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Posted on in FUNERAL SERVICE, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

SMELL YA LATER, 2015

When the end of the year rolls around, you can’t help but look back in review at all that has happened to you and in your life throughout the last twelve months. That’s human nature. We tally it all up, all these events and changes and milestones, compare it to our neighbors and friends, decide whether it was a good year or a bad year, and then dismiss it. And a Happy New Year!

A year ago today was my first day at work at my old mortuary, and I remember thinking, as I walked into that place for the first time as an employee, “This is it. I’ll be here forever. I’m set for life”. I was going to work side by side with my best friend. I was finally doing what I wanted to do and have dreamt of doing for so long. It seemed like the best and maybe only way for me to get everything that I wanted. Maybe I was naive to think that, but I bought into what I was sold and I was committed to holding on to it, no matter what.

The coolest thing about life is how it will find a way to shake you up when you get too complacent, or when you settle for something that is beneath you, or that you weren’t meant for. I will always believe, with all of my heart, that I was always meant to work at that mortuary. I was. There was a reason for that. I was always meant to go through the hell that I did there – but I was never, ever meant to stay there, and once that became clear to me, I was able to address my truths: there is something more than this. There is farther to go than just right here.

So if anything, when I look back at 2015, and all of the pain and struggle and hurt that I endured, whether it be job related or not, what I think this year really taught me is that maybe we don’t always get what we want, but we do get what we need … and really, isn’t that better? One year ago, I really thought I had what I truly wanted. And what I truly wanted was to stay forever at that old funeral home with my best friend, even if it meant enduring mental and verbal abuse at a constant rate and being treated worse than an abused animal – because I somehow believed this was my ONLY chance to do what I wanted to do. But what I really NEEDED was to get out of that toxic environment so that I could discover my own freedom and greet what my future held.

I always get so sensitive about the new year, because it always somehow signifies aging and getting older, and the idea of 2016 definitely has the potential to be horrifying – I mean, I’ll be turning 30. I’ll still be a college student living at my mom’s house. None of these things are what I wanted – but they are what I needed. And no matter how many different ways I have tried to escape my eventualities, they have found ways to re-emerge and shake me up and humble me when I was lost.

I spent 11 years being friends with a girl that treated me like garbage, because I felt like I had to stick in because I had already devoted so much time. When I finally had the confidence and strength to cut her out of my life once and for all earlier this year, it felt like being born, it was that freeing. I felt so light and so happy and so able to be my true self without having her hanging over my head like a sick raincloud. Yet, like my time spent at my old funeral home, I will never look at that time as time wasted – I know that I was always meant to be friends with her, because in the end, she taught me a massive lesson about what good friendship meant, and her inadequacies taught me how to value and love and hold on dearly to the people I have in my life.

Similarly, I spent nearly two years on and off with a man that turned out to be married. I never knew until he slipped up and I figured him out. When I confronted him, he claimed that it was an open relationship, and he didn’t want anything between us to change. I thought that because I wanted him, that I could deal with it. Fear of the future and what it may or may not hold, fear of what I might never have again, fear of being alone … it all forced me to try to yield and settle for something that I “wanted”, even if I had to sacrifice myself and what felt right to me to have it. Eventually and thankfully, I realized, HEY ASHLEY. GUESS WHAT. You don’t need this. You don’t need this AT ALL. And I stopped speaking to him from that moment on. And what did I learn? An invaluable lesson about how I want to love and be loved in the future.

Her friendship, his love, that job – they were all things I wanted, but were never things that I ended up needing in the end. They were necessary evils, instrumental in teaching me lifelong lessons, but they were only ever just that. Placeholders on the way to bigger and better – and that is why they aren’t moving forward with me in life. Because I am learning to pay attention to the difference between what I want and what I need. And I am saying no to settling or cowering out of fear.

A month or two ago, I would have steadfastly looked back on 2015 and declared it the worst of my life thus far – but from where I’m standing here at the very tail end of it, it was actually the best. It was the freaking best.  What I lost could never, ever, ever be tallied up to be nearly worth what I’ve gained. I can happily say that I feel better and stronger and closer than ever to the person that I know that I was designed to be. I have grown so much in my life that I can’t help but only feel happiness, freedom, and excitement to see what comes next.

And that applies, shockingly, even to turning 30.

So goodbye, 2015, and thank you for all the things you taught me. I never saw you coming, but I’m so glad I finally learned to listen to what you were trying to tell me. And to 2016, you beautiful and terrifying beast, bring it on.

Posted on in FUNERAL SERVICE

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

l-r: 1. My classmates, professors, and I after the ceremony. 2. My certificate. 3. My FUNERAL DIRECTOR PIN! 

On Tuesday of this week, I went to the pinning ceremony at my school for the 2015 graduates of the funeral services program. As most of you know, I have never attended a graduation in my life (okay, well, kindergarten, but does that really count?) and I had little interest in breaking my own poor attendance streak by attending this ceremony. I didn’t really know what to expect from it, and didn’t really care – after all, I have recently been “burned” by the funeral industry, and it felt silly to be lauded for something that I am not currently an active part of. But my family and my friends convinced me to go, and like most everything you end up going to that you originally didn’t want to, it was completely worth it. In actuality, it turned out to be a really touching and life changing moment for me.

In October of this year, I was fired from the funeral home that I had been working at since December of 2014 – and naturally, this did not thrill me (to put it lightly). I felt angry, betrayed, used, taken advantage of, hurt –  and above all things, horrifically and terribly afraid. I wasn’t afraid of not having money – I knew I could easily find a job doing hair or, if worse came to worse, I could sign up for unemployment to get me through until whatever came next. What I was surprised to find, as the shock of everything started to wear off and I was able to take a good, clean look at my thoughts, was that the only thing that I was afraid of was never feeling as complete and as whole and as exactly where I was supposed to be in life, if this was it for me, as far as the funeral business went. I was afraid to lose what all this has meant to me, and the gift that it has given to me.

Despite how much it all has meant to me and how furiously I have fought for all of this, the whole thing has been a very sore spot in my heart for the last few months. Thinking about it, missing it, resenting the things I was forced to do and endure during my time at that mortuary, being pissed as all holy hell for what had to happen –  those kinds of things took a mental toll on me, and I started to find myself asking “Well, do I even still really want to do this?” After all, I’m a blank slate right now, a page waiting to be turned – I could keep foraging on with this funeral stuff, or I could pick up and be someone else entirely. I hated to think that way, and I hated the idea that two terrible people and one bad experience could rob me of something that means the world to me, but I also had to be honest and confront what I was feeling.

Thus, the conflict with the ceremony. Like I said, it felt silly to go to this thing and have people say nice stuff about me – me, who was fired, me, who couldn’t cut it, me, who lost everything – but I went (mostly so that my mother could finally watch me walk for SOMETHING), expecting nothing, and leaving with everything.

Since losing my job, I have thought a lot about the whole experience, and what I kept coming back to was a feeling of not being enough. This wasn’t meant to bash myself in any way, it wasn’t an exercise in self abuse by any means –  it was just an honest assessment of my worth in the funeral industry. And when it comes down to it …. I’m not worth so much. I can meet with families, I can plan and lead a funeral, I can do cosmetics and hair for the deceased – but that’s it. I can’t embalm. I can’t cremate. I can’t answer certain questions that were asked of me by families, because I didn’t have the education, experience, or know how to answer them. So, simply, the fact that there is an entire sect of this business that I am not trained in didn’t sit well with me. I am the kind of person who has an overwhelming want and need to know everything, to never be unprepared, and to be totally self reliant, and a tough look back at my time spent at the funeral home told me that if I was going to hang in, I was going to have to step it the f up.

In my quest to find “what comes next”, one of the things that I have given some thought to has been going back to school to complete the science portion of the program, IE learning to embalm. If I’m sticking around, I never again want to have to say “I don’t know” or to be the one in the room who is worth the least due to inability – but frankly, I just was not  sure if I could stomach it. In fact, I was pretty sure that I couldn’t.

The reality is this: dead people can be gross. I mean, look how disgusting the living can be. Dead people are not exempt from the gross factor of humanity. And the things that you have to do to make them presentable, well …. let’s just say, it isn’t for the faint of heart. It isn’t that I didn’t want to embalm – I want to do anything and everything that I can to strengthen my overall skill set and keep my star in this industry burning bright – I just doubted myself. I mean, I can’t even eat chicken off of a bone, let alone carve into a dead person like a Thanksgiving turkey! So I just never let myself seriously consider it as an actual option, because I was so sure that I could never do it.

Well, it turns out, yep, I think I can. In fact, I think I most certainly can. Because as I sat there with my classmates on Tuesday at that ceremony that I didn’t even want to go to in the first place and listened to the guest speaker address us and congratulate us for the life that we have chosen despite the personal and emotional hardships we constantly endure for the sake of serving those who need us – I remembered exactly how I got here and why. And I heard it as clear as day in my mind. “You’re going to do the science program. You know you have to do this.”

It was just like that. I literally thought “Aww, shit.” to myself, because it was that clear to me. There is no choice – this is what comes next. So after the ceremony, I took my little fanny over the funeral services building, toured the facilities, met with a counselor, and here we are. Gearing up for round 2.

As I told my friend Jessica, when I was filling her in on the news – this need (because it is a full fledged need, not just a want) to help these people, this insatiable drive to do ANYTHING that I can to make what they are suffering any less painful, is absolutely shocking to me. I don’t even like to talk to strangers in the checkout line at the grocery store, but by God, if their mama just died, I will hold them to my bosom and comfort them from a place I didn’t even know I was capable of. I’ve never considered myself a nurturer, never considered myself maternal, never even considered myself particularly empathetic – so I don’t get it. But I guess it isn’t really for me to get. For some reason, this is what I am supposed to do. I mean, I’m going to have to take chemistry again, for God’s sake, so if I’m willing to do that, this crap must be for real.

In a lot of ways, and as much as I hate saying it – I think my old mortuary did my a favor by firing me. Because it literally fired me UP.  Now don’t get me wrong -I still hate them with every ounce of hate in my body and still think they are insufferable megalomaniacs who deserve all they have coming to them – but everything happens in its own time and for its own reason. I almost feel like I needed the nearly full year of working in a funeral home as solely a director to get me to the point where I could become an embalmer, too. Some people can do both right out of the gate, and that’s amazing for them – but I needed to come into this on my own terms, in my own way, and at my own time. I guess it seems like if you are meant to do something, it will find you, no matter how long it takes. Mine found me at a pinning ceremony, on a day when I thought I was finished with every last bit of school forever, but, you know, whatever. It was my time.  Part of me wants to say that I would have never imagined as a kid that I would grow up and build my life around death – but another part of me can so clearly look back with fondness at my weird little behind and just say “girl, you were always bound to catch this train.” So here I go. Time to catch my train.

So that’s the tale of my magical pinning ceremony. On top of coming to a major and life altering realization, I also just got to hang out with my friends, family, and peers, and come together over this really big thing that we all did, and that felt really dang amazing. And quite frankly, if I had missed the chance to exit a graduation ceremony while “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen played and we all laughed at the gorgeous irony of it all, I’d kick my own ass.

So, I guess I better dust off that ole Lisa Frank trapper keeper, because them school bells are about to ring a ding ding …. AGAIN. 2016, bring it. As far as I’m concerned, the only things that I can’t do are the ones that I never try.

(And as far as next year’s pinning ceremony is concerned …. well, count me in for that one, too.)

Posted on in Uncategorized

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

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EPCOT, December 7, 2015. Dress by Torrid.

So, surprise! Here we are.

The first post in my new space.

I guess I should explain, for starters, why I felt like it was time to find a new space to begin with. I have been writing as Minxual/at Minxual for nearly six years now, but recently have made the decision to shut that site down and move on to bigger and brighter things.

Nothing really happened that triggered this move. There was no big scandal or need to flee from my former internet home. I guess the long and pretty boring short of it is that I just sort of outgrew Minxual and what it represented to me. With Minxual, there became a sort of underlying dread, or maybe it could even be classified as a fear, that I felt when it came to producing content. There was no fun in it anymore. I felt a lot like I was being controlled by a space that was supposed to be a space that I was in control of. I felt typecast and stereotyped (completely by myself), and could not separate myself from a feeling of failure or disenchantment that came every time I posted.

There was also just the want to shed skins, to move away from past lives. The person you are at 23 and the person you are at 29 are complete and total strangers to one another, and that became more and more apparent whenever I would log in to post something. It is also important to mention that at its origin, Minxual was a retaliation blog. I had my little wings crushed by a boy who treated me badly all those years ago, and Minxual was my soapbox, my way of harnessing that pain and shame and trying to make a revolution out of being scorned. Like anything that is born from a place of malice or bitterness, it’ll never really get off the ground, and it will never really do anything much besides fester. Not to say that I feel that I’ve spent the past six years festering at Minxual- I am and will always continue to be really, really proud of the work that I did there, and proud of the fact that I tried to turn something painful and ugly into something bigger and better – but I’m definitely not the same girl that I was back then, nor do I want to be. I had a lot of fun for a lot of years being a minx, and a minx I shall always be at heart  – but the past is in the past. She is in the past.

What I really craved, at the end of the day, was just a blank canvas. No expectations. No forced deadlines. No constant want to apologize if what I posted was sad instead of funny or felt unimpressive. Just my own space for me to share whatever I want, whenever I want to, for whomever might be passing through. Read it, don’t read it, I don’t care. I’m posting for me. And I’m really, really excited.

Lastly – the name change?

Well, that’s pretty easy, of course. Ashley in Wonderland is a spin on a few different things – my love of whimsy, my love of Disney, and my fascination with the concept of “Wonderland” itself.

The thing that I’ve always found really interesting, about the concept of Wonderland, is how much and how little it can be at the same time – somehow both beautiful and sinister, a lot like life is.

I remember being a kid and seeing the Disney film and wanting to go there SO badly – but as an adult, you look at that movie and you see it all completely differently. Wonderland is beautiful, but terrifying. Fantastic, but dangerous. And that’s sort of how my life feels right now. Everything is so very exploratory, and I think Wonderland is just the place to do some really good investigative work about who I am as a person and what the world around me means. Because some days, my wonderland is just as it sounds – the beautiful reality of every day life, when things are so bright and so intense that everything feels just like a dream that you don’t want to wake up from. And at other times, my wonderland is a warped and twisted creature, a living, breathing, all-consuming thing – and those times are just as important to acknowledge.

So, here I go – down the rabbit hole.

Welcome to Ashley in Wonderland.