Unreasonable, Impractical Me

 

As a daydreamy sort of child, I often made the mistake of sharing the fantasies in my head.  "Oh, Terri," someone would say, "be reasonable!"   I didn't stop daydreaming.  I did stop sharing my dreams.

As a young adult, living an all too ordinary life and still daydreaming of many things, I once voiced my thoughts out loud to a friend.  "Oh, Terri," she said, "You're always such a romantic.  You're not at all practical."

And another time, when a series of tough things happened, I'd spoken out loud all the blessing I saw.  When I was finished with my recitation, I looked at the person I was with and saw a look of utter disgust on that face.  "That's just like you altogether!  The world falls apart and you have to be the optimist telling me why it's not so bad!  You have no concept of reality at all, do you?"

Reasonable. Practical. Realist. Those qualities were considered the wise ones to own.  Not a daydreamer or a romantic.  

So, I became reasonable.  I lay aside the daydreams, and the idealism.  I worked hard at being all the right things: responsible, cautious, practical, logical, strong, stoic, able. I was all those things.  

While others had the luxury of laying down in their troubles, crying into their pillow and raging at what life had dealt them, I packed up my troubles and got on with it.  When others shirked responsibility, I picked it up and carried it with my own lot.  When others wanted nothing more than to be petted and cared for, I did the petting and caring.  When others dreamed, I encouraged them, but in the back of my throat was a lump made up of all the dry dusty bits leftover from my own dreams, the scratchy bits of lost romance and the brittle bracken of optimism.  

I worked hard at doing the right thing, at being the better person, picking up the pieces I didn't break.  I tried to please everyone and pleased no one.

And when bad things happened, I kept my head down and didn't look for the silver linings on those heavy clouds.  I knew better. I had to be the realist, not the optimist.

Inside I was a quivering jelly of anxiety mixed with anger and deep depression.  I nearly killed myself being what I wasn't.  Hanging too many dreams up in the 'never, not even someday' closet hurt.  If others had the right to dream, why oh, why hadn't I?

One day I woke up and realized that not one of those old dreams fit.  Like so many ball dresses packed away for too long, moths, rust and time had done a world of damage.  And once that closet of dreams was emptied out, I found that there was nothing to put into it.  I had no more dreams.  I was too tired, too worn, too weary and sorrow of sorrows, too old.  

I'm here to declare that I've had enough of being what I am not.  

I want to be unreasonable.  I want to be the romantic daydreamer.  I want to consider the impractical things.  I want to walk barefoot in the rain.  I want to stop in the midst of doing dishes and go write down the poem budding in my brain.  I want to pick up a book and read until my eyes need a rest.  I want to lie down responsibilities and take off one day or two (in a row!) and just do the things I most want to do even if meals don't get made or dishes done or if someone else has an expectation that my time is theirs to spend at will.   

I want to soar and fly, to swim and dance and walk about as though I were made of the breath of the God who made me, instead of mere dirt and mud that somehow struggled to life.

I want to live the romantic life, the pretty life, the lovely life.  The practical life is useful, like stained dishcloths, but don't the pretty, new, impractical, snowy white ones make doing dishes more of a pleasure?  Morning coffee in a pretty mug, or a China cup, not the old mug with scratched paint and stained interior that's 'good enough' tastes better to me.   A vase of flowers on the edge of the kitchen sink makes things brighter...I know this is true because I've begun making it a habit to keep a bouquet there.

I want to walk outdoors at night and gaze at the miracle of the stars.  I want to wake in the morning and listen to the singing of the birds instead of starting chores right away.  And to stop at any time and simply stand in the sun and absorb its glorious warmth.  

I want to play the lead in my own life and not the lesser supporting roles.

And most of all, I want to dream again.  Dream of what I still might do.  It's not too late.  I'm not too old.  I know, because I keep getting these glimpses of things I might do.  Like jumping in the car and driving all across the state or the States.  Or spending a month at the beach and never leaving the condo area.  Or putting in a pool and swimming every day.  Or running away to that little house I used to dream of, the one tucked in the hills, where there's room for only me, and books and has a bathtub that sits under the stars...

I may never live those dreams, but at least I have them to call my own.  And just claiming them as mine means that they might come true...I'm optimistic you see!

I've got just this one life, and the damned thing is dwindling away rather quickly.  I want to live it.  I've wasted enough of it being all I was told to be by everyone else.  I want to be me.  Independent, romantic, impractical, lovely me.

The Value of Mistakes

 

I've been working with my grandson Isaac over the last few weeks.  He's just turned nine.  He has a computer-based series of lessons he must do each day after school.  Each week is geared towards something they are currently learning at school in both Math and English language arts.

This week, we both got stumped by a lesson on prepositional objects.  The computer program he uses is designed to tell you when you get an incorrect answer and explain in detail why your reasoning was at fault as well as showing the correct answer and the reason why its correct.

Promises Made for March

 

Promises...Oh, how I struggle to keep those I make to myself!  So instead of making goals or focusing on only how I might work hard this month I am going to focus on keeping the promises I'll make for myself in March.  I am not going to lock myself into keeping every single one, but I'm going to focus on keeping as many as I can or at least making an attempt to start these things. That's my one goal for the month: make good on my own promises!

The "Real" Authentic Life

 

Recently, a friend who has been encouraging me triggered a load of emotion: angst, anger, and shame.  Did he set out to do any of those things?  Not at all.  He merely asked a simple question, meant to be an encouragement, a gentle shove to what he perceives is the next natural step with my writing.  And it IS the next step, but I've been hesitating for too long on the brink. 

I resented the question mightily.  And that forced me to stop and examine a whole load of stuff I've been shoving into the dark closets to be dealt with later...sort of like that pile of mending and ironing I haven't attended to that is growing into a ridiculous sized pile.

The Mean Girl

 

I wrote last month about the Inner Critic, whom I called I.C.  Karla commented on the post and stopped me in my tracks.  "The Mean Girl" she called I.C.  And I knew from the chills that ran up my arm she had absolutely named exactly who that critic was.

Me.  I'm the Mean Girl.

Random Thoughts: Taking Care of Myself

 

I'm tired.  We're just coming off a long weekend and a busy start to this week.  Today was our first 'down' day.  And so of course, I've spent the entirety of the day trying to catch up on household things, and do a bit of writing, and make sure I get supper well started because I have kids to keep this afternoon and I've fretted over a half dozen jobs that need to be seen to seemingly right away but I'm not getting to at all.

I've been rushing myself all afternoon long, and I'd been sitting here writing and I thought, "Oh golly, this is too much.... Oh gosh, this doesn't sound good at all...Oh goodness why can't I make sense of anything?"   And when I paused for a moment, I realized, I am tired.  I could happily close my eyes and take a nap sort of weary.  I've done too many 'should' tasks today, this week thus far and I'd not considered that I was too weary when the day started.  I'd fallen into bed last night and gone right to sleep and had to push myself to get out of bed at all this morning.

A Passing Grief

 

This afternoon we were coming home from errands and passed a familiar landmark.  John commented that something there had changed. We discussed that change briefly.   As we spoke, I recalled how often we formerly drove out that way.   I asked why it had been that we used to drive by there so frequently and John told me. 

 It was a different season of life for us.  It had been part of an evening routine to take an evening drive, turn around and come home.  Just a small thing but deeply important to a very anxious little boy who needed routines to ground him.  That late afternoon/early evening drive was part of his evening routine, part of getting him ready to settle down each night.

I looked out across a field, one that was as familiar to me as my own landscape here on this property because I'd viewed it so often.  I said softly, "Oh yes...that season felt like it would last forever, but it didn't, did it?"  

I Forgive Her

 

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

Last night I dreamed of something hard.  I woke tense with a heavy cloud hanging over me that had nothing at all to do with the rainy wintry day outside.  I carried the heaviness with me into the kitchen to get coffee. I sat with it as I sipped from my cup and made our breakfast.  I walked with it as I did the few chores I needed to do.

Warning: Labels

 

In life we are tagged with various labels.  And many of them are untrue, falsely applied.  

As a child I heard frequently that I was 'selfish', 'lazy', 'irresponsible', 'stupid', 'dramatic', 'hateful', 'a liar'.  If I worked physically hard, I was called, 'Smart.'  

When I married and left home, I was told I was lazy and slovenly. Told that I formed acquaintances to earn favors, was a 'user' in the sense that it was supposed I used people to get what I wanted.  I was called 'careless' with money, even though I always managed very well on the limited amount of money I had.  I was told I was a bad mother.  Not a 'real' woman.  

For The Woman I'll Become

 

This morning, I waited in the car at the Dermatologist's office where John had an appointment.  It was a lovely and revelatory hour spent writing.  

At first, I was thinking about my 'retirement' which honestly wasn't much of a retirement.  It hardly felt like retirement. I rather resented anyone saying I was 'retired' since I was, at that time, working harder than I'd worked in years and years. But in September of this past year, I came to the conclusion that indeed it was time to retire.  

Things I wished I'd learned sooner

 

I was standing before the mirror the other morning, washing my face and brushing my hair.  I was thinking of the past and I found myself saying to the mirror, "I wish I'd learned that earlier."  I'd have saved myself a lot of tears and heartache had I realized they were lessons I needed to learn and not tests to fail repeatedly as I did.

1.  Being alone and being lonely are two very different things.   I learned to be alone in my childhood for many reasons, which had to do with the era and place in which I lived, and some to do with family dynamics.  I got on for the most part. Though I had brothers, we didn't often play together.  I was blessed in that I could always find something to do to pass away the hours.