Eeesh. I tried to write this post, and I deleted it, because it was terrible. You’re welcome.
This is the bottom line. People don’t change. We all have to find a way to accept that, including me. I’m working on it.
People don’t change, but we can change how we interact with them, and we are all entitled to just take a step back and a deep breath once in a while.
I think that’s worth remembering, especially this time of year.
First, this is awesome. It’s an organization that collects new or gently used baby carriers, and coordinates with volunteers who fly out, at their own expense, and fit the carriers to refugee parents so they can safely carry their young children long distances. They can only use soft structured baby carriers (Ergo, Bjorns, etc.) because they have about two minutes to fit a carrier to a parent and child, and slings and wraps would just take too much time. The website provides details for those interested in sending used carriers or money, or volunteering.
I can’t say enough about what a great idea I think this is. For anyone who has to walk many miles with a small child, toddler, in infant in their arms, a baby carrier can make a big difference. For people making the kind of long journey the refugees are making, having a carrier could really do a lot to keep children safe and parents sane.
Speaking of charities, yesterday I discovered that it’s possible to order Christmas cards (and many other holiday and greeting cards) and Christmas decorations from UNICEF. I was very excited about this and quickly filled my virtual shopping cart. Word of warning: I closed my computer to tend to a diaper situation and planned to return later with my American Express, only to discover my shopping cart did not automatically save.
A few days ago I wrote a post about changes, and I think it’s worth following up.
The past few days have been pretty busy. HW was out of town for a few days, so things were especially busy, and the children (and dog) are always lunatics when he’s gone, which always makes things super fun. When he’s gone I sleep on the couch, for a couple of reasons, but it’s not the best thing for my back, and I don’t end up getting much sleep between the dog licking my face every couple of hours, waking up at my own intervals, or waking up only to realize my feet are sticking out of the blanket.
Early this morning, sometime between 1 and 4 am, I woke up, probably due to one of those causes, and I had a thought.
I thought about all of those times in my life when change has been for the better, even when it has been difficult. Becoming a parent is at the top of that list. Marrying HW is up there too. In fact, most changes have been good, eventually.
I wasn’t actively thinking about any of this, and in fact I was staring at the wall silently willing my mind to shut up so I could get a few more hours before the baby woke up. It didn’t listen.
Slowly, I had this sort of understanding wash over me, like a very gentle rain shower at first, and then a heavy rainstorm. It was definitely an “Aha!” moment, and it didn’t occur to me to write it down to remember it, because it was one of those things I was sure I would remember when I woke up.
As I was thinking about change, I thought about people experiencing gender dysphoria. Several thoughts were taking place at once: I will never be able to truly understand, because I will never experience it, maybe I don’t need to understand, maybe I should try to read a book, maybe I should try to have a conversation with an actual person rather than with myself on a blog.
Somehow all of those thoughts led me to try to think about, and again all of this is happening while I’m awake, but not really directing my thoughts, any experience I’ve had that could be similar in any way. I thought about that kind of touching and exploring that went on at sleepovers when I was younger, but that was really a very different thing. And then it all looked very clear.
I will never completely understand what it is to experience gender dysphoria. I have experienced, though, the sensation that I cannot continue to be the person other people want me to be. I know that feeling, the feeling that if you don’t make a specific change, and make it now, you’re going to be lost, or really, destroyed. I felt that once. I felt that I wanted to be myself, the self I believed I was meant to be, the self I wanted to be, and I knew that in the situation I was in, I would never be able to be that person.
I made a choice, that didn’t really feel like a choice at all once I had made it, and I have never doubted that it was the right one. When I realized it was the right choice, there was no way I could have continued on, without truly being annihilated, and so I did not. It was a scary time for me, and I was, justifiably, terrified. As much as I was afraid, I knew it was the right thing, and neither fear of God nor fear of disappointing my Grandmother, two fears dangerously close to one another for a Catholic, could prevent knowing I had to do it.
There was no amount of coping, or trying to be happy in my situation that would have solved the problem. There was no amount of therapy or prescription drugs that could have made a difference either. I would have been a sad, miserable, shell of a person, and my children would have resented me for it.
I am not suggesting that getting a divorce is like experiencing gender dysphoria. That would be offensive and stupid. I am saying that I think I found a way, my own small way, of understanding what that must feel like. None of this is to suggest that this understanding is an answer to any of the larger questions or challenges surrounding gender dysphoria either. I’m trying to understand the world better, one day at a time, and this was my experience today.
Let’s be kind, friends.
Yesterday was a lot. I have not had much more time to think about what I wrote, other than one quick thought this morning as I was attempting to study for the bar, when I realized I have an above-average need to understand things, and I think that frequently gets me into trouble. I was studying Evidence, and I kept going back and forth between a book that explains things in detail and one that summarizes, and I came upon two lists of things I really need to memorize, but rather than just sitting down and memorizing, I looked at the lists and tried to make sense of why each item was on each list, and I realized that’s kind of a thing. For this particular issue, on this particular exam, I don’t need to know the why – I just need to know that it is. At least one of our children needs to do the same thing, and I almost feel I owe her an apology, because it’s going to complicate her life tremendously, but instead I will try to find a way to help her make the best of it, because much like many of our shared physical features, on her, that need to understand is beautiful in my eyes.
I have a lot rolling around in my head today, and I already wrote one long post about it. Among other things on my mind, for the first time since we moved, I had a conversation with HW about the things I miss, now that we live here (like the changing of the seasons). It was tough, because I never want to make him feel bad or guilty. We made the decision to move here together, because it was and is what’s best for our family.
He spent a number of childhoods here, and he said he remembered that first year the lack of a real change in seasons being a little disorienting. I think disorienting is a good word. I never realized before how much having (somewhat) predictable seasons just feels like the natural progression, and it’s a way, I think, of keeping track of the months and the years. For so many years I had school, whether as a student or a teacher, to help do that too, but now, for only the third year ever since I was five, I don’t have school to keep track, and for the first time I ever, I also don’t have any real seasons. Writing all of that was an interesting experience, because yesterday I wrote about my struggle to embrace change, and today I’m writing about missing the changing of the seasons, although not having that kind of change is another kind of change, so maybe that makes some sense.
I admitted I miss our little house, and the safe, cozy little life we built two cities ago. It was the first and last time we owned our own home, and although it had its imperfections, I loved that little house. HW reminded me, and he’s right, that our lives would be very different now than they were then if we had stayed in that house.
I got to thinking about what I miss. HW was able to work from home a lot in those days, so he was around most of the time, which was very nice. The kids were still little, and even our oldest daughter only went to school a few days per week, and only one full day, and even though the weather was absolutely terrible, our house was safe and warm, and we spent most days inside together, or if the weather was nice, we walked and explored a lot. We managed to put some money in the bank, we were able to travel regularly, we frequently visited museums and had little adventures. We had started to make friends and to have a life, we had a great priest. There wasn’t a lot of conflict for much of that time, we were able to just enjoy each other. Sometimes it felt like we were in our own safe little world.
That was never going to last, of course. Kids get older, they go to school for longer days, they become involved in more activities. Work was never going to stay that way for HW – sometimes it would be very busy, sometimes not, but in order for him to continue to climb the ladder, he was going to have to spend more time at the office. And conflict was already headed our way.
We can’t go back. No one ever can. But we can take the things we liked and loved about our time there and use it to build a life we love even more here.
The older kids are gone more, because they are older, and that’s good for them. That also means they are more independent, and interacting with them and sharing things with them, especially books and movies, is so much more rewarding and has much more depth. We have a larger family now, a family that feels complete in a way it did not back then, and it means there is that much more love to go around. HW spends more time at the office, but it matters less, because the older kids are at school, and he times most of his work around when kids are at school or activities or sleeping, and he is still home for dinner almost every night, and he gets up earlier than he did before to make sure we all still get enough time together. The weather is beautiful, if warmer than what we are used to, and we live in a truly amazing city, with truly amazing people, and we can make an effort be outside more. Our house, even though we don’t own it, is our home, and it’s cozy and safe and we are all healthy and together. We don’t have as much money in the bank as I would like right now, but our kids go to an amazing school, much better than any available to us in previous cities, and they are happy and well taken care of, and we have enough of everything we need, and many things we don’t need. We still have outings and little adventures, and we are slowly meeting people and building relationships. The conflict is more obvious, more visible now, but at least we know it’s there, and we will never have to worry about being ambushed by it again.
This is one of those posts I have a feeling I might regret in a few days, weeks, months or years. But what’s the point of all of this, if not to be open and honest, even if that means providing a window into my thought processes. And that’s what this post is. It’s an expression of my thought process, muddled, messy, complicated, but deeply honest.
WordPress has a new format for drafting posts. It makes it harder to link to old posts (so there will be fewer of those links), and it looks different on the screen. I don’t like it. I’m sure I will get used to it, and it’s not going to ruin my day or anything like that, I just don’t like it.
Then again, typically I don’t like change.
I doubt many people believe that. I’ve experienced a lot of change, and sometimes, I’ve even sought it out. I even write about change on the Internet, and I don’t just mean the jokes I’ve made about vacuum pennies.
But really, I don’t like change. I’ve learned to cope with it, I think, and even to embrace it where appropriate, but generally, unless something is really broken, I prefer it to stay the same way. Do I sound like one of those grumpy old men yet? Just wait.
I was thinking about all of this earlier, when I read an article about Rose McGowan’s post about Caitlyn Jenner. I know, what informed person gets her news from someecards? I do, ok? I also read other stuff, but I also read someecards. Whatever.
Anyway, she wrote an angry letter to Caitlyn Jenner about Glamour’s Woman of the Year Award, specifically about her acceptance speech. In the speech, Jenner reportedly joked, the “hardest part about being a woman is figuring out what to wear.”
McGowan posted this (along with some graphic memes that were deleted before I saw them):
Caitlyn Jenner you do not understand what being a woman is about at all. You want to be a woman and stand with us- well learn us. We are more than deciding what to wear. We are more than the stereotypes foisted upon us by people like you. You’re a woman now? Well f—king learn that we have had a VERY different experience than your life of male privilege.
Woman of the year? No, not until you wake up and join the fight. Being a woman comes with a lot of baggage. The weight of unequal history. You’d do well to learn it. You’d do well to wake up. Woman of the year? Not by a long f—king shot.
and later changed it to this:
Let me amend this by saying I’m happy for what she’s doing visibility wise for the trans community, and I’m happy she’s living her truth, but comments like hers have consequences for other women. How we are perceived, what our values are, and leads to more stereotyping. If you know you are going to be speaking to media about being a woman, maybe come to understand our struggles.
What does any of this have to do with WordPress’s new format? Nothing, really. I think as I was trying to sort out my thoughts and feelings about what McGowan posted, and Jenner more generally, I wondered how much those thoughts or feelings are informed by my aversion to change. Honestly, I’m not sure what the answer is, although I am pretty sure I’m too young to dislike change so much.
I think it’s a complicated situation, and one that is difficult to talk about, even with great care, without offending someone. Still, I feel like I need to try to make some sense of it, even if I end up deleting this post of pushing it to the pile of drafts that will probably never see the light of day.
I don’t know what it’s like to feel like a man, but to be in a woman’s body, and I don’t know what it’s like to feel like a woman, but in a man’s body. I do not have any close friends or close relatives who feel that way, at least to my knowledge. I have casually known a couple of people, a friend of a friend kind of thing, and one former student, who have felt that way. I don’t know anything about the friend of a friend that would add in any way to my thoughts, and the student I had was struggling with a lot of other heavy emotional baggage, and those two limited experience can hardly be deemed representative. Even when I was involved in the LGBTQI group at our campus, there was only that one student who identified as “T.”
Part of me thinks, why do I need to sort it out at all? I don’t need to have an opinion about everything, do I? Except that all of us do, really, have opinions about everything (even if the opinion is limited to, “I don’t give a flying fuck about that”) and the question is more about whether and how we express it.
When I start to think about something like this, I always start here: What if one of my children were dealing with X? What would I say? What would I want others to say? I’m not arguing that this is the best starting point – only being honest about what mine is, at this point in my life.
So if one of my children came to me and said, “Mom, I am not a boy, I’m a girl,” or “Mom, I am not a girl, I’m a boy,” what would I do?
I don’t have the slightest clue, but I would try really hard not to drop my jaw and stare back completely dumbfounded.
As I wrote about last week, if one of my daughters came to me and said, “Mom, I don’t like my nose,” or “Mom, I wish I were taller,” I have a plan for that, and for a lot of other things (including, “Mom, I’m gay”). Easy. Well, easy-ish.
Obviously it would depend on the age, and the child, and it would involve a very long conversation about what those feelings are (I am certainly not going to lose my shit because my three year old son wants to try on a pair of high heels). My first call, in the event that this was seriously something that needed addressing, would be my husband, my second call would be to the pediatrician, in an attempt to find the best available child psychologist in the area, because I would know I was in over my head, and I know a large percentage of people who struggle what the DSM-V labels as “gender dysphoria” struggle with depression. Beyond that, I have literally no idea, beyond doing whatever I believed was best for my child.
Another thing that muddies the already opaque waters is the fact that “transgender” can mean many different things. According to the APA, “transgender” can refer to someone whose gender identity, expression, or behavior, typically does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth. That means that gender reassignment surgery and hormones are not for everyone who identifies as transgender. It also means that there is no one single explanation for what causes an individual to feel that way.
I would, to be very honest, have a difficult time if one of my children wanted to have gender reassignment surgery. I get teary thinking about my oldest daughter piercing her ears. It’s not because I think her body belongs to me or any other kind of similar bullshit, it’s because I think her body is perfect exactly the way it is. I think all of my children are perfect exactly the way they are. I don’t think piercing ears or dying hair or any other change would make them less perfect, I just hate the idea of enduring any level of pain or discomfort in an attempt to change something that is already exactly as it should be.
I know there are differences between feeling like a man trapped in a woman’s body or vice versa and feeling like my legs aren’t long enough or my hair isn’t blond enough. Still, I am a big believer in appreciating and loving what we have, of learning to love what we’ve been given, and in this case, that sort of runs straight into my belief that we should all try to live as authentically as possible, that is, we should be able to be who we want to be, and be honest about who that person is.
People want to have boob jobs and tummy tucks? Fine by me, whatever you want to spend your disposable income on is none of my business. People want to take hormones and have major surgery to change the sex assigned at birth, that should be fine too. But it feels different.
Is it because I’m some kind of hateful narrow-minded conservative religious zealot? I don’t think so. I hope not anyway.
I think there are a few differences for me, and I will attempt to articulate them.
First, I think the degree of the surgery involved and the hormone requirement makes a difference. I think for people who have some kind of major accident and have extreme surgery, that is something completely separate – it’s about getting back to something that already existed. For people who have not had major physical trauma, having surgeries that changes how they look so completely feels like something else. Then again, maybe this desire to change resulted, at least in part, from some emotional trauma. In that case, maybe it’s similar. Really, I’m not sure. Maybe this is a hollow point, I’ll have to think about it more.
Second, I think the type of change is different, and it’s difficult for me to unravel the mental health pieces in motion. A woman going from a B cup to a D cup might change her life in one sense, but she is still going to live, more or less, the same life (I think). A man having surgery to become a woman is going to have a much more major and extreme change. It involves removing body parts and adding others, and taking hormones to change how the body works. That’s a big deal. Typically, women do not suffer from major depression because they have small breasts (to my knowledge), while a great number of people with gender dysphoria do. I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, so I don’t completely understand how those things interact – is the depression solely a result of societal pressures, or is it something more? Is gender reassignment the best solution? I’m not sure, but if I am wary of psychiatrists prescribing medication, I am even more concerned about them prescribing surgeries and long-term hormone therapies.
Third, and I think this is really most of the difficulty for me, I think this idea that we can change our sex is complicated, and I think that’s part of what McGowan’s post was about. Being a woman is more than having a vagina and X amount of Y hormone pumping through our bloodstream. I’m not arguing that there is any one experience that is woman, and certainly there is a spectrum to womanhood, but I am saying it is complex, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (I first wrote, “the sum is greater than its parts, because these are the things I can never remember), if you will forgive the phrase. I don’t mean that to be exclusive or hurtful in any way, but I do believe it is objectively true, and I think it’s dangerous to reduce what it is to be woman, or man, to something so simplistic. And really, I think that’s one of the real difficulties here – figuring out what it means, at its essence, to be woman, or to be man.
On the other hand, I believe people feel what they feel. If Caitlyn Jenner feels like a woman, and wants to be a woman, and wants to be treated like a woman, I think maybe that’s ok too. Again, I think the hard part is that while people have the right to be who they are, we also live in a society with other people, who also have rights (I am not including the “right” to be a jackass on that list). So for example, say Caitlyn Jenner joins a women-only volleyball team. Fair? Not really. And not just because she’s Caitlyn Jenner. Then again, who gives a shit about a volleyball game? And also, doesn’t one person’s desire and ability to be who they are outweigh any concerns about a game? I think so.
But then something like Glamour Magazine’s Woman of the Year comes along, and it does raise some questions. Two main questions, I think. First, should Caitlyn Jenner be eligible for that award because she was recently a “he?” Second, is Caitlyn Jenner deserving of the award.
The first question, I think, is complicated, for the reasons McGowan pointed out, even if she did so in terms that mostly addressed the acceptance speech, and that were, I think, unnecessarily “us vs. them” oriented. What she said about not understanding the weight of the history, the baggage that comes with being a woman. There is a sense of unfairness to someone having all of the privileges of being a white, athletic male for six decades, and becoming a white female and winning an award for being Woman of the Year soon after. I know one response to that is that she has always thought of herself as a woman, and while that may be true, she did experience most of her life as a man, that is to say, she had all of the advantages that come with being a man when she was Bruce Jenner, of which there were many, and it does seem unfair for her now to be eligible for an award specifically reserved for women.
Second, the question of whether Caitlyn Jenner has done anything to deserve the award, as a separate question from basic eligibility. That is so far beyond the scope of anything I am capable of answering, I will not even make an attempt. The only things I know about her personal life come from friends who watch more reality television than I do, and something one of his ex-wives wrote about what it was like to be married to Caitlyn when she was still Bruce, and what it was like to love that person all of these years. It was sobering to read, and my heart hurt for her as I read it. I’m sure most people know more than I do about what she is like now and what she was like, but most of those people also probably only know one small part of the story, including whoever decided on the Woman of the Year Award.
What would I do if one of my children came to me and said they thought they were assigned the wrong sex at birth? I would hug him or her, we would talk about it, and I would probably cry about it and pray about it in the shower, as I would do in response to any challenge with which they were presented. I would love them, and I would reassure them that I think they are perfect, and I will continue to think they are perfect no matter else happens, gender reassignment surgery or not.
I don’t have answers for any of the other questions surrounding this issue, and to sleep tonight I don’t need them. I hope to have a clearer understanding of gender dysphoria over the coming months and years, but for now, knowing that I have thought it out just a little bit further, even if that’s raised more questions than provided answers, that’s enough for right now.
Be kind, friends.
This is one of those posts I read back to myself at the end and almost deleted. I didn’t, because that’s not how I want to do things, but it comes out as more pessimistic and certainly more whiny than I actually feel.
My family jokes about my birthday season. I’m not exactly sure how this joke started, but it’s been around more than ten years. I’m sure I made a joke or a comment about having a birthday season as an excuse to indulge in something or other as a teenager, and the joke somehow stuck. I probably even thought it was funny the first couple of years. Somewhere along the line it took on a life of its own, and I think many people actually think I celebrate some kind of a birthday season.
At this point, I dread talking to anyone in my family this time of year, whether it’s about my birthday or not. Sometimes I say it first, “Yes, it’s my birthday season!” just to avoid hearing another person say it, which makes me physically cringe. I know they mean well, or are just making conversation, but it’s like nails on a chalkboard, because I’m actually very sensitive about my birthday.
I don’t know that it’s anyone’s fault. I’m sure I could spend thousands of dollars and hours on a couch to hear that it is someone’s fault, and that probably wouldn’t be wrong either, but I prefer to not go too far down that road today.
I’ve never been that comfortable being at the center of the attention. It’s a lot of pressure, and it’s especially a lot of pressure for someone who doesn’t always feel extremely confident. At the same time, I do feel like that one day should be special, so my expectations are high, but there is no way to successfully meet them, and I know that’s not fair to anyone. If it’s a quiet, low-key day, I tend to feel like I did something wrong, or I’m being anti-social, or nobody cares that it’s my birthday. If it’s a busy day filled with visits and activities, I tend to feel awkward about it being my birthday and end up feeling overwhelmed. There is no winning for anyone.
I can remember my dad being the same way. There was no way to make him happy on his birthday. He always ranted and raved that he didn’t want a big fuss, and he hated surprises, but always seemed disappointed that there was no fuss made, and when there was a fuss made, he used it as an excuse to throw a tantrum. I don’t want to be that way. I want to just enjoy the day, like it’s a normal, special day.
The first three birthdays of my twenties were fairly unremarkable. Twenty was getting ready for my last year of college and trying to figure out whether I really wanted to go to law school. Twenty-one was everything one might expect. Twenty-two was a night out with friends after breaking up with one of the not-so-great guys I dated back then. Between twenty-three and twenty-nine every birthday involved a pregnancy, a new baby, a bar exam, a major move, or some other major life change.
This year I think we will probably go to a party to celebrate the birthday of one of my brothers-in-law, who turns 40. If I could have the right attitude about it, it could be a great thing. I love the beach, and I like most of the people who plan to attend. It could be a fun thing to do, a social activity, the kids would love it, and it would allow me to avoid too much unwanted attention. But I don’t have the right attitude. That’s the truth. I feel sort of blech about the entire birthday experience, and I don’t feel like dealing with the inevitable bull**** that would be involved with spending the day with a large group of in-laws. For someone who wants to slap them all and scream, “Shut up and be nice!” I don’t have a lot of tolerance for their nonsense at the moment. Of course, if we don’t go, I will feel guilty, that day and many others, because I know everyone wants us to be there.
I am so thankful to be able to spend my birthday with all of my favorite people. I get to spend time with all four of my children, my husband, and my mom, and we don’t have to worry about anyone going to work or going to school. That’s what I need to focus on. Thirty is a new chapter of my life. A new beginning.
The weather will probably be beautiful. I’m going to spend the next five days trying to eat well, to sleep an adequate amount, and to stretch. I’m not sure that will be enough to chase away the ghosts of birthdays past, but it can’t hurt.
I wrote yesterday’s post while traveling by train, but I was afraid to mention it, because I never want to give too much away. See my earlier post on blogger fear and mommy paranoia.
The train ride was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. I’m sure that’s nerdy, but if you ever have the opportunity to do it, you definitely should. I’ve taken trains before, here or there, but never overnight, and never with children. There was something magical about it, and not just because of Harry Potter.
I like the quiet sound, which is so much softer than I thought it would be. I thought it would be like an airplane, but it’s more like a sailboat. The gentle rocking motion, the scenery passing by, the ability to walk around, all contribute to a sense of enjoyable progress. It’s the perfect combination of magic and reality. If my children would play along, I would spend three or four days doing this.
There is something very appealing about slowly and safely moving forward, taking everything in, having time to think, time to breathe. My head feels clearer than it has in a long time. I think we are probably going to make another big move, and it feels right. Much more right than it did last time. More right than it has since I moved south ten years ago.
The last move we made was not exactly what we thought it would be. My husband and I, for different reasons, had both spent many years trying to get back to that place. I think we remembered it as it was when we were younger, and when we visited we were romanced by the idea that it could be that way again. We also believed we would have a lot of support from, and interaction with, our family members in the area. Some of that was wishful thinking on our part, and much of it was unfulfilled promises on theirs, but we understand what it is to be busy.
Everyone is always talking about how busy they are. It’s funny, because with all of our moves, and all of the family drama, and four kids under the age of six, and no hired help, we know what it means to actually be busy, so when other people complain about how difficult it is to have two or three children and to manage a support staff of nannies and housekeepers, we just smile and nod, and I’m sure I probably roll my eyes, even thought I try really hard not to be that way. It’s not a competition or anything, I just don’t believe in using “I’m busy” as an excuse for behavior. I am exactly as busy as I choose to be, and you are exactly as busy as you choose to be.*
Part of me thinks it makes sense to stick it out. Keep trying. Make it work. I felt safe there once. I found a network of good people who were just good people. And then I think, “Why?” Why do I always feel like that’s the right answer? Sometimes my husband is right – something does not have to be hard to be right or good. Sometimes good is easy. Not always, but sometimes. God knows we have enough of the hard. That instinct, the need to suffer to feel good, is not something I want to pass on to my children.
Another part of me wants to say, “F*** this.” Our current place of residence has been nothing but trouble. It’s nothing like we thought it would be. We have been dealt blow after blow. It’s too expensive. People are not nice. In fact, people are nasty and materialistic and self-obsessed. I’m not made for the kind of hardness required to get ahead, and neither are most of my children.** The winters are long, much longer than I remember, and everything seems so dirty.
Now that I am a wise old thing, or as my grandma says, “a tough old bird,” I try to combine those two instincts, or to step back and observe them both before making a decision. Am I staying as a form of self-torture? Am I leaving because I’m running away from something?*** Should our decision be based solely on financial stability? What about other factors? We will find the best school wherever we are. We will find a home that comfortably fits our large family without being extravagant, including our ridiculous dog. We will find good people. Let’s just do what we want. And then, instantly, my mind jumps over to, “what will my children want?” and “what does my husband want?” I am still a work in progress.
On our travels north, our oldest daughter found a friend. A little girl introduced herself while we were in the lounge car. She gave her name and asked if our daughter wanted to be friends. Our daughter, who is a much more innocent and open and better version of me, enthusiastically responded, “YES, OF COURSE!” They were fast friends, and three hours later declared themselves best friends. I think our daughter would have moved to Japan if we had agreed. It gave me pause because where we live now, it has been more challenging for her to find friends, which was a surprise, because we’ve moved before, and she’s always made friends easily and quickly. That’s just who she is. Give her your tired, your poor, your whatever, and she will find a way to make you feel better, and make you feel loved. It was nice to see her get her confidence back. I spoke with the father for a while, he talked about his military background and the challenges involved in raising a daughter alone and abroad. It was nice to have a conversation with the sound of my daughter playing happily, without reservation, in the background.
Last night I rode along on the train, all four kids sleeping, and a sleeping husband, enjoying the quiet peacefulness and the dark. It’s probably the closest thing to the little bubble I wrote about creating a few days ago.
This morning everyone woke up very tired. We haven’t slept in our own beds in days, and sharing a small train room with five other people is not ideal. Still, everyone seemed a little lighter, a little more like themselves. We got back in the car and started driving, and our older children almost immediately started talking about how much they miss their cousins and their dogs and begging to move south. I guess we’ll see what happens, but I’m going to start preparing, because if it comes together, we will all be ready.
*There are exceptions to this, of course. I’m not comparing my situation to single mother working four jobs or anything like that, only commenting on what I observe about the people around me.
**My husband says our youngest daughter could stare down Ivan Drago from Rocky IV. I have no idea what that means, but she’s a tough cookie, at least as a two year old, when she’s not snuggling up, hugging or kissing one of us, or telling us how much she loves our dog. Kids are complicated.
***Interestingly, those two questions signal something deeper and more complicated: running away is what my father would do, and has always done, but staying even though, and maybe because it’s hard, that’s my mother.
I woke up last night around 3 am, which seems to be a very special time for me, and realized I published my first blog post yesterday without proofreading it, panicked, and thought of fifteen changes I wanted to make. My first thought was, well, I can edit it and repost, no one has to know. My second thought was, that would be dishonest and cheating, and even if I’m the only one who would know, I just can’t do that. My third thought, aimed primarily at calming myself back down, was that no one else is ever going to read any of this anyway. Of course my brain quickly responded with, “Well, if no one is going to read it, why are you wasting valuable time working on it? You are always so annoyed when people complain about being busy and then waste time, you cheating, lying hypocrite.” It went on from there, but eventually I fell asleep long enough to have a nightmare about a very bad man.
It seems almost every woman I know who does not work full-time, and some who do, either became a photographer, a blogger, or sold jewelry or essential oils at some point over the past seven years. Note: I know at least one photographer and one blogger who are extremely talented and who have had their share of success. I have no artistic skills to speak of (ask my oldest daughter, she’ll tell you), and I despise sales, but I guess I always thought of myself as more of a writer of novels than a writer of blogs. I told myself at several points over the past twenty-five years (I was an interesting child) that one day, I would put pen to paper, or click away on an old typewriter near a beach, and I would write a moving piece of fiction or the story of my life. I’ve even started a couple of projects, one of them near the beach, but I always stop short of anything worth sharing. Usually it’s some combination of fear I will hurt someone’s feelings and having other, more pressing things to deal with.
When I sat down to start this, I couldn’t decide where to start, or whether I should map out some sort of plan for the next thirty days, so I wasted some time reading about blogs. I read that I should post a photograph so people feel more connected, so I tried to find one, but I realized that of the 3,000+ photos I keep stored on my phone, very few are of me, and the ones that are all have at least one child in them. I tried to use the computer camera, but remembered that I haven’t showered in three days, and I’m not sure people want to feel that familiar with me, or at least I’m not sure I want to feel that familiar with them. Then I remembered I was wasting time and giving in to feelings of anxiety about starting this project, so I gave myself a choice: start writing or study for the bar exam. And just like that, I felt motivated to write a little bit about myself.
I spoke to my mom this morning and told her about this project. She asked if I thought she would need a glass of wine to read this, and I said I’m sure she would. So far she and my husband are the only two people who know about this project (my kids probably do too, because they manage to hear everything, or at least the things they aren’t supposed to hear), and there is a sense of safety in that, because neither of them will find many surprises in here.
I was born twenty-nine years and thirty days ago, in a small midwestern town that actually passes for a city of sorts, because it’s surrounded by even smaller towns, and I spent the first eighteen years of my life (which will not be the focus of this project, but will likely come up) moving around or between that town and two others, one in a neighboring state. By local standards we traveled a lot, and I hoped I would not stay in the midwest as an adult. I spent my twenties moving to and from the midwest, landing, at least for the moment, on the east coast.
In my first post I described the past ten years as being “exceptionally full,” and that’s correct. I think it’s fair to say I fit closer to fifteen, and maybe even twenty years of living, into the past ten. I finished college early, went to law school, took and (miraculously) passed a bar exam, married, divorced, married again, had four babies, moved twelve times to eight different cities in four different states, taught full-time and as an adjunct at a university, and started a blog. I fell in love (or thought I did) three times, had my heart really and truly broken once, really and truly broke someone else’s heart at least once, worried about how I would pay my bills, had more monthly income than I ever dreamed I would have, watched some very trashy television.
These days I am a SAHM to four beautiful children and a dog in a suburb of one of the greatest cities in the world. I am about to be thirty, I’m studying for a bar exam even though after I passed the last one I never bothered to send in the rest of my paperwork so I could be licensed and I have no idea if I will ever practice law, and I started a blog because I have mixed emotions about turning thirty and I want to explore them and procrastinate, but I still need to feel like I am being productive.
I am neurotic, insecure, and a little flaky, and I am optimistic, energetic, and naive. It takes me a long time to really let people in, but I tend to share anything I’m afraid people won’t like right away. I’m smart, but sometimes I lack common sense, especially when it comes to other people. I tend to think everyone is like me, or that everyone is like me, but a little bit nicer, kinder, etc., and I’m always shocked if that turns out not to be the case.
***
Today I sat down to start a blog about turning thirty, mostly describing how my unsettled life is becoming settled, typed out a few paragraphs that I would, in a more generous moment, describe as mediocre, and was interrupted by a phone call from my husband telling me he is unemployed. Boom.
30daysto30 