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."
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...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!
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.
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.
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.
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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fact of Life: When you lose your husband, the world expects you to step up and adult even if you don't want to, don't feel like it,...
