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.

Blog? What Blog?

Holy crapola. Really? It's been that long since I posted anything? I feel like I'm failing you all.

Life. Is. Crazy. Which is why I'm back on crazy pills, because when I started having mild panic attacks I figured I should get some help before they developed into not-so-mild panic attacks and I end up rocking back and forth in a corner somewhere. God bless modern pharmaceuticals.

My therapist and friends all agree this was actually an indication of how far I've come in the last few years, considering I asked for help BEFORE the crazy became The Crazy. Just sayin'. Also: I love my people. There's nothing like a time of high anxiety to bring home just how awesome a support structure I have these days. Not the least of which is a very, very beloved and supportive MTL. The hurricane winds may be blowing, but the foundation is holding firm.

So. My seniors are gone.

Excuse me a minute while I go do a happy dance.

[Insert holding music here]

Whew. They're gone, they're out of here, I managed to get all but two out the door to graduation, some squeaking through by mere tenths of a percentage point. One huge load is off my shoulders: only several dozen left to carry!

My juniors and sophomores have been very patient the last few weeks as I've neglected grading much of their work in order to focus on the seniors. Now I have time to wade through their essays, including their massive term papers (seven to ten pages for sophomores; ten to twelve pages for juniors: EACH). I have exams to create, quiz and test grades to enter, and a classroom to clean and organize. I can do that in the next eight school days, right?

Right.

Dammit. I left my meds at home.

Probably the biggest source of stress (now that the seniors are--GLORY HALLELUJAH--gone) is the impending shift at home. I can't go into all the details here, but there have been massive changes chez MTL's Ex, and the girls are moving in with us.

And there's an element to the situation that I can't discuss--yet--but suffice it to say: DRAMA WILL ENSUE.

So. Yeah.

Nothing to be anxious about. Nothing at all.

OH! There is one lovely new addition to my life! Are you ready for this?

I. Got. A. Smartphone.

Oh yes. I, the phone-technophobe, have officially Grown Up and gotten a phone that's more like a hand-held computer than a phone. A Droid X, to be exact. And I just may be in love. MTL says that I'm acting like a kid who's had her first ever taste of chocolate.

Angry Birds? Check.

Words With Friends? Check.

Sudden addiction to apps? Check, check, and absolutely check.

Hmm. You think they have a support group for that?

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.

What Dreams May Come (Dammit)

I rarely remember my dreams these days. I will wake with a vague impression of what has been spinning through my REM sleep, but even the wisps of memory remaining slip out of reach within a matter of minutes. My friend Heidi experiences lucid dreaming, for pleasure or pain, but other than a few youthful recurring dreams that, well, no longer recur, I don't recall what I dream.

I do know, however, that I dream. I'll wake with the emotional remnants of my sleeping experiences, most strongly when I am working through anger or sadness or, most especially, anxiety.

Ah, anxiety dreams. There's nothing quite like stumbling through one's morning routine with a vague sense of impending doom. It adds a certain murky spice to one's coffee.

Last night I had anxiety dreams: more specifically, financial anxiety dreams. I'm a worrier, and I have become hardwired to worry about money over the last few years. When we first moved into our townhouse and were wading through the changing finances of combined households and moving and the start of school, I had financial anxiety dreams resulting in restless sleep and (according to MTL) distressed mumbling. He had to wake me up a few times and reassure me that we were not, in fact, about to be consumed by an avalanche of arrears.

I don't think I was mumbling last night--certainly MTL shaking me to wakefulness had more to do with hitting the snooze button too many times than sleep talking--but I've been stumbling through my day with a weight of disquiet on my weary mind. I'm a zombie today. A zombie with a bank account that mutters dour reminders that bills are impending and rent is due in a few days and groceries have not been bought and, oh yeah, there's a rather significant function occurring in just over 108 days (according to that oh-so-handy and also slightly intimidating countdown clock at the top of this page) that requires saving money to cover the balances due in a few months...

We are by no means destitute, and I openly acknowledge that our problems are what Heidi likes to cheerfully call "first world problems." Food makes it onto our table, our children are clothed, we can cover our bills if we maneuvre things just so this month, and we have two incomes.

BUT. I look at my debt, which is high regardless of the reasonableness of its existence (student loans and the like). I look at our vehicles, which are both old--MTL's is no longer reliable for long distance travel--and neither of which are large enough to contain our entire family. I look at our credit rating, which is not high enough to get the kind of loan we need to pay off a certain debt that ties me too strongly to The Ex and the millstone of an upside-down mortgage for a house I don't even live in.

I wonder if perhaps we are foolish to spend this money on a wedding and honeymoon. There are those who think we are, whether they say so openly or no.

AND YET. We are spending less on the wedding and honeymoon combined than many people spend on just a wedding dress or wedding flowers. We certainly aren't spending irresponsibly in that regard. And there's a part of me--the part that is emphatically winning--that says it is somehow important to celebrate this event, that a courthouse ceremony isn't right for us, that we are not unreasonable to gather family and friends and show that YES, we love each other this much....

I don't know.

I'm tired and the Michigan skies are moistly gloomy today. Add that to the anxiety and depression of being told by The Powers That Be that my peers and I are somehow simultaneously Too Essential to be allowed to strike/negotiate/be heard and also Too Despicable to be treated with respect and human (ha) decency....

I suppose I'll take anxiety dreams over panic attacks. Brown paper bags aren't the most glamorous accessory.

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.

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