Return of the Prodigal Poster

I know. I went away. Some of you noticed and sent distressed emails and made me feel loved for a bit. The rest of you were silent--I'm assuming because you had not, for whatever reason, saved my email address at the top of your Favorites list and, since my domain disappeared and then was taken over by one of those blasted advertising sites, no longer had the helpful "Email Me" button to click.

I'm back.

I left--or rather, faded away and then simply allowed the custom domain to expire when I received the increasingly distressed emails inquiring whether I'd like to renew and it really doesn't cost much, please just click on this link--because I felt completely bottled up with my writing. Having a blended family of this complexity and, well, challenge made it very difficult to write anything. Can't vent about that person--she might read it...Can't vent about that child--this or that former spouse may read it, or someone he/she knows may read it and then send it, or even show it to the child...Can't write about how I really feel about various complicated situations because of sensitive legalities and various whatnot.

Privacy issues. That's what it boiled down to.

And it still does, really, which means I won't be posting as much about my crazy complicated family as I might otherwise.

However, I need to write. I've been feeling an ache for several months, needing this blog, needing the outlet, needing the audience. I am fragile and raw these days as I work through decades-old pain and current crises. I'm stuck in an old bog, really. I looked back through my posts from yesteryears and realized that what I'm trying to do now is what I was supposed to do almost two years ago and didn't. I didn't push myself through the barrier and the pain, and frankly neither did that therapist. In fact, I stopped seeing her a few months later. Our sessions just weren't going anywhere, and our schedules no longer meshed.

So. New year, new therapist, and I have to do the work this time or I might not make it through intact.

I need to write, and I need an audience in order for it to be real, and my lame attempts to start other anonymous blogs died in the birthing.

This blog has served as catharsis before. Perhaps, if I can pour my pain and record my joys on these electronic pages, I can face the dragons again.

Maybe, just maybe, this time I can win the fight.

Twinkle, Twinkle

Do you find that blogging helps you work through your emotions? asked my sister the other day, as I was venting to her in a long-overdue phone conversation.

Yes, yes I do. In fact, it was a crucial part of working through my depression and anguish and slow healing when my first marriage imploded, not to mention dealing (at long last) with a number of other issues that bubbled to the surface when I finally got help. Read my archives from 2009 and see what I mean.

Writing is a release for me, but I have discovered that I need an audience in order to write effectively. Private journals are worthless. Emails to a handful of people feel...insufficient. Blogging is a perfect solution, right?

Except that the anger and stress and anxiety with which I am dealing right now aren't mine to share with the world. Well, I mean, they're my emotions and whatnot, but they're about people and situations that leave me voiceless here. To write about what's going on would violate people's privacy and, quite possibly, make the situation worse.

So I'm usually silent. On here, at any rate. And Facebook.

(Because I'm not going to be one of Those People, that's why.)

***********************

Christmas is a shining light in the midst of this swirling darkness, let me tell you. Or, more aptly, an array of twinkling lights. We have pledged not to go so overboard financially this year (I got a little carried away last year), but there are ways (other than the obvious wallet-related one) in which that's better anyway. I am thinking more carefully about what to get for each person, and I'm making a few as well. I'm also working with the kids to choose gifts for MTL and each other, because I believe strongly that children should give and not just receive.

I love making gifts for Christmas. It takes me back to my own childhood, when my sister and I rarely had any money of our own to spend on gifts for our parents or each other. We would make a sign for our bedroom door declaring it official Santa's Workshop territory and denying entrance to everyone else. Then we'd take odds and ends of this and that, raiding our mother's extensive craft cupboard for much of what we needed, and we'd make all sorts of amazing gifts. Looking back, I'm rather astonished by our creativity. Two different years we created panoramas for our mother. The one I remember most was this extraordinarily detailed rendition of a market stall, with "bolts" of fabric on the walls, little drawers made from matchboxes containing bric a brac, and people made from twigs and clothes pegs and beads. There was a woman with braided hair trying on a shoe (a singleton from a Barbie pair), a male merchant displaying cloth, and a woman unmistakably meant to be our mother examining the fabric.

This, my friends, is what happens when kids have lots of free time and no real access to electronics of any kind. IMAGINATION. CREATIVITY. FUN. <insert cantankerous grumbling about "kids these days">

I'm fairly certain the month leading up to Christmas was the one time of year my sister and I actually worked or played together in Peace and Harmony.

So this year I'm making a few gifts, and I'm helping my little KlutzGirl, who is never so happy as when making or drawing something, to make a few as well. In those moments, looking at the work of my hands and knowing that I'm demonstrating my love for the recipients in a very tangible way--that's when those lights twinkle brightly enough to drive the shadows aside for a breath of time.

***********************

Part of the challenge of blending families is blending holiday traditions. MTL and I have been fairly fortunate. We aren't in direct opposition with any of it, especially since his traditions are more general and mine more specific. Last year I introduced a number of Christmas traditions to my new family, including putting an angel on the top of the tree, making Christmas Eggs for breakfast, and forbidding the children to leave their bedrooms on Christmas morning until they hear Christmas music start playing. When they emerged at last, impatient and excited, they found the Christmas tree piled 'round with presents, candles lit, and hot chocolate waiting for them.

They seemed to enjoy it, but one never knows how kids will react to New Ideas. On Sunday as we were waiting in the car for MTL to join us, The Padawan asked if we were going to do Christmas morning the same way this year.

What do you mean? I asked.

Like the music, he replied. I liked waiting until I heard the music and then coming down. Oh, and are you going to make those egg things again?

You mean the Christmas Eggs? I asked.

Yeah! Those were awesome.

Yeah! I liked all that too! chimed in KlutzGirl. And the hot chocolate and the candles and stuff. Are we doing that again?

As if I'd miss the chance to see those smiles on their faces!

***********************

This morning I proctored the first half of the PLAN test, since it's being administered to all the sophomores today and my first class of the day was a sophomore class. As I wandered up and down the aisles in the gym, I felt a sudden surge of warmth wash over me. These kids, these teens...they're annoying and frustrating and obnoxious as hell on a daily basis, but I love working with them. It's hard to remember sometimes these days, surrounded as we are by such negativity and derision directed toward my profession. I'm even looking into a new career path, because realistically I may not be allowed to remain in my career for sheer financial and political reasons. It's an ugly time to be a public school teacher, people.

But this morning, as I looked at row after row of faces, many of which I know, I felt the warmth and worth of what I do (yes, even when proctoring a damn standardized test), of working with these children caught on the cusp of adulthood. They are worth the sweat and tears and stress and time we pour into them every day, every week, every year.

I don't know how much longer I'll be a teacher, and I won't feel those warm fuzzies every day, but no one can make me regret the years I spend here.

***********************

It's a rough road I travel, at times. As my dear friend Amy said a couple of weeks ago, we are not women destined for smooth and easy lives. It would be lovely to win the lottery and not have to worry about money or debt any more. It would be lovely for the politicians to all have epiphanies and start working for the regular people instead of the corporations. It would be lovely for certain individuals to either undergo miraculous personality transformations or just....disappear.

I don't think any of those are likely to happen, alas. Life is not that neat and tidy.

But there are compensations. There are rewards for the pain. Sometimes the twinkling lights and silver linings are dimmed by the shadows and mist, but they exist.

They shine in the moments when my students understand a new concept, get excited by a piece of literature, and find safe harbor in my classroom.

They shine in the smiles on my children and stepchildren's faces, can be heard in their laughter as they rough and tumble with each other each afternoon after school, siblings in action and deed rather than just name.

They shine in the touch and looks and words of my beloved husband, who laid his head against me last night and told me he had never dreamed he would ever find his Home.

Twinkle on, Life. Twinkle on.

...laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

--e. e. cummings

Weak and Weepy

I've never been particularly good at admitting my weaknesses. The sorts that can be deprecatingly laughed about, like my lack of self-control when it comes to shoes or dark chocolate with raspberries, my obsession with the numbers on radio volume control, my tendency to twitch when I see apostrophes used for plurality...fine. Those are the sorts of weaknesses we fondly call "foibles," those little quirks of personality that transform us into special little snowflakes, possibly just a touch flakier than the next one over.

But real weaknesses? The sort that require trips to therapists, medication, incredible patience on the part of those who live with us?

Not so much.

I spent at least three years mired in high-functioning postpartum depression because I couldn't bring myself to ask for help. I was so good at hiding the despair poisoning my soul that most people made all sorts of admiring comments on how Together I was, what a SuperWoman I was...Ha. It didn't help that the one time I did tell The Ex that I thought I was depressed and in trouble, he told me to suck it up. I kept my mouth shut for another six months after that, and by then I had fallen so much further that I almost didn't make it back out.

I've come a long way since then, but I still struggle to admit that I'm, well, struggling. I have the few individuals who are "safe": DraftQueen, Heidi, Amy, and of course MTL. I don't fear judgment from them, in part because they have all Been There in one way or another, and because they love me for who I really am rather than who I would like people to think I am.

And...I just realized I'm doing a very good job of avoiding what I came here to say. You see what I mean?

Enough stalling.

I struggle with anxiety and depression. It's nothing like what I once experienced, especially the depression aspect, but I deal with anxiety on a daily basis. I'm even (gasp) medicated for it (shh, don't tell anyone) (because we all know that people who have to take medication for that mental crap are nutjobs and shouldn't be trusted), because panic attacks have a nasty way of interfering with one's ability to get through the day.

I have a feeling I always will. For one, it runs in my family, on both sides. For another, studies have shown that highly intelligent women are also highly prone to anxiety, because we overthink EVERYTHING. Mother Nature giveth and she taketh away with the other hand, the stingy bitch.

Oh, and I do kind of have a stressful life, despite the many delightful compensations.

I've been struggling this week. I've been a good girl and taken my little pill every morning, and I still find myself short of breath, my arms burning, my heart racing. I haven't had a full-fledged panic attack (thank you, pharmaceuticals), but I've come close. I keep telling myself and others that I don't really have a good reason for it, but I suspect I'm lying.

I've dealt fairly well with my grandfather's death. After all, he was old and in pain and he passed so peacefully. It's the way to go, you know? BUT. He was the first of my grandparents to die. And watching my grandmother face life without her beloved...I think that struck too close to home. I can't stop thinking about what it would be like to have to keep going without MTL.

I struggled with that reality last year, when something made me realize that I had allowed MTL to get closer than anyone else in my entire life. This meant that I also had opened myself up to incredible pain, because losing him would be like losing a part of myself. I remember weeping one night and finally confessing to him that I was terrified of letting him in that much, because it meant that one day he would die and I would have to deal with that pain.

He didn't tell me I was being silly (though he would have been fully justified in doing so), rather telling me that he understood my fear, but that we couldn't allow our fear of death and losing each other prevent us from living life and loving fully.

He was right.

So I'm not falling apart over the thought now, but that fear and anxiety are finding other ways to make themselves known. And let's face it, I'm not good at dealing with this.

What do you do about your anxiety? What works? Because I'm asking for help.

Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

My paternal grandfather, who is 93, is in the last days of his life. We have no real idea how many days this may be, but his edema and congestive heart failure have transformed into a vicious cycle feeding each other, and the medication that was supposed to help the edema instead shut down his kidneys, so now he is on hospice care.

It's the long, dark tea-time of his life. Only less dark and more light, because if there's anything his decline proves, it's that he is wealthy beyond imagining in what matters: family and love.

His five surviving children have gathered from hither and yon, including my father, who flew back from West Africa on Sunday evening. I took the day off on Monday and drove him up to Saginaw, where he joined his siblings in caring for their parents. I spent several hours there as well, more so to comfort my grandmother, who is too frail to care for him physically but is still emotionally tied as ever to her beloved husband of seventy-one years.

I know it seems morbid, she confided, but even though I don't want him to go, at the same time I don't want it to last too long...

I understand. It's incredibly difficult to witness the painful decay in my grandfather, the more so because he has always been such a strong man. He is a fighter: he will not go gentle into that good night.

I come from sturdy farmer stock, German Mennonites on both sides who traveled from land to land fleeing persecution for their pacifist beliefs. All four of my grandparents are still alive, still independent, still in compos mentis, though age is taking its toll on them all. This grandfather is the oldest. Five years ago, at age eighty-eight, he re-sided their house and put in new windows. Up until a year ago, he could still be found in his basement workroom, crafting the gorgeous woodwork that graces all our houses. Picture frames, clocks, jewelry boxes, bookshelves, rocking horses, detailed classic automobile models...all his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren own beautiful pieces that will be handed down from generation to generation. That was his hobby, the work of his hands and heart at the end of his days working the land or overseeing factories and warehouses or doing Master electrical work. The delicate curves of the clock on my mantel, the enormous bookshelf against my wall, the jewelry box on my dresser, and the incredible wooden rocking horse in my children's room: they each declare all the love that my reticent grandfather struggled to put into words.

I'll admit that witnessing this final fight has struck me to the heart; even more so, witnessing my grandmother's grief and my grandfather's determination not to leave her side, this woman he has loved for longer than most people have been alive.

I don't even know how to put into words the fear that is triggered by this. I just found My True Love recently. I know the chance of getting seventy-one years with him is somewhat slim, since we met in our thirties rather than our teens, but I want as many years as I can get. And the reality is that my family is longer-lived than his. How horrible a person am I to want to go first, when my time comes? I don't want to be in my grandmother's place, facing the loss of her life companion, the one she loves best in the world.

I have hope and faith in a life hereafter, but I am a creature of this world. Each loss leaves it a dimmer place, caught in the shadows of sorrow and death.

Shadows

I'm at a point where I'm internalizing so much stress that I'm no longer trusting my reactions or judgment. I feel like a volcano bulging with pent-up magma, ready to explode at the slightest fracture. My neck and shoulders are bunched up, my throat aches, my head throbs, and acid burns down my esophagus. It would only take one wrong word for me to erupt in rage, tears, or both.

It's no one thing. It's everything. It's the buildup of all sorts of stress and fears and worries and hopes and aggravations. It's the fatigue of the year drawing to a close. It's the frustration of senioritis. It's the lack of sleep, the lingering effects of whatever respiratory plague attacked me last week, the sense of dread as wave after wave of bad news and potentially disastrous now-we-wait-and-see news rolls in about loved ones and politics and money and everything else in this seriously fucked-up world.

I don't always deal well with stress. Okay, fine, I rarely deal well with stress.

MTL thinks I need to take a mental health day. I hate to do that. I have few enough sick days left, and I tend to hoard those for truly necessary sick leave (mine or, more likely, kidlets'), as I know all too well the financial impact of unpaid sick leave when those days run out. I do have a couple of personal business days I haven't used that will vanish if they aren't used, but I have to request those at least three days in advance, and anything further out than Thursday just isn't possible. I have senior project presentations, junior speeches, senior exams, and then the rest of final exams filling every available slot.

I'm just so TIRED. Not just physically. Mentally. Emotionally. Spiritually. I can't even focus much on the wedding, because everything else takes up my attention. I can't look forward too much to the honeymoon, because a part of me dreads the possibility of having to cancel due to financial or other reasons. I don't want to have my heart too set on that in case it's pulled out of reach.

It's as if there's a threatening cloud looming over everything. I'm struggling to find the light through the shadows.

Tears

I'm angry and I'm crying and the only reason I'm still here at work is that if I go home I'll have nothing to keep me busy and occupied. Laundry and cleaning don't count because there's too much time for thinking.

This last weekend one of my former students was in a terrible car accident in West Virginia, on his way to an audition that would hopefully continue to move him along in his amazing gifts for music and dance. He suffered horrendous head trauma and has been in a coma all week.

This morning he died.

It's not right. It's never right, but it seems so particularly horrible when it's a bright, brilliant nineteen-year-old like Nate. He was one of the memorable ones. I can't remember a day when he didn't have a smile or funny comment to brighten up the day--and not in an annoying Pollyanna way. He made people feel better about themselves. He had a sweet confidence and joyful soul like few people I've met.

Just a few months ago he came into school with a couple of other former students to bring me lunch, because I always forget lunch, and because gifts of food are always welcome. He was full of hope and laughter over what he was doing in college, where he was going in life.

And now he's gone. And his mother will be facing her first Mother's Day without her son.

I hate this part of my job. It's always tragic when people die, but even more so when they are young and all that life and hope and potential is snuffed out long before time. This isn't the first time it's happened, but it is one of the hardest.

Rest in peace, Nate. You will never be forgotten. Thank you for making all of our lives just that much brighter during the all-too-brief time you were here.

Cravings

I've been "turtling" lately: pulling my head and limbs back inside a protective shell in an instinctive effort to avoid being overwhelmed with Everything.

I don't even want to get started here, as it's all or nothing for me. Either I'm silent or I'm ranting. I normally have fairly low blood pressure--lately I can feel my heart pounding and my face flushing as a matter of course.

What's happening in this state, in this country, to educators and the regular government workers (not the politicians themselves, of course) and the middle class in general....

I'm sick to my stomach.

I need to find a career counselor. I've never had a back-up plan because, quite simply, ever since I discovered teaching I've never planned to do anything else.

What DOES a thirty-three-year-old woman with a Bachelor's in English Literature and a Master's in the Art of Teaching, with certification in English and Speech/Theatre have as a back-up plan? I'm eminently qualified to do exactly what I do. Who else is going to be knocking down my door to receive my services--especially for a wage that will continue to pay back my thousands of dollars in student loans and the other debt that I've incurred as a responsible citizen? None of which, mind you, is credit card debt or the like.

I can feel the rant rising.

We're short on "extra" money right now--not that there really is such a thing in our household lately, since pretty much every extra penny is being set aside to pay for our quite modest little wedding and honeymoon. MTL's car broke down last week and required a bit of money to repair, even though he did the repairs himself. His machine at work has also been broken, meaning his hours have been trimmed back a bit. We had a dual birthday party on Sunday for The Widget (my baby is FOUR!) and KlutzGirl (MTL's baby is EIGHT!). In three months the remaining balances are due for our ceremony and reception sites and for our honeymoon.

With all that financial stress bearing down on my mind, I can feel an age-old destructive stress mechanism kicking in. I want to buy things. I want to buy fun things, pretty things, wonderful escape-from-reality things. I want to buy books and clothes and shoes and art. I want to buy gifts for my bridesmaids. I want to buy all the accessories I want or at least need for my wedding day. I want to buy it all NOW.


I didn't give anything up for Lent this year, but I'm reminded of when I gave up chocolate a few years ago. Despite what you may think, I don't normally crave chocolate every day. I can even go a few weeks without thinking about it. Shocking, I know, but true. But when I denied myself that luscious substance, the days dragged by. I woke craving chocolate. I went to bed craving chocolate. I nearly cried when I realized that my (then daily purchase of) Cafe Mocha contained chocolate and therefore was verboten.

Impulse buys and non-necessities are off my shopping list for now--and likely for some time--and so I'm craving what I cannot have. Perhaps after a few weeks I'll find the craving wanes and leave me feeling freer, just as I did during that Lent years ago.

In the meantime, I'm staying off Etsy and Amazon and Victoria's Secret and Old Navy and every other website that urges me to indulge, treat myself, think It's only a few dollars. I have my tiny list of five necessary items which I will take to the grocery store this afternoon, and I will not buy anything except those five items. I pinkie swear.

Ugly

It's one of those days--a day when I wake up in a ragingly foul mood and little can shift it during the course of the day. Thankfully, they aren't too frequent, but when they do happen, the best thing I can do is shut myself away from the world so that I don't turn into the Queen of Hearts and stomp around calling for mass decapitations.

I could not get restful sleep last night. I had odd dreams that I cannot recall but that nevertheless disturbed what little sleep I did get. I woke every hour or two, unable to get comfortable. MTL was also restless, and at times I couldn't tell whether he had woken me or I him. DramaBoy came knocking on the door at Dark Ay Em to report that The Widget was crying in pain with his ongoing bout of Unmentionable Difficulties. I soothed and medicated the poor boy, then crawled moaning back into bed.

By the time MTL and I dragged ourselves out of bed this morning, bickering over who should get up first to get breakfast going before the childrens filled themselves up with cereal, my temper was at DefCon 4.

Coffee (brewed by me) and a scrumptious breakfast (cooked by MTL) eased me temporarily. So did an indulgent session with my latest obsession, creating treasury lists on Etsy.com. But then I had to oversee the boylets in taking an overdue shower, an experience that never fails to frustrate me. And then there were the dishes to wash and the kitchen to clean. I bit my tongue the entire time, knowing full well that if I opened my mouth, whoever was nearest would suffer its lash regardless of cause. MTL finally paused in his own cleaning to ask what was wrong, and I nearly burst into tears. Scratch that: tears there were, though muffled and suppressed.

He, lovely man that he is, hugged me, reminded me that he loves me and that everyone else in the house loves me too (though sometimes I wonder), and suggested that perhaps I needed to hole up in the bedroom and rest.

So here I am. The door is firmly closed. My Emptyself station is playing on Pandora.com, I created another treasury list on Etsy, I chatted briefly with DraftQueen before she abandoned me for a trip to the fabric store, and now I'm pouring myself out here for what few readers I still have in these days of infrequent posts.

MTL is right--it's better that I shut myself away for a while, because the alternative could be ugly. It doesn't matter, though: I'm still fighting with the guilt. I can't help but think of all the things I probably should be doing right now. I can't help but be angry with myself for being in such a horrible mood in the first place. It's not like I even have a decent reason for it, other than a bit of sleep deprivation.

Argh and Grr. I need a real vacation.

Extremes

I find myself in an odd limbo, strung between utter happiness and gloomy despair. Utter happiness because in just under five months MTL and I will be married, and while I am having to watch myself carefully for signs of going off the deep end in preparations for the shindig, plans proceed apace and almost everything is falling smoothly into place.

We're overly organized, really. Honestly, the only reason I don't have the wording for our wedding programs completely set is because one of my beloved bridesmaids is still trying to figure out whether or not she'll be able to attend and stand up for me. Pesky miles. I keep telling her that she and her family should just move over here, but for some reason Michigan doesn't seem to be much of a draw right now...

Cue the other extreme.

The gloomy despair? All it takes is for wave after wave after wave of news and worse news flooding through the television and Internet and email. I love my job, but am seriously wondering if I will be able to continue teaching for much longer. The politicians of this nation and most definitely this state seem intent on destroying the public education system, and sadly enough, too many people seem quite willing to let them do so. I find myself in tears, considering a nation where only those who can afford to do so will be educated (whether through private schools or homeschools--because yes, you have to be able to afford to homeschool), where corporations will get even fatter off the profits of charter schools, where the Least Of These will be once again forgotten and shunted to wither away in their corners and holes.

We are not a democracy. We are not a republic. We are a corporate oligarchy, and the bloated barons are laughing as they feast on the fat of the land.

Inner Child

I was, by all accounts, a bright, outgoing, bouncy, extroverted child. I was the chubby-cheeked darling who toddled up to another child, whom I had never seen before in my life, in some European airport and flung my arms around him as though he were my long-lost bff. I was bright-eyed and adventurous, making friends left and right with people young and old.

It changed around age four or five. It all blurs in my memory. The timeline fuzzes over and I can't remember whether certain things happened before or after or during kindergarten. I don't know which events slammed me first and set me up for others. I don't know when the walls started going up, or how fast I built them, or all the reasons why.

My therapist wants me to create the timeline. She wants me to through it in my mind, step by step. She also wants me to find out what else might have been going on in those years, aspects of my environment that may have had more impact on me than I know: the sort of things that would be internalized by a bright, emotionally sensitive child and become a part of her without anyone ever dreaming she even noticed.

What is it, she asks, that convinced you so long ago that you would never be good enough?

I don't know how much I can dig. I'm aware of certain elements, and facing those are hard enough. I'm not sure whether I even want to know what else might have been going on, what else might have happened. What I do know is that when I think back to those years, I'm swept away by a wave of grief and anxiety.

I've been talking a lot to my closest friends lately about the nature of my relationships. It's anything but coincidence that I do not have a close girlfriend who lives close enough to be a part of my daily life. I have a couple who live within driving distance, but such is the nature of life and metropolitan suburbia that we rarely see each other and mostly settle for chatting on the phone.

The three girlfriends who are currently my most intimate friends? The closest lives an hour away--forty-five minutes if there aren't cops around--and the other two lives states away. One I've only seen face to face once in our friendship. The other I haven't seen in fifteen years.

It's safer that way, you see. Let someone be intimately close AND be a part of your daily life and the emotional risk becomes too great. If something goes awry in the friendship or someone moves, there's a deeper loss. And even then, be careful what you say. Be careful just how much of your naked, raw, and oh-so-tender inner self you let anyone see. Keep everyone at an arm's length, for protection.

MTL is the first person I've let all the way in.

I knew it would be a risk. I knew that if I was going to let him in at all, it would have to be all the way. All or nothing. He wasn't going to settle for less. And deep down, I didn't want to either.

I didn't know how much of a risk it would be. I didn't know how unprepared I am, from a lifetime of walls and numbing myself down and disconnecting myself emotionally, for both the joy and the pain. Because it turns out that when you love someone enough to let them all the way in, everything becomes brighter and stronger and sharper. It means when I hurt him and he hurts me, whether intentional or otherwise, the pain is agony. It also means that the joy is bigger and deeper. Thankfully, the joy far outweighs the pain and is far more common, but...

But.

Here's where I'm flung back to that five year old self. Here's where I sit and realize that deep down, despite everything, I still don't believe I'm deserving of love and joy. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I keep waiting for him to wake up one day, realize that I'm not worth it, and walk away.

Because deep down that little girl is huddled in a corner, whispering that everyone leaves. And they leave because that is what she deserves.

I don't know how to talk to her. I don't know how to face her pain. I don't even know all the reasons she's there.

*****************************

"little girl"

little girl
sit quiet in your corner
veiled in plain sight
shield yourself from
anyone
who might see what's there inside
know what's inside

little girl
put on all that armor
fend off every look
protect yourself from
anything
that might break through to your heart
might break your heart

it's pain that teaches you to hide
fear that teaches you to run
never reaching out
never reaching in
always in flight from the unknown
that which you can't control

little girl
who tore out your heart so long ago
and told you you'd never be enough
for this world
who made you crawl into
the walls of your own mind
the armor of your own skin
the shield of invisibility
for those without the will to see
and they never get to know

this little girl
little girl
with a heart full of possibilities

and now you're grown
and still hiding
still building walls
and donning armor
only allowing those you choose
to climb over
and behind
and into your world
little girl
with a heart full of pain

i've always been afraid

of letting imperfections show
cracks behind the mask
porcelain fractures
lying my way through complications
situations
til truth becomes a stranger

of risking heart and mind
fears of failure
imperfect perfectionism
hiding my way through challenges
changes
so walls become my safety

of letting go
letting in
letting out
letting be

because they may not
                       (but they might)
and if they don't
                       (and if they don't?)
because some will not
                       (but some will)
could i bear the pain
                       (the shame)
yes the shame

and so am trapped in fear
                       (and so are trapped)

unless i let go

So Much To Do, So Much To Say...*

'Cos here we have been standing for a long, long time
Can't see the light
Treading trodden trails for a long, long time...*

I haven't been writing much of anything anywhere lately. It's not due to being silent; in some ways, actually, it's due to speaking a great deal elsewhere. I'm back in therapy, focusing on deep root issues that have spread their tendrils throughout almost every area of my mind and life. It's very much like after facing down depression and divorce and those dragons, others wormed their way up from the depths and waved. Hello, still here. Wanna play?

They don't play nicely.

I'm talking, yes. Talking and wringing hands and, apparently, digging my nails into my skin until the morass of red crescents becomes raw enough to realize what I'm doing. It's hard work, this therapy. Then when I leave the War Room of my therapist's office, I dive into processing and digging deeper in my own mind. And talking some more: with MTL and with my dear friends J and A and H, spread out from coast to coast of the country though they are. Thank God for email and g-chat and phones, I say.

Elsewhere, with other people, however, I find myself silent. There are ideas I have to process, issues I have to solve, emotions I have to face before I can open my mouth and speak. My therapist agrees, by the way, with this instinct. And I find myself thinking of the words of Solomon, who wrote in his time of struggle, facing dragons of his own:

1 For everything there is a season,
      a time for every activity under heaven.
2 A time to be born and a time to die.
      A time to plant and a time to harvest.
3 A time to kill and a time to heal.
      A time to tear down and a time to build up.
4 A time to cry and a time to laugh.
      A time to grieve and a time to dance.
5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
      A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
6 A time to search and a time to quit searching.
      A time to keep and a time to throw away.
7 A time to tear and a time to mend.
      A time to be quiet and a time to speak.
8 A time to love and a time to hate.
      A time for war and a time for peace. 
--Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (New Living Translation, emphasis added)

For now, in some ways, it is a season to be quiet, to be silent, to be "mindful," as my therapist says.

But oh, Dear Readers, how tired I am!

Add to all this hard work of the mind the busy-ness of the end of the Marking Period, and Parent Teacher Conferences last week, and fighting off my fifth? sixth? seventh? urinary tract infection of the year...Oh yes, I know that's not a good thing at all. And I'm sorry if it's a bit TMI, but hello, I Have A Problem. I'm scheduled to see a urologist on December 1st, because when someone (aka ME) is averaging between six and ten UTIs per year for three years straight, something is going on.

Granted, I don't take care of myself terribly well. I've been working on that recently: drinking water much more throughout the day, even at work; heading to the bathroom much more often; avoiding an overabundance of sugary junk at work instead of real food. Hopefully that will also help.

But I seem to have reached the ceiling, so to speak, with the heavy-duty antibiotics. My body is building resistance. I've been on Cipro for almost a full week, with no missed doses, and I'm still developing fevers and experiencing discomfort--including, the last couple days, an ache in my lower back that makes me nervous about my kidneys.

So I'm headed back to the doctor this afternoon, and I'm dragging myself somehow through the day and trying not to think too longingly of my bed (oh lovely bed with your soft pillows and fluffy comforter) when I'm supposed to be teaching kids about sonnet forms and the consequences of overweening ambition as shown in Macbeth and the abuse of authority as demonstrated in Oedipus Rex and dramatic irony and the emptiness of the American Dream when lacking solid foundations as shown in The Great Gatsby and oh yes, the historical context for all of those texts and let's not forget vocabulary and grammar and dear God what was I thinking when I said I'd take on three preps this year? Oh right, helping out the department because we were losing teachers.

Also, I'm trying very hard to be grateful for having a job when so many others do not, trying hard not to be bitterly cynical about politics (and losing that battle rapidly, may I say), and trying exceedingly hard not to panic about the upcoming contract negotiations which, hey, may become moot anyhow if The Powers That Newly Be in this state have anything to say about it.

I will say this, though: I'm deeply--bone deeply, really--grateful for having friends with whom I can talk so rawly and honestly; for a partner who is my best friend, and who loves me even when I'm dragged down by it all and being infuriating, and who loves me more because of than in spite of my moments of batshit crazy; for the strength to even face this all in the first place. Even when, on days like this, I feel like doing nothing more than crawling into my very own padded room and staying there for a while.

Or taking a holiday from my Self. Just for a little while.

I find sometimes it's easy to be myself
Sometimes I find it's better to be someone else...*

-----------------------------------------
*From Dave Matthews Band "So Much To Say":

Sinking

Today I'm discouraged. Deeply, deeply discouraged. As much as I try to focus on the positives of my career, as much as I try to focus on the great kids and the joy of those wonderful discussions and discoveries and moments in teaching that make my day, as much as I try to listen to the messages I get from former students saying I made a difference in their lives: today I just want to quit.

I just want to be done. Walk away, leave behind all the crap, all the heartache, all the apathy. I just want to leave behind the parents who don't understand the importance of their children's educations and who think that teachers are the Enemy rather than their allies. I just want to leave behind the political red tape and bullshit. I just want to leave behind the pervasive attitude that somehow my education and professionalism and experience mean nothing, just like that of all my many, many, many dedicated and amazing colleagues. I even want to walk away from all the students, former and current, who Need so much from me, above and beyond the parameters of academic education.

I definitely want to walk away from the pile of papers to grade and the overwhelming list of things I have to do, which grows every day.

I feel drained. It's as though I've been plugged in, but in reverse, so all the energy is being drained away from me rather than into me. I'm tired. Deeply bone-tired. I could barely move this weekend to do the bare minimum of what the weekend required, much less do much of anything productive or useful. And of course that means I have even more to do this week because I've procrastinated.

I just want to crawl into bed and sleep for twelve hours, then get up and read or work on my cross stitch project or actually exercise for once or do one of the many other things that are infinitely more attractive to me than what I actually have to do. Preferably in the company of MTL.

But I can't. I have to finish grading all these papers and quizzes and tests, and make tests, and prepare for the onslaught of project presentations, and finish grades, and somewhere in there I should probably work on cleaning a house that became absolutely trashed over Halloween weekend.

I feel like crying.

Dear So and So: An Emotional Rant (Or Four)

Pants With Names posts every now and then with her very amusing versions of her friend Kat's postcard posts. You know, the "Dear So and So" type of thing. Today, I think I need to do it too. Because I am in a MOOD. One that even Ghirardelli dark chocolate with raspberry filling cannot fix.

I KNOW.

**************************************

Dear Electronic Grading System,

WTF do you mean, it's Progress Report time??? I'm not ready! I'm not prepared! I'm still scrambling to get everything done AND figure out how to balance Work and Home Life right now, and it's still in the early stages. Plus I had to take that day off to stay home with The Widget, and it's taking me twice as long to catch up as it would have to just be here.

Your little asterisks of Grades Have Not Been Entered mock me!

Yours in frantic desperation,
Ms. Buried-Up-To-My-Neck-In-Paperwork TeacherMommy

**************************************

Dear Current Students,

No, M&Ms are not suitable replacements for Godiva. Also, it's Cherry COKE. Cherry Pepsi is an abomination.

Grumpily,
Your Favorite English Teacher

**************************************

Dear You Know Who,

I know. It's AMAZING that moving to that town didn't fix all your problems. Such a shock! I never would have guessed.

I really need to work on my bitterness.

Trying To Forgive,
One of the People You Left Behind

**************************************

Dear Media, World, and People I Love,

I know there are problems with the system. I'm not saying it can't improve. And I love that there are options for people, like private schools and charters and homeschooling. But here's the reality check: they're not all perfect either. Or even always better. And every time you lump all of us educators together under the category of "lazy" or "useless" or "outdated" or "unnecessary", you injure a group of people who, in a far greater majority than you give them credit for, have chosen a career that is full of stress and challenge and (increasingly) very little thanks--and do a damn good job.

You want to measure my efficacy? You want some stats? Today alone I actively taught five classes (three different courses), graded eight sets of quizzes, rewrote two quizzes, prepped questions and activities for a novel, answered over twenty emails, entered grades into the grading system, wrote a wiki rubric for the district benchmark "test", checked in three classes' worth of vocabulary assignments, and helped several individual students who had issues or questions outside of class.

That was in five hours. And I'm still behind.

That doesn't even include the unmeasurable aspects: getting students excited about literature, making them laugh, working with other teachers to develop ideas and activities and curriculum. How are you going to gather statistics on the number of students I impact in the ways that don't show up on standardized tests?

And I'm not even the best or hardest working teacher I know, not by a long shot. AND THEY'RE EVERYWHERE.

And here's the other thing: we take everyone. That's EVERYONE. Regardless of ethnicity or religion or gender or financial status or, especially, disability. We don't get to pick and choose like almost every private and charter school does. We take everyone, and we care about them, and we do our damnedest under increasingly difficult circumstances.

And then we get shit on from every direction. Including our own administration, our politicians, the media, and (God help me) even our own friends and family.

I told my students' parents on Sneak Peek night that I teach because I love doing it and I love working with these kids. It's true. But for the first time in my entire career, even when I was so close to burn-out that I could taste it (twice), I realized this week that if I miraculously won the lottery with that ticket I never buy, I wouldn't keep teaching.

Stop saying "Oh, but I didn't mean YOU." Yes, you did. Because I'm in this along with all the others.

It's been a hard week.

Sincerely,
Your Emotionally Raw TeacherMommy

Draco De Ira

One of the hardest lessons I've had to learn over the last not-quite two years is how to forgive and what forgiveness really means. I've learned, among other things, that forgiveness is more about healing oneself and less about healing others. I've learned that apologies often follow forgiveness rather than the other way around. And I've learned that forgiveness needs regular application, since anger and resentment tend to ooze back into one's soul over time.

Forgiveness is rather like Preparation H, when you think about it. Or Tums.

I learned that first major lesson about forgiveness nearly a year and a half ago, on a day when I planted myself next to a small lake and begged God to please make two particular people Very Sorry for all the hurt they had caused me. The geese stared at me and honked moodily. Then I sat there and begged God to forgive me for the hurt I had caused those two people. This seemed a bit better, but I wasn't quite there.

So I sat, surrounded by goose shit, which seemed rather apropos for my mood, and read a bit from a book, perhaps one by Anne Lamott, who also struggles with anger and forgiving and therefore gets through to me with some deft application of verbal hammering on my brain. I don't remember any longer exactly who the author was: at any rate, the words were about forgiveness and about how we make huge errors in thinking that (1) withholding forgiveness does any damage to anyone other than ourselves, (2) apologies are requisite precursors to forgiveness, and (3) we are better than the people we have to forgive. And then the author drove home that when we refuse to forgive someone, we're as much as yelling to the Universe that we are better than God, who forgives us for much more than we have to forgive.

That sounds like Lamott, so it probably was.

I remember sighing, because the idea of forgiving these two people, who had no interest or willingness to recognize any need to apologize, seemed like a greater task than I was capable, especially in a time of such great stress and pain. Nevertheless, I bowed my head, and this time when I prayed, I asked that I be granted the strength to forgive. Then I said out loud (much to the surprise of the geese) that I forgave those two people, and I named them. Then I said it again, just to be sure, and found the words easier to say the second time.

Imagine my surprise when I felt a tremendous weight lift off my heart.

I've had to forgive those two people again since then, for the same original pain and (in the case of one of them) additional pain caused over time.

Regular application, especially when the acid burning of anger starts up again.

Since that day by the lake, both of those people have apologized to me for the pain they caused. It's a cycle, really, the forgiveness and apology and forgiveness again, and with time the pain truly does ease.

Other times...you're blindsided.

This last weekend I found myself enraged, furious, reacting far more strongly to a frustrating moment with The Widget than the incident truly deserved. I stood in the walk-in closet searching for clean and comfy clothes, and I asked myself what was really going on.

And I realized that my anger was at other people entirely, over a situation over which I have no control, where I feel guilty for even being angry at all, where the anger comes from years of hurt and pain and loss that I have shoved deep down over and over and over again because I do not feel justified in my anger.

But the anger is there. And because I have never embraced that anger, recognized it, and forgiven both myself and those other people for these decades of pain and grief, I have never moved on. I have, in fact, allowed that pain to poison other relationships and prevent me from opening myself fully to love.

MTL found me in tears and I poured out my grief and anger. Just saying it, just letting it out of my head, was a step. Writing this post, which has taken me two days, is another.

The next step is bigger. More painful. It holds more delving into truth, a stripping away of shadows and shame.

It's a choice I have to make.

I am stalled in the moment. The skies hold no answers. The window is drenched with autumn rain.

Dregs

I'm just too tired. Drained, really. It's not just the whole moving thing or school starting thing or occasional money thing or the fact that my car decided NOW NOW NOW when we have so many start-up costs to require ALL FOUR WHEEL BEARINGS AND THE ATTACHED TIRES to be replaced (though we're doing them in stages, for sanity's and wallets' sake).

Oh no. There has also been Angst and Drama of the sort that has me, MTL, and his ex running to our parents to sob out our apologies for everything we ever did to torment them back when we were teens.

Also, we're rather grateful that we somehow survived and weren't strangled in our sleep by enraged parents.

Not, mind you, because they weren't enraged. We're fairly sure they all were. Multiple times.

It's the not-strangling-us thing that has us grateful.

I can't really go into it all more than that. Not really. For privacy's sake. But I think you get my drift. Fill in the blank, peoples. Really, let your imaginations roam.

Chances are, if you have or have had teens, or were one of those particularly TEENISH teens yourself, your imaginations are getting somewhere around the mark.

I'll tell you this much, though. I chose this life. It may not always be remotely what I expected (MTL keeps shaking his head over my incurable optimism) (and then admits freely that it's one of the many reasons he loves me) but it is the life I chose. For better or worse. And even when there are these trials by fire, I keep choosing it. I wouldn't want another.

Hey. I always told you I'm crazy.

blind

Justice is blind today
not as as she is intended
(to race gender creed
wallet)
but to Truth
they are strangers here
in a system no longer bent
on protecting the innocent
punishing the guilty

she must be lying
they say
apparently a marine is incapable
of crimes like this
he fought for his country
and therefore is infallible

we all know no military man has ever raped a woman
it's unheard of

and because he did not break and beat her
physically
(the damage to her soul and psyche
doesn't test in a forensic lab)
she must be lying

she must have wanted to endure those hours
of questioning
probing
swabbing
repeating again and again
the words she could barely force through trembling lips

she must have wanted to rip apart the only home she had
lose her friend
the sister closer than any of dna
lose the father figure who only hours before
had sworn were she a year younger he would adopt her
lose it all
when they could not choose between her
and their flesh and blood

she must have wanted the pain

i saw the emptiness in her eyes
i heard the story of those days
i felt the reality of her words
(as did the officer who wrote them down
i saw his eyes too)
my stomach churned
bile rose to my tongue
a stench like sulfur and brimstone
the work of hell in a suburban home

but now
out of his hands
out of mine
others make the call

and she
lost
broken
beaten
abandoned by family again and again

has given up
called it off
walked away

Evil once more has won

and i
i have lost my faith
(or rather
my naivete)
in a system so broken
so biased

so blind

Shame and Consequence

Here's the true nastiness of sin: even once you've asked and received forgiveness, forgiven yourself, moved on...the consequences don't end. Actions have reactions, and the fractures we make ripple out through the crust to create shock and aftershocks.

It's not punishment, you see. Punishment is finite. That was your crime: this is your punishment. It comes to an end.

Consequences are simply (and yet so not simply) the logical and often perpetual result of actions and choices.

So even when I know, to my core, that I am cleansed of my sins, I will still see consequences for them in this life. A shattered relationship that will never fully heal, revisited with pain and hurt and lashings-out in cyclical fashion. Children facing upheaval and uncertainty and change and pain that they did not earn. Friendships weakened and damaged and even lost by torn loyalties. An insidious doubt lurking in the mind of my beloved.

Long ago the people my mother works with gave me a name in their language. I cannot replicate the name here, since my keyboard lacks much of their alphabet, but the name means, essentially, "the shame is gone." They gave me the name because I am my parents' firstborn daughter--and therefore the end of culturally "shameful" childlessness.

These days I claim that name for other reasons. Do you have any idea how precious that idea is to me?

My Shame Is Gone.

There are those who would wish it to remain, who would pile it back upon me. I'm learning to ignore that. Every now and again I feel that burden creeping back and have to remind myself to let it go.

My Shame Is Gone.

But the consequences remain.

Our Eyes

Last night MTL was teasing me and I was teasing back in a faux-pouty sort of way, when he suddenly pulled back, looked at me askance, and said, Uh, hello there, DramaBoy!

Apparently I was using the exact facial expression, exact words, exact look as the sort that DramaBoy pulls out from time to time.

There's a reason I call him my mini-me. It's not just his physical appearance, though that alone causes commentary everywhere we go. Our temperaments are nearly identical (thus the fulfillment of my mother's curse) (have I apologized lately, Mom and Dad? I AM SO SORRY) and the source of many of our conflicts. Odd how two strong-willed, quick-tempered, ridiculously stubborn people will spark off each other.

I will say this: his eyes are no longer purely mine. They used to be. Now, while they're still hazel, they've become brown-hazel rather than green-grey-hazel. They've become much more like his father's over the last year or so. Still, when I look into his eyes--I see myself.

And it scares the sh*t out of me.

You see, I was broken for so very, very long. I was tormented by my dragons for nearly thirty years, and I lost the battles until I forgot how to fight. And while there were outside forces and trauma that I experienced that I pray God will never be part of DramaBoy's life, still I wonder how much of my life was simply the path I took as the person I am.

And I can't (and won't) "blame" my parents. No parents are perfect, but to this day I place no blame on mine for the broken road I traveled. They were and are amazing people, amazing parents. MTL is already starting to get a certain smile when I reference them, because I do it so very often. We don't agree on everything, my parents and I, but I respect them deeply.

So what does that mean for me? I struggle every day with parenting practice. I feel like I'm trying to catch up from years of being out of touch, correct countless bad habits (both mine and the children's), and piece together the puzzle that is parenting.  MTL helps. He's been doing this longer than I have, including the single parenting gig. But ultimately he can't and won't tell me what decisions I must make for my children.

What if it's too late? What if my son is already heading down a path similar to the one I trod? For all the love and growth and beauty that has come to me at this point in the road, I would never ever wish that journey for my son. I would never desire for him the pain and despair and brokenness I experienced.

I can't live his life for him. I can't protect him from all harm. But I cannot help but feel tremendous fear.

Because when I look into his eyes...

All I can see is that broken road.

Today

Today, it's all too much, all at once. The ups and downs of this and that, the rollercoaster ride of expectations meeting reality. There's the death of the old, the next stage in joy with the new, bumps appearing in the road that once was broken and now is healing and yet and yet

life does not run smooth

I was foolish to think it might. There's that odd optimism raising its head at the wrong moment, bashing against the edge of reality. However better I am for being where I am now

life does not run smooth

and the road will bring new obstacles, new cracks, new heartaches to face.

Today I sit and stare at the great mounds of papers that must be graded, for time has run out. I have no interest. My mind has already skipped over the next week into this summer: bags to fill with trash and donations, boxes to line with books and toys and clothing and the necessities that will carry over into the next stage, places to go with friends and children and my beloved, hard days of work and long nights of play. The clock is ticking, and so much must be done. I mix anticipation with apprehension for what is to come for

life does not run smooth

and though I know I have strength I lacked before, love I lacked before, health I lacked before, still the anxiety of all the unknown wells in my throat.

Of some things I am certain:

faith

love

hope

and knowledge that there is nothing I cannot surmount because of them. I have been to the depths and back. I have known the dark of deepest night, wept my tears of pain and loss and heartbreak, faced the dragons of my despair and lost the battles.

But I won the war.

My chains are crumbling. My armor is stripped away. I have walked the broken road, followed dead-end paths, traversed the bridges built by God and family and friends to reach again the stretches and signposts that led me here.

And the rewards, the blessings: they overflow. New life, new hope, new faith, new love.

life does not run smooth

for life is imperfect, the road broken in a world that is broken. I have learned that the paths that appear easy are those that hide the greatest pitfalls. Anything worth having requires that a price be paid, a sacrifice be made.

Today I am overwhelmed and the tears run close to the surface. But I do not despair. Strength lies beneath, and Today will pass, and Tomorrow holds such brightness that I must catch my breath with the beauty that lies ahead.