The school bells rang for the last time on Thursday.
The race is this weekend.
Graduation parties spring up all around town.
Garage sales are starting to post their signs.
The Farmers Market is calling my name.
We are starting to have more warm(ish) days than cold(er than a polar bear’s toenails).
Brandon is B-O-R-E-D.
Yup. It’s summertime.
Washable, my ASS.
Shame on you, Crayola.
Now come wash my girls stained clothes.
We have no lingering baby toys.
They broke them all.
Toddler toys?
The same.
Toys that were mine as a child, passed on to Brandon, and then the girls…
Now in the local landfill…destroyed in little pieces.
Close playtime and giggling.
Always dissolving into tears and screaming.
Hand made curtains, lovingly sewn and hung.
Ripped off the wall, the rod broken.
The girls have always been more destructive.
Their room is a barren waste-land of decorating because they can’t be trusted w/ a dresser, much less finer details like lamps, pictures, or even hangers.
They are five and six now.
And as they sit here in extended time out for their latest run of torture, mayhem and destruction. We are left wondering.
When it is time to say “Enough is Enough”?
Is it sensory issues? Is it rotten kids? Bad parenting?
Did we go wrong somewhere?
The past couple of months in our house have been, for lack of a better word, muted. My blog has lacked life because I sort of have. For the second time in less than a year I’ve found myself struggling for air. I don’t like the recurring theme of the feeling.
I’ve mentioned in recent months my regular struggle with isolating, disappearing into my head. Then I’ve turned around and done that (once again to my husband’s disappointment).
I’ve mentioned in passing once or twice my husband’s struggle with depression, and the recent months have been bad for him too.
Maybe it’s the winter that’s refused to let go until suddenly turning into 80 degree weather. Maybe it’s the constant fluctuation of health news in our house. Maybe it’s realizing that our kids are growing up faster than we feel capable of.
I’ve been playing with perking up. Getting my cute shoes recently & wearing them when I go out to feel perky. I’ve taken a recent foray into playing with fingernail polish (my current color is a bright, cheerful orange). Today I dug out my camera in hopes that maybe using it it again will help too. Today I’m writing a blog post for the first time in weeks. Little steps. Once again trying to unbury from the pile of crap that is my current funk.
Then this morning I was catching up on one of my favorite TV series, House. As I watched, distracted by other things, half paying attention…one statement pulled my attention back. Thirteen (yay, she’s back!) was talking about happiness…and her comment was:
“Our level of happiness is set. It’s in our DNA.”
It’s an incredibly cynical view.
But is it right?
Are we pre-destined to be happy or miserable by our DNA?
I’ve often wondered, throughout my whole life, how I can feel so different. So very…”un”. That people seem to sense it before we’ve finished being introduced (or is that paranoia?). And yet my brother, very clearly of the same genetic pool as I am…can be one of those magical people that draws everyone to them. That is the center of attention. That is popular. Happy. Confident.
Nature vs. nurture.
Can we literally blame our parents for creating a genetic cess pool that became us? Or does life mold us into something that becomes set in stone at a certain age?
Am I destined to live with my available level of happiness no matter what I do to fix it? Is my husband destined into a world where not even the most modern of medicines can help him cope w/ sometimes disabling levels of depression?
Are we truly limited in our happy?
Oh, hai…I have a blog? Well gee…time to pull my head out of the clouds and use it, I suppose. There are birthdays this week, and so much other stuff going on that in my first post in a couple weeks you’re stuck with random bits & pieces…
* I had major dental work done last week. This TERRIFIED me. To waylay that I got some GREAT drugs (Hello, Valium…you handsome sonofabitch), had them knock me out…and wore my CUTE new shoes *points to the left* Outside of a couple of bad points (sorry again for yelling at you, dearest husband)…it went smooth. I go in on Wednesday for a crown.
* Hubs & I got to sit in line for 10 minutes at the car wash while an idiot in a stretch SUV limo tried to get his limo through the carwash. Someone that stupid should not be given a license. Seriously. (In case you’re wondering, he did eventually succeed after nearly driving off down into the gully. Makes him no less an idiot)
* The kids also had a dentist appointment. No cavities, just some janked up teeth…thank you genetics for passing on my crazy buck-tooth issues to 2 of my kids.
* In HAPPY news…it looks like I get to see my BFF again in a couple of months. In even happier news…this should occur right around my birthday. This? Gives me giddy giggles…and is sending Archie running over to our neighbor Moe’s…where he’s threatened to sleep the entire time our tiny little house has several more occupants 😀
* I managed to snag the AMAZING defunct HBO series Deadwood on Blu-Ray for less than $100…and we have been re-watching it slowly, savoring each episode. I am deeply ashamed of HBO for many things (see also: True Blood massacring a great book series)…but cancelling this show? Was a STUPID move. Shame on you, HBO…SHAME.
* Thanks to the aforementioned CUTE shoes…I think I may be becoming a tiny bit of a shoe addict. This is not necessarily a good thing…I want to go shopping and find more more more…we have neither the room or money for such an action.
* Ooooh, my time on the wait list is over!! Very soon I’ll be meeting with the artist to design my tattoo. I should also have that by my birthday. It’s my birthday & mother’s day gift all wrapped in one painful, but pretty, bow. In other news – Archie still doesn’t think I can handle the pain. I admit to fear, but I want it…have since I was 18…I just only now figured out what it is I want 😀
* Brandon handled the news of his diagnosis well. He is running track now and it hasn’t altered his life at all. We meet with the pulmonologist next month to get down to the nitty gritty of what he’s going to have to do, and new drugs and assorted stuffs.
* I registered Angel for kindergarten. This has made me very sad. She’s my baby…and she’ll be going to kindergarten in a few months. So not right.
* And on that note – school ends in a month. May 27 we are all done. Not ready for summer!!!
Okay, I’m sure I could go on…but that’s it for now…so many things to do.
Feel no pain, but my life ain’t easy,
I know I’m my best friend.
~”Escape” by Metallica
I’ve never understood it.
Why I am like I am.
I know my parents didn’t understand, but they tried.
I remember visits to the psychologist at UB-Amherst.
I remember the embarrassment I felt about those visits.
I remember keeping my truth hidden.
The truth I feel inside.
It was blamed on teenage depression (though no meds were used – not that I’d have taken them). A reaction to the teasing and bullying I was subjected to.
It was an acceptable explanation. Reasonable. Everything made perfect sense to them.
It didn’t make sense to me. I’d felt it so long before the teasing started. The disconnect. The sense of being…different.
While I would play with the other kids, race around outside, laugh, swim in the lake, in pools, dance in a group or solo, lived life like any normal child…
I felt like an outsider. Looking in on these events.
There was only two places I felt complete.
The first was on the stage. Expressing myself in dance and movement. I knew there was an audience, but I couldn’t see them. It was me and the energy on that stage, wrapped in lights and confidence I felt nowhere else.
The other…oh, the other was such a cause for turmoil.
It was in my head.
In my room, buried in books. Buried in worlds that weren’t here. Weren’t pressing on me. Weren’t all around. They were safe, in my head. Oh, there were dangers, adventures, worlds unlike any other…but there I was in control. There I wasn’t the odd duck in a sea of normal people.
It wasn’t until high school that I truly found the release of creating my own escape instead of reading the escapes created by others.
When I am in these other worlds, creating them, reading about them, my brain stills.
In every day life the pressures, the chaos, the thoughts in my head swirl and turn until there is no escape. The smile I wear is genuine, I’m not completely lost to the chaos. When I am in life I am happy.
I can’t call it depression because that isn’t what I feel – it’s just a never ending chaos. It always has been. For as far back as I can remember it seemed as if my mind never stopped. When others could sit quiet and relaxed, my brain was still turning over possibilities of life, problems needing answered, questions needing asked. There is no true being still for me. My mind is not happy with ‘still’.
There are times when we are all sitting as a family, but my head is millions of miles away. I get called on it by my husband. Wondering where I am because I am not “here”. It can go on for days sometimes I get so lost. So far gone.
It frustrates my husband. Even when he knows I always “come back”.
I feel so bad for that.
That when I am here…writing…reading…focused and intent…I am lost.
Lost to him.
Lost to my kids.
Lost to this real world that is so chaotic.
Because here is where it is still.
The thoughts stop.
I am in control. Focused on making the lives created under my fingers into something worthwhile. Fleshing them into real people I could never be. Worlds I could never live in. Adventures I would never see otherwise. The chaos there is planned, expected, created by me.
Some days it is hard to pull away from the peace.
And that is wrong.
Real life should be more appealing.
But my ‘daydream’ moments pull far too often.
I’ve never been able to stop it – just ask my parents. I was often chastised for escaping to my room and my books. My Dad feared that it would lead me to a life of addiction like he lived through.
And it has.
Addiction to writing. To the internet.
To the “other”.
I’ve never understood why I am so different. Why it seems like the way my thoughts function is so different from everyone else. Why my social anxieties seem so extreme. Why they only go away at the theater (I’m the life of the party at auditions) or online. Why I turn into a blazing ass trying to be nice and “fit in” with the cool kids when I meet others in person.
I don’t know how to change it. To live in the real world. To form “real” friends that I communicate with face to face instead of keyboard to keyboard.
Effort has been made.
But it’s painful. Frightening. Anxiety inducing. Being face to face.
I don’t know how to find an acceptable balance.
But I know that I need to.