rejection / failure

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" (09/2010)

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.

Some days I just feel like I'm not good enough. Like I made a bad choice. A mistake. A really, really expensive mistake.

"disclaimer from a since moved blog-posting"

**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.*

Tales from an Insecure Intern (09/2010)

Week 1, Day 1: I actually forgot where my husband works. I lost my grasp on the English language.

You Became Who You Are

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

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!

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.