Fundraising

It's getting to be that dreaded time of year.  The catalogs start coming home.  Brightly colored, glossy pages filled with crap that you are paying 100 times what it cost to make so your school can get 40 cents from the sale.  Order forms that come in triplicate and dripping with guilt and shame if you do not sell.  Calling in favors from coworkers, relatives, and neighbors to "support the schools" when in reality their money would be better spent buying a lottery ticket.

Fundraising.

That dirty little 11 letter word.

It is a necessary evil, I know.  Schools are underfunded.  Teachers are spending their own money on classroom supplies.  "Extras" like art, music, and gym are being cut because teachers have to teach to the tests given and their raises, which will go towards supplies for the classrooms that are underfunded anyways, do not make up for having to deal with my little *ahem* angels all day long.

Fuck.  If I could get a three month vacation from my children, you better believe I would be all over that.  Totally don't blame them at all.  Of course, I am the opposite of an educator, so maybe there are people who feel differently.  And I am also a pretty crappy parent, so there may be other parents who feel differently as well.

(Who am I kidding.  I might make it a week.)

Anyways.

Supporting our schools.  Yes.  Why does it always have to be with shit made in China?  With wrapping paper that you will be lucky to be able to wrap a ring box?  With a 6 oz box of chocolates that you spent the equivalent of a 12 pack of really good beer on?

There is an idea.  Alcohol.  Evenings away from children.  Adult conversation.  I would support the hell out of my school, and any other in the area, if we could provide that as a fundraiser.  Grown up things.  A chance to remember that I am a person outside of a parent of school aged children.

Or chocolate.  Give me a box of candy bars and I could sell the crap out of them.  We need to market to the vices to benefit our children, dammit.  Haven't the schools learned anything from Vegas?  Life lessons, bitchez.

Quickly

Last weekend, Charles and I took the little girls on a bike ride.  It was the first time that we were able to do this with Charlie, as she has really progressed nicely with riding her bike without riding it into a telephone pole (i.e., she is able to look up while pedaling).  Elizabeth was working, like she has pretty much all summer because her employer has a pretty flagrant disregard for things like child labor laws, so it was just the four of us.

We were riding through the streets of our town, and Alexis asked to decide which way we turned.  I had an intense flashback to riding the bike with Elizabeth, before Alexis was born, and even after with her in the trailer.  I remember the thrill, the freedom, that a child experiences with riding a bike.  I remember the sheer innocence of getting pleasure out of such a simple activity written all over her face the way it was Alexis's and Charlie's.  Those twilight rides, taken in that sweet time between the end of summer and the beginning of fall, are some of my favorite memories, with all of my girls.

It struck me how it seems like just a few summers ago that we were doing this with Elizabeth.  It does not seem possible that she is 16, going on 17 in a few short months.  I am keenly aware that soon she will not be living with us; that she will be moving on in life to start her own.

It really highlights the struggle that I have with having a family with such a drastic age difference.  It was part of why I was OK with Charlie being our last.  That 13 year age difference is a lot.  Elizabeth no longer enjoys the bike rides with her parents.  Hell, she avoids her parents as much as she can, except when she needs something signed or money.  And that is OK.  That is the way it is supposed to be.  Parenthood is working yourself out of a job, or at least a full time job.  You never really retire from parenthood, just semi-retire.  And when people tell you to enjoy it, you simultaneously roll your eyes because, quite frankly, we all retain a little bit of adolescent attitude and don't want to listen to our elders.  And because you know.  The baby comes home from the hospital, and all of a sudden they don't fit into their newborn clothes.  Overnight.  (Or in the case of the gargantuan babies I birth, the 0-3 months clothes...)  It does go so quickly, yet you are suffering from no sleep and the house never being clean enough and never having time to yourself and never pooping alone and planning dates around nap times and soccer games and sex what the hell is that...?  And hearing that is not what you want because you have so much guilt anyways that you aren't enjoying it enough.

I want to hold on to those memories, though, even as I have to let go.  I want to remember that little girl who called Charles Spike.  The girl who used to fight naps like they would kill her.  The preteen with the braces, who then moved onto the requisite heavy black eyeliner that almost every girl does at least once in her life.  The woman who stood before me in her prom dress and made me cry. (Four times.  This will happen four times because she will be going to prom all four years in high school...)   I want to remember all of this as I see the absolutely amazing woman that my daughter is becoming.  I am sure she does not feel amazing.  16 sucks.  It is a swirling shitstorm of emotions and insecurity and a stunning combination of naivete and wisdom, all wrapped into a body that is likely to be the best you have ever had in your life.

Every parent says they are proud of their child.  And every parent is.  I strongly feel that it is a testament to who Elizabeth is as a person that she is not completely fucked up, given the crazy that is her mother.  It will be a testament to Alexis, and to Charlie, that they managed to survive in spite of my best efforts to emotionally scar them.  I consider less than ten years of therapy apiece to be a success story.

So far, they are all at least smart enough to hide the bodies.  It's the small things, really.

Adult

I sometimes feel like I spend the vast majority of my free time grocery shopping.  I don't necessarily enjoy this activity but I do it because not feeding your children is usually frowned upon.  It is one of those incessant, unrewarding activities that no one tells you about when you are a child.  I mean, seriously, if they did tell you about all the shit you have to deal with as an adult, no one would grow up.  And then who would change the diapers and watch really crappy reality TV and manufacture alcohol?  It's really better that we are kept in the dark.

I sometimes, though, feel as though I skidded around the corner of adolescence into the hallway of adulthood, with lipstick on my teeth, staggering in my heels with my skirt tucked up into my panties.  All of the stuff that goes along with being a grown up is sometimes overwhelming.  Paying bills, providing necessities and hopefully desires for your family, feeding, cooking cleaning laundryoilchangestaxesmortgagesplanningforretirement....it all sometimes melds into a big ball of overwhelming-ness and stress and anxiety and I wanna curl up in the fetal position-ness.

If I ever invent time travel, I am going to invest heavily in the benzodiazapine business.  I get their appeal, really I do.

I also get why grown ups seemed so stressed when I was a kid.  I get why that kind of information is hidden from children.  If I, with my alleged adult capabilities and sensibilities, find all of the responsibility to be paralyzing, I could only imagine what a child would think.

I don't know that it will ever get better.  Mostly because I am pretty crazy and tend to beat myself up and I never feel that I am good enough or doing enough.  Does any adult not have their issues, though?  Maybe childhood isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Maybe the real good time is adulthood, where you have access to self soothing and vacations and rational thought.

Or maybe the real fun is when you are elderly and can say whatever the fuck you want and blame it on dementia and drink as much alcohol and eat as much chocolate as you can because "we don't know how much longer we will have her with us."    In fact, that sounds so super good to me that I can't wait until I'm like 80.

I'm totally going for the benzos then.  Just because I can.

Random V

Me: (wincing as I write out the check for daycare)  I think we need to just find a hobo off the streets to live with us and to watch the little girls.

Charles:  Riiiiight.....

Me:  It would be educational, right?

And philanthropic. 


Working with the mentally ill has given me numerous really really good stories.  Most of which I can never ever tell.  It helps to have really good coworkers to be able to share some of these gems.  It also leads to a kind of gallows humor that is exclusive to therapists and people working in the mental health field.  For instance, it is not unusual for this conversation to happen in my office:

Me:  Do you hear voices?

Client:  (hesitates).....Yes.

Me:  Are they telling you to not talk to me?

Client nods.

Me:  Have you ever tried to tell them to shut up?  What is their response?

Normal people don't think that way.  Normal people would freak the fuck out if a voice was in their head telling them what to do, or if someone told them that they were hearing voices.

Additionally, normal people don't sit around at lunch and in between talking about our weekends and whatever news is hot debate what kind of psychosis you would be likely to have.  Delusions of grandeur?  Paranoia? Hallucinations of Jesus coming back?   My luck would be that I would feel water all over my skin because that would be its own special kind of hell for me.  I would not be a happy psychotic, I fear.


I have recently decided to do some rearranging in my house.  Cause I don't have anything more to do, like working 7 days a week or actively giving my children mommy issues to discuss with their future therapists.  I am stuck on what color to paint the living room, though.  I just recently bought new curtains and new slipcovers and now I am really regretting jumping the gun on that decision because I feel like I am committed to a certain scheme now.  My ODD (oppositional defiant disorder, for you non mental health professionals out there) is kicking in and I am really bitter that I have backed myself into a corner here.  I, of course, am blaming everyone else but myself for this decision.  I might even throw a temper tantrum or two about it.  Hell, if those kids are gonna need therapy, by God I am going to make the sessions interesting!

Conversations XII

Elizabeth:  So my aunt Jenn is going to give me her turtles when she dies.

Me:  Well, that is kind of a crappy thing for her to leave to you.  "Sorry I died.  Here's a turtle."

Charles:  Wait...how big will they get?

E:  They are the really big ones.

C:  Well, sweet.

Me:  I don't particularly want turtles here.

C: Well, I was more thinking turtle soup...

E:  You will be dead by then.

Me: (mishearing her) They will be dead?  That is even more crappy!  "Sorry I died.  Here's a dead turtle for your inheritance."

E:  No, HE will be dead.  And those things live for a really long time.

C:  No, I'll be alive.  Assholes live forever.  And remember, you said you wanted another 100 years of marriage with me.

Me:  OK, first of all...what makes you think you will last another 100 years without me killing you first?  And second, not all assholes live forever.  I feel like Hitler was a bit of an asshole, and he is not alive.

C: Well, he killed himself.

Me:  Oh, I see.  Premature termination.  Makes sense.

E:  Don't talk about Hitler like that.  He had Daddy issues.

Me:  Like his Daddy didn't hug him enough?  Or too much?

E:  Oh.  My.  God.

C:  Maybe there wasn't enough hugging, but too much cuddling.

(Elizabeth shakes her head and walks upstairs.)

Me: (yelling after her)  Not everyone enjoys spooning, Elizabeth!  (To her boyfriend, who is still in the kitchen listening to the entire conversation)  Explains so much, doesn't it?

Health

I have been told by my teenage daughter that it is next to impossible to eat unhealthfully in our house.  I was actually kind of relieved as I  have made a concerted effort to cut the crap from our diets.  Except of course for the massive amounts of wine I take my Xanax with.  And the chocolate about once a month.  Those are actually survival needs.

Mostly for my family.  Ahem.

So...cutting the crap from our diets.  Yes.  My fears about the Dukan diet were totally founded.  I did put some of the weight I lost back on once I started to eat grains again.  It pains me to admit that.  I worked so hard.  Re-introducing grains was my undoing.  I am like a toddler.  I need the rules and limits.  If you let me take an inch, I will try for the mile.  Especially when it comes to sweets made with lovely bleached white flour and high fructose corn syrup.  Two of the devil's inventions.  Along with eggs and coconuts, but for different reasons.

Really, do I need grains in my diet?  My research has pointed me slightly in the direction of no.  The response my body has to them tells me no.  Yet...the opiate like effects on my brain continues.  Plus, it is so much quicker to just grab something grain based and to go.

I hear all about prepping veggies before hand.  Into little baggies.  Salad in mason jars with the dressing in the bottom.   Precooking chicken and steaks to have to grab.  All little things I could do to eat better and make it easier to make healthy food choices.

I have started to work at a private practice part time.  In essence, I am now working 7 days a week.  In the long run, it will be worth it.  I will be happier.  In the short term...I no longer have the time to do the crazy insane shit I used to like make home made bread and granola and to experiment with quinoa flour.  To pre-prep veggies and fruit to have readily available.

So in the short term, my health is going to suffer. It pisses me off that this is the case.  I can't do it all.  I take care of everyone but me.  Business as usual.

Physician, heal thyself.

Right?  Easier said than done.  I preach day in and day out self care to my clients.  The importance of taking care of your physical health as well as the mental health.  Granted I still am running.  I still take my meds.  I still have the MHPMHD's.

I can't do it all.  And it bugs me that I feel like I have to try.  And it bugs me that this is the thing that has slipped, and that this is the thing that bugs me.  It feels like self sabotage almost, along with internalized fat hatred.  Like I am afraid of feeling good or looking good.  Because if I am feeling good, then I am not working hard enough.  If I am looking good, I have to deal with the male gaze.  How's that for rape culture speaking for me?

When the fuck did I develop this complex?  When did wearing the horsehair shirt become my thing?  I feel like those monks on Monty Python sometimes.  I keep expecting someone to accuse me of turning them into a newt.

(If you don't get that, I am not sure I want you reading my blog.)


Seriously, if you don't know what I am talking about...just go watch the movie.  It's pretty sad when I can say I have seen a movie.  Because I don't watch them usually.  I haven't even seen National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which apparently in this country is akin to admitting that the English had every right to fight the Revolutionary War because they were the ones being wronged.

Maybe I've turned myself into the newt.  I can't say yet that it got better.  It's still a work in progress.

Closets

Charlie has recently taken to turning the light on in the small linen closet in our bathroom.  Now, I am not one to complain if it means that she will go in there and just poop.  When that child needs to poop, she is as stinky as all get out.  Her farts rival that of the dogs.

I tried telling her that she did not need the closet light on to go to the bathroom.  That the four lights across the medicine cabinet, coupled with the overhead light and the bright sunshine streaming in through the window...they all provide a more than adequate amount of lighting for all of her powder room needs.  She remains unconvinced.  Why I am surprised, I don't know, as this is the same child who demands proof that jumping off of the front steps onto a concrete walkway will hurt.  And then proceeds with the experiment to prove exactly that.

Why have I not been to the ER more with her?  Her guardian angel has to be speed balling.

When it comes right down to it, she needs to have the darkness lit up and what is hiding there revealed for her to see.  Even if it is just towels and toilet paper and extra toothpaste.  The hidden corners of the bathroom need to be illuminated so her overactive mind can rest for a minute.  At least long enough for her to pinch one off.

I can appreciate that kind of anxiety.  Hell, I live with that kind of anxiety.  The kind that my meds will never completely eliminate.  The kind that tells me what is hidden and unknown is to be feared, while I rationally know that this is a load of bull crap that my mind tries to play off as the truth.

What's in the dark closet that I am so afraid of?  What prevents me from moving forward, from being all that I can be?  Monsters?  The maniac who will stab you to death with a Q-tip?  My past?  What is so terrifying in that closet that it can't be faced?

You go ahead and turn that light on, little girl.  I don't want there to be any scary stuff that you are afraid to illuminate.  Face your fears head on and barrel through them, Charlie style.  Grab a hold of them with both hand and kiss them directly on the mouth to tell them to fuck off.  Don't ever lose that passion to find out why because of being afraid of what is in the dark.

Good

"You're doing good."

I heard that frequently in the days after I had my son.  When we went to the funeral parlor to make arrangements, the funeral director expressed surprise at how "good" I was doing.  The basis for this?  I guess I was not crying hysterically in his office.  I was numb, shocked, grieving.  But it was all inside.

Society's standards for acceptable grieving are just that.  Keep it inside.  You are doing "good" if you are able to function.  Forget that my entire world was just turned upside down.  Forget that instead of bringing a baby home from the hospital, I got a box of ashes and a death certificate.  Forget that instead of celebrating the anniversary of his birth, I get to remember the anniversary of his death.

Fuck that.

I didn't want to have to do "good".  I wanted to post the funny shit he said at Facebook.  To mock my parenting and all the ways I was surely screwing him up.  To debate the years of therapy he would need.

All of the stuff I will never have.  A mother/son relationship.  A little brother for Alexis and Elizabeth.  A big brother for Charlie.  A nephew for my siblings; grandson for our parents.  In an instant, it was taken from all of us.

And I was expected to do "good".

I take July 2 off every year.  I can't work that day.  I just can't.  Yet I was asked when I thought I would stop doing this.

Because I am doing "good".

I didn't ask for good.  I didn't sign up for this.  I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.  I wish that I could make this funny; that I could laugh this off like I am able to do with so many things.  Humor has saved me on more than one occasion.

And you know what?  I can do good 51 weeks out of the year.  I can walk around and pretend like a part of me did not die that day.  That I won't sob tomorrow, clinging to his blanket and his hat and looking at the really shitty picture I have of my son.  Reading all of the cards we got.  Re-experiencing it like I do every year.

That is about as good as it gets.

Relaxation

This year's vacation involved going down into the mountains.  It was a totally different experience from Hilton Head last year.  Mostly because there was no sand to exacerbate eczema this year.  And also because the little girls are steadily getting better at traveling.  Granted, Charlie did her share of whining in the car, but on the way home we were able to make it the whole 8 hours without stopping for an extended period of time.

It was as close to a perfect vacation as I could get, really.  Busy enough that I was not bored, slow enough that we did not have to rush around and feel stressed.  I went ziplining and go carting and went to places like the Dixie Stampede and Clingman's Dome.  I made fun of (mostly in my head, because my mother was with me.  I do have some sense of decency.  Sometimes) the blatant Christianity that was pushed as well as the southern pride and male privilege that was rampant.  I will admit that I called a huge cross a lightning rod, and to my mother to boot, but I figure that that joke would be the least likely of my sins to take me to hell anyways so it was totally worth it.

We went on this vacation with my niece and nephew, my sister, sister in law, brother in law, and mother.  It was quite amusing to watch Halle, my niece, and Charlie interact.  It was reminiscent of the sorority girls that they will be someday.  A lot of stumbling around, consuming lots of drinks and junk food,  running around naked or in their bathing suits asking to get sprayed down with water, and vacillating from "You are my best friend cousin EVER"  to "You're mean!" before finally passing out in someone's bed.

When we got home, though, the change in Charlie was noticeable.  I don't know if it was because I was more relaxed, she was more relaxed, or if she was just fucking with me...but she was very sweet.  Now this kid loves to be a helper, don't get me wrong...but it is usually in the capacity of wanting to learn to be totally independent vs any sort of altruistic tendencies.  Today was different though.  She was caring, attentive, and far less intense than she usually is.  She went from "don't fuck with my sister or I'll cut you" to "I'm going to help my sister myself".

It was a refreshing change, to tell the truth.  Usually Charlie is firmly convinced that the world is out to get her through such devious means as forcing her to eat vegetables and to do things like sleep and share.  Tonight, she went out of her way to be nice to Alexis.  She shared my phone with Alexis to play games, cutting her turn short so Alexis could go.  She went and got Alexis a glass of water so I did not have to get up.  She was giving her sister hugs.

It is amazing how getting away from it all can change a person. I feel so incredibly lucky that I have the means (well, sorta) to take the time off to spend with my family.  Soon, Elizabeth will be going away to school.  Alexis will not want to spend time with us.  Then will come Charlie.  I am trying to treasure the time we have as a family in our day to day lives as well as on vacation.  They are short lived, indeed.  So yes, I am going to grab a hold of the feeling of relaxation and make memories with my children while I can.  I am going to renew my soul so I can get it sucked out again at work.  And I am going to grip onto a changed child, even if it might only be due to a desire to mess with Mommy mentally.

I am going to relax, dammit.  It's just no one told me it was going to be so much work.

Hope

After Gabe's death, some of my very dear friends got together and sent me a flowering myrtle tree to plant.  Someone else had given me a rose, but they tend to commit suicide when they see me (and in fact, I did manage to kill it off...) so having something that I was not likely to kill was nice.

The tree has provided us beautiful blossoms every summer.  It is a lovely reminder that my son is not forgotten.

After this winter, though, I was not so sure it would make it.  This winter was brutal, cold, and brutally cold.  It was a winter that a lot of people, myself included, struggled to make it through. There did not appear to be any new growth on the tree.  It seemed to have succumbed to the cold.

I started to clear away the dead wood as best I could.  It left a bunch of pointy sticks that I was going to grab a shovel to dig up.  The tree was dead anyways; why leave something in the ground to potentially impale my children (or, let's be honest, myself) on?

Then I saw it:

Hidden amongst the dead was new growth.  New life.  Tiny, persistent, struggling to get air and light and water...but alive.

A new reminder that life goes on.  After I lost my son, I begged my husband to not let me go crazy.  I seriously feared that I would go off the deep end.  One might argue that I did, but I say I was this wacky before.  I am talking the kind of crazy where I would take out my whole family and then myself.  The kind of crazy where I would dump his ashes out and smear them all over me.  The kind of crazy that people fear when they hear the words "mentally ill".

I know better now.  The mentally ill are not to be feared.  They are no more likely to hurt you than anyone else; in fact you are more likely to be harmed by a loved one who is not mentally ill.  I have a mental illness; and I abhor violence and probably couldn't hurt a flea.

That new growth, coming up out of the ugly, pointy, dead wood...hope.  That is what kept me going on.  That is what keeps all of my clients going on; why I do what I do day in and day out despite people demeaning my profession; despite the stigma; despite the fear and desperation and frustrations.  

It was what kept me going after Gabe died.  It is what keeps me running outside when it rains and is sunny at the same time, looking for the rainbow.  It is what keeps me saying the same things day in and day out.

Hoping that it will sink in.  Hoping that it makes a difference.  Hoping that it will get better.

Because it does.  The new life will spring up from the carnage.  That it will be just as beautiful.  

That it will persevere.