Showing posts with label Infertility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Infertility. Show all posts
Thursday, July 3, 2014
July 3rd
I'm down here at five thirty in the morning, hoping that in the quietness, I might be able to write. I want to write because it's July. Next month, my baby will be a year old.
Sometimes I feel like I'm already looking at this period of my life from a great distance, as if I know the shape the memories will take. They'll be centered around this house- the side of the master bedroom that was completely taken over by the glider, the crib, the suitcase with baby clothes and the boxes of diapers bought wholesale. There's the scalloped sink in the master bedroom where she was bathed and the downstairs window where her playpen was placed.
I remember last July in the rental house, everything overgrown and bugs in the kitchen, the dampness seeping through the windowsills. The landlords raised the rent by fifteen dollars and that was enough to send my husband on a house search.
He came home with pictures, realtor agents' telephone numbers and quotes from the bank. He'd been to see a few houses. He even called the adoption agency to ask about getting our address changed on the myriad places where it was officially written.
I didn't know what to do, everything was spinning too fast, but I heard Jesus whisper that He had a good plan and Keith was hard at work tracking it down. After that, I tried to step away from the fear, mostly, and paid attention instead of digging my heels in.
Of course, it was after we'd signed the papers on a house yet to be built that we were matched with Merissa's birth parents. We waited in the rental house while the boxes piled up around us, on a collision course between the house's building schedule and Merissa's projected birthday, each one getting closer and closer together and there was simply nothing we could do about it but wait.
The stroller and car seat came in the mail and we set them up right then and there. We took pictures. Our faces are filled with joy, a tender joy, but one that was fragile- because how would it end? Those boxes were pushed underneath the kitchen counter when we finally arrived at the new house with Merissa in tow, dizzy with exhaustion and light headed with relief.
On the way, we'd stopped at this two bit town, at a gas station with cracked pavement and leaning gas pumps. The air was muggy and full of the sound of local traffic heading home for dinner and a beer. Merissa was like a warm rag doll with dark eyes and a shock of dark hair. The new born sized pants gaped at her waist and fell down over her arched, helpless feet. I rode in the back with her the entire way, leaning over to watch her breathing.
The dogs were wild underfoot when we arrived and the soldier who'd been house sitting for us had set up a few things on the wide expanse of dusty counter. Outside the windows, everything was green, just like it is now, almost a full year later.
Yesterday, I took Merissa to Goodwill to do some shopping. She needed play clothes, things she could crawl around in. At the parking lot, I leaned into the back seat and lifted her from the car seat. She's heavy, compact and warm, full of strength and energy, her skin a light golden color.
Her chubby legs are getting longer and her knees and elbows and the back of her hands are dimpled. She's stretching out to run, but for right now, she still clings to me like a monkey, her hands grasping my tee shirt, looking around her with interest. She's a willing and cooperative little back seat rider, happy to get in and buckled up and happy to get unbuckled and out, stretching her arms up, intently looking at me.
Sometimes it comes over me, the goodness of my life like a wave and I have to pause and let the wave break over me. Then I must break into ridiculous baby talk and refer to myself in the third person.
"Mommy loves you!" I must whisper to her, in delight. "Who is Mommy's little baby buddy? Who is Mommy's little companion? Mommy loves to spend all day with you! Mommy loves your company. You are the joy of the Mommy!"
Inside the store, I went carefully up and down the isles with the small blue cart. I searched through the racks, sliding one hanger after another, hearing my mother's voice in my head- her you have to be patient and persistent to find the good stuff- a find! I missed her, that cheerful veteran of garage sales and second hand shops.
Merissa, however, was not convinced about this slow and steady pace of shopping, especially after she was discouraged from attempting to eat the merchandise. She prefers grocery shopping, where every isle is a new adventure and the atmosphere is cool and brisk and store clerks coo at her.
When her father gets home, she stares up at him, her mouth dropped open in delight, starry eyed. When that broad shouldered soldier in uniform leans in to kiss her, her eyes get wider and wider. She hangs out with him on the couch while I get dinner and I see the back of their two heads, one shaved close per Army regulation, one soft and downy.
Even then, when I am exhausted and stressed by the noise of the television and the growing mess in the kitchen and the fact that I still have the home stretch of the evening before me, the sight of those two heads fills me with fondness.
It's July and the heat is oppressive. Long after sunset, the air remains humid, heavy with the scent of warm earth, pine needles and green growing things. The sky holds a dusky blue color, like the bottom of a glass bottle, thick and glowing faintly. Birds flit through the shadows, darting over the grass in pursuit of insects.
My baby still sleeps on her belly with her head pillowed on her arms, her knees curled up, but in the day, she is lifting off, pushing with her hands and straightening her sturdy legs, reaching forward to grasp anything, finding sounds and linking them together and intently tracking cheerios across the tray of her high chair.
I knew I couldn't hold onto this year and I knew it would go quickly, but I knew those things in theory. Now I know it in practice. I know the rest of her childhood will pass by like this; the rest of my life will pass by like this. This one year has given me a greater understanding of the brevity and beauty of life than anything else I've even known.
When I was younger, I assumed that I would have a whole brood, that being a mother would be my most basic identity. I assumed this even when I was thirty years old, when I married Keith and waited during his deployment for him to return and our family to begin, the happy chaos, the flotsam and jetsam of many children.
I assumed this until we moved to Kentucky, and then that dream began to ebb slowly away. That was five years ago, I think. Almost five years now. I lost that dream slowly, pushing myself to walk and then jog along the golf paths in winter and early spring, making my body do at least one thing I could control.
Now that dream seems foreign to me. I am surprised to remember it. I don't think it was ever real to me; it was a kind of mirage. I would have stepped into it and made it real, if I could have, but the reality would have been something completely different.
The same now too, when I consider the future, what it holds. What will it mean and what will it look like? I don't know. I can hold to a mirage and run toward it, if I want, if I choose to do that. But I don't want to, because I don't want to lose what's real right now, the precious and imperfect life that is given to me right now.
So I must swoop my almost one year old daughter up in my arms and kiss her and love on her while she is here, as she is passing through, one of the greatest gifts I ever received and so different from my first expectations.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
June 2nd
Keith and I went to the PX last weekend- hoping he might get a haircut before going back to work. However, the base's entire population of recruits had been given the day off and flocks of the fledging soldiers had descended to the echoing halls of the shopping center, all of them also, seemingly, in pursuit of a haircut.
We took one look at the rows of very young men in bucket chairs with aprons up to their ears, and rows more spilling out into the hallway awaiting their turn, and turned around.
We walked into the food court and yet more bands of the young soldiers were gathered around tables, their newly shaved heads pale and bristly at the sides.
Beside me, my husband was tall and broad and battered, his muscled arms covered with curling golden hair, a cheap watch on one wrist. He held my hand firmly, his eyes scanning the room; he is always scanning, on high alert- two deployments on the front lines and being blown up out of a tank will do that to a person.
I remembered my first trip to the food court at the PX, five years ago. I was skinny enough to fit into a pair of lovely white cotton trousers. They still hang on a rack in my closet; I have no idea what for. It was June in Colorado, the Rockies towered over the low brick building and in the park behind us, the cottonwood leaves shimmered in the sun.
I remember clinging to Keith's hand then as much to retain my balance as from affection. I was thirty years old. I had no idea what I was getting myself into and I didn't care. I always threw myself head over heels into love.
Last weekend, instead of a haircut, we did some window shopping. My husband is on the hunt for a new grill. The old one has lived under the eves of this house and has gotten poured on for three summers now and its insides have sadly decayed.
On the way to the grills, we passed by some patio furniture, including a swing with a canopy. Keith sat down and stretched his legs out.
"Sit down," he sat, patting the seat beside him with a welcoming smile.
Myself, I always feel that furniture set out on display are meant to be Seen and Not Touched, but how could I resist?
It was so comfortable. We swung back and forth in the middle of the shopping center as if it was our own back yard.
"Looks like it was made for you!" joked a passerby.
"Let's go get a blanket from the home goods department, throw it over the top and make a tent," Keith suggested, with a playful grin.
When we got up, I could hear my joints creaking.
"We're getting old, kitten," Keith remarked, pulling me up.
"We really are," I agreed.
People older than us will laugh, but I do feel age creeping up a bit more than in past years.
I'm turning thirty six this fall. Thirty six seems so much older, somehow, than thirty five, as if more than one year separates those ages.
I remember when we were first married, how we joked about our future children, so secure that we would have them, that they would exist. We were prepared for the possibility of my getting pregnant over his leave during deployment- I hoped that I would.
When that did not happen, I was disappointed but certainly not alarmed. I was sure it would happen when he returned.
Then he returned and we did not get pregnant and I thought, it will certainly happen when we've had time to relax after we're settled down in Kentucky.
Then we were settled down in Kentucky and we were not getting pregnant and I thought, holy crap, I'm in my thirties and time is suddenly running out and I'm not getting pregnant, what on earth is going on?
I was so angry at God. "What more, exactly, do You want to do to me?" I asked Him. "Am I Your personal punching bag? Was being sexually abused not enough suffering, now You want to make me infertile? Awesome. Thanks. Thanks for this. First my body is used like some one's dirty rag, now it's broken. Why don't You give me some sort of horrible wasting disease while You're at it? You should just give me some horrible disease that will eventually kill me and have done."
Clearly I was not stopping to consider deep theological reasons for suffering; I was beginning to give myself permission to be emotionally authentic.
Suffering is a profound mystery to me and sometimes I want to blame it all on God, dump the blame on Him so that I can have Him to shadowbox with, to be angry at. Sometimes I just want to know that He's suffering with me and not worry about why or where from.
I was angry and depressed for about a year- for the year and a half that we were in Kentucky. I went back to therapy to try and deal with my plunging self esteem.
Family members had children- each time, it was devastating and then I would be ashamed of being devastated. I felt like I was raining on every one's parade.
I felt like everyone else was passing on into the warm, meaningful realms of life while I was stuck on the rocky ledges where all the other broken people get left, the people that don't fit in. I still feel that way a lot of the time, actually.
I went for a long time without speaking to God, which is unusual for me. Sometimes I would forget that I was maintaining this stony silence and would talk to Him and then stop and glare at Him, remembering.
My religious fear was alive and well. I had learned that being angry at God was incredibly wrong, inviting judgment, punishment- I was being stiff necked! He would surely whack me down, hit me over the head, shatter me like pottery- I grew up hearing a lot of the old testament.
My father encouraged me to believe that being angry at God was an act of profound trust in Him and I held onto this possibility.
How plastic could God be, I wondered, how small was His ego? Did He only want a surface relationship, all the hard, intense emotions stamped down, swallowed back, leaving only the brittle shell of rigid outer performance?
I thought this could not be. I thought if God was real, He could not be that small. If He was real, than He filled everything- if He was real, than He was living, expansive, seeing from all angles, sunk down into the heart of things, not content with the surface.
And I knew He was real- I had felt His love poured out all through me. From that point, I couldn't ever un-know Him.
So for the first time, I had the clear opportunity to sort through my religious teachings of god and the Living God. That was what my anger did for me, it drew a line in my own personal sand and I had to start tossing things to one side or the other, to clear a space.
Either God was loving and knew me and my life from the heart outward and was large enough to sustain all that I was or he was a small god, wanting the surface performance, the sacrifice of heart on the alter of his demands.
Looking back now, I can see that taking that huge emotional risk with Him was the beginning of a much deeper relationship with God, one that began unfolding almost as soon as we arrived in Georgia.
I think it was our first Christmas here and we'd traveled back up to Indiana to celebrate it with family. There was yet another new family member on the way and it hit Keith and I pretty hard. The entire trip up I ignored the subject with Jesus, worried that I might disturb the peace that I felt in His presence and knowing that I would need it in the emotionally charged atmosphere of Christmas, family and babies.
Eventually I found a quiet moment while wrapping Christmas gifts and I let the emotions and questions rise up to Him. I used pretty stark language, reverting to childhood concepts as I spoke to Him.
"Why are You making me a barren woman?" I asked.
His response was a wordless understanding poured into me, along with His strong love and reassurance. I understood that He did not see me as barren. He saw me as someone overflowing with spiritual life- someone whose inner life was overflowing with a deep, fully present relationship with Him.
I had a hard time grasping everything that He was saying to me at the time, but I understood one thing perfectly well: that I had Him. My love for Him rose up and along with it, the joy of knowing Him the way that I did. This joy filled my heart.
"I choose You," I said joyfully, though He hadn't really presented it as a choice. This answer just rose up out of me. I just let go of the longing for my life to be another way and consciously choose it as it was. "Let my life be what it must and let me have You," I said. "So be it."
I still don't understand suffering- where it comes from, why it is, ultimately. I have hopes about what it means, in the end- but it's a hope, not a certainty. I'm just more comfortable now living in the question.
We took one look at the rows of very young men in bucket chairs with aprons up to their ears, and rows more spilling out into the hallway awaiting their turn, and turned around.
We walked into the food court and yet more bands of the young soldiers were gathered around tables, their newly shaved heads pale and bristly at the sides.
Beside me, my husband was tall and broad and battered, his muscled arms covered with curling golden hair, a cheap watch on one wrist. He held my hand firmly, his eyes scanning the room; he is always scanning, on high alert- two deployments on the front lines and being blown up out of a tank will do that to a person.
I remembered my first trip to the food court at the PX, five years ago. I was skinny enough to fit into a pair of lovely white cotton trousers. They still hang on a rack in my closet; I have no idea what for. It was June in Colorado, the Rockies towered over the low brick building and in the park behind us, the cottonwood leaves shimmered in the sun.
I remember clinging to Keith's hand then as much to retain my balance as from affection. I was thirty years old. I had no idea what I was getting myself into and I didn't care. I always threw myself head over heels into love.
Last weekend, instead of a haircut, we did some window shopping. My husband is on the hunt for a new grill. The old one has lived under the eves of this house and has gotten poured on for three summers now and its insides have sadly decayed.
On the way to the grills, we passed by some patio furniture, including a swing with a canopy. Keith sat down and stretched his legs out.
"Sit down," he sat, patting the seat beside him with a welcoming smile.
Myself, I always feel that furniture set out on display are meant to be Seen and Not Touched, but how could I resist?
It was so comfortable. We swung back and forth in the middle of the shopping center as if it was our own back yard.
"Looks like it was made for you!" joked a passerby.
"Let's go get a blanket from the home goods department, throw it over the top and make a tent," Keith suggested, with a playful grin.
When we got up, I could hear my joints creaking.
"We're getting old, kitten," Keith remarked, pulling me up.
"We really are," I agreed.
People older than us will laugh, but I do feel age creeping up a bit more than in past years.
I'm turning thirty six this fall. Thirty six seems so much older, somehow, than thirty five, as if more than one year separates those ages.
I remember when we were first married, how we joked about our future children, so secure that we would have them, that they would exist. We were prepared for the possibility of my getting pregnant over his leave during deployment- I hoped that I would.
When that did not happen, I was disappointed but certainly not alarmed. I was sure it would happen when he returned.
Then he returned and we did not get pregnant and I thought, it will certainly happen when we've had time to relax after we're settled down in Kentucky.
Then we were settled down in Kentucky and we were not getting pregnant and I thought, holy crap, I'm in my thirties and time is suddenly running out and I'm not getting pregnant, what on earth is going on?
I was so angry at God. "What more, exactly, do You want to do to me?" I asked Him. "Am I Your personal punching bag? Was being sexually abused not enough suffering, now You want to make me infertile? Awesome. Thanks. Thanks for this. First my body is used like some one's dirty rag, now it's broken. Why don't You give me some sort of horrible wasting disease while You're at it? You should just give me some horrible disease that will eventually kill me and have done."
Clearly I was not stopping to consider deep theological reasons for suffering; I was beginning to give myself permission to be emotionally authentic.
Suffering is a profound mystery to me and sometimes I want to blame it all on God, dump the blame on Him so that I can have Him to shadowbox with, to be angry at. Sometimes I just want to know that He's suffering with me and not worry about why or where from.
I was angry and depressed for about a year- for the year and a half that we were in Kentucky. I went back to therapy to try and deal with my plunging self esteem.
Family members had children- each time, it was devastating and then I would be ashamed of being devastated. I felt like I was raining on every one's parade.
I felt like everyone else was passing on into the warm, meaningful realms of life while I was stuck on the rocky ledges where all the other broken people get left, the people that don't fit in. I still feel that way a lot of the time, actually.
I went for a long time without speaking to God, which is unusual for me. Sometimes I would forget that I was maintaining this stony silence and would talk to Him and then stop and glare at Him, remembering.
My religious fear was alive and well. I had learned that being angry at God was incredibly wrong, inviting judgment, punishment- I was being stiff necked! He would surely whack me down, hit me over the head, shatter me like pottery- I grew up hearing a lot of the old testament.
My father encouraged me to believe that being angry at God was an act of profound trust in Him and I held onto this possibility.
How plastic could God be, I wondered, how small was His ego? Did He only want a surface relationship, all the hard, intense emotions stamped down, swallowed back, leaving only the brittle shell of rigid outer performance?
I thought this could not be. I thought if God was real, He could not be that small. If He was real, than He filled everything- if He was real, than He was living, expansive, seeing from all angles, sunk down into the heart of things, not content with the surface.
And I knew He was real- I had felt His love poured out all through me. From that point, I couldn't ever un-know Him.
So for the first time, I had the clear opportunity to sort through my religious teachings of god and the Living God. That was what my anger did for me, it drew a line in my own personal sand and I had to start tossing things to one side or the other, to clear a space.
Either God was loving and knew me and my life from the heart outward and was large enough to sustain all that I was or he was a small god, wanting the surface performance, the sacrifice of heart on the alter of his demands.
Looking back now, I can see that taking that huge emotional risk with Him was the beginning of a much deeper relationship with God, one that began unfolding almost as soon as we arrived in Georgia.
I think it was our first Christmas here and we'd traveled back up to Indiana to celebrate it with family. There was yet another new family member on the way and it hit Keith and I pretty hard. The entire trip up I ignored the subject with Jesus, worried that I might disturb the peace that I felt in His presence and knowing that I would need it in the emotionally charged atmosphere of Christmas, family and babies.
Eventually I found a quiet moment while wrapping Christmas gifts and I let the emotions and questions rise up to Him. I used pretty stark language, reverting to childhood concepts as I spoke to Him.
"Why are You making me a barren woman?" I asked.
His response was a wordless understanding poured into me, along with His strong love and reassurance. I understood that He did not see me as barren. He saw me as someone overflowing with spiritual life- someone whose inner life was overflowing with a deep, fully present relationship with Him.
I had a hard time grasping everything that He was saying to me at the time, but I understood one thing perfectly well: that I had Him. My love for Him rose up and along with it, the joy of knowing Him the way that I did. This joy filled my heart.
"I choose You," I said joyfully, though He hadn't really presented it as a choice. This answer just rose up out of me. I just let go of the longing for my life to be another way and consciously choose it as it was. "Let my life be what it must and let me have You," I said. "So be it."
I still don't understand suffering- where it comes from, why it is, ultimately. I have hopes about what it means, in the end- but it's a hope, not a certainty. I'm just more comfortable now living in the question.
Monday, September 26, 2011
September 26th
I feel very blah today.
I was reading this blog about a woman that's been on the infertility journey for almost seven years. Pretty much her entire thirties. They tried everything., including a surrogate mother. That pregnancy didn't take either.
Then, the couple tried to adopt, and the local police chief in Vietnam refuses to sign the papers releasing the children. So, this couple, along with other couples who've adopted children from that orphanage, have been stuck in limbo for almost three years. Their son was seven months when he was matched to them, he was 36 months at the last blog post of hers that I read.
Can you imagine that woman's pain? Holy crap. But she sounds tough and resilient and uses humor a lot to stay sane.
We went to Denny's instead of to church yesterday. I'm trying to get some clarity on why it is I want to attend a church anyway, before trying another one. Despite the weirdness of the small Baptist church, I liked being recognized there. I felt like I was part of a community.
I think that's why I want to go to church, despite my very hermit-ish tendencies. But my developing religious and spiritual philosophies do not fly well within the traditional church environment. It takes me right to the crux of my confusion.
I have powerful internal voices telling me that I'm sinful, back slidden and unacceptable. These voices gain power within the church, because so frequently, the church's message agrees with the voices.
Simultaneously, those old and inbred voices are telling me that I can't understand God outside the context of religious authority. The very idea that I could is blasphemous, ridiculous, laughable.
Then I have another voice reminding me that what I'm feeling isn't conviction, it's condemnation; it's an ancient condemnation that I'll never placate by any action of mine.
I keep getting the feeling that the church wants me to be in submission to it- to its pastor and its unique group dynamics. It feels like the church wants to play three important roles in my life: to be a direct pipeline to God, to be a translation for His voice and to verify that my actions are acceptable.
The problem is, I grow increasingly jealous of those roles; I want them for Christ. I think that He, not the church, is my pipeline to God. I think that He is the Word, and I think that through Him my life and my actions are redeemed. He is the one that teaches me how to live my life.
When I attend church, I participate in a set emotional ritual. I should come to church feeling good that I have presented my physical person properly to the church, with the acceptable and necessary equipment. I can feel especially good about myself if I attended my small/life group earlier.
Once church begins, I should feel bad that I have sinned during the week and that I have not prayed enough, read my Bible enough, or gone to the Wednesday prayer/study group. Or, if I did, that I did not pray out loud or that I did not read the assigned section in my study book, or that I had doubts or questions that I knew were unacceptable.
During worship service, I should repent and go with the emotional flow. I must work myself up, using the lights and the sounds, to reach the acceptable fever pitch.
Then, before the emotions have a chance to wear off, they pass around the offering/tithes plate/bag and I give tithes but I feel guilty because I haven't given an offering. Or, I don't give the full tithes and I know that I'm sinning big time.
However, I get a burst of pride and accomplishment when I put my envelope in the bag. No else knows what I'm giving, but they can see that I do. In the eyes of the church, I'm acceptable.
Then I prepare to humbly take in what the pastor is teaching me. I busily scribble notes in my study guide. I look up the verses in my Bible. I Participate.
At the alter call, I feel how miserable is my state and how far I have yet to go, and how infrequently I feel the presence of God in my daily life, which is full of HGTV, loading the dishwasher and early morning commutes to work.
I repent, but I'm not brave enough to go up to the front of the church. I feel bad, but I pour out my heart as best I can on my own.
Or maybe I'm desperate enough that I do go down to the front. I'm deeply humbled and yet exulted. I'm a dear daughter of the church. I say that I want to receive more of God. I receive the laying on of hands and lots of impassioned prayer.
Then I walk out. I feel emptied, clear and sparkling like a goblet washed with Cascade. By that evening, however, already I feel the film of the world shifting down over me. I read an extra chapter of the Bible to try and desperately hold on to it.
Maybe I pray longer. Maybe I skip my favorite show. Maybe I get addicted to denying myself things in order to feel good about myself. I go on religious purges like other people go on diets. Maybe I'm immune to all this and I just go to church because I always have.
Church is like a club. It has membership dues, initiation rites, and ceremonies. It has standards for membership and a vertical authority system. Some rites are for members only, others are open to guests as well. We look up over the backs of every one's heads up to the pastor, who is the only one who can look us in the face.
When I attend church, I'm directly engaging these old, powerful patterns of belief and behavior. It's exhausting and it's stressful. It's frightening to live in the question, instead of leap at the answer.
But how weak is Christ, anyway? Is He so weak that the people who question church slip right out of His grasp? Is He chained to the pulpit like a dog on a leash? Is He so obtuse that He can't talk to people's hearts without the church's official translation?
Is the devil so powerful that he can pretend to be Christ, and speak lies into people's hearts, and Christ just stands there off to the side, wringing His scarred hands in consternation, unable to free His son or daughter from deception, because that person isn't in church?
I think not. I think it's terrible to believe so. I think the real church is vast and invisibile to the world. The world doesn't recognize it, because it's organized according to people's hearts. It doesn't have political sway or a collection plate or a dress code. It's made up of all those bruised and broken hearts that hunger after Christ where ever they happen to be, inside or outside of a church building.
I was reading this blog about a woman that's been on the infertility journey for almost seven years. Pretty much her entire thirties. They tried everything., including a surrogate mother. That pregnancy didn't take either.
Then, the couple tried to adopt, and the local police chief in Vietnam refuses to sign the papers releasing the children. So, this couple, along with other couples who've adopted children from that orphanage, have been stuck in limbo for almost three years. Their son was seven months when he was matched to them, he was 36 months at the last blog post of hers that I read.
Can you imagine that woman's pain? Holy crap. But she sounds tough and resilient and uses humor a lot to stay sane.
We went to Denny's instead of to church yesterday. I'm trying to get some clarity on why it is I want to attend a church anyway, before trying another one. Despite the weirdness of the small Baptist church, I liked being recognized there. I felt like I was part of a community.
I think that's why I want to go to church, despite my very hermit-ish tendencies. But my developing religious and spiritual philosophies do not fly well within the traditional church environment. It takes me right to the crux of my confusion.
I have powerful internal voices telling me that I'm sinful, back slidden and unacceptable. These voices gain power within the church, because so frequently, the church's message agrees with the voices.
Simultaneously, those old and inbred voices are telling me that I can't understand God outside the context of religious authority. The very idea that I could is blasphemous, ridiculous, laughable.
Then I have another voice reminding me that what I'm feeling isn't conviction, it's condemnation; it's an ancient condemnation that I'll never placate by any action of mine.
I keep getting the feeling that the church wants me to be in submission to it- to its pastor and its unique group dynamics. It feels like the church wants to play three important roles in my life: to be a direct pipeline to God, to be a translation for His voice and to verify that my actions are acceptable.
The problem is, I grow increasingly jealous of those roles; I want them for Christ. I think that He, not the church, is my pipeline to God. I think that He is the Word, and I think that through Him my life and my actions are redeemed. He is the one that teaches me how to live my life.
When I attend church, I participate in a set emotional ritual. I should come to church feeling good that I have presented my physical person properly to the church, with the acceptable and necessary equipment. I can feel especially good about myself if I attended my small/life group earlier.
Once church begins, I should feel bad that I have sinned during the week and that I have not prayed enough, read my Bible enough, or gone to the Wednesday prayer/study group. Or, if I did, that I did not pray out loud or that I did not read the assigned section in my study book, or that I had doubts or questions that I knew were unacceptable.
During worship service, I should repent and go with the emotional flow. I must work myself up, using the lights and the sounds, to reach the acceptable fever pitch.
Then, before the emotions have a chance to wear off, they pass around the offering/tithes plate/bag and I give tithes but I feel guilty because I haven't given an offering. Or, I don't give the full tithes and I know that I'm sinning big time.
However, I get a burst of pride and accomplishment when I put my envelope in the bag. No else knows what I'm giving, but they can see that I do. In the eyes of the church, I'm acceptable.
Then I prepare to humbly take in what the pastor is teaching me. I busily scribble notes in my study guide. I look up the verses in my Bible. I Participate.
At the alter call, I feel how miserable is my state and how far I have yet to go, and how infrequently I feel the presence of God in my daily life, which is full of HGTV, loading the dishwasher and early morning commutes to work.
I repent, but I'm not brave enough to go up to the front of the church. I feel bad, but I pour out my heart as best I can on my own.
Or maybe I'm desperate enough that I do go down to the front. I'm deeply humbled and yet exulted. I'm a dear daughter of the church. I say that I want to receive more of God. I receive the laying on of hands and lots of impassioned prayer.
Then I walk out. I feel emptied, clear and sparkling like a goblet washed with Cascade. By that evening, however, already I feel the film of the world shifting down over me. I read an extra chapter of the Bible to try and desperately hold on to it.
Maybe I pray longer. Maybe I skip my favorite show. Maybe I get addicted to denying myself things in order to feel good about myself. I go on religious purges like other people go on diets. Maybe I'm immune to all this and I just go to church because I always have.
Church is like a club. It has membership dues, initiation rites, and ceremonies. It has standards for membership and a vertical authority system. Some rites are for members only, others are open to guests as well. We look up over the backs of every one's heads up to the pastor, who is the only one who can look us in the face.
When I attend church, I'm directly engaging these old, powerful patterns of belief and behavior. It's exhausting and it's stressful. It's frightening to live in the question, instead of leap at the answer.
But how weak is Christ, anyway? Is He so weak that the people who question church slip right out of His grasp? Is He chained to the pulpit like a dog on a leash? Is He so obtuse that He can't talk to people's hearts without the church's official translation?
Is the devil so powerful that he can pretend to be Christ, and speak lies into people's hearts, and Christ just stands there off to the side, wringing His scarred hands in consternation, unable to free His son or daughter from deception, because that person isn't in church?
I think not. I think it's terrible to believe so. I think the real church is vast and invisibile to the world. The world doesn't recognize it, because it's organized according to people's hearts. It doesn't have political sway or a collection plate or a dress code. It's made up of all those bruised and broken hearts that hunger after Christ where ever they happen to be, inside or outside of a church building.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
September 21st
It's so bad that I give writing advice and yet have never been published. Heh.
But, for what it's worth, here are a few more tips I've found helpful.
Keep a style sheet. My editor friend turned me on to this. Just keep a running list of mistakes you find yourself making over and over again. Post it somewhere where you can see it. It helps you become more aware of them.
If you are stuck, here is a list of possible things to unblock you, from least severe to total writer's block.
1. Stop writing and check facebook. Just don't get stuck there for hours- I know that's easier said than done.
2. Stop writing and move around. I wash the dishes, or switch the laundry.
3. Change the music. Sometimes music in a different mood calls up a new inspiration.
4. Stop and reread what you've written so far. If that doesn't work, go back further. Start at the very beginning. Bring to mind your vision for the story, the thing you want to convey above all, the thing you love the most about it.
5. Open up a brand new sheet and start hammering out the plot, or arrange what you already have by plot points.
6. Blog about it or bounce ideas off someone.
7. If you are really well and truly stuck, like I was when I was wrestling with the stupid road, stop writing altogether for a day or so. Just push it right out of your mind. Have faith in your subconscious. It will be hard at work, bubbling away back there.
Sooner or later, it will spit an idea out at you. But you have to leave it alone for a while for it to do it's thing. So watch a movie or read a book or do your homework or whatever. Just stop thinking about it for a little while.
8. If you've done this for a couple of days, and still nothing, open a new sheet and just do stream of consciousness writing. Just write whatever the hell the comes into your head. Or start a brand new story. The point is to keep writing. Never stop writing out of sheer discouragement.
I've gotten my rewrite up to the library. It's such a massive jigsaw puzzle. I'm constantly moving around bits of the original dialogue and description into new settings. I like the results, though. I think it's much better this way.
Before, the story was a narrow, sometimes illogical or unnatural channel as I drove it mercilessly from start to finish. Now I can take that original channel and reroute and widen it.
It's that time of the month, and boy, are the hormones savage. Women's bodies are at the mercy of such a messy chemistry.
Today I feel like crying for no reason. Yesterday, when Keith spent a hundred and fifty dollars more than anticipated, it was a very close thing before I could restrain myself from throwing something at him.
He looked over at my face and recoiled. He gave a little nervous laugh. "I shouldn't be afraid of you!" he insisted.
Poor guy. He should not be. Though, I wonder if all men are just a little bit scared of their wives during this time of the month... Anyhow, I threw over the anger instead and crawled up on the couch with him.
I still think spending that much money was completely unnecessary, but that's one of those topics of conversations that will, for the sake of marriage, remain closed indefinitely.
Last night, I had a whole series of dreams, but I only remember parts of the last of them.
In that dream, I was conceiving children, but they had mortal abnormalities that caused them to die before they were born. It was something to do with their hearts; their hearts weren't strong enough to keep them alive.
Then I conceived three children, and the doctor told me that two would actually live, but the third would not. She was excited for me, because of the two that would live.
I could see them, and as I watched, the third one increasingly struggled to breathe until finally, he had no more strength and died. It happened so slowly. There was nothing I could do.
I still felt incredible joy at the fact that the other two were living. I kept touching them to make sure they were alive.
I'll bet that dream is why I felt like crying this morning.
But, for what it's worth, here are a few more tips I've found helpful.
Keep a style sheet. My editor friend turned me on to this. Just keep a running list of mistakes you find yourself making over and over again. Post it somewhere where you can see it. It helps you become more aware of them.
If you are stuck, here is a list of possible things to unblock you, from least severe to total writer's block.
1. Stop writing and check facebook. Just don't get stuck there for hours- I know that's easier said than done.
2. Stop writing and move around. I wash the dishes, or switch the laundry.
3. Change the music. Sometimes music in a different mood calls up a new inspiration.
4. Stop and reread what you've written so far. If that doesn't work, go back further. Start at the very beginning. Bring to mind your vision for the story, the thing you want to convey above all, the thing you love the most about it.
5. Open up a brand new sheet and start hammering out the plot, or arrange what you already have by plot points.
6. Blog about it or bounce ideas off someone.
7. If you are really well and truly stuck, like I was when I was wrestling with the stupid road, stop writing altogether for a day or so. Just push it right out of your mind. Have faith in your subconscious. It will be hard at work, bubbling away back there.
Sooner or later, it will spit an idea out at you. But you have to leave it alone for a while for it to do it's thing. So watch a movie or read a book or do your homework or whatever. Just stop thinking about it for a little while.
8. If you've done this for a couple of days, and still nothing, open a new sheet and just do stream of consciousness writing. Just write whatever the hell the comes into your head. Or start a brand new story. The point is to keep writing. Never stop writing out of sheer discouragement.
I've gotten my rewrite up to the library. It's such a massive jigsaw puzzle. I'm constantly moving around bits of the original dialogue and description into new settings. I like the results, though. I think it's much better this way.
Before, the story was a narrow, sometimes illogical or unnatural channel as I drove it mercilessly from start to finish. Now I can take that original channel and reroute and widen it.
It's that time of the month, and boy, are the hormones savage. Women's bodies are at the mercy of such a messy chemistry.
Today I feel like crying for no reason. Yesterday, when Keith spent a hundred and fifty dollars more than anticipated, it was a very close thing before I could restrain myself from throwing something at him.
He looked over at my face and recoiled. He gave a little nervous laugh. "I shouldn't be afraid of you!" he insisted.
Poor guy. He should not be. Though, I wonder if all men are just a little bit scared of their wives during this time of the month... Anyhow, I threw over the anger instead and crawled up on the couch with him.
I still think spending that much money was completely unnecessary, but that's one of those topics of conversations that will, for the sake of marriage, remain closed indefinitely.
Last night, I had a whole series of dreams, but I only remember parts of the last of them.
In that dream, I was conceiving children, but they had mortal abnormalities that caused them to die before they were born. It was something to do with their hearts; their hearts weren't strong enough to keep them alive.
Then I conceived three children, and the doctor told me that two would actually live, but the third would not. She was excited for me, because of the two that would live.
I could see them, and as I watched, the third one increasingly struggled to breathe until finally, he had no more strength and died. It happened so slowly. There was nothing I could do.
I still felt incredible joy at the fact that the other two were living. I kept touching them to make sure they were alive.
I'll bet that dream is why I felt like crying this morning.
Friday, September 2, 2011
September 2nd
There was a little four month old boy sitting calmly on my couch last night. His father left him in his car seat there while the rest of his family went swimming.
This boy seemed to find me very amusing. I couldn't figure out what it was. Was it my glasses? My face? Whatever it was, he kept chuckling and grinning and grabbing at his bare toes.
I explained to him very earnestly that I did not know much about babies, and so if he found communicating with me a frustrating business, I understood.
Keith graduated yesterday. I didn't go, because not only the class, but the graduation was, as my husband would say, all jacked up, and he just wanted to get it over with.
He called me and said one of his classmates had a flight that didn't leave until the next day and had no car and nothing to do and could he spend the night at the house?
That was fine, but you know how it goes. One guest quickly became six. Three of them were children. These children were like little elves; they moved so quickly and spoke so softly that sometimes I thought I only imagined them.
Their mother wore no make up and had her long hair pulled back in a ponytail. I shook her hand while holding a dripping wooden spoon in the air; I had been making mac n' cheese. Basically I was cooking whatever I had left in my pantry.
After dinner, the children mysteriously decided that I was an interesting person, and so frequently waylaid me with important information, such as the loss of a tooth, or a somersault.
The little girl kept coming into the kitchen with the Barbies from my box of stuff and requesting their names from me.
When I told her they could be anything she wanted them to be, the idea seemed to hold too much of a vastness for her; her eyes grew wide. She looked at me in wonder and slipped away.
Shortly thereafer, she returned to inquire again, with a hopeful look. I took pity on her and named one "Brenda" and the other "Karen." Nice, solid names. Delighted, she offered them to me again, so I could repeat the names. Whispering the names to herself, she scampered off to play with them.
After that, she could be found drifting around the house, dolls in hand, whispering intently to herself. She was completely lost in her own world, and would sometimes bump up against things in surprise, like the edge of the counter, or my knees. I couldn't understand what she was saying, but it sounded very serious.
Her older brother came into the kitchen and asked me if I had a box of boy toys, like the box of girl toys his sister had. Sadly, I had to explain to him that I did not, as those toys originated from my own childhood as a little girl.
He took it well; he returned with grim determination to the Barbie box, knowing there was nothing else for it.
Their mother came and found me in the kitchen as well. When I told her she had delightful children, she then began a conversation that did not end until the family left. My only part in this conversation was to make the corresponding small sounds and remarks that indicated I was still alert and listening.
This was marvelous. I am very good at listening. Never once did I have to worry about picking up my end of the conversation. It was quite relaxing.
When they left, the little girl drifted over to me and put her fingers lightly on my knees. She said nothing, she just looked at me. I returned her solemn gaze.
"It was very nice to meet you," I told her. Then she smiled; her smile began in her eyes and spread slowly out over the rest of her face. She ducked her head and disappeared.
Sometimes I forget that one of the first things I knew with certainty about myself, was that I am good with children. That used to be the best thing about me, that certainty. Now, it seems the older I get, continuing infertile, that knowledge gets shakier and harder to believe.
I begin to doubt all my instincts. Surely they must be all wrong, if I'm not being given my own children.
I keep thinking about how it will feel when we have adopted, and have brought one or two children into the house, and they are our own children that are drifting around, discovering the parameters of their own world. But I can't really imagine it, because each time I try, my heart threatens to crack from sheer longing.
Keith and the remaining guest stayed up until 3am, celebrating the end of class with gusto. My staff sergeant is still suffering from the effects of this revelry. He is prostrate on the couch and will probably remain there until much later in the day.
I myself do not feel so well; the sounds of their movie kept me awake until about 1 am, and then I was woken again at 3 am when Keith came to bed and then woke again at 5 am in order to drive our guest to the airport.
I think it safe to say that tonight will be an early night for the Indiana household.
This boy seemed to find me very amusing. I couldn't figure out what it was. Was it my glasses? My face? Whatever it was, he kept chuckling and grinning and grabbing at his bare toes.
I explained to him very earnestly that I did not know much about babies, and so if he found communicating with me a frustrating business, I understood.
Keith graduated yesterday. I didn't go, because not only the class, but the graduation was, as my husband would say, all jacked up, and he just wanted to get it over with.
He called me and said one of his classmates had a flight that didn't leave until the next day and had no car and nothing to do and could he spend the night at the house?
That was fine, but you know how it goes. One guest quickly became six. Three of them were children. These children were like little elves; they moved so quickly and spoke so softly that sometimes I thought I only imagined them.
Their mother wore no make up and had her long hair pulled back in a ponytail. I shook her hand while holding a dripping wooden spoon in the air; I had been making mac n' cheese. Basically I was cooking whatever I had left in my pantry.
After dinner, the children mysteriously decided that I was an interesting person, and so frequently waylaid me with important information, such as the loss of a tooth, or a somersault.
The little girl kept coming into the kitchen with the Barbies from my box of stuff and requesting their names from me.
When I told her they could be anything she wanted them to be, the idea seemed to hold too much of a vastness for her; her eyes grew wide. She looked at me in wonder and slipped away.
Shortly thereafer, she returned to inquire again, with a hopeful look. I took pity on her and named one "Brenda" and the other "Karen." Nice, solid names. Delighted, she offered them to me again, so I could repeat the names. Whispering the names to herself, she scampered off to play with them.
After that, she could be found drifting around the house, dolls in hand, whispering intently to herself. She was completely lost in her own world, and would sometimes bump up against things in surprise, like the edge of the counter, or my knees. I couldn't understand what she was saying, but it sounded very serious.
Her older brother came into the kitchen and asked me if I had a box of boy toys, like the box of girl toys his sister had. Sadly, I had to explain to him that I did not, as those toys originated from my own childhood as a little girl.
He took it well; he returned with grim determination to the Barbie box, knowing there was nothing else for it.
Their mother came and found me in the kitchen as well. When I told her she had delightful children, she then began a conversation that did not end until the family left. My only part in this conversation was to make the corresponding small sounds and remarks that indicated I was still alert and listening.
This was marvelous. I am very good at listening. Never once did I have to worry about picking up my end of the conversation. It was quite relaxing.
When they left, the little girl drifted over to me and put her fingers lightly on my knees. She said nothing, she just looked at me. I returned her solemn gaze.
"It was very nice to meet you," I told her. Then she smiled; her smile began in her eyes and spread slowly out over the rest of her face. She ducked her head and disappeared.
Sometimes I forget that one of the first things I knew with certainty about myself, was that I am good with children. That used to be the best thing about me, that certainty. Now, it seems the older I get, continuing infertile, that knowledge gets shakier and harder to believe.
I begin to doubt all my instincts. Surely they must be all wrong, if I'm not being given my own children.
I keep thinking about how it will feel when we have adopted, and have brought one or two children into the house, and they are our own children that are drifting around, discovering the parameters of their own world. But I can't really imagine it, because each time I try, my heart threatens to crack from sheer longing.
Keith and the remaining guest stayed up until 3am, celebrating the end of class with gusto. My staff sergeant is still suffering from the effects of this revelry. He is prostrate on the couch and will probably remain there until much later in the day.
I myself do not feel so well; the sounds of their movie kept me awake until about 1 am, and then I was woken again at 3 am when Keith came to bed and then woke again at 5 am in order to drive our guest to the airport.
I think it safe to say that tonight will be an early night for the Indiana household.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
September 1st
Dad shared my last post on facebook (with my permission), so now a lot of people can see just how crazy I really am! *grin*
Oh lord. I'm making myself talk more on facebook. It's one thing to be silent because one chooses to- it's another to do so out of fear. That's not freedom.
Last night I dreamed there were children playing on a woodpile. As I watched, a log on top fell down onto the little boy.
His father ambled over, but instead of picking up that log, or moving the other children who were still on the pile, he began randomly shifting the logs here and there.
As he did, the other children started to fall down into the woodpile, as gaps opened up and then were closed again by the slipping, rolling logs.
It happened all so quickly, with this kind of silent horror that just got worse and worse. Eventually, all I could see of the children were pieces of their clothing or a hand or a foot between the logs.
The little girl that I had loved the best had fallen all the way to the bottom of the pile and the entire weight of the rest of the logs was crushing her.
Then the dream changed, and I saw with relief that all the children were alive. They were all physically crippled in some way. They were subdued and quiet and tramatized.
I continue to wonder, am I dreaming about my hopes for children, or about my writing?
Oh lord. I'm making myself talk more on facebook. It's one thing to be silent because one chooses to- it's another to do so out of fear. That's not freedom.
Last night I dreamed there were children playing on a woodpile. As I watched, a log on top fell down onto the little boy.
His father ambled over, but instead of picking up that log, or moving the other children who were still on the pile, he began randomly shifting the logs here and there.
As he did, the other children started to fall down into the woodpile, as gaps opened up and then were closed again by the slipping, rolling logs.
It happened all so quickly, with this kind of silent horror that just got worse and worse. Eventually, all I could see of the children were pieces of their clothing or a hand or a foot between the logs.
The little girl that I had loved the best had fallen all the way to the bottom of the pile and the entire weight of the rest of the logs was crushing her.
Then the dream changed, and I saw with relief that all the children were alive. They were all physically crippled in some way. They were subdued and quiet and tramatized.
I continue to wonder, am I dreaming about my hopes for children, or about my writing?
Friday, August 26, 2011
August 26th
I know what it is.
I have stepped back into an old identity, one I wrote about in Torii. The ragged girl, the girl who must deal with the leavings of her parent's love and affection.
I don't have to do that now, of course, but when I was a child, that is how I learned to view myself. When I started to demand more, in my late teen years, I created this chasm between what I wanted from my parents, and what they were able to give me.
I felt guilty, like a bad, bad girl, for demanding something from my parents. The sense of worthlessness was almost crushing. I felt as though my needs were invalid and gross; I felt as if they revealed something wrong about me.
It was as though I was the cuckoo in the nest, knocking the other sweet little chicks out, endlessly squawking, ugly and misplaced. Only the cuckoo gets fed, in nature, so that's a bad metaphor.
Now, my parents are able to pour out love and validation at the drop of a hat. They have heard all my anger without reflecting it away and grieved with me over my pain. This is an incredible gift. I realize how rare it is to have parents that strong and that healthy.
They aren't the same people. I'm not the same person. But sometimes I step back into the old identity, like when a sibling receives a beautiful baby girl, and I continue infertile. Then, along with my grief, I feel like an ugly, bitter person for feeling my own sorrow at the same time that I feel joy and excitement for them.
This doesn't make me an ugly, bitter person; this makes me a human person. I seem to have labeled my humanity as evil, bad, unnecessary, and unsightly. I can write beautiful letters to a friend, telling her to love herself and nurture herself, but I can't seem so easily to tell my own self this.
Maybe I should try doing that deliberately- I should stand in front of the mirror and say that flacky phrase "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better." Only that's all wrong. Because the trick is not to teach yourself to value self improvement, but to teach yourself to value who you are right now.
You know why else this is coming up for me right now? It's because I'm writing Gilly up through adolescence, so I've already unlocked the door on that little shop of horrors. Mmmm.... unwanted renaissance. Such are the dangers of writing.
Yesterday, not surprisingly, I was able to go back and rewrite a key scene. The first time I wrote it, Gilly reflected a surface part of my personality and didn't act like herself. Then I fiddled with it almost endlessly, but all I was doing was rearranging the wrong dialogue.
Then yesterday, I pretty much destroyed the entire scene and wrote it from a much deeper part of myself, and Gilly was herself. But after three hours of this, I was emotionally exhausted and watched anime on Netflix instead.
I'm going to have to do this the entire way through everything that I've already written.
What an exhausting prospect.
I think I'll go grocery shopping instead.
I have stepped back into an old identity, one I wrote about in Torii. The ragged girl, the girl who must deal with the leavings of her parent's love and affection.
I don't have to do that now, of course, but when I was a child, that is how I learned to view myself. When I started to demand more, in my late teen years, I created this chasm between what I wanted from my parents, and what they were able to give me.
I felt guilty, like a bad, bad girl, for demanding something from my parents. The sense of worthlessness was almost crushing. I felt as though my needs were invalid and gross; I felt as if they revealed something wrong about me.
It was as though I was the cuckoo in the nest, knocking the other sweet little chicks out, endlessly squawking, ugly and misplaced. Only the cuckoo gets fed, in nature, so that's a bad metaphor.
Now, my parents are able to pour out love and validation at the drop of a hat. They have heard all my anger without reflecting it away and grieved with me over my pain. This is an incredible gift. I realize how rare it is to have parents that strong and that healthy.
They aren't the same people. I'm not the same person. But sometimes I step back into the old identity, like when a sibling receives a beautiful baby girl, and I continue infertile. Then, along with my grief, I feel like an ugly, bitter person for feeling my own sorrow at the same time that I feel joy and excitement for them.
This doesn't make me an ugly, bitter person; this makes me a human person. I seem to have labeled my humanity as evil, bad, unnecessary, and unsightly. I can write beautiful letters to a friend, telling her to love herself and nurture herself, but I can't seem so easily to tell my own self this.
Maybe I should try doing that deliberately- I should stand in front of the mirror and say that flacky phrase "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better." Only that's all wrong. Because the trick is not to teach yourself to value self improvement, but to teach yourself to value who you are right now.
You know why else this is coming up for me right now? It's because I'm writing Gilly up through adolescence, so I've already unlocked the door on that little shop of horrors. Mmmm.... unwanted renaissance. Such are the dangers of writing.
Yesterday, not surprisingly, I was able to go back and rewrite a key scene. The first time I wrote it, Gilly reflected a surface part of my personality and didn't act like herself. Then I fiddled with it almost endlessly, but all I was doing was rearranging the wrong dialogue.
Then yesterday, I pretty much destroyed the entire scene and wrote it from a much deeper part of myself, and Gilly was herself. But after three hours of this, I was emotionally exhausted and watched anime on Netflix instead.
I'm going to have to do this the entire way through everything that I've already written.
What an exhausting prospect.
I think I'll go grocery shopping instead.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
August 25th
I chew my lips so badly that I must put chap stick on at least four or five times a day to prevent the skin from chapping and breaking. When I go to bed at night, my jaws ache.
I never leave the house unless it's to go grocery shopping or with Keith. I don't even know where the local library is.
I wear the same two linen shirts and two cotton skirts all week long.
I tell myself this is fine, so long as I keep writing, jogging and the house clean. Which I do.
Most of the time, I think I'm happy. It's hard to tell sometimes.
My days are defined by these obscure internal crises that no one else ever knows about, unless I happen to blog about them. Things having to do with self perception: my perception of everything from my general way of living to a specific comment I left on facebook.
It doesn't matter what I say or do, at some point, it will feel like a terrible mistake and will follow me around, my constant companion for the rest of the day. I've almost stopped commenting at all, because of this, to try and avoid it.
Most of the time I'm happy to see Keith pull up in the driveway and go striding down to the mailbox. Sometimes he's arrived in the midst of an intense internal weather system that doesn't want to give way for him; I want to continue absorbed and wrestling.
I am like the crazy, eccentric and creative writer person that scare other, more normal people. I wonder if I could have turned out differently if I had tried. Would I trully want to be different? Different in what way?
I wonder if this version of me is truly the result of my choosing, over and over again, personal authenticity over society's expectations. Or is this just the result of my anxiety wearing away at me, like wind scouring the rocks?
I wonder what kind of story I would write, if I wrote about this me- the thirty three year old, infertile, anxious shut in who is also the warm and passionate wife who is also the woman with the spectacular, adversarial and fertile internal life.
Yesterday I wept. My brother and his wife were given a little girl. Their life was added to, was enlarged in every way.
In the light of this, my own life seemed so futile, like a grown up playing in the sandbox. Who cares if I can write? What does it matter? It won't change the world. I'm not a genius; I just have a natural ability.
My body seemed so broken, so worthless. Already having been the sexual plaything of pedophile, already spent, spoiled, plundered. And now broken, yielding me nothing. Just an empty vessel.
I just let myself grieve. Then I wrote. I forced myself to continue writing. After all, what am I going to do? I have this life. I have this day stretching out in front of me, full of emptiness. I might as well write.
I never leave the house unless it's to go grocery shopping or with Keith. I don't even know where the local library is.
I wear the same two linen shirts and two cotton skirts all week long.
I tell myself this is fine, so long as I keep writing, jogging and the house clean. Which I do.
Most of the time, I think I'm happy. It's hard to tell sometimes.
My days are defined by these obscure internal crises that no one else ever knows about, unless I happen to blog about them. Things having to do with self perception: my perception of everything from my general way of living to a specific comment I left on facebook.
It doesn't matter what I say or do, at some point, it will feel like a terrible mistake and will follow me around, my constant companion for the rest of the day. I've almost stopped commenting at all, because of this, to try and avoid it.
Most of the time I'm happy to see Keith pull up in the driveway and go striding down to the mailbox. Sometimes he's arrived in the midst of an intense internal weather system that doesn't want to give way for him; I want to continue absorbed and wrestling.
I am like the crazy, eccentric and creative writer person that scare other, more normal people. I wonder if I could have turned out differently if I had tried. Would I trully want to be different? Different in what way?
I wonder if this version of me is truly the result of my choosing, over and over again, personal authenticity over society's expectations. Or is this just the result of my anxiety wearing away at me, like wind scouring the rocks?
I wonder what kind of story I would write, if I wrote about this me- the thirty three year old, infertile, anxious shut in who is also the warm and passionate wife who is also the woman with the spectacular, adversarial and fertile internal life.
Yesterday I wept. My brother and his wife were given a little girl. Their life was added to, was enlarged in every way.
In the light of this, my own life seemed so futile, like a grown up playing in the sandbox. Who cares if I can write? What does it matter? It won't change the world. I'm not a genius; I just have a natural ability.
My body seemed so broken, so worthless. Already having been the sexual plaything of pedophile, already spent, spoiled, plundered. And now broken, yielding me nothing. Just an empty vessel.
I just let myself grieve. Then I wrote. I forced myself to continue writing. After all, what am I going to do? I have this life. I have this day stretching out in front of me, full of emptiness. I might as well write.
Friday, August 19, 2011
August 19th
Today is the first morning in three days that I woke up and did not feel like a hag. I'm pretty sure I still look like one, though.
Keith, on the other hand, is looking mouth wateringly attractive to me lately. It's a good thing he doesn't mind kissing me even when I'm all sniffly. After all, he's the one that gave me the cold in the first place. I surely can't give it back to him... can I?
I had the strangest dream last night. I dreamed I was in charge of a whole group of children on a trip, with one or two other adults to help out.
It was difficult at first, because the children were argumentative and insecure; they kept picking on one another. But I kept spending time with them and talking with them, and their insecurities started to fall away. I started to really like who they were as people; I enjoyed their personalities. I thought of them as mine.
Then we were at this truck stop. As I was watching, I saw a sixteen wheeler lose control on the highway and jack knife into the parking lot, right where the children were. For a moment, the cab of the truck was hung on a electric pole, preventing the children from being crushed.
I went racing into the tangled mess, screaming, "Get the children, get the children," but as soon as I did, the cab slid loose of the pole and the entire truck swung down on me. I tried to scramble out of the way, but I was being crushed to death.
What was worse was my knowledge of the fact that all the children were being crushed to death as well, right below me; I couldn't see them, they were inside the truck that was being compressed by the other one. It was so indescribably awful to know that they were all dying, so close to me and yet I couldn't do a thing about it, or speak to them, or reach them.
I wonder if this dream is about my fears that I will never have biological children, or if the children are just symbolic, and the dream is about my fears that my hopes for my writing will all be crushed.
But that wasn't the end of the dream. The dream went on, almost as though the crash had never happened.
I was in the building of the truck stop, looking for a bathroom. In the main room with the snacks and the benches for eating the greasy food was a stall, but it was for showering, not for a toilet.
It was right out in the open and I thought, wow, who would use that? I felt curious, so I went in and I found that there were panels that slid closed, making it a very modest, but very tight little space. I thought, this is cool. I would love a shower after these days of being on the road.
Then I realized I still had on all my clothes, and then I realized I didn't know how to get out, so I rapped on the wall and the attendant opened the door. She said I could put my clothes in the dryer so they could be freshened up while I showered.
I thought that was a great idea, so I took of my jeans and sweater right out in the open, intending to shower in my underwear. I felt no shame or embarrassment about doing this. In fact, the whole tenor of this part of the dream was of cheerful practicality and curiosity.
What could that mean? It's so interesting that instead of a toilet, which in my dreams are usual filthy, out in the open and symbolic of sexual abuse, I found a shower, which is where a person gets cleaned and refreshed, and that the shower was a safe and interesting place to be, and that I felt no shame in taking off my outer clothing.
I felt powerful and in control, and capable of making decisions. Also, the children were still alive, and in the parking lot, being looked after by another adult that I trusted and was fond of while I was inside the building.
I wonder why I had these two dreams back to back like that?
I looked up motorway, it says it can symbolize a major direction and quick route to where you want to go in life. A child in a dream can stand for feelings of growth or vulnerability. Washing can indicate getting rid of unwanted feelings such as self doubt or despair.
Sooo... I guess that's pretty obvious then. I guess my hopes and fears for my writing are affecting me at a far deeper level than even I would have guessed, and yet, they were expressed and resolved within the same dream sequence.
I am writing more slowly lately. It's because I'm near the end of this story. There are only a few more scenes to write out, including the linchpin scene. And, more than with any other story I've yet written, I don't want this one to end. I don't want to leave this world. So I'm extending it out deliberately by pacing myself.
Also, it's proving difficult trying to move Gilly through adolescence. Not surprising, considering that she reflects my own journey, which was torturous. Writing it is like one step forward, two steps back.
I did hear back from Dad's friend; he said my use of language was enviable, particulary my descriptive gift. He's going to read through my stuff again and then give me more detailed feeback. Which is very kind of him; I gather from Dad that he is a busy guy.
Keith, on the other hand, is looking mouth wateringly attractive to me lately. It's a good thing he doesn't mind kissing me even when I'm all sniffly. After all, he's the one that gave me the cold in the first place. I surely can't give it back to him... can I?
I had the strangest dream last night. I dreamed I was in charge of a whole group of children on a trip, with one or two other adults to help out.
It was difficult at first, because the children were argumentative and insecure; they kept picking on one another. But I kept spending time with them and talking with them, and their insecurities started to fall away. I started to really like who they were as people; I enjoyed their personalities. I thought of them as mine.
Then we were at this truck stop. As I was watching, I saw a sixteen wheeler lose control on the highway and jack knife into the parking lot, right where the children were. For a moment, the cab of the truck was hung on a electric pole, preventing the children from being crushed.
I went racing into the tangled mess, screaming, "Get the children, get the children," but as soon as I did, the cab slid loose of the pole and the entire truck swung down on me. I tried to scramble out of the way, but I was being crushed to death.
What was worse was my knowledge of the fact that all the children were being crushed to death as well, right below me; I couldn't see them, they were inside the truck that was being compressed by the other one. It was so indescribably awful to know that they were all dying, so close to me and yet I couldn't do a thing about it, or speak to them, or reach them.
I wonder if this dream is about my fears that I will never have biological children, or if the children are just symbolic, and the dream is about my fears that my hopes for my writing will all be crushed.
But that wasn't the end of the dream. The dream went on, almost as though the crash had never happened.
I was in the building of the truck stop, looking for a bathroom. In the main room with the snacks and the benches for eating the greasy food was a stall, but it was for showering, not for a toilet.
It was right out in the open and I thought, wow, who would use that? I felt curious, so I went in and I found that there were panels that slid closed, making it a very modest, but very tight little space. I thought, this is cool. I would love a shower after these days of being on the road.
Then I realized I still had on all my clothes, and then I realized I didn't know how to get out, so I rapped on the wall and the attendant opened the door. She said I could put my clothes in the dryer so they could be freshened up while I showered.
I thought that was a great idea, so I took of my jeans and sweater right out in the open, intending to shower in my underwear. I felt no shame or embarrassment about doing this. In fact, the whole tenor of this part of the dream was of cheerful practicality and curiosity.
What could that mean? It's so interesting that instead of a toilet, which in my dreams are usual filthy, out in the open and symbolic of sexual abuse, I found a shower, which is where a person gets cleaned and refreshed, and that the shower was a safe and interesting place to be, and that I felt no shame in taking off my outer clothing.
I felt powerful and in control, and capable of making decisions. Also, the children were still alive, and in the parking lot, being looked after by another adult that I trusted and was fond of while I was inside the building.
I wonder why I had these two dreams back to back like that?
I looked up motorway, it says it can symbolize a major direction and quick route to where you want to go in life. A child in a dream can stand for feelings of growth or vulnerability. Washing can indicate getting rid of unwanted feelings such as self doubt or despair.
Sooo... I guess that's pretty obvious then. I guess my hopes and fears for my writing are affecting me at a far deeper level than even I would have guessed, and yet, they were expressed and resolved within the same dream sequence.
I am writing more slowly lately. It's because I'm near the end of this story. There are only a few more scenes to write out, including the linchpin scene. And, more than with any other story I've yet written, I don't want this one to end. I don't want to leave this world. So I'm extending it out deliberately by pacing myself.
Also, it's proving difficult trying to move Gilly through adolescence. Not surprising, considering that she reflects my own journey, which was torturous. Writing it is like one step forward, two steps back.
I did hear back from Dad's friend; he said my use of language was enviable, particulary my descriptive gift. He's going to read through my stuff again and then give me more detailed feeback. Which is very kind of him; I gather from Dad that he is a busy guy.
Monday, July 18, 2011
July 18th
We checked out another church on Saturday and will try attending it next Sunday.
It's amazing to me how disloyal I feel over leaving a church we attended for maybe a month and a half. Why do I feel as though, since we started attending there, we are now obligated to continue?
I know exactly why. Because that is the way I was taught to feel about church; all or nothing. No quitters. Blind loyalty to those in authority and if it hurts, if it's hard, if it weighs you down, then church must be doing its job.
It's amazing to me, to realize the extent to which I still carry all this baggage. It's fresh; it springs to life like fungus after a rain. It's discouraging, is what it is.
But then, I take a step back and remember that I haven't exactly been able to work through this baggage, until now. So, naturally it's going to be untouched and the emotions raw. In fact, it's pretty incredible that I'm strong enough now to begin to work through it. So, that's something to be proud of, even if I feel as though I've taken a couple steps back.
And the whole goal of this reengaging my personal church dynamic is to be able to attend church in a healthy, self respecting, thoughtful and deliberate way. I like the idea of coming together with other real, imperfect people who all love God and want to worship Him together, each in their own way.
Though I'm beginning to grow increasingly doubtful about whether or not I can find that within an actual church building. If only I could breeze through it- in and out, the happy church hopper. Lots of people do it, or so I hear. At least, I remember reading an article lamenting the rise of church jumping.
At the beginning of the process, I thought to myself, "All churches are imperfect, so I'll just choose the one that's literally closest to the house. I mean, why not?"
But that did not work out. Now I'm tempted just to go based on music. I mean, if the church is going to be imperfect, why not choose the one with the most beautiful music? In which case, in my experience, the Episcopalians win.
However, we have found one of those super large churches with a full band, digital projections screens, and a Greeting Team at the door. I watched one of the sermons they had on their website, and it moved me nearly to tears, so we'll give it a try. Despite the fact that, according to their website, we will be given name tags to wear on our first day.
Talk about driving away visitors.
And then my story! Holy crap, but that story has a ton of moving parts. Everything is slowly building and it slowly builds out of my own worst experiences. Dragging it forward frequently feels like just that; as though I have a wooden sled of stones and I'm pulling at the rope, getting it to jerk forward inch by inch.
And sometimes, it gets wedged. Like now. I wrote about three paragraphs today, all total. I am in the midst of trying to describe the Ganges personification and the ensuing confrontation, none of which am I very clear on.
At points like these, I remind myself of the private vision I have of the story, of what it will ultimately be like, hopefully. And I know I can do it. I just have to do it slowly right now. I keep in mind what I want it to be: richly imagined, evocative, disturbing, and beautiful. Just saying those adjectives inspires me to continue hammering away at the damn thing.
And holy crap, but I have been really upset about not being pregnant all of a sudden. That feeling has not gone away since the Baby Isle Episode. Where is this coming from? It's like my reproductive organs have mysteriously decided, all at once, to rise up and consume all my hard won calm and contentment.
It's not even that time of the month, and various commercials are killing me.
It's amazing to me how disloyal I feel over leaving a church we attended for maybe a month and a half. Why do I feel as though, since we started attending there, we are now obligated to continue?
I know exactly why. Because that is the way I was taught to feel about church; all or nothing. No quitters. Blind loyalty to those in authority and if it hurts, if it's hard, if it weighs you down, then church must be doing its job.
It's amazing to me, to realize the extent to which I still carry all this baggage. It's fresh; it springs to life like fungus after a rain. It's discouraging, is what it is.
But then, I take a step back and remember that I haven't exactly been able to work through this baggage, until now. So, naturally it's going to be untouched and the emotions raw. In fact, it's pretty incredible that I'm strong enough now to begin to work through it. So, that's something to be proud of, even if I feel as though I've taken a couple steps back.
And the whole goal of this reengaging my personal church dynamic is to be able to attend church in a healthy, self respecting, thoughtful and deliberate way. I like the idea of coming together with other real, imperfect people who all love God and want to worship Him together, each in their own way.
Though I'm beginning to grow increasingly doubtful about whether or not I can find that within an actual church building. If only I could breeze through it- in and out, the happy church hopper. Lots of people do it, or so I hear. At least, I remember reading an article lamenting the rise of church jumping.
At the beginning of the process, I thought to myself, "All churches are imperfect, so I'll just choose the one that's literally closest to the house. I mean, why not?"
But that did not work out. Now I'm tempted just to go based on music. I mean, if the church is going to be imperfect, why not choose the one with the most beautiful music? In which case, in my experience, the Episcopalians win.
However, we have found one of those super large churches with a full band, digital projections screens, and a Greeting Team at the door. I watched one of the sermons they had on their website, and it moved me nearly to tears, so we'll give it a try. Despite the fact that, according to their website, we will be given name tags to wear on our first day.
Talk about driving away visitors.
And then my story! Holy crap, but that story has a ton of moving parts. Everything is slowly building and it slowly builds out of my own worst experiences. Dragging it forward frequently feels like just that; as though I have a wooden sled of stones and I'm pulling at the rope, getting it to jerk forward inch by inch.
And sometimes, it gets wedged. Like now. I wrote about three paragraphs today, all total. I am in the midst of trying to describe the Ganges personification and the ensuing confrontation, none of which am I very clear on.
At points like these, I remind myself of the private vision I have of the story, of what it will ultimately be like, hopefully. And I know I can do it. I just have to do it slowly right now. I keep in mind what I want it to be: richly imagined, evocative, disturbing, and beautiful. Just saying those adjectives inspires me to continue hammering away at the damn thing.
And holy crap, but I have been really upset about not being pregnant all of a sudden. That feeling has not gone away since the Baby Isle Episode. Where is this coming from? It's like my reproductive organs have mysteriously decided, all at once, to rise up and consume all my hard won calm and contentment.
It's not even that time of the month, and various commercials are killing me.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
July 16th
I turned the corner in the story; they are now sailing up the Ganges.
I had to sit down and watch some TV this morning, to remind myself that normal life in the "outside" world continues apace. People are still interested in the latest fashion, recipe, decoration, etc. It seems some deal will be made concerning the debt ceiling. Families are going camping, or to the beach or to "Pick UR Own" fruit farms for seasonal berries.
I'm glad. I'm glad normal life goes on. Sometimes I think about joining it, but it seems like so much work. I used to think that when I had children, I'd join. I'd have to- all those PTA meetings, school supply lists, play dates, safety equipment, cupcake baking and doctor and dentist appointments.
Today Keith and I went shopping after he got a lack lustre haircut at the local strip mall place. It was a very nice place, but not geared toward the military. When Keith says he wants it skin tight on the sides, he's not kidding; he wants his skin gleaming. The hair he wants left, on the very top of his head, looks like a landing strip for an airplane.
He got a cheeseburger to make up for his still bristly scalp and then we went on our zig zag course around the store. I got in some one's way in the razor isle and even when I got out of their way, they walked past me with an audible "Hmph!" and a toss of their head and hip combined; a pretty impressive move.
I have to admit, I was in a worse haze than usual. When we walked past the baby stuff on the way to the dairy section, I felt, oddly, as though I was going to start bawling, right then and there. Just out of the blue, just at the sight of small containers of baby wipes and Johnson&Johnson products.
It took me very much by surprise; I haven't been conscious of an increased desire to be pregnant and I continue to procrastinate on moving forward with infertility treatments. I have no desire ever to pursue them.
I suppose, until I have children, or if I never have them, there will always be such moments taking me by surprise, moments where I remember that I had a completely different idea of what my life would be like.
Just recently, I was watching the video of Annie Lennox's "Why." Gosh, I remember so vividly hearing that in my early twenties and feeling it so strongly...
"This is the book I never read
These are the words I never said
This is the path I'll never tread
These are the dreams I'll dream instead
This is the joy that's seldom spread
These are the tears...
The tears we shed
This is the fear
This is the dread
These are the contents of my head
And these are the years that we have spent
And this is what they represent..."
Only, it makes me smile now, to think of myself feeling something that acutely, back before I had much living under my belt at all. Though, I guess by then I was already divorced, so I would have reason to empathize with the song.
But, gosh! Did I ever feel, back then. I still do, but I now have the ability to find myself amusing, which is a huge gift. And now I have much better perspective on the dreams we dream instead.
I had to sit down and watch some TV this morning, to remind myself that normal life in the "outside" world continues apace. People are still interested in the latest fashion, recipe, decoration, etc. It seems some deal will be made concerning the debt ceiling. Families are going camping, or to the beach or to "Pick UR Own" fruit farms for seasonal berries.
I'm glad. I'm glad normal life goes on. Sometimes I think about joining it, but it seems like so much work. I used to think that when I had children, I'd join. I'd have to- all those PTA meetings, school supply lists, play dates, safety equipment, cupcake baking and doctor and dentist appointments.
Today Keith and I went shopping after he got a lack lustre haircut at the local strip mall place. It was a very nice place, but not geared toward the military. When Keith says he wants it skin tight on the sides, he's not kidding; he wants his skin gleaming. The hair he wants left, on the very top of his head, looks like a landing strip for an airplane.
He got a cheeseburger to make up for his still bristly scalp and then we went on our zig zag course around the store. I got in some one's way in the razor isle and even when I got out of their way, they walked past me with an audible "Hmph!" and a toss of their head and hip combined; a pretty impressive move.
I have to admit, I was in a worse haze than usual. When we walked past the baby stuff on the way to the dairy section, I felt, oddly, as though I was going to start bawling, right then and there. Just out of the blue, just at the sight of small containers of baby wipes and Johnson&Johnson products.
It took me very much by surprise; I haven't been conscious of an increased desire to be pregnant and I continue to procrastinate on moving forward with infertility treatments. I have no desire ever to pursue them.
I suppose, until I have children, or if I never have them, there will always be such moments taking me by surprise, moments where I remember that I had a completely different idea of what my life would be like.
Just recently, I was watching the video of Annie Lennox's "Why." Gosh, I remember so vividly hearing that in my early twenties and feeling it so strongly...
"This is the book I never read
These are the words I never said
This is the path I'll never tread
These are the dreams I'll dream instead
This is the joy that's seldom spread
These are the tears...
The tears we shed
This is the fear
This is the dread
These are the contents of my head
And these are the years that we have spent
And this is what they represent..."
Only, it makes me smile now, to think of myself feeling something that acutely, back before I had much living under my belt at all. Though, I guess by then I was already divorced, so I would have reason to empathize with the song.
But, gosh! Did I ever feel, back then. I still do, but I now have the ability to find myself amusing, which is a huge gift. And now I have much better perspective on the dreams we dream instead.
Monday, March 21, 2011
March 21st
I had a nightmare night before yesterday.
In the dream, it was as though I were simultaneously living and staring in a show. Sort of like Truman. My show/life was a horror series, staring a group of female taxi drivers who solve ghost stories, getting the crap scared out of them in the process.
So, it was a new series/night and it was my part. I was standing in this dark trailer park, on thick, dewy grass. There was a picnic table standing between two trailers, with a birthday cake on it. It had a ring of candles, they were lit. They were the only light in the place, a dim cast of light unto the rough boards of the table top.
As I watched, I saw the flames go out, one by one, about the cake. The little bit of light there went out. I turned to my left and saw candles standing in the ground. As I watched, one by the one the small, wavering flames were snuffled out.
I turned to my right and I saw candles lying on the grassy bank. I could see the candles more clearly now, they were those cheap, thin birthday candles with spirals of red and white up them. They spelled a word and the word they spelled was stillborn.
As I watched, the candles of this word began to go out, one by one. Each letter got snuffed into darkness, until there were no word and no light.
I lifted my head and saw a dark figure standing on the other side of the picnic table and all the hair on the back of my neck went up. I thought she's here.
My terror was so great that it did something I have never experienced before in a nightmare. I knew my part in my life/show, was to turn around and run wildly into the dark, back to where my compatriots were waiting, and then we would begin to solve the mystery of the ghost.
But I couldn't. My terror turned to anger. I thought, the hell with this. The hell I'm going to play my part, and run away from this ghost. I'm not giving in to this terror. She's not real.
I started walking straight toward her, taking strong, rapid strides, my back up. I had no weapon, I had no plan. My only plan was to walk straight at her. As I came on, I could see her more clearly, she didn't look frightening at all, though I knew she was dead.
She looked uncomfortable, amazed. She looked behind me, to catch the eye of the directer, with a look like, what the hell is this crazy woman doing? Then she got angry, and I saw she held two wooden handled steak knives crossed across her chest. She looked at me with a sly, evil look. I looked at her like, "Come on, come on you scanky b-tch and try it. Just try it." Then I realized I had a knife too.
I woke up. I still felt the terror all over me, especially when I thought of the word stillborn. But the most lingering impression I got from that dream was one of power.
I can't help but think that I am the most powerful right now that I have ever been. I know that sounds funny or vain, or weird to say. But I don't know how else to describe it, or what other word would work.
Keith ran with me yesterday. It turns out that I have been running three miles. Three miles. That's how far I've been running every other day, for the last two or three weeks. A part of me still doesn't believe that's even humanly possible.
But it's true. My legs are fit for the work, pared down to the task. It's like balm, to know that my body functions as I command it to in this one area. I can't control the biology of conception, but I run, non stop, for half an hour, and during that time, my lungs grow deep and my legs take on the weight. Everything works as it should.
That is a powerful feeling. But more powerful than that, is the one of creative writing. I create an entire world, and it is entirely of myself. I spin reams and reams of words out of nothing. It is as though there were so much resource within me, that I can project out of myself a thing which previously had no form.
Because of this, I get a different perspective on God creating the world, the original Creator, the One who made it possible for me to write, who created me. He made His world real, He gave it true being, self will. I see, in a new way, His breathtaking fearlessness. His power, His courage, the vastness of His resources. They boggle my mind and it causes me to throw my soul down in sheer adoration.
I have to manage my writing better though. It's taking over my whole day and has now crept up into the weekends. The only way I can write during the weekends is if I block Keith out completely and not surprisingly, he's not too fond of this. I'm not too fond of being constantly thrown out of the world I was just sitting in the midst of. Consequently, no one is happy.
My other stories weren't like this. This just crept up on me. I could put the other stories down. This one is constantly calling at me. I feel, all the time, the urge to go over what I just wrote, to pick up the threads and keep weaving it forward. But it doesn't suffer from periods of neglect, though I keep on worrying that it will.
So I have determined that I must stop working on it as soon as Keith comes home, just turn the whole computer off and not write at all on the weekends. And I'm going to have to turn back on the alarms on my phone, to remind me to get up and clean the house for an hour. Sigh.
In the meantime, I'm waiting for Keith to come home from formation and drive me to the doctor's office. I hope they don't have to take any blood.
In the dream, it was as though I were simultaneously living and staring in a show. Sort of like Truman. My show/life was a horror series, staring a group of female taxi drivers who solve ghost stories, getting the crap scared out of them in the process.
So, it was a new series/night and it was my part. I was standing in this dark trailer park, on thick, dewy grass. There was a picnic table standing between two trailers, with a birthday cake on it. It had a ring of candles, they were lit. They were the only light in the place, a dim cast of light unto the rough boards of the table top.
As I watched, I saw the flames go out, one by one, about the cake. The little bit of light there went out. I turned to my left and saw candles standing in the ground. As I watched, one by the one the small, wavering flames were snuffled out.
I turned to my right and I saw candles lying on the grassy bank. I could see the candles more clearly now, they were those cheap, thin birthday candles with spirals of red and white up them. They spelled a word and the word they spelled was stillborn.
As I watched, the candles of this word began to go out, one by one. Each letter got snuffed into darkness, until there were no word and no light.
I lifted my head and saw a dark figure standing on the other side of the picnic table and all the hair on the back of my neck went up. I thought she's here.
My terror was so great that it did something I have never experienced before in a nightmare. I knew my part in my life/show, was to turn around and run wildly into the dark, back to where my compatriots were waiting, and then we would begin to solve the mystery of the ghost.
But I couldn't. My terror turned to anger. I thought, the hell with this. The hell I'm going to play my part, and run away from this ghost. I'm not giving in to this terror. She's not real.
I started walking straight toward her, taking strong, rapid strides, my back up. I had no weapon, I had no plan. My only plan was to walk straight at her. As I came on, I could see her more clearly, she didn't look frightening at all, though I knew she was dead.
She looked uncomfortable, amazed. She looked behind me, to catch the eye of the directer, with a look like, what the hell is this crazy woman doing? Then she got angry, and I saw she held two wooden handled steak knives crossed across her chest. She looked at me with a sly, evil look. I looked at her like, "Come on, come on you scanky b-tch and try it. Just try it." Then I realized I had a knife too.
I woke up. I still felt the terror all over me, especially when I thought of the word stillborn. But the most lingering impression I got from that dream was one of power.
I can't help but think that I am the most powerful right now that I have ever been. I know that sounds funny or vain, or weird to say. But I don't know how else to describe it, or what other word would work.
Keith ran with me yesterday. It turns out that I have been running three miles. Three miles. That's how far I've been running every other day, for the last two or three weeks. A part of me still doesn't believe that's even humanly possible.
But it's true. My legs are fit for the work, pared down to the task. It's like balm, to know that my body functions as I command it to in this one area. I can't control the biology of conception, but I run, non stop, for half an hour, and during that time, my lungs grow deep and my legs take on the weight. Everything works as it should.
That is a powerful feeling. But more powerful than that, is the one of creative writing. I create an entire world, and it is entirely of myself. I spin reams and reams of words out of nothing. It is as though there were so much resource within me, that I can project out of myself a thing which previously had no form.
Because of this, I get a different perspective on God creating the world, the original Creator, the One who made it possible for me to write, who created me. He made His world real, He gave it true being, self will. I see, in a new way, His breathtaking fearlessness. His power, His courage, the vastness of His resources. They boggle my mind and it causes me to throw my soul down in sheer adoration.
I have to manage my writing better though. It's taking over my whole day and has now crept up into the weekends. The only way I can write during the weekends is if I block Keith out completely and not surprisingly, he's not too fond of this. I'm not too fond of being constantly thrown out of the world I was just sitting in the midst of. Consequently, no one is happy.
My other stories weren't like this. This just crept up on me. I could put the other stories down. This one is constantly calling at me. I feel, all the time, the urge to go over what I just wrote, to pick up the threads and keep weaving it forward. But it doesn't suffer from periods of neglect, though I keep on worrying that it will.
So I have determined that I must stop working on it as soon as Keith comes home, just turn the whole computer off and not write at all on the weekends. And I'm going to have to turn back on the alarms on my phone, to remind me to get up and clean the house for an hour. Sigh.
In the meantime, I'm waiting for Keith to come home from formation and drive me to the doctor's office. I hope they don't have to take any blood.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
March 2nd
My anxiety keeps growing.
I keep thinking, there's no way I can be this happy. I can't possibly be this fulfilled or this successful, or this satisfied. It's going to end up costing me big.
I keep thinking I'm going to have to pay for all this good stuff later on, maybe soon.
What the heck is going on with me? Where are these thoughts coming from?
Anyway, what's the worst that could happen? I stop jogging and put on fifty pounds and feel depressed? Or I turn eighty one years old and nothing that I wrote ever got published and all I have are enough rejection slips to paper my room in the retirement home?
Grant you, that is depressing. But think of all the wisdom I'll have by then, from managing rejection! I'll be like a paragon of compassion. Depressed nursing home workers will sneak into my room and tell me how depressed they are because they can't pass anatomy 101 and I'll know exactly what to say to them and every body will call me "Sweetie."
Besides, I'll have my children and their children, if they have any. And Keith, in a motorized wheelchair, terrifying the other residents by going too fast and taking out decorative side tables by accident.
Hope is a frightening thing sometimes. Well, maybe not hope so much as expectation. I have high expectations of myself now, and I'm starting to live up to them. That is terrifying.
I can't help but notice that in these thoughts, God holds so much vindictive desire. Like, God is leaning out of heaven saying, I curse you for raising yourself up too high. You will crawl before me, you will suffer, you will fail. You're stiff necked and arrogant, hard hearted and I will break you down. Like my own personal Old Testament, version 2.0.
But that isn't God, you may protest. God gave you the gift of writing, He wants you to develop it and use it, not bury it. He wants you to invest yourself in other people's lives by revealing your own in words. He wants good things for you, He's a good God.
Well, that may be true, in fact, I think probably it is, but I still carry a voice of this false god around inside me, because I served this god for years and he is also a jealous god. He pops up sometimes. He usually pops up when I'm feeling successful or proud of myself.
Sometimes, I'm like one of those tribal peoples who have the custom of not naming their children until they're a year old, for fear of drawing a bad spirit's attention to them. If I just laid low, and didn't talk so much about how good I was doing, maybe god would pass over me and leave me be.
But no, I have to go and blog about how awesome I am doing! If that isn't god provoking, I don't know what is.
I don't know how to resolve this, to be quite honest. I have a really hard time correcting thoughts that have to do with God and religion, because growing up I completely absorbed the teaching that I have no authority in those areas, and must accept instead the teaching of people who are in authority over me.
So, frequently, I just feel helpless, like a ship tossed in a stormy sea. I know above the storm is the open sky and the real God. But I'm all caught up in the turmoil of my own thoughts.
And then the only thing to do is to throw the whole thing into the hands of Christ and close my eyes and wait. I know He'll sort it all out for me. He's good like that.
In the meantime, I'm going to keep on writing, even if it never comes to anything in the end. I still think it's worth doing, just for its own sake.
I keep thinking, there's no way I can be this happy. I can't possibly be this fulfilled or this successful, or this satisfied. It's going to end up costing me big.
I keep thinking I'm going to have to pay for all this good stuff later on, maybe soon.
What the heck is going on with me? Where are these thoughts coming from?
Anyway, what's the worst that could happen? I stop jogging and put on fifty pounds and feel depressed? Or I turn eighty one years old and nothing that I wrote ever got published and all I have are enough rejection slips to paper my room in the retirement home?
Grant you, that is depressing. But think of all the wisdom I'll have by then, from managing rejection! I'll be like a paragon of compassion. Depressed nursing home workers will sneak into my room and tell me how depressed they are because they can't pass anatomy 101 and I'll know exactly what to say to them and every body will call me "Sweetie."
Besides, I'll have my children and their children, if they have any. And Keith, in a motorized wheelchair, terrifying the other residents by going too fast and taking out decorative side tables by accident.
Hope is a frightening thing sometimes. Well, maybe not hope so much as expectation. I have high expectations of myself now, and I'm starting to live up to them. That is terrifying.
I can't help but notice that in these thoughts, God holds so much vindictive desire. Like, God is leaning out of heaven saying, I curse you for raising yourself up too high. You will crawl before me, you will suffer, you will fail. You're stiff necked and arrogant, hard hearted and I will break you down. Like my own personal Old Testament, version 2.0.
But that isn't God, you may protest. God gave you the gift of writing, He wants you to develop it and use it, not bury it. He wants you to invest yourself in other people's lives by revealing your own in words. He wants good things for you, He's a good God.
Well, that may be true, in fact, I think probably it is, but I still carry a voice of this false god around inside me, because I served this god for years and he is also a jealous god. He pops up sometimes. He usually pops up when I'm feeling successful or proud of myself.
Sometimes, I'm like one of those tribal peoples who have the custom of not naming their children until they're a year old, for fear of drawing a bad spirit's attention to them. If I just laid low, and didn't talk so much about how good I was doing, maybe god would pass over me and leave me be.
But no, I have to go and blog about how awesome I am doing! If that isn't god provoking, I don't know what is.
I don't know how to resolve this, to be quite honest. I have a really hard time correcting thoughts that have to do with God and religion, because growing up I completely absorbed the teaching that I have no authority in those areas, and must accept instead the teaching of people who are in authority over me.
So, frequently, I just feel helpless, like a ship tossed in a stormy sea. I know above the storm is the open sky and the real God. But I'm all caught up in the turmoil of my own thoughts.
And then the only thing to do is to throw the whole thing into the hands of Christ and close my eyes and wait. I know He'll sort it all out for me. He's good like that.
In the meantime, I'm going to keep on writing, even if it never comes to anything in the end. I still think it's worth doing, just for its own sake.
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