....I've got about a thousand blurred shots of butterflies in flight. I had just gotten my Rebel and was spazzing about all the pretties. I can't wait to go again to enjoy them.
Sunday, 4 November 2012
Ballet in the air
Not having the Best Day Ever (headache, y u visit me today?), but the blog must go on. How about pictures? These ones make me happy - they're from the Butterfly Conservatory in Niagara Falls, Ontario. I made some notes about what each of them are but I can't find them. :(
For every shot that I got one with wings spread
or neatly folded so you can see their wings
or how they're pirouetting
or pausing on a flower
or a leaf
or a stem
or a railing (where it was nearly crushed by a careless passerby after my shutter clicked)....
....I've got about a thousand blurred shots of butterflies in flight. I had just gotten my Rebel and was spazzing about all the pretties. I can't wait to go again to enjoy them.
....I've got about a thousand blurred shots of butterflies in flight. I had just gotten my Rebel and was spazzing about all the pretties. I can't wait to go again to enjoy them.
Saturday, 3 November 2012
The gradient's against her, but she's on time
Over the years, I've been told by many, MANY people that I would be
better off I had a driver's license. They've talked about mobility,
about freedom, about not being trapped by public transit and where it
goes and on what schedule. Taking driver's ed at forty made me wish I'd
taken it earlier, because the biggest hurdle between me and my license
at forty was having my kids in the car while I was driving. They were
all supportive and encouraging, but I never lost the terror of "OMG what
if I screw up and get in an accident and KILL ALL OF MY KIDS!" Learning
to drive as a teenager, I imagine, would have been easier with that
sense of immortality you have when you're that age. Hindsight,
twenty-twenty. I rarely regret not being able to drive. But every once
in awhile, I do experience a moment where I look up at the sky and
close my eyes and wonder why the hell I ever thought public
transportation was a good idea.
I try really hard to maintain a presence in my kids' lives, and because for the most part, I've got a good relationship with them and the people who are part of their everyday - aside from their dad - it's been fairly easy to do. I have email contact with my kids' teachers, am Facebook friends with some of the girls' most important bffs, know more about Xbox games, especially Minecraft, that I ever intended to, in order to have in-depth nightly conversations with my son. A physical presence in their lives is harder, because I work during the day during the week, and they live far enough away that it's difficult and uncommon for me to travel to where they live. On transit, between the subway and the GO train and the bus, it takes me between two and a half and three hours to get door to door, depending on the time of day I'm leaving. It's good knitting time, and my iPod or Playbook will keep me entertained if I'm too restless, or too tired, to knit. But it's still four to six hours in transit, and that can take a lot out of you. I save those trips for special occasions, or off-weekends where I can't wait to see them.
Back in the spring, my baby girl was graduating from junior public school and looking towards grade seven at the high school. This was an immensely big deal to her, to her friends. They've all been together since kindergarten, and most of them are continuing with French immersion. They've been a tight group, and they were all sad about leaving their teachers, friends and siblings in younger grades. My girl is more emotional than either of her siblings, and she had bubbled over with both happiness and excitement about this change she was looking forward to, and also with sadness and a sense of loss at the comfort of friends and familiarity that she was leaving behind. I was excited for her, but I understood her sadness. There was no way I could attend her graduation ceremony, as it was at eleven in the morning on a day when we had more than ten closings, but she told me she didn't want me to feel bad, her dad would be going, and she REALLY wanted me to attend the grade six clap-out anyway.
I had attended Mel's clap-out when she finished at the junior school. The building is L-shaped, and immediately prior to the grade six classes being dismissed, all of the younger students, teachers, friends, parents, line the hallways. The principal makes sure that there are strategically placed boxes of kleenex. The grade sixes are dismissed, and everyone claps rhythmically. The students slap hands with the people who line the halls. They stop to hug teachers, volunteers, parents of friends, who have seen them grow and change over the previous seven years. There are always tears, and smiles, and promises to keep in touch. Mel, who likes to pretend she is evil incarnate, didn't make it to the bend in the hallway before she was crying too hard to see straight. I fully expected Maddie, who is, as aforesaid, more emotional, substantially more sentimental, to have an intense reaction to clap-out, and I had no intention of missing that shared experience. Especially since Maddie's dad, in the end, had not gone to her graduation, because he thought a ceremony for grade six was stupid, even though she was changing schools. My boyfriend surprised her by showing up unexpectedly, and both my girls called me that night to tell me what a good guy I had. He told me Maddie had introduced him to all her friends as her step-dad...which came out of nowhere, because the subject has never come up.
I had to be on the eleven-twenty train in order to be there on time, so I really only showed my face briefly at work and then had to leave. Each time the subway stopped between stations, I held my breath until it started moving again. I changed trains at St. George to take the southbound train to Union, and the layover was almost ten minutes. It wasn't until I had my ticket in hand that I really exhaled, and killed a few minutes by strolling around the station looking at pashminas and glancing at the screen that would tell me when I could hit the appropriate platform and board my train.
When there's a problem at Union Station, it doesn't stay quiet for long. I hadn't seen the big red CANCELLED over my train yet, but I definitely heard the uproar it caused for other people waiting for that same train. A GO representative came out and tried to soothe all of the people who clustered around her. She told us that someone had been hit on the track between Union and Danforth, and that the next train would be leaving from Danforth Station...so all we had to do was get back on the subway and head north for ten or so stops, then east almost to the end of the line, and we could catch the train that would normally leave Union in an hour.
I ran for the subway, just like everyone else did. Part of me was freaking out. I'm not going to make it in time. One of the people who had fallen into the same group I had seemed to be a sort of GO ambassador, and he was smiling and assuring everyone that there would be a train for us when we arrived at Danforth Station. Many of my fellow passengers were skeptical and angry, and we blended into the regular crowd of TTC passengers in pockets, where we anxiously clustered together and tried to stay near the guy wearing the GO pin on his lapel.
I won't bore you with the mundane details. We got to Danforth Station in about forty minutes, where the guy on the platform told us there would be a train inside of ten minutes. A variety of announcements came over the loudspeaker, some reassuring us that there would be a train shortly, some asserting that the next train that passed us would be an express from Union and would bypass this station. We stood there till after one o'clock. Knowing that my train journey was generally an hour, followed by a bus trip that was nearly an hour, I'd already given up hope of being at Maddie's clap-out. And I was angry with myself, for working those first two hours of the day instead of heading directly for the GO station and standing around outside the school if I had to, for not incorporating the possibility that on the day I NEEDED to be heading eastbound from Toronto, some guy in his twenties would decide to crank up his iPod while he was walking on the tracks and not notice the vibration.
I'd ended up standing with three other women. One was heading home from visiting her boyfriend, hoping to catch a couple of hours of sleep before heading out to her retail job. One had left work intending to work from home for the day when the office air conditioner cacked. One was a student at U of T who'd finished her last class of term and was heading home for a few days of relaxation before starting her summer job. We were all cranky and quiet, standing in direct sunlight on hot blacktop, all of us pissed off about the delay to our plans for the day.
When the train finally pulled into the station, we sat together. There were a few moments of silence, enjoying the a/c, being out of the sun, moving on an express train in the right direction. Once we were acclimatized, then there could be conversation. Mostly I listened. I was cautious when I spoke, answered the question about what plan I'd had that was being disrupted by the day's events, because I knew if I talked for too long, I would start to cry.
When it came to be my time to share, all I said was that I'd wanted to be at my daughter's last day of school ceremony, and that I was sad I was going to miss it, because at that point, even if I was express on the bus as well, the earliest I could get to the school was to arrive well after everything was over. I remembered saying to her, I will move heaven and earth to be there that day, baby girl. One of my seat-mates asked me what school my daughter went to, and when I told her, the U of T student said, oh, I had friends that went there and they did that clap-out thing, is that what your daughter is doing today? I nodded, swallowed hard. Conversation moved on.
We approached the end of the train ride, and as we stood up to make our way to the doors, the student slipped her arm under my elbow. I'm taking you to the school, she told me.
I have typed and erased several unflattering comparisons between my reaction and fish out of water, but I'll spare you the actual description. I protested that I wanted her to find an ATM so I could at least reimburse her for gas, because I had no cash. She told me that her grandmother lived in a senior's residence just down the street from my daughter's school, and that this seemed like a really good time to surprise her with a visit.
When we got into the car, she told me quietly that her dad was in Europe when she graduated, and she knew what it was like not to have a parent in the audience during that milestone moment.
I cried unashamedly, filled with gratitude and relief. She passed me a box of kleenex and made me laugh through tears when she told me to take a few extra to have during clap-out. I told her I had no idea how to thank her. She dropped me at the door of the school, ten minutes early, and asked me to just pay it forward sometime. I never knew her name and she never knew mine.
I don't see myself driving in a meaningful way at this late date in
my life, because I really am more of a public transportation type of a
person. And, when I returned to Toronto after celebrating my baby girl
that day, I bought ten extra tokens and distributed them randomly among
strangers in Union Station before I boarded my own train home. I know I
made at least one person's day, but I'm not sure it was even close to
the extent to which someone else made mine.
(Maddie's in the back row, far left, with the crazy black and pink hair.)
- title courtesy of Night Mail, by W.H. Auden
I try really hard to maintain a presence in my kids' lives, and because for the most part, I've got a good relationship with them and the people who are part of their everyday - aside from their dad - it's been fairly easy to do. I have email contact with my kids' teachers, am Facebook friends with some of the girls' most important bffs, know more about Xbox games, especially Minecraft, that I ever intended to, in order to have in-depth nightly conversations with my son. A physical presence in their lives is harder, because I work during the day during the week, and they live far enough away that it's difficult and uncommon for me to travel to where they live. On transit, between the subway and the GO train and the bus, it takes me between two and a half and three hours to get door to door, depending on the time of day I'm leaving. It's good knitting time, and my iPod or Playbook will keep me entertained if I'm too restless, or too tired, to knit. But it's still four to six hours in transit, and that can take a lot out of you. I save those trips for special occasions, or off-weekends where I can't wait to see them.
Back in the spring, my baby girl was graduating from junior public school and looking towards grade seven at the high school. This was an immensely big deal to her, to her friends. They've all been together since kindergarten, and most of them are continuing with French immersion. They've been a tight group, and they were all sad about leaving their teachers, friends and siblings in younger grades. My girl is more emotional than either of her siblings, and she had bubbled over with both happiness and excitement about this change she was looking forward to, and also with sadness and a sense of loss at the comfort of friends and familiarity that she was leaving behind. I was excited for her, but I understood her sadness. There was no way I could attend her graduation ceremony, as it was at eleven in the morning on a day when we had more than ten closings, but she told me she didn't want me to feel bad, her dad would be going, and she REALLY wanted me to attend the grade six clap-out anyway.
I had attended Mel's clap-out when she finished at the junior school. The building is L-shaped, and immediately prior to the grade six classes being dismissed, all of the younger students, teachers, friends, parents, line the hallways. The principal makes sure that there are strategically placed boxes of kleenex. The grade sixes are dismissed, and everyone claps rhythmically. The students slap hands with the people who line the halls. They stop to hug teachers, volunteers, parents of friends, who have seen them grow and change over the previous seven years. There are always tears, and smiles, and promises to keep in touch. Mel, who likes to pretend she is evil incarnate, didn't make it to the bend in the hallway before she was crying too hard to see straight. I fully expected Maddie, who is, as aforesaid, more emotional, substantially more sentimental, to have an intense reaction to clap-out, and I had no intention of missing that shared experience. Especially since Maddie's dad, in the end, had not gone to her graduation, because he thought a ceremony for grade six was stupid, even though she was changing schools. My boyfriend surprised her by showing up unexpectedly, and both my girls called me that night to tell me what a good guy I had. He told me Maddie had introduced him to all her friends as her step-dad...which came out of nowhere, because the subject has never come up.
I had to be on the eleven-twenty train in order to be there on time, so I really only showed my face briefly at work and then had to leave. Each time the subway stopped between stations, I held my breath until it started moving again. I changed trains at St. George to take the southbound train to Union, and the layover was almost ten minutes. It wasn't until I had my ticket in hand that I really exhaled, and killed a few minutes by strolling around the station looking at pashminas and glancing at the screen that would tell me when I could hit the appropriate platform and board my train.
When there's a problem at Union Station, it doesn't stay quiet for long. I hadn't seen the big red CANCELLED over my train yet, but I definitely heard the uproar it caused for other people waiting for that same train. A GO representative came out and tried to soothe all of the people who clustered around her. She told us that someone had been hit on the track between Union and Danforth, and that the next train would be leaving from Danforth Station...so all we had to do was get back on the subway and head north for ten or so stops, then east almost to the end of the line, and we could catch the train that would normally leave Union in an hour.
I ran for the subway, just like everyone else did. Part of me was freaking out. I'm not going to make it in time. One of the people who had fallen into the same group I had seemed to be a sort of GO ambassador, and he was smiling and assuring everyone that there would be a train for us when we arrived at Danforth Station. Many of my fellow passengers were skeptical and angry, and we blended into the regular crowd of TTC passengers in pockets, where we anxiously clustered together and tried to stay near the guy wearing the GO pin on his lapel.
I won't bore you with the mundane details. We got to Danforth Station in about forty minutes, where the guy on the platform told us there would be a train inside of ten minutes. A variety of announcements came over the loudspeaker, some reassuring us that there would be a train shortly, some asserting that the next train that passed us would be an express from Union and would bypass this station. We stood there till after one o'clock. Knowing that my train journey was generally an hour, followed by a bus trip that was nearly an hour, I'd already given up hope of being at Maddie's clap-out. And I was angry with myself, for working those first two hours of the day instead of heading directly for the GO station and standing around outside the school if I had to, for not incorporating the possibility that on the day I NEEDED to be heading eastbound from Toronto, some guy in his twenties would decide to crank up his iPod while he was walking on the tracks and not notice the vibration.
I'd ended up standing with three other women. One was heading home from visiting her boyfriend, hoping to catch a couple of hours of sleep before heading out to her retail job. One had left work intending to work from home for the day when the office air conditioner cacked. One was a student at U of T who'd finished her last class of term and was heading home for a few days of relaxation before starting her summer job. We were all cranky and quiet, standing in direct sunlight on hot blacktop, all of us pissed off about the delay to our plans for the day.
When the train finally pulled into the station, we sat together. There were a few moments of silence, enjoying the a/c, being out of the sun, moving on an express train in the right direction. Once we were acclimatized, then there could be conversation. Mostly I listened. I was cautious when I spoke, answered the question about what plan I'd had that was being disrupted by the day's events, because I knew if I talked for too long, I would start to cry.
When it came to be my time to share, all I said was that I'd wanted to be at my daughter's last day of school ceremony, and that I was sad I was going to miss it, because at that point, even if I was express on the bus as well, the earliest I could get to the school was to arrive well after everything was over. I remembered saying to her, I will move heaven and earth to be there that day, baby girl. One of my seat-mates asked me what school my daughter went to, and when I told her, the U of T student said, oh, I had friends that went there and they did that clap-out thing, is that what your daughter is doing today? I nodded, swallowed hard. Conversation moved on.
We approached the end of the train ride, and as we stood up to make our way to the doors, the student slipped her arm under my elbow. I'm taking you to the school, she told me.
I have typed and erased several unflattering comparisons between my reaction and fish out of water, but I'll spare you the actual description. I protested that I wanted her to find an ATM so I could at least reimburse her for gas, because I had no cash. She told me that her grandmother lived in a senior's residence just down the street from my daughter's school, and that this seemed like a really good time to surprise her with a visit.
When we got into the car, she told me quietly that her dad was in Europe when she graduated, and she knew what it was like not to have a parent in the audience during that milestone moment.
I cried unashamedly, filled with gratitude and relief. She passed me a box of kleenex and made me laugh through tears when she told me to take a few extra to have during clap-out. I told her I had no idea how to thank her. She dropped me at the door of the school, ten minutes early, and asked me to just pay it forward sometime. I never knew her name and she never knew mine.
(Maddie's in the back row, far left, with the crazy black and pink hair.)
- title courtesy of Night Mail, by W.H. Auden
Friday, 2 November 2012
I hate sleeping in a messy bed.
My kids are all starfish. Give them the open space of a queen sized mattress and suddenly even the smallest body can take up a huge amount of space. Blankets, rearranged and flung. Pillows, piled and folded. All three of them have been this way as long as they've been alive. Waking up with one of them in my bed is like waking up in the aftermath of a hurricane...no disrespect intended.
Me, I'm a self-hugger. I can get into a fully made bed, corners folded in precise military-style, all pillows fluffed, down comforter puffy...and ten hours later it would look like only the furthest left side seven inches of the bed had been mussed. One indentation in my pillow. The entire other side of the bed is completely undisturbed. I've suffered from chronic nightmares all my life, but I sit straight up when I wake up with the horrors, and I flop straight back down again to drop back into the same horrible dream. The bed is always neat when I wake up by myself, no matter how bad a night I might have had.
About a year ago, sleepily cuddled up to my boyfriend, he told me the Life Changing Story of the Linen Revolution. I share this only because I'm sure that it's still an underground movement, not known to many outside of our speshul snowflayke circle. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he is a Flailer, a Spinner, a determined Twister and Usurper of blankets and sheets, especially fitted ones.
Our bed linens have been oppressed for thousands of years. Pinstripes, paisleys, patterns, nay, seams, edges, the very corners of our coverings, all contribute to the unwitting conspiracy to enslave them, to force our linens to lie from head to foot on our beds, to keep our pillows fluffed and arranged, to make them conform to our ways. It was a surprise to me, that morning, lying in a Saturday stupor and wanting him to just shut up and either go back to sleep or get out of bed and make me some tea, to understand that I was perhaps unwittingly partaking of the enslavement of an entire race of linens. Thus was born the Linen Revolution. And, my boyfriend solemnly told me, he was an ambassador of the linens, spoke to others of their oppression, and in support of their solidarity. He said, I try wherever possible to give them their freedom, to permit striped patterns to be diagonal instead of north-south or east-west, to allow paisleys to be upside down, to allow pillows to fold in half and fitted sheets to explore the middle of the bed.
And then?
And then....
And then I said, f*ck it. I WANT to oppress the sheets. I LIKE it when they stay fitted over the mattress corners. I PREFER it when the comforter isn't balled up and hoarded under someone's knees. I ENJOY having at least two pillows to myself, with the pillows straight inside the case and not twisted or bunched up or flattened. I am an oppressor, dammit.
So...every other morning b/f gets up before me. I sleepily flail about for ten minutes trying to make the covers go the right ways and the sheets to cover the mattress while I'm getting those last few minutes in bed, and eventually he brings me tea...better tea than I make myself, soaked with milk and honey. Alternate mornings I get up and make black-as-night coffee for him, while he makes a gigantic cocoon of EVERYFUCKINGthing that's on the bed and sleeps soundly through me bringing him a hot beverage and getting dressed to go to work.
I very rarely get a night in my bed all to myself, and I always think I will enjoy it more than I ever do. I'm not a Linen Freedom Fighter...but everyone I sleep with IS, and it's less restful than you'd think, waking up alone in a neat bed.
My kids are all starfish. Give them the open space of a queen sized mattress and suddenly even the smallest body can take up a huge amount of space. Blankets, rearranged and flung. Pillows, piled and folded. All three of them have been this way as long as they've been alive. Waking up with one of them in my bed is like waking up in the aftermath of a hurricane...no disrespect intended.
Me, I'm a self-hugger. I can get into a fully made bed, corners folded in precise military-style, all pillows fluffed, down comforter puffy...and ten hours later it would look like only the furthest left side seven inches of the bed had been mussed. One indentation in my pillow. The entire other side of the bed is completely undisturbed. I've suffered from chronic nightmares all my life, but I sit straight up when I wake up with the horrors, and I flop straight back down again to drop back into the same horrible dream. The bed is always neat when I wake up by myself, no matter how bad a night I might have had.
About a year ago, sleepily cuddled up to my boyfriend, he told me the Life Changing Story of the Linen Revolution. I share this only because I'm sure that it's still an underground movement, not known to many outside of our speshul snowflayke circle. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he is a Flailer, a Spinner, a determined Twister and Usurper of blankets and sheets, especially fitted ones.
Our bed linens have been oppressed for thousands of years. Pinstripes, paisleys, patterns, nay, seams, edges, the very corners of our coverings, all contribute to the unwitting conspiracy to enslave them, to force our linens to lie from head to foot on our beds, to keep our pillows fluffed and arranged, to make them conform to our ways. It was a surprise to me, that morning, lying in a Saturday stupor and wanting him to just shut up and either go back to sleep or get out of bed and make me some tea, to understand that I was perhaps unwittingly partaking of the enslavement of an entire race of linens. Thus was born the Linen Revolution. And, my boyfriend solemnly told me, he was an ambassador of the linens, spoke to others of their oppression, and in support of their solidarity. He said, I try wherever possible to give them their freedom, to permit striped patterns to be diagonal instead of north-south or east-west, to allow paisleys to be upside down, to allow pillows to fold in half and fitted sheets to explore the middle of the bed.
And then?
And then....
And then I said, f*ck it. I WANT to oppress the sheets. I LIKE it when they stay fitted over the mattress corners. I PREFER it when the comforter isn't balled up and hoarded under someone's knees. I ENJOY having at least two pillows to myself, with the pillows straight inside the case and not twisted or bunched up or flattened. I am an oppressor, dammit.
So...every other morning b/f gets up before me. I sleepily flail about for ten minutes trying to make the covers go the right ways and the sheets to cover the mattress while I'm getting those last few minutes in bed, and eventually he brings me tea...better tea than I make myself, soaked with milk and honey. Alternate mornings I get up and make black-as-night coffee for him, while he makes a gigantic cocoon of EVERYFUCKINGthing that's on the bed and sleeps soundly through me bringing him a hot beverage and getting dressed to go to work.
I very rarely get a night in my bed all to myself, and I always think I will enjoy it more than I ever do. I'm not a Linen Freedom Fighter...but everyone I sleep with IS, and it's less restful than you'd think, waking up alone in a neat bed.
Thursday, 1 November 2012
In this life, you're on your own
Last Friday I was supposed to be facing my ex-husband and his
lawyer in front of a judge, to begin the battle for primary custody of
our children. Three weeks ago, an administrative judge reviewed his
lawyer's motion to postpone this first confrontation to sometime in
January, or later ("I'm busy, can't do it that particular day") and my
counter-motion to request that we proceed as scheduled ("All papers have been filed so there's no reason to put this off, and by the way, this is the 7th time they've requested a delay"). That judge not only adjourned the existing date, but after reviewing the file
and seeing that I had protested the sixth request for a delay, I was slapped with a $150 costs penalty for "repeatedly" not
playing nice with the other lawyer. The previous judge
awarded a ten day extension instead of the sixty plus that my ex asked for, because he needed time to file his 2009/10/11 taxes to support the
financial statement he was required to provide. I said, I'll take the confirmation
he's filed and he can provide the supporting documents later, because
if he hasn't filed his taxes from 2009 yet, what kind of open-ended
postponement is going to get him to do it now? That judge agreed with
me. Wait, what?
The last one is the really big one...the one that tells me that sometimes I'm getting a little too near the edge for my own comfort. I don't feel like there's enough of me to go around. I'm scared I'm losing me. For the first time in my life, I've debated going to a doctor to talk about getting a prescription for antidepressants....something I've been hugely contemptuous of in the past, to the point where I'm not on speaking terms with my father about his active desire to drown his issues in prescription drugs. Caveat - people who are genuinely depressed need medication. I have friends who suffer from depression, and I'm not down on them in the slightest. I get the difference. I just don't know what side of the line I'm falling down on more often yet, and I feel like, if I can step back and go, wtf, are you kidding me?, if I enjoy my kids, my friends, my job, I probably don't need Prozac just yet.
I've worked in a law firm for almost three years now, and EVERYONE says, do not, never ever, believe that your case, your position, is a slam-dunk. That is the worst kind of self-delusion possible. I know my own case, better than anyone. I believe in my position, otherwise I wouldn't continue. But, in more than a year of active combat (and by active, I mean, back and forth in court), in a legal sense, this is the first time I felt like I'd unwittingly counted on something happening, something being ruled in my favour. I was devastated when I got the letter that said, sorry....not happening, at least, not on your terms.
There's nothing I can say, really. I keep waking in the night, night after night, with tears on my face. I feel muzzled. The stress-related facial tic under my right eye is back. Crying, now, is like opening the valve on a pressure cooker...it lets off some steam, but sooner or later you have to close the valve and the pressure builds back up if you're not taking the pot off the heat.
I started this blog last summer, in view of my Facebook paralysis, and it never really got off the ground. One whole post. So thanks, Tameka, for issuing the NaBloPloMo 2012 challenge. You may have saved my sanity. I'm going to try to post every day, and comment on at least ten other fellow participants' blogs every day. Bring it on, November. Imma beat this sh*t.
The past ten months especially have been frustrating in the
extreme. I didn't realize how accustomed I'd become to wrestling with
my sh*t and working it out in a public forum by writing it down and
submitting it for analysis to a jury of my peers on Facebook. Been doing it since 2007 - never got on on the blog-roll, because I didn't feel like I posted regularly enough. I've missed writing those notes, more than I can express here in a few words, but I've also become hyper-conscious of the repercussions that could follow - statuses
included - which precludes feeling completely comfortable right now. I used to feel like I was an open book. Not so much,
anymore. The part about that that pisses me off most about that is that
every. goddamn. word. that I write is suddenly something I have to
evaluate with six other pairs of eyes. More often than not, the result
is silence.
Angry.
Frustrated.
Sad.
Scared.
Paralyzed.
If I was someone other than, well, me, I'd use the word depressed.
The last one is the really big one...the one that tells me that sometimes I'm getting a little too near the edge for my own comfort. I don't feel like there's enough of me to go around. I'm scared I'm losing me. For the first time in my life, I've debated going to a doctor to talk about getting a prescription for antidepressants....something I've been hugely contemptuous of in the past, to the point where I'm not on speaking terms with my father about his active desire to drown his issues in prescription drugs. Caveat - people who are genuinely depressed need medication. I have friends who suffer from depression, and I'm not down on them in the slightest. I get the difference. I just don't know what side of the line I'm falling down on more often yet, and I feel like, if I can step back and go, wtf, are you kidding me?, if I enjoy my kids, my friends, my job, I probably don't need Prozac just yet.
I've worked in a law firm for almost three years now, and EVERYONE says, do not, never ever, believe that your case, your position, is a slam-dunk. That is the worst kind of self-delusion possible. I know my own case, better than anyone. I believe in my position, otherwise I wouldn't continue. But, in more than a year of active combat (and by active, I mean, back and forth in court), in a legal sense, this is the first time I felt like I'd unwittingly counted on something happening, something being ruled in my favour. I was devastated when I got the letter that said, sorry....not happening, at least, not on your terms.
There's nothing I can say, really. I keep waking in the night, night after night, with tears on my face. I feel muzzled. The stress-related facial tic under my right eye is back. Crying, now, is like opening the valve on a pressure cooker...it lets off some steam, but sooner or later you have to close the valve and the pressure builds back up if you're not taking the pot off the heat.
I started this blog last summer, in view of my Facebook paralysis, and it never really got off the ground. One whole post. So thanks, Tameka, for issuing the NaBloPloMo 2012 challenge. You may have saved my sanity. I'm going to try to post every day, and comment on at least ten other fellow participants' blogs every day. Bring it on, November. Imma beat this sh*t.
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