A Work In Progress

The (sort of) Unexpected Crying

2011-10-21T23:30:00.000-07:00

We are watching the show "Life Unexpected" which is about a teenage girl who has spent her life being bounced around in foster care & while petitioning for emancipation discovers that she needs to find her biological parents to have them sign a form to sever their rights. Anyway, the long & the short of it is that she finds them & they are like 32 and are not, nor have they ever been, a couple. So once they are re-connected the show is about the quirky figurings of how to make a family with all of these disjointed lives. Oh, and it takes place in Portland.

I watched this show and I ached. And I tried not to cry (not obviously cry). I know some people know that I am at a point where I really want to be a parent. I may not be (even remotely) in a situation that is conducive to begin parenting (I know, there is never a perfect time, but employed & insured is worth aiming for first), but that does not make me want it less. The thing is that it isn't just about biology; it isn't the "baby wants", I mean that is there but it's not the whole or even main picture. For me it never has been.

So in comes this show. They meet their daughter. The "screw up" father (that is screw-up Portland style since he does sort of own his own bar & live in a super cool loft downtown) didn't even know about her & has never really had to grow up. And the mom has all kinds of crazy, quirky issues. They both (& the people in their lives) wrangle with what responsibility and adulthood really is - especially in terms of suddenly being parents & to a 16 year old girl at that. The best part is that both of them realize that there was a space in their lives and heart that has always been empty and now even though it is tough and complicated & riddled with self-doubt & challenges, something meant-to-be is happening.

For me, I already know that the space is there - no special realization required. I know about the hole in my heart & my life. I watch this show and I see the stories of her other friends in foster care and of all the screwed up homes she was in, or they were/are in and I think about how much I want to be a parent. How maybe we could parent a teen.

Then of course I think: no, no, no we could NOT parent a teen! That is straight up crazy talk! Do I not remember teenagers? But my stupid heart and its stupid capacity for love doesn't listen, it just struggles. Really though, would we be terrible at it? What if we weren't terrible and then wanted to have a baby, would we be jerks and not keep our foster daughter (yes, daughter, obviously)? No, of course not, we aren't like that - definitely NOT like that. But what about my inability to afford to even fly home just me? Or my wanting us to move to California? Or this, or that, or this, or that. And it spirals, the questions & doubts.

Yet the tears well up. The ache does not subside. The knowing that while have my own stuff to work on, and need to get my act together (see: FIND A JOB!) & what not, that does not negate what else I know. Such as how I know that there are these kids with crappy foster parents while there are people like us who are not crappy. Who could "get it". Who could be not-total-loser-jerk parents.

Then there is reality. Can I be that person? Or are we so behind in life that it isn't conceivable? I seriously hope not. For many reasons. But in terms of parenting, I like what they point out in the show. Basically they say that people could be way worse than they are and while they make a lot of mistakes, the state of Oregon still trusts them with their daughter (temporary joint-custody), so that must mean there's hope, right? Yes "it could be worse" is a terrible premise for parenting comparisons, but I think you get what I mean. We don't have to be perfect.

We just have to have room in our lives, willingness to make the sacrifices and embrace the difficulties that come with the package of parenting. That come with the hugs, the tears, the laughs, the joy of having a kid. No matter how old they are when you first get to be a part of their lives.

That runs into other stories though, so I'll stop after one more thought. I think it is kind of amazing, and that it sometimes seems weird to me because it is sort of counter to what the world tells you growing up, but my "baby wants" are not about babies or biology. They are about kids. About family. Unique, formed by choice, and crazy in their own right, families. And I like that. I feel lucky that I feel this way, not because it is easier, but because I AM lucky to feel like this & especially to have a partner who feels like this too.

Things I Forgot This Morning . . .

2011-06-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

Lately I have a hard time remembering things. The sort of things you should not forget. And it happened again this morning . . .

Now today it is more understandable that I should forget because at 7:30 I was coming back from an hour at the gym and had not (still have not at 9:09am) gone to sleep yet. Nonetheless this is an odd and recurring problem. I . . .

I keep forgetting what season it is. Like what month we are in. I think it is fall, but then realize no, that's not it. Sometimes I will think it's winter. Also no. Spring? No. Oooohhhhh. Summer. It is June. Right. June.

How do you disconnect from what month it is?! I blame unemployment.

Sadly when I realized that I have forgotten this I thought about the fact that I had forgotten a lot of things lately, but now I cannot remember what they were.

I think I need to get some sleep . . .

The Top 8 Benefits of Depression: See! There's (almost) Always A Bright Side

2011-06-22T14:03:00.001-07:00

Once the pathetic self-pity began to lift (okay, as it is beginning to lift) I have tried to gain some (not really) perspective & find the, er, close-to bright side of it all. That is to say that I have found some of the the perks of being pathetic & depressed.

My Top 8 Are Below (not in any particular order):

1. You get to see more sunrises. (on account of the insomnia)

2. You get a little high school summer-time flashback by sleeping until 11 or 12! (on account of the awake 'til sunrise 5 nights in a row)

3. Weight loss! I have lost at least 4 pounds in less than a week. Even if when I do eat it is primarily crap (sans Kyle making me eat real dinners most nights), I hardly eat at all - so that is a TOTAL plus. (granted I am just storing fat & losing muscle, but I have SO little muscle to lose that it has to be some of the chubbiness falling off -- so says my jeans at least)

4. You catch up on your "stories" - even if they are complete seasons of shows that you have watched over & over, it's okay! Now you can pick up on ALL the nuances you missed the first (second, or third) time(s) around!

5. You really catch up on facebook. Because there is not really enough of that in the average day, this way you can seem like the crazy status post-er that you always aspired to be.

6. (and this one is important) You renew your love for music from your youth, like listening to The Cure, Depeche Mode, & Morrisey.

7. You have more time to devote to your obsession with Nathan Fillion (or insert the name of your favorite actor).

8. You improve the healthiness of your skin & hair because you stop putting on make-up or styling your hair with product, blow drying & a straightener. (who needs that stuff when depressed? No one. It is really oxy moronic to be truly pathetic & depressed AND look nice. I guess if you're leaving the house you can smack on some lipstick, but really isn't nearly 20 years of making an effort to prettify before leaving the house enough?)

There are probably more, but all this cheeriness is really exhausting. I should save something to do at 3am.

:)

**Like the Phoenix I'll rise again! Wait, I don't want to do that. The damn bird has to burn to death first! Although he has the whole rebirth, renewal, immortality thing going, so that's cool.**

Lost & Found In Story

2011-06-12T14:58:00.000-07:00

I am a lover of words. A keeper of stories. I believe we all have at least one to tell.

I sometimes wish I could live inside the stories of others, inhale their words & slip away, far from me & this landscape I often feel swallowed up in.

I’ve been lonely for much of my life, although not alone. At one point when I was nearly as alone as I was lonely, I found myself saying that it is okay to not have many friends; I have my best friend, and when that is not enough, I have Jane Austen and her stories.

See I am not a great or terribly well-read reader, but I know that books and stories are faithful friends and that you can, “put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back” (John Green). When you become both lonely and alone you learn that the words whispered onto the pages of books can be your life-line, not just to another world but even to your own.

When the walls are unscalable. When I am down to just one last string. When I need something to hold on to; something not human that will not so easily decay; I need something to hold the innermost parts of me together with the rest of the world – I know then that I need the secrets, loves, pains, joys and adventures of others. I need the “something” that exists in stories.

Who Am I: My Search for a Racial Identity

2011-04-17T16:46:00.000-07:00

As a 32 year old woman I feel like I should have an answer to the question: Who Am I? Yet when I think of it I question what it means, specifically in terms of race and ethnicity.

I am Irish. This is my inherited and biological identity. I am rooted in an ancestry that is all white, an ancestry that I see in my translucent and easily burned skin. It is a lineage that I see impacting my personal and professional experience and identity.

My whiteness often feels like an affliction, especially when I try to relate to kids with a race or ethnicity that differs from my own. Even though I recognize and know that race is an ever present issue - whether or not I or anyone else (usually white people) want it to be – that does not always help. I know that for many of the kids I work with my pale complexion represents a person with limited understanding of who they are and can signal a red flag as to whether or not I can really “understand.” My discomfort in my own skin creeps into my body language and words; a feeling of inadequacy runs like an electric current through my blood and influences my actions.

And that is because it is an appropriate question. Can I understand? Can I relate to an oppressive or marginalized history? Can I relate to the experience of institutional racism? Over the years I have been discriminated against, sometimes for age, or gender, sometimes for socioeconomic status. While these are parts of my personal cultural identity, it is very different than race, and the discrimination is also different.

When I work with kids and parents I sometimes feel inadequate, or even ashamed. I feel that I cannot truly understand; that I cannot meet their needs. I hear parents say that coming into a place, like most schools, where there is almost no one who looks like them, it is isolative and there is an immediate lack of trust. These parents have shared stories of being treated like they are less. I cringe at the thought that I have most likely done this, unconscious actions, but nonetheless ones I have likely committed.

In college I took a sociology class on cultural diversity. The professor, a small and angry white man, had a multi-racial team of graduate students to offer diverse opinions and meaning to the classes. The professor gave lengthy rants and lectures – not of the academic variety - on the evils of white people. He presented himself as someone with a great hatred for not only the egregious history of racist actions, but for the very existence of a white culture. He made a point to demean and devalue, to insult any person of a white descent, as if it were chosen.

One day in class he asked us to choose any different race or ethnicity that we would want to have. When he called on me I said the truth, I said that I always wanted to be a black woman. I loved the culture that I believed many African Americans to have, a kinship and shared community. He became angry and yelled at me and he told me I was a liar.

The problem was that I meant it. Just like I mean it when I say that I identify as having a Mexican heritage, or really a desire for one. My (step) father is Mexican and I felt like making a claim to his cultural history not only meant something to me personally, but it gave me value to the kids I worked with. It made me someone with whom they could trust. Possibly ridiculous, but sometimes it worked. Having grown up feeling like I did not have a culture; because I grew up white; left me longing for one. An outward and obvious cultural identity.

There are pieces of this that I struggle with less now. I know that I do have a cultural history. I do have an ancestry that is more than the color of my skin. Yet I still question my ability to serve students of different races and ethnicities, but not because I am incapable, rather I know that it is important to have adults to connect with who are similar to you when you are at an age of such intense identity development – like in middle school.

Currently my younger sister, an 8th grader, experiences a great deal of prejudice. She is multi-racial, a white mother and a Mexican father. Her light skin separates her from the other kids, but she is daily ridiculed as not being either white or Mexican enough. I was initially surprised by this, mainly because I did not think it would be a problem. I did not think kids would care; she is a beautiful, intelligent and talented girl. But she is the recipient of consistent physical and verbal bullying.

Why? I wish I could explain it to her, that I had answers or understood. I wish I could protect her from the cruelties of prejudice and racial discrimination. I wish I could answer her questions about who she is and what it means to be bi-racial. It’s funny that I have always wanted to be at least bi-racial, yet I never considered the biases I may receive.

I suppose there is no true conclusion to this. It is simply, like most things, a work in progress. I cannot imagine what the outcome will be for me or my sister. For me I would need to know what my goal is. For her I believe it is to identify. To connect. To fit.

So, what is it for me? I suppose it is feeling comfortable in my own skin, confident that I can help students to the best of my abilities, and be honest and open with them. I know race is always present and relevant, but I also know that it does not have to prevent me from being a supportive and positive adult in the lives of any kid I work with. I hope to get there, and I believe that in time I will.

My New but Not Replacement Blog

2011-02-11T11:06:00.000-08:00

I have created a new blog that does NOT replace this one, for it has a totally different purpose. It is an introduction to My Army of Imaginary Friends.

It can be found at: It can be found at:
http://myarmyofimaginaryfriends.weebly.com/index.html
(sorry my blog won't let me post this as a link. bad blogger! bad!)

Here is my post that explains what it is:

I have decided, well, a lot of things, but for the purposes of this page we will start with my decision to create: My Army of Imaginary Friends. MAOIF is going to be awesome. If I were the sort to use this word, and I have only ever used it as a mock or joke before, but if I WERE the sort I would say: MAOIF will be epic! It will be legendary. In fact, wait . . . I just started to build it (in my head) and it IS already awesome.

The thing about it though is that my super cool and freakishly awesome imaginary friends are "real" people, but since I don't actually know most of them, they're only "imaginary" friends.

This Army is created primarily of people who I think would:

1. Totally get my sense of humor (it's my army, so it starts with my needs)

2. Be so hilarious that they would stop all non-hilarious and sad or tragic things in the world just by their mere existence

3. Definitely be able to combine their awesome, to produce the first Puppy-Sized Elephant.

YOU may be in my army and just not know it. I am accepting recommendations for members. Currently there are only like 10 so I have some room.

And now I'll go back to my currently über uncool life to study.

That's it! I am introducing new, or already existing and just not listed/named members when I can. Currently I have listed 4 but in only 3 announcements (posts).

Schroedinger's Cat & My (hopeful) Completion of Grad School

2011-02-05T15:22:00.000-08:00

If you aren't familiar with Schroedinger's Cat (SC) I will post some links, and/or you can bear with me through a weak description of it:

Schroedinger was a physicist, his theory was that something has a singular outcome IF it is observable, if it is not then it could have more than one outcome at the same time. His theory involved putting a cat in a box along with some radioactive material, and a device for detecting radiation. The device was designed to, if it sensed the decay of the radioactive material, trigger a hammer which was poised to break a flask containing hydrocyanic acid, which, when released, would kill the cat. His theory postulated that since you cannot see the cat, and cannot know if the device has triggered the hammer, the cat is both alive AND dead at the same time. (Most of this information is not my own, but taken from: http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/quantum-suicide4.htm).

What this has to do with grad school:

The SC thought experiment came to be because of a controversy between two theories in quantum mechanics. The first is the idea (Copenhagen Interpretation) that an object can exist in multiple states at once, that is until it is observed at which point it HAS to choose one probability - one outcome. The second theory (The Many-Worlds Theory) is the idea that it can continue to exist in multiple states and the universe will just split things into many parts to accommodate all possible outcomes.

This is like my current academic, educational, life, big picture, situation. The cat is either dead or alive (one outcome), but until it is observed it is both. My career & the purpose of (insert obscene $ figure) money I spent on grad school, all the stress, friendships, bad & good things, sacrifices, and crazy AND potential for success are in the box.

Being behind on my thesis, having issues at my internship, not having a video clip that is any good, or being prepared for my licensing exam on Monday, & whether or not (on account of all of those things) I will actually get my MA in April is the possibility of my Cat being dead. My deepest fear (in this) is that my cat is dead, that it was a mistake and will not pay off and I will fail - even if I do get my degree.

BUT there is a possibility that my Cat is alive, has purpose and will end up being worthwhile (not worth the debt necessarily) but the correct pursuit of a dream.

In discussing SC with my friend, she asked why we wouldn't just make the box see- through, because it's so frustrating not knowing if the cat is dead or alive why torment ourselves when we could just look? I told her that for me I don't want to see inside the box. Well I sort of do, but since I REALLY hope my cat isn't dead, even though it often feels like it is, I want it dark, sealed and unknown. Even if that means not knowing if my cat is alive.

How do I help my cat stay alive? Where is my confidence? Is this just my crazy running out of control?

Part of me wants to say: I am GOOD at this. I must be good at some of it. However the dark cloud I feel in my gut is gnawing away at my confidence and faith. But the fact that there is something remaining for it to gnaw at is hopeful, because it means my cat may still be alive.

In my heart, I love it, I do. I want to be amazing at school counseling. I want to be the best possible counselor. I have so much to learn that it terrifies me that I won't learn enough to be successful. But I hit wall after wall. I feel stuck. And this may be why. This prime example of my negativity. The pool in which I currently swim. I MUST GET OUT OF THE POOL.

I teeter between what is my being realistic, and what is my being borderline & histrionic? What is an area I can grow in, and what is something I am just not cut out for. That's the point though right? The whole experiment of Schroedinger's Cat. We won't know until we open the box, and really instead of speculating I might as well act as if the damn cat is alive!

Babies!

2010-11-12T21:10:00.000-08:00

I got to hold the cutest baby girl at work today. She stared up at me wit the most engaged & wondrous eyes. As I held her for a client I thought how I could look at this little girl all night. The mom thanked me for holding & said I could just lay her in the bassinet while she went to put the baby bath in the tub. I laid her down & she wanted her bottle & I realized that I don't actually know how to take care of a baby. Can I hold her bottle up & feed her while she's lying down? That seemed dangerous being so flat. How old are they when they can hold the bottle up alone? How old is this baby? So I picked her back up & gave her the bottle & pretended that I am not completely ignorant about all things baby, while working as a staff who is supposed to model parenting skills and child care for clients. I know I will learn all of these & that if I already had a baby I'd learn it all but.... Clearly I should've babysat more!

Anyway, I think I need to read a book...is there a picture book with easy basic information? Or like a baby-basics-cheat-sheet? Not major developmental milestones but some specifics like bottle holding....

Oh my...

Existentialism & the End of a Friendship

2010-11-11T11:34:00.000-08:00

Recently a relationship in my life has changed; I tried to prevent this from changing, specifically for the past 2 months, but in my heart have known for some time that it has being transforming from the healthy and constructive relationship that it once was to something else. Focusing on the last two months though, I had been torn between a) the pain brought on by hurt, sadness, and the selfishness of another, and b) the knowledge that confronting the person who caused a. would end an important friendship. I had hoped that I could overcome or ignore a. and prevent b., I hoped that time would pass and I would be okay with the damages, or at least accept them and let life do what it would.

A wise woman told me that as life ran its course in this relationship, space, distance and reality would bring an organic ending or healing (she assumed ending, she was both wise and correct, though I had hoped for the latter), and that I did not need to force outcomes.

Considering that it felt like, still does truly, there was a complete lack of awareness from a.’s executor (hence forth called “x.”), the ripples set out by x.’s actions (resulting in a.) were continuing to expand inside my brain and heart. I was having a hard time balancing between the choice of managing the size of a. within me to attempt the prevention of b. (which was unthinkable to endure), to risking b. by confronting x.

And then it happened. I failed at preventing b., actually that is incorrect, I failed to maintain the size of a. within me, perhaps because it is unreasonable, and vain, to think one could prevent what felt like the inevitable just because they don’t want it to be true. And once a. was out, once some of it was said to x. there was no going back. Initially x. seemed aware (which was a happy surprise) and apologized (for a moment at least) and I thought that b. would not happen. I was elated! I had been wrong, despite the failed efforts in the past for me to be heard by x. regarding things that x. did not like or want to hear, and my feelings of impotence in an important relationship because I often feared b. thus not risking telling x. important things (previous to this current situation that brought about a.), and despite my fears of stone-walling or defensiveness, I had clearly been wrong and assuming the worst of a friend I loved so much; all along x. had been aware! But that was also incorrect. No sooner said (an apology) than was it rescinded. Shaking from hurt, frustration and anger, no longer just at me because a. had to get out as it was eating away at so much space in my heart and brain, but angry that it was true. That friendship was limited by x.’s capacity to see beyond x. My thoughts that years of friendship could outweigh how x. and my friendship have transformed within the past, were futile. X. decided, in less than the time that it was taking me to process these messages (less than 24 hours that is) - that had fluctuated from apology, to taking it back, to sincerity, to confrontation - that the whole friendship should end – without trying. X. even blamed me for much of it.

Following this crushing, if even someone expected experience, I was unsure where to go. In times of trial would I not usually talk to x.? Thus in my “now what” stage I feel that it may be best to evaluate this situation in the context of the four existential givens.

Beginning with this question: Is the inevitable simply inevitable? Yes and no, because that solely supports the concept of determinism, and, existentially speaking, I believe that destiny exists. If destiny does exist than we are not totally free, because of the concept of thrownness (that some basic conditions of the world are beyond our control) perhaps there was corruption to this process, or experience. This might make sense in a minute.

The four givens (basic truths about existence) and their application (my interpretation) of them to this experience:

Existential Given #1: Freedom, Responsibility, and Agency

This is complicated and it is very hard for me to articulate but in short, I was allowing myself to be a product of my biology, unconscious, and environment; allowing my fears to prevent my living authentically. To be free, responsible and not live in a passive state, I must try to exercise my will. I am responsible for my efforts to control b., but not for the actions of x. Just as I was not responsible for the egregious behaviors of x. that led to a., I could not prevent x. from making x.’s choices. I concur with the philosophy that people make decisions based on their own interpretation of meaning, and I assigned specific meaning to b., which was rooted in an awareness of the risk of feelings of despair, loss, and sadness if a. was expressed. But those are parts of a human prison, because freedom is not external, being controlled by this fear was only creating a more painful end.

Existential Given #2: Death, Human Limitation, & Finiteness

In this case this is a symbolic death. Yalom (existentialist) argues that there are “two ways of denying death: 1) the ultimate rescuer and 2) specialness. Both are tied to the heroic. With the ultimate rescuer, the heroic is an external hero while in the conception of specialness, the hero is internal.” I wanted to prevent the death of this friendship (i.e., b.) so I thought (unconsciously) keeping a. to myself was somehow heroic, like there was a specialness to preserve and I was good for trying. I do believe that there was a specialness, but I also believe that all things (in this case relationships) are finite, I was just hoping that it was finite in terms of physical death, that it would endure within the boundaries of my human life, not end within this year. It’s an understandable hope, because man is an irrational creature, but not accepting limitations such as those within this relationship was not heroic, it was a form of denial.

Existential Given #3: Isolation and Connectedness

For my purposes here I will consider the concepts of interpersonal relationships, and (a very limited understand and application of) the concept of I-Thou / I-It relationships. I firmly believe that we were made to be in relationship with others, that we need others to survive. Interpersonal isolation is a “way of being in relationships” that are “not satisfying relational needs.” A refusal to accept that there is a limit to this human relationship, put me at risk of a “neurotic, dependent, and symbiotic relational pattern” that prevented me from growing in my ability to relate on a deeper level. Perhaps I was moving from the I-Thou genuine relationship, with all of its mutual risks, to an I-It relationship. When “relationships are reduced to effective communication and management I-It), something precious is lost.” Because of my fear of that loss -of rejection and hurt to both myself and x. - I would not accept the reality of isolation, even at the cost of authentic connectedness.

Existential Given #4: Meaning vs. Meaninglessness

“An essential assumption of the existential theorists is that people are meaning seeking creatures. It is meaning that can make existence bearable. Conversely, the lack of meaning is one of the greatest existential terrors. Becker (1973) said it well: "Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level" (p. 196).”
There are three types of meaning, false, transitory, and ultimate. Recently I (unintentionally) employed transitory into my relationship with x. Because I believe in growth and friendship, and that we, as humans, are both meaning seeking and meaning creating creatures, I thought that this was in the pursuit of an ultimate meaningful relationship. However following many occurrences of the past year, specifically of recent events, I was, without realizing it, living inauthentically, and irresponsibly, consequently preventing any true meaning. Thus allowing my relationship with x. to have false meaning. Allowing the development of an increasingly destructive relationship (internally for me if nothing else) I moved to create a negative transitory meaning that prevented growth or the fostering of an authentic relationship. Transitory became coping. And from an existential perspective, “merely surviving or coping is not really living.”

These existential givens were mostly lived out unconsciously. While I intentionally kept a. to myself because I feared b., I unintentionally constructed a new narrative that could not have anything but a destructive meaning. I did not know how to cope, so I stopped living.

Relationships need to be shared, and I did not feel any sharing from x., which I interpreted from a lack of awareness, and thus limited my own sharing. I still feel much of that (x. not being aware or taking responsibility) is true, but I can only trust that it is my interpretation of x.’s feelings, because I believe that truth, such as this, is subjective because objectivity is always suspect. I’ve read that a belief in objective truth is a belief that “bias has been contained, bracketed, or eliminated.”

In the opinions of others, some who have shared them without my asking - people who witnessed the events that led to a., not who have only heard my side - in their (as much as possible) objective opinions more than validate a.

I have been unable to respond to x.’s final message. My husband thinks that perhaps that is best, that all of x.’s words are out into the universe and maybe that’s enough. I am unsure. I have been afraid to say anything, publically or really privately, like there is a necessary mourning period and expressing happiness or being ‘okay’ somehow undermines the meaning of my previous relationship with x. Nonetheless with the quickness in x.’s decision to end our relationship (although I want to believe there was a significant internal struggle) it may be self-centered to think that it matters to x. what I put out there. That not wanting to hurt x. is an unnecessary concern, because x. did not mind hurting me – in causing a. or allowing b.

I used to say, mostly jokingly, not to cross a writer because they’ll immortalize you. I feel that despite my best intentions in keeping a. to myself, that x. (who is a writer) has interpreted it as a personal affront and for whatever reason (of which I hold many, primarily rooted in hurt opinions of) seems to have let this go quite easily, even made it a positive part of their current life experience. Making me a negative, when I know I am not.

All of this supports the theory that b. is, all in all and ultimately, the best outcome - but how can that be felt lightly? I cannot help but feel terribly wounded by all of this, and my response can only be to write this, an evaluative (while still emotionally directed) view of recent happenings. Hoping that I can find some solace or ending to the numb feeling that remains within me.

I desire freedom from this existential angst. With the removal of the object of fear (fear has to have an object, in this case b.), angst should not continue, it “has no such "constructive" measure” upon which to hang. It remains my own “nondirectional emotion” that I need to let go of. It is an act of living as a free agent that I can responsibly let this go, knowing that the consequences of my actions only went so far (are what they are), and the consequences of x.’s are beyond my control, and are x.’s own responsibility.

In the words of Jean-Paul Sartre, “Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.”

oh man, i'm depressing!

2010-10-16T14:50:00.000-07:00

i just looked at my last few posts. honestly until this incident i had not felt like quitting for 2 weeks - which is total progress. seriously, two whole weeks! i was accepting errors, moving forward, doing okay, still had crappy moments but wasn't all pathetic about them. i guess i am more likely to write about the bad feelings than the good.

when i get that feeling in my gut that i am screwing up i am compelled to write. when i feel good i think, "oh i should write" but move right along with doing something else.

i will make the effort to write some of the good things - especially on my other blog about being an intern. it isn't too inspiring to new interns to see that things for me suck.

rejection / failure

2010-10-16T14:34:00.001-07:00

I got an email from a 1st/2nd grade teacher about how counseling class, that I teach alone, has a negative impact on her students & how incredibly unhappy she is. I feel stupid & like I suck. Teachers don't like that they have me instead of my supervisor, like it isn't fair that they get the "intern" & not the "real" counselor. It was a class that ended with 3 boys crying & fighting - I should have gone to the teacher to report it & get guidance, but I didn't. They weren't crying by the end of our meeting after. But apparently two other kids cried later. What the heck did I do???

I know these are life lessons, but I feel like I failed. I hate failing and making mistakes, like I should naturally be able to do it all well. I know I am new at this and haven't worked with little kids in 14 years and never as a teacher, but I thought it was going okay, sans the crying children . . . but 6 & 7 year olds cry when they say mean things to each other. Well, 32 year olds cry when they feel like they did something wrong . . .

But there really is this air of annoyance that they get me instead of my supervisor. I hate that. Like I suck just because I am not already licensed. They seem to forget that there is a time when they were in training too. But I hate that my supervisor will talk to the teacher without me because I am not there on Mondays & that makes me feel awkward.

I put all of this pressure on myself, like I represent me, my supervisor and my school and so when I screw up it reflects poorly on everything. Which I realize is a little self-aggrandizing. And on most levels I know that I am over-reacting but it is my first big incident & it comes from the scariest teacher at the school. She is amazing with little kids but REALLY intimidating. I am afraid that I will cry when we all meet, or even just my supervisor and I meet.

So my ultimate over-reaction? I should just quit & accept failure. Because THAT'S the best choice.

I went to that bad place. The one where I think, OH MY GOD I should have stayed in the couples, marriage & family counseling program. OH MY GOD how much debt will I be in to become something I am bad at???

These are the times when I am supposed to remember why I have the words "It Is" literally tattooed on my skin. It is for two reasons, one being the theory that life is what it is, and what matters is what we do with it. Like the platitude, "this too shall pass", the idea is that some things are out of control, even the responses to things that were in our control, and as scary as it may feel, the situation will pass. (Although as a side note, I kind of think that teaching 1st & 2nd graders may sometimes involve kid's behavior that is a little out of my control) And that before it does pass, all I can do is make the choice to deal with it, be humbled and accept what has happened, and whatever consequences befall on me. OR to make the choice of running and hiding, or simply quitting.

I am supposed to go to a festival at the school today, I don't want to because I will have to see the teacher and my supervisor and I feel ashamed and weak. And I REALLY don't fit in at this school, so it feels awkward. You are expected to come for the whole thing, bond and share in cider and a harvest dinner. I want to stop by, see some kids, have some cider and leave.

Exactly when will I develop social skills to interact with other grown ups? Does that come in my mid-30s?

"too much" but not "overwhelmed"

2010-09-28T17:20:00.001-07:00

As he left today my supervisor asked if I felt overwhelmed. I said no, that I had in the morning but that I felt better now. Which was true, but that is different than feeling okay. How do I verbalize that it isn't that I feel overwhelmed, rather, I feel disappointed. I'm disappointed in myself, in my inability to do what I should be able to do. In my frustration. In my desire to cry after things go wrong. In how apathetic or boring I must seem because I don't express emotion or response. How inadequate I feel and not to mention the part of me that is comparing myself to other-intern who I feel is probably perfect and bubbly.

I feel like a loser. Like I made a bad choice. A mistake. A really, really expensive mistake.

"disclaimer from a since moved blog-posting"

2010-09-25T01:03:00.000-07:00

**Disclaimer - stories regarding events of childhood - and even their potential or actual impact on adulthood are not intended to drag the name of perfectly fine adults through some proverbial mud. I do not hold ill will to people or behaviors from childhood, but our actions influence who we grow up to be. I believe our experiences, our stories, impact who we are - but so does conscious choices. What we do with them, those experiences, is what matters now and next. Negative, positive, or mixed, they are pieces of a larger picture and ultimately it's like a a mosaic.*

You Became Who You Are

2010-09-03T16:40:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time I was a free spirit. I loved and I hurt with passion. My world was saturated with color. It was both dramatic and serene, and when I felt it was with all of me, or as much of me as I knew how to give. Then things changed; age, depression, heartbreak. Choices had consequences that led to a desire for a more sustainable and traditional stability, which for me meant sacrificing art and beauty. It didn't have to mean that, but part of feeling with all of you can mean living in a polarized world.

It was the start of 2000 and after I stopped self-medicating with dancing and drinking; I had to figure out what it meant to not be fragmented and what that might have to do with growing up. I put some of that colorfulness away because it didn’t feel safe for me, it bled into the fringes – which was a place I knew and lived but where I couldn't survive. Learning to do that, without really learning how to do the work, was complicated, painful and incomplete.

In 2001 I started taking medication. Unfortunately I let what you hear happens with medication happen to me. I stopped writing and painting. My polarized world became more polarized. And life went on and I lived and loved and traveled. I saw and felt beautiful things. But I developed inhibitions and walls. And the walls grew and grew like a castle fortress.

Some 9 years have passed. Three careers, 1 divorce, a different state, and a new marriage later, I am taking stock. Towards the end of my first marriage my husband had often told me that I was not the woman he married. He had married an artist and I was not an artist. I know now what he meant, but I don’t think he did really. I had new art, new passions, but less me. At the time I was still writing, not often though and without his notice, but it didn't really matter because I wasn’t really living. It wasn’t that I had just stopped creating but something inside me seemed to stop, it was missing – the me that he had loved because of the passion and free spirit seemed to be gone. And when we separated I told myself that wasn't going to be the case anymore, because I would do what I had always longed to do. I would travel. Live with abundance. Move to the Dominican and be - just BE.

But I didn't. Instead I did the work. The work that I should have started in 2000 I started in December of 2006. I have worked hard but remain a work in progress.

Today I saw Eat, Pray, Love with some girlfriends and thought that a version of that life, with the self discovery and travel, is the life I always wanted and in some ways still do. I want to live with less fear. I want to LIVE. But I saw something different. I used to think that I could only live that life while single, that if I wanted to travel or move somewhere across the world that it had to be just me. But it doesn't. Dreams can be shared and loved and lived together. Dreams can adapt, they don’t have to end.

Do I think we are going to move away? Maybe not. Am I open again to the idea of looking outside of my comfort zone - my white suburban SW Portland life? Yes. This girl who came to be, she is who I am meant to be - but not all of her. Life is not for this timidity. Life is for abundance and surrender. It is not for fortress walls and brokenness and TV shows and 15 facebook posts in a day; it is for sharing, loving, laughing and being. All things can cross over and in between, but it is bigger than what I have accepted.

I received a written prescription from the doctor yesterday that read: Make your own schedule a priority. "Own" was underlined three times. And that is what I need to do. The other informal prescription was to meditate. I meditated last year and I started to feel a peace. Before then there were a handful of times that this had happened and all were in artificial settings. Wonderful, but artificial in that they were not where I lived. It was Yosemite, or on a frozen lake, a rolling river, nature - places where God is easier to breathe in. But peace right in the context of my own life? I didn't know how that could really be.

All true peace must come from within; it is just easier to find when you are not in your day to day or it is simply hard to feel while in the city, because there, I guess I mean here, you have to work harder for it. You, me, we are in chaos, so it involves carving a space in your real life to make it happen.

For a class last year we had to create mandalas. A mandala is many things; it can be an artistic representation of the cosmos, like a focus for meditation. Ours was sort of that, but also about defining our self and our spirits. I chose a music box and painted it, glued poems and quotes by L’Engle and Wordsworth, passages from the Book of Counted Sorrows and on the top this poem that I wrote:

My soul speaks loudly.
Then silently.
The ancient words of God;
They are worn into the grooves.
Worked by the hands of my ancestors.

I think that is true. And it is speaking now. I hear the ancient words because they are worn into the grooves of my soul, woven into my very existence and reality. They say that as long as I am breathing, it is never too late to live.

Brokenness

2010-08-16T19:04:00.000-07:00

I was just thinking about brokenness. I thought of it the other day and then again tonight as I was watching tv. It was a big episode and following significant changes in these characters lives. Of course set to Jeff Buckley most things sound dramatic and feel depressing, but it was interesting. It was interesting and sad. Not sad because of the tv show, but because of the feeling of brokenness; the expression worn on the face of a shattered heart.

What I was thinking is that I no longer know what to make of it. It has been a long time since I saw things in a remotely black and white way, but I still had an outline. I still had an idea of God and humanity fixed somewhere deep inside me. Something that, sensible, logical or not, was real. I don't think I have that anymore.

I have felt broken in the past. I have been broken in the past. And even at those times I had something deeper to believe in, something that held the big things together - or that I knew caught the big pieces as they fell through the proverbial sky. Now I don't know. I don't know what I believe in. I don't know if I believe in anything discernible. I believe in the existence of God and I know that inside I still have a love for Christ, but I don't feel anymore. What bothers me is there is no existential/spiritual crisis. It is like one day it had all drifted away and my heart and soul were silent. They aren't void and absent or aching, they are just silent.

Being cognizant of this, essentially having come into awareness of these feelings that developed quietly over time - has awakened something. It is something I cannot really explain. Is it fear? Is it contentment with the unknown? Or solemness with having lost something without feeling loss?

I don't know. I miss being in want of God. But I don't miss it enough to fight for it.

Pop!

2010-08-07T00:15:00.000-07:00

All around the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel.
The monkey thought 'twas all in fun.
Pop! goes the weasel.

I feel like the weasel. In SO very many ways. Pop! Most of them are too pathetic to post.

Scars

2010-08-06T23:36:00.000-07:00

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

I had just read this excerpt from the Velveteen Rabbit earlier this week, and then I heard it tonight in my friend's wedding. I take it in a slightly different manner than the pastor intended, but it is the same basic idea. To be "real" - whatever that means to you - hurts, but is worth it. Some times though, it doesn't feel like that. It feels like I am done feeling. Like I would rather have my eyes in my sockets, and ears that don't flop quite so much, and to live on a shelf, untouched, with my un-mussed fur and well tied bow. But that isn't reality, and that isn't how we want to be or live. Not usually.

Aren't we all the velveteen rabbit in one way or another? Don't we all have some good scars from being real, but also some bad ones?

My best friend just published her second book (HIGHLY recommend it: Magical Shrinking: Stumbling Through Bipolar Disorder, www.christianewells.com)and on her blog she posts about an experience of working with a girl who is a cutter and recognizing so many things in that moment, and connecting to how she herself was one years ago. She writes this line about what happened following a girl asking her if she was a cutter, noting the most visible scar, a vertical one that runs up her wrist:

"I said yes, and we sat in silence, looking at our scars."

I am too tired to really write, and too emotionally spent from a messed up day - full of my pettiness and over sensitivity, and elements of fiction blurring the truth, because both make me hurt and one rubs in the pain of the other - and now my head is full and I need to slow my thoughts or (preferably) put them in a drawer and try to rest.

I miss blogging, maybe getting it out, out into a space where I am pretty sure it is no longer read, but it is out there, some where, is helpful. It eases some of the loneliness, to think of common connections.

Oh that sounded dramatic.

just not doing anything i should be

2010-04-07T21:30:00.000-07:00

time seems to stop yet pass quickly. the hours run and run and my activities stand still. my doctor said that she doesn't understand how i can be disorganized and yet say that my new medication is helping me be focused. i tried to explain that my brain isn't disorganized - my life is. my life is disorganized. i have a theory that, well is correct, that if i could just get my house clean then i could get everything, or some things done. which i currently don't do. i have so much homework, and cleaning, and people to call, and emails to write. yet i just sit. i write to my colleague about a client who gets so overwhelmed that she can't do anything and i think that it is amazing that i am emailing her at all since i am too much like that client. and unfortunately that client knows. what is she some sort of see-er? (hazard of watching Angel)

anyway. a whole day wasted minus an oddly hopeful meeting with my boss. which i almost started crying. thank god for calming techniques ACTUALLY working for once.

wow, i'm DREARY.

What are you trying to tell me Willow Tree?

2010-04-07T21:28:00.001-07:00

April 05, 2010

It looks like sun, I can see it through the hanging branches of the willow tree. Lighting up the softest, sweetest greens. Yet the water taps my windows and moves the newly formed pond around the apparently broken drain in the parking lot below.

It was pouring this morning when I left my doctor. I was pouring, the sky was pouring, we were in a synchronized dance - we struck a perfect balance. And then it let the sun out. Is it trying to tell me something?

I look into my spreadsheets and documents. I review work samples and folders. I think of writing letters to my students, but instead know I need to prep a presentation, and apply for a job. A job so that I can pay rent next month. And then rent makes me think of bills. Bills that are late.

The world is heavy and burdensome. But I am eerily calm. Empty? It is hard to say what I am. I am moving forward through the stacks of homework, but not making the needed calls to get the bills paid and stop the threat of collection. Is there a threat if nothing in red has arrived? Is that how I should be seeing my world?

And the bank. And the kitchen sink. All things in need of attention. But I write, and stare at willow trees and passing birds, and at my sleeping cat. I feel the knots in my stomach tingle, and the joints in my hand contract and pull into themselves. Straining my neck to crack I try to release its pain. And it makes that sharp sound, and I feel my tendons reject the pull on the shoulder, but the spot inside my neck is happy, if just for a minute or two. I stretch back and hear the popping through my hips, feel the aching in my shoulders. And I think, "Lately, I feel so old."

I turn to the pile of orange folders to my left, and think I should put them in a traveling cabinet of sorts, make my class more organized. I turn my head to the living room and debate an episode of television with lunch, knowing it is a very bad idea.

But my hands hurt and I don't want to type. And I don't want to think of the pain or to-dos, for just a little while. And I want to not feel, physically, and to feel motivated mentally. And I want my doctor to be wrong, because I want a cup of coffee. And her theory of no sugar and no coffee is unacceptable. Can I follow the rest and leave those out? That may be my only choice.

Memories/Skin

2010-01-23T23:42:00.000-08:00

Why would a person want tokens from their past? Why would they keep things that upon holding them in their hand could make them sad? Evoke an array of feelings. Is it not better to erase things? To file them away in your brain as far away from your immediate memory as possible?

No. I have labeled, altered, hid, and run from memories. Surely I need to let go of some, physical and otherwise, but I like to keep pieces of people, and stories. I want to have tangible things that remind me of who I was, who I am, who I've loved. I can re-write how I see them, but I do not want to delete them.

In but 3 decades I have been so many people, yet wearing the same skin. How? How can it be? I have been beautiful, and ugly. Sweet, and cruel. I have loved, and I have hurt people, I have been careless with mine and others' hearts. And some of that I wish I could forget. I find it interesting, and impossible, that people claim that they do not have regrets, that they learn from their choices etc, and do not hold onto them. To me I think you can do both, because I have. I hold regrets, and I learn from them, or try to. That doesn't mean I should dwell on them, which I am wont to do on occasion. But it means I know them. Our actions are burned into us, imprinted on our souls, and in our thoughts and there patterns and development. I see them in me, the good and the bad. I see them in the creases around my eyes - the laugh lines, the aging, the marks. These are all parts of a complex life, a human existence.

Life is a series of choices. Some that, my God, I would do differently. I cannot pretend otherwise. It is always difficult to say that though. If I love the people in my current life, and I know it is the actions I have taken that led me to them, then how can I say I would do things differently? Because this string of reality, this person that I am, would not exist; so I would not know what I am losing. Just like I do not know what I would have gained had I not made certain decisions. The primary reason I would not do things again is not for my happiness being more or less than it is, but for a chance to not have hurt the people I love. That is what I would rather erase. Remove the stains from my actions in the way that they affected other people. Nothing is harder for me than knowing that I have hurt my family and friends.

Life is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. I turned to page 32 instead of 67. I took one path, if I had taken another, which literally could have been one different turn of a page, then I would not be who I am. The lines on my face would be different. And other people's lives would be different.

That is one of the things that is so amazing about reality, if any of us had made one different decision, turned to page 59 instead of 91, not gone to a BBQ one night, or even returned a call, we would not be where we are. Some people would say that that is the marker, the sign or thing that tells us we are where we are meant to be. And perhaps they are correct. Because every cause has an effect, ever action a reaction, but that doesn't make all of our actions okay; and it doesn't mean that I should erase what happened before I turned those pages. Before I altered the course of mine and others' lives.

So my original question, why would a person want tokens from their past, really does tie into this. We have taken our paths, chosen our inadvertent adventures, but we are creating, and sadly forgetting, memories all along the way. For me in an effort to live with the bad, I have sometimes altered the good. To make me look or feel better for things I chose. Or I have forgotten the good, it has been overshadowed by the darker story lines; so the tangibles sometimes help refocus the intangible. They help ground some memories, remind me of love, of happiness in the same skin but as a different person.

In many ways people may never change, but in many, many others, everything else about them can be different. I have remained ever the same, yet I am a dramatically different person living a dramatically different life since I turned from page 31. It is a difficult dance between knowing, remember, forgiving, forgetting, wanting to keep, or hold onto pieces of the past - all of these components. But we are the sum of many parts, which means we carry those within us, and sometimes we should carry them outside too. On a shelf, or in a closet. Or in a box.

when the sun & moon stop dancing

2010-01-16T22:37:00.000-08:00

I watch the horizon. I watch the melting lights. I see the colors bleed as the darkness falls. I feel the weight of night as it is sliding in, and then quickly conquering the day. At winter, at least. Winter is the time of the conquering. In summer the day and night dance, they state up late together and laugh. But in Fall they start to distance, every year the same, pulling and pushing at evening, and by the full throws of winter, the storms that lack the enthusiasm of lightening and thunder on warm wet days, the light is pushed down deeply - completely, traceless.

That is this week. This month. Months? The darkness started with a creeping and then spread. It has invaded all of the pieces. The sum of the parts make a messy mosaic. The colors go bland and the aching prevails as the tiles expand and contract while the glue tries to breathe but cannot as it is pressed together, art on background, forced to stick and dry. It is as though all of the light stood in the back and the glue poured over it, tiles at first delicately placed, developing their image, were then pushed aside by this parade of madness as the pieces fell. The picture, less discernible, except for the memory. Brains, hearts, and bodies have memories of their own, unconsciously formed. They have this memory, or shadow of a shape that you can see, feel - if you look closely enough.

This season's mosaic is like that. The images cry out calling for splashes of color occasionally pushing through only to be pushed down by the heaviness of the night sky. I am left begging the stars to come out. Pleading with the constellations to fight for me. But deaf can be the ears of the heavens. Not the ears of God. But the universe's tongue goes quiet, and the sea of people around, even with their love, joy, and beauty melting into me, they do not sustain. So I go home and the river within purges itself, spilling out into my strained subjective reality.

The madness on parade, within, with out swallows the sensibilities, the faculties, and compress a whole girl into a small box - big enough for an ocean of sadness, small enough to hide within.

Tonight the rain will not fall, just a dark curtain leans in on me. Heavy it hangs, strung across the sky.

When in doubt . . .

2009-11-17T11:01:00.000-08:00

When in doubt, look back. When was the last time your spirit felt whole? When you found yourself at peace on a more regular basis. Mine was at 19. Life was different, of course, but there is a chord - a thread - that remains within me, that links me to her (younger me). Even as life changes and we develop and grow up or older, we harden or become softer around the edges, we shift from right to left and back again, or not, and expand and contract within our beliefs about God, love and the world, even within all of that, we stay the same in some way. A chord that keeps you YOU or me ME. And when I follow my chord back, it is to a simpler time. A 19 year old girl, new to university, living with her sister, constantly re-arranging her apartment and seeking a peace in her soul.

At that time what was I doing. A little bit of yoga. A LOT of humor. Yes, many tears and heart break (and drama) but to feed my art and soul, to remain unblocked, I wrote. But I was writing with instruction and intention. I was reading Julia Cameron's the Artist's Way. I was doing morning pages. And when you purge in stream of consciousness for 3 pages, for 30-45 or 60 minutes and then DO NOT re-read it or worry about it but turn and close the pages of your notebook or put them away in an envelope for a few months, you realize that your day is different. Whining, decreases. Pettiness decreases. Productivity and efficiency improves. You become free from the muck that was cluttering your brain. You are taking a vacuum to your unconscious and letting yourself go.

I was also reading SARK. She is a flamboyant, wild, art loving, brilliant woman. She is knocked for possibly holding to new ageyness, but really she is trying to exude life and walk in healing - allowing us to confront pain and see our connection to the rest of humanity.

In those days I liked bright colors. I liked being outside. I did not stay inside on days I could just because I could. I embraced things. I was still depressed sometimes, but I don't think I was so ruled by fear as I am now.

So when in doubt . . . go back. Back to a time that was successful. A time where I felt whole. Whole will feel differently now. My bruises are different. My hurts tell a different story. My entire story has been written and re-written so many times. But I can go back and pick up those pieces and make them part of a new mosaic. Sitting in pain and accepting it, even labeling it, is good. Embracing and living in it, is not.

For me, I have to loose my hold on other things. Like perfectionism. "Perfectionism is a pre-requisite for pain" (Tara Branch). And I am tired of seeking out pain - academically, relationally. I want to live with intention. With love. Not frustration or bitterness. I do this, but not like I CAN, but I also live up to the negative expectations people have of me. My friends who treat me like I am mentally ill (intentionally or not and who probably do not even know it - because I have not told them) often get a broken or down version of me. Because I choose fear, I choose to not be LIVING and I feel that they will not see me beyond the gray version of me they have cast before their eyes and I give them that girl. She is so familiar, but she not who or ALL of who I am. It is painful, but I rise to this bleak occasion. It is painful that I am treated like I am different and painful that I engage.

Anais Nin wrote, "People who live deeply have no fear of death." Living deeply is a choice. I can't promise to make it daily, but I can find the time that sparked that depth. It feels like ages and ages ago. But I can reclaim myself because no one else can.

Icicles & Airplanes

2009-10-07T11:06:00.000-07:00

I was staring out the window yesterday. It was covered with the moisture it collects throughout the night - it is the coldest room in the house. But despite the cold I opened the door to take in the chill. It gets so hot these days, which makes no sense. The trees don't turn these day. Which makes no sense. I hide inside these days, which seems the same and always makes sense - because I like to see the world through my single pane glass and not through walking along the concrete. I walk if the trees are throwing their leaves down at me. I walk if my steps fall on crisp colors and moisture damaged leaves. I watch the parking lot. I miss my old home where I could watch the birds and squirrels and trees and bundle up. My apartment, 15 degrees lower than the outside world, but refusing the insanely high electric bills I layer up and sit at my desk. I read. I write. I look forward. Chased by memories. But everything is the same and yet everything had changed.

There were no icicles hanging from the airplanes, they simply flew high high away and like giant birds they took up too much space. They sped through clouds and passed the sun. I stared up from the ground in amazement, pulled my coat around myself, watched the skies turn gray, felt the rain fall, blurring my vision. I thought of finding an inside to hide, but sometimes there is no need. The icicles just melt around me.

Darkest Before Dawn?

2009-09-19T14:36:00.000-07:00

People say platitudes all the time. Things are darkest before the dawn, you'll be better in the long run, things are all going to be okay, it builds character etc. etc. But what get's to me, today when more and more is crumbling around me and the people I love, is this: The idea that it is darkest before dawn rests on the assumption that dawn will come. What if it doesn't? What if it will - but not for a very long time? What then? Dawn is relative.

For the past day I've been saying that, "it isn't all going to be okay." I believe that this is not me being negative, just realistic. See, I'm not a nihilist or even a fatalist, just sometimes a realist. I believe in the reality that, as much as people don't want to hear this: life is hard and then you die. I DO believe you should live intentionally and vitally in that time in between (not miserably or negative). But I also believe that when the dawn isn't coming - or at least isn't likely to in the foreseeable future - that it is acceptable to believe feel in the non-existential sense, that we are screwed. When you cannot pay your rent, buy food or maintain housing. When the people you love are unsure how they will survive between a & b, who has the right, or the gumption, to sweep in with platitudes?

People say platitudes aren't real until you experience them - but even that is a band-aid to a deep wound - and another platitude. Don't misunderstand, I am happy that many people I love are currently protected, have some semblance of security or even safety nets - but in those nets their well meaning compassion and desire to make it better is sometimes not what is needed or even wanted. It's hard to say that because everyone wants to offer hope, no one wants to say, "Wow, it sounds like you really are screwed. Sucks." So it is hard to throw this out there, but it is also hard to hear "it will be fine" when there is no promise that it will be. There is no "how" in that statement, so I wonder where will it come from? Now this doesn't mean that eventually it won't be, but right now, in the muck, in the eye of the proverbial storm - it isn't.

Anyhow, here are my non-optimistic platitudes for the day:
The well has dried up.
It is the calm BEFORE the storm. (i.e.; there's a storm)

I am feeling like reciting Elliot's The Hollow Men, which is never a positive thing.

It's been a long time . . .

2009-09-02T21:49:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I have really written here. I was doing really well for a while, and am still in many ways, but I am slipping. I am mainly just afraid. I am really afraid financially. I do not know how I am going to make it. The loan I was going for - the high interest private education loan that I did not want to take out but was going to so that I could pay bills - fell through. I am scared. I need a job - a real (an almost) full time job.

I often wonder what I was thinking by going back to school. I have learned so very much, but I am so in debt and it feels like it gets worse daily (well, technically it does with interest). I wonder that I couldn't have found a better full time job than what I had (where my soul was being eaten) and chosen to stave off grad school for a while longer. But there is no sense in going down that road - aside from the fact that I cannot change what is, would I want to? Choosing to go to George Fox, while an exercise in significant financial mistakes (let's not think of the loans of 2008 - aka horrible, horrible, stupid decisions), it has been a guide to finding the passion of my heart. I am thankful - but right now that is being out weighed by my fear.

What do I do? I guess I go to my interview in the morning. Then I do the other things I have for the day and at every free moment apply for jobs. Apply. Apply. Apply.

I hate applying but mainly because I hate cover letters.

"Life is not what it is supposed to be. It is what it is. How we cope with it is what makes the difference." Thank you Ms. Satir. But sometimes it feels like "what is" is very close to "what will not be" on account of not being able to afford rent . . .

I want to say, embrace life, it's an adventure. Or say, God will take care of me. But to the first I think, yes I want to do that, but this part is less adventure more . . . unemployment, lack of a roof over my head. To the second I think, who am I to say that??? Does that mean that all the people (20% of Oregonians?) who are unemployed are somehow NOT being taken care of by God? No, that is not true. I do not blame God for the state of things, nor will it be God's fault if things go from questionable to bad to worse. It is what it is - we change what we can, we don't change the presence of God, we try to change our own circumstances.

Well, that went off track.

I'm tired and worried. Better sleep so I can be up early and READY for my interview.

The Proposal

2009-08-11T09:07:00.001-07:00

It was anything but a dark and stormy night – in fact it was one of those nights where everything looked and felt so perfect that you couldn’t imagine it getting any better, and then it did. We were spending my birthday in Washington with Kyle’s family so that my younger sisters, who have been visiting, could meet them, go out on the river, hike, eat vegetables straight from the garden, and play with some farm animals. His aunt, who we were staying with in Chehalis, said that since we would be there on my birthday she would insist on having a family BBQ to celebrate. And so she did – most all of the family was there and I suppose there were signs that it was more than a birthday party but I didn’t want to believe them because I thought I would just be reading into things and then not be able to enjoy how great the night was on its own.

As the evening wore on it hadn’t dawned on me that Kyle had not given me a gift until whilst being sanctioned to the dining-room so my hot fudge + ice cream + brownie combo was allegedly being assembled and topped with candles, he came in to say my gift was outside. All day we (the family at the house) had been talking about the fairies in the forest behind her house and he said that the fairies had a gift for me and led me toward the patch of trees. I laughed and as we turned the corner I could see the forest lit up with candles, torches guiding a path and arrows made of glow necklaces and dancing rings lighting up the trail. We walked down the trail and he helped me up onto the little platform that has a table and chairs usually but was now covered with more candelabras and glowing candles and he kneeled down to pick up a frame that was turned upside down, he turned a switch and when he looked up at me from bended knee he held the big wooden frame wrapped in white lights and the place where a picture should be was a big paper that read: Marry Me?

And without a second’s hesitation or room for any other thoughts in my head I said yes. I never knew you could know something so completely as much as I knew right then that every bit of me, to the smallest corner of my heart to the greatest depth of my soul, knew that I want to, will and am so blessed to get to, spend the rest of my life with him.

His family, and his aunt’s camera, instantly descended upon us and he showed me a picture of the ring he designed (that I go in to get sized for, and give final approvals to, today) and in a whirlwind there were toasts and champagne, hugs, giggles, laughs and congratulations from friends and family. Finally we had the hot fudge + ice cream + brownie combo, but no candles; there were enough in the forest already.

Self Control

2009-07-30T21:21:00.001-07:00

It feels like it has been so long since I have written. Many nights my mind has buzzed with ideas - many commentary or fiction or almost-fiction, but the thoughts seem to be lost in translation, they do not carry through from my mind to a paper, or keyboard as it may well be. But one thought I have had lately is on self-control.

Self control is something I have always struggled with; be it in food, shopping or all around healthy life choices. There is still VERY much to be worked on and there are certainly areas in which I need to monitor myself better - but one that has drastically improved is in diet and exercise. Yes for a while I have been that annoying calorie counter, the one who checks the box and picks up everything in the grocery store or while waiting and the cue and reads the Calories section. But lately it has worked - and I'm not even starving! Like I thought I would be and like I felt I was at first. It is a difficult task for me to learn to eat better, to notice that something I usually would've eaten any day is actually a special occassion sort of food, or at least a every-once-in-awhile or treat-food. The thing that has helped is accountability. I have to actually track everything. I put it into my phone that calculates everything (including all of my exercises which I am QUITE diligent about tracking)and I can see how I have done - did I meet my goals? Did I go over? What should or shouldn't I have done? Did I make good choices? Did I need 8 pieces of those deliciously decadent chocolate covered orange treats from Trader Joes?

But this is bleeding over - or at least in my brain. For example, I am terrible about tracking money and as my money is quickly drained from my account and yet my bills seem to only go up I am thinking that I need to better track that too. I mean I am far more responsible than I used to be but if I don't find a job soon . . . there won't be money to pay rent in October and September is iffy at best right now -but hopefully my meager financial aid will come through and cover those two months.

I am thinking that it might actually be coming up on the time to panic, but I won't yet . . . I'll just apply for more jobs and have some faith that something will happen. Someone will hire me. . .

But I digress, the point is that having self control has been huge for me. I won't go into the other areas that I have grown in with this but I am able to be a much healthier person - holistically speaking.

Anyway, this isn't the most exciting thing I suppose, but it is a bright spot in what has been a rough couple of months. But I refuse to sink again! Or at least I am trying my hardest not to. I am at risk of it with my financial worries, but if I can keep it up in other areas it will help me be more positive in this one. Right?

I need to be like Indiana Jones, pour out the dirt to show that there is another step there. But for me, it is just believing that there is a step at all. If I am able to learn this though . . . I think I have made one step already.

June 23rd

2009-06-23T16:43:00.000-07:00

Three years ago today I almost didn't go to a BBQ . . . and I would've missed out on a life time of happiness.

Three years ago tonight, I met Kyle and I knew about 4 hours into our 8 hours of conversation that long evening, that he was going to be trouble. I also knew that he wasn't the sort of boy I could date because he was the sort of boy I would fall in love with.

It took a while but eventually we got it right. And I am awfully grateful to my friend who kept calling and texting me to tell me coming to her BBQ was not optional which is why I finally got in my car and drove the 30+ minutes to her house. Sometimes it is good to have persistent friends, isn't it?

I'll have to tell you the story of that night later, for now I have to get ready for my date.

For all that is wrong in the world, or in my corner of it, there is one thing that is awfully right. And for that I am forever grateful.

The "I Wants"

2009-06-22T09:37:00.000-07:00

I want the things that I assign as grown up things. I don't want to want them, but I do. I want the matching, or okay really eclectic not "matching" but cool furniture that isn't, well, hideous like my current furniture. I want a home of my own - but would settle for the furniture in my current apartment. I want vacations. I want to get married. I want a baby. I want, I want, I want.

For the first time in, it seems like forever, I have a future that I want to imagine. And when I do that it isn't really about the "things" I list above. I imagine being done with school, Kyle and I being married, Kyle having a teaching job and me a school counselor. Despite our terrible school loan debts, I don't think about those in "fantasy future" just panic-inducing future. Instead I have this abstract concept of a home and just hope it has a vegetable and flower garden. We have a kid (see I want to be pregnant but not and I want a baby but really like a 3 year old). We are doing creative thins and all of these images are dripping with sunshine and happiness. But with a sense of grounding and reality. It is hard to explain what lives in my head, but sometimes my mind skips right past this and I think of the I wants out of context.

My friend is pregnant. She is hilarious about it. She calls it her sea monkey (I blame Juno), She is 4 years younger than me and while they (she and her husband) have their problems, they have a home and matching furniture. But I don't really care about that, I don't want the life, I want to be younger and pregnant. Because babies are so so far away and health risks seem to increase - when did it get so scary?

And I want us to go on vacations. To go to the coast for the weekend, to stay in hotels and do fun things. I want us to go to Greece because Kyle has never left the country. I've been to more countries than he has states (and I've been to more states, but that's not the point).

I am happy for the most part but when the wants happen I get sad. Yesterday I tried to focus on my daily mantra. And it helped, but mainly buying my friend a cute onesie (really early I know but Kyle really wanted to) with a little giraffe cuddling with an elephant I had a hard time not being jealous - or sad.

We had dinner with a friend of ours on Saturday and his girlfriend has a 5 year old daughter. So all 5 of us were hanging out and Kyle was teaching her how to play chess and it was the cutest things. She was so focused and he was so so so patient. He is such a good teacher and so good with kids and I can't help but jump to what a great dad he will be.

And I am careful to think, "If I get to have a kid or kids" not assuming that I will because that is a dangerous assumption these days. I have always thought in the back of my head, for some inexplicable reason, that I might not be able to, like a hunch I really hope I am wrong about, but just in case I let it be there to ground me.

Anyways, I am so very happy for my friends who are in different places than me and I know that it was not meant to be in my past - kids etc. But I got married relatively young and had matching furniture and all the things that were supposed to establish a life. And while I no longer long for that back I manage to disconnect from that life and yet think how it is so much later than I hoped for everything. I love Kyle, he is a gracious, good and loving man, he is the partner I could never have asked for and I want so much to be a woman who deserves him, and am trying to be her. Though he seems to think I am enough as I am, I want to be a better person because of him. Which can only be a good thing I think.

But then I get greedy like having a good relationship isn't enough. A house that gets messy so fast, chores that I can't get myself to do, feeling overwhelmed in a life filled with time - time that I don't use wisely. I get stuck. And in that stuckness there is a chasm where my depression lives and sometimes it overflows like rushing water and it takes over the sane and grateful woman who lives in my heart and the "I wants" get bigger.

So I will go ride my 10 miles on my exercise bike and do my physical therapy and call about volunteering and try to get some other things done - DMV, buy wooden beads (trying to make prayer beads but I only have pretty plastic things and old necklace pieces and I find them more distracting), trying to become someone who is less of greedy me and more of who I feel I am meant to be or who I already am but sometimes forget.

Because "it is" - that is my meaning of life. It Is. You know the old joke, man makes plans and God laughs. Not because He's mean but because that isn't how it works.

I will go learn what today's mantra is and memorize it prayerfully and hopefully step towards the less of me idea. Because when am I truly happiest? When I am serving someone else. I want to - I want to, want to.

Thanks for reading what feels like a lot of whining.

The Beautiful Messiness of Faith: A Way of Prayer

2009-06-05T10:32:00.000-07:00

The Beautiful Messiness of Faith: A Way of Prayer

p.s. DMV . . . might have been right

2009-06-02T23:31:00.000-07:00

I, er . . . may have been confused about the paperwork. Still am. Found a title, maybe, but am totally confused. Perhaps I shouldn't have made the poor DMV man feel bad for making me cry. I reassured him that it wasn't his fault. He either felt bad or thought a crazy woman in need of pharmaceuticals at his window. Maybe both.

Where She Stops . . .

2009-06-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

It has been a roller coaster today. I have faith - I am panicking - I am crying - I am calm - I am anxious - I am sad - I am empty - I am full. Up and down, round and round. It is like that isn't it? "Round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows."

I am guessing it never really stops. But sometimes we fly from one merry go round to another. It feels like one planet to another sometimes. Like we do not know who we are, we do not know what we seek. We want to be happy, we want to be present, but we get stuck. I just watched a movie about being stuck, rather getting unstuck (The Go-Getters).

These words seem to capture these sentiments:

“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be”

Marcel Pagnol

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”

Anais Nin

I guess as long as we are growing we can try to stay unstuck. But being unstuck puts us on a new merry go round. I am hoping for the next one to come soon - this round has been tough.

Oregon DMV is Wrong & I am Right

2009-06-02T16:21:00.000-07:00

They are wrong and I am right but that does not seem to matter. I tried to order a replacement title for the Beetle (where is mine? why is the place where it was in my VW file now empty???) and they said that they needed Jason's signature. To which I responded, "No, no I don't. The car is in my name, has been since 2007." Anyway the very nice man (sincerely he was nice) and I played cat and mouse but because I am the mouse I lost. DMV is going to look at their microfilm of scanned records and see if I am right and they are wrong and if someone there re-added Jason to my title when they were processing it, not seeing his release on the original title that I turned in to them in 2007. Of course the title I have SOMEWHERE would show that it is just me. Just Heather. But would that help? Would they trust their computer more than their document?

So I was writing in my last blog about trying not to cry at inappropriate times. The problem is when you don't cry at appropriate times the original plan backfires and you end up crying at DMV.

It felt like my divorce was so present and like it is never going to be behind me. Been legally divorced since April 15, 2007. Easy to remember, it's tax day and I remember thinking that it was funny that it was on a day that would stand out. That and the following summer Jason said, "Look we have a new anniversary to replace the old one - July 15th - it is April 15th, the divorce anniversary."

Oddly I did not find that to be funny. Much like my experience at DMV. Not funny, just a pathetic 30 year old woman crying because she can't get a new title and therefore cannot sell her car. The selling of the Beetle was part of the master financial bail out plan of 2009.

Back to the waiting.

While waiting for my number, 349, to be called at DMV I read one more thing on prayer in L'Engle's book, "To ask is to be human. To know that answers are not going to be given, and yet continue to be willing to ask, is to move into maturity. . .Only where there are questions can there be acceptance."

I am not feeling particularly mature.

The Root of All

2009-06-02T14:08:00.000-07:00

Money is my weakness. Not the great desire for it, though envy does most definitely arise, but the presence of financial security. The world seems to be falling apart. While Madeleine L'Engle wrote that 'sometimes it is good to remember that it has always been this bad.' it does not feel good. Not today. Not when I am looking at my bills. Looking at the need.

Everyone is in need: body, spirit, mind, love and even economy. Lately I have let my weakness overcome me. It has scared me to the point of tears and frustration. I have let it control me, let myself be mean to people I love because I had let something that is both tangible and intangible take over the space I need in my mind for love and for the effort of accomplishments.

What do we do when we have no safety net? What do we do when we do not know what to do. Yesterday this phrase came into my mind and now I think I know why: "The best thing I know is my not knowing what to do." And it is the best thing I know about this. I do not know what to do. And knowing that does not bring me comfort but it can help me find peace. There are things that will go. Things that I like, some that I need. But they can go. I look at them and think, but it is not much money I will save when I cut them out - but it is groceries and gas money. It is getting by money.

I have been reading about prayer. About prayer and what feels unanswered. It feels like the world is going unanswered. The economy is sinking so many and it feels like it is happening everywhere. Aid is being cut. Families are going hungry. More families are losing their resources, the percent of children and families in poverty grows. And I live in fear of anything like that occurring. Happening to us or our loved ones. But what does prayer mean in this?

Perhaps it is the same thing it means in praying for someone with a terminal illness. Sometimes a miracle will occur but others, and more often, the kind of miracle we want - the physical one - will not. And the people we have prayed for do die.

My friend and I were recently writing about the place of God in our lives and he shared the journey that brought God into his. And much like what I have been reading of late he wrote:

"Life is not without its' twists and turns but it is in the storms and hard times that make us who we are. It is in the midst of our darkest hours when we see truly what God can do and what we are truly made of. If we never hurt we would not trust God to heal us, if we never wanted we would never know that God can provide, if we were never lonely we would not know that God is our closest friend."

I have scarcely let myself cry for months now. Trying to learn to control the tears in hopes of being able to control them at times that it is better not to cry. But that means I have not let myself weep. Jesus cried out to God asking why he had forsaken him, telling us that we can cry out to God. We can cry out, we can silently let words and love and needs fill our hearts.

Or we could sit. Pretend that these things will pass or that we, as vulnerable and broken people, can control it all. I see that I cannot. So I will pray. I will not expect answers or sudden amounts of money, I will still hope for things to stay safe. But mainly I will hope for what my friend said above, that in the end of the hour or the day God can be my closest friend. And it will be okay for me to cry.

Jazz, God, Mental Illness and Really Good Black Bean Soup

2009-06-01T09:39:00.000-07:00

What do all of those things have in common? Ah, my Sunday night. Kyle and I went to this church my friend Mary had told me about called Augustana Lutheran. Sunday nights they have their Jazz/Gospel Service. It was Pentecost Sunday and sitting in this hot church, listening to jazz & gospel (some much more jazz than gospel) and hearing about the surprise of Pentecost was interesting, refreshing.

The Reverend spoke of how every year the men who came to the Pentecost festival knew what to expect and then this one year it was different. It was surprising. Some blamed in one the wine - but it was only 9am and Peter responded that 9am was too early for drinking to be involved (note he did not say it was impossible or even unlikely, just too early, what kind of parties did they have in biblical times?). Anyway in the sermon this moved to discussion on the uncertainty of life and expectations, to God's surprises. And how the holy spirit came and the young men then had visions and the older men dreams and that it did not matter if they would see the dreams completed in their life times, but that there were these dreams. The one spirit brought the one message and through the use of language was able to communicate to everyone at once, inclusively. The spirit communicated the power of God to change lives and so to change the earth.

Something I found interesting was the big picture perspective that was shared. Rev. Bill talked about how the pouring out of the spirit was essentially the return of Jesus in a different form which enabled us to embrace more of life and creation. He said that we get to see, with new technologies for example, more of the cosmos, we get to embrace something so much larger that God too embraces. A God who loves the world, the cosmos and all that are in them.

So after church we went to this place called the Blue Monk for dinner where I had this absolutely amazing Black bean soup with creme fraiche and cilantro. As I am eating my really good soup this man comes and sits at the table outside the window. He starts taking all the cigarette butts out of the ash tray and smoking their remnants - of which there is little. And he gets increasingly amped up - starts talking to himself, louder and more quickly and starts rocking and shifting, fidgeting. And I started thinking of mental illness. The pain of untreated mental illness. And how many people probably don't even know that they are "mentally ill" by which I mean that by living without many resources they do not get to know there is a different life out there - or were resources available there could be.

And then I thought of how God so loves the cosmos and all within them and yet here I am, surely blessed and struggling with my own very deep sadness and I scared of others who suffer with mental illnesses. Scared and not helping. Retreating to a shell.

On the day of Pentecost the holy spirit, the one spirit, came and brought the one message and it was inclusive. It was not exclusive to any. Why am I?

Something Amazing

2009-05-30T03:38:00.001-07:00

There is something amazing about pain. About memory. Memory and its ability to pull out the strings that make the correct neurons fire and bring the pain to the surface. About how no matter how removed I can be, how happy I can be, there are still pieces missing. I think we are never going to be a perfect and completed puzzle, but being incredibly aware of those pieces missing is hard.

A lot has brought this on and it goes beyond one piece of my life or story, my history. It is big. So big that there can hardly be a context. Like all things amazing, it is more than, in my great fallibility and human-ness, that I can start to categorize or compartmentalize. Let alone start to understand.

So instead I will just let it be. Let myself cry. Then let myself sleep.

Good night.

The Guilt

2009-05-29T22:07:00.000-07:00

So we hung out and I remembered why I like him. He is a really nice guy and Kyle would swear up and down that his friend is not like that jerk who did that to me when I was 21 and that while "He can" is his reason he apparently doesn't just sleep with them and when he sees that there is no future really (a minimum of 6 months being the foreseen future) he ends it. I still disagree, but feel better.

The Answer is Yes Heather, You Are A Jerk

2009-05-29T17:08:00.000-07:00

Our friend's date cancelled. His date's daughter is sick.
But on principle it was not unrealistic to think she would be 21. And you know, she could still be. My best friend growing up had a 3 year old when we were 21.

Still a jerk . . .

Am I a jerk?

2009-05-29T14:57:00.000-07:00

So, here is the situation. I have a friend, well he is one of Kyle's best friends really and I have a dilemma. He is this great guy, super nice, interesting, kind, I like hanging out with him and I like how he is an important part of Kyle's life. But he often dates younger women. He is 31, maybe 6 months or more older than me and he sometimes dates 21 year old girls. When I told him I should harass him for this (trying to be light hearted about something I am REALLY serious about) because it's wrong, I asked him why he dates them and he said, "Well, because I can." And since he is not a lecherous person I do not think he means this in a pejorative manner, just that he can. You know when I say it there it seems there is no way for it not to be pejorative.

Anyhow so Kyle just says that it has to do with his friend's interests aligning more with someone who is younger, but frankly I find that to be a terrible reason. Which personally leads to my having to ask Kyle if he were single and “could” if he would date 21 year olds? Now while his answer is no and I believe him and I know even when he was 21 he was always interested in women a little bit older than him that makes it believable, BUT he is also just a smarter man than one who would say something insanely stupid like, 'Well if I could' because that would be really a bad idea. But I digress.

So his friend asks us on this double date tonight and I think it is with this girl that he had not too long ago started seeing, this girl who is our ages, but when I ask Kyle says no, it's some new girl. To which I respond, "How old is she?" Because I should be able just to go out with friends and meet their dates regardless, but if it is some girl 10 years younger I am so disturbed by it. And I know this is a personal problem - but I also view it as a social problem.

Personal part: Most of my friends know this but why remember it? I was 21 and had this crush on this guy at work. I drove him home once and my crush increased. The next week he asked me to dinner. So I drove out to meet him (Hollywood/Los Feliz area) and we went to Melrose where there was this amazing restaurant. Serious some of the best food I had ever had to that point. And then we walked around and anyway, it was a lot of fun. Then he asked me to come upstairs to his apartment, I said it was too late, but he said we should play a game of chess. We had talked about chess at some point at dinner. Anyhow I thought, 'Wow, he is so smart and interesting. He is 31 and so great and cool, why on earth would he choose to go out with me?' Oh right. I was 21 and he could. But I went upstairs and he had the chess board set up in his kitchen and I thought, 'Wow, he is serious about chess.' Then I went into the restroom. I came out and the bed (it was an old building with single apartments and Murphy beds) was down and lights low. And I asked about chess and he kissed me. This seemed like a good idea at the time. But it got out of control and I wanted it to stop. So I said so, but he didn't believe me. To spare the next part of details perhaps it is good to note that I was a virgin, I didn't just have sex and I realized none of this mattered to him. And I know I said no and I know I said please stop and I know and I know and I know. See he wasn't trying to rape me, but he did not understand that I was really saying no. Which seems impossible. And I thought it was my fault, what an idiot I was for coming up to his apartment. Finally I was able to push him off of me and quickly gather myself and get out. He insisted on following me out to my car (it was a shady neighborhood at best) and he kept saying he was sorry and that he thought we were having a good time. He kept saying he was sorry and was confused. I turned to him when I got to my car and said, "But I kept saying no!" And he responded, "But I thought you were kidding." No, I was just lucky that he wasn't REALLY a rapist. But that is what it would have been.

So when a young girl, of 21, even one who does have sex with boyfriends or whatever kind of hook ups, a 31 year old man should not see this as an opportunity. That means there is something wrong. It is demeaning to the girl. Gives her a false view of relationships and trust. And having worked with enough young women with low self esteem - myself included - who knew their value had more to do with their ability to be cute - and I imagine with many girls "sexy" that they are being taken advantage of. And it isn't like these are real relationships with true long lasting commitments or the prospect of. (Oh here, I have slipped into the social aspect) I simply think it isn't right. And that may be judgmental, but it is how I feel. Yeah, yeah I know there are exceptions to the rule - but there is a reason there is a rule. You know what I mean, not a REAL rule, just something about right and wrong.

So what do I do? I joke that I won't go out on a double date with a girl who has to be "born on today's date in 1988" to go into a bar with us (or you know fits closely into that) because it makes me sad. I have nothing against 21 or 22 year old women and I think that it is an age of maturity and I don't doubt them as grownups, or most of them anyways, I mean I was married at 22 - as were many of my friends - but I just don't see it as the same.

Sure my interests were similar to the 31 year old attempted-date rapist, but not enough.

So, am I jerk?

Bad Blogspot! Bad!

2009-05-19T00:50:00.000-07:00

What happened to my blog? I changed my template and figured that was why all of my "info" and links had dropped to the bottom of the page, but now every template puts things at the bottom.
I would rather not be inhibited by these pesky templates but not having any clue how to make one on my own I am trapped - if only I could work better within my trap. Grrr.

Cigarettes

2009-05-19T00:31:00.000-07:00

Tonight is one of those nights where I wish I were a smoker. It is raining and I can't sleep. I was laying in bed listening to the wind and the tapping of rain against my apartment building, the droplets falling into the pool and thinking that I would like to sit on my patio and smoke.
I have never been a smoker, but I have smoked occassionally. I always liked the allure of sitting on an apartment porch (not balcony/porch, but usually steps like on a Brownstone or a 1950s apartment, not my 1975 townhome) and smoking. Not like my neighbors who stand outside their front doors and haphazardly smoke, or those who smoke in their apartment and somehow their smoke gets into the vents and into my upstairs hallway . . . but like my false image of what smoking + cool could be.

When I was in my early 20s I am sure I did that at some point; sat on the porch in the middle of the night pretending there was nothing in the world that mattered, trying to fight off the thick wet heat of a California summer. Tonight it felt like a summer storm, it was so hot today and then I came out of class around 9 and it was still warm but raining. By the time I got home it was no longer a summer storm, it was just Portland.

By the by, I don't really want to smoke in that I don't want to be a smoker. I can't stand the after taste, the after smell, the lifelong effects . . . But I would like to sit on my patio listening to the rain and watching smoke slip into the night.

Instead I will envy Kyle's ability to sleep and listen to my smoke-free rain.

Father/Daughter

2009-05-15T09:30:00.000-07:00

It has been nearly a month since I posted anything. I seem to start blogs but not finish them. This isn't for a lack of content, well usually that is not the reason, for some reason I cannot seem to complete one. Perhaps this one will be different.

Last night I was watching Last Chance Harvey with Dustin Hoffman. Harvey (Hoffman) goes to England to go to his daughter's wedding and it is clear that they have a strained relationship and it is all around awkward and his daughter is close to her step-father Brian, whom everyone treats like her Dad. So at the end of the rehearsal dinner he tells his daughter that he won't be staying for the reception rather leaving after the ceremony and she tells him that since he has been so involved the past few years that Brian is going to give her away.

I watched this and felt the quiet pain they did a good job of expressing between them. Kyle said something about how mean they all were to Harvey. And I said, "No. You don't know how hard that would be. You don't know." And I cried silently to myself. I cried because not only have I been in that situation - as has my sister and countless women with 2 dads - but because for me it remains unresolved. I tried to separate myself from the film by saying something about how complicated blended families are, but that isn't even the right term. I guess I thought if I could intellectualize it then the feeling that this is close to me could disappear.

The reality is that father-daughter issues don't disappear. That unresolved family issues don't go away. That loyalties do get divided and hearts get broken and children, even grown up ones, get hurt, as do their complex families. So, I was sad. I was sad because it is sad. I was sad because for years I couldn't barely even talk to my father, even mentioning him - through much of high school and into my late teens - I would burst into tears. This was around the same time that we moved in with Chuck and I didn't know how to, and I believed I had to, divide my loyalties. Only recently did I realize that it is probably around the same time that I learned how my parents actually got separated, I imagine those two factors had a huge impact. But underneath it all there still remain unresolved issues.

For example I recently told my Dad that when Kyle and I get married that it will be up here, probably in Washington actually. And he asked why we couldn't just do it down there. I told him because I want it to be up here, it is beautiful and will most likely be on his aunt's property. I also said that we wouldn't have the money to help him fly up or rent a place to stay so he should start saving. He did not seem pleased. He asked why we couldn't just have it in my mom's backyard or just have a reception down there. So I told him we would probably have a reception in California eventually so, no, it was not that big of a deal. He said, "Well, it is your second wedding." I said, "It isn't Kyle's, but you're right it is mine. If you can't make it when it happens it won't be the end of the world, I don't expect most people will make it up. We'll do something in California eventually." And part of me meant it because I don't want him to stress about saving up to get up here when it happens and part of me didn't want him to feel bad, but part of me was sad that he made it sound inconvenient. I doubt that is what he meant though, really.

When Harvey gets to his daughter's rehearsal dinner he says something about how far away England is for getting married and she says, slightly hurt, "I'm sorry for the inconvenience" and he says, "No, no, it was a joke. I was joking." He mostly meant that.

Lately . . .

2009-04-15T15:35:00.000-07:00

Lately I have developed two habits. The first is losing earrings, the second is gaining weight. Neither of these are particularly good habits, in fact I would say that they are both bad habits.

First the earrings. It started on Sunday. I opened my travel bag to pull out my brown beaded earrings, but only one was there, I assumed its' mate must be at home and knowing I had another pair with me I simply wore those. These are a pair of earrings that I love. They are special earrings, a gift. And all of a sudden one was gone. I looked all over the house but there was a party going on and a lot of people, and it isn't my small house, so it is a big house with a lot of rooms. But the main problem, there is a slight risk that the earring fell off outside. Outside in the forest. Granted it is a small forest but there are trees and there are plants and there is a lot of dirt (mud actually). On account of the rain I had put a hat on everytime I went outside and when I came inside I took the hat off. And hats are tricky with loose earrings, they like to liberate earrings from ears when you take them off by taking the earrings with them and tossing them around the room where no human will ever find them again.

Now, the hat is was led me to believe that my earring was inside, but we (myself, an almost-10-year-old girl and a rather nice teenage boy - compared to the less nice teenage boy who did not help me) searched and searched to no avail. Then yesterday I had to find a different pair of earrings to match the same necklace I was wearing on Sunday and I chose a lovely pair that I rarely wear. But last night when I went to take them off, there was only 1. And not even in the same ear, so it is not the ear that is faulty.

Second, the weight gain. I was doing well. I was exercising and I was eating better. And then my family visited and we ate fabulous foods - frequently and in great quantity. And I enjoyed it. Unfortunately when they left, I kept enjoying it. And then I hurt my arm and decided that no good exercises can be done with an injured arm because most exercises involve movement and movement causes my arm to hurt. And the only reasonable low-pain exercise I could think to do would be riding my stationary-bike, but alas it still only has 1 pedal. Which, I have to say, makes it an unpleasurable experience and so I use it to put sweaters on when I come home. Ironically, I believe this is what many people choose to do with stationary-bikes, the handles are just so useful. But then a sad reality happened. I bought these cute slacks just a few weeks ago for something (there was an amazing sale at The Softer Side of Sears and these gorgeous slacks were like $4!!). The other day I went to put them on, and, GASP, they were too small. How? Oh no! How???? Then last night I ate dinner and my stomach ended up not having enough room for the amount of food I consumed. And it wasn't like I was a little old man who wanted to unbutton his trousers, it was pressing on my lungs. The year I gained 20 pounds (which is a lot to gain in one year) that used to happen. And then today I ate left overs, not a GREAT amount, but it happened again. I couldn't even drink coffee! No room! But was I full? Only for a brief moment. I have been ravenously hungry CONSTANTLY. Hungry hungry hungry like a little purple snapping hippo.

This is a problem. This cannot continue. Something. Has. To. Change. I need all of my earrings to stay in my ears and no more weight to be added to my body. In fact I would like to gain earrings and lose weight. Why is it not that easy?

It was a good run

2009-04-09T11:19:00.000-07:00

I got to feel "normal" for 2 months. It isn't like I feel terrible abnormal. But more like the me pre-normal state.

I'm sure it'll be back. I liked it a lot and I will find the motivation to return. But since about 3:00 yesterday it slid back in.

It was a good run.

Getting the Imprint

2009-04-04T17:22:00.000-07:00

An argument was raised in class last month: is a therapist born or made? The fundamental components were broken into 2 categories: empathy and skills.

I do not believe that empathy can be taught, it can be developed but you have to have "it" - it is innate. So empathy either is or it isn't. Skills, for the most part, can be taught. But you need some sort of a natural framework. Like you come with the basic internal foundation from which skills can be learned.

Now then, can a therapist be made? Sort of. If one has empathy and the ability to hone the skills, then yeah, you can. If they don't have empathy? I think it is a disservice to clients. I believe that being a counselor is a vocation - in the sense that it is a calling. That is why I think that the born argument is significant for counselors.

So where do I fall into this? I have always believed that I am meant to be a helper, particularly with youth. A therapist? I don't know. A counselor of some sort? Yes. Lately I have been convinced that while I think I came pre-made in the empathy department - I was seriously concerned about my skills. Can I do this? Nothing in my role plays really says I can. And I began to believe that I am trying to make myself into a therapist. It made me sad. How could I have been such a fool?

Then in a conversation I had on Wednesday it was brought to my attention that I am basing this on very false situations. Role plays in a class are not the same as real life counseling. When have I been the happiest? In working with youth and often as some form of a counselor or mentor. There is nothing that has made me happier career wise. Even when I worked in the crisis center and it was violent or messy in many ways I came back because I believed that I could connect with those kids and that being there with them was such a privilege that I needed to do it and that I was good at it. And I loved it - well, a lot of it. Talks with kids there stand out as some of the most meaningful moments in my life.

Then today, the final day of our Advanced Family Therapy class, I was doing my final role play and it clicked. I definitely missed a lot and when my professor came in she showed some profound areas in which I was lacking (she did not point them out, she role played for us and I saw them) but for a little bit there I felt natural. I felt okay in my own skin. Even as I fumbled through some techniques. I felt like I had skills!!

At the close of class my professor said that she hoped we knew that these role plays are not really examples of how we are as therapists - and that this is why she cannot grade us on them (an opinion not shared by other professors apparently). She also said that this is a time for being befuddled. While you are in a role play it is when you are getting the imprint. The imprint of a model or a theory or of some of the process. Learning how to mirror what you hear.

So, am I a therapist? Or a counselor? I still don't know. To be a good therapist, you have to be a counselor. But you can counsel in different ways. Career wise, to be a counselor is a different job where you aren't really doing therapy.

On that note, I need to decide what I am doing soon. I go back and forth on switching my programs still from school counseling to MFT. Much has to do with the job market, much has to do with my family therapy class. It is the class I have found hope in.

It is also where I found some sadness because every MFT student that I have come to know even in the slightest way is going onto internship next year. No more classes with them. It makes me really sad. In large part because I am supposed to be with them. And if I were there would be no crisis. If I had already been in all of the classes there is no way I would have even considered switching programs.

I apparently beg existential crises to come my way. Well, whether or not that is true what is learned today is that there is hope for me. I needed that hope.

The Phoenix

2009-03-19T11:59:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking a lot about the mythical Phoenix and how it exists in our own lives - even when we have no idea that it does. Some one once wrote that the Phoenix represents, "our capacity for vision," and that it creates, "intense excitement and deathless inspiration."

Now I am not exactly sure how this (the Phoenix) came up but it keeps returning to my mind once or twice a week. This weekend it was following a conversation with my sister. She said that moving to, and staying in, Portland took courage. Which is ironic because I moved here in large part out of fear. Fear to continue my life as it was and knowing that if I were anywhere near by I would go back to it. Regardless of all of the other things that were going on at the time, part of me had gone missing and I guess I thought a little could be found somewhere else. But I never thought of it as a courageous act to look for it - I thought I was kind of a coward and a disappointment.

A small part of me believed that it was huge for me to be so far away because I had never done anything on my own before. I hated ordering food without someone else's opinion, mainly my sisters (still do really) and yet I did the unthinkable, I left my entire life. I am the only one in my immediate and immediately extended family to do that. We have always all been within a couple of hours of each other and here I require a flight or a looong drive to visit.

It was never my intention to stay. But it was my pride that kept me. I couldn't go back. I had done so much damage that the idea of returning to my own ashes was too hard. How could I? So I stayed. And here is where I feel like the Phoenix, though without the amazingness of being the Phoenix.

Things fell apart; I mean really, they were at their bottom. And for the life of me I could not imagine them ever getting better again. There was no reason to stay and there was no reason to go. I was such a wreck and so alone that going back would involve more humility than I could muster but staying meant more pain than I wanted to feel. Pain trumped humility.

It is nice to hear it called courage. Then I could rewrite or reimagine my history as courage trumped fear. The courage to keep going and not stay in my loneliness but to keep going to therapy, to go back to school to cut out a hurtful friend when I really had no other friends to fall back on, to trust love, to carve out a life. Or to make a stretch here: To rise from the ashes anew, like the Phoenix.

I think my favorite Phoenix legend is the Greek one. In one telling of it the problem for the Phoenix is that it gets lonely because it is the only of its kind and for another one to be made it must die. When it feels death coming it builds a nest with the finest aromatic woods, sets it on fire and is consumed by its own flames. From the pile of ashes a new Phoenix arises, young and powerful.

Whichever legend you choose the Phoenix is associated with starting over, resurrection, new beginnings or what not. For me, in my audacious claims of feeling a similarity to the Phoenix, it is that I had to know it was time to let things die to build that fire, embrace it, and begin to live again.

Sometimes I am unsure of where I am in this process or if I am repeating it many times. But I know that there is courage in living life in general and it takes courage for me to be this far from home - and it isn't even that far - and to keep living and building. I guess you could say, to keep flying.

Like the Phoenix I have felt so lonely. As if I was the only bird of my kind. Unlike the Phoenix I am not. But because I am the only me, I still needed the process - build the nest, go into the fire, start again.

The first the nest was really, really hard to build - especially since I knew that once it was done there was fire waiting for me. It has been scary. But despite the pain of the consequences that I always feel the need to recognize, despite that, knowing the life I now know is worth stepping into the flames and starting over.

A Tale of Two Kitties

2009-03-15T18:55:00.000-07:00

She was the best of cats, she was the worst of cats. . .

Yesterday I heard a terrible clanging sound - it was my vertical blinds smashing into both each other and the window and from where I sat on the couch I could see this flash of orange and brown fur bouncing into the air and hear it smacking into the window.

As I approached the window calling for Chakoah to stop, I assumed there was a crow (her arch nemesis) or one of the big outdoor cats that sit on the patio taunting her, but no, to my surprise there was this adorable orange tabby kitten. She was shivering beneath a chair I have on the patio. It had been raining and was cold and she looked scared. Chakoah being the relatively evil creature that she is ran up and down the length of the window essentially posturing at this poor kitten. She even tried to run her head into the window. She was so wound up and as the kitten crept to the entrance end of the sliding glass doors Chakoah got more and more amped.

I took Chakoah upstairs and put her in a room so I could see if this sweet and adorable kitten was alright. I opened the window and she came up to me. I dried her off a bit with a towel. She had clearly been walking in the muddy pathways of my building and she looked up at me with the cutest little face, mewing. There was no collar and I thought of bringing her inside to dry her off and then go ask my building manager if they knew to whom this kitten belonged, but I was afraid of three things:

1. My landlords.

2. Bringing her inside and risking Chakoah discovering her presence and attacking her.

3. Leaving her outside and her running into the street.

As I have learned from a previous heart-break with a patio kitty, cats that come to you so easily have humans and I assume hers are in this building and she just got locked out as the rain hit. She wanted to go back outside, so I let her which seemed wise. At least it was sunny by this point. Besides, I don't much care for kitty accidents of any kind inside my house so it seemed best. And I didn't really fear she would run out of the building.

So she went outside and I let Chakoah out and she spent the rest of the day Chakoah looking out the window, poised to pounce, should another cat dare to come near her window. Yes, fierce kitty behind glass that she is.

And me? I thought of how much I would love a sweet, loving and adorable kitten. Don't get me wrong, I love Chakoah, but she is sort of like an unruly ewok - which is just not the same.

Rain

2009-03-15T00:56:00.001-07:00

I have felt normal for almost two weeks. Now I realize normal is a relative term and may sound like an odd or dramatic description, but I have been pigeon holed by myself and others so greatly that I am very aware of the subtle differences in my day to day. Especially when I either interrupt my days to check or intentionally reflect on them.

I have recently become more in touch with the reality that people who know I have a diagnosis have decided that they can define me by that diagnosis. Even when they are usually incorrect and when they have taken away the human element. This is particularly true within those I know in the mental health field (or say, who are students thereof).

I say all of that because as I have moved away from seeing myself as someone who fits a specific DSM criteria, I have realized what a grave mistake it has been to, so often, be so open about my struggles or simply my "label". (Ironically I am being open about it right now). And, I know, it is me who needs to move away from labels, like a particular diagnosis or even descriptors in my life of big events that need not be tossed around because they become identifying characteristics when really they aren't.

But were I not open about some of this, I could not write the following.

Three weeks ago I was very stressed. In fact so much so that I was in a lot of pain as a result from it and the chiropractor I went to see pointed out that my pain was essentially self (i.e.; stress) induced and something needed to be changed. But I didn't have time. I had too much homework. I studied a great deal for a week and didn't sleep very much etc. And then on a Monday morning, two weeks ago, I woke up early and left my house at 6:45 for my 9am Midterm. As I drove to school it was this amazing crisp morning, it had stopped raining not long before and the sun was beginning to cross the sky. I found myself practically dancing in my car on my way to a class I had been really stressed about.

After the exam I went up to the rose gardens and looked out over the city. I enjoyed the day and found some perspective. That is when I began to feel normal.

Normal. I mean that in the last two weeks I have had regular days where parts were a sad and parts were happy but they are what I imagine a "normal" person's life is like. I know I am "normal" in the general sense of the word, but when you live beneath a label and people, friends even, point out their views on you based it on "criteria" it is hard to feel normal. But I have. And I have loved it. And it feels real. Ups and downs are wrapped up inside perspective.

There are some things I am going through that I am really not very happy about, but I am also aware that other people go through similar things and that I will just continue to live one day at a time and figure out what to do and where to go. But as I embrace Dr. Berardi's reminder that "life sucks and then you die" I can focus on how to respond to the in between - because that's what matters. (Really it is actually an inspirational reminder that I should probably share sometime)

So tonight I watched the move and I felt and I enjoyed feeling. I have spent too much time in my life being numb and feeling deeply is something I love to do. I love to feel seering joy, but to really experience it you have to know terrible pain. Most of us have known that and how much more does our joy mean? I can feel sadness deeply and know it is part of it, but not all of it.

It rained hard on my way home; I watched it crash on the asphalt. I played with the condensation on the inside of the car window. I moved through my feelings about the film and about my current life situations and allowed them to sweep through my head and heart. And I felt the rain in my bones, and I came home.

Rachel's Getting Married - a reaction

2009-03-15T00:40:00.000-07:00

Tonight I saw Rachel Getting Married. It was a compelling and moving film. The depiction of sisterhood - with its' ugliness, richness, joy and severe pains - plus its' unspoken rules - was stunning. I don't believe I have seen a film that captured the dimensions of family dynamics in the same way.

Within each family there are, of course, roles, rules, rituals, lies and secrets as well as truths, histories and healing. A family where something tragic has happened and where there is continual fracturing has a certain capacity for pain where each wound tells a story and each healing a memory. So was the family in this film.

I cannot articulate what I am thinking about this film at all. But as I watched it in my cozy red-velvet chair at the Kennedy School and listened to the rain pour onto the roof of the building and dance against the windows, I was able to slip away into this family and feel their reality. The passion for life and desire for death were feelings I could taste and even remember. Remember feelings that were possibly never my own but because on some level, on some collectivehuman experience, I felt the shame, embarassment, hurt, love, joy and hate that flowed through the veins of these characters.

I also identified with the brokenness and the loss of self that addiction, disease or a disorder can hold on you. Especially when it has become who you are and I know that the reclamation of self is hardest in the presence of family - because you are who you were and they know what they knew, but present and past have blurred and therefore futures feel disorted.

I don't think I can continue to try to explain it; all I can say is that it is a rare film. While not a new story, it is a new experience.

The Beautiful Messiness of Faith: "I am a Christian"

2009-03-11T22:49:00.000-07:00

The Beautiful Messiness of Faith: "I am a Christian"

No, no, you DON'T feel safer in the dark

2009-02-27T21:24:00.000-08:00

For some reason I thought that when I heard the sounds outside that I would feel safer if my lights were off. Initially it was so I could see out my window and other's not in. I am upstairs in my apartment, my desk is in front of the sliding glass patio doors that face the parking lot. I can (could - it stopped now) hear someone repeatedly knocking on someone's door (my neighbors I presume) swearing and saying, "I hate you!" Now it wasn't shouting, just yelling.

But I turned off my light and couldn't see anything - probably because, well, the patio is right there. I went downstairs to make sure the front door was locked - because I am super paranoid and just in case it was my door being knocked on (by all of those people who even know where I live? of the handful of people I even know in Portland, and of those the ones that would search me out on a Friday night because they hate me so? PARANOID). Then I came upstairs and to get a better look outside I had turned off both my desk and the room light - then I turned off the hall light.

Pitch black.

Hmmm. Not feeling safer. No reason to feel unsafe but if there was, that didn't help.

Did I mention that almsot all of my walls are glass? Okay one full wall in each room. The living room? Literally floor to ceiling sliding glass doors (I have higher ceilings than your average apartment - it's a town home).

Perhaps writing this was just a further attempt to avoid studying. I studied for roughly 18 hours yesterday and a few today already. Sigh.

But no one is taking that midterm for me, are they?

Are they?

Out of Touch

2009-02-27T12:10:00.000-08:00

I seem to have disappeared off any and all social scenes. I have been burying my head in books lately. Which has been much needed.

I made myself sick from stress - I am so skilled! I realize that comparatively I have nothing to stress over. Nonetheless I need to learn to manage it better because it is manifesting physically. I went to this amazing chiropractor - he runs a local pain clinic. I hadn't been sleeping because I was in too much pain and he talked with me and we worked on things to help.

I need to really start working on my head and heart - on my breathing as well. That should help. I think in part it is that everything feels like it is in such a state of dissaray. My house is a wreck and I know that cleaning my house is sort of like washing out my brain and soul. It creates more space. Sometime between studying and, well, studying this weekend I will get some things done. It would be rather helpful if I got a dresser or something for my room. My socks are sad and long for a drawer of their own. And let's not mention the boxes. . . sigh. I have to get to it! I have external motivating factors. Sarah is visiting in less than 2 weeks, my sister in less than 4 and then a month after that my best friend. It is weird so many Portland visitors. It's exciting though!

Ok, my flashcards await. Yay psychopathology. On the block for the next 45 minutes before I drive to campus to turn in my projects: Anxiety disorders. It's okay, you can be jealous.

The Overwhelming Cometh

2009-02-23T19:51:00.000-08:00

I have no motivation and not enough time to entertain such a state.

How does one become motivated to do things that they have no interest in? Like study.
When did I stop loving this?

No, that's not true. I do love it. I am just unhappy with not feeling settled. I liked it when I felt that MFT was my fit. Or close to it. It was a (hard and pricey) means to an end. Now? It doesn't feel like enough.

I meet with my adviser tomorrow. I am afraid of the GFU staff now though - I am afraid to say that I have doubts because I don't want to be told to take time off school and figure it out. Because that isn't necessary. I have always wanted the same thing. Always. It's just the right avenue for it feels foggy.

Sigh.

Now I'll go read about Suicide and treatment. Oh the cheeriness of graduate school.

My Sentiments Exactly or Sort Of

2009-02-18T22:48:00.000-08:00

Remember Peggy Ann McKay? Except the difference for me is that on Saturday I WILL be at school. Just like Friday - from 9-5. So for me, insert "Thursday" for "Saturday" and "fiendishly study" for "play" and it is totally the same (but it doesn't sound as good).

Sick

"I cannot go to school today,"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay,
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash, and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more--that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut, my eyes are blue--
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke--
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb,
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is--what?
What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is---Saturday (THURSday)?
G'bye, I'm going out to play (fiendishly study)!"

Shel Silverstein

Questionable

2009-02-16T08:34:00.000-08:00

I am wondering . . . who would graffiti the computers in my Graduate University? We have a few programs here. The graduate department of counseling, the seminary and a master of arts in teaching. Which ones do you think are the culprits? The graffiti by the "disc" part of the computer looks like a poor effort for greek - that makes me think it is those damned theologians! I must say that I am disappointed - disappointed indeed.

Enough to storm out and not go to class? Well, that would be a false reason. I just don't WANT to go to class. But I woke up, got coffee, ran errands and got to class in time to print my homework - oh and I paid a lot of money and have invested a lot of time and heart into my education - so I might as well sign off of here and head upstairs.

I am reluctant because I am unhappy with my professor. I am trying (though not that hard) to develop an open mind and just go to class and see if this week is better.

She's Out

2009-02-12T02:24:00.000-08:00

I shouldn't have looked. I have way too much to do. But I did look. I did and I found out that she's out. That girl. The girl who assaulted me. She was paroled within 10 months. She was given 6 years. 1 for assaulting me. She didn't even serve that. I figured she'd get a parole hearing in 2 years - so soon. But then when I was looking into the victim's network so I could be notified, I saw how low the numbers are of female offenders. Then I thought there was a chance she wasn't locked up but in the transitional living program - which didn't make me feel great. But then I found her, finally after searching every where. And there it was, Jordan Ashley Moore, 18, paroled, 1/17/2008.

I gasped and felt something terrible when I read the word "paroled" and I had to look at it again. And check the date again.

I just can't believe it. I can, but I can't.

I want to say I shouldn't be effected. But that's ridiculous, I can be effected. And then part of me thinks I should be more effected than I am.

I'm not scared - I really don't think she held it against me. I mean, she could have, but I don't believe she did because I believe her apology letter was sincere. But I also don't believe she could possibly be rehabilitated.

I also don't think I would recognize her on the street. Isn't that weird? Someone has that big of an impact on your life and you can't pick them out of a line up? Of course the last time I saw her she was sobbing because she was receiving her sentence, which was clearly a joke. The time before she was shrugging at me and looking smug - but I was in shock (the initial hearing before she read my delightful victim's statement). The time before . . . well there was a lot of bleeding involved and before that, well, the rest of the night isn't so clear.

I don't feel like sleeping. I have to and I have to get it together and I have to write my papers and prepare for my meeting tomorrow and update my resume. But I just need to sit here for a little bit.

Dehmanization in a school training people to work with humans

2009-02-09T12:01:00.001-08:00

WOW. The title says it all.
People ARE disorders.
THEY - THEM - THOSE People.

Good times.

Monday Blues?

2009-02-09T08:35:00.000-08:00

Wake Up relatively on-time
Leave for School
Ice on Car
Ice comes off car rather easily
Drive - can't see out front window because it refuses to defrost
Take a different route to the freeway
Surprising lack of traffic
Get to school
Get out of car
Slip on ice
Injure knee
Accidentally swear in Christian College parking lot
Grumble around car
Fear ice
Get to library
Turn on apparently already on computer
Crash computer
Coyly move to another computer
Print
Go to class

Expected fun:
Finish paper
Finish assessment search
Read looooong book
Hope for an episode of Frasier to fit in
Go to sleep

Wake up & Repeat - hopefully with a clear window / visibility and no ice slipping

My knee hurts.
Have a good day!

Change. Stay. What? No. Change. Stay. Scream? Yes.

2009-02-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

I am in a huge career confusion. I am looking into transferring / applying to be a School Counselor instead of a Marriage & Family Therapist. Yes, my dream of MFT pushed to the wayside for a sudden (huge) shift. I mean same school etc., only taken a few extra classes so far that don't count. And to switch the number of classes left actually decreases but nonetheless this is HUGE. And the question comes up, will they let me transfer? Will they see this as a sign of instability or flakiness and "suspend me" (kick me out!)? Or will they just say, you've been an excellent student so far (because I have) and if this is where your heart is, let's make it work. What are the chances of THAT one?

The funny thing is everyone I mention this to says the same, or a similar thing. They say it fits, it makes sense, they wonder why I didn't think of this before. They don't say negative things at all or that they doubt I could be an MFT but just how much sense this makes. As one friend said, it is when I talk about teens that I light up. And she's right. I get animated and excited because there is no population I would rather serve. And in a school? I would love that.

How did I not see this? I was so dead set.

Okay, back to work. Just because these classes don't count if I switch doesn't mean I am allowed to slack off - they're still important!! Though I am enjoying them less - and was before this idea struck - this epiphany. Not enjoying psychopathology? THAT is insane. But true.

A Goodbye Letter from a Dear Friend

2009-02-06T12:07:00.000-08:00

My Beloved Coffee Drinkers,

It has come to my attention that my days serving you are coming to a close; now I would like it to come to yours. I realize that after many, many years of service that I have been loved and appreciated by you, my beloved coffee drinkers, but it is time for me to hang up my carafe and turn in my lid.

I have loved my time in your kitchen - and many kitchens past! How carefully you've packed me each and every time we've moved, oh, there have been so many. You've given me a chance to meet such a variety of Stoves and Microwaves, even a juicy Blender! The fun times we have had. I have felt special and loved by you, and when I see your faces in the morning and I hear your sighs and your kind words, I am happy for the joy I have caused. The way you lean your head back as you inhale the sweet aroma of my freshly brewed coffee. Your kindness as you say, "This is a good cup of coffee," or, "Oh no it's empty!" whilst disappointed in a loss of your liquid goodness. And the way you perk up as I finish percolating . . . there is nothing quite like it. I have been proud to serve you.

However I take pride in the quality of the coffee I serve and lately I find that grounds have been showing up in the pots I brew. Grounds! This is unforgivable, it is a disgrace to any maker to serve coffee so unrefined (with the exception of my Turkish cousins who meet the needs of a very acquired taste). This and the permanent stains on my lid and the one too many times I have been left on all day until my coffee has burned away, have shown that it is time to let me go. Let me leave with my dignity. Go to the store and buy a new coffee maker. It's okay, it is my time and I will hold no ill will against you.

With love and appreciate of our lengthy relationship, I say goodbye. Toast a final cup with me and then, let me be.

Your Coffee Maker,

Proctor Silex, II.

Franny

2009-02-02T13:15:00.000-08:00

I am feeling very Franny today.

If you have read J.D. Salinger's genius work, Franny & Zooey, this should make sense. I am feeling like her in the restaurant.

I am feeling fragile.

The Beautiful Messiness of Faith: Cast them Out

2009-02-02T13:02:00.000-08:00

The Beautiful Messiness of Faith: Cast them Out

This is the LOUDEST library in the world

2009-01-30T14:08:00.000-08:00

Much like being at a small enclosed zoo the noise around me increases, rapidly it grows louder and louder. And it isn't like it is just the sudden swarm of adorable children who have filled every aisle of the library - it is the adults who are lacking in their herding responsibilities. In their teaching of library etiquette. :)

Now, I am experiencing Facebook withdrawals, I want to post things like: Heather is in the loudest library in the world. OR Heather is finally getting homework done. And so on and so forth. A desire to explode with my random thoughts and share them in this mind cluttering space. Don't get me wrong, FB and I are on a break, we aren't broken up. Though I am wondering if I spelled it "brake" by mistake. Nonetheless it is to break this obsessive control that immediate gratification and fun distraction holds over me. That and the jealousies that have cluttered my little heart and brain. Or even just all the time I look at the lives of people I don't actually know, their pictures, their comments on their walls. Now, really? Need I do this? It is a collection, like I should have a menagerie that can hold all of them. I believe for many people this is a fine avenue, but with my obsessive nature (and that is what I know I have) I need to not be looking at it. I adore the fact that I have reconnected with people and I would like to attempt to maintain that. But I need to focus on other things.

Well, as a response to my last rant/post. It was very much about the lives of people that I do not know - my friends who have successes I am happy for, my friends who have struggles I embrace and want to know how to encourage them through it. I see the humanity in the people I personally know and love and do not resent any gifts they have. And I recognize that those experiences have not come without strife or have not yet allowed them to reap what seem appropriate rewards. I can see all of this in the "human" relationships I have with actual people - not facebook strangers.

Okay, I am finding it no longer conducive to be at a library studying when there are 7 kids on one side of my table talking and flipping through magazines. And the poor 11 or 12 year old boy across from me is trying to focus on his book.

Okay, I'm leaving.

Hey, thanks for being supportive and understanding. I love you guys.

Self-Pity Be Damned!

2009-01-29T14:47:00.000-08:00

For 2 days I have been unable to do anything. Literally, anything. I have watched tv or stared blankly into space. Occasionally started to cry but have not been able to maintain interest in even that. When I did bother to think it was pathetic and pitiful thoughts. Often thinking of what my life "should have been" and of all of the great and exciting lives of other people. People I grew up with. People who went to better colleges, or pursued their dreams ACTIVELY, people who APPEAR to be living the life of their dreams. And me? I stay in my hermitage, wasting all of this time. Unable to get myself to leave the house, to study, to look at this amazing city I live in - I let myself feel overwhelmed because I believe that not a thing will get done because I cannot get myself to do it and thus all of the projects which loom over me - the real deadlines will not be met. When I start do something I just slip back into the void of nothing that has become me. I am sick of it.

Kyle thinks that things like facebook have been a bad influence - in part because in this state of pathetic self-pity I am not reflective on the goodness of life, the good fortunate of others or how we each carve out our own lives and destinies. How dreams change and how part of growing up is knowing that plans are never set in stone but move and grow and alter. Instead they are about my seeming failures and how behind I feel, how I let my dreams die - and not recently but many years ago. How I went to a less respectable university than I had dreamed of, how I did not pursue writing, how I go to a graduate school that provide a good education (with most all of my classes) but is nonetheless not noteworthy in and of itself. And I mean this in the bigger flashy sense. The sense that does not REALLY matter except in my green mind of random and childish jealousy. How I compare my responses to things in class and feel aware of their inadequacies when I listen to the intelligent responses of others. Even when they are things I have done professionally and others haven't - how much better theirs sound. It feels disappointing. It feels pathetic.

And so I beat myself up and briefly whine to Kyle and I mope. That and this god awful depression that I let own me. I do, I allow it ownership in my life. And I am sick of it. Sick of it all. I complain that I am so unsuccessful and have done nothing noteworthy. Which is an insult to those I love and to anything I have done. It says, "this life, you who are in my life - not good enough." Which I don't feel at all. I have put myself in the cave and can only see the shadows and I have chained myself to this view - I have mistaken appearance for reality and let myself stop living.

This is a life not worth observing - that is not the life I have been given. Not the life I have been blessed with. It is the shadows I have embraced and the untruth I have make truth. And it has to stop.

Oh Ziggy play that Guitar

2009-01-23T15:03:00.000-08:00

As I sat in the rather fancy Starbucks* less than a mile from my home listening to Al Green pumped through the surround sound speakers drinking my Grande Non-Fat with Whip 6 pump Mocha and falling into a state of self-pity I decided to close my $79.99 text book and put it away in my book bag by its $153.00 companion text (all purchased compliments of my high interest student loans) and walk across to the Walgreens to purchase my very expensive medication. As he retrieved it the pharmacist said, "Wow, that's some pricey medication." I winced swiping my debit card thinking - okay there is enough money in my checking account for this but maybe not rent . . . - when the pharmacist said, "well, it could be worse, without insurance it would be $400." To which I replied, "Yes, while I miss my old insurance, I'm thankful for this nevertheless." And I walked out of the store and began to think of how thankful I am indeed. And it sort of slapped me in the face, how dare I wallow in my self-righteous middle class self-pity? I mean yes I may have some sincere financial woes coming my way and really need a job, but for today I was able to purchase my medication (although my insurance's $2500 limit on med coverage should be up by now and I am just hoping they won't bill me later and this month I will begin researching low cost medication). Nonetheless, for 30 days I have medication.

I began to think about the multitude of other things I am thankful for - even just those I saw walking down 39th Ave. Like that fact that I have somewhere warm to walk to. I have food at home. I have insurance. I was not being attacked (by humans or wild animals - often an irrational fear of mine while walking day or night - oh of humans not like wilda-beasts). I am thankful for my coat and gloves. For the little girl in the winter coat walking ahead of me holding her dad's hand and licking a popsicle in 47 degree weather as her family walked into the MC Escher apartment building next door to mine. The boy in the fedora-like hat waiting for the #75 bus. For the Starbuck's* gift card that supplied my tasty mocha of utter perfection. For David Bowie's music that put a bit more pep in my step - because how could it not? - playing through my little MuVo mp3 player.

Here in my life of middle class wonder I am aware that the world is falling apart in many ways. That the economy is scary. The wars are scary. That there is so much scariness around. But that I have to see the little things. I have to be so thankful for them each step of the way.

Now, I have to study. I'm not as thankful for that, but I am for my education so I guess I should work on the attitude about studying.

*I know, I should feel shame, corporate coffee, but there was a gift card involved so I'll think of how they treat their staff well and do the whole fair trade coffee thing. If only the didn't make such perfect mochas . . .

hope is the thing with feathers

2009-01-23T07:59:00.000-08:00

How did Emily Dickinson do it? I leave my house far more than she did - granted it is to go to the pet store or pick a DVD up at the library - yet I cannot write with any of the beauty she writes even on her scraps of napkins and paper. It isn't fair to compare myself to an amazing poet. I think it has more to do with material. Where did she get all of it? Her desk faced the wall, the window behind her! However there was scandal, wasn't she excommunicated? Or was that just wild 19th century gossip? In love with a married man? Yet she never left her home? Hmmm. Nonetheless I shall eat my toast and read my books and - wow, even as I think about it I realize why I don't have anything interesting to write, I mean considering that I am reading for what should be an exciting topic - Psychopathology! but has a terrible text, an undergrad "Abnormal Psychology" text that is patronizing to the mentally ill in its very first sentence of chapter 1, but more than that it is dreadfully boring! I suppose what you are putting into your head impacts your thoughts, impacts your writing etc. So I will just post Emily's popular poem:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

As for me my "free-reading" books that are up next on cue are two of P.W. Singer's
books and one not scary book:

Children at War -and-
Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century

THEN

My Best Friend's Girl (by Dorothy Koomson - not political but supposed to be Brilliant)

pieces

2009-01-20T12:13:00.000-08:00

Do you ever feel like pieces of your life may never completely come into their own?
Like there are things that will never quite fit right again?

This will sound convoluted, but it is like a mosaic. A mosaic comes together from the broken parts of many different things. An image, often beautifully fractured yet whole, comes to be. But sometimes it feels even though mine is an ever forming mosaic there are pieces that will never be able to go. They are parts of of a different story. One that I treasure but don't know how to reconcile and thus don't know how to make part of this emerging narrative and image.

When I think of my past and what is often referred to as my "former life" I think that as time passes and I build a new life - what happens to the sacredness of those memories? Because one cannot live in the past and must forgive themselves the ugly and even the beautiful they have to take it all and wrap it up into somtething whole and, then what? Set it free? Bury it? Carry it?

Today the subject of this past is my marriage - a relationship of nearly 7 years with someone. One that as time passes slips away into a deep and distant history. It's supposed to I am told. It has to I know. But the fragments that remain continue woven into my very identity. When I got a call this morning about some pictures that he is sending me, ones he found when going through the old albums, pictures that did not pertain to him but me on hiking trips with youth groups etc. I felt the pang of an eraser. An eraser digging into my memory. And then I felt the pain of having left him to clean up a shared life - where I got to move to an empty city with no furniture, no buildings to remind me of special times, no corners to turn that will freeze my spirit or snatch the ability of my brain to move forward. But him with an apartment of memories, of a table and chairs we searched for, a couch we fought about, in a room we shared. While he is less sentimental than me I have a difficult time imagining staying in a place that held so much.

What Leonard Cohen says in, "Is This What You Wanted":

You were the promise at dawn,
I was the morning after . . .

And is this what you wanted
to live in a house that is haunted
by the ghost of you and me?

Which I played for him a year or two ago and he thought was sort of ridiculous. Mainly because LC also sings about tangerines I believe. Nonetheless, there are pieces of this story that I do not know how to keep and do not want to forget. Because forgetting erases meaning, or so it seems.

And thus my fear of marriage comes in, but that is probably for another blog because this one is quite lengthy and quite heavy. Particularly for me.

And by the way I do know how this sounds, like one who has not let go. But is it so bad to not know how to hold your history especially in light of my current happiness in love. I want the same for him - and I would really like it sooner rather than later. But that is in part for selfish reasons.

blink

2009-01-17T02:53:00.001-08:00

Sometimes you receive small gems in your simple day. Like you were just going about your average hum drum existence and then you realize something, like little "a-ha's" that dance in your thoughts. You experience small, significant, interesting, unique or simply exquisite moments that stand out.

This has been a day with many of those moments.

Crisp air through a slightly cracked door.

Devestatingly good chocolate chip and cream cheese muffins.

The way sunlight falls through a window even when it seems that it shouldn't reach.

The sincere smile and kind, kind words of a friend as you try to simultaneously wipe away tears and mascara on a rough cafe napkin.

The eyes and laugh of a new friend as they tell an antecdote so fantastic that it results in your choking on water.

The gift of a piece of someone's history tucked into your thoughts - bestowed like a secret present, even though it isn't so much a secret as a window.

The look of your cat as she seems to be inhaling the world around her & yet moving with the precision of an animatronic kitty.

A book so exquisitely written that you want to both savor and devour it at the same time because it is like poetry and the characters are alive and feel like flesh and blood.

Like little blinks when you look at the sun and you see light picking up the smallest of particles or blotting out certain parts of your view. That's what these moments are. Blinks.

I love to understand this (like you understand how the moon rises at night but don't really understand the science), how these moments when strung together to make up life. A reality grounded in the promise that there is always something magical in existence - even when you are sitting under grey and cavernous clouds for a very long time.

Blinks that, whether they are merely a reprieve or a promise of better days, give you hope.

The Laundry Consensus

2009-01-13T14:24:00.000-08:00

The ruling has been made:

Laundry takes effort, involves trying, is basically an undesirable chore (though the outcome once folded and hung up is desirable) and we should be proud of ourselves and others for accomplishing it.

I raise my proverbial glass to laundry washers everywhere - especially to those who have no machines (including no laundr-o-mats).

Day 752,003

2009-01-12T16:43:00.000-08:00

In the infamous description of time by some character in Sand Lot:

I have been depressed FOR-EV-ERRRRR. (as noted by the number of days in the title)

Malaise, turned blah, turned blah-er, turned curled up on the couch eating soup and watching Joan of Arcadia.

Efforts made: Not to cry

Efforts of productivity made: Trying to do laundry - does laundry really involve trying? Apparently it does. For me.

Must. Stop. Being. Depressed.

Where's my tunnel? Because I hear there are lights at the ends of those.

Day 1, Term 4 of 9 Million Begins

2009-01-12T13:30:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed my psychopathology class this morning - in part because it is a class that I get, stuff I actually know and have worked in - which is not always the case here. I know, or really I have just been told, that I come across as really clinical - or as if I am diagnosis or med-happy - but that isn't the case at all! I just think it is important to have a common idea of how to view and diagnose mental health issues, in particular with the larger and professional mental health community. I don't believe that it is (the DSM-IV TR - Diagnostic Statistical Manual or bible of diagnosis) filled with absolute truths or that it is right all of the time - but it is an outline that helps guide treatment, usually.

Anyhow, that wasn't the point. The point was that after going to class I find myself really sad that I am going to be in school so long and not out there working AND that I had to drop classes I really wanted to take. So, yes, woe is me I know. Nonetheless there is some general malaise hanging over me and it really needs to go away.

My professor made this great point about how people kill themselves for school, they come out damaged in many ways. That during grad school people often get married, have kids and/or get divorced. He experienced some huge health issues whilst working 30hr/week, earning his PhD, being married with kids and doing some other stressful things. He says that we shouldn't do this program in 2 years but I am not doing it in 3.5 years and somehow this makes me feel like a failure.

Isn't that ridiculous my professor says it is a bad idea, and yet I still beat myself up. In part it is that I feel I will continue to be this anonymous student in this program. This student that does well on her papers and presentations but that the professors don't remember the name of. This is not in my head, this is my experience - I just don't stand out. The only time I ever did was in advanced Social Welfare classes and that was because I boiled over with confidence, I had experience and I did projects and jobs on campus. Here I am neither a weak link nor a brilliant star. I will graduate with good grades, do well in my internship and no professor will run into me on the street and say, "Heather! It is SO good to see you. When are you coming back to teach a class?" As was the experience of many an adjunct professor.

I don't mean this as whining, just as a little note of why I get sad. You can say for me tojustdo something to stand out, but until I have the confidence and until I am able to speak up without swallowing my words, rambling, spontaneously crying or simply sounding like an idiot, it just isn't going to happen. That is why I was going to volunteer for the Traumatology Program, but I need a job and don't want to risk anything that gets in the way of that.

Oh happy doomsdayer that I am today.

I best go resume my task of looking for a job, then going and cancelling my Y membership and cleaning and not being pathetically unmotivated!

I know, I am SO fun to read the blogs of. Sigh, this shall pass.

Work, work work, scrub, scrub, shred . . .

2009-01-10T02:55:00.000-08:00

It is nearly 3am. I am exactly half way through my shift and sadly I am also halfway (more really) through my energy level, and all the way through the caffeine I brought. Is that how you spell caffeine? See, 3am.

I have cleaned the house tonight. Not my house but the house I work at. Cleaned up after men, adult ones, some (not all) who are icky. And I feel icky after spending over two hours cleaning walls, windows, doors, floors, toilets (okay that should be singular) etc. etc. And soon the shredding will commence. I came in to a note that read, "Sorry graveyard." It was on top of 1 of 2 enormous piles of papers to shred. Yay?

I am getting tired . . . 3 hours and 58 minutes to go. I will shred like a mad woman and then vacuum and wash out mops. Wow, my job is SO cool. Hmmm. But I am also blogging and may have time to fit in some of a movie. I was planning on reading but I fear I may get too tired and I was told that there were 2 things I needed to do working grave yard: Clean & Stay Awake.

Hope you are sleeping well!

downsides

2009-01-07T13:34:00.000-08:00

Things I begin to lose interest in:

Washing my hair (and I love clean hair)

Not wearing pajamas (meaning I want to change back into my pjs)

Coffee

Being awake

Being asleep - or trying to fall asleep at least

Being outside

Not being under a blanket

Being at all

Already slipping:

The desire to wash my hair because everytime I get up and think I should be motivated I start to walk and then nearly start to fall. I start to sob. It doesn't last. It quickly ends but I think then that I will never get out. Not of the house, not of my brain.

I really think the author who captured my mind the best was Elizabeth Wurtzel in Prozac Nation, it was like she went inside my worst spell, my darkest secrets and recorded them and then realized we were really just looking in a mirror. My bipolar usually feels different than so many others to me - I mean it's like we all know that same language but with different dialetcs. But she spoke my dialect.

I couldn't find the quote I wanted, but I found this:

What do you do with pain so bad it has no redeeming value? It cannot even be alchemized into art, into words, into something you can chalk up to an interesting experience because the pain itself, its intensity, is so great that there is no way to objectify it or push it outside or find its beauty within. That is the pain I'm feeling now. It's so bad, it's useless. The only lesson I will ever derive from this pain is how bad pain can be.

Now, things I feel miserably guilty about:

The reality of others' pain

My father's life

The homeless, in particular in this Portland weather

My loving the rain while others suffer it

My lack of compassion to awaken action

My self-absorbant nature

My response: Nothing. Death Cab for Cutie. Otherwise silence.

Pathetic, I know. But you can't control giants, they're too big for you to hold onto.

Where's my sling shot?

Ah, why the crash

2009-01-07T11:40:00.000-08:00

January is apparently the worst of all of the months. And to think I always blamed October.

I found old emails that helped me understand some of the things that led to January being so bad. (Bad January began in January 2006) Emails that went much farther back than I thought, they were about my state of mind, life, marriage. About being so very broken and miserable. About being so alone. And then some after I moved to Portland - reminders that I did have a soul and wasn't horrible. Was just very, very sick and in need of help.

I wish I hadn't deleted so many things last summer. I wiped out most all of my emails predating June 2008. Like a fresh-start thing. Some old ones stuck though. Now I wish they were still here to re-read, maybe they would help me understand something. I don't know, that or hurt more. Either way, I wish I hadn't deleted them.

But I did so I can just move on. The crying will stop and real life will resume soon enough. It always does.

Think I'll open the blinds and watch the rain for a while, then read for school - it starts next week.

and then it happened

2009-01-06T17:42:00.000-08:00

crash

CRASH

BOOM

watch the soup simmer - hmmm a metaphor

2008-12-28T23:11:00.000-08:00

Things improved as the night went on. Sort of like simmering soup - it can really turn out well even if it didn't seem like it would. So, yes, life is like soup.

I always have this strange guilt for writing about how I feel, especially in regards to family. As if not everyone knows that families are complicated. But for me with the way my family is complictated (or some of the ways) it ebbs and flows so quickly.

I feel bad for saying that comparatively this was the worst of my trips home. I love my family and seeing them - it was in viewing how hard and emotionally challenging it is, how much fighting and how out of the ordinary it all felt. Including how much I felt and acted like a kid that I make this unfortunate estimation.

I would like to take a moment to blame graduate school. There's the passing of tonight's buck. They rip us up and throw us to our families for the holidays - knowing that we are vulnerable and our brains are spinning. It's a messy system.

Oh and I'll blame divorce. When I was married I was less likely to be treated like, or to respond as, a teenager. I think.

So being single (in the married sense) and in graduate school have had a negative impact on my holiday. Yes, I have NO culpibility.

That's the making of a good therapist.

Here's the making of a good soup:

1 Anaheim Chili Pepper - cut to preference
(I keep them about an 1/2 inch long and pretty thin)
2 or 3 cans of Coconut Milk (depends on serving size of course but also thickness)
1 can Garbanzo Beans
1 Can black beans
3/4 teaspoons of green curry
Onion if you like (when I add it I make it big enough to notice so I don't ACTUALLY eat them just flavor with them)
You can add a little garlic

Put the coconut in the pan, heat and add the ingredients - I add the curry a 1/4 teaspoon at a time.
(the pepper is best when you've sauteed it a bit so it is softer in the soup)

It may sound odd but it is delicious! Watch those pepper seeds though - it can get spicey really fast. Even my little sisters liked it - the one who dislikes all foods liked it. Quite the feat.

why? why? and again, why?

2008-12-28T19:38:00.000-08:00

How come if you catch yourself getting upset and try to stop it, it is still too late?

Like tonight, I knew I was over-reacting but all I wanted to do was walk away. And by the time I stood up to do so I was very much acting like a child. Even though I said, "I am over-reacting so I need to walk away."

And then when I came back and said, "I know I was over-reacting that's why I walked away." It was responded to with a lecture about how I am allowed to over-react to other people but not my own parents and to accuse them of mocking me - even though everything pointed to the idea that I was being mocked. I said, again, that I had to walk away and I went to pack and because I did not come down stairs when my mother sent my littelest sister to get me because I was, sincerely, packing they went to bed (parents). Good thing I stayed home to spend time with my family.

It's really sad. This is probably my last long trip home and it was my worst trip since I moved - or since Steph's wedding at least (trips leading up to that were bad because I was an unbearable wreck).

I mean there was a lot of great that happened and I got to see a couple of friends and have a good visit with a lot of people -family/friends- in general - but if I were to line up all of my visits this was the most heartbreaking. I haven't fought with my parent's like this since I was a teenager. It's like everyone exists in some weird time warp. Like Twin Peaks meets Northridge.

Anyway, there was just a lot of sadness. Watching other people be in so much pain and dealing with my own things. I will miss my family and I am REALLY sad that I didn't get to see most of my friends and that I missed this reunion thing tonight but I am tired of feeling alone in the place where am actually NOT alone, so going home sounds good.

You know, ironically, I am more alone - literally speaking - in Portland where I can't even find a ride home from the airport because I have so few "active" friends there (or who live close enough to the city), here I don't think that would happen. But I have felt lonely and broken here - and not just because Kyle is far away (though that doesn't help) but because it is all so messy.

Understand, I know I am complicit in all of this - from the stuff here to the friend situation in portland. But all in all I am just tired and want to curl up on my own couch the next time I cry. Except I don't think I will make it until tomorrow since I am crying right now.

Better go finish packing.

The buildings crumble.

2008-12-25T21:04:00.000-08:00

They were shaking but I pretended they were still.

They were pounding but I pretended they were silent.

The pieces fell to the ground – crash after crash.

Ears covered, eyes closed, I curled up small.

I hid beneath the tall trees, stared at the rain.

Watched the clouds and prayed they would take me in.

That they would make it go away.

Block the truth.

And they did.

They hid it from my eye, my sky.

For then they hid it.

It came back - pretending is harder.

The crumbling doesn’t miss – crash after crash.

I stand in the middle of the pieces.

The trees will not shield.

The stars not reach down.

The tears shake and loudly fall.

I don’t know what to do.

So I cry and ache and wait.

I watch and stand so close but look from so far away.

And some days I don’t look at all.

Even when I should.

Because looking is painful and the pieces start to build.

The walls come up and swallow me.

Who is Herald?

2008-12-24T17:25:00.000-08:00

This is what my sisters asked me the other day. They said, Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Who is Herald and why does he have angels?

The last couple of days have been hard. They have made for an uneasy visit. My mom and I had a huge fight, my cousin and his boyfriend had to hear it, my sisters too. It was all around terrible. And it was her 50th birthday - so score Heather for the goodness and kindness and holiday cheer. (and yes, I can see the irony of a future family therapist being 30 and having HUGE fights at home - but one needs training for their work, right?)

It doesn't feel like Christmas. It feels like something I can't explain. That spirit that always exists is missing. I am sure I am contributing to that. It will be nice when my sister and her husband get here though.

My professor in Human Growth and Development said that a key goal in our program is to have us essentially gutted. To deconstruct the schemas we have and shift the way we see ourselves and the world. She said on the last night of class (I paraphrase), "I hope you all have difficult holidays" Okay that wasn't her word, it was something much worse. It may have been "horrible" or something even less charming. We study, of course, so many aspects of family and human relationship in general, and with family roles we discuss the reality that who we are in our lives vs who we are in our parent's home is so different. This is not because of anything we want to do, or anything we do do, or don't do really, just because that's life. She believes in the possibility for change of course, but I have a feeling she also subscribes to Douglas Coupland's philosophy, all families really are psychotic.

I was feeling pretty confident that I had finally learned how to have healthy interpersonal relationships. That all that therapy had paid off (haha) and it felt like it didn't this week. It felt like I was in high school. 30 going on 15. It was terrible. But I know that this isn't really who I am, or not the whole story. I know that there is more to it than a difficult week away from my regular life and that all of interpersonal skills are not ruined or my work undone - it just sort of feels that way. (was it DCFC who sang a song about not believing what you feel to be real?)

So I will just shift my perspective and seek the positive and the hopeful and celebrate Christmas. There is a reason that I had "it is" emblazoned on my ankle, because I strongly believe that life is what IT IS and we are what makes the difference. We choose to. (well that is 1/2 of the meaning, the other spiritual but i will write of that later).

Good luck to me - haha.

Wow, this is a terrible blog. :/

Into the Void I Speak

2008-12-19T21:43:00.000-08:00

I am at my parent's home, the end of day 1 of 10. This will be a quick 10 days - so much is going on with family, holidays and birthdays. I feel like so much is going on everywhere and I am unsure of how or where to focus, what to do, how to decide. What do I do about school? What do I do about a job? How do I balance? How, why, what? Flashing before and behind me are questions. And yet I tend to make nonsensical statements and seem to remain on a relatively irrelevent surface, brushing through the day to day.

It is nearly 10pm Friday, and I have, more or less, been up since 7:30 am on Thursday. It was intentional for most of it, then the terrible sleep at the airport and on the plane - that sort of blank sleep where your body feels numb and your brain shuts off but doesn't really rest. And then another hour of that on the couch in my parent's living room tonight. Then? I went to bed. That was at 8. Am I sleeping? No. Have I really tried? No.

I am, instead, writing and brewing tea. Listening to the rustling of leaves and the whistling of wind. Feeling at home and yet homesick. Like most things worth thinking about it feels like a paradox. There are two quotes I like of Madeleine L'Engles on the subject of paradox:

"The deeper and richer a personality is, the more full it is of paradox and contradiction. It is only a shallow character who offers us no problems of contrast."
(A Circle of Quiet)

"We cannot seem to escape paradox; I do not think I want to."
(Walking on Water)

We are always in the process of becoming, of being, of moving, flowing, rushing, like the leaves outside or the wind - like the flames beneath my kettle. Everything is in motion. Like our very selves -in motion, changing. I was told last summer that, not in so many words, there was something wrong with me for not having known who exactly I was by the age of 24, 25 or 27 - that I always had to find someone new inside me. That even now at 30 I have set out a new plan (grad school I presume they meant) to try to do that. I am okay with not having known, I like mystery, so does God, that's why He never gave us blueprints.

I think in many ways our core never changes, who we were made to be in the truest essence is consistent, but the process of emergence is different for everyone. Because we are never the same from moment to moment, thank God, we have the chance to grow into a better and more loving person than the one who you knew before. This is from The Developing Mind, by Daniel Siegel (an amazing book on neurobiology and interpersonal relationships):

"We are always in a perpetual state of being created and creating ourselves. We will never be the same, and we have never been quite the way we are right at this moment."

If that isn't an example of the craftsmanship of God, an example of His intricate ever emerging design, I'm not sure what is. I will never be the same, I am thankful for that.

Angels in the eary morning . . .

2008-12-19T00:57:00.000-08:00

Angels, in the early morning

94

Angels, in the early morning
May be seen the Dews among,
Stooping—plucking—smiling—flying—
Do the Buds to them belong?

Angels, when the sun is hottest
May be seen the sands among,
Stooping—plucking—sighing—flying—
Parched the flowers they bear along.

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson did not name her poems, she numbered them. She did not write them in a book, but on the back of receipts and napkins and she bundled them in her desk drawers.

The cab will be here in 2 hours to take me to the airport. I am going to see my family and friends for Christmas. I love Christmas - yet it is the absolute hardest time of the year. From October 10th - January 19 for the past 15 years, there have been many of the most painful times or worst choices of my life. Some for no reason, for others, reason indeed. . .

Tonight I couldn't stop crying. I was so sad that I won't be with Kyle for the holidays. See, I am so excited to see my family and friends, but because this time is so scary it makes the distance feel like gaps in my soul. Like there are areas in need of patching. It doesn't make much sense and when I am there it will be just fine. But the prospect is hard.

So I will think of this poem and the gift of being up so early in the morning. I love flying out during sun rise, or just after, the sky is amazing and the clouds so soft. However in this weather I imagine it will look different. But it will, nonetheless, be like finding the fairies in Kensington Gardens - difficult at best. So I will look for the Angels in the early morning and maybe on the dew on the plane's wing I will see them stooping—plucking—smiling—flying and guiding us safely.

Change of Plans

2008-12-17T16:26:00.000-08:00

I think I am going to drop to part time for school and try to work more.
What's 1 more year, right?

I don't think I could handle the stress of a full time load anyways. Think someone outside social/human services will hire me when all I know how to do is place kids in foster care and wrangle wild children?

Maybe.

Would It Be A White Christmas?

2008-12-17T14:26:00.000-08:00

I doubt it, but I wonder, were I staying in Portland would I get my first white Christmas? I am trying to think if there was any snow when I was in Paris for Christmas in 2002(that sounds rather pretentious, doesn't it?). I know it was icey and cold outside Notre Dame. I have this memory though of walking down this path outside a movie theatre just after seeing the Lord of the Rings (with French subtitles) where I could see white lights in all the little trees and the Arc de Triomphe in the not too far distance and I think there were remnants of snow. But I may be romanticizing that because it was, after all, Christmas in Paris.

That was the only Christmas I ever spent away from my family and there I was in Europe, 24 and missing them like crazy. Funny. Guess that's why I always go home for Christmas. I think the first time I ever saw it snow fall was that year too. Oh Southern California how you deprive us of weather.

And now I do not know what to do with it - weather. So I stay in my apartment and watch the flurries fall down on my patio. It is getting too cold for snow - which I think it strange. See, I didn't know that below freezing was too cold because I figured that was the perfect time for it, you know, when it is cold.

Huh, crazy climate changes.

The Beautiful Messiness of Faith: Intentionally Placed

2008-12-17T01:51:00.000-08:00

The Beautiful Messiness of Faith: Intentionally Placed

unfortunate

2008-12-16T18:27:00.000-08:00

my brain was full of fantastic stories. after a day on the bus, in the city where i so enjoy the rich material of my surroundings and encountering people in this anonymous fashion- and then one little thing broke this - shattered my sense of wonder and my artful soul was crushed.

i hate that.

so much for beauty today.

My foe fettered to my brain, insomnia why must you remain?

2008-12-14T00:42:00.000-08:00

Apparently there are very few quotes on insomnia. While I haven't combed through the whole of the internet I found these:

Disagree:
Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep. ~Fran Lebowitz

Relate:
The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late. ~Charles Caleb Colton

&

What all so soon asleep; I wish mine eyes would with themselves shut up my thoughts.
- William Shakespeare

Not Quite:
The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.
~Leonard Cohen

Indeed:
O sleep, O gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse, how have I frightened thee, that thou no more wilt weigh my eye-lids down and steep my senses in forgetfulness?
~Shakespeare

What I hear when I lay in the dark wishing for sleep:
To sleep, perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.
- William Shakespeare

In the movie White Christmas Bing Crosby says (sings) that we should "count our blessings, instead of sheep," but I've tried that too.

Insomnia is my greatest foe for it effects my nights and days and everything in between.

2008-12-14T00:38:00.001-08:00

The Beautiful Messiness of Faith: "Silence"

We Wear the Badges - We Are Trauma Junkies

2008-12-13T17:00:00.000-08:00

I was talking with my co-worker tongiht about an acute psych place he used to work - we didn't get to talk about it much but he mentioned getting strangled to the point of passing out and having his nose broken. I wanted to say (but had to get the butter out for a client, I am at work) oh, I don't work in acute settings anymore because . . . insert injury story. Instead I said, "so, you a crisis junky?" "Oh yeah," he replied smiling.

Nurse Bob at SubAcute used to tell me that people who worked there or at the psych hospital (people like him and at the time, me) were crisis junkies. We loved the drama, the trauma, the action. And I DID. I LOVED it. The reason I struggle with this job is that it's relaxed. I can read or play cards with the guys. I don't get the level of therapeutic conversations I want or need (for billing), but it is cool. I like busy. I like fast paced and stress. Why???

Because then you prove something. You can take on the worst. You can handle the hardest kids or clients and you can kick ass. That's right and you have war stories to prove it. And then you're expected to just take it and come back for more.

I could not come back. My badges became nightmares. And this made me feel like a fialure. I used to work with new staff who would all but panic when the kids would blow out. I would console them and listen to their tears and fears and I would tell them a few things. First I would tell them their strengths and then I would tell them that it is okay if they don't choose to work there - that it doesn't make them less in anyway but probably more normal than all of us who chose to. I wanted to give them permission to opt out without feeling like they failed - something my boss refused to give me when I got put in a choke hold my first week in residential in LA. I mean I used discretion with these conversations, but nonetheless I remember telling people that they didn't have to be like me.

And what was, "like me" like? Someone with what we jokingly called the SubAcute Swagger. Cocky and confident. Sure I cried and bled and yelled when I got home and swore I would quit a dozen times - but I loved the kids, I loved seeing the best in the worst situations and I loved the drama. Not that I ever liked restraints - because I didn't - or ever thought they should be anything other than a last resort -and I didn't enjoy the sadness of their lives, but the chaos? Yeah, totally my thing.

But now what? I don't want to be around violence. I am scared of it. Even here - well before I get here - I have these moments of fear. Which is unwarranted.

Anyhow, the point was I was just thinking about how we play this game - those in this field - and it's like, "who can take the worst beating and still be there the next day?" It's ridiculous but, honestly, I miss being able to do it. Besides in a job like that there is comraderie like nothing else. At least little civilian work that I can think of where someone has to have your back. And there we always did.

Just the truth. My badges are getting rusty, but I hope not to get any more.

The Beautiful Messiness of Faith: Joan of Arcadia's God - and mine too

2008-12-12T00:14:00.000-08:00

The Beautiful Messiness of Faith: Joan of Arcadia's God - and mine too

Santa, stories and a little sadness . . .

2008-12-09T16:43:00.000-08:00

This morning we had our "final" at my professor Steve Bearden's house. Steve is this brilliant, kind, thoughtful, welcoming human who seems to embrace all that is best in the world while still knowing the depths of darkness and pain. At the end of Steve's classes he has his class over for celebrations. Today our Spiritual & Clinical Praxis class went to his home, ate lots of tastey food brought by my classmates, talked to one another and then Steve read to us.

One of my favorite things as a child in school was being read to every day after lunch recess. It was soothing. For me so much of my understanding of self, love, faith, life, comes from the words of others. Many don't think me much the reader, but I find that nevertheless my identity has been so influenced by the authors who have spoken their hearts and imaginations out onto pages that I have been fortunate enough to read.

Steve read The Polar Express, Polar Bear Scare, Santa Cows and Owl Moon. I had never read any of these books - I know, how have I never read The Polar Express? I thought it seemed boring - but he read it to us and it was wonderful. Then he asked if anyone had holiday traditions. And people began to share their family's traditions - cutting down trees, staring at lights, sleeping in the living room all together and watching It's A Wonderful Life - experiences, shared experiences. And I found myself crying. I was so very sad.

I don't remember us really having traditions growing up - and I really wanted some. We opened one present on Christmas eve - always pajamas and yet often seeming a surprise and I was ever enthusiastic about that one gift. But did we have more?

When I was married we decided that we wanted traditions, things for our family. And even though our family was just the two of us, it seemed right to begin our traditions when we were engaged. One was this "first christmas" ornament that had a scroll inside - every year we would write on that scroll. Another was how we got our ornaments - we got a special one for us each year - our tree was going to fill up with special memories building each year on the last and to the next - like our love was.

And I became so sad and I wept.

And I longed for my old life. That sense of family. That feeling of forever and building and togetherness, promises and hope.

Christmas to me is a lot about hope. Hope for new beginnings, for life, faith in something good and right. And since I love Christmas - the music, the lights, the smells, the traditions I have found that remembering can be bittersweet.

I couldn't understand why I wanted so much for this Christmas to be special for me and Kyle. Why I was so sad that we would be apart for 10 days - aside from the normal expectation of missing him. Why us not celebrating in some unique way just broke my heart. And I realized today in my professors living room, it's because I want to build on our story. It is hard when your stories have to change, when dreams end and starting over is part of life. And even when your identity is new and your faith renewed, your heart still has memories that your brain doesn't think of consciously.

So here I sit watching the lights twinkle on my Christmas tree and try to wrap my head around a world of feelings and I know, my lizard is not dead (if you go to school with me that would make sense). And it's okay for the lizard to still be alive - because then some of the kittens made it too. But some didn't, and for those and for parts of what the lizard meant, I cry.

"I'm sorry, but do I know you?" said the kitty

2008-12-04T03:28:00.000-08:00

Apparently my cat is having some very Memento moments. Granted I have only been her human for . . . well, less than 36 hours (though barely that)so it makes sense for her to not be TOTALLY adjusted - but she seems to know who I am most of the time. Or she did until I went to bed and then when I could not sleep she was excited because I came out of my room, BUT then when cold I put on a sweatshirt and kept the hood up which apparently turned me into some sort of a monster. She was scared! I didn't realize it and it was not until I removed my hood that she began to like me again. THEN I went back to bed (some hours later) and when I again woke up she was on the stairs. I didn't turn on the light so apparently she didn't recognize me (again) and so she ran down the stairs and in the dark I could see her turning back to me and then walk/running backwards. Finally she scrunched back and it was like she was recoiling! It was sad. Then she tried to curl up with my computer and now she is missing. Well, she's not, but it's dark and thus she is out of site.

Be Still

2008-11-18T17:20:00.000-08:00

In the stillness, in a darkened room, things can become clearer. Brighter.

The greatest sins are not the things I do, but the things I do not do.

I do not love enough, I do not give enough compassion, I am not still, I do not wait upon the Lord - or anything. I need to pray because I don't know what God's up to, but I do know that I do not have enough love, compassion, patience.

You could look at my life and see the glaring sins - the things I do that are traditionally recognized as sins. You could make a graph, a chart and see the steadiness or irratic nature of each of these. Some are just the way I live.
But that is the way that man would like to see sin - by the tangible. The things understood.

This is not a judgement on all mankind, it is recognition of our common desire to make sense of the world - we try to orient ourselves in this massive place from infancy on. The pieces that we live outloud and outside of us are so much clearer - but the inside is not.

Someone said in class once that imagine if we wore posterboards to church on Sundays revealing our true sins - the one's we conveniently leave out, or intentionally do, the ones that we hold with shame or reluctance, or that we have accepted are things we will do that are between us and God but know/fear the objection of others. The pieces of our lives that may not separate us from God (the definition of sin, right?) and the things that are notably considered un-Chritian could count too.

But the greater sins I commit each day are what separate me from God. I look away from poverty, I close my eyes. I choose not to love. I judge my classmate, my colleague, even my neighbor. I judge a friend or loved one. I don't forgive - myself or another. The list of what separates us - me & God - is not a tangible. And it is not finite.

While there are many concrete things that do - right now I get that the things that keep me away have much more to with with my unwillingness to dig through this clutter, come down to the calm, the stillness and start and know God.

I finally get it, I don't want to (or need to) understand God - I want to know Him.

_____________________________________________________________________________________
Disclaimer: I know all sin is considered equal, but that is not how it feels or is treated. It is easier to get caught up in the obvious and tangible sins etc.

Recovery and Relationships

2008-11-14T15:01:00.000-08:00

I am taking a substance abuse class and as part of this attending a few meetings for persons in recovery. So far I have only gone to one AA meeting. Have you ever gone to one?

I have a professor who said that people in recovery are possibly the only people who truly understand how to be in relationship with others. They have once had this stripped from them, or never had it in the first place, but through recovery they have learned that there is nothing to hide behind and you are out there. And they can experience true relationships, true relational experiences.

After attending just this one meeting I could see the truth to this statement. I am not a big drinker, I drink some and I know it is sometimes because I find them tasty, sometimes because I am nervous at a party and it does soothe some nerves, but sometimes it is just because. That same professor said that so many of us just have the glass of wine, create a social symbiosis of sorts - it's sharing in a group experience, it is loosening inhibitions. It is pretending to let go - when really it is just giving in.

This is not to say that I think social drinking, or limited drinking is a problem. It is that the beauty that I have seen in my research, in the books I have read and the meeting I attended, as well as the inspiring woman I spent about a half hour on the phone with today is amazing.

Alcohol and drugs ravish people's lives. And whether in recovery you come from a disease model, an AA powerless approach, a inner power to overcome approach, whatever, you come to a place of change. You come to a relational experience.

This sounds terrible, I do not want an addiction experience - I do not want that struggle, the pain that is caused to loved ones or anything irrational like that - but I do want that community. That acceptance. That revival from brokenness. It is beauty incarnate.

There is so much more to say on this - and this is probably a terrible representation of how I feel and I fear belittles things which is not at all my intention, but mainly it is meant to be a small statement of respect.

The process to reach recovery seems to me to be difficult and scary. I have so much respect for people in recovery - whether they attend meetings or don't - whatever their practice is in their life, I think it is amazing.

That's Right Kids . . .

2008-11-12T22:02:00.000-08:00

That's right kiddies, listen to your parents and brush your teeth!

When I was younger (much so) my step-grandpa (Umpa as I call him) overheard me say, whilst complaining about my teeth issues - the ones that I have had my whole life - anyhow, I said, "I should just pull 'em all out and get dentures. I'll probably have them by the time I'm 30 anyways." That is the day that I learned that you don't laugh about dentures in front of someone who has them.

I have a whole new respect for the pain that one must go through to get there. And a new respect for those who are elderly and who have had them sometime because I can only guess that the process of removal, the medication etc., has improved.

Oh and being 30 now I see how I had a very different opinion of it in my early 20s. And I have a whole new respect for being 30 too. :)

On that subject I was listening to something depressing on the radio and they were saying how problems with childbearing etc. increase over 35 and by 37 are . . . the story went down hill. And this is what rushes through my head, some simple mathematical equations.

I'm 30 and it is almost 2009. I will graduate in 2010 right before I turn 32. Ok, so, hopefully Kyle and I will get married sometime before I turn 32 and at the earliest START to have kids when I am 33. Even if I got pregnant RIGHT AT 33 then I will be close to 34 for having a kid and perhaps I would like more than 1 and this puts me quickly over 35. That is all saying that I get to have kids. This is not whining, this is just that I know not to take for granted the gift of having children. So I am not adding that in to this particular equation.

Other than that I was thinking earlier how I hope our kids don't get my teeth - well visually they can, but health wise, nope, they need his.

Oh I could go on but thank goodness my latest codeine tablet (no, no I haven't taken one in at least 8 hours and this time I took just 1) is kicking in. I hope to sleep!!

Where's the Tooth Fairy When You Need Her?

2008-11-12T15:04:00.001-08:00

I had the post put in for the long term process for what will eventually result in my having a fake tooth in July. When did this saga begin? January 2008 I had my tooth removed. This involved them having to essentially shatter my tooth and unfuse its' roots from the bone. The bone which now has a post in it and in July will have a tooth on it.

I feel sick now. Trying to be awake is causing this.

The acetemetaphine with codeine + the ibuprophine is finally helping . . . 3 hours later . . . but now I am feeling siiiick and my head still hurts . . .

Head hurts too much to figure out why I am typing . . . or what . . .

blah.

I Need Some Carrots

2008-11-11T16:52:00.000-08:00

I still have to make those calls.
I am a bit calmer.
I am keenly aware of all that I have to do in the next week - and then some, but I'll start with 1 weeks "to-do's."

I was really disappointed in myself today. I went into therapy and heard myself whining (for lack of a better word) about this liteny of things and suddenly it was like the last 2 years of work weren't there. I mean as if my progress had disappeared. I wondered if my therapist sometimes asks herself, "Really? Will she never get it?" I don't think she REALLY does . . . well, I don't usually think so.

But she did ask me to ask myself some good questions:

1. Is this anger a red herring?
2. What am I getting out of it?
3. What purpose is it serving?

In discussing my sadness in regards to friendships and my experiences of loneliness (really of late compared to the recent past):

1. What does loneliness mean to you?

This was a difficult question to answer. I had never thought about. How could I describe it? It is a numbness. It is a lack of hearing others' stories. It is not being part of "something," something bigger than me maybe? Even just any "thing."

She said that what she sees is that loneliness means that I cannot see my "self" and so, yes, it is numb and it is empty. Because for someone (me) who is so relational having no one to interface with all day means I have no one to see my own reflection in. And this does not mean people who I can mirror or who I am similar to, but people. Interpersonal experiences.

Thus, I must wrestle with some internal demons. Some that I have already wrestled - it's like the 2008 Championships - Demons vs Heather.

Part of this, I have come to realize, is the impact of facebook and myspace. Feeling a false community makes me feel lonelier. In some ways it is great because I can connect to people I have not spoken to in well over a decade. In others it makes me aware of the gaps. Other times I just see that I do not get messages and experience the whole "last kid picked for the team" feeling. Either way, for me, it is this sort of false reality that, while it has its benefits, is risky.

Don't know if any of this really makes sense. But what I know is that I need to have a pretty clear agenda for the next week. A schedule - probably to the hour.

Starting with now.

I can read for 45 minutes. Then I have to go to an AA meeting for class. Then tomorrow dental "surgery" and more and more and more. . . BUT one day at a time with a dedicated schedule. My therapist said that if I am not doing homework anyways I need to schedule things like coffee dates or something. Or since I won't let myself watch TV in the day she said, "you're not studying, so study from 1-3 then you can watch something." Permission for tv viewing? She said it is like dangling a carrot.

(More on the role of TV in a healthy measure for creating relational experiences another time . . . )

For now? I need some carrots.

I Hate Bipolar

2008-11-10T22:56:00.000-08:00

Current state: Freaking out
Cause: Health Insurance
Problem: Multiple.

They claim they'll pay my doctor's visit, now they won't. I have to call them and write an appeal. I have to resubmit documents previously submitted. I have to call my old insurance company. I hate calling people when I am likely to cry and get upset, possibly unreasonably so when it is not the fault of the people I will talk to.

I have to not freak out when these things come my way.

My fears:

1. Can't afford my bills
2. Can't go to the doctor
3. Can't go to the psychiatrist (which I can't find one ANYWAY since their - Aetna but the crappy student version - website had few listed and most with wrong numbers - 9 out of 11 sought out were incorrect, of the 2 I called, 1 sounded like Vincent Price and the other? Her number was wrong too but I tracked her down with a different number and she has not called back. Guess I have to call Vincent again)
4. Get a psychiatrist but cannot pay them
5. My insurance won't pay for my meds which are almost $700 without insurance ($120ish with as long as I don't want my Lunesta - but hey, not sleeping is really good for my current state anyways)
6. Will freak out more because this is a really bad month for more to go wrong
7. This will kick up an episode - I just had a mild manic one, it's Fall which is the season for episodes and I don't want to hang out at EITHER pole.

I flipped out tonight, ranting about how anyone who doesn't agree with public health care is a bastard. I targetted Kyle's aunt because she targetted me previously about how my views on public health care are limited and that I don't understand the impact it could have on people like her (people with money and property).

My flip out? I want her to look me in the eyes and tell me that I am not a valuable enough human being to deserve health care and instead it is okay for me to suffer.
I want someone to look me in the eye if they believe this. (And I won't even start how looking ME in the eye is cake considering I am a person of privilege - albeit one who will be in debt roughly the worth of a house soon - but I am an easier person, comparatively, to say this to)

I need guts to stand up for my beliefs and I think others should get them to stand up for theirs. If you really don't care about people then you should have to tell them. Dehumanize them in person.

Shoot! My thoughts are not slowing down and the crying is starting again. No no no no no no no!!!!

Wow, why do I let things like this enter into cyberspace?

No self-respect?
No discretion?
A desire to let other's know what this feels like?
A need for a community?

It is not for pity I know that. Maybe for hope? For someone to validate it (other than my wonderful boyfriend who is calm to my crazy)?

I should try to sleep . . .

so . . . tired . . .

2008-11-10T02:53:00.000-08:00

so . . . tired . . . hate . . . insomnia . . .

read for school for 2 hours.
went through and deleted like 300 emails.
categorized all but 30 more - some that need to be responded to others . . . it's 3am, so i don't know.

want to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Bread and butter . . . and fire . . .

2008-11-08T09:24:00.000-08:00

So there was not actually fire, but there sure was a lot of smoke . . . and some awfully black toast.

My therapist is right, I need to treat myself to a toaster. She said that, after all, toasters were created to stop such burning of food and, in my case, flesh.

Once I move and get the counter space under control, I'm all about the $20 toaster. Mmmmm, not burnt, equally toasted on each side, toast. Fancy, fancy way to live.

Deposit is Down - Moving to Commence 11/30

2008-11-06T18:34:00.000-08:00

What's that about a sweet 2 story, 2 bedroom, 1 bath townhome with a patio off each bedroom, giant closets, a pantry, a washer / drier, a dishwasher and a large patio off the living-space (no divide for a dining room) looking out at the pool? Oh, it's my new apartment? NICE.

Location isn't ideal. No pretty leaves outside like now and really no parking (1 spot) and a crazy busy street with no on-block parking - unless you don't mind being hit by buses or being towed. BUT fortunately I will be IN the apartment more than dealing with all that, once the car is parked that is.

It's really nice and the rent is only going up $25 from what I pay now. Well $12.50 each technically. :)

Now, just need to pack and move. Ugh.