Hey there!

It has been a rough month! May grabbed me by the feet and swung me around like a unwanted rag doll. I crashed like a dropped raw egg and there was no putting me back together again. I was sleeping all day long, my whole body was (still is) hurting, and my brain was so fuzzy it felt like I was under water all the time. The good news is that my doctor just told me my thyroid is not doing its job so up the dose we go. If that is all that is going wrong I should be better soon. Can’t wait to get back to normal and have to come up with original reasons (excuses) for not doing the things I need to do. Things are looking up! I can dive back into blogging~

picture:https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

A “How-To” untouched.

My Maker is like a beautiful but broken marble. Every so often I would forget. I’d take hold of my elaborate-colored marble and I’d want to play with her. I’d hold on tight (with my hands, with my all the strength of my hungry need) to make sure it wouldn’t  slip through my fingers while I ran around the world showing my marble all the things that were almost as beautiful and brilliant as she was. I’d laugh just thinking how happy this would’ve , could’ve , (should’ve?) made my marble! How proud she would be that she was finally being recognized and praised for what she was! I would rejoice. Well, I almost did. I always forgot myself and, alas, would realize in a sudden pang of pain that I had again come close, way too close, looking for warmth. Tried to hold on too tight. Once again, I had forgotten  my marble was broken and its jagged edges had sliced open scars that had almost healed, and fresh new liquid pain poured  down my fingers, down my hands to my elbows; and I’d see how it started to cover my body like a strong rain covers a flower: brutally. Despiadada. Drops like darts to the petals. And like the flower I’d  stand there just accepting the slashes from every falling drop that burned my legs.  The goddamned reminder of a robbed childhood. That blood. All of that shameful reminder of what caused the earth to tremble and my beautiful marble to finally shatter right where the cracks were showing. Now broken. Useless. Dangerous. Still very much needed and wanted.

Marble.

Maker.

Whether she was showing her true colors or sharpening her edges it was a sight to see. I heard it all the time. It just was not the experience from my seat. We were not all watching the channel.

photography:https://www.flickr.com/photos/maggyver/

What I knew then

Hey there! Lately I have been thinking a lot about that little phrase we tell ourselves at some points in our lives: “If I only knew then what I know now…” followed by a deep sigh. The almost now classic answer tends to be that we would not mind other people’s business so much, things would be better, one would have made better choices, we would have stayed in school non-stop and had 3 majors, one would have done things very differently, in other words, one would be rocking this earth and our wisdom would be known through the ages.

Mmmmmm…but I don’t know. I don’t see how I would so easily dismiss any of the choices I have made by either want or need. To see it better, I tell myself: “If I were to remember now what I knew then….”, and try to finish that sentence honestly.

You see? As a kid I had to mind other people’s business because I had to worry about what those people were doing and thinking. People around me were not trustworthy. I had to stand out enough to be somewhat taken care of, but not so much that I would become somebody’s new target. I had to learn to detach emotionally from people as quickly as a light switch kills the light because I could not handle any more scars in my already battered soul.

You know what? It took me 16 YEARS (on and off) to finish college. I’ve had more majors than friends (and I used to be a social butterfly.) I bet some people might think I must have struggled with the process, but the truth is that, in between classes, Universities, and colleges, I have had a pretty full life. I found friendships that have lasted a lifetime. I had late nights of music, smart-ass talk, and cheap beers followed by endless days of making significant deals with God. I made horrible choices and experienced immense trauma. I also fell in love, had a child, and finally began to experience what it’s like to feel loved and safe. I am sure that knowing then some of the consequences of my actions, I might have changed some things, but accepting now what I knew then, I have to say I am pretty surprised and proud that I made it this far in one piece (even if my mind goes off on its own every now and then.)

How little credit would I give myself if I always knew what I would know to be the best in hindsight! How many steps forwards would I miss taking if I didn’t have to learn the difference between regretting and accepting things as they happened! I have so much more to learn, but one thing I HAVE learned is that by being honest when I judge myself as well as when I judge/read other is how I can determine if I feel and am safe or if I need to walk away. My gut feeling and I have become very good friends. But all this is what I know now. Perhaps it is not what I will know to be the best 20-30 years from now, and that’s ok. It’s still the best I know now *deep sigh*.

Broken people and broken toilets

Thinking so much about my purpose in life lately brought up a memory of a visit to a restroom (yes, it is that kind of story) that I had once in college. I was, at that time, teaching some undergraduate courses as a TA to help cover my tuition. The class was not going particularly well. The students shared they had been worried about upcoming midterms, their GPA’s, pleasing their parents, and their feelings of gloom and doom about their futures. It was as if their entire existence depended on the outcome of these tests. I promised them that after we covered the class material we could have an in-depth conversation (I am a mental health counselor so I figure I should only go so much in-depth so that they could vent but not open the prodigal can of worms) about it. As promised, we did. Their concerns were real. So many people had equated them to their GPA’s that they believed they would devalue as a person if their grades would lower. What/who would they be if they failed their exams? We got busy with it. A few minutes of seeing how they all had these issues in common and were not alone, with a dash of some clear step-to-step problem solving, and they left feeling like they could actually do something about their “existence-threatening” issue.

I picked up my teaching materials, and walked like a champ to the bathroom to pee (I drink sinful amounts of water). I put my things on a desk available in the bathroom, and walked into the stall. With the skill of a master I put toilet paper on the toilet seat, twirled around like a ballerina, and planted myself on the white throne. However, before I could begin, the toilet started flushing… and flushing, and flushing, and flushing. I covered the toilet sensor but nothing changed. I ducked to hide from the movement sensor and there was no policy change in that situation. As soon as I could finish I stood up to give the toilet a stern look as if to tell it that it was nothing more than a kitty litter for humans, and it stopped flushing. The evidence of my insane water intake still there, with the clouds of paper floating, and no flushing to be heard. I was indignant. I pushed the little black button and NOTHING! Beyond embarrassed I had to walk away, one of those people leaving their DNA behind knowing no one would care to collect it for cloning, and AS SOON as I closed the stall door behind me I could hear the clear sound of a loud flush. I slowly walked to the sink feeling somewhat inadequate by the toilet; wash my hands with soap while counting to 20; rinsed; dried my hands on my shirt; got my things and walked out. No direct eye contact was disbursed during the making of this episode.

Right outside the bathroom, on a sitting area available for students for waiting in-between classes, I saw a friend of mine who looked up and could see, like a masterful gypsy scrying on a crystal ball, that I had seriously deep issues. At her silent question (or the one I assumed that she was asking) I said in quite the theatrical manner, waiving my right index finger around, and my head stiff as Queen with a crown: “I AM HERE, YOU KNOW?! And a toilet will NOT determine my value or existence!” A heartbeat passed and we started belly laughing until we were wiping tears from our faces, eyeliners be damned. I told her what had happened and she asked me if it had been like the third toilet on the right (I think) and it had been. She explained that it was broken. We had to laugh so more. Still laughed a week later when I was helping her paint her apartment when she was moving back home.

At some point, while thinking about the broken toilet, and my amazingly loving students, I had to wonder how broken the people who equated my students to their grades must have been. My students made to feel like those other people (family, teachers, any figure of authority) thought them to be unworthy of an acceptable and loving reaction. My students, too busy drinking sinful amounts of the infamous “kool-aid”, struggling because broken people are too busy flushing out mouthfuls of judgment. I wish them unbroken people.

Hey there!

My experience with empty nesting sucks. I swear it has been shredding my heart like The Hulk did his t-shirts. What do I do when my life’s heart walks out the door to follow his own path? Who am I when the reason I wake up in the morning declares his independence and leaves? I am certainly not going to even think about holding him back, so of course, that means I have to blog about it. I am not ready to go grocery shopping for just 2 people. I am not ready to be able to sleep without having to wait up for him at night. The thing with this, though, is that my being ready or not has no influence on the outcome. It’s going to happen. My son is what I helped him become so he could leave and be happy. Trying to focus on what to do next I realized that I need to survey my own emotional territory and analyze what is has and what it lacks. I am so ready to start this expedition and explore things I might like, challenge assumptions, be open to new lessons, and try to figure out what makes me “me” outside of being a mom. I want to feel at home in my own skin. I want to know what it is I bring to the table. I want to feel and love my worthiness.

 

I am hoping you will participate with me in the conversation. Processing things alone doesn’t go as far as a good convention of life experiences. I say there is no such thing as too many cooks in the kitchen, except, I am not a cook, but that’s ok because this is just a blog. No flying pans are expected around here.