My Neuro Psychologist says that the majority of brain injury patients fall into depression – after their therapists have given them the go-ahead to return to “normal” life, that they are now free to live their lives without having their weeks plotted out for them and mailed to them on a rotation anymore. Instead of being happy, they are deeply depressed.
“And why’s that?” I recall asking.
Being a shrink, he gave the question back to me: “Why do you think that is?” Because, you know, my answer is more relevant than his facts. How I see it, what I think of it, lends insight into how I would feel.
I imagined it must be because it was easier for them not to have responsibility for their own lives, which were being dictated for them on a daily basis. Now they were on their own, they would fail or succeed by their own merits. Maybe I wasn’t ready to be done myself, maybe after two years I was dependent on them after all.
But today was my last “Family” Meeting at the brain rehabilitation center, and I can tell you right now how I’m going to be feeling in the coming weeks:

A.) Relieved to have my own life back.
B.) Disappointed that for some reason I have been thinking for the past couple of years that when the therapists moved out my life could pick up again right where I left off. No one promised me that, but I’m pretty sure they did promise more than what I’ve got.
C.) Wishing things could have happened differently. Wanting to bargain with somebody somewhere in the past – What if I had been more aggressive about getting the level of therapy I really needed? What if they had gotten me into Occupational Therapy sooner? What if I’d had some kind of case manager who could have helped me to get those things done?
D.) Angry because there are things that I’m always going to struggle with. Angry because I want to be like everyone else and skip the naps and burn the candle at both ends and push my way up to the top of the heap.
E.) Guilty for not being grateful enough for all the things I have, for remembering with every breath that I am alive, and that is all that matters.
F.) Wanting really badly to just forget that the whole thing ever happened, to pretend that I’ve always been here and always been this way, and I’m okay with that, I’m doing fine, I don’t want for anything. The bills are being paid and there is food in the house, I have my bus transportation and my friends here – I don’t need anything more.
G.) Daring to hope. Always at the end of everything bad, down at the bottom of a great big pile of bad, always I’m looking for the hope therein. I think of what a beautiful world this is, what wonderful kids I have, how much I love my family, how much I love Dennis, my friends. How I still have a lot to say in life. I’m not teaching in a classroom, but there’s something shining inside that I have got to share with others, and I can still do that in writing, in painting – in how I love others.

My sister wasn’t able to be at the meeting this time around, but she sent an email that pretty much summed things up: “…My understanding is that this will be the last family meeting at that you are all done treating Heather. Please let me know if Heather's interpretation of the situation is incorrect. I wanted to thank you and your staff for all the hard work you've put into Heather's rehabilitation. It's been a long and interesting process and I've been happy to help as soon as I realized how involved I needed to be. It's been very educational. I also just wanted to make sure that I understand where Heather is and what will be needed for her from here out. There are a lot of skills and steps that Heather has progressed with through the combined efforts of [you, and Heather’s] Tuesday group. Obviously this list isn't exhaustive, but off of the top of my head: · Speech and conversational skills · Information Processing · Memory and scheduling compensational skills · Physical exhaustion management · Surviving relatively independently · Initiating an application for social security · Transportation · Neural fatigue management · Accepting changes to her quality of life (ongoing)
“Obviously Heather could not recover to her full capacity from before the accident, so things that she will continue to struggle with and hopefully improve on include: · Neural fatigue (which leads to greater problems managing even skills that she is typically doing well with) · Information Processing · Problem solving · Sleep hygiene · Medication management · Scheduling and memory compensation · Budgeting · Driving skills
“Things that she is currently unable to do include: · Drive at all other than the 15 minutes from her home to work · Complete more than roughly 4 hours of work a day · Manage a day successfully without a nap in the middle of the day · Complete her masters degree in education · Work in a classroom · Work in a fast-paced position · Work without compensation for her disability
“Questions that I still have include: · Will you provide a therapy wrap up/release statement that details her capabilities? o Heather's understanding was that she could contact your offices whenever she needed a statement for Social Security, housing, food stamp, and other considerations. Is that accurate? What kind of turn around can she expect when she needs something like that? · What happens if she moves, or changes jobs? o Will she need further driving instruction? o Will she need further vocational therapy? o Where can she get further therapy if she moves away from Lansing? o Could she get a referral? I might have more questions that I haven't thought of yet. but this is basically what I would have brought to a family meeting were I able to attend. Once again with sincere thanks...”

Judging by what I understood from the meeting, Thea wasn’t wrong in her assessment of my situation. Origami is signing off. The Vocational Therapist will touch base with me a couple of times within the next couple of months to help with the transition between my old boss and my new boss (There’s actually kind of like a whole committee of bosses, who fortunately are going to be sticking around to help as well). I am by all reports doing well in the quiet, organized atmosphere with the routine schedule (Unless I’m overtired, which is when all bets are off regardless of what I’m doing).

“Heather, we have discussed that you might be able to work a couple of extra hours if you were to have a more repetitive job, but you have expressed concern that you might not be challenged enough by such a job and, frankly, I would have a really hard time with a job like that myself. If you were to change jobs at some point in the future, know that I’m always here for you if you need me. Meanwhile, I’m happy to see that you have finally been contacted by the social security administration regarding your claim, as you will need to be compensated for the work that you are no longer able to do. Although they do usually turn everyone down initially, I think you have a good case with them, given the extremely debilitating effects that neuro fatigue still has on you after two years of recovery.”
The Occupational Therapist then listed things that she feels I am doing well. Since January (when we had our last meeting) and now, I have transitioned into independent housing and am caring for my children relatively well. “And we have a new system in which Heather is keeping her weekly grocery money in envelopes so that she can keep track of her spending and also use the checking account solely for bill paying purposes. So, Heather, how’s that going so far?”

“Um… I lost the envelopes.”
“…and we implemented a new pill reminder system so that she will stop forgetting to take her pills…”
“It’s kind of working – I only missed them twice last week…”
“Well, ANYway, Heather is probably always going to struggle with budgeting, sequencing, organizing, problem-solving when there are sudden changes in her plans or schedule. Rest breaks and time management are always going to be the key to her success in any endeavor. I estimate that we should be done within the next two weeks.”

Why am I so organized at work and not at home? Because I get the great privilege of working first thing in the morning, when my brain is working to its fullest capacity. Also, work has a built-in schedule, tasks that are the same from week to week, and people who worry that things won’t get done, or notice when things don’t get done, and are sure to remind me. In other words, I have the same level of supervision as I did when I lived with Thea and Paul. More. And the bonus is that I actually get paid for doing this stuff, which surprisingly I really enjoy doing. I think it’s because I love people and helping people out, and there are enough creative things to do to keep that side of me satisfied as well.
But I sat at the meeting and marveled at how I could have been just a few classes short of a master’s degree in teaching just a couple of years ago, working full time and considering a job teaching online -- and now I’m weighing the pros and cons of a part time office job over an assembly line job at a factory. With no one but myself foreseeing my ability to do much more in the future.
The medical doctor from the rehab who has been prescribing my treatment told me at the meeting that they are all very proud of how far I’ve progressed, that they would write up a summary of what I have done and what their recommendations will be for my future. She explained that sadly they had not gotten a report back from the driving inspector regarding my future at the wheel yet, but that in the meantime my family should be compensated for helping me go back and forth to pick up Stuart and Lucy for the weekends, and in the future the auto insurance company is still obligated to cover any travel I need to brain-related medical appointments or therapies. The brain rehab will contact me via email when they get further information regarding the driving issue. If I have any further brain-related problems in the future, they are, of course, always there for me... I just have to get a referral from a medical doctor before approaching them.
Now that they are closing shop, it's probably too late for my Neuro Psychologist’s Office to get further therapy for me. He had said that I needed it, and had told me several times that he had sent the recommendation to the new doctor and therapy program he wanted for me (that he felt would be better than what I actually got), but even with his referral and several phone calls on my part, nothing ever came of that in time to be of any use to me. I mean, what are the chances that the auto company, after finding out they are all done paying for my brain treatment, are going to welcome more payments toward an all new therapy program for me? Certainly not after getting the report from the brain rehabilitation folks stating that my therapy is finished and that I am doing the best that I can do now.
That’s it.
It is kind of depressing, isn't it?
I'm not sure anymore if ANY therapy was really ever going to end with any kind of peace or sense of closure -- Maybe I could have gotten OT sooner and would be further along (the neuro psychologist thought so), but regardless I'm still stuck unable to do the things that I used to do, or to live the life I planned and spent thousands in college to achieve. There's no way this was ever going to be a happy conclusion... Except that I do love my current job, still get to paint and to write, and if I can master my fatigue and time management, I now have more time to do those things.

Maybe it was the only way that was ever going to happen, and maybe that's what I can look at as the reason behind it all. I am not one of those people who really believes that everything happens for a reason -- sometimes bad things happen, and they are random, and they will never make any sense. The “reason” isn’t the important thing, but my reaction is. Writing and painting have been my calling since a very young age, and somehow, despite all the distractions and sincere efforts to do other things that seemed more practical at the time, these are what I have left in me that I can still do without any doubt or question.
It’s all still up to me, and always has been.
That’s not depressing at all.

Telling the Stories is Enough

At the Methodist Church here they have been doing a series on living more simply, and I've had a lot to say on the subject. I have no money or home of my own right now, and I'm grateful my sister moved back to Michigan at just the right time that I wouldn't have to be alone in all this. I've been thinking about how the accident has forced me to cut back on all my busywork and focus on the bare essentials -- diet,exercise, family, and emotional health. Normally in the summertime I'm with my kids, and it's a race to do as many fun activities as we can possibly squeeze in before summer ends abruptly on us (It always seems abrupt no matter how prepared we think we may be at the beginning of the summer). We run back and forth to the beach, have picnics, visit friends and family, go to the parks and the fun parks and hit every single museum within at least a hundred mile radius.
This summer, I have been limited to walks, painting, drawing, board games were pushing it a little, and no restaurants, stores, or any new activity that would overtax my poor tired brain. No reading, movies or TV. At first my kids were climbing up the walls, and I had to sleep a lot but spent many of my waking hours hard-put to keep them busy.

Worst of all, I wasn't able to read to them. As an educator, an English Major, and soon-to-be Reading Specialist, as a writer and lover of books, it has always been my goal to raise my kids to love words as passionately as I do. I read to them in my womb, and I read to them when they were babies. As soon as they were old enough to grab a book and crawl my way, dragging the book along and holding it up to me, I had a policy of always dropping everything I was doing and sitting down and reading that story to them, so that in their lives, no matter where they go, no matter what they do or how far they travel from me, whenever they open the cover of a book it will be as if my love wafts up from the pages, a feeling of peace and pure joy, and an internal voice whispering, "My mother loves me."

Even though they are the ripe old ages of nine and ten, before the accident I was still reading to them every night they were with me. It's our special time, a time when we snuggle up close and I share the words I read when I was their age, and I fall in love with the stories again as I see them through my children's wondering eyes for the first time. They can stop me at any point and ask me questions. If the chapter ends in a cliffhanger they might even coerce me with their enthusiasm to relent and read another chapter. I'm a sucker when it comes to cliffhangers, because I remember long nights in my own childhood where I couldn't wait to find out what happens next.
So this not being able to read to them business was a huge emotional issue for me.

We tried audiobooks, but then they couldn't stop and ask as many clarifying questions as they needed, and sometimes the voice of the reader wouldn't say something quite right, or at least not the way they were certain I would have read it.
I went to my sister and asked if she would be so kind as to read to us.
She smiled and said, "Who, me? You're the master storyteller in the family. Just tell them about King Arthur like you used to tell me and Bonnie."
I've never forgotten telling them those stories, and neither have they, but for some reason I had a reluctance to attempt this with my children, who have certainly been born into a more cynical age. And the subject matter... as a teenager I never thought twice about describing all the violence, immorality and downright terrifying aspects of the stories, but with my own children I had certain misgivings.

But my sister reminded me that those weren't the things that she remembers best.

What she remembers is that I modeled all the characters out of people in our family, with all our strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears. What she remembers is a story about how someone tried with all their might to create a society of faith, peace, and justice -- and the tragedy in how our own crushing imperfections can tear all of that down. She remembers the funny parts, the parts that made her cry, and most of all the hope with which all the stories ended, a hope that if we remember that once someone came very close to having a world like that, then we as individuals should, and could, search our own hearts out and find the strength to fight for having a world like that. A world that never was but always should be. For although Camelot fell because of human weakness, still it did grow from dreams in our hearts to be more than what our flesh demands of us, to strive toward our greater purpose and to never give up on our visions of justice and peace, because it's not about whether or not it's impossible to create a perfect society: It's about what kind of people pursuing that kind of an impossible dream makes us into.

Anyway, that night I started to tell them the story, and I was pleased to find that I could remember a lot of it and that my brain isn't so addled that I can't keep it going fairly well. I struggle when they interrupt me with questions because my alternating attention is damaged, and that makes it very difficult for me to switch back and forth from one topic to another. Other than that, though, they responded very well.

The next day we walked to church. 
Now, a word on this pursuit: I was raised Baptist and lived under the harsh and impossible Rules of a Judgemental and Punishing Greater Power for many years and, after my church "family" predominantly abandoned me as a horrible sinner beyond all redemption, I went seeking a more realistic spiritual focus. I like the Methodist Church because they stress actually doing things for other people with less of the judgement and superiority. This church in particular, is surprisingly liberal for a religious organization, and I happen to love that the best piano player I have ever heard attends the church and just happens to have a life partner of the same sex. It gives me a tiny bit of hope for the world, because I'm a hopeless idealist for lack of any other options to help me to keep getting up mornings when there's nothing on the news but the latest conservative lies that spread hatred around like fertilizer. I'm looking for a lifestyle, not a pulpit. But I digress...
After church, when we were walking home again, my son Stuart started whining "Mom, I'm bored!"
And sweet little Lucy said "Momma, can you tell us what happens next in The Story?"
So, with a little reminding from them, I picked up the narrative from where we left off, and I told it to them all the way home.

I made them their lunch, and we did the dishes, and then I said, "Okay, guys -- Now we can do whatever we want: We can go play Bocce Ball in the front yard, we could paint together some more, we could play a boardgame if you can read me the directions---"
Stuart interrupted with "I want to hear more of the story, Mom! Can you please please tell us what happened to Gawain? Did he find the Green Knight again? How does he beat a guy who's a giant and can cut off his head and carry it around like it's a beachball?"
I was delighted.

We settled down on the couch and snuggled under some fuzzy blankets with drinks and snacks, and -- I could hardly believe it- two hours later I was still telling the story, and they were still laughing, asking questions, telling me what they thought should happen next, what they hoped would never happen, which characters they liked and why, and begging me to skip ahead because they were so worried about the ominous foreshadowing drawing into the story like a stormfront.
Looking at my children's faces that afternoon, I found myself thinking warmly that in many ways I have more than enough.

A Subjective Look at Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

There were a lot of things I loved about this book, but I really had to look for them.
This is because the author, Tim Robbins, kind of ticked me off.
The story is set out like a tall tale with a moral to it, something to the effect that being different is good and that being a woman is powerful, but Robbins pisses all over that by virtue of being a man pretending to speak for women, by writing too many gratuitous soft-porn scenes that read like a middle-aged man's wet dreams, and in the end simply by making a dirty old man character his philosophical mouthpiece while making another character (named for himself) the be-all-end-all solution to all the heroine's problems.
I was highly tempted to consider him a complete ass and throw down the book on several occasions, but ultimately the main character's refusal to conform to societal norms and pigeonholes, as well as some of the author's actual philosophies on life had an effect on me that I'm not able to dismiss.
Perhaps this is what good writing is comprised of: Something that challenges you, that forces you to think.
 I find I'm not quite done thinking this one over yet.

Sometimes I don't have any idea how I feel about a thing while I'm experiencing it. I know everyone has this problem to sort out on occasion, but in my case even a very strong, obvious emotion doesn't always get through. I'm afraid of powerful feelings that I perceive as being negative. My father was a slave to his emotions, and he damn near killed us with them. In particular, I recall the night he followed us (we were on foot) in the family van and I couldn't tell if he was trying to run us off the road or just hit us outright. As a result of my fear of letting my emotions get the best of me, I go a little farther than just suppressing things that I fear may hurt. I think what my mind actually does is block some strong emotions completely in a residual survival instinct that prevents me from even knowing I've got anything to feel. 

Until several days later, when emotions come pouring through some insignificant event, and I'm sitting in the parking lot at work, sobbing and feeling utterly hopeless and ready to quit, completely overtaken by an overwhelming cluster of thoughts and feeling that I cannot sort.

This is a fairly long blog entry.

Like me, you'll just have to keep reading and get through some of the messier emotions first, before you can see if I'm making any real point here.

Like with dreams, the things that stick out for us in a story that we've read are subjective, are based upon our background knowledge, our life experiences, and even how we see the world in that precise time that we are reading the book. It's possible that what is important about a dream is not what you remember of it so much as how you feel about what you remember. I find that what "sticks out" for me is as important as what the author may be trying to say (I'm egotistical that way).

I feel the book lends itself to quotation well, especially since the entire second half of the book was basically just using the character of "The Chink" on the mountaintop for the author to proselytize his views on life. But many of them were interesting or in outright agreeance with me. I managed to weed it down to only 14 quotes, just for you:

1.)  "Einstein had observed motion and learned that time and space are relative; Sissy had committed herself to motion and learned that one could alter reality by one's perception of it." ~p 71

Recently my therapist said something trite such as that it doesn't really matter what actually happened in a specific circumstance we were discussing so much as what I believe happened, that my reality is valid in so far as it affects me. 

I'm not sure how I feel about that. I believe that my attitude can affect how I perceive my life, but I do know there's a difference between reality and fiction, and it's only when I allow myself to forget it that I tend to get hurt. Are what happened and what I believe happened really the same thing? Perhaps this question is dependent upon the circumstances.

For me, the importance of this passage is that I think I can find new ways to view the things that have happened to me; ways that will empower me instead of hold me back.

It's hard, though. 

I hope you don't know what it's like to be told by a parent during your formative years just how useless, lazy and worthless they think you are.

But regardless of what I was told, I know better than to believe it, and this is where I believe my own perception of reality is vital to my happiness.

2.) "'Be careful, get comfortable, don't make any waves,' whispers the DNA. Conversely, the yearning for freedom, the risky belief that there is nothing to lose and nothing to gain, is also in our DNA. But it's of much more recent evolutionary origin, according to me. It has risen during the past couple of billion years, during the rapid increase in brain size and intellectual capacity associated our becoming human. But the desire for security, the will to survive, is of much greater antiquity. for the present, the conflicting yearnings in the DNA generate a basic paradox that in turn generates the character -- nothing if not contradictory -- of man. To live fully, one must be free, but to be free one must give up security. Therefore, to live one must be ready to die. How's that for a paradox? But since the genetic bent for freedom is comparatively recent, it may represent an evolutionary trend. We may yet outgrow our overriding obsession to survive. That's why I encourage everyone to take chances, to court danger, to welcome anxiety, to flaunt insecurity, to rock every boat and always cut against the grain." ~p  206

Well, I don't know a divorced person out there who hasn't given up security for freedom, and it's up to the individual to decide whether or not that's a good thing.

I want to be that person who leaps first and has faith that the net will appear, but I seldom really am. For survival I always used to play it safe. It's a hard habit to break, and in some cases it's not even desirable to break it. 

3.) "Life isn't simple; it's overwhelmingly complex. The love of simplicity is an escapist drug, like alcohol...Death is simple but life is rich. I embrace the richness, the more complicated the better." ~ p 223

This one reminds me of a specific relationship that ended. It got complicated, and probably still is complicated on some levels. I don't mind complexity.

It enriches my life to let people in anyway and allow them to make little changes, expose me to new thoughts and ideas, or even just to talk to about the arts, politics or culture with, or especially to laugh with. A simple relationship would have no depth of feeling, and it seems to me that a relationship like that would be empty and full of regrets. I'd rather have something wonderfully complex and lose it than to have had nothing at all.

4.) "She had questions to answer and maybe to ask. For

example, 'Where did all this lust come from!' It is important to believe in love. Everyone knows that. But is it possible to believe in lust? Sissy wasn't positive what she believed anymore. Once it had been simple. She had believed in hitchhiking." ~ p 237

I'm going through a stage in my life where I'm questioning a lot of things that I used to believe without thinking. For example, I used to believe that everything happens for a reason, and that everything will turn out all right in the end.

 I like to think that love is so powerful a force that no love you express can ever be entirely wasted. 

I wish that I could still believe in someone ever loving me in the way that I need them to. It's hard to have faith in something you can't see, although that's exactly what faith is. I want flowers and chocolates and to be the first, best thing in somebody's life, but I don't know if I even deserve to have that, let alone expect it of anyone.

5.) "Our business should be liberating the human spirit. Or if that's too idealistic for you, if that strikes you as the business of religion -- which it should be, too -- then our business should be assisting people to function -- crazily or not isn't our concern; that's up to them -- helping them to function on whatever level or levels of normality they choose to function on, not helping them to adjust and locking them up if they don't adjust." ~p 242

I'm fond of this passage because it's where I'm at with therapy. I'm tired of focusing on what might be wrong with me and I'm fixing my focus on the things that are right. I know I've got a lot to work with. I know I've got talent and brains and compassion in spades -- plus I'm a damn good teacher -- and there has to be some part of this world where I can make a life of those things.

I feel my emotional or mental state has often held me back in life.

I have to believe that I can take all of my perceived weaknesses and develop them to be strengths.

Being overly emotional could instead be powerfully compassionate.

And I most certainly hope that remembering the past will help me not to repeat it... 

6.) "Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization." ~ p 242

Gotta love this one. It's concise.

7.) "The Secretary of the Interior knew, of course, that there was a brain in his head and that the human brain was Nature's most magnificent creation...it never occurred to the Secretary to wonder why the brain, if it is as awesomely magnificent as it purports to be, why the brain would waste its time hanging out in a head such as his. Maybe some brains just want the easy life." ~ p 258

(This one's included as comic relief, if you will.)

8.) "She felt guilt, she felt sorrow, shame and confusion, but she did not feel that she owed society any accounting for her behavior, as bad as her behavior might have been. Society had never looked upon her with favor.

 It had been eager to write her off when she was just a little girl. Society may have institutionalized her way back then if she had cooperated. Society had neither liked her nor believed in her, but luckily she had liked herself and believed in herself, and although she recognized that she had floundered in recent years, erred in recent hours, she still liked and believed, and the reckoning she must make was with herself." ~ pp 273-4

Word.

9.) "Sissy had joined the ranks of the Unhappy Waiters and Killers of Time. Oh, God, there are so many of them in our land! Students who can't be happy until they've graduated, servicemen who can't be happy until they're discharged, single folks who can't be happy until they're married, workers who can't be happy until they're retired, adolescents who can't be happy until they're grown, ill people who can't be happy until they're well, failures who can't be happy until they succeed, restless who can't be happy until they get out of town, and, in most cases, vice versa, people waiting, waiting for the world to begin." ~ p 288

I feel myself tugging at the bit quite often, pushing for a better life, a life worth living, and I fluctuate between faith and despair.
 It's hard work to discover happiness in the everyday, although the work has been proven worth our while. 
My current approach is to attend a lot of group counseling and individual therapy sessions, trying to learn how to cope with frightening flashbacks so that I can really start living... realizing all along that what I'm doing right now is living, if I'll accept it and give it a good shot.

10,) "To the extent that this world surrenders its richness and diversity, it surrenders its poetry. To the extent that it relinquishes its capacity to surprise, it relinquishes its magic. To the extent that it loses its ability to tolerate ridiculous and even dangerous exceptions, it loses its grace. As its options (no matter how absurd or unlikely) diminish, so do its chances for the future." ~ p 295

This is just plain lovely.

11.) "Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between commitment and need...Of course, love can never be stripped bare of illusion, but simply to arrive at an awareness of illusion is to hold hands with truth -- and sometimes the hard light of lust affords just such an awareness." ~p 330

I'm not going to speculate much on what Robbins says about lust. His Sissy character really got around and got quite confused despite his contention that lust is some kind of great equalizer or stabilizer. I don't hold much with what the Baptist faith taught me due to all the guilt it instilled, but they weren't far off when they told me that sex complicates your ability to be objective. And it takes no genius to see that love and lust aren't as interchangeable as some movies would have us believe. Real love transcends the physical. Not that I have no interest in the physical. To the contrary. 

12.) "Poetry  is nothing more than an intensification or illumination of common objects and everyday events until they shine with their singular nature, until we can experience their power, until we can follow their steps in the dance, until we can discern what parts they play in the Great Order of Love. How is this done? By fucking around with syntax.

[Definitions are limiting. Limitations are deadening. To limit oneself is a kind of suicide. To limit another is a kind of murder..." ~ p 333

"Fucking around with syntax." I was highly amused upon reading that.

Speaking of syntax, I think definitions are boundaries, and that having healthy boundaries is what makes relationships work. That said, to limit does either kill yourself or others.

 All the limitations I place upon myself out of fear are debilitating. The limits my ex-husband placed on me were crippling as well. I am working to break free of those limitations, but it often feels as if my mind's still in the cage that my father began to build when I was only a child...

I hope to shine with my singular nature, full of power in the dance of life, aware of my place and purpose in the Universe.

13.) "When life demands more of people than they demand of life -- as ordinarily is the case -- what results is a resentment of life that is almost as deep-seated as the fear of death. Indeed, the resentment of life and the fear of death are virtually synonymous. Does it follow, then, that the more people ask of living, the less their fear of dying?" ~ p 344

I think so.

I'm asking a lot of life, and I've always asked too much of myself. 

Right now I feel a little resentment, and I often panic for fear that this deadened, angry feeling is me dying inside.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Let's promise each other that we'll keep kicking right back at our lives and encourage one another to look death in the face and laugh.

We'll win.

14.) "The various Oriental philosophers have at least one thing in common: they take the personal and try to make it universal. I hate that. I'm the opposite. I take the universal and I make it personal. The only true magical and poetic exchanges that occur in this life occur between two people. Sometimes it doesn't even get that far. Often, the true glory of existence is confined to individual consciousness. That's okay. Let us live for the beauty of our own reality." ~ p 357

I'm a better person for having been hurt and still allowed more people to come into my life and transform it.

 I'm a better person for having sought and found so many great truths and applied them to my own life instead of insisting that others apply them.

 I don't believe people develop faith, in themselves or anything else, by being told; they develop faith by what they experienced and have felt for themselves.

 It's a personal journey. 

And despite everything I still believe in magic and I still believe in miracles.

 I believe it every time someone takes my hand. 

I believe it every time I make someone else smile. 

I believe it every time I face the pain in my life and insist on not allowing it to stop me. 

And I believe it every time I look around and realize that I am not alone.

Books are subjective.

They speak to what we already know.

They echo into our hearts and minds the thoughts and ideas we've had ourselves.

They put words to the beauty and the confusion of life in the same way that dreams put those things into images.

But no one picks up any book and reads the same story, because they're all our story, not all of ours.

This is what I read when I picked up Even Cowgirls Get the Blues: I read the story of my own life through the fictitious story of another, a joyful, funny shout against anything that I think is limiting me, and I read it in a way that only I would.

Among My Favorite Quotes...

Forgive my brevity (the soul of wit).
My eyes are going to burn right out of their sockets
if I stare at the computer screen
one minute longer.

Vocabulary is Sexy

I love a man who uses the word egregious in every day conversation!
I have simple needs, really.

The Perils of Reading to Your Children

Thinking only of the great values in the story regarding having a good work ethic and sticking to your goals, I decide to read Where The Red Fern Grows to my children. This particular coming of age novel is at least partially responsible for my determination to see good in every circumstance and have faith that all things happen for a reason. I want that for my children. I don't think one way or another about the gory axe accident halfway through the book until I start the notorious chapter and it already seems too late.
As the boy tries to speak and the bubble of blood works its way out of his mouth and bursts before he falls back dead, my children's eyes are wide and fixed upon me, their mouths hanging open.
Lucy stares at me as I close the book, then declares, "Mom, don't you ever read that to me again!"
Stuart exclaims, "THAT is why you don't go running around with an axe trying to kill some other kid's dogs! What a bad kid!"
Later that night, I find Lucy curled up in her bed sobbing.
I have traumatized my babies for life!
Tonight over the phone, Stuart says darkly, "Mom, I cannot believe you read that to us. I guess I'm going to have to tell on you."
"Who?" I ask, "Your Dad?" My concern is not so much with his father as the idea of my son thinking he can tattle on me like I am some sort of covertly bad influence.
"No."
Ominous pause.
"Your Mother!" He bursts out laughing.
I don't know how he managed to keep such a deadpan expression in his voice before that.
Must take after his Uncle. That guy was always fooling me growing up.

Writing: A Metaphor or Maybe a Memoir

The Setting

 

You may recall a little essay I wrote in November entitled "Reading, a Love Story."

I have often thought of doing its sequel: "Writing, a..."
To what do I compare Writing if Reading is already a Love Story?
Writing takes Reading to the next level.
Writing hits my brain and leaks out my fingertips like Fornication Itself.
I need to write like I need to breathe, only more desperately.
Writing sears across my mind like some intensely sultry image that I can't forget until I act on it. Repeatedly.
Copiously.
Writing is an urge, a compulsion, a driving force.
Writing starts as maybe a little spark, a little itch, an idea.
Maybe it's because of that bird I saw wandering beside the highway the other day.
Maybe I saw something happen on a playground that reminded me of when I was younger.
Perhaps there is some great injustice that I feel could be righted if only I were to find a good analogy to use when writing about it.

Sometimes it's not just an itch; it's a burning question on my mind that I just have to get out.

The idea becomes a description or a character, maybe several different places and a variety of people. Either it's a quickie that fits into a short story or an essay, or it's one of those check into a hotel for the weekend and never see daylight torrid relationships that require lots of chapters and endless bottles of wine.
Personally, I'm more of a slow burn kind of writer. I court the story, study the story, soak in the story, and ultimately become engrossed in the story. I think about the story all the time. Little things I see and hear remind me of my story. I dash off little love letters on sticky notes and in notepads while out in the working world, and can't wait to come home to the story every night. I'm up at all hours of the night and sometimes into the early morning alternately coaxing out the details and banging out my ardor in throes of passion. I can't eat, I can't sleep, and I can't focus on or think about anything else. Yesterday I was at a bar and all I could think about was how several of its occupants would make great minor character descriptions for my novel.
I suppose it's like an addiction as much as like sex at this point, but it all began innocuously enough.

The Characters

Having read a great deal of books by the time I was in the third grade, I was now writing full-length stories of my own that imitated the stories our teacher was reading to us. They were horrible but they were ambitious.
By fourth grade writing had overtaken nearly every other activity in my life. Use our spelling words in complete sentences that indicate we understand the meaning of the words? Child's play! I linked all my sentences into paragraphs until I had short stories. In the first of these, a mallard duck showed up on the doorstep of my Sam Spade Detective Agency one morning, croaked out the word, "Detergents!" and then died. The story was about how the detective figured out his death. Not to mention why the hell the duck could speak, a mystery which I believe was never solved. Shoot - not only do I still remember how to spell all the words; I even remember what all the words were. This is because Mr. Deacon was a fantastic teacher who encouraged his students' strengths. He laughed out loud at my story and had me stand in front of the class to read it. He challenged me to top that story with our spelling words the next week, and had me read my work before the class again to wild applause.
My parents, encouraged by the suggestion of my teacher, enrolled me in a children's writing workshop that ran at the U of M extension in Flint that summer. I think that's what it was, anyway. I wrote a poem about The North Wind based on a book I had read, and then screen printed my own cover to hold that and the other stories I had written.

I continued along this vein from fourth through sixth grade, developing a strong sense of writing to a specific audience. The stories included my classmates, lampooned our teachers, and involved zany plots with aliens, spies, or any other situational comedy I could come up with. When these stories were not enough writing to suit me, I started keeping lengthy diaries, that I later called journals, and maintained a steady report on what was going on in my life from roughly fifth grade to the present date. It would take two strong men to cart out the boxes of journals that I now have stored away in my closet like a stack of Playboys.
Our family moved when I was going into the sixth grade, so I had a new school and new classmates to impress. I won Best Illustrations in the Young Authors and Illustrators contest for a story about how my bedroom came to life and tried to eat me while I was cleaning it. I put the family's World Book Encyclopedias to good use when I had to write a report on Norse Mythology. I didn't know what to write. I asked my mother how to write a report. She said that the important thing was to ask and answer some significant question, but refused to give me any specific ideas. (Kind of like when I asked her about sex.) I ended up writing an essay about the violent times the people lived in and how that was reflected in the stories they told. My social studies teacher laughed when she read it, and then shared it with the class. She had a big grin on her face as she read the opening lines: "In Norse Mythology, it is said that the earth is made up of the body of a fallen giant. His hair forms the grass, his blood the seas, and the sun is one of his eyeballs. Based on this story, you may be wondering, as I am, the following question: Why did their stories have to be so gross?"

Free of spelling tests, I composed a story that was a compilation of all my best work that included my new classmates and teachers. We were moving again at the end of the year, so my English teacher allowed me to read it in class. I shall never forget the sight of her, literally doubled over with laughter, when Jeffery Miller ran to the alien spaceship and was taken home to live with his real family.
My goodbye poem was printed in the little school newsletter.
Last year I reconnected with an old friend from that school district and found out that she'd saved the poem, and that they'd had it read at her father's funeral.
I'm constantly reminded of the continuing impact of words on a page, far beyond the imagined reach of the author. Sixth grade was the last time in my school career that I knew I had the adoration of my classmates for being clever.

Rising Tension/ Conflict

The switch to middle school was tough. I didn't know anyone well and there seemed to be no public outlet for my writing. Additionally, some teen gawkiness had settled into my personality. That couldn't stop me. My compulsive need to write became my self-defense. Not knowing what to do or who to talk to, I carried around my notebook and wrote everywhere, in every free moment I had. I sat in the hallway between classes and wrote. Whenever I was done with my schoolwork I would pull out my notebook and write. I wrote in my free time at home. I wrote secretly into the night. Sometimes I woke in the late hours or early morning in a frenzy over a dream I had and continued writing as an idea struck me. Teachers appreciated my writing. Classmates didn't know what to make of it. Being middle schoolers, this suggested the need to make something of it. I remember being teased a lot. Bullied would be the word they use these days.
I couldn't stop writing. Having had such positive early experiences with writing, I had decided that I was a writer, that I would be a published writer, and that I had to keep on writing if I was ever going to get out of that school or out of that small town. I wrote poems and short stories. I started several bad novels that I never finished (I might still have one of them lying around somewhere, squirreled away in a folder). I wrote fall, winter, spring and summer. I wrote in my journals as practice for when I would write "for real," compiling the most vivid and accurate descriptions I could of classmates, life events, movies or books that I admired, my naive opinions on politics, relationships, and injustices of all sorts. I wrote about what I had done and what I hoped to do. I wrote about who I admired and who I hoped to be. I won the America and Me essay contest describing how I would like to write kid-friendly history books that made historical figures as interesting to young children as I found them to be.

At the end of the year, the eighth grade class at that school always went on a weekend field trip to a sort of juvenile detention camp as a motivational experience. For this I brought a new journal so that I could describe the trip in detail. Originally, I had planned to write it as a satirical account, as I was none too thrilled to be trapped in a cabin with my peers. I was working on getting the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of the experience on paper. Unable to fully describe the climbing tower they forced me up the first day, I sat at a table in the cafeteria and drew it, trying to get a bead on what distinguishing features of the tower could be put in writing to enable a reader to fully visualize it. Always interested in what I was working on, my science teacher spotted the drawing and asked if he could see it. He showed the drawing to another teacher, and they both said that they wanted to read the journal when it was finished. Having redetermined that I was going to make this dreaded experience as positive as humanly possible, I created a three day tour of what one might learn while being forced to do cooperative activities with one's peers. Looking back, I may have had my audience in mind as I talked about building self-esteem and forming bonds with classmates. I was impressed that I made it up that tower, but I was never very comfortable around my peers. They didn't understand the volume of reading and writing I needed to do on a daily basis, and I didn't understand their preoccupation with clothes, boys, and what everyone else did on the weekend.

 

The teachers were so impressed by the journal that they asked if I would type it so that they could
make copies. I explained that I had no typing skills. I was fighting technology tooth and nail because it seemed easier to write longhand in my notebooks, which were easily transported from place to place. Not sure if I'd even heard of laptop computers at the time, which dates me a bit. Not to be dissuaded, the teachers had another student type the story. In the end, there were a lot of typos because this girl wasn't especially thrilled to be given such a huge job. I have no memory of how they talked her into it and what recompense she had for her efforts, but it mustn't have justified the avoidance of several errors. I felt sorry for her and also kind of embarrassed to be causing her all that trouble. All the same, the journal was shared with other students, and copies of it were put in the school library.
Last week I called the school to ask about helping out the local PFLAG group, and the secretary knew my name because she'd just read the journal last summer!

Now that I was an "established" writer, I was tormented less and kind of ignored instead. I learned not to mind. No one wanted to discuss character or plot development with me, and I still had no clue why it was so important that everyone know if I had a crush on someone and why. I was going to go to college and become a writer. What did I care about dating? (The answer is, a lot, but I didn't think there was anyone in the entire building who had anything in common with me, saving perhaps that weird kid who read Webster's Dictionary every lunch hour instead of eating. Don't get me wrong, he was a nice kid and all - I was just a coward. Back then, I hid behind those words like they were fences instead of bridges.)

I aced all my English classes without much effort. Sometimes the teachers would still be trying to clarify the difference between adverbs and adjectives, a lesson I had learned by third grade and never needed to be reminded of. Every marking period at least one of my teachers read one of my stories to the class, or asked if they could photocopy it and keep it as a writing sample. Read huge novels and write book reports? Please. I was on page 335 of my own book, thank you very much. Write an argumentative essay on censorship? Glad to. I had plenty of things I wanted to present and defend concerning that topic. Huge essay test? Bring it on - I would love to compare and contrast Holden Caufield with Huckleberry Finn. They were my favorite type of characters because they weren't as straightforward as a Hero. They were unreliable narrators whose opinions colored how they described the events of their stories.
There was nothing I loved better than discussing the mechanics or politics behind a novel in class, or
championing my cause concerning a particular topic if it was important enough to me. I scored points in debates about the value of a given novel as a matter of course. At that time, all the novels we read were good and their authors had to be defended at all costs. After all, I was going to be one of them someday. God, I must have been annoying to the people who just wanted to pass the class so that they never had to read "another book like that again."

The Climax

It all culminated in my creative writing class my senior year of high school. Impressed by my work, the teacher arranged for me and another student to attend a writer's conference at the local community college.

During the last week of school that year, he made the exam so easy - turn in your best work. So I did, and I was so self-conscious about it that I tried to focus on what I was writing in class, but I kept stealing glances over at the podium where he was standing, reading my story - and then to my utter chagrin, I saw that he had tears in his eyes. It was a sad story, so you'd think that was the reaction I wanted, but such a strong reaction was completely unexpected.

My heart started pounding like a jackhammer. I barely made it through class without falling apart myself. Had I really reached a point where my reading could effect another human being so viscerally that it brought them to tears in a public place? Later, I convinced myself that I'd imagined it.

Last year, a woman friended me on facebook whom I remembered fairly well from school, but I wasn't sure how she remembered me until she messaged me a story about how envious she had been of my writing; that I could bring a teacher to tears like that with something I had written.
She reminded me of another story I'd written in that class that was about how the paper was plotting to take over my room - little sticky notes and notepaper and construction paper and the like, all balling up and creeping out over everything with some insidious invasional intent. I forgot I ever wrote it until she wrote me about it. I recalled that I was just writing whatever popped into my head first as a way to fill class time when I was feeling particularly blocked, not concerned about the quality because I felt it would still be pretty good when compared to some of the other entries. Honestly, how did I have any friends? I suppose it was because I never bragged about my talents. Out loud. I didn't go out of my way to share anything I wrote with anyone but the teachers, but I felt so confident of my writing that false modesty seemed trite at best; hypocritical at worst. Outside of English classes, I tried to keep a low profile, but I simply could not keep my mouth shut when the subject was my favorite.

Not even trying to be modest with the long-lost facebook friend, I had to admit that I hadn't even thought the sad little story I had given to the teacher that day was even a particularly well-written one. Only now that I'd gone and made someone cry over it, there was no way to take it back and change it much. I had always known and understood that the written word was powerful, and after that day I began to give serious thought to what kinds of stories I wanted to tell.
 A quote of Toni Morrison's that I really love is that if there is a book you really want to read, and you can't find that book, then you must write it. Because of this quote, when my sisters complained that there were no King Arthur stories published that told the story so well as I had rendered it into bedtime stories for them long ago, I let them talk me into writing it for them.
Another quote to the subject, however, would be Alain de Botton's contention that most books are created by writers who "couldn't find anyone to talk to."
 

That's probably more true of me than anything more complimentary could ever be.
 

I finally reached my stride when I went to college and majored in English. What a relief to be surrounded by other people who loved words and wanted to talk about them! It felt like going out of the closet after moving to Elton John's Philadelphia. Concerned at making a living as I write, I have since strayed into the teaching field. I had always admired my English teachers, who had encouraged me like no one else in my life.

I've yet to publish anything, but I'm still writing. I'm writing a novel about something that I once was unable to talk about. At it's best, my writing was always a way of communicating to myself and others.
I joined a Writer's Group for encouragement and to have someone to talk to about my work, and have found that it is also rewarding to help others with their writing, or simply to sit back and soak in what everyone else has to say. Writing is an act of giving more than anything, if you plan on being published. You give something away of yourself  with every phrase.
 

I can't stop writing. There are so many stories that I want to tell, so many causes I still have to champion, still so many people who might laugh or cry at that shared experience that is born when an author finishes a novel and it comes into their possession, a gift of themselves from the authors in which the readers interprets themselves. That's a fun one to work out.
I feel this heavy responsibility to shepherd my words, to craft them and plot them and arrange them in such a way that they impact people in some way that is significant for them. I think the elements of surprise and familiarity both have to combine to bring that about. It makes for a good sex life, too.
I don't really care if readers bring away from what I've written what I put into it. It would be juvenile to expect the exchange to work that way. Relationships don't work that way. I've created a certain environment that the reader shares with me for a time, and I want to riffle through their lymbic system while they're there. It's interesting to see what they take away, but I don't own that anymore after I've given it away.

Denouement (because French is Sexy)

 

Unlike when I stood before audiences who laughed and cheered, I now write solely for myself. I would like to publish something, but more than that I would like to birth something that will live a life of its own after I let it go. In my opinion, all truly good writing does exactly that.
 

And that, my dears, is how writing is like sex. You do the deed, you have the children, and you raise them in such a way that one day you can let them go. It's less romantic than reading. It's more like how life just happens to you every day, whether you have planned it that way or not.
 

Yes, I am addicted to writing.

Any metaphor that suggests of my personal life you will have to interpret for yourself.