Writing, Reading, Reflection

Yes, it’s been six months since I posted something. There are a bazillion reasons why, but it simply comes down to time. When push came to shove, the blog went by the wayside. In truth, all writing and reflection ended up in the closet. Now, that time is back on my side, I’m dusting off the cobwebs and getting back to the writing and reflection, which has always been my lifeline. Since my wonderful friend Stacey introduced me to blogging, I can use this as a place to do that. With school ending, and the summer being made a sacred time for me to regroup, process, think, reflect and plan, I hope to be here every day doing what I love to do, WRITE.

Below are photos of one reason I’ve not had time to do my writing. Of course he would say that he doesn’t ask me to not write, and that is VERY true, but when given the choice the last few months, I’ve chosen to spend the evening with him rather than write. It’s not his fault that he’s a good guy and I’d rather be with him than plunk myself in front of the computer!

So, tell me, honestly, what do you think about when you awake in the morning?  What were those first few thoughts as you became aware of your surroundings, as you began to climb out of dream land and recognize the movement of your legs, the pillow beneath your head, the covers touching your skin?

Here were my thoughts this morning. (Recognize, I KNOW I likely do not think like everyone else! )

I have left 99 percent of my baggage along the side of the road in the last five years. Several years and thousands of dollars on therapy (and Lexipro) have allowed me to set down the suitcase of hate, the handbag of ugliness, the trunk of fear, the backpack of constant uneasiness…I’m so much lighter. My shoulders are not bogged down. I awake with so much less pain in my joints. I awake relaxed and rejuvenated because I am not hauling around those extra pounds that I took on when I was a little girl and had no other ways of coping, as a teenager when I had taken it all on to hide what I was truly feeling, as a twenty-something when I didn’t know any other way of dealing with things.

By 30, I was really good at catching the baggage thrown at me, and I was even better at shopping for more to add to the pile. Imagine purposefully seeking out more baggage? Comical, huh?

Then, something snapped. I could no longer carry it all. I wanted to run. Who can run when bogged down with bags and suitcases and trunks full of junk accumlated from issues with other people?  I began to shed them. One by one.

Today as I awoke, this all came to me. The baggage is nearly gone. Sure, occasionally someone picks up a piece of it and hurls it at my head. Too, there are days I walk down one of those roads where I left a pile of that baggage and I trip over it, fall on my face. Even get a little bloody and bruised. But let me tell you how much easier it is to recover from a goose egg on the back of your head, or jump up and dust myself off–so much easier than lugging a thousand and three pounds up and down the stairs each day, hunched and sweating, gasping for air, with no end in sight.

Thank god for the year I took to toss the baggage off, one piece at a time. It was painful. It’s like someone who is buried under a building that collapses in an earthquake. What follows the removal of the brick and wood is far more painful and dangerous than the collapse itself. The body has a hard time readjusting once it’s been crushed. Unlike in medicine, though, in therapy there is no pressurized machine to wrap around the leg, the arm, the heart to help ease it back to normal. And, of course, when normal is such a distant memory, the body and mind have even more difficulty knowing when “normal” has been reached.

A year of unearthing, rediscovering, coming to terms with what normal is and/or can be.  Realizing that each interaction, each experience is a lesson we are being given. If we don’t get the lesson the first time, it will happen again, and again, and again until we get it. Having the ability to vocalize what the lesson is and verbalizing what you’ve learned from the experience and how it’s changed your way of life and following through. Otherwise, the lesson will come around again, and sometimes it will be more painful the second time around.

I know that when I trip and fall–that is normal. Just pick yourself up. Dust yourself off. Take a walk, a Tylenol, a nap, a break, a deep breath. In the great scheme of things, it’s all okay.  Life is all about learning and unearthing the best part of who we are so that we can contribute to the common good of the world. If we do not recognize that is the purpose of our lives, then we will continue to be souls burdened by baggage, struggling against the current of the direction we are meant to be going.

Yes, these were my waking thoughts. Several years ago, I made a pact with myself to analzye my life before I fell asleep. Did I do my very best today? If not, why? What do I need to do differently tomorrow to ensure that I do the right thing? Because of that pact, I’ve found I awake almost every morning wondering what path my life with take today.

Okay, if you read the last few weeks of posts, you’ll see that I’m very happy, finding love and meaning in work, and the tone of my posts could be construed as unrealistic, Disney-like, even. Well, as always, I’ve been brought back to reality. Yes, no more floating on cloud nine. No more blissful posts. What you may ask has happened, well, how do I put this as lightly as possible? It’s cheerleading. Yes, the world of backbends, tabletop jumps, pony tails perfectly coiffed, little pleated skirts, pom pons and caddy girls has infiltrated my life.

I do not want to offend those of you who were once cheerleaders because I’m sure you have wonderful memories. But, let me tell you from an adult’s perspective middle school cheerleaders are not fun nor do they create wonderful memories for me. They are caddy, looking down their noses at every girl in the hall, leering at them like they were wild animals circling to take down the antelope unable to keep up with the herd. Yes, middle school girls are not the most pleasant creatures anyhow, their hormones swinging more quickly and drastically than a birdfeeder in a tornado, but give them a skirt, give them a 10 for their herkey jerk, their perfectly turned hands and tight arms–not those noodle arms, for heaven’s sake!–and you create girls who not only have hormones out of control but they have fangs and laser vision that cuts through the hardest of people.

I had to do the whole, “Don’t roll your eyes at me!” speech, but unlike most mothers, I tell the girls they cannot roll their eyes at the girl who perfected eye rolling–hello, that’s me! Do not roll them unless you can throw in the head toss that causes the hair to move like a staccato note, stomp the right foot perfectly enough to cause noise but not so sloppily that you slip and nearly fall, that you move your hip and turn your body all in one fell swoop, and for heaven’s sake do not roll your eyes if you cannot do all of these things and leave the room, slamming the door behind you!

Of course, I demonstrate this perfectly, just like I was 14 again and storming out of my parents’ living room heading for my room, all the while my dad saying, “Don’t roll your eyes at me, young lady! Don’t slam that door, either, or I’ll be popping it off the hinges and you’ll see what having no privacy is all about!”

Yes, cheerleading has arrived and has popped the bubble of my gaiety, has sucked the air out of my “high on life” and has brought me down to reality, kicking and screaming all the way—actually, I’m not kicking and screaming, it’s the kicking and screaming of middle school girls doing it, and right behind them, the mothers who are living vicariously through their 13 year old daughters….This is why  God didn’t give me girls to raise, I’m quite sure.

Just posting to let you know I’m alive and well. I had cheer tryouts this week and loads to grade and meetings out the whazoo…so no postings. I’ll catch up on Sunday. No worries.

After posting that my son wasn’t coming home, he changed his mind. He arrived late Friday night, and we spent Saturday together, eating lunch with my parents, shopping for his birthday gift, etc. This is a child who could have had anything for his birthday, and all he wanted from me was a pair of jeans, and I had to force him to get those. He’s such a good kid. We stopped by Eric’s so he could meet his kids–Eric’s son turned 15 yesterday.

It was lovely having Jake home–even for a little while. He went to his dad’s last night to celebrate his birthday, watch the MU game and then watch the Chiefs (lose, I’m sure) today. I’ll be taking him back to campus later this afternoon.

This is the first year I’ve not watched the video of his birth. I just realized that. I always watch the video of the day he was born. God, we loved him so much. His dad taped Jake’s first bath while I was being moved to my room. My dad was on the other side of the glass watching from the hall, smiling and tapping on the glass trying to get Jake’s attention. In the background you can hear Jake’s dad sniffling. I remember that day of his birth vividly. I was so afraid of being a mom. What if I wasn’t a good mother? What if I raised him wrong? The fear of it all. And, honestly, that fear has yet to lift!  I worry every day about being a good mom. Of course, I have come to the conclusion that I did do a good job with him, but there is always tomorrow. I could mess it up then, right?

After Jake left, I went to Eric’s. We had a great evening. First of all, he let me watch HGTV in bed. Yes, seems very small, but let me tell you this was huge for me. In addition, with a glass of wine in hand, we discussed the questions in the book Lies at the Altar. The simple fact that we spent over two hours talking about this book–with HGTV in the background–cemented the fact that this is serious!

Needless to say, yesterday proved to be a day of happiness. I went to sleep content with knowing that I have the greatest child in the world, I’m madly in love and I’m loved in return. Seems so simple doesn’t it? But how many times have I gone to sleep in the last 39 years without feeling this way? Too many to count, to many to dwell on.  All that matters is that last night all the little stars in the sky lined up for me, and it wasn’t just happiness that I felt. There was a real sense of peace and gratitude and, even, complete and utter fulfillment.

I got home from work tonight at 7.  A twelve hour stint at work yet again. However, I arrived home to the smell of wood burning in someone’s fireplace, the air was crisp and there is something about the trees right now as they begin to change. There is a gentle hum in the slow turning colors, the way the leaves must be stretching and changing, pulling their last bits of nutrients from the trees that will soon shake them free. If it never got any colder, I’d be very happy. Just enough cool that I can crack the windows and curl up under my comforter and get all cozy and warm.

I’m too tired to clean the house, which desperately needs it. I got an email from my son who was planning on coming home from college this weekend to celebrate his 19th birthday. He says he wants to go to the MU game in Oklahoma instead. I told him “of course, go. Have fun!” But there is that twinge of disappointment, too. This is his first time canceling coming home. It’s a good sign. He’s having fun with his friends. He’s doing things he loves. He is creating a life for himself. But there is also something very sad about this. Not that he won’t be home, but that someday in the near future the next missed event might be a major holiday. That makes me sad. Before long, he’ll likely have a girlfriend who will want him to go home with her. In a few years, he’ll likely live out of state and won’t have the money to come home every holiday. It’s bittersweet this growing up, growing old, letting go that we must do.

In truth, I’m working so much so that I don’t miss Jake so much. I know that. If I weren’t dating again, I’d likely be at work, doing work every moment of my waking hours. Work is the way I avoid things, especially feelings. I love my job; I am good at it; there, I can sink into things that bring me success and intellectual stimulation–all of which keeps me distant from emotions like sadness and lonliness and longing. I must sit and feel this. I must sit and feel.

My dearest friend Stacey posted eight different categories with 8 different things in them, and since I love these kinds of lists, I thought I’d post the same. Here goes, but like always, I can’t follow directions, so I’m listing 10 things in each category

8 things I’m passionate about

1. Doing the right thing–all the time, to excess, until I’m stressed out

2. My son

3. My new love affair

4. Friends

5. Family

6. Writing

7. Reading

8. Teaching

9. art

10. Listening to God

8 things I say often

1. Oh, that’s so sad

2. I love you

3. Tell me about your book

4. So, what are you learning?

5. Not my problem

6. Sure, I can do that

7. There’s just not enough time in the day

8. Sure, I can do that!

9. How are you?

10. Duh!

8 books I’ve read recently

1. Eat, Pray, Love

2. The Truth about Great Marriages

3. Born Blue

4. Lessons Before Dying

5. In Praise of Slowness

6. Lovely Bones

7. poems by Bukowski

8. Monster

9. My Thirteenth Year

10. Into the Wild

8 Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over

1. Rock You Like a Hurricane (Scorpions)

2. In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins)

3. Hold on To Your Dreams (Triumph)

4. More than a Feeling (Boston)

5. Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Judy Garland)

6. Whole Lotta Love (Led Zepplin)

7. Most Meatloaf songs

8. Love Shack (B-52′s)

9. Most of AC/DC

10. Pachabel’s Canon

8 Things I want to do before I die

1. Write a book

2. Go to France

3. Go back to England and live for several months

4. Win the Lottery

5. Live in the mountains

6. Go to a Yoga retreat in New Mexico

7. Go on an African Safari

8. See my son and neices grow into loving, happy adults

9. okay. so this is the only one that I’ll just list 8 things!

8 Things that attract me to my friends

1. Honesty

2. Fun

3. Sense of adventure

4. Rooted in goodness

5. Family values

6. Love of life

7. Creativity

8. Non-judgemental

9. Laughter

10. Hard working and fun loving

8 Things I’ve Learned This Year

1. Love exists

2. I’m capable of loving

3. I’m a good mother

4. I need to be still more often

5. I say “yes, I can do that” too often

6. I love life

7. It’s hard letting go, but when you do good things fill the gap

8. Internet dating isn’t bad

9. I still miss my friend Linda

10. Church might not be so bad

11. Okay, now I’m not following my own rules, but I have to add this one–Stacey is a very strong person who knows me very well and guides me in the right direction.

The book Eat, Pray, Love has struck a cord. It’s been on the book shelves at Border’s now for a while and has been calling to me. After watching the interview of the author on Oprah, I bought the book today. I opened it and began reading. It is as if the author was writing about me–with some exceptions, of course. I’ve been writing my own story of self-discovery, and in the process have become incredibly aware of who I am and what I want in my life. Reading this book, allows me to know that there are so many other women out there struggling to find themselves and find love–that is good and true.
This past week, I’ve had some serious conversations with the man I’m dating. In the process, I’m seeing my self in a new light. For the first time, I’m beginning to trust a man with every ounce of who I am. It’s difficult for me, which is frustrating to him, I must say. I keep testing him, and I must stop doing that. There is such fear though that I’ll dive in and be hurt in the process. That being said, if there was one person I’d trust not to hurt me it would be Eric. So why must I test him?

While reading the book, though, I understand that believing in the fairy tale romance is unreasonable, but making a choice to bring someone into your life because they are good, because they are capable of love, because I am capable of being loved and loving in return is a wonderful and mature thing to do. Several months ago, I was made aware that I was ready to be in love. I was ready to find someone to spend my life with. I didn’t think it would happen so quickly, but years of eating, praying and loving–no matter how misguided, have gotten me to a place where I am ready for a life-long commitment.

At this moment in my life, I’m afraid that I’ll mess this moment up, that I am deluded  into believing that this is real. I suppose that is normal. I do not know. I’ve never felt this way about someone before, so that in itself makes me feel safer. Like it’s real and the right thing to do.   This relationship is different. Eric is different. Thank God.

To help me see the difference, I’m posting a part of the writing I’ve been working on so that I can see how my life is different, how I’m accepting love into my life now for very different reasons than I did the times before. Of course, before “love” wasn’t real love. But to see it, makes me realize how different I am from 10 years ago. Again, thank God.

Eric, if you read this, this is an important event I’m about to share. You didn’t have to ask; I’m just offering it to you so you know a little more about me. If you do ask, you know I’ll answer. Thank you for being good to me. I know you said I don’t have to thank you, but I need to thank you.

Excerpt:

“Though I try to live a life that is good and kind, I am not religious, nor did this journey lead me to a religion. What I discovered, however, is that if you stop and listen, God—or what I deem to be God—is everywhere. But I didn’t realize this immediately. I knew the little prayers to help me find more information were getting answered as I asked them, but I didn’t quite understand why. I had prayed for years. Never had those prayers been answered so obviously.  In fact, most prayers were never answered. Why now? It wasn’t as if the burglary was the first time I had been victimized. My entire life was filled with one form of trauma or abuse.  Some much worse than the fear initiated by the burglary, and yet during those truly horrific times when I prayed hard, I either received no help or I quickly accepted what I thought was an answer to my prayers. As a child when scary things were happening around me, I’d close my eyes and whisper, “Please god, help me. Make it stop.” But it didn’t.
As an adult, I had nearly stopped praying until one life-changing event occurred.  Just minutes before a horrible car accident, of which I was the sole witness, I was talking on the phone to a man who would become a boyfriend and continuation of abuse because I thought of him as an answer to a prayer. On this particular evening in late fall of 1998, he insisted knowing my exact location—which, I later learned, was one of his controlling characteristics. At the time, I questioned his need to know exactly where I was. After all, he was in Las Vegas thousands of miles away from me. What did it matter? He didn’t find it funny when I tried to make up numbers for longitude and latitude, and instead of continuing to argue, I told him where I was. The signposts I passed at that moment said Hwy 6 and Hwy W. It proved to be the most beneficial thing I could have uttered that night.
Twenty minutes later when I was returning to town, the accident occurred at that exact location. The car sitting in front of me at a stop sign pulled out in front of a grain truck. In a split second one woman was ejected from the car and landed in front of me, my headlights shining on her dark clothing. The other two remained in the front seat of the car that now rested in a field a few hundred feet from me. The November sky was pitch black. The country roads were empty except for my screaming into the phone. When the 911 operator asked where I was, I knew exactly. Highways 6 and W. If the man in Vegas hadn’t insisted on knowing my exact location just minutes earlier, I wouldn’t have known what to tell the operator.
I was in desperate need of someone to help me. A car drove up alongside mine, an answer to my prayer, I thought. The woman who was driving just looked at me, mouthed “Sorry”, and drove around the woman thrown from the car and continued to drive, leaving me there alone. I couldn’t do anything.  The 911 operator demanded I stay near my car for fear that if I tried to help the woman lying in front of my car or tried to cross the highway to check on the others, I’d be hit by an unknowing passerby.
Once emergency vehicles arrived, I was asked to call someone to come and get me. The emergency lights that filled the night sky beckoned me closer. I found myself wandering the highway, the pasture where the car had stopped, the man still slumped over the wheel. Several troopers kept removing me from the area, and placing me in their cars. Within a few minutes, I was again wandering around. I was in shock, and the patrolmen knew it. I began to call the handful of numbers I could remember at that moment. It was Friday night. No one was home—not even my 70-year-old grandma who was always home. There was no one there for me. I sat in my car, praying that someone would call me back. My phone rang and it was him, the man in Vegas. A sure sign from God. He was, after all, the reason I knew where I was when I called for help. He was the only one that Friday night who was there to talk me through what I’d just seen, and he was trying to help me the best he could. Since my own friends and family weren’t able to get me, he said his parents were willing to do it; instead, a group of firemen drove me home. Rather than seeing the firemen as the people God had placed in front of me that night to take care of me, I perceived the man in Vegas as an answered prayer, and I went forward with him, which was possibly the single biggest mistake I could have made.

Twenty years ago, I had a friend tell me she was getting a degree in art therapy. At that time, even though I loved art, I had no idea what that meant or how art could be therapuetic. Six years ago, as I was looking for a counselor to help me through numerous bad experiences, a friend recommended a woman who incorporates art into her therapy.

By then, I was firmly established in writing and art as part of my life, I began to understand. Today was one of those art therapy days. I took Eric to meet my son this weekend, and that went very well. Leaving my son at college, again, was hard and then, later in the evening, the past reared its ugly head, and I needed to be alone. Without going into the details, I’ve learned over the years that when the past creeps up on me, slaps me around a little bit and shakes the very foundation I have worked so hard to repair, I have to take a moment–or two–and retreat into my self.

Today was that kind of day, and I found myself in my art room patching away that foundation. The beauty of it was that I wasn’t feeling guilty–Eric was okay with this unlike so many other men I’ve dated who are like emotional vampires, sucking the life right out of me. Instead of asking questions, pouting or demanding my presence, he let me have my day and allowed me to heal in my art room.

Ironically, I’ve been joking with him about “testing” him to see if he’s the man I want to be with. I didn’t intend this to be a test, but if I had, he passed with flying colors.

My project today was creating a collage of images from my garden. I’ve been collecting pictures all summer. There are the spring flowers in full bloom, my statuse in the late evening sun, the butterflies, squirrels and neighbor’s cat prowling around the yard. I found wonderful quotes about gardens and how they are the things that connect us to god, the things that allow us to create something living. The collage isn’t any wonderful piece of art, but today the process of creating it allowed me to re-center. Cutting each flower, gluing them, writing the quotes, all of this allowed me to sit and just be.

My last post was about falling in love. Today, the fact that Eric supported me in my need to create made me fall even more. Funny, though, how “fall” is a good thing here. Maybe I should consider changing this phrase “falling in love” to something more uplifting. There is no falling, really. It isn’t painful, though it is scary at times.

I’m better, now, after creating this little collage–better on so many levels. I will post it as soon as I get a picture of it.
Thank you, Eric, for letting me fall apart a little and for giving me the time to pull myself back together.