Comfort the Disturbed; Disturb the Comfortable

 I am becoming unraveled, unwound, unspun.  I pulled on the loose end of a string, and the weave began unwrapping itself from the whole.  Every day, I pull a bit more – I absentmindedly pick at the frayed ends, and what I’ve done is destroyed the tapestry of my life.  I need to start knitting my life back together now.  It’s time.

I can really only imagine what I could do or accomplish or create if I wasn’t so good at creating distractions for myself.  Short term distractions, that is.  I don’t read books anymore, because my attention span is too short – my eyes start to hurt by the end of the second or third page, so the book lies on the floor, unread.  Netflix, Trivia Crack, cocktail hour … these things all pop up insidiously and distract me from doing anything creative.  I allow them to invade; I invite them in via my apathy and depression.  Losing focus isn’t at all rare for someone stuck in the rut of unhappiness. 

What’s the cure to malignant existential cancer off the soul? 

I don’t have the strength to fight it off anymore.  My weapons have gone dull and lost their efficacy.  I fend off the new onslaughts of melancholy with nothing more than arms upraised in a semi-defensive stance, more to block the blows than anything.  But then, once a fighter has stopped throwing punches and just covers their face, they end up sunk down in the corner of the ring, dazed and bruised and bleeding.  It’s not that they’ve given up, more like they can’t even stand up anymore.  Too much energy is needed just to push themselves back up off the ground. 

But enough of the boxing metaphor – life awaits today.  I am hiding in my bedroom until the main source of my discontent goes to work, and then I will try to find something, anything, which inspires me enough to care today.  Just listening to his footsteps in the hallway outside my closed door makes me want to crawl back under the covers and never come out.  Childish, I know.  Avoidant, I know.  But right now, it’s the only thing keeping me wound. 

These words I’ve just written are not inspirational, but they are a base, a start.  I’m going to build on these words and use them as a start to catharsis.  From the ashes comes the phoenix, right?  I’m gathering myself back.

Life Plan??

I think I’ve missed the point of life.  Maybe I found it for a while, but the last 10 years have been a haze, in which I’ve retreated into myself at the expense of relationships with other people.  Other people either want something from me (which I am too exhausted to give), or they are toxic (focused on things that I don’t care about).  I find myself sitting alone, a lot, and wondering what the hell I’m even doing.  I don’t want to go anywhere or do anything, because nothing sounds fun.  Textbook depression, right?  Maybe.  I just feel alone, even when I’m not alone.  All my favorite people are teenagers, which seems counter-intuitive to adult happiness.  For a while, I thought maybe I could just vampire away their youth and be happy, but … turns out, that is not a good plan.  Since I’m the adult, I’m supposed to have my shit together and give good life advice and all that, but I don’t have my shit together, and I certainly don’t want to give them advice which would put them in my place in life.  So … I don’t know.   I am much better at giving good advice than at taking it. 

Time for a new plan. 

I wish I cared enough to make one.

College is a Scam

I am so god damn sick of hearing about how it's so hard to get into college.  It's not hard.  Graduate high school, and you can go to almost any (local) state college.  The problem is not GETTING INTO college - it's PAYING FOR college.  Rich people can pay for it - poor people can't.  That's what we read every, single day in the newspaper.  But that ridiculously simplistic sentence I just typed doesn't encompass the people like myself who aren't rich and aren't poor.  We live paycheck to paycheck, hoping shit doesn't go off the rails in some way, because if it does ... we're fucked.  If I didn't get a paycheck next month, I'd lose my house, my car, get reported to credit agencies for outstanding debt, and not be able to feed my family, yet I'm considered solvent (according to the FAFSA).

One month.

But somehow, I don't qualify for student financial aid.  According to the federal government, I can pay for all my children's tuition, because I make X-amount of dollars per year.  Ignore the fact that my family is still reeling in debt from a failed business three years ago.  Ignore the fact that my son blew out his knee and cost me upwards of $10,000 in medical bills.  Fucking ridiculous.  What happened to admitting students and offering scholarships based on their academic record rather than how much money a university can extort from parents?!

I'm still paying my own college loans, and now I'm on the hook for the Parent Plus loans from the first child who graduated college, and next year, I'll have another one entering college.  If the American Dream is to go to college and better yourself, why is the struggling middle class getting fucked all the time in favor of other demographic groups?  I'm just trying to keep it together and pay the bills.  So I am punished, because I'm not poor enough.

Why are people on public assistance?  Because it's more convenient that working a 60-hour week, nose to the grindstone every day, just so you can (maybe) go into life-long debt to pay for your children to ... dig the same financial hole for themselves.  What a dream.  Makes me want to take out a loan for $50,000 and just hand the money to my son.  Tell him to blow it however he wants.  He'd probably end up equally successful after four years.

School's in Session

We're back in.  7am til 4pm, five days a week.  Nights and weekends too, when you count Open House, extra duties, grading papers, and then trying to have energy for family activities.  All day, every day, there's something either going on or about to go on, and when the odd moments of down-time occur, I just collapse in a heap on a piece of furniture and wish I was asleep.  When I do sleep, it's fitful and short, not restful and energizing.  I think my missionary position as a teacher is over.  I think I'm hanging in there out of habit, indecisiveness, poverty, and fear of the future.

I used to take special pleasure in looking out into the seas of faces each period and finding the students who are half-asleep or glaring at me, so that I could find a way to reach them - to show them that learning can be  applicable and fun and even necessary.  Those people just make me sad now.  The ones who don't care are not going to be suddenly converted by a tired, sad, aging lady at the front of the room, who's droning on about history and literature and philosophy.  Sometimes I can't even stand the sound of my own voice.  It's like I'm up there, and I suddenly hear myself like an outsider might, and I just want to grab a few of my favorite things, head for the door, and never come back.

Reality is rarely what real - it's only our perception of what's going on; and my perception is that I've hit the proverbial brick wall.  It's not that I need to find a different path; it's that the path has ended.  There's nowhere else to go.  I'm standing here shouting into the abyss, hearing only the rapid thumping of my own, defective heart, muffled inside my fluid-filled ear drum.  Thumping, beating, skipping, and then ... nothing.

Mork

"I used to think the worst thing in life is to end of alone.  It's not.  The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone."  -Robin Williams

Robin Williams is dead.  This guy entertained me my whole life, making movies that were wonderful and that sucked and that lived somewhere in the middle - the story of every person's life.  Sometimes we're amazing, and sometimes we aren't.  The worst part is that while he was making the rest of us laugh, he was struggling to even keep it together.

I feel his pain.  Every, single day ... I feel the same way.  I don't really want to hang myself with a belt, but that's only because I'm a female, and women tend to choose less violent ways to end their lives.

But Robin, let me tell you - I chose to marry someone who makes me feel all alone every single day.  And I can't get out of this muddy shithole.  Being alone when you're with other people is the worst thing ever.  And I get it:  Robin Williams just said that line in a movie, but sometimes the dialogue in a movie (as delivered by an amazing actor) is more real than the everyday conversations I get with the people who surround me every day.

Life is strange.  People are strange. I'm in a losing battle with myself.

Critical Thinking 101

I just asked my 13-year-old daughter to take the recycle bin from the back yard and dump it in the recycle bin out front.  Easy, right?  There is, in fact, an enormous, red trash can from the sanitation company out front, which is labeled RECYCLING.  

She came back inside and said it didn't fit.  Understand that the bin she took out front was about the size of a large suitcase, and the trash can outside is a HUGE TRASH CAN.  I was like, "what are you talking about?!  They picked up all the trash yesterday!"

A few minutes of total miscommunication ensued, until I realized that she had simply dumped one small container into another small container of the exact same size, which happened to be sitting directly next to the HUGE TRASH CAN LABELED RECYCLABLES.  Wtf?

She's not stupid - I mean, she's 13 and all, so there's the regular teenage stupidity factor happening, but she is generally an intelligent, critically-thinking human being.  So this makes me wonder how we are supposed to teach our kids how to think, and then (more importantly) how we know if we've done that job properly.  Obviously, I did something wrong, because even someone who's not very bright would have just left the full container out front and brought the empty container to the back!!  It doesn't make any sense, and thus I am worried for the future of all humankind. 

Philosophy, Guns, and Stupidity

I recently reread Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, a book by Chuck Klosterman, in which he wrote, “Reality is a paradigm that always seems different and personal and unique, yet never really IS.”  Now Klosterman’s books are not indexed next to Sartre or Nietzsche or Hume, but his profound statement represents an entire branch of philosophy, and it exactly depicts the problems facing the world today.  (And probably every other day that has ever been in the history of humankind.)

All a person has to do is look to the “great” state of Texas, where CRAZY is an art-form.  Being a fringe, religious zealot is apparently a qualification for Texas residency.  I’m sure there are lots of nice, calm, rational people in Texas, but we certainly don’t hear about those people in the media.  Maybe those people are just as embarrassed of their fellow Texans as I am of some of my fellow Americans, but we’ll never know, because they don’t scream quite as loud and carry AK-47s to Starbucks. 

A couple months ago, Texas had a “Gathering of the American Patriot” event, where people gathered, listened to music, toted enormous automatic weapons, and bashed on the federal government.  This group has what they call “liberty issues” – in other words, the federal government is telling them what to do, and they don’t like it.  The real problem is that none of the people who were interviewed really knew exactly what they were protesting, except for the ability to carry around enormous weapons (a right which is already protected in their state). 

Anti-government ranters have these horror stories about our “reprehensible” president and his incompetent federal government (all of whom were ELECTED, by the way) who are out to take away all the things we love.  WHAT, specifically, they are taking away varies from person to person.  The problem is that PERSPECTIVE is shifting from person to person, but REALITY remains the same.  While you may have the RIGHT to carry your AK-47 into McDonald’s, that doesn’t mean you SHOULD.  Frankly, it makes other people nervous to be surrounded by twitchy people with guns.  And I am thankful for our veterans, but how many times a week do we read in the news about a veteran with PTSD killing him- or herself and taking other people out with them?  Protect your home, protect your property, but please don’t try to protect me while I’m getting takeout food.

America is nation of gun-toting xenophobes, who think that the only reality is THEIR reality, but the social contract  exists so that we can live in relative peace.  If some people are afraid of the federal government taking their freedom, why can’t they respect the freedom of those of us who don’t walk around armed and dangerous to live in a civil society?  Can’t we just all get along? 

Of course not.  That’s the point, isn’t it?  When we have pseudo-celebrities like Ted Nugent calling our president a “sub-human mongrel”, we are passed the point of civilized discussion and co-existence.  You can hate Obama all you want.  Hate everyone, if you like.  But that changes nothing about the reality of our changing nation.  It’s not 1800, and the world is changing (like it or not).  We can either embrace the change or shoot each other in the face over issues upon which we disagree. 

But Amurricah is what it is – being stupid and lazy and belligerent is what we’re known for across the globe already.  Why screw with our image?  I understand that there are things to be angry about – but bitching about kids not being able to take guns to school (yes, that’s a complaint in Texas) is fucking ridiculous. 

Like Klosterman said, “Life is rarely about what happens; it’s about what we THINK happens.”  But that doesn’t mean people should stop considering an objective reality in which all people (and their ideas) are equal.

Reality Check

My daughter was invited to a birthday celebration at Worlds of Fun with one of her really good friends.  She was so excited in the days leading up to this weekend that she was counting down.  “Five more days!”  “One more day!”  “Oh my god, I’m so excited!!”

And then came the night before they were leaving… She cried, and then she cried some more this morning.  “I’m gonna miss you so much!”  “I feel sick.”  (She did, in fact, puke twice this morning.)

I finally got her (sort of) psyched up into leaving and got her into her friend’s car. 

And then came the onslaught.  She has texted me 174 times in the past five hours.  I counted.   She called me six times, and we were on the phone for the better part of three hours in total.

Did I do something wrong in making her so close to me?  Should I have ripped off the bandaid and sent her to sleepaway camp (against her wishes) every summer of her life??

The one time I DID send her to day camp, I had to drive to Iowa to pick her up on the sleepover night, because she was having none of that. 

So the hard truth is that no matter how much we hype things up in our minds, reality happens at some point.  Many, many things are great in theory and mediocre in real-time. 

Another example?  Sure

I had a massage today.  Don’t get me wrong, it was lovely,  but … I totally had to fart the whole time, and I couldn’t, because, well, it’s a small room and that’s not cool.   Also, I forgot to shave my legs, so I was a little neurotic about the prickly business down there.  Oh, and I’m getting sick and my sinus are all congested, so at one point, I thought my nose was literally going to drip onto the floor. 

Too much information?  Probably.  But that’s the crux of reality versus the ideal. 

Life is good, but reality sometimes gets in the way of our perfect little image of how things should be. 

Oops

If you have kids, you’ll understand what I’m about to say.  Sometimes, when I interact with or watch my children, I think … “oh shit.  That’s my fault.”  Some personality characteristics are inbred and some are learned.  I am currently teaching my children the following bad habits:

·         Be a martyr.  It’s better than being the asshole who ruins everything.  (Obviously, this isn’t true, because the assholes never realize they’re assholes, so the whole “martyr” thing is lost on the very people who suck.)

·         Stay in a relationship no matter how much it sucks and no matter how much it eats you alive every single day.  (My excuse is that I’m doing it for my kids, but the truth is that it’s making me the very sort of person I don’t want my children to become, because people who can’t make shocking decisions in their best interest don’t deserve anyone’s respect.)

·         Give up your social life for your children.  (Again, obviously untrue; but I’d rather be the homebody parent than the one who takes his/her kids to a bar and surrounds them with drunken, fucking idiots to show them a good time.)

·         Women should take care of the house.  (Honestly, when the other parent is a fucking pig, someone has to clean it up.  Someone has to take care of shit that needs to be done.  Gender shouldn’t matter, but society makes women the default gender to clean kitchens and bathrooms and … every other thing inside and outside the house, apparently.)

·         Just take it.  (Whatever “it” is in that sentence, I’ve apparently taught them that they should just put up with all the assholes in their lives.)

Yep, this is making me sad, so I’m done with this list.  I’m just saying:  be careful with the way you live your life around your children, because they will emulate you in all the good and bad ways you never imagined.  

Dear College

 Here is my contribution to the future college freshmen trying to get scholarships:  (Not everyone is a bi-sexual, American-Indian, whose parents never graduated high school, and lives in abject poverty …)

Dear College:

There is absolutely nothing I can write on this piece of paper (or PDF file) which will make you want to offer me scholarships.  I am not completely retarded, so my GPA is well above average (public school isn’t that hard, it turns out)), but I don’t have a weighted 4.75 or whatever to impress your pants off.  I am also not the president of my senior class (or the president of anything else, for that matter), and I find community service to be morally repugnant.  I know colleges like community service hours, but homeless people remind me of old people, and old people smell weird (plus they’re on the edge of death), and animals in pet shelters just shit a lot, so you see my dilemma. 

Another good college essay topic is overcoming economic adversity, but I live in the suburbs of middle-America, and I have an iphone, an Xbox, and, there’s a TV in basically every room of my house.  Although my car is pretty shitty, I have my own car.  I have never been “interfered with” and I am not addicted to any drugs.  I basically just hang out with my friends (even though I don’t really “like” most of them), watch Netflix, and play the apps on my phone.  Not very exciting - I’ll give you that – but I’m also not a serial killer or a rapist or a sociopath, so I would probably do okay grade-wise. 

People who have really fucked up families can usually cash in on their problems, but my family is painfully average.  I hang out with my dad and talk about … sports.  He’s actually not usually home, so I don’t even know what’s going on with him.  He could be in the Mexican drug cartel, for all know.  And my mom is pretty cool, but I think she might have chardonnay in that sippy cup she walks around with.  Seriously?  I don’t know much about my parents, even though we all live in the same house.  I don’t really see how my parents have anything to do with me getting into college anyway; my parents couldn’t do my calc homework even if my life was on the line.  (That might actually be a really good horror movie dilemma – just a thought.)

So … to the point:  I would like some money please.  I tried pretty hard in school (and let me just tell you: even paying attention in school is like a fucking marathon), and I got good grades.  I don’t want to stay in this festering, suburban pit that I’ve grown up in (sorry, in which I’ve grown up- thank you, John Baylor), so I’d like to pretty please come to your school in the ________________ (mountains, beach area, urban culture) which I have been missing throughout my childhood. 

Thank you, and don’t blow me off.  I know how this shit works, and if you got this far in my essay, you haven’t thrown my essay into the ABSOLUTELY NOT pile yet.   Have some mercy for a depressingly average person from a state you couldn’t find on a map with a gun to your head. 

Sincerely,

Your Future Student, Esquire.

On Being a Parent

                                                                                                                               

Bringing a child into the world isn’t the right decision for everyone, but there are things I experience with my kids that I don’t get with literally anyone else on earth.  My old family, my parents and siblings, are pretty cool, and I definitely share things with them, but my relationship with my kids is … different. 

Here is a (probably weird) list of things my kids and I have in common that are … rare. 

·         Poop.  They talk about poop all the time.  And here’s the thing:  people shit.  Everyone does, but no one talks about it.  My kids tell me truly unnecessary details about their bowel movements.  Why?  Because they can.  I mean, if everyone poops, then why isn’t it something that people chat about in everyday conversations?  Ooh, awkward, and all that.  But if you feel comfortable enough with your parents to talk about your relationship with the toilet, well, that’s intimacy.

·         Speaking of bodily functions, I’ve been thrown up on my all my children.  I’m not saying that’s preferable or anything, but if some stranger in a bar puked on me, I’d probably kick their ass (or hate them forever, because they were the person who puked on me in public).   Just like people poop, people throw up; and if you can still love them unconditionally after they throw up on you, the bond is strong.

·         Emotions are another super-personal thing.  You don’t want everyone knowing how you feel all the time.  But when you live in such close proximity with people, especially people who don’t know what the hell is happening to their bodies (hormonally-speaking), there’s a personal tie.  I would tell my kids pretty much anything.  Is that good?  Many parents would say no – keep the truth away from the children – but I believe in sharing.  I want to know who these people are that I brought into the world.  And for better or worse, they’re going to know who I am too.

·         Another huge bonus is snuggling.  You can’t really snuggle with your friends.  I mean, I suppose you COULD, but it might be weird.  I spoon with my 13-year-old every day.  I can feel her heartbeat.  It’s probably one of the greatest ways to spend any given moment of your life, spooning.  Go do it with someone you love, right now. 

·         Teaching a person how to drive is another way to really see a person’s personality in action.  I will never forget my dad teaching me how to drive on my manual transmission Mustang.  I was fucking freaking out.  I thought he hated me because I couldn’t get it together, but (of course) he didn’t.  Is it terrifying to be in the passenger seat of a huge death-machine with a driver who doesn’t know what the hell is going on?  YES.  I wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

·         Showing people how to think is pretty cool too.  As a teacher, I try to do this at work, but (more importantly) I want my kids to THINK.  Critical thinking is dangerously absent in society today, so I feel like I’ve done my job when my kids point out things that most adults would ignore. 

o   Side Note:  Playing Cards Against Humanity is a key indicator for intelligence.  People might say it’s irresponsible or inappropriate to play this particular game with my children, but stupid people can’t play it well.  My kids are twisted in all the good ways.

·         In general, it’s also very cool to watch THAT KID become THIS TOTALLY DIFFERENT KID in photos.  The change is sometimes disconcerting, but it’s also beautiful to watch a person grow up, frame-by-frame. 

Bottom line:  I would not be the same person I am today (for better or worse) without my children.  They break my heart periodically, but they make me laugh every day and they make me find a reason to get out of bed in the morning.  Unconditional love is a beautiful thing.

Anger Sucks

Yep. 

This is what I’m doing. 

And the poison is surely killing me. 

So much energy spent on hate, and yet I can’t seem to stop doing it. 

Why is that?

How can a rational person like me not stop doing something which is clearly unhealthy? 

I don’t know.

And I can’t seem to stop hating him. 

Summer 2014

                                                                  

Summer is definitely the greatest season … in theory.  As a teacher, I have the summer “off”.  I use the quotes, because my brain never turns off, so I’ll still planning and doing stuff all summer, but I don’t have to physically go to work.  Don’t get me wrong; it’s a beautiful thing having a 2½ month break (otherwise, I’d probably be in an institution somewhere), but it’s not like I just get to kick back and do whatever I want all the time. 

Example:  My kids are also out of school.  While the older one is off doing his thing most of the time, the younger one has no ability to entertain herself.  I am the entertainment provider (and the bank, for said entertainment).  She sleeps until noon or one and then lies in bed for an hour catching up on whatever riveting social media posts might have happened in the dark hours.  Then she gets up and does … pretty much nothing.  (Maybe I’m just jealous…) She has no hobbies.  She doesn’t play an instrument or read books or create things.  During the school year, she plays sports all the time, but this summer … nothing.  Nada.  She won’t go to the YMCA with me.  She won’t go for a run.  She won’t walk on our basement treadmill (which is directly under an air conditioning vent!).  The most action I’ve seen out of her is when I connected the old-school Wii sports the other day, and she played a little tennis.   (Again, I’m probably just jealous, because I’m old and getting fat.)

Another Example:  I live in Nebraska.  So the weather goes from being too cold to go outside … to torrential rainstorms which scare the shit out of the youngest one and flood my basement … to humidity so high that even gardening is a sweaty shitfest.  Right this second, the temperature outside is absolutely beautiful – like 75 degrees and not all that humid.  I went outside for about 10 minutes, and I now have at least two dozen mosquito bites.  (Bastards.)  All I want to do is go outside and hang out in the haven I’ve created out there, but the subsequent malaria or Lyme Disease doesn’t seem worth it. 

But summer is also sleeping in and the College World Series (except I didn’t get to go this year), and vacations (except I couldn’t afford one this summer), and the pool (except mine is currently green because of all the recent rain).  Lots of POTENTIAL good to be had in the summer. 

If I was in California, where I belong, I’d just go play outside, but for now, I’m just gonna go join the little one for another match of Wii tennis.  Maybe do some Wii Fit yoga or something.  I guess not everyone can have the beach summer from the catalogue.

ADD Theater

I have three children.  They were all preteens at some point.  They all bridged the gap to 13.  This last one – the youngest, of course – is the pinnacle of teenage lunacy.  She talks roughly 1000 miles per hour.  All of her stories have a 100-1 ratio of words which are irrelevant to words which are necessary.   While I definitely want to hear what’s going on in her life, I just wish we could eliminate all the unnecessary verbiage and get to the god damn point. 

My (totally un-expert) opinion is that she is a victim of the 21^st Century.  All of the short attention span bullshit that happens inhibits her ability to articulate clearly and concisely.  Young people are more likely to say a bunch of meaningless shit than actually possess (and subsequently utter) coherent thoughts.  In an age where a six-second Vine is the entertainment norm, it’s not necessary (apparently) to make any sense. 

The Shovel Girl video is a perfect example of this short attention span phenomenon.  I’ll admit … I’ve watched the youtube video and subsequent Vine.  Rather than being amused, I was totally appalled.  The fact that these two stupid little bitches planned a fight, fixed their hair in the middle of said fight, and had “friends” recording the entire thing makes me physically ill.  What the fuck were they all thinking?!  Why is a girl-on-girl fistfight something to encourage and record?  Why the hell would a person go retrieve a SHOVEL and throw it at another person’s head?! 

Civilized society is apparently dead. 

All I really want is for my (beautiful, intelligent) children to take their fucking faces out of their screens and LIVE.  Life is so much more than what other people post on vapid social media sites.  And when my youngest tells me a story, all I hear is OTHER.  Her personality evaporates into a constant stream of online bullshit, leaving me to wonder what I’ve done wrong as a parent.   She has potential which is being sucked into the online vacuum of useless group-think.

READ BOOKS.  HAVE HOBBIES.  CREATE SOMETHING.  

R(eading) I(s) F(undamental)

I have three children. 

Child number one just graduated from college with an English/philosophy BA.  Always a reader – always a thinker.

Child number two is extremely smart, but the only thing he reads for fun is twitter.  He will, however, read books assigned at school.

Child number three might be the smartest one, but I’ll never know, because I have to bribe her to read anything that isn’t on Instagram.  I finally got her to “read” yesterday, then I realized she had a Wreck This Journal book, which TOTALLY doesn’t count as “reading”.   She read only one book in all of seventh grade, and she only read it because she didn’t need to read the books to do any of the assigned work.  So I literally forced her to read one (I read it in one day and then asked ridiculously specific questions about the plot so I would know if she was lying – which she totally would do to get out of reading).

So, let’s put this in perspective:  I’m a teacher of English who inspired exactly one-third of my children to read books. 

What I’m about to say makes me sound like a fossil and a technophobe, but technology is seriously destroying people’s minds.  I’m not about to be a hypocrite and say that I don’t play games on my phone, but this 30-second-attention-span society that’s blossoming all around us is not PROGRESS.  We might have more information and accessibility at our fingertips, but we are losing true communication.  My youngest will have friends over, and when I come in the room, they’re all staring at their phones.  It’s pretty bleak.

I have no solution to this problem, I might add.  I get it.  Technology is cool.  But we went from a youtube trend to a vine trend, and I seriously think it’s just because vine is shorter.  Less time spent trying to sort something out.   THINKING is out of the question.  We’re becoming a bunch of fucking drooling idiots who would rather be distracted for a minute than actually do something productive – something which is fine SOMETIMES, but not ALL THE TIME. 

It’s a mystery.   I’ll keep digging, and perhaps we will all come out on the other side of this distraction. 

Viktor Frankl and Me

Viktor Frankl never ceases to amaze me.  He gets in my brain and tells me what I should have known all along. 

I’ll give you this (from Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning, where Frankl is sharing a letter sent to him by an American medical student):  “All around me here in the U.S. I see young people my age who are desperately groping for a meaning to their existence.  One of my best friends died as a result of his search.  I know now that if her were here now I could help him, thanks to your book, but he is not.  His death, however, will always serve to pull me toward all people who are in distress.  I think this is most powerful motivation anyone can have.  I have found a meaning (despite my deep sorrow and guilt) in my friend’s life and death.  If I can be strong enough to fulfill my responsibility, his death will not have been in vain.  I want more than anything to prevent this tragedy from happening to others.”

In this passage, I recognize the reason I teach high school.  Not only did I see a handful of friends die when I was young (drunk driving accidents, overdoses, suicide), I myself experienced a kind of death in adolescence.  After high school, I wasn’t all that happy, and I sought happiness in places where it could never be found permanently.  Frankl’s explanation of the “existential vacuum”, in which people try to fill a void with supplements to happiness, is a perfect analogy for the feelings of meaninglessness that people feel.  We want to find meaning.  Everyone does.  Some of us, more than others, feel a void.  I felt it.  I still feel it.  What I want to do with my life is help other people stop trying to fill a bottomless pit and just find happiness.  MY problem is that I help other people while neglecting my own personal needs.  Even so, I would not change that purpose in life for anything.  I just need to keep reminding myself of Dr. Frankl:  he survived a series of concentration camps in which all of his family died.  He maintained a positive attitude, because there was nothing else to do.  If you want to help other people, you can’t wallow in circumstance.  Life is. 

We are all human, and the events which take place in our lives happen.  Whether by fate or purposeful decision-making, we are who we have made ourselves to be.  That doesn’t mean we can’t change, but it does mean that being stuck in the past is absolutely useless.  We can’t transcend the past, but we can impact the future. 

Frankl wrote that “all freedom has a ‘from what’ and a ‘to what’”.  Just like Margaret Atwood wrote in The Handmaid’s Tale, people have “freedom to” and “freedom from”.  Problems in existential thought happen when we can’t decide which freedom is more important.  People in the United States certainly have “freedom to” (at least most of the time), so then they are faced with the crisis of:  now what?  If I have all this freedom, shouldn’t I be doing something with it?  Shouldn’t there be a bigger purpose?  What is it?!  And the crisis ensues …  People who struggle with the meaning of life seem to self-administer psychotherapy, via drinking, drugs, cutting, promiscuity, or simply guilting themselves out of happiness. 

I love that I have a job in which I can help people identify and (possibly) avoid the sucking vacuum of meaninglessness.  I will teach them my subject area, and (hopefully) in the process, teach them about life itself.  I may not be a doctor of psychology, but I can certainly pass on my friend Viktor’s wisdom.

Maya Angelou died today, and she once said:  “If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.”  You see?  English and psychology and life all merge.  School is not useless, no matter what the haters think.  We might not realize it until much, much later, but the things we encounter in our youth have a lasting impact.  My youth almost killed me, and yet here I am.  That’s a good enough reason as any to help others find meaning in life before it’s too late.   

Pop-Up Pools & Other Outdoor Nightmares

I decided to put my little pool up today.  It will absolutely be worth the pain later, when the Nebraska heat hits 1000 degrees, but it was a pain in the ass.  Leveling (again), shoving poles into other poles (no innuendo intended), and spiking my water bill for the next three months.  It's dirty already, and I can't afford a proper pool vacuum, so I will be seen any given day scooping debris out of the pool by hand.  (Why did I ever move from an apartment building with a proper pool and workout facility included?  (I think it had something to do with my irrational fear of other people burning down the building...)

I also just spent $50 on chemicals to kill and/or repel things from my yard.  Bunnies, squirrels, birds (repel) - ants, flies, gnats, mosquitoes, grubs (kill).  All those little fuckers are ruining all my hard work by eating the shit I planted.  This isn't a socialist garden; it's MINE.  So they have to go.

And then, for every plant I intentionally put in the ground, there are roughly 100 plants which don't belong.  I have pulled out about 500 (seriously, no exaggeration) little maple trees from my yard.  They are tenacious little fuckers, growing in places I can't even reach.  Even the stupid bunnies don't want the maple trees.  Just now, trying to spray a chemical barrier around my sunflowers to stop the onslaught of fuzzy little creatures, I inhaled a couple lungs full of whatever is in that bottle.  Thank god I got the eco-friendly variety, but I still have a terrible red-pepperish burning in the back of my throat.  If their are no more blog posts, you can assume I succumbed to the toxins.

Every time I go in the back yard to relax, I end up picking weeds.  I wish I could be a lazy sack of shit like my neighbor and just guzzle beer in the garage, but I can't sit still while NATURE tries to outplay my man-made (lower-case) nature.

I'll get those bastards.  I've got nothing else to do for now... :)

Past-Tense Teacher

Many of my students were kind enough to give me thank-you notes at the end of our time together this year.  The common theme was that I initially scared the shit out of them.  Next came the part where they thanked me for allowing them to be who they are without judgment and for making them think.

That’s it.  That’s all I ever wanted to do.  I could probably go without the “scaring the shit” out of people, but being who you are and thinking are not bad things, no matter how many times society tells individuals to conform. 

I went to the store the other days to buy garden supplies, and the guy ringing up my stuff was a former student.  I said hi; he said hi.  I asked if he remembered me.  His face drained of color, and he said “of course I remember you.  You were the first adult who made me feel like a human being.  I’m going to be an English teacher, because I want to do for other people what you did for me.”

I said thank you, but I was totally at a loss for words.  (which is very unlike me…)  How did other people manage NOT make him feel like a human being?!

Strange days, when people treat other people like objects.  Very Kafka-esque.  And very shitty.

I think I am a very nontraditional teacher, but I guess sometimes I don’t realize just how different I am from the other teachers.  I like these people I teach.  Even the ones who make me want to kick their ass or punch them in the throat are worth my time.  Is that not something all teachers have in common?  Maybe we just deal with people in different ways – I’ll probably never know.   But I think if teaching is your chosen profession, you better care about your charges, or else get the hell out of there. 

I was pretty fragile as a teenager, and I took that existential angst and made a fucking mess of my life for a while because of it.  If I help even one kid avoid that pain (or at least alleviate it), I’m happy.   Not everybody likes what I do or how I do it, and I suppose it really doesn’t matter what they think.  I am who I am, for better and worse.

To the Men

I want to be a man for a day.  Just one, because I don’t think I could stand being in that brain for too long; but there has to be something alien up in there which would explain the strange behavior I see manifesting in the opposite sex. 

I understand that women are complex.  (P.S. This is why men are always trying to get in us.)  But I must be wrong in my experiences with men, because my conclusion is that men are fucking stupid.  They think with their penises, and all they seem to want is mediocrity.  No drama – no fight – no talking. 

Dear men:  Women want a little fight in a man.  I’m not talking about domestic abuse; I’m just talking about desire.  I’m talking about a man who can unabashedly feel emotion and then talk about it.  There’s nothing “gay” about having feelings – it’s called “being alive”.  If I can’t talk to you, well, you’re worthless.  Because part of being alive and being in love is conflict.  Arguments can be productive.  They can allow relationships to grow and flourish.

But…  If you can’t talk … we’re done.  If I wanted to be alone, I’d be alone.  I don’t need to be alone in the same house with someone else.  That sort of defeats the purpose.  And if I don’t want to have sex with you, because I don’t even know who you are anymore … it’s dead.  Stick a fucking fork in it.  I can’t have sex with someone who won’t talk to me; and if I DID want that, it would be a handsome stranger, not someone I had to pick up after. 

Get it? 

So maybe if I had a penis for a day, I could understand this apathetic thing most men have going on which deprives them of having healthy relationships with women. 

Don’t send me suggestive text messages.  Don’t send me naked pictures of yourself.  Don’t try to get me drunk and make lewd suggestions.  Talk to me, and then we’ll see what’s up.  

End of Days 2014

            

Today is my first official day of summer vacation.  Am I happy?  Yes.  Am I confused?  Yes.  If doesn’t seem like the end of anything.  School just sort of ended yesterday.  It didn’t feel like the last day of school.  I didn’t get weepy or sad when the seniors left two weeks ago, and I didn’t really feel anything yesterday either.  It just feels like the weekend.  I’m sure students all over the city were out celebrating and burning all their “useless” paper from school (I know my kids were…), but I just sat at home and watched Hell’s Kitchen. 

I suppose my ambivalence is caused by too many years of teaching.  The whole shit-storm will all start over again in no time.  Nothing is really over.  But I would love to feel something. 

I don’t.

One of these days, I’ll wake up and not know what day it is; that’s the real measure of summer break for students and teachers alike:  getting caught up in the squandering of time. 

Last night, I dreamed that I wrote a novel this summer.  It’s not unheard of to write an whole book in two months.  Maybe my track record of not being able to write a good book, well, ever, so far should deter me, but I’m going to bleed out on the keys of this computer this summer.  (Not in the whole DEATH way, but in a more CATHARTIC, LITERARY way.)  Even if no one reads what I have to say, I’ll write it anyway. 

Life is better spent trying than being angry at everything and nothing.  I’ll let the anger fuel the words, and then perhaps the anger at all that I’ve left unsaid and undone with dissipate into peacefulness. 

It’s worth a try.

Killing Me Softly

My life is made up of units of time.  I distract myself within those units of time, accomplishing nothing.  I’ve had a full life, and yet I wonder if it’s meant anything.  I find myself wandering about in my house or in my yard or at my job, wondering what I’m doing.  Why I’m there, in that spot, at that moment.  I’m circling the drain. 

I don’t want a different job; no job could compare to the one I hold right now.  I want a different path; I want to be a writer, but I have no earthly idea how to do that.  I have to change everything.  Gut my life in every aspect.  Change every breath and every decision made in each of those breaths.  How is that possible?  

The life is killing me softly – telling my whole life in a handful of useless words. 

Mother’s Day 2014

I have a mother.  I am a mother.  My daughters will (most likely) later be mothers. 

My mother-in-law sent me a card.  I sent her a card.  I painted a pot to give to my mother.  My daughter took me to dinner.  My son bought me flowers.  All lovely gestures.  I don’t see why gestures are necessary on Mother’s Day.  I love those women, and (I assume) they love me.  I am okay with that.  I would actually prefer it if they would spontaneously show me their love in a more daily way, rather than being told by the American Capitalist Industry that it’s time to purchase a card or buy some market-inflated flowers (which will go down in price by half tomorrow).  I also don’t want to feel guilty about staying home, just because my brother is having a dinner at his house for my mother and his wife, but I don’t want to drive 40 minutes each way to get there. 

I just want to be a mother today.  On my terms.  At my house.  I don’t even need my children to be here; they’re here every other day, and I don’t love them any differently today than I did yesterday or than I will tomorrow. 

Maybe we should celebrate humanity on a day-to-day basis, rather than waiting until coporate America tells us it’s time to buy something. 

Love each other.  Today.  

Another Last Day

Tomorrow is the senior's last day.  Again.  I've been through this 16 times now.  16.  Perspective:  That's as long as my son has been alive.

Every year it's a countdown to the end of the year, which seems pretty counter-intuitive.  Wishing our lives away day-by-day; but I really don't wish the days away.  I would love to freeze the good moments to revisit later.  What I love about teaching is that the best days are not always the most productive days.   We learn about each other even when we aren't trying so hard.

Yes, it's beautiful symbiosis when we all learn something new and spend time together questioning and exploring ideas.  I love that.  I love the spark of recognition or inspiration or even anger at an idea which stews in our minds.  But sometimes, it's just the present ... and we just "are".  Today in Debate, we finished watching The Breakfast Club (because there are only eight of us, and some of them had never seen John Hughes channeling high school) and ate waffles.  I'm not talking frozen waffles; I'm talking about a kid who brought in a waffle iron and a huge vat of waffle batter (and all the ingredients, in case we ran out).  I read the paper and watched the movie.  A couple of boys wrestled each other to the ground (the smaller kid won with the under-the-ear-pressure-point hold).  Other people who aren't in that class floated in and out of the room to hang out.

The key is looking up in a moment, and seeing that you wouldn't restructure that moment in any other way.  We even talked briefly about how we would explain to an administrator (if he or she were to walk in) why we were watching an 80s movie:  "You see, The Breakfast Club is a psycho-social experiment about the different manifestations of high school, dependent on who you are."
(You see, I'm trying to teach them how to think ...)

I'm going to miss these seniors.  I miss them every year, even before they're gone.  I don't cry (only once, actually, when a girl I barely knew grabbed me after the senior video - tears streaming down here face - and told me she didn't know how she would ever find her way in life).  But it's a life-changing event for all of us.  Even the younger classes who are simply moving up a category next year.

We ebb; we flow.

People come; people go.

Philosophy Season

Hello?  Mr. Sartre?  I, too, sit and watch the humans every day, and I, too, am nauseated.  I have looked in the mirror and seen someone else looking back at me.   I hear your call to take responsibility for my choices, and to make choices as though I am choosing for all of mankind.  Unfortunately, I am a victim of the absurdist vacuum which daily threatened to suck in your friend, Mr. Camus.  I would like to make meaningful decisions and take control of my circumstances, but every day I am more paralyzed by the futility of my actions.  Do this, or do that.  Who cares?  What does it matter?  Why spend an entire lifetime contemplating whether things have meaning, when there are no answers? 

I’d write a book about it, but I can’t care long enough.  Contemplating the nuances of life is exhausting. 

Just ask Mr. Tolstoy.  Even being born into Russian nobility and writing brilliantly crafted tomes about the human condition didn’t save him from a lifetime of wanting what he could not have.  The serfs wanted Tolstoy’s wisdom and money, and he wanted their faith. 

Melancholia is the disease of the thinker.  Those of us who poke and ponder and wish and dream aren’t satisfied with the general mundaneness of everyday life.  If we stare into the abyss long enough, we occasionally lose our balance and fall in, only to have to crawl back into the light … somehow.

I need to talk to you, Mr. Nietzsche.  We have so much in common, and I am ready for the lantern your madman smashed to pieces.  The rest of the world might revel in ignorance, but I long for deep, unadulterated truth.  Even when I thought I was deviating from the herd with my individuality, I was just wandering aimlessly into a different stream of cattle. 

Mr. Frankl, how did you find meaning in such a bleak and dreadful landscape?   How did optimism find its way into a man whose family was systematically murdered simply for existing in the wrong place at the wrong time?  Will you put me on your couch and coach me through this muddled mess?  Sorry, Misters Freud and Jung, you were too adrift in the cranial ocean for me.  I would like to live here, in this place, and not hate it (or myself) for all the ways I feel cheated and manipulated and ignored.  I want optimism. 

In all the bleak landscape of the existentialists and absurdists, I see hope.  I hear students speak of my friend Mr. Kafka as though he was a tragic loser, but even in a man-turned –beetle, killed by an apple thrown by his father, I see hope.  I see writers who wanted nothing more than a break in the cloud through which some sunlight leaks through.  They watched and waited.  They wrote and waited.  They tried to love and waited.  

And while I love that I can find kindred souls in the books on my shelf, I would prefer happiness. 

Mr. Leary, if only you were right about LSD curing the closed human mind and opening the doors to nirvana.  The problem, sir, is that the things behind those doors are all-too-often scary as hell.  Opening the doors of perception means opening them to any and all things – not just the beautiful ones.   

So, friends, how do I proceed?  How shall I act, and what shall I say, and which thought should I entertain?  I would wish that you all were here to help me, but you couldn’t even help yourselves through this thing called life.  Perhaps there is another side, and I’ll meet you later.  Until then, this daffodil on my table is lovely, and this beer is chilled, and the sun is shining outside my door.  I’ll find a way.

The Selfish Model

                                                                                                     

Today, Ayn Rand told me (actually, a 15-year-old girl told me, via her speech about Ms. Rand) that being selfish is preferable, even necessary.  She said that altruism is dangerous for individuals, because when a person thinks of others before him- or herself, that person can’t reach full potential. 

At first, the idea seems ridiculous.  People (Americans, at least) are told all the time that they should be others-centered, because altruism makes the world a better place.  But the more I thought about what she was saying, the more I realized what I have done to myself over the course of many years.  Primarily, I have chosen my children’s needs over my own.  I have always thought that giving myself to them was a natural, necessary consequence of bringing other people into the world.  We set aside our own needs for the benefit of others. 

To a certain extent, I stand by that decision.  When children are young, they need undivided attention and nurturing.  But at some point, our children look to us for guidance; and what lesson am I teaching them when I have no life of my own anymore?  I have no friends to speak of, and I have no compelling hobbies to share with them.  Because, after all, they have become my “hobby”.  They are the thing to which I devote my time and energy.  I am not teaching them to pursue their passions, because I have set mine aside. 

Besides being a parent, my other passion is teaching.  While I often look out into a sea of apathy in my classroom, I do think I have made a difference in some lives along the way.  (I say that even though just yesterday, seven months into a semester together, one of my students said, “yeah, I just don’t see that I’ve learned anything in this class.”)  But if I am a teacher of writing, should I be a writer?  If I encourage my students to get out of their home state and attend college elsewhere, shouldn’t I, too, move on?  If I teach students the value and relevance of reading, shouldn’t I create something of value and import for others to read?  Can’t I be a teacher outside of the classroom?!

The only way for me to “advance” in my job is to get a degree in administration, and (I’ll be honest here) I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than be an administrator. 

Fostering personal interests is the only way for me to express my deeply-seeded belief that happiness is key.  I can’t tell my son to break up with the girlfriend he barely tolerates, when I can’t manage to shed a husband that I can’t tolerate at all.  What my children and my students see me do is the biggest lesson of all, and at that, I seem to failing.  Ayn would be appalled at my total lack of personal growth. 

I don’t write, because I can’t publish.  I stay at my job, because it’s comfortable (and because I’m poor and can’t afford to just quit).  I baby my children, because I love them unconditionally and I want them to be happy … BUT … they don’t need to be coddled – they need to be shown how to live without apology.  If my passion in life is to teach other people, then I need to start leading by example.  I can’t tell other people to jump out of their comfort zones if I’m not willing to. 

Too bad I’m going to work tomorrow, and I’m probably going to do my kids’ laundry and make them dinner and stay at home in case they need anything.  Not everyone can just uproot their lives and continent-jump from Russia to Hollywood, but I have to do something.  I don’t want to die in a Kafka-esque stupor.  (And I seem to be headed that direction…) 

A Sink is a Metaphor for My Life

                                                                                             

Sometimes, things happen in my life which seem to be a microcosm of the bigger picture.  Today, it’s my kitchen sink.  A sink is a basic house fixture.  Water, dishes, whatnot.  My sink is a big, fat, piece of shit composed of the same, rusted, caked parts from when the home was built in 1960-something.  It fucking reeks.  Seriously.  It smells like rancid food, even when I dump half a gallon of bleach down the drain. 

A few months ago, the garbage disposal started leaking.  Drip, drip, drip.  Not a torrent of water, which would need require emergency plumbing, but a small, annoying, stinky drip.  I found it when I when looking for a screwdriver in the toolbox which is stored under the sink.  All of the tools were literally floating in a primordial, stanky soup of partially disposed food and run-off water from the sink.  Sitting and festering under the sink, behind the cupboard.  No one would notice it, unless they actually opened the cupboard for cleaning supplies and poked around – something literally no one else in my house would EVER do. 

Finding that fucking mess REALLY pissed me off.  I tried to fix the problem, but it requires a plumber.  Some things are better done by a person who does that thing for a living.  I learned how to change out an electrical outlet recently (from an electrician, by the way), but I don’t delude myself into thinking I can rewire a home.  And one home skill does not mean I can fix fundamental problems.  (Nor do I want to, if I’m being honest.)  Who is delusional?  My roommate/still-husband.  He invites his brother over to do the job (two months later). 

Don’t get me wrong; his brother is a REALLY good guy, but he is not a plumber.  He’s a bartender.  And now, not only does the disposal still leak like a sieve, the sink doesn’t even turn on.  No water at all.  Nothing.  Nada.  I washed my dinner dishes in the bathtub tonight. 

Is that funny?  Sort of.  In the I-want-to-fucking-rip-my-husband’s-face-off sort of way. 

HIRE A MOTHERFUCKING PLUMBER.

His grandmother just died, and she left us some money.  I gave my husband my portion of the money to do some home improvements.   I asked for a new garbage disposal and a new door.  I got the door, but instead of new disposal, I got a new faucet (…inexplicable, except that he is under the impression that surfaces are more important than depth…).  But no water comes out of it.  It’s barren.  It’s new and shiny, but it’s absolutely worthless, because the whole point of a faucet is for water to come out of it. 

I’m not trying to be bitter, but this absurdist version of my life has got to be some cosmic joke. 

College is Overrated

From the New York Times, April 22, 2014:  “For students who borrow on the private market to pay for school, the death of a parent can come with an unexpected, added blow … Even borrowers who have good payment records can face sudden demands for full, early repayment of those loans, and can be forced into default.”

Are you fucking kidding me?!

Why is it that our capitalistic, American society preys on the very people who can ill afford to be targets?  As if my death would not be enough of a burden to my children, they have to immediately make reconciliation with banks?  I understand that the money needs to be repaid, but this policy, along with the absolutely predatory practices of banking institutions has got to stop. 

The American Dream has a new addendum which seems to insist that everyone get a college degree, else they can make nothing of their lives, an idea which is absolutely untrue.  The further we move into the future, the more clear it becomes that college is yet another falsely inflated commodity which not everyone needs.  Of course the banks offer loans to people who can’t pay their household bills, let alone pay for a four-year, $30,000 college tuition bill.  It’s the same concept as proffering shady home mortgages to people who can’t afford a home:  “It’s American.  Just do it.”  Not everyone needs to own a home, just like not everyone needs to pay for a four-year degree.  There are actually a lot of people working jobs in America who make a lot more money every year than I do, and I have three college degrees. 

It’s a farce, and parents need to counsel their kids to make good choices rather than corporately-sponsored choices.  As a parent, a teacher, a citizen, and a human being, I am getting tired of rich people making destructive decisions for the rest of us, while claiming they’re for our own long-term good.   Perhaps if American high schools did a better job of teaching students concrete, applicable skills, they wouldn’t need two years of remedial college just to get those students up to the “college standard”. 

I call bullshit on this whole system.  My kid could get a gig on the Disney Channel doing some brainless acting and make more than I will in a lifetime of trying to educate other people.   Who wins in a system where Americans now owe more than $150 billion in student loans?  The banks, not the citizens.  

Love Lines

                                                                                                                                               

There are so many men in the world.  How is a woman supposed to choose just one?  How does a person sift through all the people they meet and settle on just one with whom to spend their nights and days?  After all, we meet so many faces and smiles and gestures, that it seems logistically improbable that anyone could choose correctly.  Yes, we can choose well in any given moment, but long-term?  Well, that’s another story altogether. 

So many men have floated into and out of my life.  That’s not a sex joke (although, I supposed it could be), but rather an observation about the transient nature of human beings.  We are always in the process of becoming who we are, so when we meet people, we are not yet complete.  I would argue that people never truly stop changing as individuals.  If my belief is valid, how probable is it that two people could continue in the same vein over the course of 10 or 20 or 30 years together?!  People who fall in love and remain in love throughout the various stages of becoming are incredibly lucky (and dedicated). 

Think about all the people who have smiled at you in your life, and you felt that pull.  You know the one I’m talking about.  That “yes” smile.  It’s an invitation.  Sometimes, we follow that smile; we engage and get to know that smile better.  That smile can turn into afternoons and evenings and longing and promises and heartbreak.  But you never know unless you follow that smile. 

I’ve followed it.  We all have.  I’ve been led down alleys of mystical happiness and bleak abandon.  That’s the whole point, isn’t it?  Potential and possibility are what keep people from throwing themselves in front of a bus every day.  No one would get up in the morning if life wasn’t worth living, and smiles lighten up all the dark corners of our lives.  Interpersonal connections are absolutely essential in life – something which I’m sure hasn’t changed since cave dwellers and hunter/gatherers roamed the earth. 

So, what happens when the face you chased down a week or a month or a year or 10 years ago looks across the table at you, over the meal laid out in front of you both, and the smile is gone?  The person across the vast expanse of table and water glasses and dinner is but a distant shadow of the person who drew you in?  Is it so bloody awful to just say so?  Is it so grossly socially unacceptable to just move on?  To say, “Listen, your eyes are no longer the eyes of someone I want to spend time with”? 

I think we all deserve honesty with our entrée. 

And I think we all deserve to have someone smile at us with genuine love, not heaped social expectations of making relationships work.   People are complex organisms with true feelings, not cutouts whose actions can be dictated through social mores.  Heart Lines, Love Lines, Life Lines are what capture our personalities and make us who we are.  Keeping to one person’s smile for an entire lifetime might be romantic, but it’s also unrealistic. 

I’m not saying that I wrongly chose any certain person, but that every person I did choose says something about my personality.  All of those people make up the sum of my parts.  Each person impacted me differently, for better or worse, and I wouldn’t replace any of them.  But I also think that we know when it’s time to move on, and that societal rules shouldn’t cloud our perception of right and wrong.  We are the sum of our mistakes and our successes, and even though we often don’t want to take ownership of our fate … it’s ours alone. 

Smiling is so much better than not.  Happiness might be elusive sometimes, but that doesn’t mean we should stop pursuing it.  

What's in Your Backyard?

I want to go here:

This place looks tranquil and beautiful and inspiring. 

I am having a hard time being inspired by my backyard these days. 

I have never been the most peaceful of people – like just satisfied in my own skin – but these days my brain simply vibrates with the desire to find something better.  I have no love life, no close friends, my house is falling apart, and I am dead broke.  I look at pictures of all the beautiful places in the world, and I don’t understand why I have trapped myself in this particular place.  I guess I’ve made all the wrong choices.  One or two good ones, interspersed with a string of shit ones. 

I would like to have a dream, one of those where you wake up feeling transformed, but I would like it to be real.    I would like to find something like this in my backyard:

Is that too much to ask?  I mean, someone has this treehouse in their backyard, because I’m looking at a picture of it right now.   I don’t want to become a hunchbacked, bitter old crank, sitting in a chair in my bleak, shitty house, wondering what happened to my life.  I want to tear down the walls; they're suffocating me.  And there's no one here to dream with either, which is maybe the hardest part of all. 

On Being a Teenager

In Plato’s Republic, one of the characters declares that youth and age are an equal burden.  At first glance, that statement seems like a load of shit, but give it a moment of consideration. 

As I am on the cusp on being old, I can say with certainty that it sucks.  I wish I could claim what Plato’s interlocutor did and say that my wealth has softened the blow of getting older, but I have no material wealth to distract me from the everyday, shitty business of  graying hair and thinning skin.  But to consider youth an equal burden?  Now that’s interesting … because it’s true. 

The best, most free years of life are the 20s and 30s.  Generally, a person can do what they what without interference from society.  Making huge life changes is still spontaneous during these decades of life:  new job, new boyfriend/girlfriend, traveling to foreign countries just because, blowing the budget on a whim, whatever.  Those freedoms are not available as a child.  If one’s 20s are a roller coaster of exciting, creative, authentic, potential experiences, then early youth is a seemingly endless series of moments spent waiting. 

Much of youth is spent being told what to do and when (and how) to do it.  People are probably always in the process of becoming, but during youth, our peers are constantly in collusion to make us something we haven’t decided  to be quite yet.  The constant onslaught of other peoples’ expectations is quite suffocating. 

Example:  A girl is being a cunt to you, talking shit and making up lies.  What do you do?  A 20-something knows who he or she is well enough to either call that bitch out or ignore her.   A teenager is more likely to just take it.   Self-doubt is at an apex in people who exist in the vacuum between child- and adulthood.  Even the bitchy, mean, popular girls are littered with self-doubt (even though they would never admit it).  Dealing with all the issues of life is overwhelming and largely experimental in the early stages of life.  In a word, it’s hard. 

So … give young people a break, and maybe take some time to help them find who they are, independent of all the noise around them.

Junior High Sucks

I have a daughter.  She is ridiculously smart.  Too smart, in the not-so-good way in which she know she's smart, so she doesn't try.  I am a teacher, so ... I give her shit all the time for not trying hard enough.  I mean, get it together, young people; intelligence isn't a social disease or something.  Embrace it.

And yet ...

My daughter is at the ass-end of a terrible, physical, allergic reaction of some kind.  She broke out in nasty, angry hives that had to be treated with Prednisone and copious amounts of Benydryl..  She missed five days of school in a row - she missed so much school, in fact, that while she was at home, we received the Truancy Letter from the State of Nebraska.  Don't get me wrong - I could care less what the State of Nebraska thinks about my children's school attendance - but I would rather not go to court for truancy issues, after I (mostly) avoided court during all my breaking-the-law years.

I digress.

I picked up all her work from school on Friday (after a full week missed), then I had to literally force her to attend to it on Sunday.  (This is after five days off school!!).  Here's the deal:  she was right to blow it off.  What a joke.  Assignment:  Think of scene and describe it.  Assignment:  Read this graph and answer some questions.  Assignment:  Read this news article about Julius Caesar and then write a (shorter) news article about Julius Caesar.  (By the way, the last one had equal points being given for the title and the byline and the who, what, when, where, and why.  Wtf?)

I spent more time harassing her than she spent actually doing the work from a missed week of school.  If I had the money, I'd home-school her.  In a heartbeat.  She is learning a big fat wad of nothing at that shithole, except maybe how to be a shitty human being via social media sites.

Another brick in the wall.

Spring!

O Sweet Spontaneous

by e e cummings

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

               fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and

poked
thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

         beauty                  how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
         (but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

              thou answerest

them only with

                                spring)

Life is a Trade-Off

Everything in life is a trade-off.  We should.  We could.  We might.  If this, then that.

Once in a great while, it's possible to just say 'fuck it' and do whatever you want, but most of the time, life is a game of wanting to do one thing, but having to do a dozen other things just to make the one thing happen.  Why?  We work our asses off to take a week of vacation, but what's the point?  Shouldn't the general idea be that we live our lives in such a way that we don't need a vacation from the environment which we have so systematically built?  It just seems farcical that people have to live for some thing other than that in which we bathe every day.  If we choose to bathe in shit, that shithole will most certainly be exactly where we left it when we return from holiday.  Every day is exactly what we choose to make it.  I might fight that concept every day, and try to claim it's not true, but ... every day I choose whether to get up, go to work, work out, eat, drink ... everything is a choice.  Some choices are harder than others (which is why I don't make them), but that doesn't mean that I can blame other people for anything about my life's minutes and hours and days.

I live in a free country.  I won't get stoned to death for leaving my husband.  I won't be burned at the stake for not believing in a certain god.  I  can drive my car wherever I want, whenever I want.  I can vote without shielding my face or dodging bullets.

And yet ...

I know there's a better place (in a non-geographical, existential sort of way) than the place I'm living.  I just want to know how far away it is.  And I'd like to know how much of the present is mine to keep.  And how deep it is.  And how wide.  If I could tell ... well, I'd know whether to jump or not.  Take the leap of faith?  Or stand my ground?  To breathe?  To care?  Fuck, I don't know.  All I know is that I am what I am because I have made choices that contribute to the being I've become.  And I don't want to stop becoming quite yet.  I'm not finished.  I can do better.  

Spring Break 2014

Moment of silence ... Spring Break 2014 is officially over.  I am going to celebrate by drinking a mimosa (or two or five), because that is how I celebrated every other day of Spring Break.  I'm not saying I got all drunk every day during the past 10 days, but I made a point of having at least one mimosa every day, because I was stuck in the greater Papillion area all through break.

When I went back to the all-school "teacher meeting" today, staff was encouraged to shout out the cool places they may have visited over break, and it took all my willpower not to shout out the fact that I got as far as Omaha at one point, but that's it.  Most of my outdoor activity was spent in my own front- or backyard.  I picked up leaves and sticks.  I played one million games of HORSE (and got beat 900,000 by a 12-year-old).  I ... wait, that's about all I did.  Here is a list of things which I planned to do (since I was stuck here), but did not:  volunteer at the Open Door Mission, write summer reading curriculum, read The Republic again to prep for teaching it, cure cancer.  So, yeah.  I did none of those things.

But that's okay.  I hung out with my kids, had sleepovers with them, ate meals, slept in, and did a big bunch of nothing.  It's all good.  Oh, wait!  I also edited my two novels - gutted them, actually - which felt nice, even if they never amount to anything.  I also read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Sharp Objects for nothing but pleasure (which is a rare bonus).  I figure that if I can just get used to being happy in my own skin and not actively hating the people who make me crazy, I will be okay.  I have decided to (try to) forgive everyone for everything all the time, because anger eats people alive.  It's just not healthy.  I don't want to hand over my mental and physical well-being to other people.  I am me, and they can be them.

I think that I promised myself a bunch of things which I did not understand at the time, and I'm ready to let those promises go.  Every day is a new opportunity, and yesterday is gone.  I'll try to be happy in this moment right now rather than thinking about other moments which aren't even happening right now.

(But let's be honest, my anger will be back.  It will manifest here.  And I'm okay with that.  Writing is catharsis.  If I bitch about life here, I can hit publish and send the negativity into cyberspace, where it will do far less harm than it does sitting in my heart every day.)