Thoughts

July was an awful month. In so many ways it kept reminding me how I was inadequate: ill prepared for this life, incapable of plotting my own course in seeing it through, ridiculous in my pursuits and even that I was a terrible parent, because my daughters came home from camp with lice.

I am kind of an experiential learner, sometimes my best lessons are learnt with tears running down my face. I am that child who never understood "hot" until I had burnt my hand. Even then I would still want to poke at the fire, questioning but "why, why, why"? I say no to everything, so if I say "yes" you have to bet that I have spent a lot of time psyching myself up for the event. And when the "yes" doesnt work out the way that I want, I am dumbfounded, reeling and I begin the process of disambiguation/ rumination till the senseless/ pointless and useless makes some form of sense.

I interpret life in a way that makes zero sense to those governed purely by logic. My logical side, who comes in a close second, reminds me always why something is not a good idea, is like my sidekick holding out a helmet or knee pads saying "you might want to put these on, that could hurt". But my emotional side says I have to try it, I have to feel it, I have to be it, I have to experience it.

So I am stuck half way on a continuum of belief and disbelief, in confidence and in self doubt, in safety and in reckless abandon.

7-21-16

Send your words he said. They’re meaningful. To someone, somewhere. The strings of conflicting experiences, the non-stop chatter, they had some value. There were people who would read them and feel something. I don’t know what they would feel, but they would feel more alive than they do, in this world where everything numbs your ability to feel; your wine, your coffee, the lull of the train, it numbs you until you are senseless, defeated, and you have forgotten how to simply exist.

Send your words, he said. They are the things we wish to say, that we cannot summons up in our weariness. In the way that our bodies ache, in the way that we are forced to be so close to each other, head to armpit, I accidentally bump into you, a look in my direction is not even granted, it would be too much effort.  We are crammed into this place, the putrid stench of too many bodies, together in our bustle, yet we have nothing and no one. We’re alone and we all just can’t stand it.

I send my words, I write them for him, in the hopes that he is the one person who can understand.  I live this life of occasional agony, brief glimpses of togetherness, then huge walls of separation where I linger, mulling over everything I did wrong, trying somehow to prove my worthiness.  My pain is nothing and it is everything, it is universal and it is individual, it is everything and it is nothing. It is human.

Around me there are marriages, and dissolutions of marriage, new babies, happy families, engagements, people in my group of friends who have long term relationships, like 30 years, and I am incredulous. When did I get to the age where I had grey hair on my temples and people have known each other for 30 years? I mourn the loss of where I thought I was going, periodically throughout the week. I am jealous of people whose husbands come home from work, who eat dinner with them, who tickle the children and tousle their hair.

My own children stand before me like I am this vast source of knowledge. I want to scream that I don’t know anything, and I should barely be allowed to make choices as an adult, because obviously I choose the wrong thing. I try to smile at them, but my elder child cannot be so easily placated.  She bears worry on her face too. I try not to project unnecessary distress onto her. I remind her I am an adult therefore I have it all under control. Then I worry how I am going to keep my words to her, true.

I lie awake long nights, my head a tally of the choices I made, the reactions to those choices, and whether those choices were the correct ones based off of the outcomes. I ruminate on what I could have done better, how someone else would have used the opportunities before them for something more beneficial.  Have I wasted this opportunity?

I will send my words, I write them for him, I write them for you, I write them for me. I write these words of universal distress. In a world of endless possibilities, and free choice, how do you know that you have used every ounce of your life for the best? How do you know you are not wasting these few days between your first breath and your last?

The river

We floated down the river in inner tubes. I became separated from the group, singular in my float in the meandering current. At times my bum scraped over jagged rocks, but for the meantime I was stuck in a circular swirl, I put my head back and looked up to the heavens.

A lady from the bus on the way up to the tubing drop off point was very talkative. She kept involving herself in our conversation. Stacey said something, and the lady retorted with her own anecdote. I decided then that I liked her, possibly because she reminded me of myself, just a person who could relate to anyone, who had a good natured comment about most things, who wasn't afraid to speak up.

Stuck in the swirl the trees began to twist, from pale lime green leaves bordering a royal blue sky. The more that I swirled, the more dizzy that I became. I was already a bit dizzy. Stacey had let me drink an entire 16oz German pilsner at lunch... And I had thoroughly enjoyed it, before heading off on our tubing experience.

A voice carried across the rocky water, it was that lady from the bus. She said to her friend "You know Jeff? Well he is married. Why do I always fall in love with the married ones?". And her friend said "I do not know".

My current took me ahead of them, the lady from the bus and her friend were tethered together in their tubes, I was solitary, the current carried me ahead at times because of my singular weight, and then sometimes it held me back. I guess there was no continuity in this river, because of that it grew rather irritating.

About twenty minutes later, I found myself behind the bus lady and her friend. We were slowed by an outcropping of slippery boulders.  This time the bus lady remarked excitedly "So I found the perfect dog for me!". Her friend said "Oh where did you find it?" and the bus lady said "We'll technically the dog already has a home, it's my neighbours dog, its a Great Dane and she is beautiful".

At this point I started laughing. I said "I heard your conversation earlier about Jeff, who already has a wife. And now you're talking about your neighbours dog, who already has a home". I said to her "I think you just fall in love with things that you can not have".  Her eyes popped out of her head a bit.

I asked her if she grew bored very easily. With her mouth agape, she nodded her head.

So I lay back in my tube and I watched the sky. I was stuck in a swirl again. I went round and round again. Then, I adjusted my hat.

As we got off at the exit point, they walked past me. They bade me farewell with the forced friendliness of cautious eyes.  You know how people just don't like to be seen. It's not of course like I presume to even know her. Just like I already said, I saw myself in her.

When you pray for a tomato.

The couch is cool supple leather beneath the length of my spine and I am able to fully stretch out and point my toes. I point one toe, then the next, feeling the stretch radiate through my hamstrings and into my hips. The room is dark, only escaping light from a scant centimeter around a paper shade that covers a small window in the basement. If only summer could be permanently escaped in a subterranean lair where you needn't come out except after dark to meet your friends.

I begin to imagine how to tell the story:

My day began yesterday when I failed my statistics exam. I studied exactly the same way that I did when I got 90%. I devoted exactly the same amount of hours to the craft that is "plugging and chugging" your way through formulas that only bored Greeks or uber geeks could fathom. I have foregone most of the summer festivities, I turn down birthday party invitations, pool party invitations, BBQ invitations, facetime requests, I don't return whatsapp messages or emails. All I do is take care of the most immediate need in front of me (normally the kids), the necessity for provision for their keep (my job) and peripheral jobs that aid their quality of life (cooking, vacuuming, cleaning, laundry, dishes, brushing and washing their hair). So when I got a whopping 35% for the exam I was more than heartbroken. I felt like the wind was knocked out of me. I had all the things that people have said about the American education system floating around in my head "oh you know in America they just give you a degree" (yes the education system is a lot different, and very forgiving, but you actually do more homework and participate more here), "American college is so easy anyone can do it" (actually yes anyone can get a liberal arts degree, the degrees that you can actually use that are worth their parchment that they are printed on are harder to get), "my cousin is so dumb and he got his engineering degree, just like that, anyone can do it". And there I was staring at my 35% when I began to get tunnel vision and feel panicky. I didn't have the words to speak. I was so flat, but in my spirit I was just praying.

The professor has four exams, comprising of 25% per exam towards the total mark. So I would have to get 78% in each subsequent exam in order to get a minimum grade of 70% (which is a C) to pass the class. We all know my big sob story, I didn't do maths in high school, I taught myself high school maths at home over a period of a year, before I did university level algebra and trig. I have gone on to do accounting, economics, computer science. So I just saw this stats class as another hurdle I would just have to face and overcome. Just more than anything, the words that kept racing through my mind were "you are so stupid", and "look how smart you are now, turns out you cant do everything that you think" or "maybe you should just give up, you have your associate of science degree, why try so hard, this is too difficult".

I phoned my dad. He said don't worry, it happens, worst case scenario, you do the class again. I felt a teensy bit better. He was correct, I could just do the class again, it would mess up my GPA, but that is the definition of learning, correct, where you take something you couldn't previously do, and learn how to do it. So what if I graduate a semester later. Its not going to hurt that much. I spoke to my brother, he said this had happened to him before, and not to worry, it shouldn't mess up my GPA, I could still correct it. He suggested I email my professor. I spoke to the IT guy, who is also my friend, as he sat there at work with me upgrading our computers, and he said to me, why not email your professor. Which I ultimately did. The IT guy also read to me the psalm where He says His love never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out. The Psalm spoke about being on a ship and experiencing the highest of high peaks as the ship was catapulted through the sea, and the spirit of God calming the water, and rescuing His people because they cried out to him and because He loves them.

So I just felt flat yesterday. I felt overwhelmed. I felt like I had gone 10 rounds with the world, and my arms were tired. My mind flittered over to tomorrow's lunch, what I would eat at work, feeling like I needed to prepare my food for the next day, and I took stock of what was left in my fridge at work and my fridge at home. I realized if I had a single tomato I could make a pimento cheese and baby spinach salad and I would be satisfied and satiated and enjoy my lunch. Eating is one of my most perfect pleasures. But I was so weary I couldn't leave the comfort of my car, step out of the AC into the heat, to face the stores, plus I had the girls with me, they too were exhausted from all the shenanigans of youth.

I know I didn't pray for a tomato. But it was a request in my spirit, it was something so private, my request never formed on my lips. My heart had been openly crying to the God of the heavens, who painted the sky, who suspended the clouds on a breeze, who knew how our skins would welcome the sun.

I turned onto my street at about 6pm last night. A blonde boy walked ahead with two grocery bags of something. I knew him as my friends' son. He said "My mom sent veggies from my Nan's garden. We have squash, cucumbers....And there is even a single tomato".

In the busyness of getting the kids in the house it didn't immediately strike me of what had exactly happened. As I poured over the contents of the bags, huge yellow squash, almost plastic and unreal looking in their perfection, it suddenly dawned on me, that I was staring at the physical manifestation of a silent request to my Abba Father. It sat there like a big fat red round reminder of everything that He has said. He hears everything. He is with you. He walks with you. He loves you. You are His beloved.

And He gave me my tomato.

I did.

I gave you the knife so you could cut me.
Whet it between my teeth.
Rubbed it on a raw nerve
Until I was in agony.
I am doubled over.
You walked away,
Unaware of all of the fuss.

You didn't mislead me.
I misled myself.
I told myself you understood
The intricacies of my broken self
That you were the Superman of all men
The one who deserved an accolade of love.

Every night I go to bed
I say the same prayer.
Lord Jesus help me.
I am so lost and I don't know where
To begin again in this place I call home
Where I walk the way of life alone

I am the head of this house
And I am so lost.

On crippling introversion.

In the highlight that is my 35th year on this planet, I have finally learnt a lesson that most kids learn in school: that often times the objective of participation is not perfection, but merely group connectedness.

How did I come to such routine mundane illumination in only my 35th orbit around our solar system? Why, by simply being the most reclusive, shy, introverted wall flower that "ever existed". he he

Now I am not about to compete in the Wallflower Shy Olympics (because wallflowers don't compete, because competition brings about attention and even negative attention is still attention, which must be avoided at all costs), but I would like to describe a bit on what it was like to be me when I was a kid.

Firstly I had no idea I was that "strange" because I have been me for as long as I have begun to be. So I make perfect sense to myself. Carla came to visit in 2012. She was my friend from elementary school, and she happened to be visiting from Joburg. I presently reside north of Atlanta, Georgia. So she was a bit far from home and I just was so excited to find her. When I saw her she said "oi vey you have changed"... And I was a bit taken aback, because I have always been this level of epic awesomeness (inside the safe confines of my mind) for my whole life...But she said you did not engage and nobody really knew you. She drew it in comparison to how I was then as to how I am now.

I hated elementary school. I went to this awful (it was awful, there's no other way to describe how stifling a dogmatic charismatic Christian private school can be) tiny school with very little variation on the expected normal behavior required from its students. We were all supposed to love the bible and to raise our hands and sing on the tops of our lungs. Well, I wasn't sure I loved the bible and I wanted to shave my head, pierce my ears, wear Doc Martens and headbang to whatever noisy music made my dad upset.

So somehow along the lines I got this idea I was a bad kid. My mom allowed me a lot of freedom when it came to self expression, and when I was in high school, age 13 and beyond, she helped shave my undercut into my hair, I pierced ears at home (hers included), I had hoards of Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, Dragon Lance Chronicles, any type of book I wanted, I was allowed to watch whatever movies I wanted, go where I wanted (although I rarely went out)... And mostly, like most weirdo's, I just lay in wait and watched and interpreted the world around me in my own fashion.

I had my group of beautiful friends in school, I didn't say boo to a ghost. I didn't participate in anything. School was merely something I endured because I had to. In Standard Eight (tenth grade) I purposefully tried to fail a whole bunch of subjects to prove I was "too dumb for school". My mom of course didn't buy that. She gave me one of her big lectures where I realized she was smarter than I thought and my great plan had failed. I never achieved because I didn't want any attention, but then when you're purposefully failing you get attention on you too. So I pulled my marks up to where I was right in the middle again. People coasting down in the middle rarely get attention brought on to them.

So that's how it all began. My 20's were a strange time of going to university for almost 3 years, thinking I wanted to be a teacher, dropping out, getting pregnant, emigrating to the USA and getting married. Along the way the whole sense of self was lost. My 30's have been another strange time of rejuvenation, where I have had my babies (yes I am raising them still, but not in the same sense that I was before, I am more in the maintenance phase, not the blood sweat and tears phase of actually growing humans inside your skin and tearing them from your flesh)... and now because of the Grace of God (and for no other reason), I am able to correct my "wrongs" and work on myself and become "selfish" and correct the things that have brought me such personal anguish.

In that same vein is finally being physical, using this body, forcing it to be something it has never been before. I never tried anything for fear of failure. I was a great swimmer, but I wouldn't swim because I didn't want to get up on that starting block and have everyone look at me in my Speedo. The fear of people judging me with the same contempt that I had for myself kept me from achieving.

Fast forward to my 35th year where I am weight training at the university of North Georgia with a bunch of beautiful 20 something year olds. Maybe theyre still teenagers. I don't know. I love their verve. Their youth. Their unjadedness. Their ability to be optimistic. They out perform me. When we're doing the drills, I come in last. But I see their heads turning to watch me cross that line. I finish my burpees and squats whilst they are cooling down, leaning against the wall, drinking their water. When I leave they hold the doors for me and their faces turn to implore me to be back. I think initially they thought I would quit, but I keep coming back, and I think it is amusing to them. I am outspoken. I wear these bright colours and have bra straps poking out. I weigh the same as them, and in some cases less than they do. We're all working on the same things, they're ahead of me in their schooling in some places, some of them graduate in two weeks time. But developmentally as humans we're all on a par.

The point of this is that the human experience is so subjective, it can not be rushed. It is perfect in its timing. The point of completion and readiness is so different for each individual that there is no yard stick to which you can hold yourself accountable against for lack of growth or attainment. The point is there is no point in berating yourself for not being what you think you ought to have already been. But at the time that you are able to and ready, you will innately transform into that thing that you are ready to become. It is like a caterpillar forming its chrysalis and climbing inside to sleep before it has fed, the sequence of events is off kilter, and the transformation will be abruptly dashed.

So my thoughts simply are, each of us attains the level of self that we are able to, as and when we can be. Hopefully sooner than later, but not before we are ready.

And when you are ready, may you soar, like that eagle, to heights you always knew you were capable of.

Go!

Go. Go now. Go before it's too late and you lose your nerve. There's no tomorrow. Only the here and the now. Don't build regrets of what never was. Just be. Be sincere. Be real. Be flawed and hopeless. Be vulnerable and be ugly. Be so needy that you scare all the little boys far, far away. That's okay. They can't handle you anyways. You, always on your best behavior, a life of dress rehearsals, is like planting a rose bush in a dark room. Give life your all. Remove all of the... boundaries. Self imposed prisons are the worst type of hell. Just try. Try more than possibly you should. You may surprise yourself. You may discover you were capable the whole time and only your doubt kept you failing. Just live. In these inconsistent amount of breaths from where you first begin to the day that you end. Be a person worthy of respect. It takes half a second to notice a person and to acknowledge their humanness. Show your love. Don't withhold your affection. Be a blessing whenever you can. You can never go back and recreate a moment when you lose it. Create memories. Refuse to collect regrets.

Game Free

I don’t have game.

 

No. I don’t have “game”. In fact, my brother and sister have laughingly concluded I would be the worst candidate for “game”. I would give it all away in the way in the first five minutes, the same way that I cant keep a secret about what I bought you, or the way that the excitement that I feel when I see you is not at all contained and it escapes in the loud squeals as I run out to you, arms stretched out, telling you how good it is to see your face.

 

I don’t have game. I won’t pretend. In those five minutes of wonder, you are the very hinge from which my sun and stars are strung. In a planetary orbit, you’re the alignment that orders entire constellations and galaxies. You become the east, the dawn of all delight and the source of probing light to awaken every day.

 

I become focused on you, amazed by you, new play thing, phone me every night before bed, tell me stories, ask me about my day, learn about my friends, then come to my house and  take me out to eat, show me how you can drive (or cant drive), show me how you cant use a fork, show me how you treat a waiter with petty arrogance, insult my cat and I grow bored of you. Show me your flaws. I hear your same lines twice and watch how you try too hard. You mock me because of my neediness, my fingers don’t find your ticklish spot on your ribs, I lie awake long hours, as you sleep, watching you, a voyeur in my own bed.

 

You see, I don’t have game. I have limited personal resources. I have this greediness that prowls around like a roaring hungry beast. I want delight, motivation, beauty. I want a full shock and awe campaign. I want novelty. I want the rawness of unpolished and unrehearsed answers. I need to be limitless, it needs to be subconscious, let my mind wander into yours because somehow you bring me solace.

 

I am fully aware of those whom I intimidate, and those whom I do not. I look for broadness and strength. I look for the ability to be vulnerable, and the total lack of pretence.

 

I don’t have game, because I can promise you that what you see is real. However fleeting or momentary it may be. In that millisecond, the only star I thought about was you.

 

 

The Big Easy

I am for easy. I am for the relaxed way that things fit together, or for the way that they don’t. I am for walking side by side, the natural compensation between us for where your body fits against mine. I am for the allowance you create where you turn to invite me to be with you, without saying a word. One look and I am all yours and that you are mine. I am for the way you look for me, in a group of people, the way that strangers know we have this thing, the assumptions that onlookers have when we walk by the awareness of the cohesiveness that we portray.

I am for easy. The way that who I am does not intimidate you. I can throw a thousand prickly things your way. You react to only one thing, and it’s only to laugh at me, or make fun of a silly weakness.  The rest is forgotten, irrelevant. They pass away as fast as they come. The anxiety of me doesn’t fell you. You are stoic and strong. Your strength fills all of my empty spaces, the same way my sillies fill yours.

I am for easy. I am for climbing into the space in I am invited in to. I am for taking what is offered. I am for making what possibilities from what there already is.

You are for easy too. The way you know you can have the best of me.

"You look like you are married, Mom".

My baby, her eleventh birthday, jury of all seeing eyes attached to not quite all comprehending mind, but eyes most certainly aware of discrepancies, with the liberty of a mouth and tongue that speaks freely at any given time.

We arrived at the skating rink in Alpharetta, little mouths a chatter. The girlies linked arms and walked off leaving their mom to trail behind. I ran after them iPhone in hand, to snap some happy shots of this monumental day. I had had an uncomfortable morning, full of all of the anxiety of the burden that I carry, personally, as a now single parent, as a daughter as an employee and as a full time student, throwing an impromptu party for my eldest daughter. All signs pointed to today being a glorious day. I parallel parked in street parking close to the valet, the car slid itself in between a Merc and a Volvo like it was meant to be there.

Stace arrived, and her with her silken tongue smoothed over my rough edges. She donned on her skates and took off across the ice, and I fulfilled my contract with terra firma and held onto the bags and kept our coats safe.

Before I knew it, I looked over the ice and there S was, skating freely! I kept my eyes on her, she made the large oval of the rink seem like it was miniscule, she was a bit wobbly and she did fall, but she even learnt to fall in a way that wouldn't hurt, and she got up faster and with more confidence each time.

In fact, the faces of all of the girls were different than on the drive there. Em's bright blue eyes were sparkling, as she gained her confidence, and she teamed up with Addie who soon had them pirouetting on their skates in tandem. K followed Stace, and A and F gave their skating a good go, although I think the Dunkin Donuts that I had bought before hand had more of an allure to the little girls. C was like a professional, just a turquoise blur on the white ice.

The Avalon, with its granite floored bathrooms, its strands of faerie lights, its water fountains, its upmarket stores and its inviting cafes is a safe haven in a buzzing metropolis. The moms wear their skinny jeans tucked into their Uggs, their MK purses under their arms, their BOB and Bugaboo strollers holding their little urchins, the dads wearing CK beanies and Ralph Lauren sweaters, cuffs folded over their Tags and Rolex's.

The atmosphere and the activities must have overwhelmed me. I felt this elation, a sort of transcendence beyond where I began that day in the morning, so full of trepidation and fear.

In the car on the way home, my daughter turned to me. She said "You look like you are married, Mom, you look like you were happy". And I asked her "I looked like I was married?" (this description delighted me, because I thought how clever). She said "yes" and I asked her to explain it more. She said she didn't know exactly. But that I looked like I was complete, not missing anything, that my clothes, my everything, I just looked like a normal mom there, and that I was fine.

Here I was trying to give her what she deserves, what she needs, to feel good about herself. To give her happy childhood memories, and foundation blocks from which she can grow. I am trying to give her the world. But she just keeps giving back to me.

She gives me what I need so I can go on. I am whole. I am content. I am happy. Sure I get tired. But its only because I am actually doing all those things that I dreamt of doing for so long.