Love Is Nuance.

The Original Cast of Saved By The Bell (L to R)

Tiffani Thiessen, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Dustin Diamond, Mario Lopez,

Elizabeth Berkley, & Lark Voorhies.

On February 1st, 2021, the world lost a comedic genius of the 80's and 90's with the death of Dustin Diamond.  He was only 44 years old.  Best known for Screech on Saved By The Bell, his fellow cast-members poured out their grief on social media platforms to be replied with condolences and call-outs abound.  I was not one that called them out, rather sympathized with their grief and loss, choosing instead to meditate on the variety of lessons to be gleaned from Dustin's passing as well as to share my gratitude for what he brought to my life in my younger years, even in a post that realized that from the year 2018 with Harry Anderson's passing, onwards through Luke Perry's demise in 2019, 2020 with Shannen Doherty's stage four cancer announcement, and now Dustin's passing in 2021, that my youth is now fading into the oblivion that is life after death.

But I digress, death is as much a part of life as any other constant and one which we must pass into, experience, contemplate, and understand in our own unique ways.  For today's entry, I want to reflect on the aspect of love as it relates to the grief of the co-stars and how we can find relevance in our life.  This being the week leading up to Valentine's Day and the week of love, I find it especially important that we reflect on the four letter l-word and in effect re-claim it and this holiday as more than a Hallmark commercialized endeavor but of its true nature and purpose.

Okay, the cast of SBTB, or rather Saved By The Bell, which ran from 1989 to 1993 in a variety of versions, was a popular part of my middle school and high school years.  To this day, I can joyfully sing along to the theme song as I rock out in my living room: SBTB Theme Song

It is a very true reality that after the show ended and the cast parted ways, Dustin Diamond had a high degree of hard-ship, as is common with child-stars.  And, that is an idea I have been ruminating on, these actors were all very young children when they started out and grew up in the lime-light, they knew hardly anything else, unlike that of the majority of the cast of Beverly Hills, 90210, who began their careers around 18, give or take.  Being a child-star is known to be damaging to the psyche of a child and I can warrant each of the cast-members of SBTB had their demons to attend to and like any dealt with it in their own unique fashion.  That is, everyone reacts to situations, whether joyful or troubling, in different ways depending on who they are within.  It is true that Tiffani, Mark-Paul, Mario, and Elizabeth seemed to continue forward in a more positive fashion in their career but it may be due to the bone structure and that they reflect more of that classic Hollywood marketable look.  (Yes, Lark Voorhies has the same look, but as is very well known, she had to contend with her mental illness and return to stability before she could return to her career, which she has, and all should congratulate her for the hard work done.)

Dustin didn't fair well, he did not have that classic Hollywood look, and could not break from his "Screech" iconic role.  It is known that he struggled for years reflected in various embattled news stories, including having to put out a Tell-All book on the behind the scenes events of Saved By The Bell, showing his cast-mates in a very poor light.  He did go on to recant and explain that the stories were falsified by the ghostwriter, but the damage was done and the majority of the cast-mates were greatly wounded, lashing out and reacting accordingly.  I believe that this reactivity was a result of their being child-stars, it's how they were raised, what society expects of them, to play a part and find the humor for the sake of the audience.  Do they regret now this reaction, not forgiving (perhaps they did privately), not trying to make amends (perhaps they did privately)? The answer, I would conjecture, is most assuredly so and thus their grieving should not be labeled as hypocrisy.

See, my friends, love is nuanced, it is not definable, but in fact leans more to the inexplicable and is more open than we allow it.  It is at times incomprehensible yet it is us that seek to control and pin it down in order to appease our insecurities.  True to this, we seek to control and dictate those we love in whatever degree, romantic or platonic.  Furthermore, it is a very fact of life that relationships shift and change throughout life as we forge onward.  As we look at the cast of SBTB, we hold them in our mind and heart as who they were back then and expect them to remain there, yet they did not nor should they have done.  The reality is, all of them moved forward, changed, made new friendships, acquaintances, lovers, adapted in their careers, and had to forage their own individual paths to become who they were meant to be.  This should not be held against them.  We all individually, whether celebrity or layman, have our paths to follow, that may lead to regrets and heartbreak.  It's a part of the universal theme of life.

The truth of the matter is, love is not concrete, easily defined, or maintained according to our personal agenda and rigid mindset.  In reality, Dustin's actions post-SBTB were toxic and his former cast-mates made the decision, for whatever reason, to step back from a close relationship.  In the past several years, I have had to do this in my personal life, with individuals who I cared deeply for due to harmful behaviors and actions of theirs to myself and them that I could no longer condone for both of our wellbeing.  Contrary to what these friends may want to believe, this action broke my heart and still to this day I love them very deeply, cherishing the time spent together.  But this rift caused an opening within my heart and I grew from it, abounding in the gift of love for myself and allowing true unconditional love from healthier friends to flow towards me.  I have learned that those we meet upon the course of our life have their season in my life as I do in theirs, soul-mates for certain time and place sent to teach the lessons needed for our personal evolution.  

This has brought me to the realization that love is nuance, dynamic, and will not, whether we like it or not, submit to being controlled, dictated, dominated, even defined.  In the past, I viewed love in a way that was very limiting and also not true to who I was, what I wanted and valued, at my core.  This, coupled with my history of traumatic abuse, led to issue with relationship addiction.  Currently, I am on the journey to wellness in the area of love and relationship in every degree which leads me down the path of much research spanning from the current reads of "More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory" to "Is It Love Or Is It Addiction?".  This may seem an odd combination of text but in reality they merge very nicely to help reflect on the abundant variety of love, the powerful force it is, and how to be in healthy relationship however that may be.  

With this newly discovered realizations and discovery of love close to my heart, I look forward to the holiday of V-Day, allowing myself to enjoy the true meaning of love, with memory of Valentine's Day past, such as elementary school parties, middle school dances, first crush to first kiss(and then some), and not focus on the commercialized Hallmark aspect or even overly sentimentalized romance. 

So to, my readers, let your hearts rest upon the ultimate true abundant variety of love, the dynamic, powerful force that overwhelms beyond that of your comprehension, letting it freely rein and lead, allowing yourselves to swiftly flow, wherever the path may go, whether be full of joy or heartbreak.

Some say love, it is a river
That drowns the tender reed
Some say love, it is a razor
That leaves your soul to bleed
Some say love, it is a hunger
An endless aching need
I say love, it is a flower
And you, its only seed

The Rose

Thoughts on what you read? Comment below.  I will respond.  

The Thriving Artist is a subset of Cafe-Girl Productions, Inc, a film and media company with the focus of helping artists of every variety find and love their thrive.  Find out more about Cafe-Girl Productions, Inc at: 

www.cafegirlproductionsinc.com

www.patreon.com/cafegirlproductions

Hey, just in time for Valentine's Day, Cafe-Girl Productions, Inc releases season two of the original romantic comedy, Nate & Laura & How They Met.  Subscribe to the Youtube channel so you can see the premiere at 7 pm.  Also, follow on Facebook, Twitter, & Instagram for updates, fun posts, and behind the scenes tidbits. 

Nate & Laura & How They Met

The House On The Corner

In my neighborhood as a young child, there was this old house, long since abandoned by its original owners. 

Let me back track, I grew up in a rural country club environment, emphasis on the rural.  When I say 'country club', don't let your mind run crazy with the golf club, the private meals, focus solely on the country part of it and you are basically right there.

But like any country club type deals, we had a lot of families that owned second homes in our neighborhood and up they would trek from the faraway city of San Francisco and its surrounding areas (well, its really only about an hour north, but for a smallish child that's a trek), for the summer months and weekends.

We called them the "weekenders".  We were pretty creative with our nicknames, weren't we? True to form, we were called the "year-rounders".  Oh, the depths of our creativity!  See,  we described someone as such, "Oh so and so, they are a weekender" meaning we only see them on certain weekends or lengths of time during the summer months, and otherwise their house is empty and so very very alone.

That said, for the smattering of kids that were like me, year-rounders, we had free roaming rights of the neighborhood.  Thus, we are the ones that truly can say we grew up there.  Yes, my friends from childhood that were, in fact, weekenders, or big city snobs as I jokingly called my friend, Matt, can say they spent their childhood in my neighborhood called, "The Vineyards" (which at the time there was no single person with a 'vineyard' and Sonoma County, at the time, was yet to truly become the booming wine industry it is today, so why someone decided that's what it should be called was a mystery that alluded discovery in my childhood).  But its us 'year-rounders' who survived not just the flood of '86, and again, '95, and then once again for good measure, '97, who also suffered the boredom of trying desperately to fill up the time when there was just nothing to do, no one to talk to, until maybe that sporadic moment when something unusual happened like a friend appeared, or someone moved in that you'd never seen before, and you spent all sorts of time speculating on them and not actually talking to them.  It wasn't the weekenders, like Matt, who came up in the summer and who was entertained by our silly country ways, found fishing, sailing, swimming, and endless hours of Speed (the game not the drug) fascinating.  (Um, Matt, if you are reading this, sorry, dude, I don't mean to be picking on you, you are just a representation of that breed of human called "weekenders", we cool?). Most of our daily lives back then were spent watching tv shows like Punky Brewster, Night Court (for me especially), and Saved By The Bell.  Our life was a tame, very quiet existence, where we spent most of it imagining what life was like in big wildness of the city.  (Or was that just me?)  We dreamed of a way out...

Sometimes throughout the year, there would be parties held at the clubhouse in the center of the neighborhood, smack dab next to the community lake (did I mention the lake?).  The best of these was of course the Halloween Party.  We got to roam pretty freely about the neighborhood in our costumes acquiring our loot of candy, without any fear of the kind of stuff one worries about today, and then afterwards down to the clubhouse for the fun of a very teeny haunted  house, a friendly neighbor lady dressed up as a palm reader, bobbing for apples, oh the fun never stops.

Okay, now back to the mysterious house on the corner.  It was one of the first houses built in the "Vineyards".  It was, and is, a deep grey house set back into a wooded tree lined driveway.  Trees grew up through both the front and back porch.  What's more, furniture, books, a tv, a radio all were left as they had been when the owners had been there.  The electricity was still connected, the phone still rang, off the hook.  It still  had a phone number you could call, and call we did.  (Remember when I said there wasn't much to do?)  As wee young folk, we'd peek in the windows, trying to out scare each other with the mysterious hauntings we would see.  "Look, there's a ghost!"  "Where?" "There."  "Oh I see it."

Later on, in my pre-teen years, I told my friends a ghost story about a young girl who had lived there that had a heart shaped birthmark on her cheek.  She fell in love with a guy that died under somewhat strange circumstances, some random war perhaps, and she just waited and waited for him in a tree on  the front porch, wouldn't get down, did not eat or anything, grew more and more pale, the heart shaped birthmark increasing in its redness until one day, she fell to her death, like four feet.  See, I'd say, here's the mark where her head crashed into the brick killing her instantly.  Sometimes at night you could see her ghostly presence sitting there, singing and waiting, waiting and singing.  The little neighbor boy down the street from my house (Bobby was his name, See Matt, you aren't the only one I am choosing to pick on) had nightmares because of it.  And, even though I stole the story from a L.M. Montgomery novel I had read, I still thought I saw her from time to time when I walked home in the evening from a friend's house (most likely Corinne, see another friend I'm picking on, Matt!) or randomly walked through the neighborhood late at night empowered by the spirit of the moon.

We found out that the original family had built the house, raised their kids as "weekenders", and then when the kids had grown, had divorced.  Thus, the house just sat full of all of its trappings and memories for us to speculate, ruminate, imagine.

In my early teens, it was rented out by a girl about my age, another weekend-only family, and I struck up a friendship with for the sole purpose of being able to go into that amazingly epic house with all its mystery attached.  I'd invite her to come over on the Saturday evenings when she was in town, when I saw the thrill of the lights on, to get in good with her.  We'd watch my current obsession of a movie, Wayne's World.  (I watched that movie a gazillion times just on my own, in all fairness, until the video itself wore out.  Yeah, I'm old enough that we only had videos for watching movies, so bite me!)

The house represented something untouchable, unattainable.  Like the big city from which Matt hailed (ha ha) and the world beyond, it was something we had yet to see but were always reaching towards, seeking discovery.

Then one day, in early teenage years, we got our wish.  One of our friends, a weekender, discovered that we could all slip through the doggy door at a side door and in we went.  We excitedly and with an air of danger moved through the house, calling to one each other, when we found something interesting.  One friend opened up a closet and joked, "All the skeletons fall out."  I remember that specifically for some reason.  Later on when the colder, bare months of winter would set in, the year-rounders would crawl inside, turn on the heater a bit, and make phone calls.  (We were an inventive rebellious and perhaps a bit odd bunch.)

In my neighborhood as a young child, there was this old house, long since abandoned by its original owners. 

I'd like to dedicate this blog to the aforementioned "Bobby", "Corinne,  the girl who I used to watch Wayne's World and struck up a friendship so I could find out what it was like to live in said house, and to give my heartfelt thankfulness to "Matt" without my ability of picking on him the story could not have been told (well, it could have been, just not in an interesting fashion.)