The Extremist, the Ocean, and Enough

I’m an extremist. I understand that now. I’m a perfectionist who thinks things (myself included) are either perfect or terrible, and if I’m not perfect than I must be shit.

I am unlearning that dichotomy.

As a student, I’d claim I failed an exam if I landed a C. I thought I wasn’t a good English student because I always got an A- on my report card. My metrics were ridiculous then and can still be from time to time.

But I am not my worst mistakes. And okay is OKAY, and “okay” doesn’t mean PERFECT. It’s hard to break that patterning but it is VITAL.

One of my biggest fears is passing on my perfectionism and extremism to my child. I see her rip up a drawing if she makes a mistake and it’s a shock to my system.

I’ve tried to use my past methods to break free from this lifelong, self-built prison, but it turns out the tools I used to make this prison will not help me escape it. I need a different toolkit.

I’ve tried to muscle my way through it, to discipline my way through it, to push, grind, write, analyze, discuss my way through it. And I haven’t gotten very far. After years of smashing brick after brick against the walls around me, I finally see that there’s a door. Rusted shut, yes, and painted over and over and over again but there it is. My way out. If I’m brave enough to try. If I value myself enough to know I deserve sunshine.

And that door was not the fortress gate I’d imagined, I didn’t even have to kick it down. I just needed the courage to push a little and it gave way. But how to find the guts to step out, beyond the familiar walls, into the greater world.

So here I stand, squinting in the light, confused by all the noise around me, completely overwhelmed by the vastness and insignificance of it all. The living contradiction that used to baffle me. And I think of the lessons I have yet to learn. The gifts people have given me that I haven’t quite opened yet.

My Dad told me never to turn my back on the ocean. But I stand here, facing away from it, wondering why I’m getting knocked over, why my mouth is full of sand. Why why why, when what I need to do is turn around and witness the strength and the power and the glory of the ocean. To see it come at me and step back if I need to, or roll up my pants, or run toward it and dive in. But first I have to face it– a power greater than myself. Something beyond my control. Something affected by the moon itself.

The ocean can hold me, the ocean can destroy me, the ocean carries life and mystery and power and history. The ocean is so much greater than me and yet we are both here, on this tiny and immense planet. We both grew out of the nothingness.

I remember the ocean and I feel less alone. I re-size myself and can recalibrate my expectations. When I turned by back to the ocean, I was turning away from myself. I was afraid to admit my powerlessness. I want to be mighty. And in my own way, I am. But the ocean is bigger. Our planet, our solar system, our galaxy, the cosmos are so much bigger. And for once that doesn’t feel diminutive. It doesn’t make me feel small because they are infinite and they contain me. I am part of the Everything. And that is enough.

Big Feelings, Bigger Picture

A year ago I took my girl to the park for the first time in over 200 days (206 to be precise, we were definitely counting).

Now she’s back to Kindergarten after a couple days out with a sniffle and testing negative.

We had a play date with Forever Friends. It was amazing to watch them together. These only-children who met before birth, who were preschoolers of the pandemic, checking in on one another.

These kids, y’all, they’ll break your heart. Even the ones that are making it through okay are going through so much. Mine’s having a hard time. She doesn’t want to go to school. There are a couple boys that she has friction with.

She’s an ALL CAPS kid, like Gabi in Vivo, her very own brand of awesome and not everyone’s flavor. I point out the 17 other kids in class who think she’s fun and creative and a good teammate, but she hears the two boys who call her a crybaby.

She’s got big feelings, my girl. I do, too, I always have. It was really hard in elementary school (and middle school and high school and college and now), to be so passionate about so many things. Starting in elementary school I rose to every perceived injustice with the same fire I see her breathe now: I stormed out of a student council meeting when I felt like I wasn’t being heard (that was 3rd grade?)

Sidenote: Ever notice in Student Government, Parli-Pro is invoked way more frequently against girl students than boys? I certainly noticed. Early.

I know she comes by her fire honestly, and I do NOT want to tame it but I don’t want it to burn her either. I want her learn to hone it, to harness it, to wield it.

I spent decades trying to quiet my big feelings, trying to tone it down or keep it in and I’ve scorched myself in the process. I’ve spent years discovering ways to wield it. I still get burned, I’m still learning.

Becoming a Badass: Dysmorphia and Acceptance

I don’t recognize myself in the mirror. I almost always surprise myself. I must not remember or know what I look like.

I remember the first time it happened, but I was in high school and I’d just dyed my hair. Bright, Angela Chase red. From a golden wheat brown that was neither a sunny blonde nor a rich brunette, to art school redhead. Of course my reflection startled me, it was shocking. It was meant to be.

This is different. I’ll catch a glimpse of myself and think “really?” Usually it’s a pleasant “really,” like, my neck is that long? And sometimes it’s a resigned “really,” like, my chest is that spotted?

Today it was my arms. Yesterday it was my legs. It’s as if I haven’t updated my internal software to recognize what my body is today; its strength and endurance (and for my grammar nerds, there’s your semi-colon and it’s/its, you’re welcome and goodnight).

Like, I’m 38 and I still picture the college, and post-college version of myself, which is not who I am anymore. That was a lifetime ago and while I carry that splintered person within me, I am so much stronger around her and because of her.

She is the steel rebar within my cement– she strengthens and shapes me, but she is not my entirety. Yet, she is who I see when I think of myself.

I have not updated my sense of self, which hasn’t been strong for a long time.

When I was in 10th grade, I had an incredible (and problematic) teacher that I totally crushed on. One of our assignments was writing about senses, and one was the sense of self. I usually did pretty well on aced my assignments, but that one I struggled with. Looking back, it’s comical because I had no idea who I was at 15, 16 and I tried so hard to find out.

I thought I would find myself by looking to others, I tried to find people with answers and planned to fake it until I made it. I tried to be EVERYONE, I still do sometimes. Instead of looking inward and being authentically myself and finding my people, I put on personalities and preferences like costumes and tried to fit in with everyone around me.

I did all the things. I burned the fuck out.

I did ballet and played softball and the school play and made honor roll. I was in Amnesty International and President of the IMPACT club. I was on the cheer squad and the first girls water polo team. I dated an emo-goth bisexual and went to church every Sunday. I did Presidential Classroom and went to UC Berkeley and studied abroad and graduated with highest honors and I was toast.

I was exhausted from trying to be all the things to all the people because I was scared that I was not enough as is.

I had an eating disorder and was filling up water bottles with alcohol. I partied all night and slept through half of my midterm, raced to campus (on crutches) in time to write enough on the Philosophy of Politics to pass the class. I was popping diet pills like they were candy and exercising as punishment for eating, then binge on pizza and beer, puke my guts out, and carry on. I stole from the guys who tried to date me and I made a lot of terrible decisions that were not decisions at all.

All of that is true and yet none of that is true anymore. I feel caught, suspended between two versions of myself. This shattered, broken me, and the me that I am becoming. She’s that rebar: broken pieces within me that on their own do nothing, but can help support a great structure. And I’m pouring this cement around her, hoping to make something new. I’m healing around her, but it’s like an organ transplant– my body isn’t sure what to do, do I accept this? Do I reject it?

Acceptance keeps coming up… dammit. I know I need to work on that.

To me, “Acceptance” is tricky because part of it feels like a dereliction of duty, like, I am not fighting this, I am simply accepting it, like a resignation.

Acceptance as an undertaking, as in, I accept this challenge, I will take this on, I will carry this through.

Acceptance as welcoming, being accepted. And now I’ve used it too much and it sounds and looks weird.

I have to do a copy switch in my head when people tell me I have to accept something. I’ll tag on an unspoken “as true”, because there are some terrible things I do have to accept as true, but I do NOT have to accept them as adequate or suitable.

Yes, it’s true there are unacceptable conditions we must accept as true. That is NOT resignation or dereliction of duty, that is facing the reality of a situation so that you can act where you can.

My emotions like to take me all over the place, that’s their job and it’s a human experience. But my work as an adult, to take care of myself, is not to resist the rollercoaster, but to feel those feelings and then face the situation.

I’ve spent so much energy trying to resist or control my feelings, as if those were something a human could control! Next I tried to control my behaviors, until I absolutely could not and rebelled and revolted. Then, I tried to control the world around me, which is completely useless and simply exhausting.

Now I’m working on feeling my feelings, recognizing the truths around me, and focusing on what I can do about it. Every now and then my feelings want to ride the rollercoaster of “Holy shit! Can you believe this is happening?!! Another school shooting, WTF Texas, WTF SCOTUS, GAAAAAAH!!!” That’s called being human. My emotions are doing their job, and I try to feel the feelings and THEN…look a-ROUND, look a-ROUND and find what I can do.

So I volunteer with Moms Demand Action, and as a patient escort with Planned Parenthood, and write letters and postcards with Indivisible and call my Senator on the regular. And yes, it’s exhausting and perhaps a little intense, but you know what it’s not?

It’s not starving my way through my feelings. It’s not self-destruction, or extreme exercise, or binging or purging. And at times it can feel compulsive, even obsessive, but it’s not a set of rules I have to follow, it’s a way I can channel the chaos and do the things I can.

No wonder I don’t recognize myself in the mirror. I need to remember who I am becoming, a badass.

I am tired and Do Not Know Where the Halloween Decorations are.

I should be decorating for Halloween right now. I am usually decorating for Halloween by now. But I am not. I am tired and I do not know where the Halloween decorations are.

I am tired and do not know where the Halloween decorations are because 569 days ago I came home from work and didn’t go back for months, we didn’t go anywhere for months.

I am tired and do not know where the Halloween decorations are because for 523 days my child did not have in-person learning and at one point I decided, sure, we can decorate for Halloween and go trick-or-treating at each door in our House– I feel like that was April, the first April. Yeah. The First April.

I do not know where the Halloween decorations are because at some point, I have no idea how many days ago, those decorations were properly put away, and then taken out again, and again, and again, and again and at some point I stopped putting them away and we still have skulls strewn randomly in our yard.

I am tired because I have been going nonstop in different directions since I can’t remember when, and after 43 days of being at school, Kidlette caught a cold and we got her swabbed and kept her home and when I said we couldn’t go to the park she LOST HER LOVING MIND, because the last time I said we couldn’t go to the park, we couldn’t go to the park for a LONG-ASS TIME. Like MONTHS.

“Oh, sweetheart,” I say, “This is just temporary, this won’t be like before.”

But after four days straight without other kids I can tell she doesn’t quite trust me that she gets to go back tomorrow.

“We got your test back, it’s negative, you get to go back to school.”

This is a best-case-scenario scenario– she only missed two days and gets to go back tomorrow, dodged the virus, great news. This is a happy story and we are grateful but we are tired. Though she’s just six, she’s wary; though I keep going, I’m weary.

I am tired and do not know where the Halloween decorations are because I thought 43 days at school would be enough time to recover from the 523 at home and it is not. Not when it was tested.

I know it is small potatoes and a total privilege for me to pout about her missing a class or gymnastics or her theatre class performance when she’s going to be just fine. I am not pouting about her missing her performance. She is not pouting about missing her performance. She is terrified that she won’t get to see her friends for a really long time. I am sad because I see her crumple and panic at that fear and despair. I am tired because I rush to fill that hole but I am pouring from a void.

But that’s not entirely true. I am not a void, I am a vessel with many holes. I have a lot of leaks I’m tending to, and I may be terra cotta the way I soak up moisture, and I haven’t refilled myself in a long while.

For 249 days I’ve been doing the work, plugging the holes and adding water.

But I have no clue where my Halloween decorations are.

Relapse vs. Recovery

Like a lot of people, I’m recovering from quite a few things. One of those things is an eating disorder that developed in elementary school and I finally tackled after college.

I’ve felt fairly solid, if not incremental, in my eating disorder recovery. It took a long time to get me here, and I sacrificed a tooth or two in the process, but with a lot of therapy and introspection and unpacking, I’ve gotten myself onto fairly solid ground for the past decade-ish.

(The neck injury certainly sped up the trajectory of that by completely rewiring my relationship with my body, but that’s for another time).

It’s frustrating to realize this beast I thought I’d conquered, hadn’t been vanquished, but had just gone dormant. She got small and quiet, less powerful. I thought she was gone, but she reared her ugly head this month.

I recognized her, and I named her. I was honest with my therapist and when she asked me why I thought I was skipping meals again, I started to cry. I hadn’t cried in awhile.

I know it’s because I’m tired. Because I’m depleted. Because I’ve over-committed and spread myself too thin and stopped doing the things that keep that little beast in her cage. I’m staying up late and scrolling too long and holding my breath and running for hours and skipping meditations and snapping at everyone around me.

And my beast draws her power from secrecy, she feeds off my shame. So when I push back the curtain and reveal her, she shrinks and withers.

I didn’t start skipping my meditations because I’m lazy. I’m not staying up late because I’m stupid. My recovery took a hit because my disease opened the door for relapse by whispering again and again “You don’t deserve to be taken care of.” She talks me out of dinner and into an extra mile.

But she is not me and her lies are not true. I recognize her voice and I will not listen to her. When I sat down to write this I thought I was confessing a relapse. But instead, I think I’ve unlocked another level of my recovery.

I know I haven’t vanquished her, that’s no longer the point. She will likely live with me my whole life. I will no longer battle her. I will live with her and do my best to soothe and silence her. I will bring her food and flowers and remind her to sleep. I will remember her voice and dismiss her lies. I will sing her songs of fall and spring, of rebirth and the value of decay.

I will unleash myself bit by bit. My incremental recovery. My incredible life.

Scale of Shit

Most people aren’t actually shitty.

Most people are shitty-adjacent.

Some people are not-so-shitty

And a few people are not-shitty-at-all.

We were told there were good people and bad people, shitty people and not-shitty people. Turns out… there are some of both but most are in between, influenced by their surroundings. Most people are just kinda shitty, which is kinda nice.

Hopefully Halfway

When I am 80 I hope to have a face covered in laugh lines and walls covered with pictures of people I love and adventures taken.

When I am 70 I hope to have a strong heart and body so I can read to school children and walk dogs from the shelter.

When I am 60 I hope to have confidence in the future.

When I am 50 I hope I am dancing.

When I am 40 I hope I am friends with myself.

So today I let my daughter sleep an extra five minutes and listened to her when she told me about her dreams.  I strengthened my heart, bones, and muscles with a run and I spoke with my therapist.  I was vulnerable, honest, and playful with my partner.  I snapped a couple extra pictures of an ordinary day.  

I’m hopefully in the first half of my life and I’m finally looking forward to the years ahead.

Forgotten/Remembered

I was on fire to write but couldn’t find the computer, by the time I did and logged on, the thoughts had evaporated. Too many passwords and distractions, too many side quests to stay focused. What did I come here to write?

Seven months ago my world fell apart and I’ve been putting it back together, like so many women before me and the many that will follow. As I rebuild, I’ve been so focused on the work of it that I didn’t see how much I had done. The self work and the determination not to slip back into self-destructive habits

And I didn’t.

I didn’t. I walked through hell, and as Winston Churchill advised us, I kept going. I didn’t slow my pace to prolong my suffering. I didn’t sit down and watch the flames char my skin. Nor did I strut through them, raking my hands through the fire. But I kept going. Every day.

Every day I got up and took my medicine and most days I had breakfast and some days I got dressed but every day, except for a very few at the beginning, every day I got up. Maybe not for long. Maybe just to go back down again but I kept getting up.

And I started seeing miracles around me (I know that sounds intense), but little tiny things, like the way a hummingbird’s beak fits into a flower and how sweet some humans are with their animals, and how a weed or a wildflower will defiantly sprout out of a crack in the cement.

I stacked these experiences on top of each other, brick after brick after brick, layering proper rest and hydration between to cement me together. I built myself back stronger and more tender than I was before. Smaller, perhaps, but not reduced, revealed. And larger in a way I never knew possible.

I’m proud of myself, which is a rare and fairly new feeling. I am waking and facing every day with as much bravery and kindness as I can muster (levels may vary from day to day), I’m choosing grace over judgment more and more often. I am recognizing and remembering myself. I am naming my history so I can claim my own life.

For so long I had no idea who I was and yet was terrified that someone else would find me out. There were those who claimed to “have me all figured out,” and I would have loved it if they’d clued me in. My fear and self-judgment separated me from who I was in my bones. I tried to be everything to see if anything fit.

But now I know who I am. It took me longer than some, sure, but a lot of folks never get there so I’m grateful for this self-knowledge, it came at an extraordinarily high cost.

That fiery and forgotten thought from earlier this afternoon will return, those brain worms always do. But for now, things are good.

Week One

Notes from the field after three days of Kindergarten after 523 days without in-person learning.

She’s 5 and she’s exhausted and exhilarated.

She woke up and put on a tutu and her star shirt and started playing a math game. Then stares blankly into space.

“Hi honey, you’ve had a big week.”

Her response is more sounds than words.

“I know you’re tired and had a big week. Remember your theatre camp? They’re doing Saturday classes,” (I realize she’s at complete saturation and cannot absorb one more thing), “Sorry, I know it’s a lot right now, we’ll talk about it later.”

“Yes please.”

“Okay sweetie, we’ll talk about it later.”

“I mean, yes please to the class. Theatre class.” And she cues up Vivo.

Noteworthy– you know my child is truly exhausted when she can watch Vivo without dancing around the living room.

I’m so incredibly proud of this girl. We picked her up from preschool March 12, 2020 and never went back. She did a year of TK on the computer and is finally in a classroom, masked, with a vaccinated teacher.

I’ve always valued education but I’ve never been this explosively grateful for it.

THANK YOU TEACHERS!!!!

Stories

There are stories that I carry with me, some I proudly unfurl like a flag, a banner I’m thrilled to carry– stories of my grandmother, tales from my mom.  Others I’ve stuffed down deep into my cells, hoping that the deeper I keep them, the less true they’ll become.  Some I carry without even being aware that they are part of my narrative.  Stories so true and encompassing, they seem to be the fabric of life, rather than a thread running through it. 

Today I’ve uncovered a story, one stuffed deep into my cells.  One I’ve edited in my memory and recently have come to face more of its truth.  

I thought stuffing it down so deep would hide it from daylight, starving it until it ceased to be true.  I didn’t know that holding it so close would bring it into my bones and into my body.  My body carries memories my brain isn’t brave enough to see.  

But my body isn’t going to keep this story secret any longer.  It’s been screaming at me, begging me to face it, to see it, to claim it and repair as much as I can.  I’ve turned up the volume around me in an attempt to drown it out.  But like a smoke alarm that will not cease, my body kept hollering at me, demanding attention.  Rather than addressing the issue, I chose to remove the battery.

So the smoke detector in my body has been going off for decades, silently warning me, but I could not be bothered.  And I knew better than to put a fresh battery in, I didn’t want to be screamed at again. 

It’s funny when we finally face the things we’ve been avoiding, it’s not as awful as we’d imagine.  That dealing with the thing isn’t as exhausting as running from the thing.  But how could we know that?

25 years ago I was assaulted in school.  

Some of you have heard this story.  I’ve been dealing with it in bite size pieces.

I was in 7th grade, so either 12 or 13 years old.

It was PE class and we were playing softball.

I tagged a boy out on third base.

A few innings later I tagged the same boy out on third base.

He charged me.  He pick me up and whipped me around like a rag doll.  He had about half a foot on me.  

These memories are not new.  The parts I remember:  the disorientation, the popping, the horror on my teacher’s face, running away from the field, down the stairs and into the girls locker room.  I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my parents, them fighting my suspension and telling me I would be allowed to attend Sports Night on campus that weekend.

Recently I realized that while I know I was in 7th grade, I didn’t recognize just how young that is.  

In my memory I was practically grown, I’m the same height and it’s easy to pretend.   I’d rather pretend like I was a scrappy fighter than the aching, separated body I was.  

I see my niece and realize I was younger than she is now.

I see your 12 year old daughters and their fierceness and vulnerability.

I can release this story from my bones.

I can see the senseless violence and offer myself grace instead of judgement or defensive justification. 

I can finally see myself. 

 A tall, skinny, pimply girl in glasses, who beat the biggest guy in the grade at softball, and then he tore her apart in front of their classmates and teacher who were all powerless to stop him.

I don’t carry it like a banner, but I will no longer keep it in my cells.  

That experience shaped more of my adolescence and student years than I am able to articulate.  The tension in my body, the fear and vulnerability, the recognition that I am powerless in so many ways, the arrogant and desperate hope that I might still have a bigger influence than I have.  The constant red alert.  

Because, yes, I removed the battery from the smoke detector all those years ago.  I had to in order to function, in order to survive.  I couldn’t listen to that blaring noise and get anything done, so I yanked out the wires.  But the alarm continued to sound, silently blaring.   And while my ears were spared the noise, like a florescent light bulb flickering too quickly for the eyes to register it, my brain still recorded the message, the danger, and my cells lived in a state of constant alarm.

But now I’m plugging back in.  And the noise isn’t as overwhelming as it once was, I feel like I can actually take a look and hear what’s going on.  It’s the right kind of hard. And we can do hard things.