Goodnight, Moon

I am having another restless night. Not so much sleepless, I just happened to sleep too much in the early part of it. I awoke in the wee hours and am fully rested, so here I am wide awake while the rest of my world is fast asleep. I am not completely distraught at having been awakened by my own thoughts. Some parts of this, this sleepless wrangling with my thoughts is good. I enjoy the quiet, the necessary nothingness, so I can gather myself into a place a conscious thoughtfulness, a place of centered mindfulness, versus the scattered, somewhat manic paced daylight, where I am running mentally all day long. I am worried, a useless emotion that garners nothing more than an anxious physiological response versus a mentally stable one. It wears me out wondering where will live a year from now, wondering which direction to point our family in order to find a place to call home. My kids and I have been talking recently about rolling consequences. The discussions have been about how as an adult how karmic experiences as a grown up last so much longer than those of a child. Make a mistake as a child and the punishment is usually swift and temporary. Make a sizable mistake as an adult and the consequences can come in waves rolling over you for possibly years. I think we, as parents, try and teach our children to avoid the big life altering mistakes that lead directly to regret, but unfortunately, much of the time we realize that our children have to figure out at least part of it on their own. It's a parent's heartbreak watching children make mistakes we know will haunt them for awhile. It is in those times I back off the punishment side of parenting because I know the world will punish them enough. We, as a family have not faced some of the traumatic events that can rip apart a child and their dreams, but still we have seen our fair share of the ugly side of learning. While I talk to my children, who now are not really children at all, we talk about our futures. We have to acknowledge that at some time, in the not so distant future, we will split apart and live in different parts of the country. One is planning a move back north, one is planning a move further west in Texas, one is planning a move across town about 45 minutes away, and Michael, well, he is headed away from everyone. This is not what I had ever thought would happen, while I was raising my kids, being fractured into multiple parts, like this. When my kids were small, I had thought we might live near each other and spend holidays together. I had thought I would be rocking grandchildren on my front porch. Now, I don't even own that porch and live in another state. It's a bit funny, how much life changes as the years pass. As a rational being I know for a fact that worrying will garner me nothing positive, but I am afraid, I am unable to make it all go away. For the most part, I live everyday much as I have always done, treating things as they come, doing triage to take care of my family of 6. Sometimes, I get stuck in the web of my own thoughts wondering how this will all turn out. I have no control. That is my primary thought these days. I have no control. My son and I were talking about drinking. Wait, I have a point here. He and I were discussing how neither of us likes the out of control feeling of alcohol. There is this really unsettling gut feeling about getting drunk, about not having control over your own body, mind and emotions that keeps us sober. The other thing we talked about was how much trust you have to have with the people you are with when you are smashed. Neither of us has ever been comfortable putting our fate in someone's hands. We laughed while we both admitted to having trust issues. For us, it is better to handle our own affairs, than to discover we have put our faith in the wrong people. The tie in here is that it is the lack of control. My kids think I am a control freak, just ask them, and they will gladly tell you about all of my rules, advice, questions, blah, blah. Yeah, they are not wrong, but I will say in my defense that I have experienced the rolling consequences of trusting the wrong people. Ooh, there are the ugly trust issues again, but rather than to try and control everything, I try and control things I think are imperative to our well being. Remembering there are 6 of us, most of my day is putting out fires. The paper work alone for 6 adults is enough to deplete an entire forest. The worry for me is mostly how we will all do, when we are not together anymore. While I remain confident that we will survive living apart, in different cites, in different states, spread out like peanut butter, I wonder how happy we will be. Cognitively I know there is no "they all lived happily ever after" without the conscious mindset to make it so, but will we have the strength? Will we be able to maintain it? I have no control. My alarm just went off. It's time for me to get up. I think that is apropos for this blog. I do think it is time for me to get up; up from being down too long, up from being dragged down by the worry.

I think it's time for me to get up, way up, and find a way to stay there, at least for as long as I have been down.

Perception Is Reality

Sometimes life is unfair, and sometimes it just plain sucks. There have been times in my life when I seriously wondered if all my praying was just me trying to self soothe. Ultimately, I have always felt heard. I know plenty of people who do not have that luxury, so I am not one to take it for granted. Recently, Mike has had a seemingly long line of bad luck. If it is true about good luck being preparedness meeting opportunity, then bad luck must be one being ill prepared to occurring events. I am not sure if that applies here, but let's remember how much I like logic, even when it doesn't apply. Yesterday, Mike left his beloved bicycle out on the driveway next to the house, for about an hour. In that hour, someone came brazenly forward to our house and just stole it. I could not wrap my brain around the shear nerve of how close to us, while we were sitting in our back yard, they had to come to get the bike. WTF? There have been other things that had I not experienced enough crazy in my life I would have thought someone was gunning for Mike. But in truth, stuff just happens sometimes and we have to decide for ourselves what it all means. Yep, you guessed it, here comes one my many optimistic "all things for a reason" diatribes. Even though there have been an entire string of crap headed at my boy, the truth is some of it is caused by distraction due to the other crap he is dealing with. It is not fair. What it is, is life. I do not mean to sound callous about his bike or any other kerfluffle he has had to deal with, during these past months. What I do mean to point out is everybody has crap. How we choose to see and deal with our crap is the key to not just survival, but real life long learning. Is what is happening a life defining moment or is it just crap that has to be waded through in order to be the chicken who gets to the other side? Years ago I was raped. I sat in the mess of the typical guilt, shame, self blame, blah blah blah. I did that for a few years until I realized that I had been victimized for ten minutes by the jerk who I knew, who had decided to assault me. The rest of the time I had victimized me, by replaying things over and over and over. The rape did not have to be life defining moment in that way. It did not have to define my present or future or even make a dent in who I was or who I wanted to become. It took some time and some much needed therapy to figure that out, but I did, indeed figure it out. The rape, for me would become merely something that happened to me, but I did not have to ingest all of it, and internalize it until it would chew me up from the inside out. It wasn't the first time I had gotten hurt by someone, nor was it the last, but once I figured out that I didn't have to become a slave to it, or be defined by it, it became what it was, in fact, an unfortunate incident. It was my perception of what it did to who I was, that caused most of my pain. When I realized I held the key to my own perception, I was set free to acknowledge it, talk about it, and eventually let it go to become a bad memory from my distant past. Being raped, having to figure out how to survive such a horrific pain is what caused me to teach my children that they alone get to determine their worth, and the rest of the world can suck it if they don't agree. I must admit, I think it has been some of my best parenting. I am the first to admit my parenting skill set is one I constantly work on, since I have long ago acknowledged I am fatally flawed. Some reality is just reality. New reality is just reality. But the memory of the reality is where we get to perceive ourselves in that reality any way we want. Except if you see yourself as a Noble prize winner when all you did was open a jar of peanut butter for your spouse. Once, when I was nurse I was asking for supplies from an administrator who was balking at the idea of having to pony up the extra cash from our shoestring budget. He looked at me and said in a voice that was flat as a pancake, "Kellie, perception is reality." He walked away with a smug look on his face as if he had left me with some nugget of obtuse wisdom. I walked back to the station where two other nurses looked at me for a reaction. "What? I think he is correct. Perception is reality and I perceive that cheap SOB to be an idiot." Mike will get a new bike. We will find a way to be together. Life will go on. My reality, well as long as I am with my boy, is a little slice of heaven.

http://www.ourtribune.com/article.php?id=13461

http://www.ourtribune.com/article.php?id=13461

The Long Goodbye

I have spent the last couple of months saying goodbye to our friends from Houston. Maybe I was living in denial, but I had put my feelings for Michael's impending exit on hold. I thought about it and when I did I started to cry, but I was really tired of crying, so I stopped thinking about the day he will have packed his car and he drives away with no idea of when I will see him again. He has vacation in the summer, but I do not. He has vacation in the fall, but again, I do not, so while he is home I will be at work. I cannot picture living day to day without him because it is unfathomable. I can't imagine it, trust me, in order to brace myself, I have tried. I applied for jobs in the Chicago area. I guess we will see. Their unemployment numbers are much higher than ours, here in Texas, so I have no idea what impact my little dog and pony show will have. My feelings are that they can find someone already there to do any job I might qualify for. I am not being pessimistic, but realistic, as to what it will take to make a monstrous move like that one. We sat down and made a pro and con list of three places we could end up, including Houston, and Chicago. The third city I don't want to mention now, for personal reasons. Houston came up the winner by default, but still a clear winner, most of it doing with housing prices, inflation and income to outgo ratio. Now we wait...we have a year to figure it all out, but still we will have to wait in limbo for a while longer. Our friends one by one are leaving us behind. Then before I know it, our turn, or I should say Michael's turn will come. I am still not prepared to think about it, even when it wakes me from a dead sleep. I am good at resolution. Usually when I make my mind to something I am good at shoving things through the barely open portal until all the opportunities fall out. Right now, even I the over bearing, big mouthed, resolutionist ( I can make up words) has no idea of which way to shove. To give up my job, the one I just got, the one I love, well, I think right now it would take something rather extraordinary to happen. I am waiting for a sign. Not so much for the heavens to open up but something more clear than the foggy ideas we have come up with while sitting stewing in our own juice. In the mean time, and I am not going to lie, this feels meaner than ever, we have to go and send our friends off to the new city. It's wonderful to care that much and awful at the same time. The last one was for our friends who I love so much I cannot even hardly tell you. Being with them in the jungle, their jungle, well, for me it was a little piece of comfort, a slice of home, familiarity in action and words. The jungle was dismantled and the moving van has long since evacuated their beloved belongings and Friday, very appropriately, the thirteenth, I said goodbye to my friends. Long hugs, well wishes and no tears from me...Until Saturday when the weight of watching more friends pack up and go hit me like a car. I hate crying, it is closely associated to weakness with most of the men in my life not tolerating it, but I have little choice as tears push out of my visibly pissed off face. I cry and then I get on with it. I guess I shouldn't feel so bad about feeling so bad, but I am tired of me and all this crap we got handed. I had thought, naively thought, that by now we would know more, have more of an answer to all of our questions. It was not to be. Our questions seem to come in long strings, wrapping around each other causing an increasingly tangled mess. I have sent resumes up there, and Michael has sent resumes down here. Both trying desperately to reach the other in order to be together. So far what we know is more about how to write a resume than where we will end up. Neither of us can be the sole support of this family in either direction, so we must both have jobs. This is one hamster wheel I would have loved to have never gotten on. Our only certainty is uncertainty. Our constant is change. So here it is, the middle of April, counting down to the last week of May. I will turn 49 in May, this year. I will blow out a fire hazardous cake and then pack up my best friend, my boyfriend, lover, dishwasher, lawn expert and personal comedian, my beloved husband and send him off without me. OK, it sucks, it really does. At what point will we know what to do? At what point we will do something, anything to be in the same state, let alone the same city? I don't have those answers either. This weekend I let go of more of those I love. I wish them happy, I really do. I hope they find wondrous things, make new friends and shake all of the fun out of the trees. I will continue to love them wherever they are. I looked at Mike and said, "So this is hell..." "I actually think it is Limbo," Michael said with a smile. "Nope, I am pretty sure this is hell. Limbo, being a misnomer, they tried to convince us is better than hell. I think this is hell right here on earth. No security, no answers and not even the person you pledge to love until death gets to help you along the way. Nope this definitely hell." I said that and then thought better of it. This is indeed Limbo, the place where you can see heaven just beyond your grasp, but can't get there. I had thought it was hell because it has been tortuous. Since I do know at some point a trigger will be pulled in one direction or another, and that trigger will eventually bring us back together, so then this will not be permanent, it just feels that way, so Limbo it is. For now while the waiting game continues I am going to go stretch. If Limbo is my new home, then I had better get my back in shape.

Seeing the Face In Front of Me

My eldest daughter said something I have been thinking about now for a couple of days. "We northerners are not very good at killing people or situations with kindness." The reason I have been thinking abo0ut it because it stemmed from a conversation we had about a reaction I had to a bad situation. She noticed we both, instantly show what we are thinking all over our faces. I do not have a poker face, and apparently she has found out, neither does she. She may be right about the "killing with kindness" thing. Cynicism is easier to show. When I first took the job at the college, all I really knew for sure was I wanted to "see" each face that came up to the counter looking for help. I didn't want to be cynical, or judge people out of hand. I had that done to me, and I know for certain, I have never liked it. My only goal was to listen, empathize and to the best of my ability, see their face, recognize that they are human first, student second. As a nurse, I had to stop myself at times from judging a situation too quickly. It is too easy to make mistakes if I didn't take the time to really look, ask questions, and find out as much information as I could before I made a decision. One breath was all it took for me to slow time down to manageable bits. If I could take one breath, even during the most critical moments, then I could slow time enough to do the dig, before I made a tragic error. Lately, I have been breathing a lot. I have had to force myself to be mindful of my face and what reaction I may be showing. I noticed something remarkable, recently. My face is contemptible. I had thought I was keeping my face in check, not showing my inner dialogue, only to find out it was clearly marked all across my emotional puss. Me, the one who lectures about judging too quickly and too harshly was allowing my face to do the very thing I find contemptible. When someone first goes to college, whether they are a kid just out of school or an adult who has found themselves being down sized out of the only world they have ever known, they all have one constant between them. They are scared. They are uncertainty, they are confounded, they are utterly overwhelmed by the idea of starting the process because the one thing college does faster than anything else is overwhelm a body. The sheer demands of class work, expenses, time management, well, I remember wanting to take my own life a few times so to speak. When I had gone back to school in the 1990's, I was working 65 to 80 hours a week, taking classes, caring for my children and mowing my lawn, I thought, momentarily, mind you, but I actually thought, "Just kill me." My work goal of seeing people is probably the smartest things I have ever done in my nearly forty year work life. I am trying to learn the rest of the job, but the importance of seeing who is standing in front of me makes the rest look like details. Not everybody who leaves me is happy with what I have handed them. "No" is a big thing in this line of work, we have to say it many times. But in my very short experience, I notice that if I take a breath, look in their eyes, and just focus on them as a human being, regardless of how often I say "No" it never seems as bad as what they had originally projected. Here is where I have gotten it wrong. You had to know this part was coming, right? I have really screwed it up when it comes to seeing me as human. I have had survive some really devastating illness I realize now because I have viewed myself as more machine than human. I have forgiven a multitude of sins from others, but when it comes to me, I will re-live a misstep or mistake a thousand times grinding it in like ground glass, until I am certain I have been punished properly. Although I see my face everyday, I never stop to really see who is standing in front of me. Perfect strangers get treated better by me than I treat myself. That is really screwed up. Each morning I stagger into the shower, wash everything, rinse everything, and buff it dry. I tippy toe to the mirror, only looking for flaws. Does something need waxed, or covered up, or painted over? Do I need a hair cut, is the gray showing too much? I am, when in my bathroom, quite literally surrounded by mirrors, yet I never really look at my face. I never look into my own eyes. There always seems to be a look of disdain for my face, by my face. It's ridiculous. Knowing that I cannot unring a bell, I now know something I cannot unknow. I am not nice to me. This morning I spent almost 2 minutes looking at my face without myself to do the usual schtick of picking myself apart. I just stood in front of the mirror and thought about what expression I was seeing, I think for the very first time. I tried with only moderate success, to see what others see when they see me for the first time. In all honesty, without my usual out of hand condemnation, it needs work. Not Botox work, but definitely "Scowl, get the away from me" work. My face in it's entirety is perfectly acceptable. What I found unacceptable was all the scrunching of my facial muscles, as if I had just eaten sour fruit for the previous hour. Since we have been under so much stress lately, I thought my shoulders were literally shouldering the brunt of my muscular paralysis. Much to my surprise, it is my face that is the one really taking the beating. My mirror time was then put to use in trying to relax my face. I focused on individual muscles, getting them to relax, fall back into some sort of alignment, that didn't make me look like Play Dough that had been balled up and discarded. Once I felt like I looked remotely human again, I went about the business of being a girl. My findings in this face thing has been real shocker to me. I was deluded in the mindset that I was showing the world a relatively calm and happy face, when in reality I was showing them what I can only describe as someone who has eaten pooh. My goal is smile at least 20 times today. I plan to build this up to at least 50 times a day. I want to exercise my right not look like a pooh eating depressive. You might think you are smiley person, I sure thought I was, until I actually looked at my face. Go spend some uninterrupted mirror time. You might be as surprised as I was, at what is reflected back. Go ahead and indulge, what I also discovered is why so many people compliment me on my eyes.

I Believe It's Time For Me To Fly

So I have been internetting for a while. I have discovered it may not be a good fit for me. I have the usual suspects of Facebook and Twitter and some other stuff. I originally did it to promote my writing, but these days my writing is taking a back seat to my life. Things are changing, shape shifting if you will. I believe I am facing a test in character, and I am not getting the joy out of the internet like I used to. It's too much for my old soul. If my mother was right and I really am an old soul, then maybe my relic-like personality needs to give up the information highway. I have thought about doing this for a while now, with all the politics, unnecessary roughness and constant contact. "What are you doing? Where have you been? What is the plan?" I have gotten called more names than I can to think about from relative strangers. Technically they are people I knew once, who now feel as though they know me well enough to say anything they want. It doesn't really bother me that much, but I am starting to feel restless, starting to want to move through all this and stick to the friends I know for certain I can count on. Our life is hard, the kind of hard that has us asking questions about things we used to be pretty certain about. I had posted things on my wall that I thought were atrocious, only to have someone call me a whiner. I suppose to them I was whining when seemingly I have it so good, but all I did in actuality was express an opinion. My perspective these days has shifted, too. I am not as tolerant as I used to be. I am not going to tolerate all the name calling like I used to. Disrespect me and you will find yourself outside the walls of my little world. Just as so many in my generation are just now finding facebook and other venues, I am calling it quits. It's not just a time waster, it's a time killer. It's a creativity killer as well. My favorite writers do not do any internet stuff. They don't because I think they know what I recently discovered. Writing takes lots of time. My new day job as a collegemfinancial advisor takes lots of time. Hell, grocery shopping takes lots of time. If I want any hope of accomplishing anything at all in my life, I need to guard my time and stop looking at innocuous pictures of playing kittens, not that they aren't adorable, but seriously, I live in a domesticated petting zoo. I would like to spend more time with them, too. I wasn't looking for drama when I posted that I was leaving. I wasn't seeking out attention, so that people would say how much they love or would miss me. I was merely trying to back out of something that no longer fit. It was a little like trying on that bathing suit I had 15 years ago, only to discover it no longer does what I had originally intended and now the spandex showcases my most unflattering spots. I deactivated my account and discovered the world did not end. My author page is still up, but I will only be using it to do what I had originally planned, promote my writing. I felt very much at peace with my decision to start disappearing for a while. Little by little I will be backing away from all the internet typing and start writing again with my chewed up pen and the tattered pages of my old spiral notebook. It is the way I like to write, the way my body feels the most comfortable while my mind and soul let loose all the words that are pushing on the inside of my skull. My friends can email me, or call. I like voices, the tenor and tone of the modulating air as it passes from their lips and sinks into my ears. All this unnecessary chatter online, the abject cruelty that people spew out thinking themselves brilliant for knocking someone on their ass, for no other reason than they can, well, that is not for me. My mom and I argued about the political games afoot. Not once did she call me stupid, ignorant, or a whiner, baby, socialist or heaven forbid a progressive. We just passionately said our very opposing views and let it all go. My parents, a very imperfect couple who gave birth to a very imperfect child, taught me that it is completely acceptable to not agree. What is not acceptable, is all the unnecessary roughness of those who do not know how to articulate their thoughts without condemning the other people around them. It's all too much. I looked at Mike the other day and thought what are we doing? What the hell are we doing? The outside world was starting to take a role in our lives it had not earned. Someone online referred to me going through something. Well, I am always going through something, everyday I get to decide who I am and which direction I want to go. For those who think me depressed, your wrong. My back bone is made of steel. I didn't survive so many things to fall apart now when so many things are cresting. Mike and I for the first time in our lives get to sit back and ask this: where do we really want to live, to do, what makes us happy? Right now, I could give a crap about much else other than my integrity, my faith, and more importantly my family. Right now, we are devising a plan, a plan about us, our future, and how we see ourselves. It's remarkable to sit back and ask, "what if we sold everything and just moved? If we could live anywhere, doing anything, where would we go? What activities do we love, and where is the place that best suits us?" Think of the last time you got to really pontificate about your life, where your choices seemed limitless? Was it in your twenties, before you established your life and family? Mike and I had promised each other we would support our dreams for ourselves and each other. We promised ourselves we would not get stuck somewhere or doing something just because someone dictated it. We promised each other we would always remember that we determine our worth. Well, it's pay day on those promises. We knew instinctively that one day we would come to a cross roads and have to decide if we wanted to practice what we had promised; today is that day. If you are a parent, then you know exactly how many times you have put your kids first. You can track your child's life stages by every gray hair you acquire, but eventually kids grow up and if you are at all an effective parent, they want to strike out on their own and live their lives according to their directives. With no one to dictate geography, or salary, or school district, Mike and I find ourselves wanting things we had put on hold until the kids were old enough. They are old enough now, they are for the most part independent souls seeking out their own futures. They are wishing us whatever we want for our happiness. For us, doors are closing and other doors have slammed wide open, letting in all kinds of crazy notions and ideas. So, in the spirit of the old joke, what do you feed a 300 pound tiger; what will Mike and Kellie do for their 50's? Anything they want.