Shortly before I left for the cruise I had another meeting with my Kabbalah teacher. And it feels really strange to say that because it wasn’t even anything I sought out… well, not directly, anyway. But there we were, talking, and he asked me what it was that I wanted to work on. I told him how I was on a quest to figure out what love was all about.

“But what’s the root of it?” he pressed.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Yes you do.”

I was mad and I didn’t want to talk about it anymore, which naturally means he hit a nerve. So through some questioning and ripping away the layers, he got me to blurt out a story about how when I was a kid I ran into my uncle at a hockey game. His girlfriend at the time asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I told her I wanted to be Barbara Walters. At the time I had a terrible lisp. I had to go to speech therapy for it, and I was horribly embarrassed about it. Even today when I see myself talking on TV things I can see my natural tendency to look like I’m lisping, even though I’m not. Anyway. So there I am, confessing my dream goal (at the time – obviously it’s changed), and she says to my uncle loud enough for me to hear, “Not with that lisp, you’re not going to be.”

“Since then it’s felt like my whole entire life has been about proving myself to everyone – showing everyone that I am good and I can do the things I set out to do and that they’re good things… and the only person I can’t seem to convince of that is me,” I blurted to my teacher. I didn’t even realize what I was saying when I said it. And when I heard the words come out of my mouth, I started to cry. There it was – my whole life’s purpose up to that point. And it sounded really ugly.

He let me cry – encouraged it, actually. He explained to me that he didn’t want to push me, but getting to that uncomfortable part was important. We talked for a while longer about how kids learn at a young age to look for approval from their parents, but the problem arises when they don’t learn to grow out of that phase. It’s a common problem – lots of people do it, obviously. But the whole thing is as we mature, we’re supposed to find ways to validate ourselves instead of looking for others to do it for us… which makes sense to me. The tools we learn for survival as kids are ones we outgrow using as we grow into adulthood… provided we’ve learned new skills. Which, I guess, is what I’m learning now.

So he sent me off with a homework assignment until our next call: make a list of at least ten things that I love about myself, and become aware of when I’m seeking attention from others as a way of acceptance and validation. I went on the cruise had had plenty of opportunities to do the latter, but the former was proving to be a challenge. Have you ever sat down and tried to write out ten things that you love about yourself? I think the only person I know who could honestly do that is Adam. I sat down at my computer at least a hundred times over the two-week period in between Kabbalah calls and found myself feeling so incredibly pissed off about the whole thing. Not only could I not do it, I didn’t want to. It was egotistical. It was selfish. It was annoying and dumb. But of course, my not wanting to disappoint my teacher won out and I forced myself to eke out a grand total of fourteen things that I loved about myself.

Another word about this list that I made: ugh. I took great pains in watching the thoughts and feelings that came up while I was working on it, and all I could think of was how it felt wrong and I shouldn’t take this kind of pride in myself… but then, why shouldn’t I? What’s wrong with admiring and appreciating one’s self? Old programming taught me otherwise. Old programming from people who didn’t think much of themselves taught me not to feel much about myself. Not feeling much about myself wasn’t getting me anywhere anymore. I was tired of looking in the mirror and picking apart what I saw. So I soldiered on ahead.

I caught up with my teacher again a week ago and told him stories about how I was aware of my attention seeking and how when I stopped seeking it, it came to me naturally. We went over my list and I told him how much it irritated me to work on it. I was actually having a hard time telling him about working on it, I was so irritated. I asked him why I was having so many negative emotions about this and battling it so hard, but also why I felt so egotistical in having to write that list.

"What we don't tend to realize is that denying the light that's inside us is a function of the ego as well," he explained.

As our call drew to a close, I asked him if he had any more homework for me.

“I don’t think we’re done with this lesson yet,” he said. “Stay on the same path and see what comes up for you.”

So I have been. And the last 24 hours in particular have been excruciating.

It started like this: yesterday was Adam’s birthday. I’ve been pretty comfortable hiding out in my cave and getting work done when I’m not traveling, but I figured I should make an exception for him and come out to pay my respects at the Valley dive bar he’d chosen as event central. I knew I was going to be seeing some people I knew from my momentary stint in porn (quick explanation for newbies – I did PR, not movies.) I knew it was going to be good to catch up with some of them, and figured it would be an interesting experiment to see how I related to and communicated with them now.

So I went. And had fun. And shared laughs and stories and whatnot. At one point I grabbed my purse and pulled out my keys.

“Are you leaving?” one of my friends asked.

“Momentarily,” I told him.

“If my ride isn’t leaving soon do you mind giving me a ride home?”

OH GOOD, A CHANCE FOR US TO DO SOMETHING NICE FOR SOMEONE, AND THEN THEY WILL LIKE US! my brain shouted. “Yeah, but I’m leaving in, like, five.”

“That works,” he said.

“Then let’s go,” I told him.

Wait a second, what happened to leaving in five? my gut asked, but I ignored it and started saying goodbye to people. When I turned to him he told me he was going to stick around, so I hugged him goodbye, and thanked him for having the caring and presence of mind to not take advantage of my heartbroken state roughly this time last year when I threw myself at him looking for – what else? – attention and validation on the heels of my break-up.

“I was behaving like an asshole,” I said, “and I meant to apologize for my behavior before, but I didn’t know how to say it.”

“It’s okay,” he said, and kissed me on the cheek. “I understand. You were fine. It’s all good.”

As I walked to the car, I was irritated with myself. One, because I jumped all over the chance to drive my friend home for no other reason that it was going to make me feel good to be of service to someone. And two, because his reaction to my apology made me want to find other things to apologize to other people for. It sounds dumb, right? But it was true.

This morning it was still bugging me. I told Sharolyn what had happened, and she summed it up in such a beautiful, perfect way. She said, “It sounds like PR Carly came out to play.”

Christ. I thought I’d buried PR Carly a long time ago. And here she was, rearing her ugly head. See, PR Carly was caught in this never ending validation cycle because PR Carly was looking to be and feel loved. Doing PR gave her the opportunity to get validation and acceptance from several sides all at once, and it gave her a high. Press would give her kudos for pitching well, and she’d eat it up. Clients would be happy with her work and want more, and she’d eat it up. And the ones who didn’t behave as such? She’d work six times as hard to try and sway their opinion. The kudos, the acceptance, the associated paycheck… it became an addiction. The problem was, the high was fleeting… so she constantly pushed herself harder and harder to be better and better, do more and more, and finally she was incapable of keeping up with her ever-heightening bar. It’s pretty much what signaled her demise in early 2005. Essentially, I had to kill her… or she was going to kill me.

But somehow that all behavior had become habit. Everything that led up to PR Carly had both built up that moment in time and helped it all come crashing down. PR Carly was passionate and pushy, hardcore competitive, and angry. So, so angry. And I suspect that anger was necessary to fuel her, but it just got to be too much. The never-ending cycle of getting acceptance, feeling it fall away and hunting it out again in a way that made it bigger, better, faster and more… just writing about it feels exhausting. It’s part of the reason why I try to be really respectful of other PR people. I often wonder if they’ve got a piece inside of them that’s like the piece that was inside of me… or rather, missing piece.

Anyway. I took this with me to yoga class this morning, thinking I’d meditate on it and come up with some magic answer, and like my teacher often does by fluke, she chose a class set that correlated with my issue for the day – rooting into one’s self. Just before we started doing our meditation she turned to me, and, in front of the whole class, said, “How long have I known you, about two years?”

I nodded.

“I didn’t think you could get more beautiful and graceful than you already were, but you’re just beaming,” she said to me, and I noticed a couple friends looking at me proudly. “You’ve done so much work and grown so much, and I’m so happy to be a part of that. It’s incredible to watch.”

“Thank you,” I said, and smiled. And that was that.

Until I went to the bathroom after class and one of the other women in my class commented on it, saying how nice it was to be recognized for my work.

And it triggered something. I left the bathroom and actually found myself looking for someone else I knew to give me more acceptance, more validation.

It felt sickening.

I was alternating between fighting that cupcake urge and looking for someone else to tell me I was great. My stomach was churning, I felt like I wanted to throw up, but most of all, I felt like the whole thing was wrong. This didn’t suit me – not the me that I am, nor the me that I’m working to become. This suited the old me. This suited PR Carly. And I wasn’t PR Carly anymore. I finally forced myself to get back in the car and go the hell home so I could lock down what in the hell was going on in my brain.

I meditated. I tried to distract myself with work. I couldn’t shake the feeling, so I called my teacher and shared with him what I was going through. And I cried, feeling gross about the whole thing.

“What's going on is you've finally become disgusted with your ego and realized what it's doing to you,” he explained. “It's good that you feel this discomfort.”

It didn’t feel good.

“What you have to understand is there's always going to be a hole inside of you, no matter what you do,” he continued. “The key is choosing to fill it with something else, like your spiritual work.”

“So what do I do when I get a compliment?” I asked, reaching a point where I was fearing it because I didn’t want to start the cycle all over again.

“You have to train yourself to say thank you and not dwell on it - move on to the next thing,” he said. “Find ways to pay it forward so you’re not tempted to dwell on it – do something nice for someone you love. It’s not about what you get, it’s about what you give… and remember, this is a process.”

Yeah. It is. And it damn sure isn’t easy.

I’ve wrestled for hours about whether or not to write about this, because on some level I wonder if writing about this for the blog is just another thinly veiled attempt to get acceptance and validation. But in all honesty, I hate this. I hate exposing myself on this level to mostly strangers. “Hi, book?” you’re saying. Yeah, but the book isn’t out yet. The book was in my head for five years, and has only been on paper for one… and it hasn’t been unleashed yet, so I can still sit here and feel fine about not showing people my warts and weaknesses because technically, it doesn’t exist yet. I’m really the only one who knows what’s in between the covers. Well, next to my editors and publisher, of course.

I think I’ve reached the end of this entry. I’m exhausted and have nothing left to say.