Feeling Sneaky

For those of you who might peek on here just to see if I posted something, here you go.  I plan to stick to my every other week schedule, but there were some things I just needed to get out.  A little ranting can go a long way. 

Tasty Tidbit #1:  There is No “H”

            Spell my name right, please.  There is no H at the end of my name.  In a society that uses things like “u” for you, “r” for are, the dreaded “k” for okay, and the ultra hated “kk” for I’m really okay or to end a conversation, I find it strange that people want to add letters.  Is it really that hard?  S-A-R-A.  Look, no H.  You want to insult my creative talents, fine.  You want to crush any hope I had of becoming a poet, spiffy.  You want to try to analyze me and judge me when you don’t even know me, fantastic.  But spell my goddamn name right when you do it.  I can understand if you ask me, is there an H on the end?  I’ll tell you no.  But if you ask me, or if you have my name in PRINT and then STILL spell my name wrong, you just suck.  To me it’s careless inattention to detail.  Don’t ask me for something, don’t have my name spelled out in front of you and then ignore it, it makes you look like a waste of organic material.  I’m just saying.

Tasty Tidbit #2:  Two Dead Caterpillars

            I saw something both beautiful and tragically sad on my walk the other day.  I bet you can’t guess what it was.  The whole caterpillar butterfly metamorphosis thing has been quite prevalent in my life lately, so seeing these two dead little guys made me feel a little crushed.  I found the first one during the first quarter mile of the trail.  He was bright green and his insides had been squashed to the outside.  It looked like he had been trampled by a running, poor maybe one of those baby strollers that I see people running with.  That has to be one hell of a ride for the kid.  Anyway, I stopped and looked at his crushed little body all his insides exposed in a gooey mess.  I wondered if he knew he was dead, if he felt the spark of life leave him when the shoe came down.  I don’t think caterpillars have brains, at least not in the way that we think of a brain.  More an instinctual relay center.  Further up the trail I saw a black and orange caterpillar curled into a horseshoe shape on the side of the trail.  He looked like he had been either frightened or frozen to death.  He was fuzzy with a bright orange blotch his back, probably some survival mechanism to keep predators away.  Maybe the orange is a warning, “don’t eat me I’m poisonous,” type of thing.  I wondered if these caterpillars knew that their lives had been cut short, but what made me feel the worst was thinking that these two would never become butterflies or even moths.  They would never undertake the journey of metamorphosis.  When a caterpillar changes into a butterfly it’s DNA changes completely, there is nothing left of the caterpillar DNA at all.  I once asked the question when a caterpillar changes into butterfly did it remember being a caterpillar.  If I remember correctly the consensus was no, it would not remember, but I hope that they do.  Such a powerful journey to undertake, whether through instinct or courage and though it may be painful to go through how much more would we savor it if we could say here I am all wings and light, it wasn’t bad being a caterpillar.  I was courageous to take the journey. I want to remember those feelings of taking those first steps toward total evolution. 

Tasty Tidbit #3: Exposure

            I’ve had a couple of requests to post some of my class tortured poetry on this blog.  I thought about it for a long time before deciding that I’m not ready yet.  It’s not that I think anyone will make fun of it or anything like that, I just don’t feel like it’s time for those poems to come out into the daylight again, at least not yet.  Each time we create we put a little bit of ourselves into that creation.  If the creation is well accepted it tends to thrive.  If instead the creation is treated with disdain, disrespect and some other D word of negative connotation, the creations tend to shrivel.  To me, my writings are like children.  I give birth to each one. I tend to it, care for it, watch it grow and evolve.  When people smack my children around they need time to heal and so do I.  Right now my poetry children are huddled up under a blanket, frightened that if they show themselves they will get beaten again.  My job is to heal both them and myself.  I must be gentle.  I must realize that sometimes there is bad writing and love those creative children for who they are and what I can learn from them.  When the time is right I will post some of my poems on this blog, but not right now.  We’re still healing.

I'm Pretty Sure He Irons His Socks

I thought it might be informative and fun (at least for me), to write this week’s blog and possible some future blogs focusing on my shrink appointments and my road back to me.

I’m Pretty Sure He Irons His Socks

            I’m talking about my shrink of course.  On the phone he sounded all country, which made me a little afraid.  Why do the office buildings for these guys always look like old torture chambers, or at minimum like old moldy high schools?  I love the waiting rooms.  Ten crazy people all trying not to look crazy as we flip through Woman’s Day, or Newsweek.  I try not to look around too much when I’m sitting there although and this is going to sound so horrible, it is nice to know you aren’t the craziest person in the room.  When they call my name to finish up my insurance paperwork, they just yell out, Sara, because nobody wants to even try to pronounce my last name.  And I’m not exaggerating here, the lady yells my name.  Because that’s a good idea in a room full of nuts.  In Screaming Sally’s office I sit down and she takes off with my military id card.  Naturally I have a look around, and what do I see?  A diploma from Bible Thumper University.  Now I have no problem with the Bible, but I am an open minded individual who considers herself spiritual not thumping.  I even said, uh-oh, under my breath.  After paperwork, in which I signed two documents without seeing either of them, it was back out to the waiting room.  They have a gum machine out there, one of those kind with the chicklet’s in it.  I love those damn things.  I munch my gum and I’m digging for another quarter when this high speed city slicker voice calls my name.  I don’t know how you can sound totally country on the phone and like a New Yorker in person, it was a strange transformation. 

            And there he was, Dr. Shrink.  He led me through a maze of hallways that made me think of the labyrinth and just when I was starting to wonder where the Minotaur was, we came to a tiny room with two chairs, a desk, and a sofa crammed into it.  He told me to have a seat wherever so I took a comfortable looking orange chair.  Mistake.  It was so old that it creaked every time I breathed.  It also rocked so I looked like I was trying to do the fetal position through the whole session.  He had a nice yellow notepad and shot questions at me filling three pages with I have no idea what.  Problem- he’s a pill pusher.  This is what he said, “If there was a pill that could make you feel happy, that could make you feel better, that had no side effects, why wouldn’t you take it?”  I smiled and tried not to be a bitch.  I replied that the idea of a pill with no side effects was great but that nasal spray can kill you now-a-days and that I have a sensitive system when it comes to pills.  I explained that pills were an absolute last ditch, save my life, no alternative; Janis, Peggy, and Leah all tell me I need them, solution.  He tried to tell me that pills these days only have mild side effects.  Yeah, because the pill that screws with my brain is going to be less lethal than nasal spray, really? 

            After he reminded me to keep an open mind, yeah right, he continued with his questions.  I was distracted which probably made me look unfocused or more nuts, but I couldn’t stop staring at his socks.  He’s a skinny guy, and he had on a nice stripped button down shirt, iron grey pants that looked like they had been ironed ten or twelve times the crease was so perfect, these nice shoes, which were worn on the bottom, and then these socks.  They are the prissy pull up fancy socks that office guys wear.  They’re the kind of socks that if I was undressing a guy and took off his pants and he had those socks on I would laugh his ass out of the room.  I know they are dress socks, but come on.  These were black with diamond patterns on them and all I could do was stare.  I was wondering how far up his leg they went and then I thought I didn’t want to know the answer to that question.  For some reason those socks captivated me, and not in a good way. 

            The session ended on two sour notes for me.  The first was that Dr. Socks told me that I had to give my step-dad, Randy credit for stopping his drinking.  My first thought was, no I don’t.  My second was, don’t tell me what I’m supposed to think sock-boy.  The other thing that left me wondering if I made a poor choice in head doctor’s (by the way, I choose him by pulling his name out of a hat, literally, no joke and no I didn’t tell him that) was that after he finished his third page of writing he set his notebook down, and asked me if we had anything else to talk about.  You’re the shrink, you tell me.  When I got to the car I realized we had ended almost twenty minutes early.  I’m betting he billed Tri-Care for the full fifty-five minute session.  I have another appointment with him tomorrow.  I’m just wondering what kind of socks he’ll be wearing.  Like a good friend said to me when I told her about this mis-adventure, at least I’ll have something to blog about. 

Something I'm Not and Practices in Compassion

Something I’m Not and Practices in Compassion 

            After a break you would think that the words would be flying, but they’re not.  In fact they feel twice as slow in coming, but they are coming.  I decided to take a walk tonight, again at the lovely Greenway park. I don’t know why I went, I had a headache and I didn’t want to be around people, especially considering how I feel about my weight lately.  I went any way.  That seems to be the definition of me right now, “it doesn’t make sense, hell yes let’s do it!”  For the most part I feel like I am fumbling around, blind, fogged in, no clue how to find what I’m looking for, hell I can’t even remember what I’m looking for right now.  The butterfly metaphor is still alive and working in my life and right now I am wrapped up tight in a cocoon.  I have a feeling I’m going to be here for a minute. 

            Tonight’s blog is about me.  But, Sara, you say, aren’t they all about you?  I suppose in a way they are.  The last month or so I have been stuck in a serious depression.  My mother suffers from depression and so does my grandmother.  I don’t like thinking that something like this might be hereditary, that sounds like a cop out, an excuse, but the reality of how I have been feeling  makes me think that sometimes as much as something might sound like an excuse, it really is the truth.  For the first time since I was a teenager I have actually reached out for help.  I email my friends, I’ve had lunches with them, attend social events, in other words I make myself get out of the house.  I’m even going to see a shrink starting tomorrow, despite my spastic fears that he will pronounce me a nut job and lock me up for the rest of my life.  Most of the time I just want to stay in bed, but I know if I stay there that this thing will eat me alive.  I do not get out of bed because I want to, or because I am making some positive affirmation about the day is going to be good.  I get out of bed because I must get out of bed, it is a matter of survival. Same with reaching out to my family and friends.  Typically, I would try to bear this depression alone.  I have this fear of running people off, boring them or scaring them with what I call my “crazies.”  Not this time though.  Oh, I’m still afraid of all those things, but I know better, because last time this happened I almost didn’t reach out.  I can say with certainty that yours truly would not be here tonight if my mouth had not opened one night at a party.  I don’t even know what made me open my mouth, maybe just straight will to survive, maybe it was divine intervention either way I’m alive because of it. 

            Writing has helped immensely.  When I start breaking down, which happens far too often these days, I turn to my journals.  I write it out like you would suck poison from a wound.  I know I have to get it out of me.  If it stays in my head I’ll think about it until I break down again, berating myself and then it gets really ugly.  So instead I write.   The blank page becomes my safe space, the holder of my sorrow.  I’m grateful for every line I write.  But still, I’m not a poet.

            I don’t think I ever will be.  Oh, by the end of the semester I will probably have a better idea of what poetry should look like, but it won’t be mine.  My poetry is too abstract, which I still find incredibly amusing.  The good thing about knowing I’m not a poet is that I’m starting to get over it.  At first it hurt, learning I wasn’t a poet.  I mean I’m a writer and I thought I liked poetry, so why am I not a poet?  I would go home after poetry workshop days and just cry.  Then last week I got an okay review on my poem.  It wasn’t good by any stretch but at least I didn’t feel like the professor had completely dismantled it.  I have to admit it didn’t give me a lot of hope.  I noticed things I could have done better, playing with form and language, but I also realized that a part of me didn’t want to be a poet.  Somehow realizing that there was something on this planet that I wasn’t good at and, most probably, I was never going to be good at was a shock.  I always thought I would be good at everything I tried.  Coming to terms with something I’m not hasn’t been easy, but it has helped me see the things that I am and things that I want to change.

            First and foremost I am a nice person, a compassionate person.  I’m the kind of person who steps over ants and grasshoppers.  I stop in the middle of the trail and use my foot as a block to protect snails from being run over by strollers.  I’ve been known to run out in the middle of the road to rescue turtles (running in flip-flops no less) and dogs.  I’m the person who takes your criticism with a smile, nodding my head emphatically as you outright attack me feeling as though you just punch a hole in my chest.   I’ll give the little kids with collection buckets my last dollar.  I’m the kind of person who doesn’t want to disturb anyone with her little problems.  When I hear a song that reminds me of an ex-boyfriend I sing along and wish with all my might that he is having the best life possible, whatever that might be for him.  I’m the peace maker, the diplomat, the people pleaser.  I’m the strong army wife, but not really.  I am the person who remembers everything, you can rely on me.  I’m a good girl.  I do my homework, I get to class on time, I don’t skip.  I drink, but not often.  I don’t do drugs.  I am the poster child for what you should do and be.

            And there’s the word that started it all, should.

            Here’s how I really feel: empty and voiceless.  I want to scream at you for attacking me and scream at myself for allowing it.  I want to tell people to take care of their animals.  I want to tell people to watch where they are walking.  I want to talk to my friends about my problems no matter how small they might seem or no matter how many times I need to repeat myself and hear their reassurances.  I don’t know how to be a strong army wife any more; the last deployment nearly killed me.  I do not want to be the peace maker.  I am sick of being the luke warm diplomat and people pleaser?  Let’s not even go there.  I feel like getting drunk one of these nights and yes I’ve recently had an inkling to try pot.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t want to be a nice person or follow the rules but something in me is no longer satisfied with the choices I am making.  I am a nice person, it’s just who I am, but there is a part of me that wants to reach out and punch someone.  Yes, I believe we’ve come full circle. 

            I don’t think I could ever actually punch someone, but I wish that I could find my voice. Fear overtakes me though and I’m left staring at my hands wondering why didn’t I say something?  One incident stands out in my mind from this past summer.  I may have related this story to you in another blog, but it bears repeating.  I rescued two beagles from the side of the road.  One had a collar with a phone number on it, so I called the number and the woman there said she would come get them.  Both dogs were emancipated; you could count every bone in their bodies.  They had sores all over them, cuts and scrapes, burs in their fur.  When the woman came I wanted to question her about the dogs condition, but the only thing I could do was timidly ask how the dogs got the cuts.  She said the dogs play around horses and they got cut that way.  I didn’t believe her.  I wanted to tell her that she needed to feed her dogs that she shouldn’t even be allowed to have them.  But I didn’t.  I was too afraid.  I watched her drive away and I knew I would never see either of those two dogs again.  I doubt very much they are alive today.  I felt I was just as guilty of hurting those two dogs as the woman was.  Why is it when I see things like this I can’t speak up?  Why is it I’m so afraid?  I wish I had the answers to those questions; perhaps it would have done those pups some good. 

            This semester at school has required my voice.  Every class requires participation and they are all so small that it’s impossible to hide in the crowd.  I have tried to use my voice but have managed to get smacked down in every class, either by student or professor.  So I got quiet, but the professors still call on you, so I don’t have a choice but to speak up. I try to keep my answers small and simple.  I would rather look stupid than say too much and invite conflict.  Looking at my situation I wonder if this semester is meant to help me find my voice.  It will not be easy, it is a difficult lesson.  I must learn to speak, to say what I need to say without getting defensive or angry.  I must learn to speak even though it might cause conflict, I must remember that not everyone in the world is always going to agree with me and as a good friend once said to me, not everyone is here to support me, sometimes that is the lesson. 

            “Opposition is true friendship.”  William Blake

            I might say that opposition is you getting punch in the face over and over and over again and you being really nice about it until you are bleeding all over the place, your eyes are swollen, your teeth are cracked and you finally figure out that you need to tell the person to stop or they won’t.  But still I get what Blake is saying, because I’ve said it myself.  The opposition is the lesson.  How can we have light without dark?  How can we learn if everything around us is happy happy joy joy?  No we need the opposition, we need the contrast, and I just wish I knew how to handle it better.  One way I think I could handle it better is if I had compassion for myself.  I realized a few days ago while writing in my trusty journal, that I have almost no compassion for myself.  I have compassion for everything else, even people who are nasty to me, but I left none for me.  Usually in a rough situation I send love, light pink candles, meditate and pray for guidance.  I realized that I’ve done none of these things for myself, even though right now I could do with a little love.  So I’m being gentle with myself, loving myself, even though it’s hard.  I even let myself light one of the candles I brought back from Fatima.  A long handmade beeswax candle that I call a mother candle, because the nuns at Fatima make them and Mary is so revered there.  I haven’t noticed much of a difference, but I have noticed a tiny difference and at this moment something is better than nothing. 

            For anyone who is going through depression I would urge you to reach out to those around you.   No, not everyone is going to be helpful, but you don’t need everyone.  You just need those precious few who are willing to listen.  As for me, I will inch out of my cocoon a millimeter at a time until I am back in the sunlight.  I will find my voice one word at a time.  I will plunge into the depths of myself and return, not as I was, but better, stronger, and more full of love.

Change in Posting Days

Just to let my readers know I will be changing to a bi-weekly posting schedule.  No blog tonight, but I hope you all come back and read next week.  Thank you for your continued support!

Emotional Orphan

Thoughts for the Week:

Water should not be cloudy and fizzle. (I almost drank it)

Sometimes you need to remember there is an and, instead of always an either or.

When a leaf smacks you in the forehead, you best be paying attention.

Sometimes we choose to walk with others, and sometimes we choose to walk alone.  It is when we walk alone that we must remember that we made the choice to do so. 

God does not make broke things.  (from tonight’s meditation)

Tasty Tidbit #1: Turn Right

            For those of you who having been keeping up with this blog you might have noticed that I have been having some interesting times lately.  After a couple of good talks with friends and the weekend so close that it makes me want to skip class tomorrow, I am on the road to recentering.  I have started meditating which is both good and annoying.  I feel like I am starting from square one.  My mind wanders all over the place.  The first meditation I did I was wondering why I couldn’t hear anything or why the answers were grabbled.  I would ask a yes or no question and hear both answers.  As I wondered about this it popped in my head that I needed to breath. Being a smart ass to the Universe is one of my talents so I said I am breathing (yes I talk to the voices in my head, who doesn’t?)  I was advised to take a minimum (because lately I need more than the minimum) of three deep breaths and then ask, the answer will come out more clearly.  I have to admit it works, although it usually takes about five or six good deep breaths to get me started.  One example of this working was on Tuesday.  Anyone who goes to Austin Peay knows about the parking and traffic issues.  A little slice of hell to go with your tuition costs.  I was sitting in traffic waiting my turn to dodge through cars and pedestrians when that little voice said turn right.  I didn’t want to turn right, I wanted to turn left, but I took a couple of deep breaths and listened and found a back way home that is very simple and there is no traffic at all.  This morning I woke up expecting to feel terrified because today was my poetry workshop day.  As I meditated taking a dozen deep breaths a song started playing in my head, well the line from a song anyway, “Everything’s going to be all right.”  I remember thinking; I hope to God you know what you’re talking about. Of course it did.  I try to keep the breathing thing in mind now, especially since I have been having problems with panic attacks.  The breathing helps.  When I start to feel the anxiety taking over I start breathing.  I don’t care where I am, I just close my eyes and start breathing slow and deep.  I’m just so happy about hearing that little voice again, even if it tells me to turn right, when I think I want to turn left. 

Tasty Tidbit #2:  Not a Poet

            I have mentioned in at least one previous blog that I like poetry and that I would love to learn how to write poetry better.  I decided that this was the semester to take the poetry class offered at APSU.  Then during the first workshop I realized something, I’m not a poet.  I don’t get poetry and I’m not sure how to get myself through the next thirteen weeks.  Oh, I’ll get through it; I would just prefer not to feel humiliated every time we walk into workshop.  In my creative writing classes, there is always a weak writer, someone who loves to write but hasn’t figured out how to do it yet.  I’m that person in poetry class and it’s not an easy chair to sit in.  I’m embarrassed about my poetry, it sounds like a five year old clobbered it together for me two minutes before class starts.  The sad part is how much time I spend on my poems.  I spend hours, literally hours working on them.  I read them over and over.  I walk into class and they sound like crap.  I’m not just being a drama queen here; I mean they literally sound so pitiful.  The worst part of it is I now have to finish this class and get over it.  I have to deal with the fact that I pretty much suck at writing poetry.  The other nine students in my class weave these amazing poems.  They are all different, but they are all beautiful.  I don’t get most of them, but that doesn’t take away from the obvious talent the writers have.  I have been working this week to find a way to change my attitude about poetry class, but today again in workshop I heard myself explain that I’m just not good at poetry and that the poem I wrote was hard for me to write.  This is probably another one of those perspective changing things but for now I think I’ll stick to prose.

Emotional Orphan

            I decided earlier in the week that I wanted to write this week’s blog about parents.  More specifically my parents.  I wrote the first draft in my head, as I tend to do, and then started to write the second draft, but something was missing.  It felt whiny and overplayed.  I know I have talked a lot about my father in past tidbits and blogs, but not much about my mother.  I have been extra emotional lately, although better than the previous two weeks.  I still feel this intense need to be nurtured; the problem is I don’t know where to turn for it.  So this blog is going to be a little bouncy as I take you through my week’s worth of blog thoughts that began on Sunday afternoon, when we here in Clarksville got some rain, but in Dover where I was with my mother it was hailing and storming like a bitch.

Sunday Afternoon

            My mother is creative.  She can paint anything, sew anything, and craft pretty much anything.  I’m not sure there isn’t anything crafty that she can’t do.  Lately she has been into scrapbooking.  There is a store near her that is a big scrapbooking store and she found out they have Christmas card classes.  There is one a month and she wants me to go.  I don’t have any interest in making Christmas cards.  I only send about three out a year so I don’t feel a big need to have them around, a box will last me a solid four or five years.  But this is my mother and I like spending quality time when I can, so I say I’ll go to the class.  Ben left for Georgia Sunday morning and I left in the afternoon for round two of card making.  While we are on the third card it starts down pouring.  All I can think about is that I left my windows open at home, with a fan in one of them.  At first I say it’s no big deal, there’s nothing I can do about it anyway, than it starts to hail.  The anxiety kicks in and I have to breath.  I tell my mom I think I need to leave.  To which she answers, but I drove you.  Fuck.  I forgot.  I had dropped my Jeep off at my mom’s house and she drove out here.  I apologize to my mother, I know she wants to stay and finish the other two cards, but now I’m worried about my animals.  What if the hail tears a hole in the screen and the cats get out?  I give it a minute and repeat my request to leave, again apologizing.  She gives in this time and the lady gives us the kits for the remaining cards and mom drives me back to my Jeep.  I drove home and got there just minutes before it started raining in Clarksville.  I was glad that my animals were safe and that the inside of my house wasn’t soaking wet, but I couldn’t get the look on my mom’s face out of my head.  Late that night I was still thinking about it when I was trying to get to sleep.  This is what I wrote in my journal.

“My mother feeling like she had wasted her time and her money looks at me.  I was always such a disappointment.”

Tuesday

            Tuesday’s and Thursday’s I spend about six hours in the library doing homework.  Today I am finished with my homework and I am just sitting and staring at the wall.  I’m thinking about my parents.  I’m thinking about how I was never good enough from the very start.  I think about my mom telling me how both my father and her wanted a first born boy.  I think about the pictures in my mother’s house, the one’s of my brother.  I think about how I desperately want my parents to love me, to treat me like a daughter who is loveable.  Then I wonder if they are capable of loving me that way.  I go home after school and try to cry, but the tears just refuse to show up.  There is just this burning ache in my chest that I can’t get to go away.  I can’t cry.

Wednesday

            Wednesday I began the composition of the first draft of this blog.  I talked about how competitive my mom always was with me.  How she was jealous when I got boobs (big ones anyway, she had what I consider to be a perfect C cup until a few years ago), and how we were always competing for who lost the most weight when I was in high school.  How there were so many times when I had to play the mother in our relationship.  I talk about the fact that I can’t talk about another woman with motherly like affection because she gets jealous and pissed off.  I talk about how much it hurts that both of my parents know that I write a blog, but as far as I know, neither of them read it.  I talk about how pushed aside I felt when my little brother showed up.  How my father would scream at me when I asked him to help me with my math homework, so I stopped asking and took the F’s.  I talked about the last walk I ever took with my father, the one where he outlined my life including which college I would be going to and I told him I wasn’t going and he could go to hell if he thought I was going to live his dreams for him.  I think about my mother convincing me to join the Air Force and the disaster it lead to.  I think about all these things.  I feel like an orphan, but both my parents are alive.  I am an emotional orphan and I feel like I am starving to death.  Not from lack of food but from lack of nurturing.  Wednesday night I finally cry, the burning in my chest eases.

Thursday

            After my cry last night I decided I would be a bad student and not spend all day cooped up in the library.  I would go run some errands that I needed to run and worry about finding a parking space later.  It rained again Wednesday night and this morning was crisp and beautiful.  Some people would have called it dreary, but there was something shiny and beautiful in it to me.  I decided that I would go to school and I would study.  I drove out to school, parked, and started walking to the library which is where I spend the majority of my time.  I was only about a quarter of the way there when I just dead stopped.  I wasn’t thinking about stopping, I just did.  I stood on the sidewalk trying to figure out why I stopped, did I leave a candle lit at home?  Had I forgotten a book?  As I stood there I realized that I didn’t want to be there, it was that simple.  So without thinking about, which I’ve decided is the best way to follow spiritual guidance, I jumped back in the Jeep.  I wasn’t sure where I was going; I didn’t feel a need to go home. It popped in my head that I would like to enjoy today, the weather so crisp and fresh, so I decided to head over to the Greenway Park and take a walk. 

            When I got to the park I thought about what I said to myself this morning in the mirror.  I said, “You sure are putzing today.”  I have a little saying that I recite in the mornings from a book called The Seven Whispers, and I’ve listed my little prayer here for you.

Please help me to…

Maintain peace of mind (theme of the month)

Move at the pace of guidance (today’s theme)

Practice certainty of purpose

Surrender to surprise

Ask for what I need and offer what I can

Love the folks in front of me

Return to the world 

            When I meandered into the park this morning that second one was on my mind, I thought maybe this is what spirit wanted me to do right now.  I moved slowly in the park, trying to drink the air.  It smelled so good.  I stopped to touch rocks and trees and moss.  There were snails all over the place and I stopped to watch them too.  For anyone who doesn’t know snails are pretty much sacred to me.  A weird thing to consider sacred I know but they have always been present in my life, in fact in high school I made what I called a snail god for my first stain glass project.  Finding or seeing a snail or its shell has always been a sign that I’m on the right track.  I watched the snails wondering how many other people saw them or if they were just there for me, like a special gift.

            Being a “dreary” day, there were very few people out on the trail, which I enjoyed immensely.  I walked the entire length of the 2.6 mile trail enjoying every minute, appreciating every breath of fresh air and yes talking to Spirit about my parents.

            At first I was still in my original blog mode, the one were my parents simply didn’t love me.  There is a part in Sue Monk Kidd’s book, The Secret Life of Bees, where the main character Lily talks about how it was too much if both her parent’s hadn’t loved her.  “Some things were not possible in this world.  Children did not have two parents that refused to love them.  One, maybe, but for pity’s sake, not two.”  If you haven’t read this book I highly recommend it.  That’s how I felt.  I just couldn’t figure out how I could be so broken, the way I put it is how God could have made me so broken, that my parents couldn’t figure out how to love me.  I thought about these things as I walked up the trail.  There was something in me that little voice probably that was nudging me to change my perspective.  To look at my parents as humans.  I told the little voice that I did see my parents as humans; they were just humans who couldn’t seem to figure out how much I needed them to actually be my parents, even at 32.  I wanted to see through the eyes of love but sometimes I felt like there was no damn excuse why they had acted like they had or were still acting.  Even though my mom said it was okay about the card class I could see and hear the disappointment in her.  I had done it again, disappointed her, when was I going to get it together? 

            My walking and my conversation continued and as it did things that I wrote in my first draft began to untangle a bit.  The thing that felt the strongest was the question I had asked myself on Wednesday, were my parents capable of loving me in the capacity that I needed them to love me?  I thought about that question for a long time.  I didn’t feel like I was asking for anything extraordinary, I just wanted to be loved.  I just wanted to be good enough, even if it was just for a moment.  I figured that if I felt it for a moment that moment would preserve me for the rest of my life.  My next thought was that I didn’t want to write all of this stuff and have people think what horrible parents I have.  They aren’t horrible; I just honestly am beginning to believe they don’t know what to do with me.  After my walk I also believe that they have so much trouble loving me because they have so much trouble loving themselves.  I know they are human.  I know that children do not come with manuals and I know there is a lot I don’t understand about being a parent because I’m not one.  I try to understand it from their point of view, but it’s hard.

            As I walk the wind seems to pick up each time I hit a clear thought or at least a thought that has some clear thinking behind it.  As I walk I remind myself that (according to my beliefs anyway) I picked these two to be my parents.  I wanted to learn something from them.  I choose them with clear intent, when things were much less complicated, when I got the whole picture.  So what was I trying to learn and why?  The answer seems simple.  I must learn to love myself.  I feel it’s more than just simply having a love for oneself; this is an even deeper more fierce love that I must protect.  I wonder if that’s why have Athena sitting on my desk, a gift from a dear friend.  Is she here to show me (through wisdom), my own inner strength?  The protection bit comes in because I tend to give all of myself away until I am completely spent and most of the time I don’t notice until things start erupting around me. 

            I realize that I love my parents, even though they have trouble doing the same for me.  I realize that in a way I need to be my own mother and my own father.  By the time this realization comes I have made it to the end of the trail and started back, my pace is quicker now.  I will have to tend to myself with great awareness and balance.  It always seems to come back to those two for me.  Be aware, be balanced.  As I walked I laughed to myself and wondered out loud if that was what I came to learn this lifetime.  At that moment a leaf hit me forehead.  I mean it swooped out of the tree and attacked my forehead.  It was a tulip poplar leaf, yellow and brown with two tiny holes in it like someone had been having lunch before it flew in my face.  I got the message though.  I would tend to loving myself.  I would find a way to forgive my parents for not being parents or at least not the parents I feel I need in my life.  I will love them and I will forgive myself for being harsh to them and not learning this lesson sooner.  I would change my perspective about my parents and I would love myself.  I twirled the leaf in my hand and then released it onto the waters of the Red River and watched it float and bounce among the rocks.