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Focus and Fog

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A few weeks ago I came out of the cave. Struggling to stay productive as my elaborate and expansive fantasy world beckoned, desperate for inspiration, I began to write about my writer’s ‘block’. It’s more of a cave sealed by a great iron door than a block. When I’m teetering on the edge of a serious depression as I do almost annually, I retreat behind the door. The world behind it is richer and provides a sustaining refuge when anxiety and despair grow, inflaming one another and consuming me. But, the escape is never without a cost, as my sister recently reminded me.

Fantasy is my mentally-induced coma. When I’m diving into it, I still function, holding up my end of the household. For most of my fantasy visit, the only lifeline out of that very deep and seductive pit is the knowledge that several someone else’s completely depend on my not letting go. But, even though I’ve never completely lost my grip on that line, I know that living at the back of my mind means I’m not fully living with the people I love.

There are pharmaceutical ‘cures’ and therapies for depression, but they, too, come with costs. Some – physical side effects, sluggishness, even increased risk of suicide – are printed on the label. But others are not so apparent.

The back of my cave is dark, but sometimes I think it also provides me with tremendous depth of field when I do look back out at the ‘real world’. It doesn’t allow for any filter all the events of the day and their implications intrude on my consciousness as soon as I venture outside my fantasy realm, and they are in sharp focus at every distance. Where my mania lets the popular media burn out disturbing details through overexposure, my depression cancels out the glare.

With tack-sharp clarity and all at once I can see a life that is finally unfolding as I always wanted – people to love, work to sustain us, and a physical refuge from the rest of the world – and the things that can undo it. I pass a rusting upturned oil drum on the banks of the Battenkill and wonder how much ooze still covers the rocks at the bottom of that river. How many parts per million now float in that water where my children cavort in the summer? How much of it seeps into our ground water? Our well must be safe. How much of our cleaning products get into our well? Are they really going to start fracking across the state line? Can we protect our own water? Do we have any say in it? How do people find the courage to take these on? I should be trying to write the next Silent Spring, and all I can come up with is posts about laundry. And that’s before I even turn on the news.

There have been times when my worries have taken me to a dangerous precipice, and after many years of walking to the edge and staring into the delicious dark, I learned from an observant aunt that there were alternatives to this routine. I began to explore Prozac, which was popular at the time, and for a short time, it worked. And then it didn’t. I tried others. And, while sometimes they could contain the chain reactions of my worries, they created a new nagging fear.

The new worry had nothing to do with the chest palpitations they produced but with the foggy filter they fit over my lens on the world. I began to sense the problems of the world less, but in the back of my mind, I knew they were still there. The fog didn’t help to resolve them anymore than the fear did, and I often wondered if its true function was to obscure my own cowardice when considering how to help solve those problems.

I’m working to barricade the door to my fantasy realm now. It stands in the way of my present and future. But it is only just behind me, and now as I wait for my mania to shine its white hot, distorting light on the world, its problems are still in sharp focus.  I know I don’t have the wherewithal or courage to be an agent of change, but as much as that clarity can be a curse, I’m still not sure the filter is a blessing either.

Sanity Sunday… or Not

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Organization is not a hallmark of our family life, but over the years we have managed to stumble on a few rituals.  Lately, it’s been Taco Friday –  neither kid objects to it because they make it themselves.   When Mom is dieting it’s Meatless Monday (the diet almost always begins and ends on Monday).  Six-year-old Thing2’s addiction to Shake ‘n’ Bake means at least one night of the week is dedicated to pork chops.  Saturdays are dedicated to morning sports and breakfast at Bob’s Diner in Manchester, Vermont in the winter and dragging the kids to the latest free art exhibit in the summer.  Sundays have been a bit nebulous, however.

We’re not religious, so our Sunday mornings tend to be wide open.  Some weeks we head to back to the diner, other days the kids will ‘inspire’ the Big Guy to make corn cakes.  Yesterday, however, we thought we might have found on a new candidate for our Sunday routine.

Our boys, twelve and six and affectionately nicknamed Thing1 and Thing2 after the imps in Cat in the Hat, still share a room whose hamper not long ago acquired magical properties that prevent dirty clothes from entering.  A recent ruling by the Big Guy made indoor Dodge Ball with the smaller, ‘softer’ red ball in their toy box permissible, and now a carpet of clothes and dodgeball casualties litter the room.  Still, until Friday night, I had put the mess at a mere Defcon 4.  Level 4 usually causes a double-take when I walk by the room but doesn’t inspire me to intervene.  Friday, however getting from the door to the bunk bed for a goodnight kiss had become an act of death defiance, and I raised the alert to Defcon 2.   After a snuggle with Thing2 and an almost-deflected kiss for Thing1, I let them know it was time to engage in cleaning maneuvers before I had to go nuclear and clean everything OUT.

Hoping to encourage them to manage their own time a little and recognize that mother and maid are not interchangeable terms, I gave them the weekend to get the room presentable.  It didn’t have to be Grandma-and-Grandpa-are-coming clean, but the mess couldn’t just move under the bed either.  And I set a deadline – high noon on Sunday or there would be consequences.  There would also be no access to electronic media Sunday morning until the work was done.

Saturday morning we had basketball practice and went to breakfast.  The boys decided that was an iron-clad excuse not to clean in the morning.  They had a few hours in the afternoon, but decided to use it dawdling until we went out for a brief visit to friends.  By the time dinner rolled around, they had rationalized the entire day away.

By seven A.M. Sunday, the procrastination began to acquire heroic proportions.  Zero hour was approaching so they woke early and immediately began arguing about how to divvy up the work.  Between settling rounds, the Big Guy and I began quietly debating what the consequences should be.  Then, shortly after a breakfast of thoroughly-chewed cereal, the room at the end of the hall became eerily quiet.  I wondered if victory might be in our grasp as griping morphed into the sounds of things being picked up.

Then it stopped.  I got up to lay down some law but was stopped by the opening riff of ‘Ticket to Ride’.  The Big Guy is usually the source of homemade music, but his guitar was still in the utility room.  The radio was off, and as I got closer to the minefield, I realized that Thing1 must have rediscovered his guitar under a pile of clothes or toys.  I knew this was just another diversion on his part, but this was the first one that was remotely constructive.  Suddenly Thing2 bolted out of the room and into the utility room.  He emerged with his guitar and bounced over to the Big Guy.

“Daddy,” he breathed, “can you show me how to play that Beatles song?”  The Big Guy is always happy to pass on his love of all things Beatle to the boys, and obliged.  Thing2 disappeared into his room, and I sat down on the couch with my co-parent, marveling at how, deprived of all privileges and electronic entertainment these two had finally found something creative to do.

“I think we should make them do this every Sunday,” I said.  The Big Guy nodded, and we both listened to the chirping (Thing2) and picking (Thing1) in the other room.  For a few brief moments sanity reigned. We both agreed the noon deadline should still stand, and, for the moment, I thought we had found a new ritual.

Two minutes later the chirping stopped, and it wasn’t long before the picking ceased and cries of “You started it” resumed.  The Big Guy and I closed our eyes.  I think he was the first one to speak after an exasperated minute.

“So, how about the art museum next Sunday?” He said.

Jekylls and Hydes

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There are very few things in my life that I look at and feel my chest fill with pride as I mentally point to them and say, “I had a hand in that.” Two of those things – twelve-year-old Thing1 and six-year-old Thing2 – keep me pretty busy as chauffeur, cook, tutor, and maid, and I do love it when I get the chance to stop and admire the fruit of my and my husband’s labors. Today was one of those days.

We’re trying to design a fence to keep our dog in the yard and our too-friendly neighborhood porcupine out and decided to go over the state line to visit a farm owned by friends in Cambridge to check out their fence design. The couple is very kid tolerant, but Thing1 and Thing2 were still in the throes of a series of preteen-flavored jokes that had begun the night before on the way home from a party, and we spent the short trip letting them know the shenanigans would stop as soon as we shut off the car engine.

As luck would have it, threats of military school or lifetime groundings were unnecessary.

The farm owners showed us their fences and the livestock they protect – a small flock of sheep. They and their very friendly border collie treated us and the boys to a sheep herding demonstration.

Thing2 is always enchanted by animals, especially farm animals (I think he senses there’s a snowball’s chance we could be talked into getting sheep or horses at some point), and he was uncharacteristically quiet as he petted the sheep and donkeys. Score one for the parents, I thought, and I glanced at Thing1 for a behavior check.

Thing1, who is currently trying to earn money to build his own computer, was engrossed in a discussion with the husband. He’s already a few inches taller than I, and he looked strangely adult to me as he carried on an adult conversation without any antics.

The six of us chatted about fences and Hubbard Hall and farms until the first flakes and drops of an impending late winter storm pulled us in our different directions. As we walked back to our car, I could  hear Thing2 beginning to formulate a new song-and-dance routine, but it was more happy than hysteria. Thing1 was as dignified as a twelve-year-old could be, and I treated myself to a mental pat on the back as we got in the car.

Then I put the car in reverse, and, before I had backed out of our spot, dignity and mental pats were mere memories. Sensing a lapse in our vigilance, Thing1 and Thing2 launched into their favorite game – Sound Effects Theatre, Seventh Grade Edition. Trying to ignore the snorts and burps coming from the back seat, I pulled out into traffic wondering whose kids were back there.

Roots

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True confession: I am a huge Star Trek fan. I have been since high school when I stumbled on it on a Saturday afternoon trying to find something other than college football to watch. By the time I found Star Trek, the cardboard sets and blinking light computers had been made quaint by more extravagant sci-fi shows, but for a chronically depressed teenager (redundant, I know) there was something appealing about a vision of a future in which at least humanity had learned to cooperate enough to mount an interplanetary expedition.

The travel junkie in me loved the idea of going to other planets and seeing other creatures and people. But the thing I loved most about Star Trek (and its offspring) was the philosophy enshrined in the Prime Directive. As every respectable Trekker knows, the Prime Directive forbade Star Fleet explorers from interfering in the course of development in the places they visited. In other words, they were there to observe and learn, not to teach.

Thanks to my parents’ influence, my own wanderlust was already pretty healthy by the time I was a teenager. And, while our parents made sure that any trip included a visit to the obligatory museums and monuments, they had their own Prime Directive. It was actually pretty similar to Star Fleet’s: be a good guest when you travel by learning and respecting the local customs and culture. In other words, observe and learn.

I’ve tried to carry these directives with me through most of my life, and Star Trek and my parents have served me well in my travels. Each adventure is a chance to embrace something completely new. I love absorbing the languages and flavors and being absorbed – however briefly – into the local cultures.

And yet, as much as I love immersion, even when our travels have kept us in one place for months or years, there is always a part of me that feels like a visitor.

We’ve lived in Vermont for over ten years, and, even though it’s a longer stay than just about any other place in my life, I do sometimes fret over the grass that’s growing around my feet. A phrase in a recent post prompted a reader to ask me if I was a native Vermonter, and I realized that, despite having birthed a Vermonter and married a man with Vermont roots predating European settlers, I am still very much an explorer at heart. The realization got me thinking, not about my status as a Vermonter but about how I think of home in general.

I love the town we’ve settled in, and I have made some of the closest friends in my life here, but I have also always been willing to pull up stakes when adventure beckons. The Big Guy I married is equally adventurous, but his roots here and in New England in general are deep, and they are strong. Those roots, and the two smaller branches we’ve been nurturing for the last twelve and six years are often the only things keeping my feet on the ground when my heart is getting ready to leapfrog past my head into a new venture.

I don’t know if I’m capable of growing real roots of my own. If I were still single or half of a DINK (double-income no kids), I would be doing my job from a different locale every few months. But I do know that the graft I’ve formed with the Big Guy has helped me figure out where my home is, and it’s anywhere he and our two offshoots have planted their roots.

On the Street Where I Live

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It’s been four or five days now since a fertilizer bomb was detonated somewhere on the mountain across from ours.  While the local paper (two towns away) hasn’t picked up the story yet, it was a hot topic for many people at our local country store on Sunday.  Curiosity and concern were still high on Monday, but by Tuesday it was clear that fear was already losing its grip on many of us .

I’m still worried, of course.  Vermont isn’t at war as far as any of us know, so a bomb is not what we’re expecting to hear at eight o’ clock at night.  I am still waiting for some scrap of comforting information.  Even in the absence of information, however, I’m managing to find signs that this town (whose motto is ‘Whatever happens here stays here… But nothing ever happens here’) has managed to put a serious dent in my once Olympic-caliber capacity for agonizing over every potential problem.  There were two of those signs yesterday.

The first one had me trying to remember to breathe.  Mother Nature had been in her paintbox the night before.  After wiping her canvas clean with an inch of rain, she cooled things down.  Then, under cover of night, she brought out her fattest paint brush and daubed just enough white powdery paint over the mountains to cover but not completely obscure the trees and rocks.   I only noticed her work after I’d finished scraping the car and getting six-year-old Thing2 on the road to winter camp.  We scaled the long icy slope of our driveway, and then turned onto the road heading towards the horse farm at the bottom of our road.

The road makes a beautiful S-curve as we get closer.  A few isolated trees frame the rolling hills and the buildings of the farm perfectly, and a day doesn’t go by when I think what a perfect painting it would make.   Yesterday we hit the S-curve just as low purple and white clouds were skimming the powered mountains that rise up behind the farm.  It was breathtaking.  I forgot, for a moment, that we were late, that my foot was still on the gas, and even that a bomb had ever gone off on the mountain across from ours.

When I recovered my breath and remembered to slow down before we hit the more adventurous part of the mud pit we call a road, I drew Thing2’s attention to the scene ahead of us.  We slowly descended the hill, and the painting seemed to envelope us.  Thing2 spoke first after we had passed the farm.

“Can you believe we get to live here all the time?”  He asked.  I couldn’t, and all my recent mutterings that we should move somewhere safer to the middle of nowhere (redundant really) shattered like dust falling with the snow.

The second sign was more subtle, but when I finally saw it, was just as powerful.

The Big Guy went in the afternoon to Hubbard Hall, our local community theatre and art center in Cambridge, NY to pick up Thing2 at his winter break workshop.  Caught up in the excitement of viewing Thing2’s art projects, the nearly empty gas tank in the car slipped his mind, and they headed home. They were almost home when the gas ran out.  Fortunately, a neighbor spotted them quickly and brought them the rest of the way home.  The Big Guy borrowed my car to go get a can of gas for the vehicle still on the side of the road.

He was gone not five minutes when we heard a truck in the driveway.  Positive he couldn’t have filled up the car that quickly, we wondered who it could be.  Before I could get up from the kitchen table (my home office – very glamorous), Thing2 had gone into the mudroom to answer the door.  I had forgotten to lock the outside door again, however, and I suddenly heard a deep voice talking to my son.  It was another neighbor who had seen the car by the road and popped down to see if we needed help.  I told him we were all set and thanked him for checking on us.  Thing2 threatened to entrap him with endless cheerful banter, but the neighbor just smiled at him good-naturedly and waved goodbye to all of us.

I was not yet at the end of my work day and, forgetting to lock the door again, sat back down at the table to finish my shift.  Then the phone rang.  It was another neighbor from across the valley checking to see if we needed any help with the car.  I gave him the same answer, thanked him and hung up.   Before the phone touched the table, however, it rang again.  This time it was our neighbor at the top of our driveway who had seen the car.  I hung up a few minutes later, smiling and thinking that however loud one misguided kook might be, he doesn’t outnumber the ‘good guys’ in this tiny little town.

I realize it’s the same every city.  The ones making the bombs – regardless of their form – are the loudest, but they aren’t the majority.  They can cause havoc with your sense of peace if you let them, however.  I’m still hoping for news about our incident, but by the time the Big Guy returned with my keys, I had seen the second sign.  It wasn’t in the calls from caring neighbors.  It was the fact that, thanks to this town, I’m slowly learning to live my life without locked doors.

 

Chuck

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He really is a pussycat in the morning.  When I go to my study at 5 AM, we usually play a game of ‘who gets the chair’ until he resigns himself to sitting on my desk, overseeing the writing.  Occasionally, he’ll put a gentle paw on my hand when he thinks a word or phrase is wrong.

The sun is up now, and he’s taking his place on the woodpile as the guardian of the house – Katy the wonder dog is better at announcing burglars than stopping them.  But, as I walk back from the car after my morning chauffeur duties, he fixes me with a stern gaze, warning me to keep his safe secret from the other critters that will pass through our yard today.

Flying

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This is the time when I start crawl out of the abyss.  I won’t crawl for long.  The door at the back of my mind will open, and my fantasies, once merely and barely sustaining, will soon have me rocketing into the firmament.  

Sunday, as I drove home from Manchester, cursing the flood of tourists that had made my favorite haunts temporarily unavailable, I had the first inkling that I was at this threshold.  Caution still wraps me in reason, but that bond was already beginning to fray on Sunday as I began exploring my options for a new haunt.  Unfounded and unfettered exhilaration awaits just beyond my cave, and soon I’ll be soaring on those limitless ideas and possibilities – no matter how remote.  

In five minutes, I went from restaurant refugee to searcher of new solutions to creator of them:  We need a good cafe in Arlington.  Something with sofas and wifi and pastries.  How about Cambridge?  Is there anything there?  There’s the old Beanheads.  I bet I could turn that into a hopping’ internet cafe.  I love to bake.  I could go there everyday.  There could have a guest DJ.  We could have music.  How hard would it be to get really good at the piano again?  I’d love to do another animation with music.  It would be so cool to make the music for my animations.  Can you be a writer and a film maker?  It be cool to have an independent movie theatre slash bookstore cafe.  In Cambridge or Arlington.  Wait… where am I going?

There is a small plateau between my deep dark cave and the dizzying heights I am about to scale.  I should tarry and even stay, but I have never been able to stop for long – regardless of the ways I’ve tried to bind myself here.  Propelled by possibility,  I’m already skipping over the plain –  anticipating and fearing the flight and the fall that I know will – and must – come.  Now, when my battles are beginning to brim with potential, danger is not always apparent and simply choosing one over the other is an important victory.

Fear and Unknowing

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It was just about eight o’clock on Saturday night (Feb 16) when the house – buried on three sides and constructed mostly of concrete – was rocked by a loud, dull bang.  Our first response to it made me realize how far removed from the dangers of the ‘real world’ our lifestyle has made us feel.  Less than twenty-four hours later, knowledge would make me realize how easily that illusion can be shattered.  The bang and the shattering are still putting all of my theories about fear and life to the test, as I suspect they will for days to come.

When the bang first interrupted our movie night, the Big Guy and I looked at each other, puzzled and wondering if we had heard the same thing or imagined something.  Thing1 quickly confirmed that we weren’t suffering from some form of group auditory senility when he poked his head out of his room and asked, “Did you hear that?!?  It sounded like a bomb!”

“it was not a bomb!”  We answered our twelve-year-old in unison.

“The old tree behind the house must have fallen,” I shouted, momentarily forgetting that there was no wind.

“There must have been a chimney fire,” suggested the Big Guy, and we both got up, got flashlights and went outside to investigate our theories.  Twenty minutes later, we were colder but no wiser and we headed back inside.  Fruitless phone calls were made to our nearest neighbors, and we soon settled back into movie night, assuming there was a reasonable explanation we just hadn’t considered.

I had almost forgotten the bang by the time my own little noise makers drove me to the relative peace of our local wifi hot spot, deli, and general store this afternoon.  I sat down with my computer and snack with the idea I would work.  I didn’t get my earbuds in fast enough, however, to avoid hearing a neighbor (anyone in a town of ~300 is considered a neighbor) mention the big bang from the night before.  

The owner of the establishment wisely chose not to join in any gossip or speculation, but our new companion was more than willing to share what he knew and thought he knew.  None of what he shared was comforting.  Still, the initial explanation – that a firearm had caused an explosion (how we didn’t know quite for sure) was half speculation and half fact, and I left a while later feeling concerned but not overly worried.

My concern turned to real worry very soon, however, when the Big Guy got a call and more information from a neighbor with reliable source.  To our horror we learned that someone across the way had managed to build a fertilizer bomb.  We learned that an investigation was and is underway, but little other information was available. 

The absence of information turned my worry to palpable fear. Even now as I write, thoughts of other bomb builders and their targets run through my mind.  My first thought was to keep my children home from school or any public activity until we hear more.  But, even as I struggle to find the line between common sense safety measures and parental paranoia, I am confronted by my own words and desire for progress.

Over the last few months and years I have struggled not to let my own encounter with a pair of armed robbers years ago control my or my family’s lives.  Countless times I have choked down my fear and forced myself to let my kids live their lives.  But tonight, wondering what the bomb builder was thinking or even planning, the line between lives half-lived in fear and those carefully guarded is pretty blurred.

Deflating Fantasy

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“You and your wife shall have good fortune in your journey together in life,” read the fortune from the cookie. I knew it was a sign, and, while the very small rational part of my brain kept insisting the fortune was merely confirming my wisdom in deciding to get take out on a week night, the party of my brain that runs the fantasy department had decided that this message was a directive. On the reverse side of the little paper slip were a set of lucky numbers, and the message so clearly meant that this particular set should be played. The big jackpot wasn’t a record breaker last night, but, deciding that the Big Guy and I would be happy to settle with only $40 million, I plunked down my $2 and bought an evening of fantasy. The problem is, the cost of the tickets has inflated, but the fantasy has not only not kept pace with inflation, over the last few years or so it’s deflated.

Once upon a time, I’d indulge in my $2 fantasy whenever the jackpot reached record-breaking status and come home for a few hours of ‘what would I do’. The obvious paying off of any bills and not worrying about how to pay future debts and college were up first on the list. Even, when we were too poor to be gambling, I’d still gamble, dreaming about the house we’d build and the clothes I would buy (and somehow magically look better in because the winning lottery ticket also bestows the winner with instant weight loss). I’d dream about the cars we’d buy for our family and the fleet we’d own – a different vehicle for every purpose – and the traveling we’d do.

The fantasies reached their height when I was still paying off a mountain of medical bills and trying to find a job with better health insurance. Then, a few years ago, I hit the job jackpot. I found a job at a place that not only offered the one benefit I really needed, but let me work at home and do something I was already doing for a lot of friends and family for free (tech support – get your minds out of the gutter).

I came for the regular paycheck and the insurance, but I had only been at the company a week before I realized there was a hidden benefit that had not been mentioned at the interviews. My coworkers and I all work remotely, but during the day, we congregate in a private chatroom. The chatroom is primarily for sharing advices, but, as anyone who’s worked with computer geeks can attest, the Monty Python and Tolkien references also fly thick. I’ve always marched to my own beat, and I quickly learned that most of my coworkers had each brought their own rhythm section to our band of tech rep. For one of the few times in my life, I felt like I really fit in, and my $2 fantasy suddenly got a little smaller – I might be able to work part time, but I could never leave this group for good (we all feel that way, btw).

One of the side effects of keeping your own beat in your head is that your not always in sync with what’s in style. For me that’s just about never, and the shrinking of my fortune fantasy accelerated as each session began another realization. The problem became that not only do we live in the perfect house – for us – but, as unmatched and unkempt as most of our furniture is, almost every piece has some memory attached to it. So, I had to scratch the multi-million dollar, un-earth-sheltered McMansion from my fantasy. Suddenly these tickets seemed more expensive.

I’ve been scribbling in little notebooks for most of my life. And, while the fortune fantasy requires a ticket infusion to get going each time, my once-secret and sustaining fantasy was to be a real, published author. The ridiculous end of this fantasy is somewhere in J.K. Rowling territory, but the more usual one is to be living in an off-beat, off-grid house in Vermont, making enough money and having enough legitimacy to keep scribbling away. For many years the ‘any money’ part was fantasy.

However, as I began writing more as part of a group and then found a writing workshop that made a writing life seem possible, the potential realization of my $2 fantasy – however remote a possibility – began to seem like even less of a blessing. After all, hitting a multimillion dollar jackpot might get you a spot on the Today show, but it does not make you a better writer.

So Saturday, as I went to play our lucky numbers, the little voice called to me from behind the mostly-locked iron door at the back of my brain was still, trying to lure me back to my world of fantasy. But as I stood in line ticking off the things I would do if we won, I realized the list had grown depressingly short. We’d still pay off the bills and future college graduates. We’d still buy a couple of veggie-vehicles, fulfilling our longtime fantasy of converting a car to run on waste vegetable oil (the Big Guy also has his own rhythm section). But that’s it. I really couldn’t think of anything we’d do.

I still bought the ticket of course – no one will ever accuse me of being too rational. But instead of thinking about all the problems it would magically solve, I walked out thinking about the things that I really want from life and how even a winning number could never give me most of them. It occurred to me that the problem with the deflating $2 fantasy was that I’ve become the author and fulfiller of my own fantasy over the last few years. And it’s still the one that sustains me.

Secrets and Stories

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There are stories in any life that are too damaging to tell.  And, while the stories that come later will help to fill a mind with less painful memories, the ones that can’t be told remain.  They are the small hard lumps in a heart. 

Mine planted false flags, and, in an unwitting effort to exorcise that story from my soul, I followed them – even after I knew they were leading me astray.  Spiting only myself, I continued on the wrong path, creating more stories so filled with my own decay and debauchery that, for many years, I only told them to myself and then only as fiction.  

Like all little girls, I read fairy tales as a child.  As a girl I once dreamed of being rescued by a prince – he didn’t even have to be handsome.  Then I dreamed, not of being rescued, but of being worth rescuing.  I dreamed of being beautiful or wise or good like the often passive but always pure and morally perfect ‘heroines’ of these tales.  

I finally did choose a new path that led me to a new town and to a prince.  But even after I began creating new stories, I wondered if they were just another part of the fantasy where I was wise and good.  My rescue didn’t come until several years after I married my prince, and it didn’t come with a dramatic fight or breaking of a spell.   

Instead, my salvation was in those years.  It was in learning to trust someone.  It was in being a partner.  And when we became parents, responsible for another life, it was, for me, in realizing that I was in the process of rescuing myself – whether or not I was beautiful or good or wise.

I thought about this yesterday watching the BillionRising videos and posts from around the world as women (and many men) spoke out against sexual assault and violence against women.  I thought of the women who can’t tell the stories of their lumps because of shame and fear.  I thought of how many of them, trying to make sense of their stories, have wandered from the paths they started on when they were girls. I thought about how many still wonder if they can or should be rescued.  And I thought about the way we talk about the stumbling starlets, misguided girls in the midwest, and even the women who have had their stories brutally ended at the back of a bus or irrevocably altered in a dorm room.  As a warning to others not to slip or be pushed, we call them slut or tramp or trash, admitting to the world that those tales – and sometimes even their owners – should be discarded.

The small, hard lump in my heart never goes away.  I don’t think it can.  But for me, the key to living with it was to stop giving into the conventional wisdom that a fallen woman can never get back up.  The BillionRising reminded me how important as it is to safeguard the stories of the girls who are just starting their journeys.  But it also reminded me, yet again, how important it is that – whether they trip and fall or have a push of any sort – every one of them has the chance to rescue herself when she’s ready because we are all wise and good and beautiful enough to be saved.

Milestones

/ Picking My Battles / 2 Comments

 

I love journals.  I can’t pass the spinning kiosk in the bookstore without stopping to fondle the ones that are swathed in brocade or are meant to look like  spell books.  In my weaker moments, I’ve bought a few, planning to fill them and follow in the footsteps of the Hemingway’s and the Walker’s of the world.  Usually my plan derails after a few weeks and twenty or thirty pages, but yesterday I hit an unprecedented milestone – I managed to exhaust the last pages not only of a pink-ribboned notebook but of a sketchbook that was a similar impulse purchase.

Neither tome will ever be on display at the Smithsonian, but for me, it’s significant.   Each of them is a symbol of my first steps on a new path and their covered pages are proof – if only to myself – that you can discover your drive in the middle of your life.

Music Credit:  Garage Band Demo Loop

Why I Wrote

/ Picking My Battles / 1 Comment

Photo

Sunday morning I was planning to write about the porcupine our dog seems to have adopted but instead found myself writing about my mental illness.  I had been slipping into my fantasy world alarmingly often recently, and the indulgence was not enhancing my performance in any part of my life.  So, I started writing about it, mostly for me.  

As I wrote, I realized this was something I was sill hiding.  Most of the time I try to keep my politics out of the blog – there’s enough of that in the real world, and readers can infer what they like – and, being a bit of a smart ass, it tends to be a bit acerbic once in a while.  But I always hesitated writing about my dark side when it appeared, trying to write as if blue phases were anomalies so as not to scare readers off.  

Sunday I took a chance and a stand.  

At Christmas, my sister gave me a book by another writer/artist called Marbles.  Written by cartoonist Ellen Forney, it details her discovery and management of her disorder as an adult.  Reading it was like looking into a funhouse mirror and realizing the reflection wasn’t a distortion.  And that reflection made me realize I was still being a coward in my life and what I want to be my life work to be, so I gambled, and the response has been overwhelming.

Afraid I would come off like an open wound, instead I learned from comments and emails how many people struggle with this.  They struggle not just with the effects of mental illness but the fear of what will happen if they expose themselves to the world.

Blog started out focusing on rural life (the main theme of the writing workshop I’ve been attending at Hubbard Hall, a local community center in Cambridge, NY).  An exercise in discipline and discovery, I’ve come to realize that, as important as our Vermont life and lifestyle is to us, the mountains and farms are the setting, not the scene.  Still a wayfarer under the skin, I’m realizing the rurality influences my life, but it’s not who I am.  

First and foremost, I am a wife-and-mother, and in learning to see the stories close to home (the first directive issued by our workshop leader), I’ve found that – good and bad – that status is one of the two things that has most defined my identity.  The only other thing I’ve carried with me to every place and through every phase of life and identity (and I’ve had a few) is my bipolar.  

It’s not easy to come clean – it’s the kind of thing that makes people slide a little further down the ‘Group W’ bench from you.  People who know you aren’t put off by it because it explains things.  People who write it off, however, write you off as undisciplined (certainly true in some parts of my life) or lazy.  And, while I certainly don’t want to make this the mental illness blog, I am glad I wrote about it because it’s a battle I do fight every day.  I have to fight it because I can’t not pick it.  It’s picked me.