Day 191: The Fear Response

I am little and hiding behind the green-brocade, swivel chair in our family’s living room.  My mother is sitting on the chair, but she doesn’t see me.  The room is full of adults talking, smoking, and laughing, but I am afraid.  My father has pulled out a gun and is pointing it at another man.  I want to scream out to him to stop, but I cannot.  My voice is frozen.  I am paralyzed and helpless. 

I wake up.

And remember.

My parents loved to party when I was a child, and I wanted to be part of it.  In later years, I would perch on the staircase and listen to the exploits, but the dream takes place in the early years, when we lived in a bungalow, and I would wander out of my bedroom and hide behind the living room chair, wanting to be close to my mother and hoping I wouldn’t be found out.

My father never actually owned a gun that I know of, but he did have a violent temper, and on more than one occasion ended the evening by beating up on one of the male guests.

I learned fear in my father’s home.  I learned that to step out of line was to invite violence.

What I didn’t learn is how to define that line, so I lived most of my childhood in irrational, and sometimes paralyzing fear.  Survival, unharmed, became a goal and focus.  I spent countless hours and years upon years trying to figure out how to avoid my father’s wrath.

And in the meantime, I failed to learn about a healthy fear response.

I didn’t flinch when my older sister took me to a biker bar when I was only twelve.

I didn’t think anything was amiss when I was allowed to stay out to all hours of the night, and no one asked where I’d been.

It never occurred to me to question a strange man giving me a ride home.

When home is a scary place, everything else seems tame.

Day 190 “Name Change”

My father named me despite my mother’s protests; she’d carried the name for all her life and never liked it.  I grew to hate it too.

“Is it possible to change your first name?”  I started asking when I was nine, but I wasn’t sure what other moniker I might adopt.  Heather appealed to me as it was reminiscent of the moors in England where my family hailed from, but when I met a girl named Heather who I didn’t like,  I looked for another name.  Ali, short for Allison, became my next desired name.  I even wrote a book about her.

I never did change my first name, but at the age of nineteen, when I first got married, I acquired a new surname, and with it the hope for a new life.  Being married, I was sure, was an official step into adulthood and away from childhood struggles.  I exchanged a mundane family name for one that sounded more regal.  I was a new person.  Well, maybe for the honeymoon period, but of course, I was still the same, and the distance between me and my past had not lengthened.

Marrying again brought a new surname, erasing the mistakes of my first entanglement.  Under this name, I became a mother, completed my degree, and launched a career.  I liked this identity.  It connected me to people I loved, and felt good.  I wore the name years beyond the divorce.

When I met Thor, and the discussion of marriage came up again, I had to make a choice – retain the name belonging to both my ex-husband and my children, or embracie a new identity.  Two weeks after marrying, I would be entering teacher’s college, so decided to change my name to honour this life change.

As a woman, changing my name is akin to establishing landmarks in the journey of my life.

Day 189 “Karma”

He sat in the middle of the auditorium, and with his flaming red hair and beard, and booming voice, everyone knew who he was.  On lecture days, he attended both sessions, even though they were repeats, and he made comments that bounced off the walls and caused the audience to stir uncomfortably.  He was full of himself, and long-winded, and while I was amused at first, I soon joined my peers in dreading his presence. 

When classes switched at midterm, there he was, front and center in my Counselling Adolescents class, deflating my bubble of anticipation.  His was always the first hand to shoot up and when the instructor acknowledged him, he would settle into his seat, clasp his hands on his belly and begin his epic pronouncement.  Nothing that he said invited response, it was instead an endless declaration of his own accomplishments, real or imaginary.  I shared my fellow classmates disgust of this fellow, and like the others, chose to keep my distance. 

“He must be awfully insecure,”  my husband offered.  “People like that usually are.”

I tried to feel sympathy for him.  Maybe my husband was right.  Maybe he actually will make a good teacher, and is as gifted as he likes to proclaim.  Maybe I needed to give him another chance. 

In our final week of classes, the student body was divided into mock schools, complete with a pretend principal, vice principal, etc.  Each “school” team was given an series of issues to explore:  preparation for the real world.  My assigned principal was mister pomp and circumstance.  I knew in that moment that this would be a wasted exercise and committed myself to sudokus for the remainder of the course, sitting in the back where I would be undetected.  I remember little of what went on as those little math puzzles can be wonderfully addictive.

On the last day, a real principal visited our team and presented a dilemma to be acted out.  A disgruntled parent was to appear before the principal and teacher to argue that her child had been unfairly treated.  Principal Pomp turned the tides on the parent, berating her in defense of his teacher.  After the role play, we were asked to comment on what we saw.  Ignoring the blah, blah, blah, I hunkered down to break the current pattern on my page.

That is when I heard a fellow classmate tell the “Principal” that he did a wonderful job.

I was on my feet in protest before I even knew what was happening.  “No he didn’t!” I objected.  “He was condescending and patronizing and quite frankly, if I had been the parent I would have punched him in the nose.”

Whoops!  Did I just say that out loud?

I sat back down.

“Actually, you are right,” the real Principal responded.  “Your tone was out of line for someone in a position of authority.  How should he have responded?” 

The spotlight was now on me.  “Well, as a parent, I would want to feel like I was heard, so he should have acknowledged her frustration, and then invited input as to how they might resolve the situation.  Everyone present was an adult, so everyone deserved to be treated as such.”

I didn’t hear the response, mortified as I was that I had just embarrassed myself and acted unprofessionally in front of a future potential employer.

The next day, our last day, I found myself elevated to heroic level as people cheered me in the halls: word of my outburst had traveled quickly.  I deflated the pomp.  Momentarily.

It would be a while after graduation before we all had interviews and found our various jobs.  Occasional work was all there was for newcomers, and so like many of my peers, I went from school to school searching for that final resting ground.  In my third year, I landed a job at a tiny school, thirty minutes out of town.  With a staff of twenty, I knew it wouldn’t take long to get acquainted, so I sought out my colleagues and introduced myself.  All seemed very friendly, except for one fellow who left each room when I entered.  I finally caught up with him in the staff lounge and when I offered my hand in introduction, he replied:  “I know who you are, Beth.  I am _____________”.

Yes, you guessed it.  He’d shaved the beard, and somehow his hair wasn’t quite as red, but here we were, face to face, colleagues in a staff of twenty. 

Now if that isn’t karma, what is?

 

Simplicity: A Noble Quest

At thirty-one, I had to learn to change my approach to life, because the old way wasn’t working.

th-2The old way put me at the center of the family (even though I was fifth born), listening to and attempting to resolve every family issue:   Do you think your younger sister is okay living out there in isolation?  Your older sisters are not talking to each other.  I can’t talk to Mom, will you?  Why do men always leave me?  Your brother thinks I abandoned him as a child.  I can’t talk to Dad; he’ll listen to you. Your brother is coming to stay, and well, you know about his wife.   I can’t live with your Father.  And on and on.

The old way was me constantly trying to run from my problems, striving to be better, to do better, and to get ahead.  I was invested in the belief that if I could just do the right thing, my life would be perfect.  I beat myself up trying to reach some magical destination where peace would prevail, and all would be well with the world.

Attachments, chaos, interference, and desires were destroying me.  I lived in a perpetual state of strife and discontentment.

And then the blessing came:  my mind snapped.

As I picked up the pieces of my life, I had to learn to simplify.

th-3I was gifted with new objectivity.  I realized that even though my own life had come to a screaming stop,  everyone else’s went on without me.  The chaos and drama of my family continued, and for the first time in my life, I recognized that I had no ability to control it.  Never had.  My need to feel important and responsible in the midst of that whirlwind was my own sick way of coping.  Nothing I said, did, or sweat over was going to change the outcomes.  I learned to detach and stop interfering.

Mom and Dad are trying to run my life.

“You are strong and have supports.  I trust that you can deal with this.”

Find out what’s wrong with your sister.

“I have my own relationship with my sister, and would prefer that you do the same.  Let’s not get them confused.”

It was the first step to learning to breathe again.

Losing my mind also put a stop to all that rushing around.  I was forced to stand still, which meant everything I had been running from caught up to me.  Egads!  I went into therapy.

th-4My family, I came to understand, dealt with dilemma’s by creating more distractions: new problems.  Our momentum came from the next crisis and there was never any shortage of those.  The problem with this way of living is that the underlying message is that there is something so wrong, so unmentionable, that it is not safe to relax, and so we hang on until the next cliff hanger.  The only control I had in all of this was to no longer choose to be part of it.  Peace, I discovered, was an inner journey and not an outer destination.  Boy, had I been on the wrong track!

“What is it that you really desire?”  the therapist asked me one day.

“I don’t know,” came the response, and it was true.  I had been driving myself so hard, I had forgotten what it was that I was aiming for in the first place.

Life, I concluded, is not a game in which the person with the best ideas, and the most responsibility wins.  It is a journey of moments, and discoveries, and connections, which if we’re not careful, we will miss.  Simplicity, my heart’s actual desire, is being able to minimize the attachments, resist the need to interfere, and be the calm at the center of the storm.

I’m still working on it, but at least now, I am more aware.

Day 187 “The Thorns”

I grew my thorns at a tender age before my flower was even in bloom.

I grew them with clenched fists, in a fetal position, sobbing into my pillow while the rest of the household ignored me.

“Take that mood to your bedroom and don’t come out till you are over it,” my father would say.

“I don’t need anyone!” I would tell myself, over and over again, and chastise myself for forgetting in between.  If I didn’t need anyone, I reasoned, I could never be hurt like this again.

I reinforced those thorns throughout my second marriage, changing my mantra to “I don’t need anything.”  Married to a man who either made me pay for everything I got or deprived me of my wants, I decided that the answer was to just not want for anything.

No matter how strong I thought my defense system was, it didn’t work.   I still suffered.

In retrospect, maybe I suffered more because of the thorns.

My flower is long past bloomed, and I no longer have need of the protection, but it is not easy to let down one’s defenses.

Maybe by writing, I can one by one, strip the thorns.

Day 186 “A Life Well Lived”

I am addicted to word games – the ones where you have to make as many words as you can from a limited number of letters in a limited amount of time.  As you progress, the time is shortened.  I love the challenge, and the brain workout.  And if I am stuck, I can just quit and start again.  I make ‘genius’ moves and love the positive feedback.

My job is parceled into seventy-five minute periods in which I have to solve an unlimited number of problems in a limited amount of time.  Unlike the word games, I cannot click ‘quit’ and start again.  Unlike the game, there is no score to give me immediate feedback.  I juggle, think on my feet, and then start again when the bell rings.  I only receive feedback when I have erred in my judgment, or displeased another teacher, the student, or a parent.  There is nothing ‘genius’ about what I do.

Am I making a difference?  Is this a life well lived.

How would you define a life well lived?

Day 185 “The Desire to Control”

In the bedroom, my mother is trying to settle the baby.  I am in the kitchen trying to clean up when a gust of wind, followed by a wall of water hits me.  The floor around me is quickly filling up with this flood of elements and I push my way through to find the source:  the sliding glass window on my third story balcony is bent and off the track, unwilling to close. 

“Grab me duct tape,” I yell, but no one hears me, so I rush to find it, trying desperately to minimize the damage. 

Duct tape is no match for the storm brewing outside.  There is no way to fix this problem.

This dream has unsettled me.  I can’t shake the image and the feeling of hopelessness.  Too many responsibilities.  Too many things in need of repair.  How did everything get so out of control?

I know it is a dream, but the need for my inhaler coming out of it is real.  I have been struggling for weeks, no months, to get my breathing stabilized, and it is weighing on me.  I am the same age my father was when he was diagnosed with emphysema; is this to be my fate also?

I try to go back to sleep, but can’t shake the image and the feeling that there is no solution.  This is the end, my dream self realizes.  When I do slide back, the images are no different:  my baby daughter drowning in a pool and no one reacting but me, and I am too late; trying to take a shortcut home through the woods, only to find it is a dead end, blocked by police who turn me around, then realizing I have lost everyone, including myself. 

Deep despair.

The dream is flooded with images from my life.

The setting is reminiscent of the apartment I rented after my first divorce.  Marriage was to have been my salvation, but instead, here I was, more broken than before thrown back into the turmoil.  Just released from the hospital, my sister Mai came to live with me.  She was too fragile to live with my other sister, but the two were often present, adding to the chaos in my home.

The kitchen was how I defined myself at the time.  I could cook – had cooked at home for the family – and I became the mother figure for all lost and single souls looking for a home cooked meal and a warm place to land.  No one seemed to mind that my schizophrenic sister sat rocking endlessly in a chair in the corner, nor that my ailing (mentally as well as physically) older sister would drop in unexpectedly, bringing with her a constant storm of drama.   Maybe it was dinner theater for those whose lives were comparatively tame.

The baby is my middle daughter, who traumatized by illness during pregnancy, struggled in the first years of her life, unable to sleep and constantly screaming in pain.  For three years we dragged her from one specialist to the next desperately looking for an answer and eventually found one, but I remember the daily heart wrenching  feeling of inadequacy as a mother who couldn’t meet her child’s needs.

The path into the woods was the one I took so many days as a child to find solace.  Deep in the shelter of trees, there was peace and tranquility and it filled my soul many days and gave me the courage to carry on. The path is long gone and many have been lost in my life, myself included.

All my life, I have fought to overcome.  Overcome failure, dis-ease, dis-order, and in-sanity.

Bottom line, as the dream so eloquently points out, is that there never is a way to fix all that.  There is no sudden solution or ending.  The storms of life rage on, ready to unleash their power at any time, and the only hope – the only answer – is to hold ground through it and humbly pick up the pieces afterwards, knowing that this is the best anyone can do; the best anyone can be.

Control is an illusion.

Chasing Success

“With your mathematical aptitude, you should consider a career in accounting.” My guidance counselor has called me in for an interview concerning my post-secondary plans.

You should be the Treasurer for a large corporation, I hear my father echoing.

“I am not interested in math.”  Blunt.

The counselor leans back in his chair, drops his pen, and runs his fingers through his thinning hair.

“And what would it be that does interest you?”

“Children.  I want to work with children.  I was thinking maybe as an Early Childhood Educator.”

He picks up my report again.

“Your grades indicate you can do much better.  How about psychiatry?  This aptitude test you completed also suggests this is a good field for you.”

“Maybe, but I’d rather be a teacher.”

“Not many people have your academic capabilities.  You can potentially be very successful.”

I can feel myself shutting down.  How many times have I been through this?

* * *

I am eight years old, and the school has called my parents for a meeting with the teacher, Principal, and a woman from the Board office who has been conducting tests.

“We want to accelerate your daughter,”  the woman explains.  “Testing shows that she is gifted, and we believe her educational needs would be better served by sending her to a different school, where she will be with peers of her intellectual equal.”

I sit in the room, like a fly on the wall, and listen as the adults passionately discuss my future.  The educators clearly have the upper hand – they are talking about what they know.  My uneducated parents (neither attended school beyond grade eight) are clearly out of their element – my mother worried, my father not knowing what to think.  He turns to me.

“What do you want to do?”

“Go to the new school.”  It is easy for me.  I am game for adventure.  Success is miles away; not something I need worry about now.

* * *

“We called this meeting to discuss V.J.’s course selection for high school.”

My mother has come alone this time, and as usual, is daunted by the professionals that sit before her.

“What seems to be the problem?”

“As you are aware, V.J. has signed up for Art next year.”

“Yes?”

“I won the Art award this year.”

“That is all well and good, V.J. , but you are an academic student, and while Art has its merits, it is not a course of study recommended for a student of your caliber.  We would like you to consider taking something more in line with your future success.”

I drop Art.

* * *

“What do you want to do with your life?”  my mother asks on the way home.

“I don’t know, Mom.  There is really only one thing I’ve ever wanted and that’s to be married with children.”

“I don’t know, Veej,” my mother shakes her head.  “Men don’t like smart women, and from everything the school says, you could be much more successful.”

“Yeah, and alone, right Mom?”

“Well, I just can’t see who will put up with you, to be honest.”

* * * *

“Why are you here?  Not why are you here in this group, at this moment, but why are you here in University, studying psychology, or whatever other major you have signed on for?  Who are you serving by being here – yourself, or your parents?”

The group is mandatory group therapy, part of our first year Psychology credit.  Lead by a tall pear-shaped woman, with long stringy blond hair, and a gangly young man with a blonde beard.  Psychologists.

The question makes me uncomfortable, because to be honest, I don’t know the answer.

“I used to think I knew what I wanted,” I answer, “but my life feels like it’s always a game of tug-of-war, with me at one end and everybody who knows better at the other.”

“Go on,” the woman encourages.  “Tell us why you feel that way.”

“Well, I feel like there are things I could do with my life, you know, worthwhile things, and at the same time, all I really aspire to is normalcy – if that makes any sense.  I mean, my mother certainly didn’t want me to be here; she thinks it’s a waste of a woman’s time to get an education, but my father, he’s kind of proud of me, and I like that….”   I am rambling, not even sure where I’m going with this.

“My parents want me to be educated,” another student pipes in.  “They say that you can’t be successful without it.”

“But what does that mean?” the lanky leader questions.  “How do you define, success?”

“Exactly,” I continue.  “Are we ever successful when we follow someone else’s script for us?  Or is rebellion the only answer?”

“Rebellion can be self-destructive.”

“No doubt, but if we follow our own path, isn’t that what we are doing?”

“How about you?” the woman turns the conversation over to another, and before I can speak further the class is over, but the questions linger with me.

They linger on into the next week and the week after that, and by April, I have made my decision:  I am not here for the right reasons.

I drop out and get married.

And ‘success’, or any concept of success becomes even more elusive.

Divorce follows within two years, and I realize that maybe my mother was right:  maybe I am not loveable.

I jump in again, this time more committed; this time bearing three children and feeling a semblance of completion.

And it ends, and I am alone again, and broke and struggling, and I begin to wonder if others really did know what was best for me after all.  And as a divorced mother of three, I definitely know that had I pursued higher education and a more suitable career the struggles would be lessened, and I would at least have financial security.

I never really have defined success for myself, apart from wanting happiness, and maybe this has been the problem.

What is your concept of success?

One Thing

Sipping my second cup of morning tea, I breathe in the solitude that nature dropped on my doorstep overnight:  great mounds of white, silently commanding the world to a halt.  The tea is extra sweet and warming when accompanied by the luxury of leisure time.

Shaking off the frayed edges of yesterday’s insanity, I contemplate a more relaxed day – some laundry that has needed tending to all week, a few hours of schoolwork, and maybe even an apple crumble.

The snow continues to fall outside my window, softly, without a sign of letting up and I rise from my last sip and stretch, lingering to revel in the majestic beauty of the landscape before me.

Yesterday, everything was chaos, or so it seemed.  The wind was howling and a cold sleet constantly beat against the windows, and indoors, the students were restless, hyper, inattentive, and I was short on patience.  There is always a multitude of things happening at any time in my room:  students writing tests, students working on past due assignments, students looking for refuge from out of control classrooms, and, of course, my own class.  My own class, who would not settle; could not settle, as it was Friday, and the weather report promised snow, and it is only a month to Christmas, and Do we really have to read?!   And as I hushed them for the third or fourth time, all hell broke loose as a face pressed up against our classroom window: the face of a missing member of my flock, not warm and contained in my room, but running wild outside with two other truants.

I sigh, and glance outside again at the marvel that is the first snowfall.  Untouched purity.  And I cozy inside.

The laundry is scattered about the house in various stages of completion.  Some sorted and ready  for washing, some wrinkled in the dryer awaiting rescue, and some folded in baskets wishing to be put away.  It is symbolic of my life, I realize, that nothing ever really gets completed.  The too many demands of my job eat away at my attention until there is nothing left to offer any one task, and so none of it is done properly, and I am left exhausted, and discontented, wondering if anything I do is of value.

Today, I will finish the laundry, and not leave any remnants, and I will clean up the kitchen, and bake that crumble, and get work done, because I can.  And I will feel the satisfaction that comes with being able to do one thing at a time:  the satisfaction of completing a task.

Thank goodness for Mother Nature’s intervention, and the subtle reminder to value the simple times.

If only I could bring this serenity into my everyday life.

Day 182 “Mystic Virtue”

I lost my temper today.  I am not proud of it, and the image of the redden-face of my cornered victim haunts me.  But there it is.

Today’s reflection cautions against being: “possessive, flaunting, and dominating.”  Ever since I came to this school, three years ago, I have tried to emulate the virtue of which Derek Lin writes; to be “productive, action-oriented, and nurturing.”

When first transferred to this school, I ignored the letter my colleagues wrote asking that I be placed in another department, for the benefit of the students, recognizing that they knew nothing of my capabilities.  Instead, I focused on productivity.

I tried to brush off the comment, by my then department head, that people over fifty are “useless”, choosing to do what I do best:  offer nurturing support to the special needs children we work with daily.

And when a colleague from outside my department criticized the way we conducted ourselves in the Resource room, I reflected and took action to better our operation.

It was when that same teacher spoke harshly to a student in my care that I lost it.  Storming, I confronted her.  What business was it of hers, questioning our students? I demanded to know.  My sense of righteousness led the tirade, and she was effectively reduced to a cower.

Way to go!  my new boss exclaimed.

Didn’t see that coming, other friends confessed, undeniably impressed.

I was a momentary hero…..for some.

Whenever there is power over love cannot exist, the words of a former teacher echo in my heart.  I demonstrated power over – there is no doubt.  The more the woman cringed, the larger I grew, and in retrospect, it was unfair.  I accused her of being unprofessional, but then, what was I?

Where was the compassion that nurtured a growing relationship?  Where was the productivity in that moment of sheer rage?

My mystic virtue continues to be a work in progress.