Paying Attention…

I’m supposed to pay attention to, label my feelings, pay attention to my movements…going from stopped to moving, from seated to standing. I think too hard about the latter…wait, am I moving now? Am I stopped? When does movement start? Trying. Not breathing right this morning. Irritated. Stressed. Too much to do before I leave for Houston. Work raises its ugly head and demands more attention. Fuck you…you have too much of my life already, you bastard. I’m ignoring you. Hard to do with the sound of hundreds of middle-schoolers outside my door.

I started typing this in the morning, before school. I was trying to get everything set up and my brain was vibrating, it was working so hard to push emotion down and out and away. So I stopped. I typed. I cried. I cried with kids right outside the door. Better than inside, right? It’s OK. It’s under control most of the time. Or is that OK? Would less control be better? I don’t know. I have to function. I have to do my job, pay the bills, take care of my kids.

Tension. Nausea. Tweaked one part of my back. Bloated, tired. Wanted to stay home and read my book. Still want to do that. (got to read at the gym and during dinner…having dinner by yourself? Or having dinner with the characters of your book? Sad either way, but at least I semi-enjoy one version.)

Here’s the core problem to paying attention to your feelings: mine get overwhelming pretty quickly, and that’s not OK at work. I try to draw from positive interactions at work, especially with kids, but they seem more heavily weighted in the morning hours, and then I try to check in with my team at lunch for their collective strength and with my science coteacher between classes, in the space between our doors, but some days I just can’t get enough mental and emotional space from all that crap that swirls around in my head, making soup out of my control and logic and planning. Mr. Meditation doesn’t probably deal with what I deal with…he looks too damn calm. Give him my life for a week or so and see if he changes his tune. I spent all day breathing and paying attention to how I felt (you are about to duct tape a student to a chair…how does that make you FEEL?). Not really. But maybe it worked, I don’t know.

He says, “Experience overtakes the intellectual understanding of your feelings,” like that’s a good thing. OK. I guess it is. It’s just not good in the context of work or the gym or the grocery store or wherever I’m standing that isn’t in my room, a closet, in my car, in a big field in the middle of nowhere (can I be transported there now?). I am very good at experiencing my feelings. I am also good at understanding them. That unfortunately does not help them leave me alone for a while. Or even control them enough to feel like I’m in control.

Speaking of control, tomorrow’s dinner is already prepped and in the fridge for the slow-cooker tomorrow (I’m getting the hang of this. Praise my efficiency, dammit). My sub plans for the two days I’m gone were done this morning. I did extra laundry today for the trip. I’m not packed, but that’s OK…I’m doing that tomorrow night. I have food for the trip. I’ll be running on very little sleep (hey, what’s new?). Expect me to fall into a closet and cry at some point. I have books on the iPad and in real life (just in case), I have a couple of sketchbooks (have to make a decision about those), and I spent time tonight prepping the last two months’ of Sue Spargo’s birds to take with me…

I needed to iron and cut things out…

and sew a few things down with the machine. Tomorrow night I will put the bags together for stitching on the plane. I’m hoping we aren’t in terminals for long…if we are, it’s because we missed a flight. I’m prepared if we do. I have food, books, and stitching…materials for drawing. I hate being bored. Headphones for music. I will need music.

I’d like to say I’m excited, but mostly I’m nervous and apprehensive. I don’t travel well. I have to talk about two quilts, and I don’t really have anything logical to say about one of them, although girlchild approved my rambling explanation from last night. I’m worried about being around people. I know, that’s lame. I’m hoping to hold it together without my routines of exercise, meditation, reading, and drawing in a safe place. There are no safe places in a hotel or on a plane. I have my gym clothes. I have my meditation app. I have headphones.

I had to grade tests tonight, so I didn’t get any time for real art, but I did interact with fabric. During school, I needed to do a cover page for the new unit…

So I even got to draw at school. And color! You wonder why I draw what I draw…or maybe you don’t. I wonder if I were an English or Math teacher, what would I draw instead of body parts? Or was I fated to be a science teacher? Who knows.

I had 17 ideas today for drawing uterine-related stuff, women and their periods, women and menopause, women and their uteri, the pain, the blood, the mess, the annoyance, as you age, having to deal with the vagaries of the female body deciding to ignore routine and just mess with you on a regular basis. Cramps so bad it hurts to stand, it hurts to sit…and yet, there you are, doing both, in front of 35 kids who have no idea what you’re feeling or experiencing. This is your teacher…she is basically hemorrhaging AND suffering from depression. And you think YOU have it bad? Really? Deep breaths. It’s like my inner emotional world is being wrought upon the physical body. I can draw that.

I need to draw more of that…you know, because it will be so accepted in the art or art-quilt worlds. Yeah. Whatever. I obviously don’t pay much attention to acceptance in either. I just do what’s in my head and rail at the world when it causes issues.

I’m going to Houston for the opening of the Art Quilt Portfolio: People and Portraits exhibit that SAQA is sponsoring to go along with Martha Sielman’s book published this year. I was one of 21 featured artists in the book (if I’m smart, I will find my copy and take it with me for signatures). They are exhibiting two quilts from each artist. I got to choose which two out of the book (oh my…what were they thinking, letting me choose?). I chose Fully Medicated and I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket. I’ll post them later this week (although they are on my Current Shows page). My mom will be there too…be nice to her. It must have been hard to raise me to be the crazy-ass artist that I am today. I’m sure it was hard.

When I get back from Houston, it’s race race race to the end of the school trimester and getting two quilts done and the stupid fucking holiday season (hate the holidays) and the high-school soccer season and family stuff and maybe some free time. And maybe some mental space, who knows. Probably some pain and hurt as well. That seems to come with the holidays, whether I like it or not. Lots of have-to’s and shoulds and not a lot of enjoying the moment. I will have to work on that. More exhibits to enter, some to get into, some to reject me (I can handle that…it’s disappointing, but it’s a rejection that I’m used to and can deal with). If I had my choice right this second, I’d be working on a quilt right now, instead of trying to persuade my brain it’s bedtime.

I don’t often have a choice, though. Paying attention. Sigh. I really wish someone had been paying attention. That’s part of my test, now. You need to pay attention. If you can’t? Fuck off. You’re not worth it.

Half Asleep with Its Tongue Hanging out

How to distract a grieving mind? Just give it stuff it likes…the gym, a good book, some fabric, time with kids, a task so close to being finished, tracing Wonder Under. Then try to bring it back and focus it on itself? Not happening. I wonder how healthy it is to constantly be trying to distract my mind from its work, its pulling apart the grief like a stuffed dog toy, going after the fluffy insides to spread them all over the carpet. Everyone’s had a dog like that, right? It’s Christmas, you give the dog a new toy, and an hour later, it’s all over the floor and they look perturbed…and they’ve probably swallowed the squeaky mechanism.

Pulling the grief apart is taking much longer. Sometimes I have to distract the mind from its task just so I don’t feel like I’m sinking under. Sometimes you just have to get stuff done…I am a highly functional depressoid, apparently. I have a couple of books I’m reading about loss and being and stuff like that, but my brain gets so tied up in them, and one of them, while I’m reading it, I just cry. So I can only take it in small amounts. I still need escape…art, music, movies (not many of those lately), books, the gym.

The meditation app is talking about feelings, about labeling them like yesterday with a type, but also deciding how we are dealing with that particular feeling. It’s easy for me to pick the feeling…I really only have one or variations on it: sadness. I guess there’s loss and grief, a variation, and sometimes misery and often tension is there, but that’s a much more physical feeling. When he says to check in with the physical body, from the head to the toe, my gut automatically tenses up multiple times, not something under my control, some psychological thing. The counselor asked me to name it once, name the feeling, and I called it loss. And as soon as my gut tenses up in that physical check-in, here comes the sad, sweeping over me, through my chest, my eyes, that’s when I start to cry. Sometimes it’s sobbing and sometimes like today, it’s more like a convulsive uncontrollable thing, and maybe only a few tears make it out. I cried at the gym today. Can’t remember why. Some thought, some song on the iPod, some random-ass thing as I beat myself up…physically and emotionally.

He asks about the feelings: do I want to prolong them? I don’t think I do. I don’t know. Maybe it’s too hard to let go of being sad. I know I’m trying to, but the girlchild says there are things I should be doing, things that are hurting me that I could get rid of or avoid, and I don’t. I don’t think I am trying to prolong anything…I am just having a hard time letting go. When I am ready, I will. I don’t know when that will be. I’m aware of it, at least. Do I hold on to feelings? I don’t think I’m allowed to…I often have to cut off a feeling so I can get things under control wherever I am or wherever I’m going. I can’t sob at the gym. When I get to work, I have to wipe my face and get out of the car and go to my classroom. I don’t cry all night. Am I resisting the emotion? I don’t think I resist them. I think I let them be. I don’t think I could resist them. I am beyond the days when I could push emotions down into a box and squash them down there until they explode outwards. That’s not really me. I’m not sure I’m letting the emotions go when I sit with them like he wants me to. I think I let it go in the moment, like releasing one balloon, because in reality, there are 50 trillion balloons and releasing one isn’t a problem…there are still 49 trillion and blobbity blobbity left. So even though I’ve let the balloon go, the emotion is still there, looming above me.

It was a physically painful day. Being a woman…sometimes it just hurts physically and emotionally, and you have to wait for it to be done and move on. It makes the days sometimes more difficult simply because the body is going to do what it needs to do, and you will just have to wait on it, be with it, deal with it…like childbirth…you relinquish control to the process and just do the work…and at the end, if you’re lucky, you will push that baby out…but it’s not something you ultimately have control over…which includes the child once it’s out. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. Today…even standing and sitting were painful. Deep breaths.

Today things were just painful. So it was easy to distance myself from emotion and physical pain. I did what I needed to do. I’m good at that. I can be relied upon for that.

You can hear how distant I am, can’t you? Everything that is so painful is over there…way over there…by the river. I’m standing up on the hill looking down on it. The river is sparkling in the morning sun, and there is a breeze, and everything is washed clean by the rain. It’s not exactly pretty or enjoyable…but it has promise. At least for now.

I finished the Wonder Under on the Celebrating Silver quilt. Eleven hours and seventeen minutes.

Looks to be about 5-6 yards of Wonder Under…I started October 13, finished October 28. I didn’t work on it October 24 or 25, but I worked on it every other day. The shortest amount was 24 minutes in a day; the longest was an hour and 16 minutes. I get to do art for about an hour a day, on average, during the school year. Sad but true. Next I get to cut them all out…that should take less time, but not by a lot.

I like that there is progress, that I am creating, making things from nothing.

I’m a little over 5 hours into cutting out the fabrics for the Love quilt…I’m almost done with that. It’s got fewer pieces…and it’s smaller too. I think I’m going to try to iron it together before I cut Wonder Under on the other piece…I’m just looking at due dates and trying to be logical. I know, me? Logical? What the fuck for? I am pretty organized, though…that’s how I get done as much as I do. Plus writing makes me accountable to myself for getting stuff done. If I didn’t write it here, I wouldn’t feel as much pressure to get it done. The second bit of pressure comes from not feeling so useless in my life…if I can get some art done, get a bit done every night or most nights, and I can see progress over time with that, then I feel better about my own existence…it’s not a purpose…or maybe it is? I don’t know. It gets me off the couch. It gets me away from the computer, which isn’t really a source of happiness for me at the moment. I can look back at all this trauma and think, well, at least you made a shitload of art, eh?

Anyway. The girlchild sent me this…

and this…

they took the dogs on a hike and Calli’s tongue tried to take over the world. That’s kind of how I want to leave this rambling post…half asleep with its tongue hanging out.

Something the Darkness Couldn’t Take

Hi. Do you see me? I’m that person crawling into a hole. Do you see me? I’m crawling into the hole and pulling all the dirt in after me? Can you see me? I’m crawling and pulling it after me.

I’ve been hearing this in my head all evening. I don’t know why. It’s just repeating. Like a whisper. Do you see me?

Sometimes the stupidest things hurt me right now, things I would have found funny or even cute before the tidal wave hit, they hurt…and not a little…the hurt I feel in my gut when I meditate, the hurt that feels like aliens climbing out, or is it zombies climbing in? Doesn’t matter. Either way, it’s pain, pain caused by others…but it’s also my reaction. I can’t disconnect…I can’t harness enough anger to disconnect. The anger is there, but so often I direct it at myself, even though I know I shouldn’t, that the fault is not there. Girlchild rails at me, speaks of vengeance, tries to understand how 9-plus years of connections are harder to break, to escape, to destroy…well, for me they are. She is so angry too…and I didn’t do that. I understand her anger. I would be angry too if I were her. She is my Mama Bear at the moment, because I can’t be. She’s protective, standing out in front of me, fists half-cocked, ready to go at someone on my behalf.

I made it through the gym. I don’t even remember working out. I was only half there. My muscles were there. Enough of my brain was there to go through the workout, and not in a half-ass manner…full throttle. And that part of my brain got me home and dealt with prepping for school and prepping dinner for the slow cooker and dealing with kids and getting in the car and going to pick up my passenger and driving all the way to Oceanside and holding my own in conversations and then driving back. It fractured in between, at the meeting, but I kept cutting out little bits of fabric and kept it under control.

But by the time I finished meditation, which was all about labeling feelings, and I realized that my brain was screaming at me, “FEELING! UNPLEASANT! FEELING! UNPLEASANT!” (the choices for labeling your feelings were ‘pleasant,’ ‘unpleasant,’ and ‘neutral’), I was already grabbing the sketchbook, even before meditation officially ended. He told me to open my eyes and have a stretch, and I stretched right over and picked up the book and opened to the first blank page (I say that so many times a day at school, I can’t tell you, in answer to “what page?”) and took the pen and it was moving across that blank expanse of white toothy beautiful page before I could even wipe all the tears from my face and neck and down onto my chest, where they fall when they reach the end.

When I reach the end.

I thought I was going to finish tracing Wonder Under tonight, but no. My brain had a different plan. I did try grading earlier, but I could tell my brain was fighting it…fighting the mundane, the work, the drag-you-down-further-into-the-fucking-muck feeling I was getting, the one I’ve been fighting all week, since last Monday. It gets worse and then better but never very good.

B. B for be? B for broken. B for bamboozled. B for bad. B for breaking. B for bastard. B for bearing…bearing it. I was thinking The Scarlett Letter…or a branding.

I’ve always put symbols in my work…the symbols are changing. Some of them.

So I am a bit more at peace, now that I’ve drawn. It’s not a happy peace. Just a distancing peace. That’s what labeling the feelings is supposed to do…to help me distance myself from the emotion and not wallow in it or make it worse, but maybe, at some point, to just let it wash over me while I be, and then maybe I won’t have to be that emotion any more. I’m not very good at the distance. Or maybe I am…because if I really wasn’t very good at it, I would be crying all the time, no matter where I was, and I do seem to hold it together for hours at a time when necessary.

At the meeting, I saw this out the window…

I think everyone else was socializing and eating and being friendly and I was staring out a window at a foggy grey sky and watching this beautiful bird and trying to just Be in the moment even though I wasn’t connecting to the moment at all.

Birds are often in my work. I need to draw more types of birds. I usually just make them up.

I’ve told you that both kids worry about me because of my braindeadness…my uncharacteristic mindlessness at times, my loss of memory, my inattention to detail.

Girlchild pointed out that I didn’t need to buy more ground mustard, that I must have just bought some in the last few weeks. I didn’t remember. She thinks we will never use it up…so now I have to come up with all-mustard recipes from now until we use it up. Just to prove her wrong. I really only have two recipes that use ground mustard, and neither in large quantities. We’re fucked. I’m going to die and have ground mustard left over.

Speaking of dying, I finished World War Z today…

It was OK…a little on the dry side. A little truncated. Not really a story, per se, but an interesting take on a story. I guess I could watch the movie now, if I wanted to. Do I want to? I don’t know. I’m currently immersed in all the PBS Mystery shows I have archived on Tivo. I’ve been watching Wallander and Endeavour…I like Endeavour better. He is more caring, less of an asshole. Wallander cares, but he’s an asshole. I don’t need more assholes right now.

I wrote this down from Endeavour tonight: “You go home and put your music on, and with every note, you remember that’s something that the darkness couldn’t take from you.” DI Fred Thursday

Yeah. That. That’s why I draw. That’s why I make art. That’s why I get out of bed in the morning. That’s why I don’t just give up. That’s why I’m writing every day. Almost every day. Because of that.

At the meeting (yes, I realize my brain is jumping all over the place, hence the multiple mustards), I cut out pieces for the Love quilt. I need a plan. I can get it cut out this week, and when I get back from Houston, I can start ironing it. If I can get it ironed and maybe even stitched down (that might take more mental energy than I have at the moment), then maybe I can quilt it over Thanksgiving. Maybe. Then at the same time, I can be cutting out the Wonder Under for the Celebrating Silver quilt, aiming to pick fabrics for it either over Thanksgiving or the first few weeks of December. Either way, it’s a plan. I need plans at the moment, even if I keep fucking them up.

So I cut out lots…

because it kept my brain from wandering off into the mists…

Someone please do something about the cat that is trying to be a scarf around my neck. Please. It’s literally perched up there between the back of my head and the back of the chair and trying to hold on. The stuff in the bag is all the scraps. I save them until the quilt is ironed down, because occasionally I toss a piece in there instead of into the bin. The way my brain’s working, though, I’ll probably forget I have them and I’ll just recut another piece. Or I’ll toss all the good pieces in the trash by accident.

Whatever. It’s progress. Movement anyway. No one knows in what direction. Taking my headache to bed right now. Hopefully it will let me sleep. Unless it’s an asshole. Don’t need more assholes.

It’s Complicated. It’s Messy. It’s Me.

While tracing the crone tonight, I feel the brain anxiously scrabbling at me, trying to draw me in to its worry and pain, but I focus on each piece, drawing it as accurately as possible. I wonder how I would have drawn the crone if I had drawn her before all the bad happened. Would she look so worn, so world-weary? Would I have made her eyes so bagged and wrinkled? Would the cracks in her exterior have shown up? Is she a better piece of art (in progress), a more accurate depiction because of my own recent suffering?

I hate believing that artists have to suffer to make good art. I would like to think that our suffering often draws us (or drags us, as someone recently wrote me) toward creative endeavors as a way of dealing with…processing the pain. Then again, there must be artists who never suffer, right? I don’t know the answer to that.

I am close to the end. I am on piece 1145. There are 80 more pieces to trace. Then it will be on to a different type of meditative act, that of cutting all those pieces apart. I might need to divert some time and energy to the cutting out of fabric pieces for the other piece, the one that needs to be done by the beginning of January, which is drawing closer. The time of year that I hate so much is also drawing closer, the holidays. No break from that this year.

Speaking of breaks, I realized I had been avoiding staying home on Saturday nights…that I had spent over 9 years going out every Saturday night, although usually just to movies and dinner, but money is tight and I spent my weekly budgeted allotment for entertainment on Thursday night, plus I have a lot going on this weekend, lots of stuff that has to get done, and I was feeling overwhelmed, especially since I didn’t do any real art stuff two nights running. And then I was trapped here for 4-plus hours because the oven has been seriously malfunctioning (again) and I was waiting for the fixit guy to show up…luckily, it was the same goofy guy from two years ago who put in the last known thermostat for my oven in the entire world (seriously), and he took it upon himself to MacGyver a solution…

Yup. He didn’t have the right type of screwdriver to adjust the thermostat (long skinny tube with a tiny adjustable screw at the end of it), so he borrowed a wire coathanger from me and made one. Seriously. In my kitchen. And then he tutored me on how to use it and left it with me, and didn’t charge me for labor (I provided the metal). Worst-case, this will be a short-term fix and we’ll have to find some other ghetto option (he wanted to make sure I understood the after-market options would make my kitchen look ghetto…really? More ghetto than it already does?). Because the alternative is $1800-3000 that I don’t have to get a new one in that space. Or just build a fire in there, but that will upset the girlchild, and we don’t want that. Her dad’s oven is also on the fritz and he won’t get his fixed, so she can’t cook anywhere at the moment.

I did the grocery shopping on a Saturday night, like a loser. Yeah! I bought radishes. Exciting. I mailed my nephew’s birthday present, finally. I found incentive stickers for my classroom. These were all things that had been on my list. Tomorrow is my quarterly California Fibers’ meeting, as well as two soccer games, both of which I will miss due to the meeting. I have to plan for school and find my way to the gym.

So I decided when I got back from the grocery store that the best thing I could do for myself tonight was to just slowly experience the evening…do things I wanted to do, and maybe some I needed to (I wrapped all the UK Xmas gifts while he was calibrating the oven…they need to ship out soon)…

I knew I needed to prep the last three month’s of Sue Spargo’s birds to take with me on the trip to Houston (lots of hours on planes). I kind of stopped working on them when I almost burnt the house down with the August package. Whoops. But I need to get going on them. I don’t really NEED to. It would just make me feel better, and they’re easy to work on when traveling, unlike some of the stuff I’m working on at the moment. So I took a few minutes and did that…

I ate. I made dessert. I didn’t eat enough today, so it was OK to eat dessert (I ate real food too, don’t panic). I exercised (I cried during that because of the book I’m reading while on the bike). I meditated (cried during that too, but that’s OK and normal). It’s been a sad day, week…full of loss and realizations and things that are just hard to process…like a bad British pub meal sitting heavy in your gut. Either direction it goes, it’s going to hurt. Cry it out. That’s all I do. Once you’ve cried it all out, though, there’s a quiet sense of peace. It’s not happy, it’s not joyful…it’s just quiet. And some of the sadness is just gone for a while. It’s not overwhelming any more.

I also spent a lot of time petting cats (and dog) today.

That one sat on my lap for a while and I spent some concerted effort smoothing its fur and scratching its head. It was very appreciative.

That one asked for attention, rubbing around my ankles until I petted it…coming up near me while I was tracing and head-butting me until I paid her attention. Kitten is waiting for me to come to bed so she can curl up next to me and vigorously clean her nether regions, and then wake me up at my school-alarm-clock time, which is too early for a weekend wakeup, not that she cares. Close attention paid to the fur-creatures seems to soothe me for a moment. Plus they don’t care if I’m crying. Midnight will even help by cleaning my face for me. She often sits by me while I’m meditating, if I’m in the living room. She cleans herself to the sound of the meditative guy on my app. If I’m in my office, it’s Babygirl who’s listening, perched on the back of my chair, behind my neck.

I wonder what they think about my meditation. Or my crying. The food giver is sad. We love the food giver. She pets us. We must sit close to the food giver and purr on her (shades of Margaret Atwood’s Crakers). Then she will give us more pets and more food. And it will be good.

I got this huge long spam comment on my blog the other day…it was all like this…

Your {story-telling|writing|humoristic} style is {awesome|witty},
keep {doing what you’re doing|up the good work|it up}!|
I {simply|just} {could not|couldn’t} {leave|depart|go away} your {site|web site|website}
{prior to|before} suggesting that I {really|extremely|actually} {enjoyed|loved} {the standard|the usual}
{information|info} {a person|an individual} {supply|provide} {for your|on your|in your|to your} {visitors|guests}?
Is {going to|gonna} be {back|again} {frequently|regularly|incessantly|steadily|ceaselessly|often|continuously} {in order
to|to} {check up on|check out|inspect|investigate cross-check} new posts|
{I wanted|I needed|I want to|I need to} to thank you for this {great|excellent|fantastic|wonderful|good|very
good} read!! I {definitely|certainly|absolutely} {enjoyed|loved} every {little bit
of|bit of} it. {I have|I’ve got|I have got} you {bookmarked|book marked|book-marked|saved as a favorite} {to check out|to look
at} new {stuff you|things you} post…|

Like I could choose the words I really wanted to read and come up with my own message. I was amused. It’s almost like poetry. Love poetry of a sort. OK. Not.

I read this blog from start to finish…I think she liked one of my posts and I read one of hers, and then I read the rest. It’s not a lot, but it’s an interesting read. Things like that always make me question my OWN depression though…we always wonder if we have the right to be depressed, doesn’t someone else have it worse? I know people who have actually SAID that to me (not this time around), but I write them off pretty quickly. There’s a lack of understanding there. I think most people around me are trying to be understanding and supportive, and I don’t give many guidelines on how to do that, because I honestly don’t know…and yes, dear counselor, I’m pushing people the fuck away because it’s people that hurt me and I don’t want to be hurt. Everything I do is self-protective and based on years of practice in protecting myself, but there hasn’t been a lot of experience I’ve had with not needing that protection. It’s not my self-protective behaviors that caused this. They certainly didn’t help, but they weren’t the source of the problem. The source was not in me. My issues…well, I’ll get to them. When I can handle everything else, then I will get to them, and I will peel off the armor again, maybe, a little, and honestly…if you want to see the fucking armor peeled off, look at my art. There it is. It’s all hanging out and in the open…this is probably why I find it so hard to STAND next to my art and explain it. Because that IS the deep core, the inside, the painful emotional part. And you want me to own it? (I do own it…I just don’t want to explain it to you. You look at it. You get something out of it. You react to it. I put it out there. Don’t make me explain it.).

One of the things I like about the Fifty2Letters blog is that she posts art, really interesting art, as part of every post. And she writes well. And her story is compelling.

Reading other people’s stories…ideally it helps us suss out our own? My story…it’s complicated. It’s messy. It’s me.

I Get Tired

When people start to worry about me because of what I say or what I write here, I always tell them that they shouldn’t worry unless I’m NOT talking or writing. That’s when you know it’s bad. That’s when you know I’ve gotten out of control. I couldn’t write last night. There was too much in me, bubbling up to the top. I couldn’t process any of it, and that’s what this blog is at the moment…it’s the place I process all the thinking and feeling into something I can handle. I was also too tired, but there was just too much emotion rolling around. I couldn’t talk when all of this first happened, back in July. It took me a few days to be able to write. I couldn’t communicate. Even now, it’s hard to talk to people sometimes. I can’t talk without getting emotional, and there’s only so many places that’s appropriate. The counselor even brought that up yesterday when I was talking about it…she said, but you cry here all the time! But that’s your JOB…I can handle doing that here, in this enclosed space, because you’re not judging me (well, maybe you are, but I don’t care) or deciding if I’m fit to work here or if I’m someone you can’t talk to any more because I’m such a mess. I can cry here safely. (It’s OK. She knew that. She was giving me shit…she likes to challenge my assumptions.)

Thursday. Thursday was bad because I gave a test. Normally at school, my brain is so full of trying to deal with teaching and lesson plans and kid behavior that it doesn’t have time to wander off and get into trouble…and this week, it’s had lots to think about that is getting it into trouble. When I’m giving a test, it’s actually a quiet day. I’m not doing much. I was logging assignments into the gradebook and paroling the classroom for cheaters (yup, got some of them, but minor offenses), but my brain by the end of the day had dug itself a giant hole and was wallowing in it, because it had free time and that’s how it wastes free time. My gut was tied up in knots. I went to the gym to try to work some of it out, but some of the stuff that happened in the evening honestly made it even worse. I was too tired to even meditate. Even though the storytelling was good, it reminded me of what was not good and how far I have to go to get to good again.

Friday was even worse, not because I didn’t have to manage a lesson…I did. And the first class was awesome…I was excited that they were progressing so well. And then the second class hit. The wall. Of nonwork. Of just not working because? Oh hey, welcome to middle school. Welcome to the brain not realizing consequences for actions (or nonaction in this case). I went upstairs at lunch to check with my team and it was everyone. Every class. A giant pile of not-work. So I made it through the rest of the day fighting this nonwork, but it was incredibly frustrating, and my real problem at this stage of my slow recovery is that I have no buffer…I have no mental resources for dealing with anger, sadness, frustration. I just get more depressed. So as the last kid is walking out of 8th period, I’m thinking, “close the damn door…I appreciate your putting all the chairs up, sweetie, but I’m about to lose it.” And I did. I stood there and cried (unacceptable).

I can’t ignore the damn hormones in all this. PMS is getting worse and more often and longer (thank you, perimenopause), and it doesn’t help on days like that. But I don’t cry at school. I make it to the parking lot (semi-acceptable). I got most of it under control, because I had to go lock the computer cart up. I did that. I managed a brief verbal interaction. I went back to my room and made it to the car, where I lost it (acceptable). I wiped my face enough so that I could drive out of the lot, because my students are walking past the driveway, waving at me. Waving back. Trying to smile. Trying not to leak salt water (unacceptable). Made it to the counselor and cried in the waiting room (semi-acceptable, more so in a therapists’ waiting room or even like oncology or radiology). Cried through counseling (acceptable). Cried out the door, into the car, in the driveway (all acceptable; no one was in the waiting room when I went through).

I wish I could say the day was a done deal at that point, that I could have gone home and put on my pajamas and eaten dinner with the kids and watched some TV show with them, but the girlchild and I finally had an appointment to deal with hair (I couldn’t get the brush through the last 3 inches of mine at the time). The problem for me is that the person who cuts our hair has a connection to the cause of all my grief, and I was hoping she would be a mature person and handle it all appropriately, but it could go badly. I had an exit plan, but I’m such an emotional mess at the moment that it might not matter.

We get there. My brain’s a mess. I had decided against taking grading with me (I have waiting time while girlchild is getting her hair cut…I like to use waiting time for grading so I don’t have to use other personal time for that). School-related stuff has been part of the problem…it makes me think, “So this is your life?” and get upset about it. So I leave all the grading and take my sketchbook. I draw.

Really. I drew. I know. Of course I drew. My art brain is much better at taking care of me than any other part of me. And I realized that as I was listening to her talk to the girlchild that she was being kind. She was being respectful. She was avoiding the bad bad, but still saying good and nice things about depression and stuff related to being a woman going through shit, and she spoke carefully. And at some point, when she got to my hair, she realized I wasn’t in a place to decide anything about it, and she just did what she thought would be good, using her years of experience (which is why we like her), and she kept saying how this would be better. And she gifted me some product (not a full container, but sweet nonetheless) and we left…and as we walked out, I told the girlchild, “She was nice to me. She was kind.” and started to cry. Because I didn’t know if she would be. Some people are just good people. Some people are nasty selfish bitches, but she made me feel OK for a bit. And my hair does look much better. She’s always going to be right about that.

The rest of the issues are still plaguing me. I didn’t write last night because I was still mired in sad (still am today as well, but I’ve had a decent amount of sleep at this point). I exercised, I watched TV with the kids, I meditated. I read. I didn’t make art…I was too damn tired, more than tired, it was emotional exhaustion. I have so much to get done this weekend that I have to start focusing on it soon, or things will fall apart (they won’t really…but it will feel worse if I don’t get some of these things done). I’m feeling all those “should’s” in my gut right this moment. I’ll be better if I can get some of them done and move on to the stuff that makes me feel almost human: drawing. Wonder Under. fabric. I don’t know what else today brings. I haven’t planned beyond about 2 PM. That could be a problem, but it’s certainly an indicator that I’m having issues this week. I do the stuff I have to do, but my brain then shorts out and freaks out and I start crying again.

I’m crying right now. I get tired of it. I get tired of feeling this bad. I get tired of thinking about it. I get tired of being sad and angry and feeling like I’ve done everything wrong. Or trying to persuade myself that I haven’t, that it wasn’t me, that I couldn’t have predicted this or fixed this. This is the maelstrom my brain wanders in at the moment. Think of it as a blinding sandstorm. Hopefully I will find a way out of it this weekend…somehow.

I appreciate her kindness. It doesn’t fix anything, but it made a small difference for a short period of time. And at least I know I can get my hair cut without trauma.

Pushing Back the Swamp

I seem to have pushed back at least a little of the swamp from yesterday. It’s still there, pokes its ugly head up, makes my guts clench, makes me feel nauseous, gives me this headache, and then leaves me alone for a while. I’m exhausted…didn’t sleep well last night. Waking up with chills and then night sweats. I’m not sick. My body did this early on…for the first three weeks on and off. I just figured it was psychological. I’ve had a few since then…problem is, I’m used to the night sweats. Had them for years. They actually seemed better in the last two months, but these chills, they’re awful. I’m so cold I can’t get warm. I pile all the blankets on me, including the down comforter, and then I wake up an hour later sweating to death, and then I get the chills again. Don’t Google it…it’s just freaky. Quite honestly, it could be anything from stress to low blood sugar to something to do with my current meds, which are probably all out of whack with the massive weight loss. So I’ll wait until I go to the doctor next month and bug her about it…try to document when and if there are any triggers…nothing much else to be done.

I’m tense today. Body is tight and about to jump out of its skin. And tired. Not a good mix. But better than yesterday. Yesterday sucked. Really really bad. There will be more days of suckitude. I know my triggers and I try to deal, but there’s only so much talking the logical brain can do until the emotional brain just shuts it outside and turns the music up loud.

I went to a school meeting today about teachers and technology and the law. It was helpful in some ways, but remarkably vague in others, because quite honestly, the law hasn’t caught up with reality. It’s amazing though what teachers are held to that the rest of the world doesn’t need to care about…we live in a culture where a high-ranking government official can be sending pictures of his penis to random women, and teachers are supposed to still be living in the Dark Ages of morality. My art has always been an issue…if someone complains, there will be an investigation. The question I had was is the password I use necessary? I instituted the password about 4 years ago because a parent complained about my website anonymously (hence, no investigation) to the superintendent. I freaked out (like you do) and put the password on there. That said, if you Google me nowadays, my images are all over the web. They’re published in books that you can buy at the local bookstore. If someone is going to come after me for my art, the password on the website isn’t going to protect me. Nothing will.

That said, the lawyer I talked to suggested that art is not the same as my posting nude pictures of myself (wow, wouldn’t that be scary), that art had certain protections…and when it came down to it, if there was discipline against me, I was probably talking to the guy who would handle it. He did advise caution, but I get so many complaints that people can’t get into the site because of the password that I’d rather just get rid of it…and he basically said I could. That I was in so deep with the art at this point that it wouldn’t matter.

So did I come home and remove the passwords from every post? Heck no. First of all, I’m still thinking about it…paranoid daughter of a lawyer here. Second, it would take hours to remove all the password protection, from what I remember from the last time I did it. I could just not use a password from here on out.

I’m still thinking. I already know which of you will urge caution and which will squeal hallelujah.

So it was a long day, nonetheless, but I eventually made it to the tracing table…

I’m about 1015 pieces in (although there are 10 missing? Maybe? I certainly can’t find pieces 986-995), 9 1/2 hours in…about 200 pieces left…nearing the finish line…at least on this step. I think I’m up to 7 yards of Wonder Under…not sure. Too tired to check. Need to take my headache to bed.

We’re getting new teacher computers at school next week, after 4 years of using that ancient beast…it won’t really matter to me, because I usually leave it at school anyway. I have three computers in the house…it seems like enough, although now I’m totally paranoid that something is going to go wrong that I can’t fix (or that the boychild can’t figure out). I hate being vulnerable. Did I tell you that? I need an Ironman suit that also is capable of dealing with everything breaking and going bad and falling down and shooting water into the sky and trees falling down and cars breaking down and all that shit. I’m so tired of being the only one dealing with it all and not having anyone else you can depend on for help with getting it done or packing it up or cleaning it up or any of that. It just gets old.

The wonder of being a single mom. If I weren’t such a mental mess, I’m sure I would be able to get them to tidy up a bit more, but I just don’t have the energy.

Tomorrow…tomorrow is going to be interesting. I don’t know if it will be good or not, but that’s the thing…you never do know. Taking the sad person to sleep. I’ll tell you, if one more person says you just have to CHOOSE to be happy and it magically fucking happens, I may have to launch myself at them. I’m sure that’s possible if you aren’t carrying around biochemical markers for depression, but right now, happiness is not something I can just magically choose, and if I did, I would be faking it. You have to get through the grief and make sure that what was cracked is at least mending, that whatever caused all the issues in the first place is actually gone or going or at least well understood. Otherwise you’re just going to be doing it again at some point in the future, and if you’re lucky like me, you’ll do all the healing and mending and then you’ll get to do it all again because someone ELSE didn’t do it and you get to pay for their dumbass maneuvers.

Yeah. So hopefully none of THAT angst will wake me up in the middle of the night. I need my rest.

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