disconnected hands of how “everything is disconnected,” people didn’t understand the necessity of being seen as REAL, as my childhood story caused people to disconnect: “that sounds like something you’d see on TV…” which, um, did they mean the news? I have to laugh. That’s a disconnect. Now, if someone were to yell at me across the street, “the train to Bohemia is that way,” I would tell them to shut the fuck up. Looking down, remembering what I wore? Girl, I have to laugh; I am telling myself, “you gotta get yourself a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.” Honestly, I can’t even believe how I presented myself. A totally confused individual. But then, clothes to me, eventually, were just fun, but I would not have gotten caught up there, since this brought an obsessed fashionista into my life, who was obsessed with spending money, more so than anything else, and clothes – and this would take me down a road I didn’t need to go down. I feel like I’ve spent the last year, sort of waving away… my youth, unfortunately. I didn’t need to get caught up in fantasizers.

I found people in the arts I met, there were a lot of fantasizers there. I was surrounded by fantasy. Like, this boy in college, still, to this day, he swears that “90 people a day” approached him specifically, after one convo with me, to tell him that we were meant to be. Not him and I. Did I speak to 90 people a day? If I did, I never saw them again. They never wanted to see me again. You see? FANTASY. The fashionista = fantasizer. And then in the end, I met this dark screenwriter with dark fantasies. Another theater “artist.” A bunch of weirdos. Meant to be… what are you even talking about? I wish I went to LAW school, where someone might have simply asked me out on a date. I’m going to hear a lot of “you seem…to me…” a world of appearances that doesn’t really ask questions. It turns out, asking questions, investigation, is dead in this world of empaths. They feel things, disconnected from you, as if your energy is radiating, and they are coping a feel.

In any case, college was a transition I didn’t make successfully. I could circle it, with my invisible laser pointer, as I feel like someone could teach me, in school, the psychology department. It’s a real subject, psychology, in a world that – at least the one I moved through – that doesn’t see it. The world loves speaking of vague mental health concepts, frankly, people’s emotional problems, which was not my problem, exactly. I didn’t have mental health problems; I had structural problems. And the interactions I had with the world didn’t support connection, real connection. Someone like me would have been better off, deferring, not going to college, even, and just forcing myself into the real world right away. Get a job. Get a place. Start operating first. That would have been the smart move. I needed ONE person, who didn’t exist, who would have called me, once a week at the same time, and held a netural, stance, if it took me a little time to be able to get on the phone. Meaning: maintain schedule, “I call you at this time.” I’d get there, eventually. Who knows, maybe that would have been simpler, but I had a hard time picking up my phone, at one point. All these other families – this structural dysfunction, they did not help me at all. They didn’t even SEE me, really.

College, I don’t look back on that time, fondly, but rather, “oh no…” I disappeared. I do not know who that is. My cousins in Italy, when I went back, they didn’t know who this was. They kept saying, “you were sort of like…that…” but something was off, fundamentally. This child that they knew didn’t = this adult. And college, this transition, as even my cousins in Italy shut me down, but got caught up in this “other family” story, not making CONNECTIONS, but rather thinking I was – lying? Hard to tell here. A fucking nightmare. With this screenwriter going, um, “do they see through the show?” When, dude, I cannot say, “molestatore di bambini.” Like, this fucking idiot, like at his family holiday? Since he has cousins, this would be an ENTERTAINING MOVE? A cousin literally saying, “child molester” in front of his entire family? This man, sorry, is definitely a main character in my book, a totally delusional TV writer. “Molestatore di bambini,” I’m laughing out loud. In Italian? This sounds ridiculous. “Mia mama ha detto,” lol, my mother said, “my father was a molestatore di bambini,” at Christmas. A comedy. But that DETAIL was always erased, when it was THE detail. Amazingly. I was amazed. This screenwriter saw me, 100%, as a character on TV.

The comics handing me water. “She said WHAT?!!” I was flailing on stage. “She said WHAT??!!” And they were on crisis control, like, assisting me through the birth canal. Seriously. Molestatore di bambini. That’s what she said. “Is it true?” The comics, they asked the question that “everyone did, ohhhhhh,” they nodded. “Ohhhh…” “Everyone asked me that.” “Right.” It was hilarious to me because it was one of these unreal stories that was inherently revelatory of the psychological, and I had to go to this stage to be able to be understood. We got DEEP, but that’s okay to Eddie Murphy; he can go DEEP no problem. “But there is no connection,” and they understood that. “So,” a comic could act dramatically, perching himself against a table, “so, Maria…” a Black comic, of course, “was it true?” That was the point. He’s ready to press play, the “ohhhh aahhh” ethereal soundtrack. That’s what happened to me. “Are you joking?” I heard that too on the open mic scene. “No I just came from a joke.” That stage, in particular, allowed me to POINT at them, make points. This was a psychological problem. Ohhhh… in a world that DOESN’T SEE PSYCHOLOGY. A Black comic? He’s definitely seeing psychology. And interestingly enough, it was always black comics, a couple, who confronted me on the mic. They kept talking to me. So I was out in the open. THAT saved my life, sanity.

A Latin comic, he said, he was the only one who asked me, for real, “how are you doing with that?” And comics, they are, naturally, surfacing what is SUB or even unconscious, though there’s hypocrisy around these lines, of course, like, ohhhh I didn’t see racism, you know, like, uhhhhhhh really? So I can’t relate to people of color, obviously, but someone like that might understand my personal dilemma. In any case, José even POINTED into it, “how are you doing with THAT, specifically?” When no one in my life thought of asking that question. I laughed. He didn’t understand. “Aren’t you supposed to ask like that?” And he asked, “are you able to get out of bed, in the morning?” A real question, considering my struggles at that time. I had a hard time, especially the psychic shit; this plagued me. I had to deprogram myself, “because you were in a cult…?” I had to laugh. That’s what it sounded like to them, and the Hollywood dude was another one of these Hollywood dudes that was grooming me, maybe slipping drugs into my drink? Hard to tell there. Because my 30s got really dark.

And so, I had to get to a place of total acceptance. I am where I am. I didn’t get life, in my opinion, from a basic standpoint. I don’t have anywhere to go for the holidays… I mean, I had a family. In New Jersey. But my cousin’s wife became my “like a mother,” this lady, sorry, who’s going to go beyond HER own comfort zone, because she feels bad for me, and then, when my father’s secret illness finally surfaces, as he had some kinda of dementia, apparently, which he didn’t tell anyone, (while these other families are forming around me, imagine? How utterly, annoyingly, transparent this was?) My father’s ILLNESS surfaces, and I will not be able to handle it. And she’s going to resent me, truly, because of everything she did for me, which didn’t help me at all. And now I look back at this woman: what were you even doing? Honestly. So, I had a family, a place to go for holidays, people I really enjoyed, even. But it got fucked up. And in college, how I spoke about all this – I was so deeply confused. It’s very clear to me now.

So acceptance.

I am in a new world. I don’t have plans for the holidays. That wasn’t my problem, originally. I had a family. I went through a crisis that provoked the weirdest responses, even meanness… I met some jerk of a screenwriter who fucked with my family, again, as writing a book around my cousins = a move THEY didn’t really want. “Molestatore di bambini?” He thinks that this was going to go, well? That we were going to have some cheesy convo? These were my cousins, not characters on TV, not my immediate family. A couple of them got all wrapped up too, in this stupid other family narrative, not believing the details that explain it all: my mother gave me away to another person (no no no no ), and my father had DEMENTIA he told no one about (no no no), but they are getting wrapped up, and hilariously confused, in this other family narrative that these details produced, even getting lost in a TV show themselves: calling me their “like a kid.” A Hollywood screenwriter bizarrely repeating “they feed you they feed you they feed you” like, what’s his obsession with me being fed? It was a nightmare. I don’t have ANY interest in speaking with them. But, who knows, maybe it will make a great script. Just the transparency of it, the blindness, the broken Italian. Weird phone calls to this weirdo Hollywood screenwriter. “Co-writers.”

I filed for divorce from my entire life.

The best decision I ever made.

So I’m on the other side of that, having reached a state of total acceptance. So that’s it. It took me my life to get here. The comics…they followed, they did. Not always. But. Through the birth canal. I’m enjoying, stillness, I’m enjoying… being grounded. I’m enjoying not having a SWIRL of inventions around me: “well I think I think I think…” I work for META now as a data analyst; I’m flagging, hilariously, hallucinations all day, every day.

And so now, I must read my script, as I will be in a movie in the woods of Massachusetts about “ a routine exorcism goes horribly wrong as the past of two pastors, David and Solomon, proves more dangerous than any poltergeist they could hope to encounter. A story about letting one's self-righteousness trump our ability to help others in their time of need, and the tragedies that unfold as a result.” lol.

You see? This is why people believe I am psychic.