Stephanie Says.. Take a walk inside my head

July 30, 2014

The Starfish

Filed under: Gratitude — srose @ 1:08 am

(This is going to be a long post. For that, I’m sorry.)

Do you know the story of the starfish and the little girl? It begins with a little girl walking along a beach where a host of starfish had been stranded. One by one, the little girl picked up a starfish and threw it (them) back into the ocean. A man happened to be jogging by and caught her efforts. “Don’t you know,” he asked her “that there are so many starfish drying on the beach that you cannot possibly get to them all? What difference can you really make?” The little girl smiled, shook her head and pitched another starfish into the deep. “It made,” she informed her doubter, “a difference to that one.”

In talking with several of my friends (in several parts of the world), I am discovering that -making a difference- is something that most of us yearn for. We do not, however, know where to start. We imagine ourselves having to be wealthy beyond possibility, funding disease research, building schools, having medicines named after ourselves.

We forget that we are building a community, a world, one starfish, one ocean wave at a time.

It’s hard. I know.
People are careless. People are casually cruel.
People are thoughtless and heedless and break our hearts.

And we don’t WANT to build a world of love and kindness. We WANT to get even. We WANT to inflict pain on the people who just inflicted pain on us.

Our hearts, they bleed. They seethe. They churn and writhe and fill with bitterness and confusion.

Honestly though? That’s a terrible way to live.
I know. I’m preaching to myself here.
I can be just as hypocritical as the next guy, proclaiming peace while actually filled with selfishness or pride.

I HATE being ignored. I HATE being misunderstood. And I HATE having my heart broken by the people who are supposed to love me the most.

You know what though? At one time, I too, was a starfish. Somebody picked me up, got me out of the sun and threw me back into the coolness of the water.
I was a starfish. I was rescued.
I’m willing to bet you were too.

They are all around us. Brittle, drying, getting sand in places that sand was never meant to go. They are hurt. They are broken.

And we don’t have to be rich to reach out to them. We don’t have to be smart. We don’t have to be beautiful. We just have to care.

It’s been a rough season in my world. It’s also been one of reflection. There are people to this day who don’t know what they mean to me. A look. A touch. A fitly spoken word. These all have lifted me up and given me life. I hope someday to do the same for others.

I too, want to make a difference. Wayne helped me compile this list of ways to do so:

Write a letter to someone who has influenced you.
Write a note of encouragement to someone who is setting a good example.
Write a note of encouragement to someone who is striving to reach a new goal.
Smile.
Leave a note of thanks for your mail person or garbage person.
Tell a co worker what you appreciate about them.
Teach someone to drive, ride a bike, play tennis, swim…
Visit someone who may not be able to get out much.
Babysit for new parents, or come over to help while a new mother naps.
Help a friend organize a closet.
Bake cookies or brownies for your local fire or police department.
Write a note of appreciation to your pastor or other church staff.
Listen without trying to find a space to insert your own opinion.
Instead of throwing away your child’s stories and artwork, write an encouraging note on the top of them and take them to the local hospital or nursing home.
Donate your scrap paper to teachers, hospitals or your local pharmacy.
Get to know the youth of your church. Have a make over party complete with funny hairstyles and popcorn.
Interview a senior citizen. Put the stories that they tell you into a keepsake book.
Actually pray for the people on your list.
Teach a new bride how to cook.
Take a senior citizen to a doctor’s appointment or to pick up their prescriptions.
“Adopt” a local senior citizen as an honorary “grandparent”.
Organize a neighborhood talent show.
Host a board game party for college students.
Have a knick knack swap. Exchange knick knacks with your friends and neighbors and redecorate to have a whole new room!
Change the toilet paper roll without your spouse having to ask.
Walk the dog of a friend or neighbor who works during the day.
Pass on the coupons that you get in the mail.
Play games for charity, such as freerice.com
Volunteer with your local school or library.
Let a child who is learning to read share a story with you.
Mow the grass of a single parent.
Pay for someone’s dinner.
Get “caught” bragging on your children or your spouse.
Volunteer to disinfect the toys in your church nursery.
Coach a Little League team or Scout troop.
Read or sing to children at a local school.
Make sock dolls or teddy bears for children in the hospital.
Make baby blankets for a crisis pregnancy center or maternity ward.
Help plan a class or family reunion.
Write a story for a small child and let them illustrate it.
Encourage a shy friend by taking a class or trying out for a play with them.
Present your wife with ballroom dancing lessons.
Organize dinners for a friend who is going through a hard time.
Collect spare change throughout the year and donate it to a missions offering or charity.
See if the local historical society wants to look at the contents of your attic.
Spend time with your parents organizing and labeling old pictures.
Tutor a student struggling with their schoolwork.
String cereal on some yarn as a kind of birdfeeder.
Let a small child tell you a knock knock joke (even if it doesn’t make any sense).
Mail a care package to a college student.
Take a stressed friend out for coffee or ice cream.
Attend a concert or play or recital in support of a friend or their child.
Collect underwear and socks for a local hospital or homeless shelter.
Teach a child an old song or dance.
Don’t always say what you are thinking.
Cheerfully fill your spouse’s coffee cup without saying “You have legs. Get it yourself.”
Shovel snow for an elderly neighbor.
Collect food and supplies into backpacks to donate to local schools.
Give someone the benefit of the doubt.
Offer to rock a crying baby so a new mom or dad can enjoy a church service/concert/event.
Tip a waiter or waitress for excellent service.
Brag on a service industry worker to their supervisor.
Clean the house of a sick or exhausted friend.
Give hugs. Give many hugs.
Host a neighborhood potluck or movie night.
Encourage someone in their interests or emerging talents.
Help a teenager make a movie or put on a play.
Choose to believe the best in people.
Support a local band or community theatre.
Donate old clothes and household items to a local theatre.
Be available during a church service or revival for prayer with those in need.
Teach or lead an after school class or summer camp.
Donate samples of toothbrushes and hygiene items to a homeless ministry.
Help someone work on their resume.
Supply lemonade or popsicles to a local sports team.
Lend or donate old or used furniture to newlyweds or someone living on their own for the first time.
Slip a love note into your spouse’s purse or pocket.
Slip a cute cartoon or drawing into your child’s lunch.
Tell your church pianist how much you appreciate them.
Take a walk in the rain with someone you love.
Share a meaningful poem or song with your family members.
Tell your child stories of when you were their age.
Leave a penny in a leave a penny take a penny box.
Watch a movie just because a loved one wants to.
Hold the door open for someone.
Help someone label and organize their family pictures.
Take over a responsibility that usually belongs to a stressed out loved one.
Tell a young person you are proud of them.
Take someone who is housebound out for an afternoon drive.
Let someone go ahead of you in line.
Present your favorite teacher, librarian, office worker, secretary with a rose.
Wish someone a good day.
Host a girls’ night out or slumber party.
Take someone out to dinner.
Write someone a poem.
Keep a journal over a year, or five, or ten of letters to your loved one/child/partner. Present it to them on their birthday or special date.
Babysit for an overwhelmed single mom or friend who is going back to school.
Vacuum or dust for a new mom.
Compile a book of Scriptures and notes for your local minister. Let them know how much they are appreciated.
Make a mix tape/CD of songs that remind you of someone special.
Take your loved one on a date. Fall in love all over again.
Call your mother.
Run in a charity race.
Sponsor someone who is participating in a walk-a-thon.
Slip a love note into someone’s lunch or bag or briefcase.
Take someone to a movie that they want to see, even if you know you won’t like it.
Give someone flowers just because.
Write a song or story. Personalize it for someone you love.
Spend time with an older person or a child and just listen.
Put a little extra in your church’s offering plate.
Read a book that your spouse is reading.
Refuse to participate in teasing someone.
Put things in a trash can instead of on the ground.
Rub someone’s shoulders.
Take care of someone’s pet.
Share your umbrella.
Handle interruptions gracefully.
Keep a list of things for which you are grateful.
Take care of someone’s tab.
Think before you speak.
Organize a teddy bear drive. Donate to a local hospital, children’s home or police department.
Take your loved one to play in the snow or dance in the rain.
Pray for the people in your life.
Make bags for homeless people. Fill with easy to open tins of fruit, napkins, toothpaste, washcloths, soap, combs and other food and toiletries.
Take a young person camping.
Use your creative talents to make church, school or work bulletin boards.
Use stray boxes, buttons and colored paper to make instruments for the children in your life.
Let your pastor know specific ways his sermons have blessed you.
Turn off all the lights and have a candlelit camp out on your living room floor, complete with sleeping bags and silly stories.
Organize a multigenerational family picture day. Get special shots of your grandparents and all their descendants.
Check in with someone who has been missing work or church. Sometimes a simple “Is everything okay?” goes a long way in showing that people care.
Become someone’s exercise buddy.
Donate your wedding attire to a service man or woman who is soon to be deployed.
Try to see the best in people. Have faith in others.
Go through your old pictures. Instead of throwing them away, make scrapbooks for your friends and family.
Lend someone a shoulder to cry on.
Create a safe space. Justify the trust people have in you.
Pay the toll for the car behind you.
Bring someone a cup of coffee just because.
Do more than what is asked of you.
Take a nap. Sometimes you just need to decompress.
Ask your church staff for specific ways in which you can serve. Be willing to lend a hand.
Brush and braid someone’s hair.
Be willing to donate your coats, blankets and heaters to people who are cold.
Color a picture for someone you love.
Give credit where credit is due.
Help organize a club, class or family reunion.
Volunteer to help someone on a school project or with a school paper.
Help start a community garden.
Host an “All About You” day to honor someone you love.
Serve breakfast for dinner.
Keep a “Reasons Why We’re Thankful” board and encourage your family members to add to it.
Skip a church service or two. Find an adjacent room to pray for the pastor and congregation instead.
Be willing to say “I don’t know, but we can find out” when a child asks you a question.
Donate gently used magazines to a local doctor’s office or hospital.
Take a tour of your hometown and discover its unique charms.
Put on some old music and dance. Invite your kids to join in.
Start someone’s car on a cold day to warm it up.
Be happy and not jealous at a friend’s good news.
Teach young people how to make snow angels.
Pet a dog or cat to lower blood pressure.
Make confetti hearts out of scrap paper and put them in cards for people.
Make a game out of looking for hearts, stars and smiley faces in the patterns and designs around you.

May 17, 2014

This One

Filed under: Family,Glimpses of Me,Marriage — srose @ 1:17 am

This One. This Man. This Love of Mine.

I was fourteen the first time I fell in love. Ninth grade was a very heady time for me. We were reading –Romeo and Juliet- in English class. We were working on –West Side Story- in Musical Theatre. And I was chasing after someone who was chasing after my best friend. Soapy? Yes. Dramatic? Yes. But it fed right into my boy crazy, drama queen tendencies and helped pave the way for the rest of my overly emotional, “…but…but you just HAVE to love me forever and ever” adolescence and young adulthood. I came out of that year the star (at least in my mind) of my own little reality show. In truth, I was no more special or unique than any girl going through poutings and pangs, but I loved him. As much as a fourteen year old can love anyone, I loved him. And though it was one sided and I acted in ways that now cause my older, more experienced self much grief and embarrassment, we are currently friends of a sort. And every now and then I flash back to our lunch breaks and the way my classmates and I would giggle, believing that we knew, really knew about love.

The second time I fell that deeply came when I was seventeen and a senior. It, too, was (in its way) a heady, romantic year. In class, we were reading –The Once and Future King-. We were putting out a school newspaper. And, once again, I was chasing a boy, believing I knew everything there was to know about love. I didn’t, of course. I knew something of heartache, something of loss, something of packing up a life and moving from one country to another and back again. I knew something of the pressure a girl can put on herself when she is being schooled with bright, driven young men and women all looking beyond their own campus to future opportunities that would take them around the country and even, in some cases, around the world.

On the back side of Christmas Break, I learned something of what it meant when the boy you had been dreaming of, chasing after and journaling about looks at you one night and decides to kiss you. But still, though I was sure that the most romantic year I’d ever known just HAD to be a sign of something predestined, I knew nothing of love.

And now? Well, to be honest, I’m not so sure.

Indulge me for a minute, will you? Travel back in time with me to a place called 1992.

If you have read my previous entries, you will recognize that date.

1992:
The year I graduated high school and moved to yet another state…this time to Kentucky, where I still remain
The year both of my mother’s parents died, plunging my family into deep grief and an inability to help each other that lasted well beyond the twelve months of that particular calendar
The year I began college, introducing me to people who are now dear and trusted friends for whom I will be forever grateful
The year that someone decided to put his hands on me, causing a deep seated belief that I had literally lost my mind and could never trust my own instinct or judgment again

And, of course:
The year that seventeen year old Stephanie met a twenty eight year old man who is now her husband

It was not, in case you were wondering, love at first sight. I was still coming out of my Year of Beau, still dreaming of a combination Lancelot, Rhett Butler and Heathcliff. I was about to enter over a decade of believing myself hopeless, helpless and insane. He was in his third year of professoring and thought of me as “The New Minister at Church’s Little Daughter”.

Two years later, after Kenny had moved away to graduate school and I had begun a life of college during the week and my parents’ hometown on the off days, we were a couple. Some months after that, I was beginning another romantic senior year. This time, however, instead of being kissed and sent away by the boy I was chasing after, I was wearing an engagement ring and dreaming of dresses, flowers, vows and cake.

The problem, however, was that I still knew nothing of love. Because of this, I began a new life that was troubled almost from the moment Kenny and I began envisioning it.

See, here is something that most people do not know-or have forgotten: Kenny married for love. I did not.

Are you shocked? Do you think me some kind of manipulative user? Do you want to stand up for my man and call me a liar and a deceiver? It’s okay. That’s what I was…to a point.

Manipulative? Yes.

User? Yes.

Lover? Well, to answer that one, you’ll have to define “love” for me.

Did I love him? Yes. Yes, of course I did. Even as young as I was then, I knew that there-right there standing in front of me-was the man that God had put down into my world, my own personal little world, to marry. I knew him to be smart, and kind, and faithful and hard working and protective. And I knew that he loved me.

I, however? I was, in my own way, using the man.

See, with the grief over losing our loved ones and the confusion over moving from country to country only to discover that finding a place where we landed was not going to be very easy, came anger. My people are not quiet, like Kenny’s side is. We have feelings and we express them somewhat freely. We are tightly knit. We are bound together. But we are not afraid to emote. And we do a lot of it.

A year out of college, five years after my brain rolled out of my head and about twenty months into being engaged, I couldn’t take it anymore. I loved my family, but I couldn’t live in that world. Our hurts and hearts were colliding and no one was being healed. Enter my Mister.

I had had other options. My best friend’s cousin, for example, offered to set me up in a trailer, hunt me squirrels and give me many many babies. As my best friend’s cousin was barely of age and had never worked a day in his life-and I kinda wanted more than he was offering…oh, who am I kidding, I wanted a LOT more than he was offering- I hastily declined. (He was in prison and in between wives the last I heard, if any of my single friends want to follow up on THAT lead.)
Kenny, though? Kenny wanted to marry me. Kenny wanted to MARRY ME. Kenny STILL wanted to marry me after our wedding day talk in which I told him I didn’t and couldn’t love him and he replied that he was okay with that, that he had enough love for the both of us.

It was the perfect line. It could have been scripted, it was that romantic. And suddenly, there he was, my man, the spouter of perfect lines.

And we got married. And we had a blissful almost month long honeymoon in which the real world only intruded during infrequent phone calls “back home”. I was a princess. I was a Southern Belle. I was beautiful and charming and very very young.

And still, I knew nothing of love.

DID I love him, I can hear you asking. DO I love him now?

Well yes, yes, I do. And no, no, not in the way you mean.

I was nineteen when Kenny and I first began to be seen together. He taught me everything he could think of. He stood me over the sink and handed me peanut M and Ms one by one until I could swallow them whole. This was his way of combating my lifelong conviction that I just couldn’t and wouldn’t swallow pills. He had me practice pouring catsup until I could start my own portion and didn’t need to ask anyone else to do it for me.
I was in awe. He was smart. He was confident. He was capable. And I was very much in hero worship mode. True, he didn’t fill my car with roses like my brother did for HIS girlfriend. He didn’t plan scavenger hunts that ended in surprise picnics. But he loved me. He was the strength I ran to when my family was fighting again. He was the calming influence who almost singlehandedly planned and orchestrated our wedding because I was a blubbering mess through both the rehearsal and the ceremony. He introduced me to people like Styx and let me dance around his living room singing “Crystal Ba-a-a-ll”, not even minding that I was badly out of tune.

At twenty three and newly married, I was STILL in hero worship mode. The problem was, I was often in hero worship mode alone as Kenny was still working on his doctorate and teaching at two schools, trying to be a new husband AND caring for gravely ill parents. Several years ago, in one of our relatively drama free moments, we decided that if we had it to do over again, we probably (had we been thinking) would have waited AT LEAST until he had gotten his PhD and some of the pressure was not choking the life, and love, our of our brand new togetherness.

For it was. We were under tremendous pressure. I was isolated much of the time in a town where, though I had lived here for college, I really knew no one who had not graduated and moved on. Kenny was on the road in a ninety mile triangle trying to attend to teaching, his mother who was, it turned out, not going to live much past our honeymoon, and me. By the time he got to me, I was angry and bored. It was not an auspicious start.

Still, we thought, five years later after having attended funerals for at least ten close relatives and friends, including both of Kenny’s parents…still, we love each other. We have a new house to fill with memories. Surely we are past the worst of it.

And we were right. In a way, we were. What we didn’t count on was that little girls grow from twenty three to thirty in ways that men aging from thirty three to forty do not. Suddenly, the hero worship goggles began to chafe. Kenny and I began to fight over things we never thought we would…and believe me, our first five years were doozies. He had an office to escape to when things got bad. I had nowhere to go, nothing to do except pace the hallways growing madder and madder.

I loved him…at least, I thought I loved him. I couldn’t understand why things were getting so much harder. I was hurting. I was dying for some kind of change, but honestly? I didn’t see a way out.

The way out came, as ways out often do, in a most unexpected place. A tiny little town named LaFollette, Tennessee came calling at just the right time. Kenny had a friend who wanted to buy a small print shop and needed someone to partner with him. He thought that Kenny might be the right person for the job. He was right. Kenny IS the right person for the job. What none of us foresaw, however, was that in getting Kenny, the shop got me too. Suddenly, we had a common goal. We had something to strive for. We had a reason to work together. We were happier. We fought less. I had a reason to test out my latently developed grown up skills and Kenny was able to stretch and expand his abilities and creativity in ways he had not been doing as a man teaching about computers.
Still, even then, though I had learned more of love and the twists that lead off in unexpected ways, I did not fully know it.
I still do not know it.

Kenny and I, as you may have observed, are stretching once again. Once I hit thirty, once I was able to find counselors and companions whom I could fully trust, I slowly, very slowly, began to grow away from my husband. Some of this amuses him. Some of this, however, leads to conflict the likes of which I had thought we put away years ago
.
If you ask me, I’ll tell you that we fight over typical things:
He cannot, for example, seem to put his things away and implores me not to touch his office, for, though it is a junkpile to me, it is a finely organized mess to my husband and he has everything just where he wants it.

Or, take for example the way we communicate:
I like stories. I have a co worker with whom I frequently converse. It has literally taken three days before to reach a conclusion of one of my tales as I tend to meander off into stray paragraphs here or lost sentences there. Kenny? He believes in the fewer words, the better. Perhaps it is because he expends so much of his energy on his students, but, by the time he returns home to me, he doesn’t want to hear my chatter. I have literally had to tell him…please be quiet. You are NOT going to be interested in this, but you are the only person I have to talk to right now, so I’m telling it. I will let you know when I have made my point and you can talk again.

This is typical. There are often messy vs neat and quiet vs rambling people in relationships all around the world.

Some of what we fight over, is less typical but not unheard of. I was, as I have said, raised in a somewhat freer emotional state than my husband. We talk over each other. We cry. We tease. We laugh. We love. We hug. We like our puns and our inside jokes and we have been known to say “It’s a Hall thing. You wouldn’t understand.” Somewhere along the line, however, I absorbed into myself a need to be loved on. It wasn’t as if the people around me DIDN”T love me, it was just that I needed to be TOLD and SHOWN such.

My husband is not a shower. My husband is not a teller. He is not my father, bringing flowers and chocolates on both holidays and just because. He is not my brother, coming home to play with the children so that his weary wife could rest. My husband is an “I feed and clothe and shelter you. If I didn’t love you, you’d know it because you’d stop eating” kind of person.

So he loves me, yet we fight.

Again though, this is not unheard of. There is a whole series devoted to finding the way individuals both receive and express their loves to spouses and children and the world around them. Some hug. Some clean out garages. Some bring in just because bracelets and necklaces. My husband feeds me and keeps a roof over my head.

And yet.

And yet.

I am no longer twenty three sitting alone in a trailer on a hot summer day. I am no longer thirty standing at the door of our new shop helping my husband greet customers. I am four decades old. I am still trying to figure out this love thing.

Do I want to scream?

Sometimes.

When I think I’m trying to express why I’m hurting and how what he said made me feel yet he thinks I’m bringing up something from the past to punish him for a slip of the tongue that he can’t even remember?

Yes, I want to scream.

When I start to cry and he asks me what’s wrong only to hear the answer and turn away with a “Haven’t you gotten over that YET?”

I want to scream.

When I approach him for affection only to be told that, “kissing is stupid. Wouldn’t you rather have supper?” and “Of course I love you. What makes you think I don’t love you? I feed you, don’t I?”

I want to scream. And hit things.

When my friends say, “but you jump. You run. You are so friendly with people and like to talk. Your husband, however? He’s so…boring. Aren’t you bored?”
I want to scream at him to do something, not remembering that the twenty hours a day he works-the very things making him so sleepy at home- were part of what I considered pluses when I was younger and knowing deep down that I wanted someone faithful, someone people could trust.

So, do I love him?

Yes. And no.

It’s not a Guinevere kind of love. It’s not a Cinderella kind. It’s not the kind of love that my brother and sister in law have. Kenny and I aren’t romantic. We aren’t domestic. And I’m only a princess in my own mind.

Yet.

For every time he tells me that only stupid people watch the television shows that I do, only to not understand that saying that is to call ME stupid
There is the time that the heater went out during my shower and Kenny boiled water on the stove so that I would not be cold while rinsing the shampoo out of my hair. It was the –Out of Africa- moment I’d dreamed of and one of the sweetest, most perfect things anyone has ever done for me.

For every time I cannot make plans because we don’t know if one of the local funeral homes will need us to print cards or we don’t know if the machine will act up running a new order

There is the time that I stayed home from work in order to meet up with some of the girls and see a movie. When they couldn’t make it, Kenny drove back from Tennessee, took me by the hand and presented me with a date, even though he knew going in that it would be a movie he hated. He was right. It was. He took me anyway.

It’s not unusual, of course. Every couple has a story. Every story includes likes and dislikes, happy surprises and broken promises. Almost every couple goes into their relationship thinking that they know love, only to realize later that they really knew nothing at all.
Not every young bride grows up the way I did. Kenny was my twenties and soon will have been my thirties. Twenty years is a long time for a young woman. Even one who thought she knew of love.

What do I know for sure?

Not much, really.

I don’t know what is going to happen.

I don’t know if I will forever be sad over not having babies.

I don’t know if I will always be looking to my husband for affection he just cannot provide.

I don’t know how badly my heart will continue to break.

I don’t know if my melodrama will influence him any more than I know if his coolness will influence me.

And yet.

This is still the man who held me all those afternoons ago while I was crying.

This is still the man who told me he wanted to marry me no matter what.

This is still the man who said he had love enough for both of us.

This is the man I have used.

This is the man I have idolized.

This is the man I have learned from, the man I followed, the man I chose.

This is the man I have married.

This…this is the man I have loved.

Even though it is something of which I know
Not much.

Not much, it turns out,
At all.

April 6, 2014

Just…No More

Filed under: Glimpses of Me,kids,Marriage — srose @ 5:52 am

He stood in the kitchen the other day and announced that he had been thinking.

We’d been talking about it for a while, but this time he had come to a conclusion.

“No more”, he had decided.

No more dreaming.

No more thinking.

No more making plans.

No more visions of a little girl with my fair skin and her father’s dark hair.

No more handling of little lacy dresses and exclaiming over fancy, sparkling bows.

No more wishing.

No more hoping.

We would, he announced, not be having children.

Ever.

And my heart, which had, of course, been casually and carelessly broken before, caved in.

And I couldn’t breathe.

He was sorry, he said.  He knew that he hurt me.  He knew that he was crushing my dreams.

But he had made up his mind.

He was right.

He HAD hurt me.

He had broken my heart.

No.

No.  He had done much more than that.

He had shattered my world.

I came of age, of course, in the era of shoulder pads and power suits.

I knew that “Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves” and that “She Works Hard For the Money” long before I was even mature enough to parse those words.

I was always a throwback.  A Donna Reed.  A June Cleaver wanna be.

Not with the pearls, of course.

I can’t cook…er…I don’t.  I HAVE, but generally the kitchen is the Mister’s domain.

Generally all the grown up stuff, the driving, the taxes, the speaking to people in public is his domain too.

(He had already raised a child, people would say when they joked about me being so much younger than my husband.  Why would he want the responsibility of rearing another one?)

Well, as it turns out….

No.  That’s not fair.

He’s not the great villain in my life, now is he?

He knows I’m hurting.

He understands…well he mostly understands why it’s hard for me to go to work anymore since he is my boss.

He just doesn’t…

He can’t…

He will never…

Be empathetic.

To him, in his mind, we would make terrible parents.

We, at least HE, is on call all the time, for one thing.

The phone rings while we’re eating supper.

The phone rings while we’re in the car.

The phone rings while we’re at church.

He has even left the house before at one in the morning to drive down, set up, and print something that a funeral home needed for that/the next day.

He is a good man.

He wants to help.

He’s just so darn busy all the time.

But, I want to say…

So are doctors.  So are EMTs.  So are ministers and missionaries and counselors and professors and ANYBODY who works with the public, who is needed to help make the world a better place.

And they have children.

Ah.  Yes.  They do.

But THEY aren’t US.

He, with his self confidence and his need to be able to get things accomplished in HIS way in HIS time.  Don’t I recognize how frustrated he gets when he is in the middle of something and a student or customer comes in needing something?  Don’t I know that life with a child would be constant interruptions?

Don’t I think our poor little JJ would end up in therapy twenty years later because both of her parents had a strong, egocentric yen for taking the world and shaping it to fit themselves and their own needs?

“Selfishness” was the word he used.

We are so selfish…

We have tailored our world so well that we have stitched ourselves into it.

And any child who came along…

Anyone trying to find their own place

Would be ruined.

Ruined.

Not on purpose.

Just because we would be so unthinking…

So casual.

So selfish.

And with that phrase, my heart stopped beating.

See, the babies weren’t just hypothetical to me.

I could SEE them.

I can still see them.

Years,

Decades before I knew there was going to be a Kenny in my life,

There were my babies.

Jonathan Frederic

Jennifer Rose

Named after the glamorous “Hart” couple of 1980’s TV and both my mother AND father’s side of the family.

The day we moved into this house, I had a room picked out for a nursery.

And then…

And then came my husband’s job after job after job

And my breakdown.

I’m emotional.

He’s busy.

I battle depression.

He’s always at the office.

We hit a rough patch there…

And couldn’t stand to be around each other very much.

And then…

Then things got better.

We became a real team.

A real couple.

And I started dreaming again.

Until that night in the kitchen.

As you know,

I have always been Rachel, begging for children from her husband’s God.

I struggle.

I cry.

I remind God that I never WANTED a career.

Offices were not for me.

I did not major in Law, or Science, or Education…

Nothing that would put me in a classroom, or lab, or boardroom, or library.

I wanted to be someone’s Mommy.

No,

That’s not technically true…

I wanted to be THEIR Mommy.

My Jonathan

My Jennifer.

But he says no more.

No more.

Stop dreaming.

Stop begging.

Stop crying.

Look forward.

Move on.

“But you are so creative,” say the well meaning, but not entirely helpful people in my life who REALLY DO love me even if I do want to grab them and scream in their faces sometimes.

“You are so creative.  You’ve written stories and plays and when you were little you wrote songs and tiny books.  Be a writer.  Be a play write.  Let your work, let your volumes be your children.”

A valid choice, that is.

I’ve heard authors compare their books to their babies.  Some even say they cannot choose a favorite work, just as they cannot choose a favorite child.

But…they have a child.

Not words on paper, but a living, breathing little person whose hair they can touch and whose cheek they can kiss.

“Ah,” say the same people who were trying to offer encouragement with their last statements “You don’t understand what it is like.  You don’t have to deal with throw up or spiked fevers at two in the morning.  You don’t have to deal with water in baby’s ear because they went to the swimming pool.  There are no toys in your living room that should be in the play chest.  There are no stains on your best clothes.  In many ways, you are free.”

Thank you.

I will take these words to heart.

You do make me wonder why you even had a baby in the first place if you think they are that much trouble, but I appreciate your support.

“And you?” Some have asked, “Why do YOU want a baby so badly?”

They point out that I’m a self proclaimed princess.

I am a spoiled brat.

Much of my life is done for me and I don’t REALLY encounter anything hard.

“And having a child,” they remind me, “Is HARD.”

Yes.

I realize that.

But you yourself didn’t know how hard it would be before you had your child, now did you?

And, besides,

We live in first world countries in the twenty first century

Aren’t we ALL just a little bit spoiled?

But I don’t say this.

I don’t say any of it.

I myself don’t know what to say to my lovies whey THEY are going through hard times.  I know that people love me and aren’t really thinking about what they are saying either.

And yet…

If one more person tells me that this is something every woman goes through?

I seriously might just lose it.

REALLY?

I want to say

EVERY woman stands in the kitchen and listens as her husband rips out her still beating heart?

EVERY woman despises Mother’s Day so much that she wishes it can be erased from the calender?  ‘

And don’t even get me started on those “And to all the women who are aunts or have worked with children, we thank you too” tags… It’s a sop, a concession and we all know it.

EVERY woman has to listen to her husband explain that he doesn’t think she’ll be a good mother because she misses so much church and loves her bed more than she loves most people?

I get it.

I mean, I do but I don’t.

I’m sorry.  For those of you who have lost babies (and I know you are out there), I’m sorry.  I cannot imagine your pain.  If I could throw my arms around you and somehow lesson your grief, I would.

For those of you who have struggled through years of infertility and all the stigmas and gossip and expensive treatments that entails, I’m sorry.  I can’t imagine your pain either.  I cannot.  I’m sorry we live in a world that pays for birth control and sex aids but does not help those who want to expand their family.

I’m sorry for the stupid things people say.

I’m sorry for the way that your reputations changed when people found out you had some kind of hurt or obstacle in your life.

I’m sorry for the friends you may have lost, the people who stayed away.

I really am.

I’m sorry I cannot give you any comfort.

And I’m sorry I cannot take any comfort from you.

I’m sorry that my broken heart and mind cannot see your proffers of solace as anything but stupidity.

No, I’ve never lost a baby.

No, I’ve never had injections.

No, I do not know if God is directing me to better things.

In all honesty, I have no idea what (besides the grief that I feel) is going on in and around Stephanie Land.

I’ve never been pregnant.

I’ve never tried to be.

The Mister never thought it was time.

Until it was…

Or so I believed.

We started making plans.

After fifteen years, there were finally a few discussions.

A few glimpses.

A few flutterings

Of hope.

Tiny little girl child, I thought…

Black hair like her Daddy

Fair skin like me

Our very own Snow White

She was there

She was real

I could see her

I could

Until the man I married

The man I was daily building a life with

The man I thought would make our family

Took her away

Now I’m not an outwardly introspective person

I talk to myself, to my cat, to the heavens

When I am in bed

I try to figure myself

My world

My existance

Out

But mostly, in public, I act on feeling

So I’ve never actually discussed WHY I wanted a child

It was just something that was known

Stephanie wears glasses

Stephanie has freckles

Stephanie wants to be a Mama

Stephanie did

Stephanie DOES

And Stephanie doesn’t know how to feel

Anymore

“Let Go.” I’ve been told.  “Let God.”

“Nothing can touch us that hasn’t been sifted already through His fingers of love”

“He will direct your paths”

“Turn it over to Him”

I used to be one of those people

Minister’s daughter

Hymn Singer

Bible Drill Queen

Sunday School Student with her hand up in the air

Miss Know it All

And then Life Happened

And Miss Know it All discovered that she didn’t really know very much

And now I say that.

It’s hard.

It’s hard to be a Rachel in my world.

My world doesn’t like questions.

Or doubts.

Even my church…my  church as collective, I mean

Acts as if Jesus were the Magic Answer Giver

We all are supposed to be Hannah’s

Hurt but still praying

Crushed but still believing

Keeping her promises

Well,

I’ve never been Hannah

I wasn’t Hannah at twenty four and I’m not Hannah now

I’m crushed

I’m hurting

I can’t see how any of this is going to work out

At all

And “Let Go and Let God”  hurts

I’m sorry,

But when the person who is supposed to love you best and most over all the world

Takes your dearest and most cherished dream

Rips it out of your soul

And stops it to death before your eyes

“Let Go and Let God”  hurts ALOT

And what you discover

Is that work hurts too

And you don’t want to be anywhere near your husband

Especially when he is your boss

Yet,

Since it’s just the two of you,

Home seems like a cage

And,

Though you had been coming together

Working through things

Feeling like true partners

Your sadness enters before you do

And your husband escapes to his office as much as he can

Leaving you deserted and confused

At least FEELING deserted and confused

(He would be there.  You know he would be there.  But he hurt you.

And though

You want someone to love you

Truly love you

Through your pain

You aren’t sure if the person who caused it in the first place

Is really the right man for the job right now

Even if he IS the man who has been with you

All of your life.)

So you back away.

Sometimes flinching.

He says he’s sorry.

He says he knows.

He says it will pass.

EVERYBODY says it will pass.

“Dream a new dream”

“The best way to forget about your own need is to help someone else who is hurting more”

“Keep busy.  Don’t think about it.”

“Let Go and Let God.”

The Mister says I need to get up.

“You will feel so much better if you will just get up and go to work and church.”

I tell him I don’t miss as much as he thinks I do

And Yet

Church…

The place I’ve been since I was six weeks old

The place I went every time the doors were open

(And sometimes when they were not)

Church

Refuge

Sanctuary

Alter

Salvation

For so many?

I cannot face right now

It hurts too much

I couldn’t even BEGIN to tell you why

It’s something I don’t really understand myself

Maybe it’s because the hymns

My beloved hymns

Are ashes right now

In my mouth

Maybe it’s because if I hear one more “Praise the Lord”

I’m gonna scream

It’s hard to sit numb through the solos and sermons

I’m NOT okay

I’m really

Really

Not

I’d rather be home in tears

But we’re big on church in my family

And we go

When we can make ourselves get out of bed

When we can tell ourselves that we only have to be hypocrites for two hours and then we will be home again

I wonder

A lot

If I DIDN’T know the stories

Sing the songs

If I COULDN’T recite the verses

Would it be easier?

If I wasn’t a minister’s child

And married to a leader

Could I be more real?

Because all anyone wants to hear is “fine”

It’s not like I can EXPLAIN or anything

And one doesn’t stay home

With a broken heart

Not when one is…

Not when one…

Well sometimes it’s just easier to let him haul me out of my sleep and stick me in the shower

No matter how much

Being around the faithful

Hurts

No matter how much

I want to blame him

He’s not a bad guy

He’s not my Prince Charming

But he’s not some kind of Wicked Evil Spouse either

And I’m trying

Very carefully trying

Not to vilify him

And I’m trying

Very carefully trying

Not to run too far away from Jesus either

But home feels like a cage

And church feels like a prison

And I’m Old Testament enough

And Backwoods enough

And just plain HUMAN enough

To believe I’m being punished

To believe that I’m so hurtful

Or WAS so hurtful

At some time in the past

To someone else

And THEIR dream

That now is when mine

Will be taken away

Forever

And it’s just me

And the Mister

And the millions of helpful unhelpful comments

That people

(Some of whom don’t even really know what is happening)

Feel compelled to give

Because people are people

And people like normality

And right now

I am anything but

Even though

I know that I WILL be singing solos again someday

And not skipping Mother’s Day

Or having to stop teach the children

Or crying for days before a reunion

Because EVERYBODY in my family

Has a newborn in the same year

Except for me

Someday

This will either be TRULY okay

Or so status quo

That it feels normal

To be numb

But right now?

You know what?

It’s hard to be around people

And church

And work

And even the people I love

Because my husband

The person who is supposed to love me most and best

Stood in the kitchen one day

Reached into my heart

And ripped it out

And that?

Well that is going to take some time

To heal

If ever

It does

 

February 9, 2014

This one is gonna hurt

Filed under: Glimpses of Me — srose @ 1:48 am

This One Is Gonna Hurt

 In 1992, I met three men who changed my life forever.  The first, of course, was Beau.  All of seventeen, he was the hero of my senior year.  Not my first love, or even my first kiss, he WAS the first person to call me “very, very pretty”, the first to show me that maybe, just maybe, when I liked a boy, some part of him might like me back.  He was patient with me, as much as an adolescent could be, and gave me the gift of feeling worth something, even if it was only for a few months.  This was a gift I would need going into the big scary world of college.

 The second is the man who is now my husband.  He was already a professor and we didn’t begin to form a relationship until a few years later, but the seeds were laid that summer.  I began to get to know him, to laugh at his jokes, to figure out who he was.  Three years later, we were engaged, but that is for a different day.

 And then.  And then there was HIM.  Six weeks into being a freshman, there I was, standing in his apartment with his hands on me.

I didn’t realize until years later that actual factual abuse had taken place.  See, someone in my new little group, someone that I thought was my friend hurt me very badly.  On the inside, where there are no scars.

There was no actual sex.  There were no actual wounds.  He had me strip.  We played Truth or Dare.  He kissed me.  He took pictures.  He tied me up.  He ran his hands over me.   He ran a knife over me.  He blindfolded me.  He took me to his room.  There were other people there.  There were hands on me.  There was something in my mouth.  I was cold and afraid and alone.  But there was no actual wound.  No bruise.  No scar.

I was hurt, but I was not injured.

And then the nightmares began.

And I couldn’t figure out why.

Hear what I’m saying.  The early ‘90’s were a strange time to be a teenager.  Abuse and assault weren’t studied or understood as much as they are today.  Victimizers were no longer thought of as strange men dragging unwary women behind the bushes, but neither were they perceived to be what they sometimes are: students, friends, advisers, part of a group.  Even the people I eventually talked to didn’t and couldn’t understand.  I was fine.  I was going to school.  I was singing in choir.  I ate, breathed, slept, attended classes, participated in work study, did my homework.  Was I sure there was something wrong?

There was something wrong.  There was (and continues to be) something wrong in the dream cycles I circle through in which I’m being chased by HIM, holding a knife and determined to find me.  There is something wrong in the episodes of –Law and Order- I watch and continually tell the TV that just because someone is not ACTING like a victim, it doesn’t mean they are NOT a victim.  There is something wrong in the attention I continually seek from those around me.  I am a “love me, touch me, hold me, think I’m worth something for a little while” kind of person and some of it stems from having been used in a physical way.

I was ten years past my freshman year and on the verge of destroying my marriage (one cannot beg for love from everyone one meets and expect one’s spouse to stay happy) when I met the first therapist who understood what I myself couldn’t put into words.

“You.”, he told me, “Have the responses and reactions of a rape victim.  Didn’t you know that?”

Well no.  No I didn’t.  No one had ever used that word in connection with me before.  After all, nothing had really happened, had it?  There was no actual sex, no contact in that way.  I thought I was going crazy.  I honestly thought my brain had rolled out of my head and I had lost my mind somewhere along the way. 

I was functioning.  I went to work and halfway sorta did my job.  I went to church.  I watched TV.  I ate.  I breathed.  I did the laundry.  I slept.  But I was on my way to convincing myself that I was crazy.  After all, no one seemed to know what was going on with me.  I myself couldn’t explain why I was feeling the way I did.  If there were no words, if I could not express what I was feeling, even to my most secret self, wasn’t I going insane?  It was, I thought, the only possible explanation.

Well.  No.  As it turns out, there were other explanations.  And that day, in that office, with my doctor looking me straight in the eye, I began to discover the strength to seek them.

I’m not there yet.  I’m still broken.  But there are more pieces fitting together these days than there ever have been.  And I’m learning that there ARE answers for the ones still left in the box, waiting to fill up the empty holes.

That day, in that office, I began to realize that I wasn’t alone.  I began to read.  I began to discover some things.

One of the things I have discovered is that some studies show that nearly one out of every five women has been abused sexually.  Think about that.  If there are twenty girls in your class, four of them are statistically victims.  If you are in a study group of ten girls, two of them have been hurt in that way, according to the surveys.

Yet, it is something no one talks about in a personal way.  There are surveys and studies and reports, but few actual faces.  This is not a movement in the way that Civil Rights or Fair Wage or Death Penalty cases are.  So many people feel alone.  And if they are like me, they often feel that their brain has fallen out of their head and rolled away, never to return.

Therefore, with your permission, I would like to share some of my insights.  These are mostly targeted toward girls and women.  I don’t know much about men who are violated, but anyone is free to read this blog if they want.

First:  THERE ARE NO SUCH THINGS AS “RIGHT” REACTIONS WHEN YOU ARE COMING TO TERMS WITH BEING MISUSED

Hear me here, please.  I am NOT advocating hurting someone else just because you yourself are hurting.  What I AM saying is that your reactions are your reactions.  Your healing is your healing.  You are a person, not a case study or statistic.

You may get mad.  That is okay

You may get sad.  That is okay.

You may feel betrayed.  That is okay.

You may laugh and not know why.  That is okay.

You may not want to talk.  That is okay.

You may feel like kissing everyone in sight.  That is okay.  You feel what you feel.  Actions are different, but it is okay to feel what you feel.

You may want to sleep.  That is okay.

You may want to eat.  That is okay.

You may want to shower.  That is okay.

You may want to hit something.  That is okay.

You may want to write a sad song.  That is okay.

You may want to organize your living space down to the last detail.  That is okay.

You may want to cut your hair.  That is okay.

You may not want to be touched.  That is okay.

You may want to guard your personal space.  That is okay.

You may feel like you don’t have any radar anymore and not know if you can trust anyone.  This is okay.

You may feel like you have to be on guard all the time and get heavily invested in personal safety classes/issues.  This is okay.

You may feel scared all the time and jump at the slightest noise.  This is okay.

 You may also WANT to do some things that are harmful to you and others.  You may not understand or be able to explain why you want to do these things.  Know this.  Your reactions are your reactions.    Feeling is okay.  Thinking is okay.  Hurting…feeling your hurt…is a process.  Part of that process may be to want to hurt yourself.  Part of that process may be that you want to hurt someone else.

You may feel like no one loves you, or that no one could ever love you again.

You may feel betrayed.  You may feel that you can trust no one ever again.

You may feel like you need to use someone, anyone, before someone uses you and you get hurt.

You may hate yourself.

You may feel the need to change the way you dress.

You may feel the need to dress down or ugly so that no one looks at you and wants or values you.

You may feel the need to dress up and wear lots of make up so that all anyone ever sees is the physical you.  You may feel all you are good for now is sexual things.

You may hurt yourself and don’t know why.

You may begin befriending or dating people that you normally would not spend time with because you want to change, escape or run away from the person that you think you are.

You may not know who you are and go through many changes in your make up, wardrobe, speech, activities, jobs, hairstyles or other things.

You may feel the need to shut yourself off from anyone, even the ones who love you best.

You may stop praying.

You may lash out in anger, even at the people you love.

You may have flashbacks and react harshly or run away from situations that seem normal to everyone else.

You may shower a lot or stop showering all together.

You may stop eating.

You may start eating.  You may feel like gaining so much weight that you are ugly and unlovable.

You may START praying and seek to explore or deepen your faith or lack of it.

There are many many reactions.  This is okay!  Healing is a process.

ALSO…HEALING…FEELING is not a step ladder.  You go through cycles like a circle.  You may be angry one day…one hour…one minute and sad the next only to feel yourself angry again.  DON’T BE ALARMED.  This is normal.  Emotions and issues circle around.  They overlap.  They overwhelm at times.  You don’t just deal with one feeling and put it to rest only to take on the next.  It is not a neat line that you check off on some kind of list.  It is more like a collage or a knitted blanket with intertwined strands.

 Second:  IT DOESN’T MATTER

There is a question so familiar in discussions about sexual abuse that it has almost become a cliché.  “What were you wearing?” is so predictable anymore that it is almost part of a script.  The truth is that it doesn’t matter.  It really doesn’t.  I was wearing a sweatshirt with penguins on it and jeans.  I had nothing to eat or drink and I was brushing my hair a lot of the night.  It doesn’t matter.  If I had been topless in a thong, it still wouldn’t have mattered.  Wrong is wrong is wrong.

What were you wearing?  It doesn’t matter.

What did you have to eat? It doesn’t matter.

What was in your purse?  It doesn’t matter.

What did you talk about?  It doesn’t matter.

Were you kissing?  It doesn’t matter.

What did you have to drink?  It doesn’t matter.

Were you in his lap?  It doesn’t matter.

Were you a guest in his house?  It doesn’t matter.

Had you had sex before?  It doesn’t matter.

Had you ever let him touch you before?  It doesn’t matter.

Who else was there?  It doesn’t matter.

Have you ever let him take pictures of you before?  It doesn’t matter.

Were you flirting?  It doesn’t matter.

What kind of signals were you sending?  It doesn’t matter.

Had you ever “played games” before?  It doesn’t matter.

Had you ever told sexually explicit jokes in his presence?  It doesn’t matter.

Where were you sitting?  It doesn’t matter.

What objects were in the room?  It doesn’t matter.

Wrong is wrong is wrong.  But you may blame yourself.  You may second guess everything you said, everything you did, every move you made.  You may believe it was or is your fault.  It is not.  Really.  It is not.

Third:  PEOPLE MAY LOVE YOU BUT THEY MIGHT NOT ALWAYS UNDERSTAND

Some people may ask you why you didn’t scream.  Some people may ask you why you didn’t fight.  If you come from a trusting background, some people may ask you why you didn’t sense that something wrong was happening and you may not have an answer for that.

If you come from a church going background, some people may ask you why you didn’t pray.  You may not have an answer for that.

If the person who hurt you is a friend, some people might ask you if you are SURE that something happened.  You may have an angry answer for that.

People are strange.  Some people want to help, but don’t know what to say.  Some people try to help, but say the wrong thing.  Some people say the wrong thing and don’t realize that they are inflicting even more wounds.

It’s hard.  When one is hurting, they may get so into their own heads that they don’t have the energy to interact with other people-even people who love them.  This, too, is okay for a while.

Hurting can be stressful.  It is okay to devote energy to yourself and your journey.

And now, a little note:  Not everyone is going to believe you.  Even with scars, tears, rips, self destructive behavior, not everyone is going to believe that any kind of abuse, any kind of damage even happened.  It sucks, I know.  

Four:  IT IS NOT OKAY TO HURT OTHER PEOPLE, EVEN IF YOU MIGHT BE HURTING YOURSELF

Thinking can be hard.  You may be convinced that your brain dropped out of your head.  You may be convinced that you are going crazy.  You may be convinced that your mouth is running away with you.

You may try to combat your own pain by hiding it in behaviors such as watching TV or sleeping or working on a project.  This is okay.  Your reaction is your reaction.  Your healing is a process.

What is not okay, ever, is to turn so mistrusting, or revenge filled, or bitter, that you lash out or strike out at those around you.  You are still a person.  People around you are still people.  You are hurting.  You may be confused, or angry, or sad, or questioning.  That is okay.  But becoming something other than yourself by letting anger or bitterness or revenge take over your entire identity?  Is that really someone you want to become?

Yes, Hurting people hurt people.

But you have been hurt.  Don’t become the catalyst for someone else’s pain.

 Finally: SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE IS ABLE TO HELP

It’s frustrating.  It’s difficult.  It’s confusing.  It’s muddling.  It’s foggy.  It’s painful.

Getting answers.  Getting help.  Having someone turn a key that finally puts your mind back in place.

These are things that can take years.

You are going to want to give up.

You are going to want to sink into your pain.

You are going to want to sleep, or drink, or work your life away.

You are going to doubt yourself.

You are going to question your life, your existence, your very identity.

You are going to wonder what your worth even is.

I promise.  You have value.

I promise.  You are worthwhile.

I promise.  It may not ever ever be okay, but some of the pieces WILL fit back together.

Someone somewhere is going to say something that clicks it into place.

Someone somewhere is going to be able to touch your heart.

I don’t mean a lover.

I don’t mean a partner.

I mean a counselor.  A friend.   A teacher.  A priest.  A doctor.

They will believe you.  They will care for you.  They will take your hand so you are not alone.

It’s still going to hurt.  It’s not going to be easy.

Figuring out what to do next can take more than a decade.

You may think you are crazy.  You aren’t.

You may think you aren’t worth loving.  You are.

Don’t give up.  Don’t give in.

Strengthen.  Heal.

Cry. Scream.

Write.  Sing.

Shower. Sleep.

Talk. Weep.

Grieve.

And know that we are here.

We are here.

You are not alone.

April 19, 2013

I Am a Depressed American

Filed under: Glimpses of Me,Uncategorized — srose @ 3:55 am

I Am, In Fact, A Depressed American

My friend Katie recently went through a time of troubles. She was throwing up. She couldn’t breathe. She had headaches. She couldn’t sleep. She finally ended up in the hospital for tests and observation. When she was discharged, she told me that bananas would be part of her recovery.
Bananas? I was skeptical. She was serious. Among other things, Katie’s potassium was very low and she needed to build it back up. She was prescribed greens, chocolate milk…and bananas.

So simple. So sweet. So doable.

I’ve gone through my own times of troubles. Recently, for example, Kenny caught me crying in the hallway. Concerned, he asked me what was wrong.
“I don’t know, “I sobbed. “I just don’t know.”

That was a lie. I DID know what was wrong. Well…I DID and I DIDN’T.

See, I am depressed. Certified, diagnosed and everything. I cry for no reason. I stay in bed for days. I endlessly obsess over whether or not I am getting better.
I’ve got a counselor…or two…or three.

And I can tell you what’s wrong with me.

I just can’t fix it.

I debated (and worried and cried and went back and forth and changed my mind and still am not sure) over even writing this entry. After all, aren’t I one of the most blessed people ever to walk the earth? Don’t I have food? And education? And shelter? And employment? Aren’t I American? Don’t I have hobbies? And friends? And a loving spouse and supportive family? What could I bring to this page other than “Poor pitiful mes” and a mile long list of “First World Problems”?

But (unless I change my mind between now and time to post), writing this entry I am. Partially because the words have been circling in my head for months now without disappearing and my theory is that the only way to get them to leave is to write (er…type) them out. And second because, well, because just maybe these words will touch someone. Egotistical, I know, to think that a flighty, disorganized girl in tiny town, Kentucky, could write something powerful enough to connect with some random someone somewhere else, but there is, as they say, always a chance.

Yet, I worry. Depression can be, as it is in my case, tied to one’s upbringing. One’s upbringing is often tied to the people one dearly loves. The people I dearly love are very much alive and are quite capable of reading whatever it is I have to say about my childhood and adolescence (of which they were a part). So, when one is writing about one’s heart and soul, does one a) keep silent about the causes of their coming apart? b) speak only in the most academic and clinical of terms? c) make up stories about other people or d) just keep going, regardless of the relational consequences?

I, the flighty, disorganized girl in tiny town Kentucky, will probably choose from all of the options. Just know that if you are wounded by anything said here, the offense was unintentional. I have written and re written this. I love you. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.

So, to the topic at hand:

First off, you need to know that some of this is from experience, some from what I’ve been told in my therapy sessions and some from the reading I do.
NONE of it is to be taken as absolute, one size fits all Gospel. This blog entry is slanted from MY experience, MY thoughts and MY feelings. I’m an extensive reader, but I am also, at times, an emotional wreck. I’ve been a teacher, a storyteller, a cat owner, a soloist, a student, a crybaby, a lover, a napper, a poet, a traveler and much more but I have NEVER been involved in medicine, mental or otherwise. Quote me, contact me, love me or vilify me, but please know that everyone’s experience is unique. My depression is not and cannot be your depression, neither can yours be mine. I cannot feel what you feel. I cannot see what you see. I cannot help you.
I can barely help myself.

I didn’t know that, of course, the not being able to help myself part, when depression first came into my life. I was an imaginative child who grew into a dreamy adolescent. My thoughts were of Princes (of the Charming variety) and my notebooks were full of poems concerning everything from chance encounters to fleeting smiles. Like Disney’s Belle, I was never without a book or two and most of those books were romantic in nature.

I was, in other words, ill-suited for high school. I was neither popular nor athletic. I was smart enough, but not particularly driven. I was given to pastels, to ribbons in my hair, to pretty earrings and pink fingernail polish. I could neither flirt nor dance and I was lacking in both grace and social skills.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, my life was not that much different than most of the students in my grade. I believe that this fact would have eventually dawned on me and that I would have found some kind of tenuous footing, had it not been for the clouds.

Ah yes, the clouds. The clouds have been my not infrequent companions for a couple of decades or more. When I was younger, I was too inexperienced to recognize them for what they were and they, combined with what we now know were severe migraines, had me entering daily diary entries about death and all its encumbrances. I thought that I was dying. By turns, I could not catch my breath, concentrate on what was going on around me, find solace in anything but deep sleep, communicate even the most simple of concepts without tears and so on and so forth. By themselves, save for maybe the migraines, each of these occurrences are a sign of nothing more than a change from childhood to a more adult physiology. Even the moodiness and the extra sleep, together with a couple of the other checkpoints listed are not necessarily long term causes for concern. I was a young woman, a very young woman, going through a growth that I had not as yet experienced.

But I was frightened. I was scared that I was losing my mind. At some points, I was convinced that I was dying.

I was not. I did not. And for a while, the clouds, along with their accompanying depression, lifted.

Only to return a few years later.

But this time, I was marginally better prepared. And when the weeping for no reason began, I was able to cling both to my bed and my journal and hope the storm would pass quickly.
It did not. And, as I have learned, in some cases, it will not.

Mine is such a case.

Depression, as you may have surmised, is an umbrella term. Some depressives are compulsive. Some are angry. Some weep. Some fixate on an event or person to the exclusion of all else going on around them. Some lose touch with reality and others refuse to leave the relative safety of their rooms.

Not any case is like another, though some, and, in fact, many, share similar backgrounds and characteristics.

My depression is mostly tri birthed.

The first prong is heredity.

The second is circumstances.

The third is chemical.

Some of you may see the word chemical and think “substances”. Yes, stimulants, enhancers and other such lovely amusements are often used to retard and distract the noises in a depressed person’s head and the emptiness in their soul, but such is not the case with me. Barring the “real wine” that was served one Communion service when my family and I lived in South America and the fermented cough syrup my husband presented me with when we were newlyweds, I have never had a drink.

If you are an individual that believes in genes that carry certain pre dispositions, alcohol is in my bloodline. I’ve been cautioned not to start drinking because of the difficulty others in my family have had quitting once they began (part of the heredity I mentioned..along with artistry, we sometimes get migraines, anger and bouts of the crazies) , but, though I take this warning very seriously, it is only part of the reason for my decision not to partake.

I am, you see, a “crazy” girl. I sing too loudly, laugh too frantically, cry too frequently. Even in times when the clouds are not circling, my emotions are never far from the surface. I don’t need the aftermath of even one night of alcohol to add to my ever increasing shameful memory bank tempting the “Nobody loves me/everybody hates me/guess I’ll go eat some worms” tape to replay over and over.

No, I don’t mean “chemical” as in anything illicit. I mean wires, connections, sparks. Somewhere along the way, something in my brain got twisted and kinked and whatever fluid or juice was supposed to be humming smoothly along, helping me live in the land of sunshine and rainbows (or at least in the land of nice and normal) was diverted down the wrong pipe. Hence the easy tears, the days spent in the company of no one but my cats and my pillow, the feeling that life is too overwhelming to face and I’ll just stay in my room, thank you very much.

I do have help for these feelings. I take nice little pills every night to help regulate my existence. I am, as I have said, not alone in this. Depression as a phenomenon is not unique to me, the messy haired, messy lived girl in tiny town, Kentucky.

My background, however, is. I was born into a loving, generous family. I was (and am) a “Daddy’s girl”. I share a love of reading with my mother. I sing with my father. My brother and I had a large group of neighbors, cousins and parental co workers’ children to adventure with. Ours was, in many ways, a golden, charmed, rainbow filled, existence.
But, as much as I was born into song, I was also born into Southern (and Southern Baptist) Ladyhood. Because we moved a bit, my upbringing was not as Honeysuckled and Magnolia Blossomed as some of my old friends’, but there was still a prevailing air of understated grace and gentility that surrounded us. An air which I, unfortunately for my ever ready clouds, miserably failed at. With the grace and the gentility came scrutiny. Ladies came with expectations to be met. Adolescent me met not a one. I stood wrong. I spoke wrong. I mastered neither conversation nor socialization. I was, and continue to be, too curious, too inquisitive. I either shuffle, awkwardly silent or I blurt out questions as if I were conducting an interrogation.

Gradually, piece by piece, question by question, year by year, it became clear that who I was, who I am, was and is not okay. Some people take this information and reinvent themselves. They become smooth, popular golden gods, always with the right remark or charming story. I have, and did, nothing of the sort. I remain awkward, inquisitive, fearful of everything from censure via the ones I love to rejection from people I am trying to impress.

Again, these experiences are not my own. Many teenaged girls are kicked under the lunch table when they utter something the rest of the group considers strange or inappropriate. Other children are warned not to discuss certain topics or to refrain from dominating a conversation so that the adults can socialize.

What may be unique to me, however, is the pain felt when the people I love unthinkingly bring hurt into my already fragile being.

With permission, I will share a fact of my marriage: I am almost a completely opposite person from my husband. Our marriage is much, much better than it was even two years ago. We love each other very much. We just don’t agree on many things. And Kenny is not shy about letting me know this. Frequently, he lets me know this. His conversational openers are peppered with suggestions/hints/strongly worded advisements to turn my music down or stop jumping around my room or get to the point. The last one, of course, often has the opposite of the desired effect. When faced with such negative (perceived or otherwise) wordage, my brain shuts down…literally goes blank…and however important my message was, it simply remains lost in whatever recesses my fright banishes it to. I try and talk with my husband only to be met with interruptions and eye rolls. He frequently tells me that he is not interested in whatever it is I have to say at that moment. He is impatient with me, as I often is with him. In my depressive state, I live with the knowledge that who I am is not okay. It is this way with other relatives as well.

For example, I, the dreamy, messy, romantic Kentucky girl that I am, have a reputation among my close family members to “misremember” certain events in my life. If I am, for instance, relaying something that happened to me, my companions will hasten to assure me that I just BELIEVED that the affair happened to me and that I must have merely read about or watched what I believed to be my own personal story.

This reputation serves to make me appear fun, inspiring and creative as an aunt, a babysitter and a storyteller, but it also shakes me deeply in two ways. The first is a personal one. If I cannot, for instance, trust that the events I believe to be true actually in fact ARE true, how can I know that what I believe about myself and my world is real?
The second is relational. I have found myself in the position of dismissed hysterical emotive more than once. Some of my loved ones seem to take the attitude that if the experiences I relate are not to be believed, than the feelings I am trying to share are not factual either. Therefore, I am often overlooked as, not quite a liar, but not quite a verifiable source either…even when it comes to my own psyche. So I often leave conversations with needs unmet and issues unresolved.

Ah yes, resolution. Maybe because of all the books I devoured as a child, but closure is an important issue for me. Unfortunately, it is not an issue for what is laughingly called “the real world”. And here is where my circumstantial depression comes in.

1992, as I have already said, was a year of extremes for me. One of the lowest points was meeting the people who were the first to truly break my heart.

Being a minister’s child, I had been in all kinds of situations with all kinds of people. I don’t know what you know about church culture, especially the culture of an Evangelical, which we Southern Baptists are, but overt stand offishness is not the status quo. By this, I mean, everyone does their best to appear friendly and approachable, even if they are having the most soul crushing day of their existence.

Being Southern, Southern Baptist, a Lady and a Minister’s Child (all of which I love and would not trade for anything), I was sometimes in situations that I deemed uncomfortable but whatever authority figure was over me at the time deemed acceptable. I was, in fact, around very few (if any) actual dangerous people, but there were a few (again very few) comments that were just a bit off or hugs or touches that I wanted to shy away from.

As a result, I learned to disregard whatever radar I ever had and follow my authority figures into whatever situation I was told to follow them into. I have no way of knowing if ANY other Lady in Training, Minister’s Child or Paragon of Womanhood experienced this as well, but it was, and remains, very real to me.

In 1992, this led me into trouble. There were some people in my life who, whether out of their own hurt or out of wanton destructiveness, turned out to be the very opposite of friends.
Because of this, I lost much of my identity and much of my faith. I had already begun to be told that I made up or imagined details of my own autobiography. I had also been told at least once that whatever it was that I was praying for at the time was too small to bother God with and that I should only trouble Him for big things. So 1992 ended on two notes: Was the loss of my friends (and my innocence) a small thing that should not be brought to God and only handled on my own or was it okay to pray? And why did the people I needed the most dismiss everything I said as hyperbole and over exaggeration and not take time out of their own selves to at least try and listen to me, for if the words and situations were not real, the emotions very much WERE? (This point I discovered in therapy. I had previously been disregarding my emotions surrounding situations because others disregarded the situations themselves. My counselor, however, informed me that emotions did not just happen on their own. Hence the potential unreal situation yet very much real emotion dynamic.)

These emotions grew, unchecked, for many years. Though I have prayed, off and on. Sometimes I am a fully functioning adult member of a polite civilized society.
These days, however, I am an overwhelmed glass sculpture just waiting for a fall.

1992 is gone but the hurt remains. As does the hurt of high school. And the experience of Southern (Southern Baptist) womanhood.
As does small town life.

In thinking and drafting this now rather long entry, I was trying to list the things I knew about me, about my depression, about my life, into facts.
Those pertaining to small town life, at least small town over thirty life, are as follows:
*I am not a teacher
*I am not a parent
*I am married to a man who prefers staying in his office, alone, to socializing (sometimes even with his few friends)
*I work a schedule that is ever fluidly changing
*People of my acquaintance cannot make firm plans

Some of these depression causers are actually rainbows. My work schedule is due to a shop that my husband co owns. This shop turned out to be a huge blessing for us, as we now have a common purpose and more fully understand the ins and outs of the others’ day.

Co owning a business, however, can play havoc with one’s schedule. As a result, I lead a somewhat isolated life. My work hours begin in the afternoon, so I am eating my snack when everyone else is beginning their evenings. Due to last minute jobs and emergency phone calls, as well as extensive orders (again, blessings all as my husband loves the freedom, creativity and flexibility that co working for himself is bringing to our lives and I love some of those things as well), we get home anywhere from eight in the evening to one in the morning. Just in time to go to bed, right? Fun, yes. Challenging, yes. Blessings in terms of both people and work, most definitely. Yet it is also isolating. It leaves no room for parties, for movie nights, for impromptu ice cream runs.

And even if I had time, my depressed side whispers, who would I go with. See points one, two, four and five. I have no children. I have no children. I have no children. I have no play dates. I have nothing in common with the people my age who attend my church and frequent my path. I do not know what they are talking about, not do they care to take the time to explain themselves. I am forever outside looking in.

This fact (I have no children), more than any other, is the most long standing hurt in my marriage. Yet it also affects my social life. Mother’s Day services at church are killer. Baby pictures are hard. Each announcement of a happy pregnancy among the members of my ever expanding family is another nail in my coffin. Another, if you will permit me to use my expression, cloud in my sky.

And my faith dies a little more.

See, that’s the thing. You can be a Christian and be depressed. I was saved at the age of five. I love Jesus and hymns and the Gospels and Point of Grace and Lottie Moon and the book of Esther and the sweet little choruses we teach children to sing. I love the hope of heaven and the fact that we don’t have to say goodbye forever when a fellow Christian dies.
I don’t like..er…don’t love the guilt.

Have you ever read a Jennifer Weiner book? In one, she is describing a group of women enrolled in a weight loss seminar. The participants are asked to verbalize slogans or promises that they have encountered in their pasts as they related to being “big women”.
“Just eat carrots. “says one woman. All her life, she had been told to just eat healthy and her pretty body would shine through to match her pretty face. This woman hated the advice. This woman knew that the carrot advice would not work, yet people (out of either ignorance or sincere belief, or maybe for lack of anything better to say) kept offering it.

I am the same way.

I am an “if only” girl too.
“If only you would wear a little make up, you would be so much prettier.”
(Make up. Yet another thing to be depressed about. Make up breaks me out and makes my eyes water. I was in a church play once and wore some. People thought I had been hit in the face, I was so swollen and black ringed.)

“If only you would go back to school, you could get such a good job. You would be a great teacher. Why don’t you try for that?”

“If only you would sell or store all the stuff you came into your house with. Other people picked it out. Redocorate! You will feel so much more independent. You would be so happy.” Independence being another of the buzzwords of the “I know what you need crowd”. As loving as they are, they are not in my head, not in my life. Making my husband angry would NOT make me happy. Disrespecting him would not either. I know my clouds. They would circle much more should I begin to ignore those I love and go my own way.

I feel guilty about wanting to go to the movies when my friends cancel on me. If I hadn’t have wanted to go in the first place, there would have been no conflict.

I feel guilty about coming home crying when we don’t have enough people to come to some of the classes I teach at church and the children can’t present their offerings. If I hadn’t have wanted to have class at the same time as sports or parental meetings or if I were just more flashy, more exciting, class could have met and…we could have had a season.

I feel guilty about not having enough faith. Don’t I know Roman’s 8:28? Don’t I know all it takes is a mustard seed?

And still the days come when my bed is both my refuge and prison.

I can’t eat. I can’t work. I don’t shower.

Mine is not the blues. It is not a song. It is more.

Mine is not the crazies, though I have wondered.

I don’t hear actual voices, save the one saying “Why can’t you just count your blessings? Get up, don’t you know the Lord made this day…the Lord made your man, your job, your life? Why can’t you live and work it?”

Mine is not the self destructive anger, though I have experienced that.

Mine is more the fade away kind. Maybe if I just faded away, all would be well.

And yet, I’m aware that depression is selfish.
It is ego driven sometimes. It is wanting MY needs (er…mostly wants, actually) met.
It is a luxury most developing countries, who are fighting for food and clean water, can’t afford.
It is first world, not counting your blessings, not acknowledging your gifts.

Yet it is all consuming.
It is a monster, never filled. A great wound never stitched.
In some ways, it is universal.
Yet it is intensely personal.

You can be a Christian; you can know all the hymns, quote all the verses, say the platitudes with the sincerely concerned church ladies who want to know why they haven’t seen you in weeks.
You can say to yourself that you ARE worthwhile, your life DOES have meaning, someone IS loving you very much.
But the clouds are there.
And sometimes you fall into bed and don’t get up.
And sometimes you fight through another endless day.
And sometimes you wonder if the medicine is doing any good.
And sometimes you pray and get no further than the ceiling.
And it passes. Somehow, slowly, it passes.

That’s the thing. Show me “Where is the Lid?” or certain Katharine Hepburn movies or read me parts of “BossyPants”, put me in front of a class of three year olds and let me play, give me a kitten learning to flop over and hold their paws up.
I will laugh myself to tears. I will be enchanted. I will quote my favorite lines.

But you can sing and be depressed.
You can have faith and be depressed.
You can pray and be depressed.
You can even watch “A Bit of Frye and Laurie” and still have the clouds circle.

I’m okay. I’ll be okay.
I’ll read.
I’ll sing.
I’ll teach my classes.
I won’t be graceful.
Or athletic.
I’ll never ever be the lady I was supposed to be.
I’ll carry my books.
And eat my chocolate.
And I’ll be okay.

But I’ll still have the “Don’t bother God with that’s” and the “It’s not okay to be you’s” and the “You’ll never be good enough’s”.
And that…
That is why I’ll be crying in the hall ways.

Even though I know it’s just my brain.

August 12, 2011

I Believe in Babies

Filed under: ah life — srose @ 5:04 pm

Okay, true confession time. I love hot fudge cake. Love hot fudge cake. Eat “real food” during dinner so I can GET hot fudge cake.

As a result of this, I often seize any excuse to go to Shoney’s.  Shoney’s is interesting.  All kinds of people come to Shoney’s.  I personally like the hot fudge cakes and the French toast sticks, but the seafood seems to be popular as well.

Sometime last winter, Kenny and I were wrapping up a long week at work by partaking of the buffet when I began to notice the families seated around us.  At the table beyond were a mom, a dad and a young baby in a high chair.  At the table beyond THEM were a mom, a dad and a young baby in a different high chair.

I watched the babies and smiled when they noticed each other.  I smiled even bigger when they began to communicate.

They were either pre verbal or choosing not to talk, but they flirted and smiled and waved and cooed.

“Ah” said baby number one to baby number two.

“Ouah” replied baby number two.

They talked through the entire meal.  After a while, their parents quit trying to feed them and just let them interact.

And interact they did.  They cooed and gurgled and booed and aahed and kicked and laughed.

They were having a grand old time.

And I was having a ball just watching them.

Baby number one  had to leave and baby number two actually cried, looking around for his friend.

It was darling.

And instructive.

Do we take to strangers that easily?  Do we smile and wave across a table?  Are we willing to make friends with people we’ve never met?

Somehow, I think we’d be a little better off if we could all be like those babies: smiling, cooing and (for me) spooning up the last of our hot fudge cakes.

July 25, 2011

Solitary (Wo)man

Filed under: Glimpses of Me — srose @ 4:47 pm

This time, it started with Elphaba.  You know Elphaba, don’t you?  Elphaba Thropp?  Green of skin, black of clothing and just a little bit “Wicked”?

See, “Wicked” is my favorite musical.  Ever.  Of all time.  Future generations are going to have to work hard to come up with something to surpass it. (And yes, I have the book and know that my musical isn’t REALLY how Gregory Maguire imagined Oz, but just LISTEN to “I’m Not That Girl” or “As Long As You’re Mine” and then tell me how far fetched it all is.)

“Wicked” is so good, in fact, that I’ve seen it three times.  This is a record for me.  Besides the ever popular, always around performances of “The Sound of Music”, I’ve never seen any musical more than once.

So, when I saw that it was coming to Nashville this fall, I was excited.  Galinda.  Fiyero. Nessarose.  ELPHABA.  Just a few hours away.  Wouldn’t it be exciting?  I could listen to my soundtrack.  I could bone up on my songs.  I could pretend to Defy Gravity.  “Wicked” IS, after all, the best musical EVER.

I forgot I can’t drive.  I forgot that I’m married to a wonderfully sweet, generous man who HATES MUSICALS.

HE doesn’t think “Wicked” is the best show ever.  HE doesn’t care about seeing Elphaba again.  HE is not going to shell out money for the tickets.

The answer was no.

The answer remains no.
And so it began.

This time.

See, I’ve known that I’m depressed for years.

I can’t tell you when it began.

There are stories of overwhelmed grandmothers and great aunts in hospitals.  There are incidents of the women in my family being unable to leave their beds.  There are drawn curtains and homes left unrung with the sound of the laughter of friends.

But for me.  For me, it probably began with adolescence.

I know, I know, I’m a walking cliche.

Blame the hormones.

Blame the move to another continent.

Blame the introduction of junior high school popularity contests.

Whatever it was, I got it.  My diary entries (which are probably filled with oh so ordinary teenage problems now that I look back on them) speak of headaches.  Many many headaches.

Eventually the headaches gave way to naps.

Naps gave way to withdrawal.

And withdrawal…? Well we’re still gestating on that.

While we’re gestating, the clouds are circling.  Anything can cause them.

A friend suddenly begins backing out of a relationship?  There comes a little puff of wind.

Someone breaks plans only to dine with another couple? The first little patter begins to fall.

My name is called in the exact same inflection as it had been during childhood sessions of “What did you screw up NOW?” The sky begins to darken and the thunder announces its presence.

I try to help a customer or take over a new task only to be told that someone else will be performing said service because I would only mess it up anyway?  KA-BOOM.

The little group I sometimes hang out with used to call me a “social butterfly” because I was always making plans to go somewhere.

It’s true, I suppose.  I don’t like being in the house if I can help it.  Kenny keeps it dark.  Kenny doesn’t mess with the temperature.  But mostly, THERE ARE NO PEOPLE THERE.

My phone doesn’t ring.  My bell doesn’t chime.  I’m not what you would call “popular”.

It’s my fault, I suppose.

I can be curt.  I can be weird.  How many other people do you know who have to leave stores at the mall because the music makes them cry?

I don’t like talking on the phone.  It makes me twitchy.  I can’t read facial expressions and I’m too poorly able to read nuance to really be able to tell what the other party is saying.

I tend to talk about myself. ALOT.  If I’m not talking about myself, I’m talking about Kenny.  I try to be a kind, empathetic person, but sometimes I come across as cold and uncaring. At best, I appear disinterested.  At worst, I’m perceived as egotistical.

And don’t even get me started on my compulsions.  I drive my husband crazy with my inability to “take a break”.  I either have to see a task through or not start it at all.

I’m constantly washing my hands.

I can’t leave a doll in a face down position and all toys have to be neatly put away before I’ll leave the preschool area.

I’m strange.  I’m weird.

I’m more alone than I’m not.

It hurts of course, but I don’t know how to change it.

I don’t know how to MAKE the phone ring with party invitations.

I don’t know how to go back in time and teach my husband how to stand the summer months so that somewhere between my “Touch me, hold me, love me, PLEASE” and his “People born to Depression Era babies don’t show physical affection and besides, can’t you feel how hot and sticky it is today?” we can find SOME kind of happy medium.

I don’t know how to talk myself into staying in a crowded area without the panic that the massive amounts of people will somehow…okay, who am I kidding?  It’s not the people, it’s the strangers.

I’m friendly.  I really am.  I like people.  For the most part, I LOVE my church friends and shop customers.  I like hearing people’s stories and living vicariously through their adventures.

But I’ve been told over and over again that people don’t like me.   Er…okay, no one has ever said those exact words, but the implications are there.  “Don’t ask so many questions.”  “You get too personal too fast.”  “Can’t you just let people BE?”

So, I’m scared of strangers.  The people closest to me seem to make…allowances?  adjustments?

I’m often treated as if I’m a child or some sort of pet.

Jobs are done before I can get to them.

Remarks are explained away as being just my “way”.

I have translators and explainers and it’s just easier to play with the preschoolers rather than having to try and make my way through yet another conversation. It’s easier to play with paints and colors and posterboard, with puppets and music and dances than to face ANOTHER social situation that ends in my inevitable mockery.
And my heart grows dimmer and dimmer as I hide it away.

And the clouds circle.

And I join the long line of women in my family who can’t get out of bed.

Even for my babies.

*******************************************

It’s not always like this, of course.  I have a good life.

The first ten nightmare years of our marriage are behind us and we’re doing so much better.

I have three classes at church that I love and I get to learn new songs, new slang and new missionary techniques.

I have wonderful customers at the shop, some of whom even greet me with a hug.

Nothing’s wrong.  Not really.

Nothing’s wrong enough to take to my bed for.

The migraines are fading.  The hormones are lessoning.

I have the occasional lunch with the girls and movie date with the husband.

But the clouds still circle.

My phone doesn’t ring.

My last three therapists have moved out of state, one after the other.

I’m terrified to make a move on anything out of my “comfort zone” for fear of harming some customer’s important documents.

Nothing’s wrong.  Not really.

Kenny says I’m fine.  He says we’re busy anyway.  We work afternoons and evenings.  Church is enough, we don’t need other people.

But it hurts.

It hurts to be a joke.

It hurts to be a failure.

It hurts…right now it hurts…to be me.

*****************************************
In my dreams, of course, I’m Supergirl.

I clean up messes.

I set things right.

I’m fun.

I’m charming.

I’m beautiful.

I’m not real.

Because really, right now what I am is hurt.

And broken.

And withdrawn.

And always, ever

Alone.

July 7, 2011

With apologies to James Lipton and those who have gone before

Filed under: Glimpses of Me — srose @ 4:39 pm

As some of you may know, aside from -Pop Up Video-, my favorite non fiction show is the interview program known as -Inside the Actor’s Studio-.  (Yes, we can debate the “facts” on -Pop Up Video- as being true or not, but that is for another post.)  -Inside the Actor’s Studio- is actually the culmination of a series of classes taken by aspiring artists working on graduate degrees in everything from script writing to stage acting.  An established actor (or ensemble, as in the case of “The Cast of -The Simpsons-“) spends four hours or so being questioned by the Dean of The Actors Studio.  Topics range from “What elementary school did you attend?” to “Why did you agree to be in that music video?” The four hour session is edited down to one (or two in the case of Robin Williams) and aired on the Bravo channel.

I have always wanted to be interviewed like that.  I used to want to be on -This is Your Life- but a)It’s not on anymore (how many of you reading this even know what program I’m talking about?) and b) I don’t like surprises all that much.  I mean, would I REALLY want my first grade teacher appearing in public to talk about what a brat I was?  I don’t think so.

I do, however, love to talk about myself.  I’m not a complete egocentric, but I am my favorite subject (Poor Toby Keith would have written “I Wanna Talk About ME” much earlier if I had been in his life).  The chances of me being on national television (not a star, not famous, not the crime committing type-too scared of the police) are slim to none.  But I do have this blog.  And it is my birthday.

So (not that you asked) here are the answers to some of the questions asked on one of my favorite shows.  Imagine me fidgiting around on a chair and someone at a table with a pile of blue cards in front of them.

WHERE WERE YOU BORN?

The short answer is that I was born in Alabama.  The longer answer is that I was born in Decatur, Alabama.  My parents were living in Moulton at the time and that is where I lived for my first two years.

WHAT WAS/IS YOUR FATHER’S NAME AND WHAT DID/DOES HE DO?

My father is Stephen Frederic Hall.  The “Stephen” is where my “Stephanie” comes from.  My dad has been a minister of all kinds of things (education, singles, youth, senior adults) but his main title is “Minister of Music”.  Some churches call this position  a “Choir Director” and some label it a “Worship Leader”.  Daddy plans the hymns, arranges the solos, leads some of the small groups, teaches some of the Bible Study Classes, takes the Senior Adults on “Mystery Trips”, picks out the cantatas for Christmas and Easter and sometimes introduces special guests from other churches.  He’s written his own songs and has dabbled in writing stories as well.

WHAT WAS/IS YOUR MOTHER’S NAME AND WHAT DOES/DID SHE DO?

My mother is Claudia Rose Estes Hall, from Dickson, Tennessee. (The “Rose” in “Stephanie Rose Hall Sims” is in honor of her.  I love my name.)   Her degree is in kindergarten through eighth grade education, but she has mostly worked in preschool, kindergarten and first grade.  She has supervised field trips, taught low functioning kids how to read and write (she is especially interested in early childhood reading), fallen in love with Disney characters while searching for “clean” movies and heroes to introduce her children to, shocked her classroom by appearing in places such as Wal*Mart and Pizza Hut (teachers don’t REALLY live behind their desks, you know), explored pumpkin patches and petting zoos, watched caterpillars become butterflies and sung “I’m gonna be a part of it/First Grade/FIRST GRADE!”.

WHAT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (S) DID YOU ATTEND?

First I went to Caldwell.  It was sort of down the street from us when we lived in Alabama.  Across the street was a playground that, when I was little, I thought of as “mine”.  I was apparently upset when fall rolled around, classes resumed and “my” playground was invaded by the big kids.

I don’t remember much about my academic life in Alabama.  I know I met a dark haired, dark eyed beauty named Beth whom I now call “Beth From Alabama” who taught me “When I Survey The Wondrous Cross” in sign language.  I learned to write in cursive and wanted to write “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” on everything. I also did a report on the state of Idaho, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about it now.
After Alabama, we moved to Tennessee.  We lived in Sweetwater and I attended Brown.  At Brown, I learned such poems as “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” and passages from the Psalms.  My friends and I acted out scenes from “The Three Investigators” on the playground.  I believe I was someone named Bob since he had glasses.  In a couple of classes, I was allowed to read some of my little stories out loud.  My favorite was about Joan of Arc.  I loved  writing about Joan of Arc.
At one of the schools (I can’t remember which), I had a teacher who read us a chapter of the Bible and a chapter of a novel before class began.  It was an introduction to Trixie Beldon and her friends which I couldn’t get enough of.  Years later, when e-bay came around, I had Kenny get the Trixie Beldon books for me.  I still have them on a shelf.

DO YOU HAVE ANY SIBLINGS?

I have a brother, Clayton Frederic Hall.  I was three and a half when he was born (also in Decatur).  I recommend that all ministers who might be moving from one church, one missionfield, to another have more than one child.  Clay was the only kid I knew during my times of being “the new girl”.  We bonded over songs we learned (“You Get A Line And I’ll Get A Pole, Honey” comes to mind), pop stars (Madonna was in her early stages at that time and there was that band who sang the word “Highway” over and over) and games (though he had much more patience with Monopoly than I ever will have).  Clay was the outgoing one and I was content to let him do the talking.  He was my buddy, my “Bubby”, my partner in crime and I was lucky enough to be along for the ride.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE WORD?

I don’t know if I have one, really.  The ones I use the most are “Anyway…” and “Hey Babe?”  The former is used when I want to return to a previous topic.  The latter is when we’re at work and I want my husband/boss to do something for me or explain something to me.

WHAT IS  YOUR LEAST FAVORITE WORD?

I have two: The word is “later”.  The phrase is “Let’s take a break”.  To me, both mean “Whatever it is you want to do (or whatever it is that we are doing) we are about to stop/halt/never get back to/never start/leave unfinished.” Both of these raise my hackles instantly.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SMELL? (Note: This is not something that James Lipton asks, but he should.)
Apple Cinnamon, Mint Chocolate, Lemon Zest…but not all at once.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SOUND?

My cat purring.  She’s usually up and investigating something (or jumping on counters that she shouldn’t be jumping on) so I love it when she sits in my lap and watches TV with me.  I also like when my husband’s phone says “Droid” at random times.  It always makes me laugh.

WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE SOUND?

Animals yelping in pain.  Even if an animal is “the enemy” in a TV show or movie, when it yelps, I cry.  This doesn’t, however, explain why I won’t read animal BOOKS.  There are no sounds in those.

WHAT PROFESSION (OTHER THAN YOUR OWN) WOULD YOU LIKE TO TRY?

I have decided that my dream profession is to be the research assistant to a traveling professor.  That way, I can see the world.  I can learn interesting facts.  I can be nosy.  But I DON”T have to be responsible for compiling any of the facts.

I’d also like to be a professional doll.  Not a doll like a toy.  But someone who lets other people mess with her clothes, hair and make up.  I like to be played with.  I just don’t like to put anything together myself.  Though I do like the color blue.
WHAT PROFESSION WOULD YOU NOT LIKE TO TRY?

I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with math.  But what I would really not like was a job in which I was responsible for any important outcomes  of people’s lives.  I couldn’t be a doctor, for example.  I couldn’t be a teacher.  I couldn’t work in insurance.  I couldn’t be a clown and be the reason little kids have nightmares.  I couldn’t…well, you get the idea.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CURSE  WORD?

Well, besides that brief “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” period, I’ve mostly made up my own language of anger and frustration.  When my husband half irks and half amuses me, I say “silly rabbit” (yes, I totally ripped that off of Twix).  When I haven’t been at work in a while and someone has misfiled an invoice I say “Work with me, people” or “Come ON, you guys!”

When I was younger, I would say “Frudabaga!”  And as children my brother and I would call each other “You Noun” because we had learned that it meant “Person, Place or Thing”.

But mostly I just hiss “Shoot Fire”, prompting whomever is nearest me to declare me “country”.  Well, I’m part Alabama, part Tennessee, part Kentucky.  I don’t reckon I have a choice.

IF HEAVEN EXISTS WHAT DO YOU WANT GOD TO SAY WHEN YOU REACH THE PEARLY GATES?

First of all, people, heaven is real.  As is hell.  God is love, but there IS a division as to where we will spend eternity.

As to what I hope God will say?  Well, there is a song called “This One’s With Me” that expresses my thoughts on the subject perfectly.

Look it up.  You’ll be glad you did.

May 31, 2011

Now that you are grown

Filed under: Glimpses of Me — srose @ 5:36 pm

So some of “my” kids are now high school graduates. In honor of this (these?) life transitions, I have decided to compile some of my not so hard earned wisdom.

Take it, leave it, read it, ignore it. Some of this is from my experience, some from my parents, some from my husband and some from Oprah, America’s advice guru.

So, here goes:

Ahem. Attention, Attention. Today you become a man.

No, that isn’t quite right.

Let’s try again.

Well, now you are an adult.  At least in the eyes of the world.  You may feel like the same kid, look like the same kid, even smell like the same kid that you were just last week, but you are now an adult.  A grown up.

Congratulations!  You made it.

But what does being “an adult” mean?

Besides picking up after your own puppy, planning your own meals and paying your own bills, what nuggets of wisdom should you take with you into your new life?

Well, it’s like this:

It’s a little bit of trial and error, a little bit of common sense and a whole lot of discovering for yourself just where you fit in.

You are going, for example, to discover that not everyone likes you.  Some people will seem to dislike you for no reason.  You may not have ever talked to said disliker and they bear a grudge anyway.  There is nothing that you can do about these people.  They have already made up their minds.  Forget about them and go hang out with your friends.  Your friends are generally more fun.  And if they aren’t, you need new friends.
One thing that may surprise you about being a grown up is that you are sometimes going to be lonely.  You may have a mom, a dad, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a best friend for life, twelve dogs and two cats AND the most adoring fan club ever and you are still sometimes going to be lonely.  This doesn’t have to be a bad thing.  Lonely times can be creative times.  Take a walk.  Paint a picture.  Run a mile.  Soak in a bubble bath.  Loneliness can be a time of figuring things out.  Don’t be afraid of it.  It will be okay.

Figuring things out will also be a huge component of  your life.  If you are lucky, you will never stop learning.  Don’t be afraid to try new things.  Go out to dinner alone.  Read a book you never would have considered before.  Learn to count to ten in another language.

Don’t put labels on yourself.  You don’t have to be “the smart one” or “the pretty one” or “the funny one”.  Life is big.  Don’t be afraid to be big with it.

Learn the value of waiting.  Be sure and wait for a response when talking with other people.  Give people time to think. You don’t like to be interrupted.  Neither does anyone else.
Don’t just talk to your friends.  There was a news program a few years ago that featured a reporter throwing a dart at a map of the US.  The reporter then traveled to whatever town the dart landed on and featured everyday people and their stories.  Everyone has a story to tell.  Be one of the people who takes the time to listen.

It really is nice to be nice.  It makes you feel good and it helps the people around you.  Really, what does it cost to share your candy bar or to help someone pick up their dropped packages or to hold open a door?  Are you really in too big of a hurry to say “please” or “thank you”?  Remember, you might just be the person who makes someone’s day.

Don’t be afraid to say yes.  Teach a class of small children.  Bake your grandmother a birthday cake.  Sew your best friend a dress. Kick a soccer ball.  Take your neighbor to the doctor.  Do something you’ve never thought of yourself as doing before.  So what if it isn’t “your thing”?  You might discover a passion or hobby or talent that you otherwise might not have known about.

Once you say yes, however, take responsibility for your choices.  So you don’t like your class of small children? You never want to see another soccer ball?  Don’t quit.  Wait until your semester/term/year ends, then do something else.  Honor your commitments.  No one likes unreliable people.

For God’s sake, learn to shut up.  If you can, try and see the world in a different way.  Is your job REALLY hell on earth?  Is there NOTHING good about your school?  Is your Pastor REALLY aiming all his sermons at you?

We all have “ThecatissickIburnedthedinnerandohnothecarwon’tstart” days.  That’s okay.  That’s life.  But if all you can talk about is your nasty co workers and horrible family and crummy boyfriends, you may have a problem.  Do people walk the other way when they see you coming?  Then the problem may be you.

You are not like everyone else.  You never will be.  It’s fun to occasionally wear the same shirt as your Best Friend and be (in the words of my nieces) “matchers”, but don’t dress for other people’s approval.  If you don’t like dresses, don’t wear a dress.  If you can’t stand your hair in your face, cut it, no matter how cute your girlfriend thinks it is long.

Do a good job at your job.  Very few of you are going to marry your boss, so be the best employee you can be.  If you are in a customer based industry, for example, it is rude to take a personal phone call while someone is standing at the counter.  If the garbage can is overflowing, don’t wait to be asked.  Take it out.  Take the initiative.  Look around.  There is usually something you can do.  And erase the phrase “That’s not my job” from your vocabulary.  We’re all in this together.  Let’s start acting like it.

Double check.  Proofread.  You aren’t going to catch every mistake, but being careful never hurt.

Your love doesn’t always look like everyone else’s love.  So your sister is having her third set of twins and your best friend just got engaged?  That is them.  That is not you.  Don’t be in a big rush to find “the one”.  Your romance is yours.  How sad it would be to settle for second best just because you were copying the people around you.

Say “Thank You”.  You aren’t all going to believe in God.  That is your right.  But  you should believe in something other than yourself.  And when you catch yourself transported by the beauty of a flower or the notes of a song or the cry of a baby, say “Thank You”.

And if you do believe in God, if you do consider yourself a Christian, try memorizing an old hymn or two.  You’d be surprised how much it helps to sing them when you are feeling all alone.

And finally, always ALWAYS double check your flushing in public restrooms.  Go back and look after you have washed your hands if you have to.  No one, no matter how polite, wants to see someone else’s “business”.  Be the kind of person who doesn’t leave yours.

April 11, 2011

Please Don’t Canonize Me, I’m Really Not All That Special

Filed under: Glimpses of Me — srose @ 7:25 pm

I’ve been thinking about death lately.

Not horror death. Not like “oh, a new -Scream- is coming out and isn’t that why you hate garages because Rose McGowan got killed by one in one of the earlier movies?” More of a “Really? You’ve got to be kidding me!” kind of way.

See, one of my jobs is to proofread documents and fliers. Part of that is proofreading obituaries. Not the announcements that go in the paper. I don’t have THAT much power. Just the cards and bookmarks that find their way to the funeral home and are given to family and friends after someone dies.

I have decided that we have funerals for different reasons, one of which is to whitewash the deceased. For example, almost every single obituary I read has the line “and loved spending time with family and friends”. Or how about “had a smile for everyone (they) met”?

Yeah, right, okay.

It could be true, I suppose. It is easy to fake manners in public. But these things are (mostly) written by those who knew the honoree best.  Those who saw them at home, at church, in the garden.  And there is No Way someone can be that good all the time.

Well, okay, let me stop here.  We have had to do cards when infants die.  One was only a month old.  That I get.  The sappy poems and “our little angels” totally apply in that case.  I’m not saying that I believe babies to be angels, I’m saying I get it.  What are you supposed to say when your baby dies?  Bring on the flowery language.  Bring on the cute cherubs.  Bring on the references to heaven.  Totally. Understand.

But someone my age?  Someone older?  As much as I’d like to believe it is true, there is NO WAY every person who dies in Campbell County was always good.  Or kind.  Or church going.  Or saved, for that matter.

I want to rewrite the obituaries sometimes.  Or at least tell the writer to Get Real.

But I don’t.  You don’t do that to grieving people who are either

a) realizing that their wounds and biases won’t ever heal and their unkind words will never be taken back

or

b) missing their loved one so much that all the CAN see is the beauty

or

c) both

What I HAVE decided to do is help.

Now Kenny and Jennifer know not to let the song “Amazing Grace” anywhere NEAR my dead body and they know that bagpipes (and now kazoos) are forbidden, but we haven’t talked obituary yet.

(And for those of you literalists out there, no I am not ill.  I plan on living until my eighties.  This is just for fun.  And also a little bit of a reaction to sweet little poems that can be just plain stupid depending on how you are using them.)

So, Kenny, Jennifer and anyone else who might care, I present to you:

My Flaws

(don’t worry, we’ll end on virtues.  This is just to give you some material for a non or at least less sentimental funeral card)

okay, in no particular order, here we go:

1. I get defensive.  Just ACT like you are going to criticize me and I will attack faster than you can say “psychological mechanism”.  I also have a temper.  Over stupid things.  Seriously.  I am frequently mad at my hangers or the washing machine.  THE WASHING MACHINE.

2. Once I have formed an opinion or belief, it’s hard for me to let go.  For example, I don’t CARE if someone debunked the myth of Jesus and Judas in Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” being the same man.  I like the story and I will believe it always.  I also hold on to first impressions.  I once encountered someone in Wal Mart.  I could not remember who she was, but I knew that I somehow knew her.  I also knew I didn’t like her.  But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember why.  True story.

3. I’m a hypocrite. I can find reasons to justify almost anything I do (like missing church or being late to work) but I HATE to be stood up or kept waiting.

4. I’m not a great listener.  I like to talk and most of what I like to talk about concerns ME. (Cue Toby Keith here)  I can be very un empathetic too.  I try and see other people’s point of view, but I’m not very good at it.  Usually I’ll have formed an opinion of what someone should do before they even tell me their problem.  Usually I stick to that opinion AFTER they have told me their problem.

5. I’m depressed. A lot.  A lot a lot. I swear, I think I run a low grade depression just like some people run a low grade fever.  Clouds circle and I give in.  Most of the time, I don’t even TRY to fight.

Got it?  No “Amazing Grace”.  No sappy poems.  And don’t call me a saint or an angel.

If you MUST praise me, here are some virtues to focus on:

1. I love people.  If the clouds aren’t circling, I enjoy talking with people.  I like starting conversations and see where they lead.  I like discovering new connections and learning new things.

2. I can be stubborn.  If I set out to look for a lost hat, for example, then by Jingo, that hat better be good and lost if I can’t eventually find it.  Once I’ve decided to solve some mystery (little ones like crossword puzzles and missing earrings, not big crime cases-I’m not THAT brave), it’s hard for me to quit.  And I usually (eventually) find what I’m looking for.  Or at least a reasonable facsimile of it.

3. I like to help people.  Sometimes this involves more of Kenny’s money than he wants to spend but I generally like giving to charity or watching someone’s face when they get a present.  I also love the mission project parts of the classes I teach.  I love introducing my children to various needs and talking about ways I can meet them.

4. For the most part, people are people to me.  It doesn’t cost anything to wish someone a nice day or to share a smile.  I don’t generally think “Does this customer DESERVE me interrupting my counting out paper to get up and go see what they need?”  They are a customer.  I can help them or at least try.  Now, if a customer is stinky (that is not a figure of speech.  We really do have customers who actually do stink) and I can’t help them, I try to find a cheerful way to get what they need even as I am passing them off to a co worker.  People are people.  Why be mean?

I guess I want to be remembered as real.  Crazy?  Yes.  Asking stupid questions?  Sometimes.  Enjoyed spending time with family and friends?  Yeah, yeah I do.

But I’m also cranky and prone to depression.  I cry for no reason.  I get impatient.  I’m always late (especially for work.)  I take shameless advantage of my husband’s intelligence and ability to fix almost anything and hide behind being “Daddy’s Girl” especially when it comes to pancakes.

I’m judgmental.  I hold grudges. I think things about people that I would never say to their face because I’m a coward and don’t like confrontation.

But I can be kind.  And loving.  And helpful.  I like to sing and cuddle my cats and rock babies.  I read and read and sometimes write.  I like pretty colors and oversized sweaters and People Magazine.  I eat more chocolate than is good for me and I look forward to navel oranges at Christmas.

I adore my nieces and their brothers.  I adore MY brother.  I think my husband is the best thing that every happened to me and I would have no idea what to do if I actually did run into Johnny Depp.
I’m not all that special.  I’m really rather ordinary.

Please don’t canonize me.  You don’t even have to remember me at all, if you don’t want to.

But I swear, if you do and I hear any kind of bagpipe start to play, someone’s  in deep trouble!

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