I’m a byword for neurosis
by·word/ˈbīˌwərd/
| Noun: |
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My children know one of my old classmates by name. Not that they have ever met her. And it’s not even because I have told them stories about her. I have told them stories about lots of people I have known without bothering to add in their name. No, I’m kind of ashamed to admit that they know her name because when I was a kid, her name became a byword to me. Her name stood in for a set of behaviors which I associated with her and wanted desperately to avoid myself. I called it “Sally Ruthersbrodt* Syndrome” (*Not her real name!) My kids and other people who were very unlikely to ever meet her know her name and what it meant to me. In my mind her name meant thinking that people liked you when they didn’t.
I’m not even sure how that became such a big fear for me, but it was. I got that not everyone was going to like me and I was cool with that (eventually). But what if the people who seemed to like me didn’t really? That was an intolerable thought to me. The idea of thinking that you were safe with people who weren’t really safe freaked me out. And like any good geek, I believed that gathering as much information as possible was the solution. Because then I could figure out how to avoid this perceived threat. So, to that end, I applied my powers of observation to watching the people around me looking for signs that I might be turning into a Sally Ruthersbrodt.
Unfortunately for me, if there is a disorder which is the opposite of Asperger’s that makes you inappropriately hyper-sensitive to non-verbal social cues, I have that. Continue reading “I’m a byword for neurosis”
It Will Be Alright. Or So I’ve Been Told
A friend recently sent a note in which she commented on the lack of “why me?” talk on my blog. Silly girl – I was raised Catholic. I can think of at least 100 reasons all of this is my own fault right off the top of my head! That, plus the fact that life has been handing me inexplicably little help for as long as I can remember means that I let “why me?” go a long time ago. There are only two answers: “you’re doing it wrong” or “because this is the way you need to go“. Either I’m screwing something up and should fix it – hence the Catholic guilt – or this is one of those things that will only make sense later. Frankly, Catholic guilt gets a bad rap – it’s downright empowering in light of the alternative!
This was a tough week. It was one of those weeks where an emotional rough patch and a life rough patch collided and made a mess all over the highway of my life. (I keep telling God he needs to pave the damn thing.) And just to make sure that all of this doesn’t get to be too routine, my wonderful parents were visiting, so I had an audience. (My poor parents; I’m glad and grateful that they were here, but I know it’s only marginally more fun to watch someone you love go through things you are helpless to do anything about than it is to go through it yourself. I have to remind myself that God must have his reasons for asking them to walk a path which includes me and my mess of a life.)
If you read my book The Upside Down World ~ A Book of Wisdom in Progress, you will remember that I first met God in a fit of enraged blasphemy. Which means that I’ve always felt free to itch and moan and be as upset as I want to be in prayer. Besides, Jesus was said to have prayed with “loud cries and tears” himself. So by the end of the week, my prayers had devolved into demands: “I can’t do this. I’m not going to do this. You need to fix this. Not just spiritually, but for real. In the real world. Continue reading “It Will Be Alright. Or So I’ve Been Told”
Drinking Anger’s Poison
One of the worst things I ever did in my life was pull my sister Shannon’s hair. Well, it wasn’t just the hair pulling; hitting her repeatedly just before pulling her hair was pretty bad too. I was in my early teens and had been left to babysit my younger siblings, including Shannon who is 8 years younger than me. I have no idea what started it exactly, but I do remember that she was refusing to do something or another that I had told her to do. So, I hit her. And she laughed. Which enraged me. So I hit my very slight little sister again harder. And she laughed harder. Completely besides myself with frustration and anger, I hit her again and again and she laughed at me again and again. Finally, I yanked hard on her hair and she suddenly started sobbing. Which shot right through my anger to the part of me that can’t help but feel empathy towards someone in pain.
Saying that it was one of the worst things I ever did is a bit of hyperbole. More accurate would be to say that out of all the things I have ever done, this was one that I felt worst about. I had lashed out at someone smaller and weaker than myself in anger. I love her and had been entrusted with her care, but because I had not been able to control myself, she had wound up being hurt – emotionally if nothing else. As an adult, I went and apologized to her for this incident and learned (not too surprisingly) that she has no memory of it. Honestly, I’m quite certain it wasn’t the first time I had hit one of my siblings in an attempt to get them to do what I wanted or needed them to do. But her hurt this time was so raw it made a huge impression on me. I was married before I ever let myself get that angry again. Continue reading “Drinking Anger’s Poison”
Psalm 44: “You have made us a byword among the nations”
We have heard with our ears, O God;
Our fathers have told us
what you did in their days,
in days long ago.
I heard a story the other day about a woman who needed potatoes. To make potato salad. And apparently she needed a lot of potatoes. I probably wasn’t listening very attentively, because I have no idea why she needed to make potato salad – church picnic, family reunion, Paula Deen was coming for a cook-out, I don’t know. But the woman needed potatoes and had no money for potatoes which was causing her a good deal of stress. People were depending on her potato salad. And then she got a phone call from a friend who worked at the weigh-station outside of town: “there’s truck here that’s 150 lbs overweight. It’s full of potatoes – do you know anyone who might need 150 lbs of potatoes?” Why, yes, yes she did. And potatoes fell down from the heavens like manna.
At the completion of this story, another man in the room exclaimed, “isn’t it amazing how God provides? Over and over I have seen things like that – even in my own family, God provides in the most unexpected ways.” Several others in the room nodded in agreement. Not me. I’m like the psalmist – I have heard of these things, but I haven’t seen them. Continue reading “Psalm 44: “You have made us a byword among the nations””
Angels in my Bedroom?
After a longer string of good days that I’ve had in I don’t know how long, I woke up pretty out of sorts this morning. Which is bound to happen. Especially, you know, every four weeks or so. So, rather than ruining my whole day by pushing myself until I’m too overwhelmed and drained to function, I grabbed my still groggy, crabby 2 year old and went back to bed to cry like a baby myself until it passed.
After a couple of minutes, Olivia looked up at the corner above the bed and began pointing towards the ceiling. She does this fairly often. I always say, “do you see an angel?” although I never see anything in the corner she’s pointing to. Continue reading “Angels in my Bedroom?”
Seed Catalogue Dreaming
I have been resisting the temptation to look for a couple of weeks now, but . . . SEED CATALOGUES ARE HERE! I love seed catalogues. I can sit and pour through them over and over again during the short days of winter. But this leads to dreams of turning my scraggly 2 acre yard of reclaimed brush land into a lush garden oasis. I develop delusions of having a thriving vegetable garden with well planned rows and patches. Maybe this will be the year that we try our hand at growing giant pumpkins. Visions of sunny sunflower patches. Rose bushes! A koi pond! Maybe even cluster of blueberry bushes and a few fruit trees at one corner of the yard. I can just see my children frolicking about the gardens, stopping to pluck a flower to adorn their curly hair while I sit with a glass of iced tea and soak in all the beauty of it. If only my yard didn’t actually look like it was waiting for a Chevy on cinder blocks to adorn it. One day.
For years I started seeds in a spare room under lights each spring. Each morning one of the first things I would do is go into the room to check and see what had sprouted or put up a new leaf overnight. Frankly I couldn’t even tell you why, but not much makes me happier – especially when it’s snowing in April – than seeing these little green shoots emerging from the soil. A few years back I had to leave town for a few days in late spring before I was able to plant out that year’s crop. The qxh, apparently not understanding that my request that he water them daily while I was gone wasn’t really optional, didn’t. When I got back about a third of my plants were dead. I’m normally a pretty tough cookie, but I cried for days. Continue reading “Seed Catalogue Dreaming”
Gabriel Santorum and our Rituals of Grief
Because I am a self-confessed former political junkie in recovery, I sometimes miss stories when they first happen (which, trust me, isn’t really a problem). Which is why I’m just now hearing about this Santorum, dead-baby deal. For those of you who like me were fortunate to miss this story as it developed, here’s the brief version:
In 1996, Rick and Karen Santorum lost a child just past 20 weeks gestation. The baby died 2 hours after birth. The Santorums held and spent time with their deceased infant. They took the baby home for their other children to be able to do the same. They also had a funeral service and burial. We know all of this because Karen Santorum wrote about it in her book Letters to Gabriel which came out in 1998.
The reason it is in the news is because two commentators – one real liberal and one token “liberal” hired by Fox News to lose arguments – both made reference to this event on TV recently. Both spoke of this story as being so strange, distasteful and crazy that voters who heard about it would reject Santorum as a disturbed wack-job. Controversy ensued. The Fox news talking head claimed in a tweet to have apologized directly to Rick and Karen Santorum who were brought to tears when asked to comment on these fools’ words. (They don’t deserve to be named. Fools is name enough.) Continue reading “Gabriel Santorum and our Rituals of Grief”
When a Clown Loves You
The room looks and smells not too different from the library in the middle school I attended while growing up. Walls lined with books. A floor covered with short, blue looped carpet. Encouraging posters dominated by animals reading books are pasted to any wall without shelves. Florescent lights buzz overhead. The room smells like books do when the humidity from hot Chicago summers seeps into their pages and yellows them. Missing are any of the trappings one finds in school libraries these days. No computers or technology of any sort. A typical, old school library; except this one isn’t in any school building. It’s on the lower level of a juvenile prison. Continue reading “When a Clown Loves You”
The Emotional God
A couple of years ago, I was sitting on my front porch steps after dinner, watching my two oldest daughters playing and complaining to God in my head. I don’t remember what it was (nothing too serious), but the qxh (quasi-ex-husband) had done something to chap my hide. As I wound down my complaints and let the whole thing go, I asked God in an almost off-handed way, “do you ever have to deal with people treating you like this?” At which point I’m pretty sure all of heaven burst into hearty guffaws. But soon a funny thing started happening: as I dealt with people in my life, often some parallel experience between God and people would pop into my head.
Sometimes it was something little, like calling someone who did not answer their phone. How often does God try to reach out to people who ignore or reject the call because they are too busy, inattentive or just don’t feel like it? I would ask one of my boys to load and run the dishwasher only to discover at dinnertime hours later that we had no clean pots, plates or utensils. Suppose God ever asks people to do things that don’t get done? Ocasionally, I would have to deal with someone who insisted on talking over me, refused to listen to my perspective or treat it with respect. Yeah, I’m sure God never has to deal with stuff like that, right?
By the next summer a variety of calamities, traumas and disappointments had hit my family full force. As the qxh started to dissemble and then turn on me, these parallels became more pointed and poignant. Loving someone who is being supremely difficult, unreasonable and hostile turns out to be something that God is intimately familiar with. Continue reading “The Emotional God”
Mindfulness and Procrastination
There’s probably nothing guaranteed to make you feel worse on a day-in-day out basis than those unfinished tasks we just keep putting off. Unsent thankyou notes, unfolded laundry, bills, making that doctor’s appointment. Whatever. They just hang over our heads like big neon signs screaming “irresponsible”, “lazy”, “unorganized”. I know that a lot of people swear by lists, but that has never worked for me. I am completely unrealistic about what I can get done in a day, I am dissatisfied with anything less than near-perfection and the list thing just puts those two tendencies on a collision course with burn-out and discouragement. But in my relentless quest to be both healthy and happy – at the same time – I have hit on something that works for disorderly, easily discouraged, unrealistic me.
The way things usually work is that in the back of my mind, I will know there’s something I need to get done. Sometimes these things will pop into my head at an inopportune time. And because it’s not done, I just have a gut level reaction to the task which is a combination of guilt and dread. So I put it off again. It’s waited this long, right? Over and over. Continue reading “Mindfulness and Procrastination”
The Upside Down World 