The Teething Stage

I’ve been wandering around wondering if I have feelings left to hurt. When I’m alone, I’m almost certain that I’m heartless and soulless.

When you’re in limbo you find yourself with your head in the clouds, or anywhere other than the present moment, to avoid reality. Because reality does bite once it’s past the teething stage.  And what do you know? I have no Anbesol to take the edge off.

Bottom line: I don’t believe in love anymore. I never believed in finding “the one” in the first place.

Hoping this is just a stage, a transition.

Baby steps. Baby steps, I tell myself. With time this confusion will pass. I need to recognize this despite the fact that it seems impossible for me to move on. Obsessing is part of how I was built.

How many times did I endure the heartache? How many times do I look back and say, that was the moment? That was the moment you should have left. There are so many moments, in retrospect, that I start to lose count. But no worries, it’s all written down somewhere. So that when I stumble across it in my wayward travels I experience hell afresh.

I keep stopping to tell myself that the years were not wasted. After all, I was becoming someone, and even managed to create someone. Such a little beauty that seems to represent the best that was ever in us.

You do get to that point where you think you no longer have the capacity to feel. Then the thought of no longer being able to feel , or a memory, or a song on the radio, makes you wail. 

Something New

Currently in search of someone to light up for.

Let me explain.

I drove around this morning to find that this song was not about someone new, but about someone who has been there for the last thirteen years. And it very nearly broke me.

For the past few months, I wanted to be able to feel again. To feel anything but this void that I find myself in. Now I want to be prepared the next time I drive into a pile of feelings. 

Despite the potential consequences to my psyche, despite the fact that I'll probably never be ready, and despite the reality that memories crop up and emotions will linger, I am in search of something and someone new.

I want to know what it is to be appreciated for who I am. I want to drive around singing like a madwoman at the top of my lungs. I want to be weird and carefree for once in my thus-far  paltry existence.  

Perhaps most of all, I want to light up like a fucking Christmas tree at the thought of someone. 

I can’t believe that you would think
I’d never see that you deserve the best (deserve the best)
If you’re afraid, then I’m to blame
I should’ve never let it come to this (come to this)

Sometimes we just have to walk through the fire (the fire)
Just to see once more what has never shined brighter (shined brighter)

Don't say enough, we’re not out of love
We just grew up having to find out that
Hearts go astray, sparks slip away
But I have to say, I still light up for you
For you, I still light up for you

Don’t let the tears undo the years
That got us here we traveled all this way (all this way)
And no matter how we sort it out
Know I’m for sure that you’re the one for me (the one for me)

Sometimes we just have to walk on the wire (the wire)
Just to understand we have never felt higher (felt higher)

Don't say enough, we’re not out of love
We just grew up having to find out that
Hearts go astray, sparks slip away
But I have to say, I still light up for you
For you, I still light up for you

Nobody said it would be easy
We thought we could prove them wrong
And we know it takes more than a feeling
To carry the two of us on
But I still believe in our love
Yeah I still believe in us
I still believe in us
I still light up

[x2]
Don't say enough, we’re not out of love
We just grew up having to find out that
Hearts go astray, sparks slip away
But I have to say, I still light up for you
For you, I still light up for you

On Becoming Self-Aware

Trying to determine your own self-worth is a learning experience.

We all make mistakes, but I refuse to beat myself up over my perceived infractions. I am a rare and delicate creature and given time I will come to understand that regret can sometimes be a good thing.

It is, in fact, better to have loved and lost. But the important thing is not to lose your sense of self. I was lost for so many years that I began to doubt my own existence. It's no way to live. I have recently come to the sometimes harsh realization that I am real. What I think and say matters. I have limited influence over what other people will do, but it is imparative that I assert myself. And that I continue to be myself.

Part of me is music. Part of me is writing. Part of me is my lovely daughter. Part of me is the light of self-realization. Part of me is hope. Part of me is a profound love of the world that I am priveleged to share. Part of me is regret, but day by day I am shedding that part. There is always a new facet of myself on the horizon, and new parts of myself to love.

Change is not necessarily a bad thing: evolution is a necessity if we are to grow as people. I grow by the hour it seems. I grow into things and out of other things, and none of it makes me a bad person. It is the essence of what it is to be human.

And it is time to be forgiving of others who are also ultimately human. I leave you with this beutiful piece by Hugo Wolf, sung by the lovely Jeanine DeBique. 

.
The Forsaken Maiden

Early when the cock crows
Ere the stars retire,
I must stand at the hearth,
Must tend the fire.

What beauty in the fire's light,
When the sparks are leaping,
I stand gazing long at them,
Lost now in my grieving.

Suddenly I remember,
Unfaithful fellow,
'Twas you I was dreaming of
Until the night had ended.

Tears well up and fall
One upon the other;
The day has just begun—
Oh, would that it were over! - See more at: http://www.cingolani.com/2em.html#sthash.o0lsEbAh.dpuf

Every Which Way but Loose

Well those of you who know me well (or read my stuff at all) will be quite shocked to learn that I drove on the freeway the last two days. I must be losing what's left of my mind.

My job is going well. I still find that I need to get out more (some immersion therapy, if you will, to combat social anxiety). The struggle is real, people. And it’s really with people. But I can no longer drink myself into a stupor in order to say the things I’ve been feeling. Time to be as brave in real life as I purport to be online. Watch out Boise, I may even start singing sober again.

Interestingly, all of those years I spent nearly crippled with stage fright, I never thought of having a drink to loosen up. I was too much a perfectionist and thought surely imbibing something before a performance would negatively influence my pitch, among other things. Little did I realize (though it was suggested by one professor) that what I needed for this anxiety was medication. I didn’t take kindly to the suggestion that I needed to be medicated at the time, because I was a young twenty-something and I knew everything. Yes, those of you who knew me in high school and college might readily recognize that my head was, and sometimes still is, stuck up my own ass.

Yet I wonder if they had struck upon this particular cocktail of medicines earlier in my life. What might I have accomplished? I love my daughter and I don’t regret one second of our time together. But I wonder about how my path might have differed if I had followed my preferred professions.

And then, naturally, I wonder if it is too late for me. I’m almost forty years old (though some would argue a tad preternaturally preserved). Can I still do this? Can I open my mouth and allow music to consume me once again? Can I perhaps get back the octave of range I’ve lost? Or was that simply something that was never meant to be?

And then there’s the other art I love, that of acting. I started out in plays because I found it was the only way to speak in public that didn’t involve my stage fright. I became rather good at pretending to be someone else. No wonder, since I wore the mask of normalcy over my illness for so long.

So it’s been fun being a coward and hiding in the shadows. I’m going to start getting out there somehow. Maybe I’ll even end up a geriatric actress in a laxative commercial.

Stranger shit has happened.  

Miss Mood

I'm trying not to be too swayed by my emotions. It's not working so well. One minute I'm fine and the next I'm openly weeping. Alone time is not my friend in this respect.

In Utah, I was a bit of a social pariah, with the exception of my husband's work circle. Now I find myself with a variety of social events on my calendar. It's strange, and a tad overwhelming. It's good that I'm getting out but I still find it difficult to mask my anxiety.

I filled my prescription, and I feel more balanced. I have a vehicle now, and a job. My boss is very focused on goals, which is inspiring. I've lost a bit of weight without really trying. These are all excellent things.

And yet I'm struggling with my moods. I wonder how much is circumstantial and how much is just brain chemistry. I am at odds with myself. At times I know exactly how to articulate, other times my brain refuses to work with my mouth when I speak or my hands as I type. I am at once bold and then immeasurably shy. I have moments of calm only to have my pounding heart or shaking hands betray me. I started books in earnest and then abandoned them almost completely. I spend way too much time on Facebook, scrolling repeatedly, when I should be accomplishing something significant. Or even something simple, like remembering to eat lunch,

I sleep well, most of the time. When I dream, it’s about school or one of my first jobs. I’d like to say not all of them are nightmares.

Then there are the issues of awkwardness and silence. On Halloween, Violet and her cousin played “the quiet game” as we drove them around in the van. My husband and I played the same game as I dropped him off at a motel later that evening.

I am nothing if not stubborn and resistant to change. Yet I know, as difficult and illogical as it may seem, that I want to stay here.

Shattered

I was finally checked in to the mental health walk-in clinic. I sat in the corner, wary of all the couples present due to my social anxiety. I knew it would be a while. So I decided to check Facebook. I was reading about at a high school friend's overseas adventures when the trouble began.

The patient waiting at the counter seemed like a nice enough person. Nice clothes, hair done neatly, a red plaid wrap around her shoulders. She pointed to the receptionist and said, 'F*** you," in the calmest manner. She then smashed the nearby planter up against the wall, swept everything off the receptionist's desk, and attempted to further damage the wall (and perhaps the receptionist) with a decorative metal bird of some sort. When the gentleman behind her thwarted her from her attempt to inflict more destruction, she walked out. But as she did she smashed the glass of the front door and it shattered. Other witnesses said that the first explosion of glass sounded like a gunshot. I don't know whether she broke the door with her boot or if she had picked up another object, as my view was obstructed by a nearby wall.

The door continued to shatter throughout the evening, dropping pieces of glass at random times.

Oh, this adventure did nothing for my anxiety. I shook for hours after leaving the clinic.

But on the bright side, I got my prescription, after answering some awkward questions. About the wonderful show I was treated to in the waiting room. About the separation, About my old doctor's inability to help me and my new doctor's refusal to see me before November 30th. About my fun trip to the hospital that one time. About any manic symptoms such as overspending and hyper-sexuality.

I was on the verge of tears throughout the conversation. The physician's assistant concluded that, all things considered, I seemed a bit depressed.

The side door was locked when my appointment concluded. I exited with a few employees out the front, gingerly stepping over pieces of glass.

My Social Butterfly

This Washington Post article brings up a lot of excellent points. As I read it, I recall a tale my mother once told me about how I was quite the social baby. I learned that once, as a tyke, I wanted a particularly ugly man at a bowling alley to hold me. I sat on the man’s lap, and laughed and smiled at him, as if nothing pleased me more than to babble at him incessantly.

That was long before the harm of bullying was inflicted, leading to my social anxiety. And I admit I now try to avoid most strange men I meet in bowling alleys and elsewhere.

My daughter, Violet, also had to cultivate stranger danger. She has always been a social soul. As a baby she once reached out for a female cashier at Albertson’s to hold her. She was insistent, and she eventually got her way.

Fast forward about a year and a half. There was an older gentleman in the dollar store who was raising my red flags for some reason. He was indescribably creepy.  He kept trying to engage Violet in conversation as she sat in the cart. She refused to reply, so he attempted to play a game of “peek-a-boo” with his sunglasses.

The man finally walked away. When he was barely out of earshot, Violet exhaled and commented, “Phew, that was close!” It was a phrase she had often heard watching her superhero cartoons. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

I am a somewhat the classic introvert. Violet is extroverted like her father, and often tries to make conversation with unfamiliar children, but she remains cautious around adults in social situations.

I still need to explain the “puppy” experiment to her, however. And I think she would fall for the candy trick in a heartbeat.

Yikes.