peanutbutterjellytime

Dear Small-On-The-Inside-BIG-On-The-Outside,

I saw a picture today.

Strange... it was accompanied by your height and weight. It was labeled with your name and something called DOB... the date listed was your birth day. Funny, right? Despite the fact that the picture looked exactly like you, the hair color and eye color were both listed as "brown". I knew then that it couldn't be you. Your hair is dark ash. It sticks up all over your head, especially in the back where it is nearly impossible to cut in a way which doesn't cause it to stick out funny, and they didn't mention that. The description would have said that because that's important. Your eyes are something like "brown", but they're a lot more like transparent. What's in there clearly doesn't have a color... or if it does, it's hurtandfightandfearandfuckyouandhugme... but it's not called "brown". Anyone who looked into them would know that. I knew it the first time I looked you full in the face.

That's a lie. I felt it the first time I watched you from behind, struttin down the road, back straight, shoulders squared, head tilted a little higher than necessary on what could only be a newly very tall frame so that nearly everyone would have to ask to permission to see those eyes.

Anyway, he had to be someone else's kid. If he'd been you they would have mentioned that smile that just don't quit with the under-bite and the way you look down a little when you're half-embarassed/half-proud when I'm laughing at how funny you are and how bad I'm beating you at Scrabble.

He wasn't smiling, but he reminded me of you a little.

There are a couple of bruises on that kid's face and neck. I'm curious as to where they came from... it's my nature. You know I always wanna know where things come from... always have 2.5 million questions. Remember that time you were fighting this kid, and he threw that mug at you? Poor white kid, you got that big purple bruise on your arm with that big knot under the surface. You said it didn't hurt, but you flinched a little when I felt the knot. I bet if I touched that kid's face, something sore would be on the surface. I wonder if he would flinch... I wonder if he would let me...

Remember that time you got too angry to be still? Remember how that man called you "son" and something snapped and it was all you could do to leave the room to avoid fighting him? Remember how I put you in the car and we didn't speak and we went to breakfast because I was out of ideas... and we ate pancakes and you spoke about the people whose son you are... and you experimented with syrups and I thought about how close you were to... well, to the mess that kid in the picture's in? How close you were to falling off an edge that would be the fulfillment of everything these people whose son you are had taught you?

I know that you don't remember how badly I wanted to get into that car and drive so far away...
drive until we were in a place with no cell phone reception
where none of your home boys could find you
where DSS stood for "Damn Silly Story" (or something equally descriptive)
a magical place where we could go back in time
and you could magically be 5 years old again
and I could pick you up
sit you on my lap
and hold you
while you told me all about the flowers you destroyed and where the stains on your shirt came from and how you wanted to be Superman and how slippery the tadpoles in the pond are...
where I could make sure that your hair didn't stick up in the back,
and your dreams weren't nightmares faced alone,
and you could play basketball in the yard with friends who didn't know what weed was unless we were talking about dandelions,
and I could make you peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,
and you would get at least some more time before you knew what it felt like to be punched and hurt and dismally disappointed,
and I could take a bat to anyone who even looked like they might make you feel like that.
A place where someone would be able to show you what a real man looks like and how he goes about protecting and defending and representing and providing and loving.
A place where you could grow from that chubby little boy you told me you were into the very tall, strong, generous, smart, affectionate, defender of younger kids I always knew you to be.
A place where there would be pictures of that chubby little boy doing things chubby little boys do so that you didn't forget him when you grew tall like the trees.
Where your smoking of cigarettes and love of curse words really would be my biggest worries.
Where the facial hair that still hasn't grown in would be the biggest of yours.

(That kid doesn't have hair on his face either. See? It takes some people a while.)

I don't know where you are right now. I haven't really heard from you since they put you out for being so mad that you couldn't stop punching someone and too mad to talk and too big for that to be safe... except that time we went to take the SAT in hopes of leaving the college option open for some time in the future when you felt like you could take on a project other than staying alive and then had lunch and you threw bread at pigeons and laughed like someone half your size.

I think about you every day... I think about you like there's some big, dumb hole in my brain/heart the shape of your big, dumb head. I still expect to see you at the library or walking around the neighborhood or asleep on the chairs in my office. You come to mind unbidden at night when I talk to God before attempting sleep. I think about you every day in the breath just before I think about how I'd be out of a job if we could all get the love we need and everyone thought a little more about justice and hugs and education and prayer and training and respect and affection and pancakes and Superman and people who hold you hand when you're scared and a little less about blame and punishment and lessons and entitlement... forget back-flips on the tightrope, wouldn't THAT be MAGICAL. Bring me a circus filled with THAT.

I'm wondering if the people wherever you are know that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are code for "I love you, and it's safe to stop acting like a time bomb." I wonder if that kid is as disarmed by peanut butter and jelly as you were. I wonder if anyone even tried that.

He really did look a lot like you.

His eyes called my name and "help" and "maybe it's too late" all at the same time, and I had to sit down outside where there was air in a hurry.

Call me. Let's start driving...

Love Always,

Welcome Back, Campers! :)

So long between posts... are they even called "posts" if they come so far in between? I feel like they're snap-shots taken along the way... like maybe a series of shots taken from the car as the photographer drives way too fast so some of them are a little blurry.

I have a bit of something to say, something which I am less comfortable putting out on the internet, but I think that maybe it would be good for me to go ahead and say it in the interest of alerting others who might struggle with similar issues and need maybe to go get help like I finally ended up doing. I also realize that a lot of the judgement would probably come from people who are ignorant of disorders in the depression spectrum and don't understand me anyway. Those people are welcome not to read the following.

A year and some change ago (oh, stop it with the puns, Blue, seriously. ;) ), I began seeing a counselor. I was in yet another job I hated with a similar set of issues I had faced in my past much-hated jobs, so I finally reached the conclusion that either I didn't know how to pick a job that didn't put me into a victim position, I didn't know how to quit when I realized I was being victimized, I was imagining the entire thing and had no idea why I would do such a thing, or God hated me and wanted me to be profoundly miserable for the rest of my life. Realizing that I also tend towards the more dramatic end of the spectrum, I had been putting off dealing with this for some time, convinced that if I could just make up my mind, move, decide to "follow my dreams", think more positive thoughts, etc., I could just "snap out of it". Snapping was seeming increasingly impossible. Additionally, I had thought for years about becoming a counselor, thought I was getting close to starting the process, and couldn't stomach the idea of offering these services to another soul without trying it out myself first. After realizing that my life was poo, at an absolute stand-still, and, dramatic or not, my mind was going into increasingly depressing places, I finally, with the help of a friend/angel, made an appointment and went in.

It was a cold and rainy day (Actually I can't remember, but I've always wanted to use that line!). I found myself in a room with a white man in his 50's with profound eyebrows. Pictures of hunting dogs and grandchildren scattered the room. He sat on a wooden rocking chair and asked me why I was there. I explained that I had recognized that I had a problem. I told him that I realized that I was not struggling with something debilitating (this was a lie), that I was not in any real danger (also a lie), and that I felt like I was over-reacting a little (yet one more lie, although I still feel the need to defend this more often than not). I told him that I wanted to address the problem directly. I told him that I needed concrete assistance and that if he even suggested anything that bore a slight resemblance to bullshit, I would get up off the couch and leave immediately... something I once brought up in a session, saying that I was not sure that I would have had the courage. "You?" he responded. "Nope. You would have been gone."

Four nearly interrogation-like sessions later, the man clicked the light on. Turns out there's a word for this. Ladies and gentlemen, meet dysthymia...

The main symptom of dysthymia is low, dark, or sad mood nearly every day for at least 2 years. The symptoms are less severe than in patients with major depression, but people with this condition can still struggle with:
Feelings of hopelessness
Insomnia or hypersomnia
Low energy or fatigue
Low self-esteem
Poor appetite or overeating
Poor concentration
(https://health.google.com/health/ref/Dysthymia)

Dude, I can't tell you what happened that day. I was suddenly not crazy. I was not imagining things, not lazy, not wallowing, and not a useless chunk of human being. I had a name for the never-ending inertia... a word to refer to the constant feeling that everything was going to suck forever, that I was never going to be good enough... there's a reason I feel that I, a perfectly decent human being with a number of sterling qualities, have, beyond reason, felt like utter crap about myself every day for as long as I can remember... a reason that I felt like part of me was standing outside looking at the mopey, indecisive, underachieving me and shaking her head... simply having a name for all of this was more freeing than I can explain. Despite the fact that nearly everyone I knew would probably never have guessed it, I had been sad, stressed, and immobile for years. Perhaps that's the real tragedy--they had simply gotten used to my constant slight sadness.

Oddly enough, I had also been anti-diagnosis for years. I felt that a diagnosis made it ok to give up and stop trying to overcome something... a diagnosis was something which defined a person and made the person weak and able to make excuses for that weakness... something people did and received as an excuse for their inability to get up like the rest of us (HAHA) and accomplish what we do (HAHAAAA!). Geeeez, the air got thin up on that pedestal.

The problem with NOT having a diagnosis is that then there is nothing to deal with. I don't know how other people feel, but I felt (and still feel) that the diagnosis gave me focus. My tendency towards inertia and half-empty thinking is something which has a name. It's no longer an all-encompassing personality flaw of which I must be ashamed.

Here comes some science...
The high level of stress and transition in my life as I grew up never allowed my brain to develop steady levels of serotonin. Serotonin is the chemical in the brain which allows all of us to feel calm, safe, and like everything is generally ok. Without the regulating, one goes up and down, never feeling really safe, really calm, or really ok. Stress and mild sadness are constant. I read dysthymia described once as "an invisible Nerf bat pounding on the inside of my brain." It's not debilitating, but it makes doing anything nearly impossible. It's always in the way. Whether I had a genetic predisposition to this or not, the theory is that my brain doesn't know how to keep serotonin levels stable. Although it is possible for dysthymia to become clinical depression and require medication, the most effective route to go here is counseling. Get this-- because the brain can grow and change and all of that, I can literally re-train my brain to regulate the serotonin. It's kind of amazing to me... the brain can change behavior, and behavior can change the brain. The feelings and thoughts we have are not just ethereal things floating in the atmosphere... they are also chemical pathways at work in our brains. If I work to make my thought processes change, my brain will adapt. It's super-cool. It's actually the preferred method for dysthymia. Meds tend not to be as effective as they can be with clinical depression, but I will take the pills if someday it becomes necessary. Life is too damn short to be so sad. If it means counseling forever, then so be it. I will not lay down and be conquered by this. This is the only life on this earth I get. I'm going to do what I have to do to be able to enjoy it and make use of it.

There has been a lot of get-up-and-go in the course of my own counseling journey. I have been pushed to apply to school, pushed to make some changes in my job and personal life, pushed to analyze my family and friends and the forces at work there, pushed to address my spirituality and how it and the ways in which I choose to express and experience, pushed to look clearly at how I see my body and choose to live in it... it's so far from easy, but I'm a believer in counseling. It turns out I'm not weak. It's not a character flaw, and I'm not Debbie Downer. I'm not doomed to a dead-end and disappointing life, and God loves the hell out of me. I just need help seeing that through the now occasional brain fog. My counselor doesn't have all of the answers, but, mumbo-jumbo as it may sound, he sees me. He sees me as I've never been able to see myself, and it makes me feel like I could climb mountains. We all need that from time to time, sometimes more intensively than others... but we all have those moments in which it's just too dark, and we can't see. It's really helpful not to be alone.

My parents have each faced major health issues this year, graduate school (suprise, surprise) has it's own set of issues, work is no picnic, I'm still pretty poor, and my hormonal cycle continues to be challenging, but I feel MUCH better. My life is in motion now. I can honestly say that I have more good days than blah, and I actually like my life the vast majority of the time. I may get tired and fall into old traps of complaining, but I currently work one of my dream jobs, I am going to school to get certified to do something I know I'm my soul I was made for, and in many ways I have healthier relationships than ever before.

It's not all cotton candy... but cotton candy is unrealistic anyway. I'm just happy the Nerf bat seems to be at least taking a breather more often than not. I can't tell you how relieved I am. It's mighty peaceful in here...

It is impossible...

... to explain everything which has transpired since last I wrote. Here are some of my learnings:

1. There is a reason they call it working FULL-TIME and going to school FULL-TIME. Doing both at the same time in one life results in a negative quantity of time and whole lot of half-assed assignments in both domains.

2. Our system for assisting those suffering with any kind of mental challenge and their families is one of the more broken things in our world. No one gets what they need without unimaginable pain and stress that does not let go. The only way to get through this is one breath at a time.

3. I love the boys I work with more than I ever thought it was possible to love children that did not come out of my own womb. They smell, they curse, they are involved in all sorts of destructive behaviors, they devour media whose benefit I cannot find, they only love you back when it suits them, and they have attitudes bigger than the whole sky... and somtimes things happen and they run away and I don't know where they are or if they are safe or cold or hungry or dead or injured or scared or sad or destroying themselves by some other means, and when they come home I realize why my heart was racing and I could't sleep and it makes tears in my eyes and I have to hold on to them for a few seconds and touch their faces to make sure that the peices are still attached. There are moments in every day I work there that are so fundamentally human that my heart literally hurts. Human = someone needs to listen to my story. Human = someone needs to be there for me to give my school papers to. Human = someone needs to hug me when I get home. Human = someone needs to laugh at my jokes. Human = someone needs to be delighted that I came back with both feet under me. That anyone could birth a child like any of the children in my cottage and ever give him away... ever consent to have him taken away... ever not be able to find the strength necessary to move heaven and earth for him... this baffles me. I am better able to interact with the bafflement than I have been in the past. The parents concerned cannot find the strength. Things have happened beyond their control. Most of them come from so many generations of shattered families that they do not know how to even think about being 1 of 2, let alone 1 of a whole family. The world is an ugly place, and foster care is another place where the ugly shows clearly. All I know is that if the universe conspires in such a way that I cannot adopt or have a son of my own, I think that my life will be incomplete. Seriously, I have sisters; I knew about daughters. I did not know about sons. Why didn't anyone ever tell me about sons?

4. I have the capacity to literally love anyone. This is both a blessing and a curse. I am still learning how to interact with this quality. Love is, after all, both blind and the answer.

5. EVERYTHING (from eye contact to tone of voice to words that are said to when to speak and when to not to what you say and how you say it and what color shirt you're wearing and more things even than that) about communication is cultural. There literally are different sets of rules for different colors of people, and an annoyingly small number of people are able to understand that people should be treated differently when they deliberately slight you than when they simply did not speak your cultural language.

6. The flu SUCKS. Seriously, that thing knocked me on my behind for 1 week and left me perpetually dizzy and exhausted to weak for another week on top of that. I lay there and thought, "Yep, I could see how someone could die from this. It wouldn't be that hard to die from this." Still firmly in this world, but it was truly awful.

7. I need curtains on my windows in my room. I have decided to go ahead and let this be a long, laborious process of picking some that I really love instead of settling for ones which will work but which I don't really care about. This is probably metaphorical, but for now it's about curtains. Stop judging me.

8. Speaking of judging, I do not know where single women even go to find a man. I am open to this possibility, and I feel like, despite #1, now is the time. There is a startling lack of options.

9. I hate school and everything it stands for. Who said this was about education? I've said it before, and I'll say it again; school getting grades which is about figuring out what the teacher wants and delivering it.


I think that's probably enough learning for now. I'm exhausted. My life is exhausting. I do, however, love almost everything I get to do. Who's complaining? Not me. :)

pines

We were talking the other day, singing to each other about homes...

me with my voice
and you with your many souls moving, it seemed, from the trees...
called from the woods and the collective memory
of the battles you fought... the babies you birthed... the tears you cried... the pies you baked... the children you taught... the prayers you prayed... the songs you sang,
songs you sang to Him about the home you were building...
the home for when this earthly house decays...
the home for your soul because what was home now was so thoroughly painful, so systematically stifling, so all-encompassingly dehumanizing...

My soul felt called to attention by the legacy you left...
to the power you left soaked into an earth wet with your tears and blood and the sweat from your brow,
trees standing tall like strong arms holding up hope where hope might only be imagined,
air thick to stifling like so many judgment-laced glances,
so many assumptions
so many condemnations
from
so
many
sides
to a place so dark that understanding only comes in lightening flashes, gone before I can focus my eyes...
so dark that my own skin means that I can only feel it from the periphery, feel it radiating from souls walking into and out of the room of my life...
so dark that color still colors everything like a red sock in the whites...

I asked you there what I could do.
I heard your voices join mine.
You moved my heart to a place where the only desire is more voices - where the only longing left was that of throwing my life down to build the path to Him Who is the Hearer of all cries, Singer of all songs

- where I loved so much that I could not breathe -

And I felt my heart cease to beat alone.
I felt my heart cease to beat alone.
I felt my heart cease to beat alone.

*

This memory sits fresh on top of love and more love like just enough pillows made of just enough smooth softness,
and I am among your little daughters again,
and in the quiet hours of the night when one of yours comes to me and her heart says, "Speak. Tell me what you saw,"

I tell your daughter to always know that she is born of love and of strength and of love and of faithfulness and of love.
We speak of drums and prayer and sounds and souls and dignity.
We speak of the fight against the forces that seek to cover her light over with darkness, to tell her, loudly and from all sides, that her light is, in fact, darkness.
We speak of remembering what those whose skin she shares lived and died for.
I tell her that if she keeps her mind open and the conversation with Above in the front of it, she will know when it's her heart speaking.

And I tell her heart that it will hear what mine has heard.

That you are all around, waiting to be hailed.

And that, baby, we none of us beat alone.

too big

Last night was one of those nights in which I was completely over-whelmed with how GIANT the task I'm engaged in is. This job and the magnitude of what we're doing here are completely on the abnormal end of the scale.

NORMAL: Mom and Dad make baby. Mom and Dad raise baby to be contributing member of society, complete with random psychological issues inherent in the process. Baby turns into adult. Adult make own choices and runs (a part of) the world. Wash, Rinse, Repeat, right?

I mean, sure there are manifold variations on the theme, but come on...

MY JOB: 3 single women in their late twenties with very little administrative support and shockingly small financial resources take turns raising 9-10 teenage girls in varying stages of crisis. Women must fight against a society which not only objectifies women but praises them for objectifying themselves, drugs, gangs, their own hormones and the hormones of those around them, an education system which has forgotten them except when it comes to punishing them for the attitudes that they developed in response to their trauma, lack of positive role models, and the persistent lack of ability to connect meaningfully to anything meaningful, not to mention a spiritual structure which, obliviously of course, doesn't recognize the profound impact of culture on the language the souls in question speak because, let's face it folks, we don't all speak the same language.

Oh
Dear
God
what
am
I
doing?

I am over-come in such moments with the fact that there's a good chance that all I can do for them is pray, attempt to shed some light, pray, love really loudly, pray, and maybe hope that something Written sticks in their heads. If they get to college or a job and not prison or immediate pregnancy, the operation will be a success.

Which in reality would be among best-case scenarios if they were of the few who actually get 2 semi-functioning parents... so does that mean that the parenting is the problem? Our parents are also under-supported, under-resourced, and, likely, having a lot of the same all-encompassing questions I am, which are really centered around one big question:

Is it enough?

To which I'm pretty sure the answer is a resounding NO. It's not enough. Simply providing for basic needs and praying for the best is just plain NOT enough... NOT enough for anyone. We are not our bodies; it's not just a material world, and I sure as hell am not a material girl... which means what? I have some ideas of some directions from guidance I'm constantly striving to immerse myself in and an ever-widening scope of what it's not supposed to look like, but it's slow going. It's very slow going.

Where is the through-line? How much of this is just stepping out on faith?

“when he went away/ the blues walked in and met me”

We like to have very PC conversation about men keeping women down, women’s ways of doing things and thinking about things as superior to the male approach, equality as sameness, and the like, but current neurological research shows clearly that there are a number of very importance difference between men and women which explain many of the stereotypes we’ve grown accustomed to accepting… men don’t listen, men can’t find things, men only think about sex, men aren’t in touch with their feelings, etc. Things I’m reading and thinking these days make me sit back and evaluate these thoughts in a different light.


I’m into this new thing called a “learning mode”… you know, attempting to approach things in life, the universe, and everything with the idea that I have something to learn from an experience. It has been an exercise in humility, and I think that, as a strong and fiercely independent woman, humility is called for here… here being not just my wee life but search to find ways to understand and serve in God’s grander movement of humanity towards peace and prosperity.


There is a reason that clichés and stereotypes have become clichés and stereotypes. It’s not that they’re always true, but there’s a reason that things stick in our collective head. Apples, for example, do not tend to fall far from the tree, what goes up does tend to come down, and I don’t know about you, but I have found, at least so far, that the rains turn to pours in my life at a moment’s notice.


It leaves me wondering about what else is true, or at least indicative of a predisposition in a certain area. The differences in our brains are interesting. For example, I am told by most of the men in my life that there are times that they’re actually thinking nothing. Nothing. I am fully prepared for this never to be a reality for me. I can safely say that there is never a moment of silence in this head of mine, nor do I know any women for whom this would be false, except in moments of highly practiced meditation, during which I’m sure there must be some sort of thinking going on… mostly because I cannot actually imagine it being truly quiet. Peaceful, yes. Softer, sure. Empty? Thinking nothing? What does that even mean? Freedom from rolling over in the middle of the night to hear some random song from the day playing in your head (this morning it was T-Pain singing “I could put you in a mansion/ way up in Wisconsin/ said it’s nothing you could change your name T-Pain what’s happening”… SO troubling)? Wow. The experience in a body in which that’s not a reality would be so different. I think it’s why I can’t sleep with music on. It’s NEVER quiet in my head, and I always want to sing along, too. Who cares about sleep when you could be singing?


Anyway there are better examples I can think of once my head isn’t so full of other things, but what I’m trying to say is that strengths and weaknesses differ. What would happen if we actually looked at the stereotypes being thrown around and tried to see if what there is to learn... like what if "men don't ask for directions" might also indicate an inherent tendency towards individual initiative and individual investigation of truth. What if we looked at that as a natural predisposition to a strength instead of putting it down? Perhaps we would get farther not always jumping to emasculating our men. I'm not sure how that works, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't look like our current system.


Empowering women isn’t about disempowering men. Something in my wonders if we’re failing our men… like the standard for them must be re-evaluated in light of changes in balancing the wings, but it doesn’t mean that our men become dispossessed of their inherent strengths and skills to which they are predisposed. There has to be a way to empower both wings. Surely God created us complimentary.

something I wrote a while ago

I want to start by apologizing.

I realize that it’s ridiculous.

Ridiculous that the rain always seems to make me feel as though the drops must be the hope in my life, falling from God’s grace, to be mixed with the shit on the road and run over by my tires.

Ridiculous that I become a walking question mark, italicized backwards to be always downward-sloping, always a singer of sad songs, a crier of loud tears.

Ridiculously frizzy of hair and short of patience.

Ridiculous

and so far from above ridicule from me and myself
(as I sit snickering in a corner… any corner… all corners…)

But it is truly so terribly real in those moments

I really do hurt like a hangnail,
like a limping sprained ankle,
like hair pulled during the deepest of headaches.

And the
deep,
oh-so-dark,

secret

is

that I don’t actually want you to leave me alone.

Despite how sharply I prick you when you ask to help,
how wildly my arms flail when you look at me in that tone of voice,
And how many times I insist loudly that I am strong,
that I can handle me.

I can.

But.

It’s dark, it’s cold, and I want you to hold me, whoever you are, and let me have my moment.