Naked

Three years ago, I lost 40 pounds.  Two years before that I lost 30 pounds.  So that means, that five years ago, I was 70 pounds heavier than I am right now.  Sometimes, I encounter people I haven’t seen in years and they will look at me twice, just to make sure it’s really me.  Or they’ll say things like  “you look AMAMZING!!  How much weight have you lost?”  While those interactions give me some satisfaction, I’m always a little self conscious after.  Because I am not at my ideal weight.  And I am not satisfied with my body.  Then, I feel guilty for giving up on my goal weight before I achieved it.  Naturally, I think “I’ve gotta get back in it.  I can do the last twenty pounds by summer.”  I don’t do it though.  If I were going to do it, I would have done it three years ago, with the other 40 pounds. 

Of course, I told you that story to tell you this story.  This morning I was in the shower and I looked down and I was surrounded by this feeling of same.  It seems ridiculous, but I was embarrassed to be with myself in the shower.  Vulnerable.  Flawed.  Naked.  So I rinsed out my hair and got out of there in quick, fast and in a fucking hurry.  I don’t need to spend too much time with that reality.  So got dressed and put some stuff on my face and stopped looking in the mirror.  Because that wasn’t helping anything.  I was getting really anxious about seeing myself naked.  And, yes.  I realize how shallow that sounds.  With all of the legitimate things I could worry about, I was most concerned with my body.  I think they call that vanity.  That’s when the epiphany hit me like a baseball bat to the ribs:  “we are doing this to ourselves.  And we’re fucked if we care too much and we’re fucked if we don’t care enough.” 

What does that all that mean, you ask?  Well, it’s all first-semester, community college psychology.  It’s about how the influence of our environment dictates how we see ourselves.  It’s nature vs. nurture.  In this case, the way we are nurtured overrules how we are natured.  It’s a social reflection of perfection that is nearly impossible to achieve.  We have invested so deeply into the power media has assigned beauty and perfection that it’s what we value the most.  And when we don’t live up to societal expectations of perfection and beauty, we just assume we can’t be loved or accepted. 

Ok.  So saying that we are captives to the corporate dollar and the media’s profiling of perfection is a little extreme.  And it’s also not a new idea.  It’s been stated repeatedly in scholarly journals and in journalistic exposés and, even, advertisers have tried to buck the establishment (please see Dove’s marketing campaign, from the mid-2000’s, geared toward “real” women.)  We know that it’s not a new idea.  We know that stereotyping ourselves, based on what Hollywood, or Vogue or L’Oreal sells to us is total bullshit.  But they don’t’ stop.  So neither do we.  So, we have done this to ourselves. 

Now listen.  I’m not pointing fingers.  Nobody pays more for a beauty regimen than I do.  Nobody in the real world, anyway.  I have a girl who does my hair.  I have a girl who waxes my eyebrows and my bikini line.  There’s a girl who paints my toes.  I buy designer makeup to cover up the blemishes and lines on my face.  The pantyhose I wear tuck and cover everything.  You can’t see the scar on my knee from where I fell in the orchard behind our house when I was 12.  You can’t see the imperfections in my thighs (and by imperfections, I mean lumps. GIANT.  CELLULITE.  LUMPS.)  AND!!  They make my waist look about two inches smaller than it actually is.  I pay for all of that.  I pay to look better than I actually do.  There’s a market for it, and since the market told me that I should look better than I actually do, I pay for it.  All of it. 

If you were born into and/or raised in this culture of beauty, you are fucked.  If you care too much about how you look, you are a narcissist.  If you don’t care enough, you’re a slob.  If you find yourself living a very average life, then all you have to do is head to your local beauty supply store, pay close to a thousand dollars, and walk away with all the tools to make you “appear” standard.  This is the thing though.  If you are average, and you can pay to look better, AND you  really want to conform, you will do it.  But the other thing is, if you do all of those things, you still have to look at yourself naked.  You still see what is underneath.  You still know that no amount of hair color or makeup or skinny skirts is going to change what you are.  So, what are you?

This morning in the shower, I looked down at my body and thought “For fuck sake.  Haven’t I paid enough to get rid of this by now?”  The stretch marks and the belly fat and the cellulite and the small boobs.  Haven’t I paid enough to be better than this?  Not even in a dollar amount.  Haven’t I paid enough in emotional currency to be better than this?  “What are you?” I asked myself.  And this is what it comes down to:  I am still a lonely, aging spinster.  I’m still afraid of having a meaningful relationship.  I’m still driving that Focus I bought in college.  The effects self esteem have on your psyche, on yourself image, only hinder you.  It doesn’t matter how much makeup I apply or how many shoes I buy or how often I get my hair done.  I’m still an aging spinster.  With a child and failed marriage and a car that is going to die any day now.  I’m still the girl in an empty bed every morning.  And when I look at my body in the shower, I assume I know why:  I’m not pretty enough.  Or smart enough.  Or wealthy enough.  And I’m old enough, now, to know that I will never look good naked.  Maybe it’s time to find a backup plan. 

Self esteem is a bitch.  Especially when you are naked. 

-Inner Peas

Unwell

The first time a doctor referred to my anxiety as a “mental illness,” I remember feeling like someone had just kicked me in the stomach.  I didn’t say anything.  I just looked back at him and nodded my head.  I had nothing to say.  I was so offended.  It’s not a “mental illness,” I thought.  It’s anxiety.  I’m an anxious person.  That’s what I do.  I feel uncomfortable.  I worry.  I do shit like that.  AND!!  I just had a baby!  Everybody feels like that after they have a baby.  It’s anxiety, you asshole. Not a mental illness.  Of course, I didn’t say any of that.  Because as if having a doctor label my feelings as a mental illness wasn’t insulting enough, it was a doctor I worked for.  A man I respected.  And because of that relationship, I felt ashamed.  Embarrassed.  Horrified, even.  I remember driving home after that appointment and finding it really hard to breath.  I thought to myself “My bosses think I’m a fucking head case.  There’s no way that they will keep me around.  They’re going to fire me because they think I’m crazy!”  if I wasn’t anxious before that, I certainly was after. 

Needless to say, I was disenchanted with being labeled as crazy. You know who’s crazy?  Schizophrenics.  Those people are crazy.  Borderline personality disorders.  That shit’s crazy.  Those people talk to themselves.  They have multiple personalities.  People with mental illnesses are homeless or in prison or are heinous criminals.  I was not any of those things, so thank you very much, Dr. Larson, I DO NOT have a mental illness.  His words haunted me.  And they made me even more self conscious about my anxiety than I had ever felt before.  Even worse, it made me shield my emotions from the rest of the world.  That way, I had no outlet.  I couldn’t ever tell people when I was scared or worried or consumed with unreasonable fears.  I couldn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want them to know that I had a mental illness. 

Years went by, and I hid it all.  When I left that job in private practice, I did it under the façade of family and personal growth.  I never told anyone that my anxiety owned me.  I never admitted that watching people die and children get sick, without explanation or cause, had finally touched my soul so deeply that I went home crying every day.  I couldn’t tell them that.  I had already been diagnosed as unwell.  I couldn’t let anyone know that it was actually true.  I could never admit that my emotional well being had become a liability for the people I worked with and worked for.  You just can’t say that.  That’s a one way ticket to a fitted jacket and a padded room.  That’s really what I thought. 

I thought that because of the stigma associated with mental illness.  People who are mentally unwell live on the streets and talk to themselves.  I really didn’t want that.  As the years passed, and the anxiety came and went, it made me think about what that doctor meant when he told me that my anxious tendencies were a mental illness.  Finally, I admitted to him “Doc, I don’t want to be crazy.  I never felt crazy until you told me I was.”  And he looked at me, stunned, and said “Angela.  I wasn’t telling you that you are crazy.  I was telling you that anxiety is a mental illness.  I just assumed that because you’ve worked in medicine that you KNOW that mental illness is no different than the flu or bronchitis or acid reflux.  Those are all illnesses.  And they can be recovered from, or at the very least, they can be treated.”  Oh.  Well, then. 

That’s how doctors see mental illnesses. The same way as they see any other ailment.  But the rest of the industrialized world does not see it that way.  We see mental illness as weakness.  We see it as crazy.  Culturally, we see mental illness as a black eye on society.  And don’t think that we do not.  You know how you can tell?  When someone breaks a bone, you can see the injury.  They go to the doctor’s office and they get it x-rayed and they doc wraps it up.  They leave with crutches and casts.  We sign our friends’  casts with well wishes and hopes for a speedy recovery.  When someone gets sick or falls on hard times because of a physical ailment, we rally around them.  We have raffles and spaghetti dinners and take up collections so they can save their homes and pay their bills. When someone looses a loved one to an illness, we send cards and flowers and make donations in the name of the people we’ve lost.  But when people have an emotional ailment, we do everything in our power to ignore it.  If a friend becomes unemployed because his state of mind prevented him from performing his job functions, we don’t talk about it.  And if, god forbid, we lose a friend to an unbearable sadness, we absolutely do NOT post about it on Facebook. 

I had a panic attack on Saturday.  It was awful.  And it was just another reminder of how vulnerable I am.  I tried to explain it to somebody.  That’s when I realized that trying to explain it was like trying to describe the color purple to someone who had never seen purple before.  Then I realized that people always say the same thing.  “Oh.  You’ll be fine.”  Or “you are a fighter, this won’t get you down.”  Or “You’re just making it up in your mind.  You are way better than this.”  Those things, of course, are the equivalent of saying “rub some dirt on it!” when you get a cut.  Or “You’ll be fine!  Walk it off” when you break a bone.  We all know that rubbing dirt in a gaping wound is just asking for a nasty infection.  We also know that you can’t walk off a broken bone.  The only way to heal a physical injury is to rest and protect yourself, so you don’t aggravate the pain.  But with mental injuries, it’s so much different.  They tell you to get back to work, get back to life, get going.  GO!  And since nobody can see the injury, it must not be there. 

Well, it’s there.  And 1 in 3 of us suffers from it.  That’s way more of us than are walking around on crutches or with our arms in slings.  Remember that next time you tell someone to walk it off or work it out. 

-Inner Peas

Delusional

See that?  It's my ass.  And if I really believed it looked like that, I'd be delusional.  

Sometime, over the last year or so, during my daily exploration of what’s happening on the interwebs, I’ve noticed a trend.  I don’t know exactly how to label this trend.  But it’s definitely there.  There’s just something that has been happening on social media in the way we share our lives and the way we share what we think is meaningful.  If you want to know what’s really important to your friends, log on to Facebook or Twitter.  You’ll find out real quick what they want you to believe about them.  All of it.  How much they love their kids.  How clean their houses are.  How much sex they are having with their perfect husbands.  How great their ass looks in a skirt…Oh…Wait.  See, nobody is exempt.  I can spot a disingenuous statement from 1000 miles away.  Why?  Because my ass doesn’t ever look that good .  And I can always divert attention from it with my unhealthy yearning to have Peyton Manning’s babies.   

So, yeah.  We do this thing on the internet where we feel an insatiable desire to prove to the entire world that things are going better for us than they actually are.  Our smart kids.  Our beautiful homes.  Our FUCKING phenomenal sex lives, proof of which can be found in our brilliant children.  Great asses.  We do this.  When I first started to notice this trend, I made it my life’s purpose to do the exact opposite.  I just have this moral disdain for people who can’t own what they’re own reality.  But, if you can just take a moment to stop staring at my fine ass in my profile picture, you might notice that I do it, too.  I don’t know if anyone is exempt from this trend.  We all want to be better than we actually are, and we all, in our own twisted little way, want others to THINK we are better than we actually are. 

But the trend goes deeper than the façade we put on about our own lives.  It includes the things that other people say, that we want the world to know are important.  Social media allows us the opportunity to “share” other people’s ideas when we like them or think that they are important.  If you want the world to know you are deep and thoughtful, all you have to do is hit “like” or “share” on Facebook, and you can adopt the values of others and announce it to the entire fucking internet.  Now, please don’t get me wrong.  I want you to “like” and “share” what I have to say.  After all, I do have illusions of grandeur and dreams of eventually going viral.  Whatever that means. 

Since we are on the subject of going “viral,” I have a point with all this “liking” and “sharing” we do.  I’ve been noticing a lot of my friends sharing stories that they find inspirational.  We all know what I’m talking about.  The kind of story that was titled “28 Reasons You Know You’re a Postive person.”  Or “This Lion Walked Up to a Hippo…YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT HAPPPENED NEXT!!!!”  Or “This Guy Just Got Divorced and Now is An Expert on Relationships so LIST EN TO HIM!!!”  And my personal favorite:  “If You Act like a Parent, You are Bullying your Child.”  Yeah.  That all happened.  On the internet.  In the last 24 hours.  And for some reason, we feel the need to share those things.  Because if somebody else says something that makes us feel bad about ourselves, we should repent by acknowledging our indiscretions and acknowledge the light.  So we share these thoughts and ideas like they are gospel. 

After a little while, I started to develop a little bit of a complex about the content of my character.  You know, because I didn’t really meet any of the 28 qualifications for being a “positive person.”  And when I watched that precious video of the lion and the hippopotamus hugging, all I could imagine was that after the video was over, the lion ate the hippo.  Or even better, the hippo rolled over on the lion and crushed every bone in its body and collapsed its windpipe.  Either way, one of them didn’t walk about from that heartwarming image of peace and harmony in the animal kingdom.  Then, I felt guilty about that, too.  How can I be so negative, I don’t even appreciate the beauty of two sworn enemies in a seemingly honest embrace?   I must be some sort of emotional deviant. 

Then.  THEN!  There was that article by this guy who is so heartbroken by his third divorce, giving advice about how to save your marriage.  Now, granted, I have to give him credit, he may not know what to do right, but he definitely knows what to do wrong.  But people ate that shit up.  Like the common sense advice he gave about treating your wife like a queen or letting her have her space and saying “I love you” every day.  Uh…Wait.  Uh…That mother fucker is making MILLIONS with his common sense advice.  Because we are eating it up.  We don’t  need the advice of the  triple crown of divorcees.  It’s just simple reasoning.  And, I’ll be very honest with you.  It doesn’t matter how many times a day you tell someone you love them, if they don’t love you back, it doesn’t matter.  In fact, in some settings, that makes you more of a stalker than a partner.  That advice is just as good as the woman who told you that if you act like a parent, you will ruin your children to infinity and beyond.  That one really got me. 

This parenting thing is a battle I fight every day.  Every morning, when I get up, the first thing I think about is how I’m going to approach the morning with Radley.  Do I do the same thing I always do, or do I try something different because what I do every day doesn’t seem to get the point across.  But still, every morning, I go into his room,  I hold him while he’s between the peaceful sleep and “get away from me lady” moments.  Then I tell him to brush his teeth and get dressed.  Repeatedly.  Until I would rather drink a bottle of draino than say it all again.  Then I finally lose my shit and I say “rinse your mouth out.  If you aren’t going to brush your teeth, they can fall out.”  To which he response, “NO!!!  I’m brushing!!!!”  Then, some woman I have never met before, tells me that I’m bullying my kid for trying to teach him good oral hygiene.  What the fuck, people?  Is that real?  Being a parent is not being abusive.  Unless you are an abuse parent, then that’s a different story. 

Now, I’m stepping off the soapbox.  Anyway, the point at hand, is that we “enhance” ourselves in public.  We may do it at work or with our friends.  We really want to tell the people around us that we are much closer to perfect than we actually are.  We probably say things like “should I have Thai or Sushi for dinner?”  When what we really mean is “should I have hamburger helper or DiGiorno? “ Sometimes we say things like “I love my hair girl!”  When we should say things like “I just tipped this bitch $60 so she’d make me look 10 years younger.”  When we wish a video titled “This hippo just fucked up that lion” would show up on our news feed, we “like” the other one instead.  Close enough right?  When we hear a man who did it ALL wrong in ALL of his marriages explain the secret to romance, we believe it.  When somebody who’s house we have never walked into tells us not to psychologically damage our children with our inconvenient parenting, we all start to question what we are doing to our children.  

I’m starting to think that all of this accessibility and sharing is making us a little delusional.  I mean, let’s be honest.  Nobody’s kids are perfect.  Nobody’s house is always clean.  NOBODY is having amazing sex all the time.  Nobody actually believes what they read on the internet, right?  We might want to, but we don’t’.  Right? 

You may now compliment my ass.  (But be reminded that I DO want to have Peyton’s babies.)  Also, “like” and “share”

-Inner Peas

I Do This Thing

I do this thing.  Can you see that picture?  That’s kind of like the thing I do.  I don’t do it openly though.  I don’t destroy things that people can see.  In fact, I try to preserve the things that are outwardly evident.  I try to cherish and nurture the visible, the tangible.  My home, my child, my job, my friendships.  Those are the things I protect from destruction.  That thing that I do, I do on the inside.  That way nobody can see the devastation.  Nobody sees the fury.  Nobody sees the violent aftermath.  It’s all inside.  Since it’s not visible, I don’t ever have to worry about cleaning it up.  I don’t ever have to rebuild.  I can just let the dust settle and go around about my life.  Nobody will ever be the wiser.  Because they can’t see it.  Much to my dismay, turns out that just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. 

So, this thing I do.  This emotional annihilation.  It surely seems mad to most people.  Some of the closest people to my heart often say to me “Angela.  Why?  Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”  Well.  I don’t know.  I’ve lived a lot of life.  I have a lot of experience.  I’m marginally well educated.  Logically, I should know when enough is enough and when it’s time to move on before any more damage is done.  That’s true.  But emotion is very seldom accompanied by logic.  I guess that’s why I do it.  I am an emotional person.  Perhaps, even, boarding on crazy.  But that’s neither here nor there, really.  Ok.  Yes  it is.  The point is I make these decisions to sabotage myself.  I have this really special gift to question EVERYTHING I do.  My parenting.  My employment.  My relationships.  And once I have questioned ALL of it, I usually come to the determination that everything I have done is wrong.  Then, as a special reward for all of this thinking, I berate myself for doing it all wrong.  That’s where the destruction happens.  That’s when I press the detonate on myself. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, sometimes I find victories after defeat.  Like when Radley actually brushes his teeth or the time the school called to tell me about the student of the month thing.  Sometimes, at work, people acknowledge that I am actually competent and capable and probably the best person for the job.  And sometimes, in matters of the heart, I make a good decision.  Ok.  Never mind.  That’s the exception.  In matters of the heart I always make the wrong decision.  Always.  That’s usually when that thing happens.  That thing that I do.  Sometimes, I honestly believe that I am the only person, who at my advanced age, still does that shit.  I probably am. 

Anyway, after I am doing that thing.  Usually in the wake of some emotional upheaval by a man who has made it a priority in his entire existence to remind me that I’m not worthy of his love, I do this other thing.  I read books.  Or I listen to music.  Or watch movies.  Never happy books or music or movies.  Always self deprecating shit.  I may as well have a broken hearted play list:  Heart of Stone. 3 AM.  The Pretender.  Forget About Us.  Don’t Bother.  Somebody That I  Used to Know.  Oh and don’t forget Every Rose Has its Thorn.  That’s a classic heart broke song.  Thank you Poison for immortalizing pain in lyrics.  Anyway, there’s no better way to punish yourself when you are already hurting than with music that reminds you that you’ve failed at everything you’ve fought so hard to protect. There’s also no better reminder that you are at fault for your failures.  Time to do that thing, again.  Ka-BOOM. 

Alright, so after I do that first thing.  Then I do the other thing.  Then I do the first thing again.  I do this other thing.  It’s not cleaning or rebuilding.  It’s not taking preventative measures to ensure that the pain doesn’t prevent itself in future bad decisions.  This last thing I do is what I like to refer to as begging for attention.  And that’s what it is.  Me.  Begging for attention.  That way I can divert my focus from the problem at hand and have everyone I know tell me how amazing I am. Now.  In my defense, when I do this, I am not begging for attention under the guise of humility.  I never beat around the bush when I need attention.  For example, when I speak in front of a group of people and I don’t feel comfortable with it, I always end with “You may now tell me that I’m smart and funny and pretty.”  And when I say that, I am NOT trying to be funny.   I actually want them to tell me that I’m smart and funny and pretty.  Because I am feeling insecure and I need other people to validate me sometimes.  That may seem pretty shallow and pathetic to some people.  I can absolutely accept judgment for that.  When I tell you to compliment me, I want you to compliment me.  Because I feel like shit, so even if you make something up, it doesn’t’ matter.  I just want to hear something complimentary.  And I’m fucking serious about it.  Ok.  Not that serious.  But kind of serious. 

So, anyway.  I do these things.  I put myself in emotionally compromising situations.  I foster a really unhealthy attachment to them.  Then, I demand that the people I love pull me out of the dark with delusions and half truths.  But it’s what I do.  These things.  Then one of the most miraculous people in my life sent me a text today.  The message read:  “You know, it amazes me sometimes how the powers that be force a change so that we can evaluate what we have.”  But wait.  What?  Changes? Forces?  Evaluations?  I was confused.  I already have things that I do.  Those things have nothing to do with changing or forcing or evaluating.  Was this woman trying to tell me there might be a different way?  Was she saying that maybe there’s no need to detonate my soul every time I feel defeated?  That just sounded like nonsense.  But maybe….MAYBE…she’s right.  Maybe there is a different way.  But, you know, I do these things.  But maybe I should be doing different things. 

*Disclaimer:  I’m not so shallow that I will ever outwardly ever hold you accountable if you do not compliment my shoes when I feel shitty, but a mental note will be made. 

-Inner Peas

Balance

Some people trust that everything will turn out OK.  It doesn’t matter what you do.  It doesn’t matter where you go.  They just believe that everything will take care of itself.  I am not one of those people.  I am not an “everything happens for a reason” kind of person.   I am not a “it’ll all be OK” type of girl.  I am a “holyfuckingshit…how do I make this right” kind of girl.  Some people might think it’s because I’m a pessimist.  Some people might believe it’s because I’m a realist.  Nobody has ever accused me of being an optimist…But I think it’s because I believe in Karma.  You know.  You reap what you sow.  The yin and the yang.  Tit for tat.  I don’t really know what that means, but I’m sure there’s some fascinating historical reference to accompany it. Anyway, that may be the reason I think about everything.  Because I believe there is a balance in life that must be maintained. 

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying that I don’t believe that bad things don’t happen to good people.  They do.  And sometimes, shit goes wrong, without explanation.  On the other hand, good things happen to bad people, too.  AND, on occasion, everything goes RIGHT.  To me, that’s just as confusing as when everything goes wrong.  That’s just the way I think.  Now, I won’t take you too far into the fun house that is the inside of my brain, but essentially, I think this way because I believe that life is about balance. 

So, why all of this talk about balance?  I think it has a lot to do with the sick child, sleeping on my living room floor.  It probably also has to do with the puke bucket that I’ve had the pleasure of washing out 12 times since 10:AM.  I got a call at work this morning, around 9:30.  Liz, at the school, told me “Radley is so sick.”  And the first thing that crossed my mind is “AAAAGGGHHHHHH!!!!!  Of course he is.  My desk looks like the records fairy took a shit on it and we have an inspection next week.”  Then, as I walked into the school office, ten minutes later, and I saw my sick little boy throwing up into a trash can, I thought “Jesus supermom.  Look at your sick kid.  And all you had to worry about was your job.”  Hold your applause.  It gets better.  I was going to take him back to work with me, so I could get my work done.  Also, so he could puke all over that place, too.  At least there are other sick people there.  It’s not like he’d be alone.  As we were making the half a mile trip from school to work, he threw up twice.  Then, this panic came over me.  We pulled into the parking lot, Radley told me he didn’t want to go in with me.  Obviously, I wasn’t going to keep him at work while he was yaking his guts out.  But, that’s when I knew he was really sick.  He ALWAYS wants to go in to work with me.  Everybody talks to him.  He draws them pictures.  He talks to patients.  Sometimes, in exam rooms.  The docs frown on that, but everyone else is usually pretty cool about it.  He loves it there.  Because he’s always the most popular guy in the building.  Anyway, he didn’t want to go in.

So, I started hyperventilating.  I told my boss I would be back.  I have work to do.  I needed to standby during training today.  How am I going to explain this?  I guess I could have just taken him inside and let him puke on them, but instead, I just took a few minutes to figure it all out and make good with everything.  But this is the point:  You have to have a balance.  People like to say things like “family always comes first.”  And “You’re children grow up quickly, you don’t have forever with them.”  And while that is ABSOLUTELY the truth, and you shouldn’t take the people you love for granted.  However, you can’t provide for the people you love if you don’t have an income.  That’s what I realized today, with a child sicker than I have ever seen him before, lethargic on the living room floor.  As I sat there and rub bed his back and my heart broke as he couldn’t put together a sentence to tell me what he needed, I realized that he is the most important thing in my life.  But I would never be able to take care of him if I didn’t go to work. 

It didn’t’ make me feel a lot better, but that realization made me feel a little better about weighing the concerns in my day.  If I didn’t care about my job, we wouldn’t have a living room floor to come home to pass out on when he’s sick.  I think that’s what social scientists refer to as a “work-life” balance.  There’s also a life-life balance.  If I didn’t care about myself, and my well being, Radley might have a roof over his head, but he wouldn’t have any safe outlet to express himself in.  If he didn’t go to school or out to play with his friends, he would never have anything to come home and talk about. 

I know it all seems so simple.  There is no one part of your life that can consume all of who you are, but I have had really hard time dedicating myself to the “most important” thing in my life.  Obviously, that’s my child.  Providing for my child is part of what is important.  Taking care of myself is also important.  I have so much guilt.  I want to be the best mommy I can be.  I want to be the best employee I can be.  I want to be the best friend, daughter, neighbor, citizen I can be.  I also want to be the best me I can be.  I realized today, I can’t be the best everything.  So, either I can settle for being the best at one, and mediocre at everything else.  Or I can just do my best at all of them and hope it all works out in the end.  Is that balanced? 

I don’t ever try to get to high, because I know where the bottom is.  There’s a happy place, somewhere in the middle for everyone.  That’s just realism.  Also, I try not to expect to find the good in the world.  I’d rather be surprised by it than be disappointed in what’s not actually there.  That may be pessimism.  But still, I prefer to think of it as balance.  And this is the thing about seeking balance:  You don’t necessarily have to assume the worst, but you should never hope for the best either.  There’s an acceptable place in the middle.  Naturally, nobody wants to be in the middle.  But nobody wants to be at the bottom, either.  Most of us want to be high above all of that.  That’s just unrealistic.  If we were meant to find a place at the top, we’d all be there already.  Then we’d be fighting about who’s on a higher high, instead of who’s at the lowest low. 

That’s why I seek balance.  It’s the shortest distance between two points. 

-Inner Peas

I don't

People keep asking me strange things.  Things like “what’s your mission statement?”  Or “What’s your theme for the next year?”  What do I look like?  Google?  I don’t have a theme.  I don’t have a mission statement.  I just want to pay my bills and raise my child and talk shit with my friends and love the amazing people who have graced my life.  Is that good enough for a mission statement?  How about surviving?  Is that a theme?  I know that they are asked with the best of intentions.  I understand that people who care about me what to have a direction and a purpose, and I love that they care enough about me to ask those questions.  However, I’ve spent the last three years just trying to remind myself to breath.  So, pardon me if defining my “mission” is a little overwhelming.  Stop asking me.  And degrading me for not defining my purpose really doesn’t encourage me to do all the painful, tedious soul searching that it requires. 

But goddamnit if those people might be right.  Maybe the approach was a little ineffective, but they might be right.  Maybe you do need to verbally define your purpose.  Maybe you need to document that purpose, somehow, so that you don’t forget what it is.  However, you can’t do that if you don’t acknowledge the reason you need direction.  I think, now, that may have been the reason I was so combative when people continued to ask me where I was going:  Because I hadn’t come to terms with where I had been. 

I never thought I would be discussing where I’d been here, in this very public forum.  I know I talk a lot about my upbringing and my hippie parents and my child and even my failed marriage.  But I never thought that I would sit down and write about my divorce.  I never wanted to share the remarkably intimate details of how my marriage failed.  I never wanted to put myself, or the man I was married to for 12 years ,in a precarious situation by reliving what we did wrong .  But I’m doing it now.  Because if I don’t, I might never move forward. 

I won’t rehash the entire 12 years.  That’s just nonsense.  But essentially, what started at 11:PM on a cold, April in Reno, NV, when I was barely 20, would dictate how my entire life, to this point unfolded.  This is where it started.  I met Mike at my boss’ house in December, when I was 19.  We spent three weeks together before my boat got underway for two months.  His boat got underway shortly thereafter.  But we were committed to making this work.  I guess that’s what you do when you are 19, and 22, respectively.  When both of the boats came back, we had about two weeks together, before I was getting underway again.  So, as any rational, now 20 year old, would do, I broke up with Mike.  At the Spaghetti Factory in Jack London Square.  Only to go see him at work the next day.  We agreed we would talk it over after work.  When he walked through the door, I said “get in the car.”  He looked at me, confused, and said “uh.  Where we going?  And who’s car are we going in?”  Huh.  That was a good question.  We were going to Reno, to get married.  I just hadn’t told him yet.  But the transportation predicament was a challenge.  We weren’t going to get over the Sierra’s in my ’68 Volkswagon Karmann Ghia.  And we weren’t going to get there in his car, because it was in Bakersfield, as he’d he’d loaned it to a friend with a family emergency.  So, I looked at Mike’s friend Chris.  And shook his head.  “Nope.  Not in the Miata.”  Chris wanted nothing to do with this, but once I hunted down a car, he was along for the ride.  Mostly, so he could try to talk us both out of doing this.  It was clearly a bad idea.  And God love Chris for giving us every reason to not do it, but I was not going to be stopped.  I was 20 now, and I’d had a boyfriend for four months.  (of which, I had spent 5 weeks with).  How could this not work out??  Poor Chris, somehow, he remained loyal to both of us, through all of it. 

Anyway.  Of course, I told you that story to tell you this story.  That crazy idea I’d had two weeks after my 20^th birthday, turned into more than a decade.  As all newlyweds, we were very much in love in the beginning.  Lot’s of kissing and touching and talking and laughing and sex.  So much sex.  Amazing sex.  There was a time that I looked at him and I said “I’m going to make you have sex with me at least three times a day, for the rest of our lives.  That’s a promise”  If you aren’t laughing, you clearly have never been married.  Or had a relationship.  Or had sex.  It’s such a novel idea.  Sex three times a day.  That’s not out of the question at all.  But then things happened.  Like life and careers and school and groceries and stuff.  So, needless to say, that pipedream didn’t last very long.  But that promise always haunted us.  It didn’t matter how much we loved each other or that we were best friends or that we had committed to each other.  When the promise wasn’t fulfilled, neither one of us was either. 

There were always disruptions, so the amazing sex turned into obligatory sex.  Then obligatory sex turned into very little sex.  Until one day, seemingly out of nowhere, Mike came to me and told me he was going to leave me.  I was so confused.  I was so pissed.  I was so ready for a fight.  So, we fought.  We had it the fuck out in the kitchen, with our toddler sleeping two rooms down.  We yelled and screamed and I threw things.  We cussed and acted hateful.  And when it was all hashed out, it came down to sex.  That made me even more resentful.  He was going to leave his wife and his child because of sex.  Oh, that’s real grown up.  Finally, we talked it out and we decided to go to therapy.  Too late. 

We didn’t like our therapist.  Hell, at that point, we didn’t even like each other anymore.  Even though we were best friends, we couldn’t stand to be alone together.  Because it was always the same conversation.  So, by the time we realized what was happening, we had isolated each other so significantly, that the thought of sex was too much pressure to enjoy.  Then finally, on a dark Alaskan night, all of the hostility and resentment imploded around us.  It was a week before we were leaving Alaska.  In a hotel room downtown, and we were so hateful and angry to each other, that I went down to the lobby and bought two plane tickets, one for me, one for Radley, to Texas.  One way tickets.  To go stay with a  friend while I figured it all out.  I didn’t know if I was ever going to go back to Mike at that point. 

While I was in Texas, two things happened.  1.)  I realized I didn’t like Texas.  2.)  I figured out that I needed to keep my family together.  So, three weeks later, I boarded a plane for California to go meet my husband.  And as we took off over East Texas, I looked down and swore to myself “Even if I am unhappy, I will never let Mike or Radley know.  I will be happy for them.”  The classic “fake it til you make it” maneuver.  And I was committed to it.  I got to California and got a job and made friends and had sex with my husband.  It was all good and fine until it wasn’t anymore.  Then, one late winter day, I realized that I just couldn’t fake it.  I wasn’t happy.  There were too many burned bridges, there were too many scars, it was too much work to try to be happy. 

As I was driving to take Radley to see my mom, I had three hours in the car, in silence, to think about it.  When I got to my mom’s house, I sat on her patio, and told her I couldn’t do it anymore.  She looked at me, devastated, and said “can’t you just try a little harder?”  I just shook my head.  On the three hour drive home, I thought about how I was going to tell him.  There was no good way to say it.  So, as we sat in the back yard watching the sunset, as we had so many times before, I looked down and said “I’m not happy.”  Silence.  Silence.  More silence.  Then it all started.  All of the divorce stuff.  The name calling and the object claiming and the tears.  That was the hardest day of my life.  And the days that followed, only got harder. 

I found a place to live.  I moved out.  I watched my friends disappear, one by one.  And I wondered if I had made the right decision.  It was probably easiest in the beginning.  But as the weeks turned into months, and the months to years, I really began to suffer the consequences of my decision.  At first, seeing Radley so confused about having to live it two different homes was the worst of it.  But my divorced friends assured me that he would eventually be grateful that he didn’t’ have to grow up in a home with parents who resented each other.  So, I waited, patiently, for that day to come.  It still hasn’t.  Then, I realized I was lonely.  So, I stumbled into bed with the first asshole who could find my house.  And I thought this will help.  Right?  Because the best way to get over one is to get under another.  Only, things didn’t really make form with that guy, not matter how long I waited.  And the phone conversations with Sallie Mae every couple of months about why my student loan payments were late.  Again.  That didn’t make anything better.  Then, on top of it all, I had to see my ex husband at least once a week.  And I was so used to him being my best friend, that I couldn’t deal with the pain of not having him in my life anymore.  Now, be reminded, this was all my decision.  This way my choice.  These were my actions that got us here. 

On the day our divorce was finalized, we stood in front of the judge, and she looked back at us, left eyebrow raised, and said:  “are you sure you aren’t missing something?  This is the most amicable divorce I’ve ever presided over.”  We both nodded our heads and said “yes ma’am.”  She said again:  “Are you sure?”  Again, we nodded.  Then we walked out of the courthouse and Mike stopped, tears in his eyes and said “I’m sorry.  I didn’t know you were unhappy.  Before this, this is the happiest I’d been in eight years.”  That’s when I lost it.  I started sobbing uncontrollably.  And I looked at him and said “this isn’t your fault.  This was both of us.   I wasn’t happy.”  I didn’t say anything else.  I just left.  But what I should have said was “This wasn’t your fault.  It was me.  I pretended to be happy when I wasn’t and you suffered because I manipulated you into believing that I was OK when I was not at all OK.  Then I threw you to the fucking wolves when I finally admitted that I wasn’t happy.  This is my fault.”    I didn’t say that though. 

Now, don’t get me wrong.  My marriage wasn’t perfect.  I just wanted more for all of us, whatever the fuck that means.  And sure, If I had stuck around, Radley wouldn’t have to adjust to two different homes every week.  And I’d be able to more readily pay my student loan bills.  I probably wouldn’t get those looks of sympathy and judgment from the other moms at soccer.  But that’s the lot that my decisions have created for me.  And I’m willing to accept it now.  But I could never have created a mission statement or identified a theme if I didn’t acknowledge what challenges me. First. 

The other day, a friend told me about his “compass.”  At the time, the idea didn’t make sense to me.  I thought “how can you have four ideas that point in different directions and want to move towards each of them?”  You know, because a compass points you in a certain direction and away from other directions.  But then I got it.  Maybe you need to travel all of the directions before you find your destination.  So, this year, on my compass, there is no true north.  There is no magnetic declination.  There is no correction between where you should be going an where you are actually going.  My compass reads:  Find your livelihood.  Enjoy who  you love.  Don’t forget to laugh.  A lot.  And get your shit together because the choices of your past no longer dictate your future.

 

-Inner Peas