Tag: writing

Starting Over

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Spring, a time of renewal and growth. It’s about new beginnings and rejuvenation. As I’ve gotten older, I look to nature to sync up my natural rhythm. I stopped caring about climbing the corporate ladder and the never ending “go go go.” I change with the seasons and it’s set me up for a stable, full life.

In summer, I ramp up. I garden, exercise, and become much more social. There’s graduations, weddings, and cook outs. I take it all in and breathe deeply. I’m more positive and productive. I savor the beauty of the never setting sun, fresh fruit, full trees, and gorgeous blooms. I don’t need as much sleep and feel naturally light.

In fall, I’m thankful. I start to slow my roll. I take in the last moments of the glowing leaves, shining bright oranges, deep reds, and soft yellows. I love the chunky sweaters and warm apple cider. I get excited about spooky decorations and the cheerful kids wanting to collect as much candy as possible. I think deeply about what I want to let go and what I need to heal as the year wraps up.

It sounds easy, but changing mental states can feel scary. It’s hard not operating the same everyday, but I know the burn out feels worse. The last few years of letting go of perfection and over-performing have been humbling to say the least. I feel judgment from the majority of people who don’t seem to subscribe to seasonal adjustments. But when I let go of perceptions and look to nature, I feel whole and on track.

This year hit differently though. I was hit with two major medical setbacks. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder that prevents me from being in the scorching sun and I suffered a severe foot injury that involved surgery and six months of rehab, four of which were couch bound. It was horrific. I’m still not back to my pre-injury self. I don’t know if I ever will be either.

I’m ready for my springtime renewal. I want to start seeds and mow the newly green grass. I want to hike with my dog in the spring air and feel fullness. I want to set new goals and start working towards them…but I can’t. I’m not physically able. It’s left me scared and confused. I still feel like I’m in the dead of winter.

I thought I would be better by now. I thought I would be so much further than I am. I worry that I’m never going to get my stamina back. I feel lost and out of tune. This is the first time my body isn’t changing with the natural seasons and I don’t know what to do about it. I look to the trees and flowers and feel bitterness. I’m jealous of their effortless, natural transformation. I long for easy growth and seamless transitions, but they’re not coming.

I wish I could say that I choose positivity and hope, but most days negative feelings wash over me. I want to hide and stay in the darkness. I feel unsettled with the longer days and changing into pajamas at 5pm still. I see my neighborhood coming alive again. Kids play basketball and ride bikes, and all I feel is fury. I can’t believe I took my physical health for granted. Being able-bodied my entire life, I didn’t know the struggles people with disabilities go through. It’s so much harder to live and it’s as if no one else lays witness to it. It’s an internal struggle that I have to face alone.

I pray that I can have the fortitude to keep moving forward. I hope my attitude adjusts with the changing season. I want my jealously to wane. Until then, I will continue to sit in the darkness and respect myself as I am today. I might not be blooming, but I will be one day. This might be a year of winter and I’m going to have to let that be okay. I know I can’t be the only one going through this. Instead of looking to nature for camaraderie, maybe it’s time to look towards other humans who are also experiencing a long winter.

Can you relate?

Avoiding Motherhood

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I’ve been reading my book outside in the cold spring air. The sun is shining and I’m not moody or anxious. I can breathe out here. My book is about a mother telling her three adult daughters how, when you’re older, you don’t care to go to the carnival anymore…you don’t believe in Santa or the Easter Bunny. The magic of life is drained away and you have to deal with reality. You hold all sides of life – the boring, the mundane, the evils, the triumphs, and the beauty. She was trying to explain to them that loving their stable, boring father was infinitely better than loving her famous actor boyfriend in her 20’s. They couldn’t believe her.

It hit me with a hard dose of reality. I can remember being young, naive, and in love. My husband, then boyfriend, was only good. We went to carnivals, on bike rides, to parties, to ice cream shops, bought Easter baskets, and had fun at bowling alleys. We knew life had hardships because our parents were killed when they were young, but we were young enough to compartmentalize the evil because the high of young love was so great.

I have tears slowly streaming down my face at the nostalgia of it all.

This makes his hand on the small of my back the other day 10 times more special.

Being in a romantic relationship with someone for 16 years, I’ve experienced the magic falling away. It’s hard to connect with, or even remember, the highs of the honeymoon phase because it’s not our normal anymore. We’ve been through financial hardships, affairs, therapy, family wars, substance misuse, and career changes. We became adults, when we used to be kids. Love used to be our only job and we did it so well. Our rose colored glasses faded to clear lenses. We see life for what it really is – impossibly hard and innately beautiful. We appreciate the hardships because the calluses make our bond stronger everyday. We have a silent underlying fear of losing one another because our lives have become one. How could one exist without the other? We are each other’s home.

As I have been housebound for four months, I have become an expert at watching tv. After my surgery, we binged Breaking Bad. It was horrific. The season finale made me want to vomit. Seeing Walt abandon his family and leave them in financial and emotional ruin brought up all of the demons from my distant past…the dark house, the absent parent hardened by immense grief, the broken teenager, the new normal of fantasizing about the warm past. I cried so many tears. We picked Young Sheldon after it because it was lighthearted and funny. This was our second rewatch. I used to love it and laugh at it, but knowing George dies in the end taints every season. I didn’t want to see their comfortable living and small world problems anymore, knowing that soon enough they would be struck with insurmountable grief. I can’t unsee the last season and feel the full joy of the previous seasons. They’re tainted. I want to yell through the screen, “Savor this! Stop fighting about stupid stuff because George won’t be there soon!!”

I remember my therapist telling me that she had to censor what her oldest child watches because she was deeply affected by emotionally charged shows. I thought it was ridiculous, but now I understand because it happens to me too. My life is rich with deeply felt emotions. While I sob at people dying, others watch it dry eyed. They can’t connect to something they haven’t experienced. My past washes over me as the scenes nail every emotion I’ve tried to forget. I have catalogued every emotion under the sun.

I’m bitter that my past has controlled my present and future. I hate that my glasses were only rose colored for the first four years of my life, while others have them into their 40’s. I didn’t bring kids into this world based on my own experience. I projected my trauma onto my unborn. They never materialized because I was doing the most heroic thing a mother can ever do – protect her kids from evil. I prevented the heartache of being bullied, the high statistical possibility of sexual abuse, financial ruin, of losing a parent to an untimely death, their first heartbreak, prejudice, and failing health. I took the bullet for them. They never asked for the gift of a hard life…they never asked for life at all.

But is that fair? Is my lack of an easy, beautiful, rich life their fault? Is my inability to immerse myself, and believe, in the innate good of the world their problem?

Maybe I missed the point of life entirely. Instead of striving to provide the perfect life for them, I should have accepted the reality of a nuanced life. Maybe a child’s love could have healed my broken heart enough to make me a good enough mother. Maybe the bond with my child, my own flesh and blood, could have given me the chance of redemption…a path to a beautiful life for the both of us. I could try with all my might to keep their world rosy long enough to withstand the certainty of an unfair world. I could give them the gift of a safe, warm, stable childhood that could soothe their broken adult hearts. I could lay a path so stable that my own insecurities would never bleed into theirs. I could fail again and again as a mother, yet still be humble enough to accept their ultimate forgiveness that they would be equipped to give because I modeled it enough times. I could be the definition of unconditional love that they could always reference. I could be their safe space to land, even after death.

I Murdered a Gnat

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It was a quintessential summer day in the Midwest. The sky was bright blue, the sun was interspersing its rays through cotton ball clouds, and the grass felt spongy and full beneath my bare feet. I had the music blaring and a smile on my face. I finally had the time to detail my dirty car. It was perfect.

I had parked under a tree that dripped sap on my window. I let it bake on there for a solid two weeks. It was impossible to get off with the soapy water, so I ventured out to the shed for some Goo Gone. As I rubbed it on, the sap still didn’t want to come off. The directions told me to let it sit on there for a minute, which clearly means five, so I went to vacuum the back.

When I came back, I saw two gnats stuck in the gooey slime that was melting the sap off. One was already dead and the other was barely wriggling. I felt horrible. The smile was wiped right off my sun-kissed face. My mind raced.

Do I try to swipe him off?

No, he won’t survive this.

Either his wings will break or he’ll die from the inhalation of chemicals…or my fat fingers will squish his atom sized body if I try to rescue him.

So I stood there and did nothing. I watched him for a few more seconds until his legs stopped moving and I knew he was dead. I tried getting into my music as I wiped the sap and gnat cemetery off my window, but couldn’t. Then I started crying.

I wanted to laugh at how ridiculous it must seem to be crying over a dead gnat. Kids, and adults, squish and kill bugs all the time. There’s no moral quandary or judgement from onlookers. If anything, there’s support, curiosity, cheer, and laughter. The spider won’t bite your child. The annoying fly will stop flying onto the TV. The impressiveness of ants swarming and trying to carry their dead back home.

But this gnat did nothing to me. He wasn’t a threat or annoyance. I was the sole reason he died. He was living his best life, enjoying the same summer day as I was. My superficial want of a sparkly window and careless monitoring led to his demise. Even if it was just a gnat, he had life inside of him. It was heartbreaking knowing there was nothing I could do to save it…then it hit me.

It was more than the gnat. It was my own personal trauma bubbling up from deep within. I threw a tantrum when I was 14 years old and made my mom drive to get my yearbook. She was hit head on and killed instantly by a distracted driver. After 20 years, I still shoulder the guilt. No amount of therapy or family convincing will ever erase it.

Life is just like this. The gnat was a personification of my mom. My brain subconsciously drew links that I didn’t know it could. I’m proud that I have the self-awareness and insight to finally be able to understand the links, but sometimes I’m not because a dying gnat ruined the rest of my day. It turned into a solemn day of remembrance of the worst moment of my life.

Our brains are filled with every moment we’ve ever lived. Our hearts carry the emotions. Our souls carry the lessons.

The gnat is my mom and my mom is the gnat. My brain assimilated the two. My heart found the pain and guilt that was filed away and it washed over me. My soul grieved for the loss of both sentient beings.

One is not more important than the other. We are all one.

How different would the world be if we all realized that 100% of the time?

My Dead Parents Haunt Me

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I’m 34 years old and lost my mom in a tragic accident when I was 14. Then my dad died of a sudden heart attack when I was 31. I hardly have any memories of my mom left, and by the time my dad died, we’d hadn’t spoken in 4 years.

I have been having mysterious health issues and the specialists are trying to figure out the issue. When I met my Rheumatologist for the first time, he spent an hour going over my intake form with me meticulously line-by-line. When he got to the family history list, he saw that both of my parents were deceased.

“Both of your parents have died. Am I reading that correctly?” I clinically confirmed, “Yes. My mom was killed in a car accident and my dad died from a sudden, unexpected heart attack.” I think he was waiting for me to have some emotion, but it never came.

His young eyebrows pinned together, puzzled by my lack of outward emotion and said, “Wow. That must be really difficult. I can’t imagine not having my parents or family.” I light-heartedly agreed and signaled to move on. I knew if he kept probing I might lose it.

When my parents died, I found it hard to speak to people about it. I hated breaking down in tears and becoming inaudible. It is the thing that makes me feel the weakest. So I would turn to the trees. I’d go on long walks, alone at night, and cry/scream at the sky or simply talk about my day…things I would call my parents about. It was pitiful, but healing.

I had huge trees all around my neighborhood. They towered over me at night like a blanket. After big storms, some of my favorites would be the victims of high winds and lightning. I would tear up for a couple of days when I passed them. It was hard for me to accept, but I got used to it.

Unlike humans, grieving for a tree is relatively quick and painless. I miss it, but I know that something else will fill its place. It’s a space of opportunity. I saw a man use a chainsaw to create a chair out of the left over trunk. I saw multiple people create natural flower pots out of the stumps. One person inserted his flag pole in it. And a lot of people left them alone and new growth would come.

Isn’t that just like life? Losing people is HARD. They took a piece of my soul with them. I wasn’t whole anymore and it takes time to rebuild. I can’t throw dirt in it and plant beautiful flowers. I have to give myself grace and grieve what I had, what I lost, and what I’ll never get.

As of today, I don’t think I want to have children. They won’t have grandparents and I won’t have a mom to call in the middle of the night when I’m panicked or broken. I won’t get to see my dad teaching them everything and anything that has to do with the woods. There will be no vacations or Christmas’ with my family of origin.

My heart is still tender. It was a huge milestone when I lost both of my parents. It’s like I’m lost and floating at sea all alone. No one holds my past. It’s been erased. I have no one to flex that muscle with, so it atrophied and died. I must exist in the present moment only. I have no past to bring into it.

When I lost my vantage point of where I came from, life became scarier. Who could I depend on if I got sick/unemployed/something catastrophic? No one. My heart has been so hardened by their deaths, that it’s nearly impossible for me to depend on anyone.

Just like the trees.

Whatever trauma trees go through, it shows. They will always have the bump and inner rings of where a limb was. They will show cracks and bark skinning. It will shape them forever. They can scar just as easily as we can. It does take time for them to heal and they never quit going. They instinctually know to grow where the light leads them.

At the end of the day, that’s all I can try to do too.