Important

I have this way of making something important that isn't important at all.  Hyperfocus on a detail that doesn't deserve the attention.  Sometimes what is unimportant takes over my life.  Minutae.  Like an autistic child that can only see the freckle on your face and not the beauty of the face as a whole.

I want to live and focus on what is important.  I just can't always define what that is.  Not in my soul.  I can speak or write about what really matters and make people go "wow, she is so right."  But, I can't internalize those profound words into my own way of living.

Sometimes, I think I am broken.

Not in a way that makes me unuseable.  Just in a way that keeps me from enjoying the full measure of life.

Fruit Salad

I wish I could describe the people I work with.  I have tried for 20 minutes and the only thing I can come up with is that I work with some crazy ass people. 

Ready?

I'm almost ready to:

quit complaining

get over myself and my problems

focus on the positive

put others first

have some fun

quit overthinking

loosen up

be forgiving

do something unexpected

do something expected

show my best side

read the books that others have given me

let people in

say no

travel (not just in my mind)

paint

write

sing

dance

climb a tree

say yes

Wander

"All that wander are not lost."

I want to wander.

And get lost.

I want to veer off the path of my life and find something unexpected.

I want to lose some of my anxiety.  I want to loosen up.  I want to lose some of what doesn't work.  I want to lose some work.

I want to wonder while I wander.  I want to feel alive.  I want to smile from the inside out - deep and full.  I want to laugh until my gut hurts and tears fill my eyes.

I want to get lost in the moment.

I want to wander to the edge.

I want to lose some baggage.

I want to wander in style.  My style.

I want to tell my troubles to go away and stay gone.

I want to wander.

And get lost.

Rose Colored Glasses

I see poverty in my community almost everyday.  I work smack dab in the middle of it.  I know its face in a way that someone who is surrounded by it knows it.  I do not begin to pretend to know it as someone whose life is immersed in it.  But still, poverty is a part of my life.

So, I was a little surprised this week when I went to Austin and saw its poverty.  I was not surprised that Austin had poverty.  I was surprised that it did not look the same as my poverty.  I mean, it looked the same, it just didn't "look" the same.

There were broken down houses and yards strewn with debris of a difficult life.  Mangy looking dogs, some with limps (likely from being kicked or run over) scrounging around.  Beacons of light alongside the sadness - houses well kept.  Strung out men and women walking around looking for relief.  Others, just living life like everyone else.

I guess what was different is that I know the people that live in my poverty.  I see the heart and soul of that neighborhood, not just the broke down parts.  Or it could be that I have become immune to my poverty.  I've seen it so much that it just seems normal.

I Believe

I believe that God will not give me anything that is beyond my ability to handle.  I believe that sometimes I handle things in a way that makes it too hard to handle.

I believe that we can say yes and we can say no - that we always have a choice.  I believe that saying no is almost always the harder choice.  I believe that if I am overwhelmed and stressed beyond my limits and unhappy it is because I have said yes to the circumstances that brought all of that on.

I believe that some people are crazy and that won't change regardless of the actions I take.  I believe some people like chaos and drama and destruction and again, that won't change because of me.  I can't change the circumstances for people that choose these things.

I believe I will smile again.

I'm Not Stressed Out - Not Me

There is one thing I am really good at.  Denial.  Not the kind of denial where I act like something didn't happen that actually happened.  No, I'm an expert at the denial of how something affects me.  I can block emotions in a way that allows me to stay calm, when most people would blow.  It's a critical skill if you grew up with asthma.  Getting worked up makes asthma worse.  Staying calm makes it better.  I liked to breathe so I learned how to get calm quickly.

But staying calm in a crisis or difficult situation or in everyday stressful life does not mean that you make the emotion go away.  You just move it around so that it is not expressed in an outward way.  So chaos, anxiety, anger, elation and all other big emotions and events just run underneath the surface looking for a place to hide and ferment.  My emotions are experts too.  They know where to hide, where I can't find them.  They disappear into my soul and morph into something less recognizable.  They become cancer and eat away at me without my ever knowing until a huge lump forms somewhere and can no longer be ignored.

When I was 24 I got the shingles.  A disease mostly limited to older people or people with suppressed immune symptoms.  My doctor asked me if I was under a lot of stress.  I said no.  He then asked me to describe the past 6 months of my life.  I went through and as I mentioned all of the events that had occurred (finishing an intensive 1 year internship, finding a job, moving to Austin, getting my own apartment, being financially independent for the first time in my life, studying for and taking my RD exam, my mom getting breast cancer, me taking care of my mom on weekends and getting Christmas ready for our family) I began to see that it had been stressful.  There was a real reason I had shingles.

And now I'm 45 and though I'm aware that I've got a little more stress than usual, I still keep thinking I should be able to handle this.  I should have this all under control.  But, it is becoming clear quickly that I can't control this level of stress.  In the Fall I missed 2 wedding showers and I was a hostess for one of them.  Just forgot them.   You would think that would have been a CLEAR signal.  But I just kept trudging along, acting like I had it all together.  Now my hair is falling out in clumps.  I can't really ignore that.  But I don't know what to do.  I don't know how to fix this.

A Safe Place for Pain

There are few places where most people can be safe with their pain.  For someone like me, who rarely lets anyone past the outer layers, there are even fewer. 

I love the family that I was born into but I come from a "suck it up and quit whining kind of family."  That's fine for the everyday sort of things, but for emotions that are so raw that even I can barely acknowledge them, my family isn't much help. 
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I married into a family that thinks the best way to deal with any emotion is to ignore it and definitely not talk about it.  This is fine until life throws a curve ball and I simply cannot contain what hurts my heart.

Friends.  For most, this involves a don't ask don't tell policy.  I won't put any heavy emotional demands on you and you don't put any on me and we can talk and hang out some but never go too deep where it all gets messy.

But God provides.  And He has given me a few someones that can handle the hard parts of my life in a way that sees me through to the other side.  I hope that everyone has that.  I hope that I am that person for someone else.

I Speak Your Language

I have blogged before about my connection to weird, different, offbeat, damaged.  This is where I am comfortable.  New, shiny, perfect makes me amazingly uncomfortable.  There's nothing wrong with new, shiny, perfect.  It's just not MY safe place.  So this story I'm about to tell fits right into my preferred way of life.

It all started with T and writing.  She spells fairly accurately.  She can identify what belongs and what does not belong. She knows writing conventions.  But, she has struggled in a big way with generation.  I mean really struggled.  Blank slate struggled.  Today I was determined that she would create a sentence when given a topic.

Me:  I want you to write one sentence about a friend.
T:  (staring at me, wheels trying to turn, mouth open, unable to produce anything)
Me:  How about a sentence telling me what your favorite color is.
T: 
Me:  Write a sentence about your favorite food to eat in the cafeteria.
T:

It was like she didn't know where to go to get her information.  So I drew a picture of her and her brain.  I told her that in her brain was all of the things she thinks.  Her dreams.  How she feels.  Memories of places she has gone.  Television shows she has watched.  People that she knows.  And so on.

The conversation resumed.
Me:  Tell me about one of your friends.
T:  I don't really have any friends.  Except for S.  She's really nice.

All this time and all she needed was directions.

HELP!!!!

One of my themes for this year is to teach people to fish, rather than continuously providing the fish.  I think this is a very good concept.  (I think someone needs to do this for me in the area of technology.)  I think that if I can accomplish this, then everyone's life will be better.

Where I have failed is in the transition.  You can't just stop providing fish and expect people to learn to fish automatically.  I kind of took an all or nothing approach.  Here, let me take care of everything you need and do all of the thinking and give you things to do that don't require any real committment from you.  Okay, I'm exhausted from providing fish for my family and yours too.  I'm feeling kind of used.  You need to learn how to fish for yourself.  Go to it.

The recipient isn't sure what happened.  They want to know why I can't just keep fishing for them.  They continue to feel that it isn't their responsibility so they don't do anything but complain about how I am no longer providing fish for them.  I continue to be resentful that they can't get their own damn fish.  I don't understand why they just don't get to it.

And people that depend on them, continue to starve.  And though I am not fully responsible for that, I am partially responsible.  Because I haven't taught anyone how to fish.  I simply quit providing fish.

Now it's time to do this the right way.  I'm just not sure how.  Maybe someone will show me.

It's a Small World

As we are working on the new fence tonight, we could hear the sound of a basketball dribbling, shooting, dribbling across the rode.  Of course Alex, with his radar for people, noticed.  He said "after we finish with this fence I thought I might go meet that kid."  This from the child who said he refused to meet or like any people from College Station.  So nonchalantly we said "sure, go ahead."

He comes back in 15 minutes without comment.  I ask him how it went and he replies "They are really nice."  Me, "How old is he?"  Alex, "Eleven."  I can tell I'm going to have to drag this out of him and then he begins to talk as if he forgot his vow of silence and hatred toward anything CS.

Turns out, the people across the street used to live in our old neighborhood.  We didn't know them well but as we would walk through the neighborhood and they would walk through the neighborhood we would often stop and talk.  Sometimes for 5 minutes and sometimes for 30.  They moved out about 8 years ago.  I always liked her and we had this ease around each other that I find so rarely with people that I don't know well.

I'm excited and thankful for this gift.

Drug Addict

There is a moment before surgery, after they have inserted the IV into your hand, when they give you that drug that completely relaxes you without making you immediately konk out.   Nirvana.  I can feel the coolness of the drug course through my veins as all of the worries, pains and irritations of life just disappear in an instant.  It, and the warmed blankets, are the only thing that ever make me look forward to surgery.

Now, I have the opposite kind of drug coursing through my veins.  No IV is required.  There are times when all is well and I feel it rapidly make its way through the highways of my bloodstream and straight to my heart.  Blood pumping out of control.  Heat.  Sweat.  Agitation spreading like wildfire. 

The hormones of menopause or peri-menopause or whatever stage any 45 year old woman happens to be in just suck.  They take a rational, intelligent and well organized woman and turn her into an emotional slob who can't remember the conversation she had with you two minutes ago.

Uugh!!!

Wake Up

In the middle of a very pleasant dream (no details people, this is PG) I heard a beeping sound.  Again.  And again.  As dream faded into reality I realized that the alarm that signals entry and exit from our home was going off.  Every 6 seconds.  At first I thought it was Bob on one of his insomniac middle of the night lets pretend like its the middle of the afternoon adventures.  But as I felt next to me I realized he was in the middle of one of his own dreams.

I woke him up so he could figure it out.  As he fumbled around in the dark to put clothes on to face the potential of danger, I snuggled in tighter and waited.  He checked things out, figured out it was the smoke alarm that was set off by an over ambitious fire the night before and reset it so it wouldn't beep anymore. I was almost asleep by this point. 

This morning in the middle of another dream, that I can't remember, a sneezing attack woke me up.  As I glanced at the clock I realized my alarm had failed to go off, so I set it for 40 minutes later.  I snoozed until that alarm rang and my dreams faded into the reality that Christmas vacation was over.

I went to work with a list prepared with determination and hope the night before.  I fumbled around the first few hours trying to remember what it meant to work while spilling my guts in an impromptu therapy session with my friends that included one outrageously funny gyno story (not mine.)  At least one thing on that well prepared list got done. 

Thank God for husbands and friends.

A Walk in the Park

There is something about a walk on a sunny day that brings forth peace in my soul.  Cool breeze blowing, dogs pulling at the leash when a squirrel teases.  Passing people I don't know as they go along their way. 

The birds chirp and the trees sway and I am home.  I am at that place where any troubles I may have disappear, for at least a moment. 

Our new neighborhood has a small lake and a park at the lake.  Once we get there the dogs are off the leash and there is freedom for everyone.  Freedom to imagine a picnic on the bank on a Spring day or slowly cooking my white skin as summer approaches.  Kayaks gliding through the water as sweat forms beads on my forehead.  Work that feels like play.  Life that feels full.

Like a New Year, Like a New Year

There are some things that are different about this New Year, 2011.  New house.  The absence of black-eyed peas, pork chops, resolutions and guilt.

I am not starting this year with grand, life-changing expectations.    I am starting this year with desires, that have remained over time, to be a better person.  To let the circumstances of life form me in a way of my choosing.  A way that makes me wiser and more interesting and not bitter and worn out.  To engage in the rough and tumble of every day with an open mind and willing spirit.  To see beyond what my eyes have seen a thousand times.  Be confident in the trials and the triumphs.  Seek what is best rather than what is comfortable.  Grant forgiveness at the end of every day to myself and anyone along my path.  Savor my cup of tea.

Okay 2011.  I'm ready.