I regret to inform you that the party you were all invited to as been canceled. And not even until further notice either. It's just been canceled. Now, for those of you are feeling indignat that you didn't get your invitation, it's probably because you have a cheery disposition. I was having a pity party, and there is no place for optimism there.
It's a shame too. I had found the most morose decorations. I had also purchased quite a few humidifiers so it would feel like it was raining, which seems like a nice touch. Besides which, it would make it that much more pitiful to open soggy gifts that are also empty, or better yet, filled with IOU's. And pitiful is what I was striving for, after all. The cake was to be undercooked, with salt added instead of sugar, and the rest of the eats- laced with salmonilla.
It would have been such a good pity party too. But then I went and did the dumbest thing EVER. I included my mom is my plans, and I'll tell you...there's never been another person alive who's better at hearing you feel sorry for yourself, and then saying something so horrendously sympathetic about someone else in worse straights, and making you feel very very silly. That's right, after listening to me sniffle and whine for a few minutes, she said something to the effect of "It's a good thing you don't live in Japan!"
Yep. Conversation stopper right there. Not much you can say to that is there?
So from the very bottom of my heart, thanks mom. Thankyou for putting things in perspective for me, and putting an end to my fantastically selfish pity party. No, my life is not what I want it to be. I do, however, have a home with four walls and a roof. Hot water coming out of my taps, and a working toilette. There is food in my fridge, clean clothes on my back. I have a phone to call someone, and a car to get where I need to be. My children are safe, and healthy, and happy. I know where all the people I love are, and that they are safe, happy, healthy and at least as well provided as I. Heat comes out of my vents when it is cold, and lights come on when it is dark. The air I breathe is safe, as is the food I eat. I do not live in fear for my life, or for the lives of my family. I have a place to go when I am sick, where I will be cared for. I have a place to buy medicine when I need it. The water I drink is clean and fresh.
Not only do I have everything I need to survive, but I have what I need to live. Happily too, if I could get out of my own way. I have a computer, to learn on and to communicate and reach out to anyone and anywhere. I have books to read, a television to watch, movies and music to entertain myself with. There are board games in the basement, and decks of cards on top of the fridge. My house is usually filled with the sound of laughing children, and tapping dressup shoes. There are happy little make up smudges at roughly a 6 year olds level. Toys are scattered about in every room in the house. My back yard is (or will be when it's warmer) green and lush with grass and flowers. It is large too, I have a lot of room to enjoy my children.
I have so many blessings, so much to be happy for. So life doesn't look like I thought it would today...but mom is right. It looks a hell of a lot better than a lot of other peoples lives. There are many people who would love to have just ONE of my many blessings. It's a sad thing, when it takes a woman who's been through so much and who has so much right to be angry and pitiful to tell me not to feel sorry for myself.
So, longs story short. the party is off. I'm celebrating instead, with a quiet thanks for all that I've been given.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
insomnia is no match for a good imagination
In periods of stress and anxiety, I always get insomnia. It's enough to drive me nuts, simply because facing anxiety and stress alone are difficult let alone doing it while exhausted. What you might struggle to deal with today, I can pretty much assure you that if you stay up half the night, today will feel like wonderland compared to tomorrow. Sleep is essential for health- mind, body and soul.
When you've spent nights awake till two and then up at six, the darkness seems deeper and darker and reaches too far to see the edge of. Loneliness is sharper, what you are afraid will happen seems so much more likely. When it's two am, and everyone is asleep and the house and everything around you is silent, isolation is at it's peak. Solutions to problems are tucked away somewhere, out of sight and hidden. Mentally, you spin around and around and around, lighting for a moment on a thought and then skipping away again when it stings. When you're that tired, and that stressed, everything stings. Happy thoughts belong to the day, not to the people sitting alone in the dark.
On these nights, I try to banish the fear, or sadness or stress with happy thoughts. Something so happy, so beautiful that the darkness can't break in. Since I was very young, I've gone to the same mental place when even the relief of sleep is hard to hold on to. My little personal cure for insomnia.
I curl up in bed and close my eyes and I imagine something I will never ever have, but something that is so perfect, the image is enough.
I imagine my mother running in the sun catching butterflies with my daughter. I can see the expression on her face as they jump through the sprinkler, flashing in and out of the little rainbows. I imagine us, mom and the girls and I, swinging on the swings feet pointed to the sun. I imagine us jumping in puddles in the rain and looking for worms and other icky's. I see us all sitting on a log by the creek eating ice cream. Walking down the trails in the snow, sliding down hills with rosey cheeks. In my imagination, she does not limp or hurt. We swim in the summer, and slide in the winter. We rake leaves and jump in the piles in the fall, we go on hikes and look for all the baby snapping turtles so faith can be like Diego and help them find their way to their mothers in the water. We skip and run and laugh and play, and she's always laughing and smiling.
Even though I know I will never have these things, imagining what it would be like if I COULD...it is enough to make me happy and relaxed enough to sleep. Truth be told, I do not do this only when I can't sleep. Every night I am not sleeping before I've touched my pillow, I spend a little bit of time in that other world where my mom gets to be the person she would have been.
To you it sounds morbid maybe, but to me...it's perfect.
When you've spent nights awake till two and then up at six, the darkness seems deeper and darker and reaches too far to see the edge of. Loneliness is sharper, what you are afraid will happen seems so much more likely. When it's two am, and everyone is asleep and the house and everything around you is silent, isolation is at it's peak. Solutions to problems are tucked away somewhere, out of sight and hidden. Mentally, you spin around and around and around, lighting for a moment on a thought and then skipping away again when it stings. When you're that tired, and that stressed, everything stings. Happy thoughts belong to the day, not to the people sitting alone in the dark.
On these nights, I try to banish the fear, or sadness or stress with happy thoughts. Something so happy, so beautiful that the darkness can't break in. Since I was very young, I've gone to the same mental place when even the relief of sleep is hard to hold on to. My little personal cure for insomnia.
I curl up in bed and close my eyes and I imagine something I will never ever have, but something that is so perfect, the image is enough.
I imagine my mother running in the sun catching butterflies with my daughter. I can see the expression on her face as they jump through the sprinkler, flashing in and out of the little rainbows. I imagine us, mom and the girls and I, swinging on the swings feet pointed to the sun. I imagine us jumping in puddles in the rain and looking for worms and other icky's. I see us all sitting on a log by the creek eating ice cream. Walking down the trails in the snow, sliding down hills with rosey cheeks. In my imagination, she does not limp or hurt. We swim in the summer, and slide in the winter. We rake leaves and jump in the piles in the fall, we go on hikes and look for all the baby snapping turtles so faith can be like Diego and help them find their way to their mothers in the water. We skip and run and laugh and play, and she's always laughing and smiling.
Even though I know I will never have these things, imagining what it would be like if I COULD...it is enough to make me happy and relaxed enough to sleep. Truth be told, I do not do this only when I can't sleep. Every night I am not sleeping before I've touched my pillow, I spend a little bit of time in that other world where my mom gets to be the person she would have been.
To you it sounds morbid maybe, but to me...it's perfect.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Every day starts out perfect
I think that every day starts out perfectly...and remember, just because you're eyes aren't open yet doesn't mean the day hasn't started. Before the sun comes up and eyes open, nothing bad has happened. No mistakes have been made. You haven't accidentally kicked the cat off the balcony, you haven't burned your scalp with the curling iron, you have not realized yet that your hot water tank has been leaking alllllllllll night. You didn't run over a dog on the way to work. The junkie has yet to go and get his fix. A parent hasn't crossed a line they can never come back from.
If you took the time, you would see the perfect beauty of a fresh new day. Dew drops on a spiders web, frost patterns on the window, bird song in the early morning. A pink sky, the smell of coffee floating up the stairs. The perfect arms and legs and bony joints awkwardly sticking out of your childrens blankets. The quiet warmth of the early sun, or the sound of rain on the roof. The way a fresh blanket of snow makes everything so much quieter.
In the middle of the day, sometimes it's hard to find those perfect moments. You've gotten stressy, fallen behind, been forgotten, been late, gotten lost or anything else. It's harder to appreciate the imperfections that throw a shadow of unique on everything. By the end of the day, it can be impossible.
Kids are kind of like that. They start off so perfect, and anyone can recognize a million beautiful things about them. Even a stranger. Their tiny nails, and translucent skin, the squeaks and squirms and hearty cries. The way their eyelashes seem to almost be made of light, and how when they fall asleep on your shoulder, you could swear they were angels. It's so easy to find their innocence, it radiates outside of them and seeps into everyone inside of a mile. You feel yourself get younger just watching them.
But a little later, when they fall down screaming and then make like an over cooked noodle when you try to pick them up, and they test you and push you and saw at your last nerve until you can actually feel yourself cracking, that's when it's harder.
My husband works with teenagers who are always, always, ALWAYS that kid that the average stranger would not like. They are dangerous, dishonest, and always in trouble. They lack impulse control, and are either unable to predict consequences or they just don't care. They would rather spend three times more energy avoiding responsibilities than it would take to just DO IT. He came home one day, and held our children while he shook and he looked at me and asked "Is it hard? Please, tell me it is hard to fuck up children THAT badly".
I didn't have an answer, and still don't. All my experience being a child, a teenager, a young adult, an irrisponsible student, a social service worker, and a parent does not qualify my to answer that. I really have no idea. I hope the answer is yes, it's hard to screw up kids that badly. You have to work to be that negligent. But I don't know. I think that it's important to remember though, that like the days that end with little to recomend it...they started off perfect and people are no different.
They start off perfect too.
If you took the time, you would see the perfect beauty of a fresh new day. Dew drops on a spiders web, frost patterns on the window, bird song in the early morning. A pink sky, the smell of coffee floating up the stairs. The perfect arms and legs and bony joints awkwardly sticking out of your childrens blankets. The quiet warmth of the early sun, or the sound of rain on the roof. The way a fresh blanket of snow makes everything so much quieter.
In the middle of the day, sometimes it's hard to find those perfect moments. You've gotten stressy, fallen behind, been forgotten, been late, gotten lost or anything else. It's harder to appreciate the imperfections that throw a shadow of unique on everything. By the end of the day, it can be impossible.
Kids are kind of like that. They start off so perfect, and anyone can recognize a million beautiful things about them. Even a stranger. Their tiny nails, and translucent skin, the squeaks and squirms and hearty cries. The way their eyelashes seem to almost be made of light, and how when they fall asleep on your shoulder, you could swear they were angels. It's so easy to find their innocence, it radiates outside of them and seeps into everyone inside of a mile. You feel yourself get younger just watching them.
But a little later, when they fall down screaming and then make like an over cooked noodle when you try to pick them up, and they test you and push you and saw at your last nerve until you can actually feel yourself cracking, that's when it's harder.
My husband works with teenagers who are always, always, ALWAYS that kid that the average stranger would not like. They are dangerous, dishonest, and always in trouble. They lack impulse control, and are either unable to predict consequences or they just don't care. They would rather spend three times more energy avoiding responsibilities than it would take to just DO IT. He came home one day, and held our children while he shook and he looked at me and asked "Is it hard? Please, tell me it is hard to fuck up children THAT badly".
I didn't have an answer, and still don't. All my experience being a child, a teenager, a young adult, an irrisponsible student, a social service worker, and a parent does not qualify my to answer that. I really have no idea. I hope the answer is yes, it's hard to screw up kids that badly. You have to work to be that negligent. But I don't know. I think that it's important to remember though, that like the days that end with little to recomend it...they started off perfect and people are no different.
They start off perfect too.
