chasing and dodging

after a few attempts to dodge my feelings with chocolate and bunny-shaped graham crackers, i'm making a good dinner (well, defrosting one) and some favorite chai and sitting down with them.

actually, if you could have heard the convo in my head, you might have been surprised to find some familiar players.

me: maybe i'll have a drink... maybe some more chocolate... what's so wrong about numbing out the feelings?

miriam: you know you will have to feel them eventually.

me: oh cmon are you sure? do i have to?

michelle (goblinbox): yup. those are the rules. sorry babe.

so anyway. my aunt died in September and i've managed to ignore that fact. i haven't called my mother more than a couple times since then, because i don't want to be reminded that she's grieving tremendously for her sister. (yes, i beat myself up about that a lot, but i won't here). it's bad enough i get her emails about her sadness, cc'd to me as she writes other friends (a standard m.o. for her).

but now that i'm heading to AZ in less than 72 hours, i can't avoid the fact that i'm going to be immersed in the collective grief of my uncle, their three sons, and the wives and grandchildren - and of course my mom. i'm dreading it. absolutely dreading it. i don't know if it's because my grief is walled off or because i'm afraid theirs will be so much greater than my own that it will be overwhelming or what.

i should look at it as a time to be kind to people i love. but i'm afraid of all those feelings. i'll try to let go of those fears and take on the positive viewpoint. and to remember, as all of you would remind me, to be gentle to myself.

the special diet

1:45 AM
me: i should go to sleep i guess
i came home and fell asleep on the couch
(R is off dogsitting at someone else's house)
1:46 AM
then just woke up a short while ago to take the dog out and have some cheerios
and since i'm late taking my meds i cried. sometimes it feels so good to take a
break from the meds, if only for 15 minutes
1:47 AM
i can see why people stop taking them.
Nadine: how come
me: cuz it's like all the time breathing shallowly and then being able to take a nice
deep breath and fill your lungs
it's like being on a diet all the time and then getting to eat something delicious
1:48 AM
Nadine: ok - interesting
me: i just have to be a grownup and understand that, like a diabetic, i have to
follow the damn diet or it hurts not just me but everyone else
Nadine: what's the delicious bit tho -
me: crying
Nadine: oh.
me: feeling things too much
Nadine: never thought of missing that
me: i guess it's like an addiction
1:49 AM
big feelings
dramatic thoughts
Nadine: ah
yeah
I can see that
I miss that too
me: yeah it does make sense right
Nadine: but I so hate the crash that comes afterwards
1:50 AM
me: heh - supposedly the crying would be the crash. but really the crash is when you
realize you've made a mess of your life.

fear

have been feeling that old anxiety. started friday when i gave a quiz and students didn't seem to understand what i was teaching. have been frozen again, deer in the headlights, feeling ineffective. stuck. avoiding my work instead of embracing it. lost that determination and drive. for the first time, eager for the day to be over, not enjoying my job.

Loopy says. "Your job is to teach, their job is not to learn. Just keep going."

Since then I've started to think that I misinterpreted the quiz - that students just didn't understand the instructions. that's helping me get back on my feet.

in the interim, though, i've amassed a pile of undone work. it goes so fast - you have to keep up - every day.

and the anxiety persists. i tell myself i was overwhelmed with anxiety at the beginning of school and i kept putting one foot in front of the other - just do that now. one day at a time. one foot in front of the other. don't focus on what i didn't do yesterday or what my mistakes were. just start from now.

trying to apply what i learned this summer but it starts to seem far away. need to review my little post-its and other tools. wonder where all those papers went. the advice seemed obvious at the time but now i need it.

i'll imagine myself at the group check-in in the morning and see what i think others would say. maybe i'll call some people from the program and see if they want to hang out.

right now i have to get ready for school. i suppose even this post is a way to avoid, a way to be deer-in-headlights. but now i feel somewhat that i could stop that, that i could wake up, that i could be me again. it's coming back. strength flows back into my limbs. god. i was so scared.

grateful for this space to write. grateful for those who read.

technological genius in action

i've just set up my facebook to post status updates to my twitter account, and my twitter tweets to my blog, so updates (which are once or twice a day) will appear in the right column on my blog. since some of you (AMY! and mostly Nadine!) don't facebook i thought it's a way to update my blog more regularly. in case you want that kind of update! lol :-)

upside down / rightside up

when i take my pills late, my old normal comes back. feeling weepy and as though i don't want to do anything. everything seems desperate and insoluble. the thing is it's very normal and familiar and it's intense, and it always makes me wonder whether the pills are numbing out feelings i should be having. i remember highs and lows, giddiness and heartbreak and think that i've been so even-keeled that it's kind of scary.

then i take the pills and a while later i feel better, and i can see that i was trapped and mired in those feelings for years and they destroyed me again and again, and they can't be the feelings i "should be having" either. it's like a playing card and whichever side is up, seems right.

when i'm upside down without the pills i think that maybe Loopy n I should have broken up back when we were in crisis. when i'm upside down with the pills i think that's insane, we're obviously meant to grow old together. when i'm right side up without the pills i miss people and remember things. when i'm right side up with the pills i think i can live with everything the way it is - at least for a while. upside down is whatever side you're not on; right side up doesn't seem to mean anything.

i read a good book today - a piece of graphic art so it didn't take long to read. in it there was a moment where two strangers meet while looking at a billboard where someone has scrawled "you are not alone" over the closed eyelid of a model. i thought about how much more that statement would have meant to me before the pills. how i felt lost in darkness and akin to other lost souls. now i feel like i've climbed into a boat that goes sailing blithely over the seas in sunshine and salty spray, and i barely remember what it was like down deep in the waters beneath my dry feet, where the lost souls still wander, seeking warmth in each other and so moved by the comfort they find.

self-doubt

...comes creeping back in. classes are getting unruly. i'm getting tired - very tired. i start to feel myself being like last year - staring dully at them and going back to teaching without knowing how to handle what's happening. deer in the headlights, is that coming back? damn, it was so traumatic and awful last year. and the year before.

trying not to panic. using my tools from my outpatient program... what is going well? remember my accomplishments... focus on the positive...

maybe i should call someone from the program, help me snap out of this.

good friends from Madison are coming to visit this weekend - they always make me laugh, hard, a lot. so that will be a good chance to recharge.

i've made some friends in Chicago, finally. a colleague from last year, one from the year before (but we've just started hanging out and grading together on a weekly basis over the past couple months), and a guy i met on the meditation retreat last summer. three whole friends! wow! that's a good thing.

dog continues to be a pain in the ass. doesn't give me a lot of joy like owning a dog should. he's mostly annoying, occasionally delightful. right now we're dogsitting another dog, too. it makes decent money for very little trouble, but it makes me stress out like crazy so i don't know that it's worth it.

i was observed on Tuesday by our curriculum director who just loves me, and she had not one single negative thing to say, and a lot positive. tomorrow there's a team coming from somewhere to judge the school in some way, and the school people want them to observe and interview me. somehow i've become the dog in the dog and pony show, and i don't know that i like it. i mean, it's a huge, huge compliment that suddenly i'm almost a star instead of the door that gets rushed past, but it's scary. i guess that might be one reason for my little freakout. so really, it's a good thing. it just feels painful and scary. but some good things do.

or so i try to tell myself.

i'm glad to have this blog to talk to... helps me figure things out. thank you for reading...

the sky gets in the trees

I made this four years ago to try to convey a silly thought I had about autumn many years back: when you look at the colors, it's like the sky has gotten mixed up with the trees, and the trees have gotten mixed up with the grass.

Technically, it's three times the same slice of the same photo, with the Photoshop "crystallize" filter at 15 and 50.

uncurling

When Halloween's over I feel better. It's like this growing darkness and then a lightness and brightness of crisp autumn air. Pre-Christmas stuff starts - I know everyone complains about that, but I don't mind, I like Christmas. And the leaves are falling in earnest and the air's getting colder and... it's a good time.

Things continue to be fine at school. I come home and Loopy asks, "So how was your day?" and my answer is almost always, "Fine. They're all fine."

It's a nice change - understatement - it's a day, or a day after day, that I never thought would come. Peace? Peace in our time? It's getting quite late in the year and things haven't fallen apart yet... fingers still crossed, still knockin' on wood...

The kids don't try to get my goat because it's clear that my goat is tethered and quietly munching on grass no matter what they do. They don't always listen or behave, but they don't go after me like they used to - I don't feel like the deer in the headlights, the dartboard helpless before the speeding metal points... this gives me some breathing space to practice other things and to think that the behavior will fall into line eventually.

The image isn't an autumnal but it reflects how I feel... slowly uncurling fist, slowly unclenching muscles, body slowly unwinding from fetus-position... like the petals opening... i'll post an autumnal post separately.