the truth will set you free, but it will piss a lot of people off

Forgive me Gloria Steinem, but right  now all I really want a man, on a great big horse, to ride up and rescue me.

I'm sorry, but sometimes this life gets to heavy to carry by myself and I regress from my fiercely independent "Sisters are Doing it for Themselves" self, and daydream about someone sweeping in and taking care of me. Someone who would, as Maurice Sendak says in "Where the Wild Things Are", "love me best of all".

I feel a bit like a spoiled princess stomping her tiny foot (for me it would sensibly sized foot in stylish, but sensible shoes, no glass slippers here), but I really want to be someone's, anyone's -- okay, scratch ANYone's -- first choice. I'm not perfect, but I have tried to be mindful and compassionate in my relationships with family and friends.  I am sometimes successful, and sometimes I crash and burn quite spectacularly, but I do really try to stay compassionate in my intentions and have my words and actions come from there. This is sometimes difficult, because I want to feel sorry for myself, I want to be the victim, so I don't have to take personal responsibility for aspects of my life and of myself that I don't like. Yes, it stings when people react unkindly, but I can only be responsible for myself - I HATE that. ..... Okay, I only hate that sometimes, when I'm stressed and I'm tired and I would LOVE to blame other people. Ultimately that doesn't work well for me. They say resentment is like drinking poison in the hope it will harm the other person. It doesn't, it just eats you alive until you're the bitter mean spirited person that you were resentful of.  I know other's actions are a reflection of themselves, as mine are a reflection of me, I know this in my head. In my heart I sometimes feel like an unloved child, or on days that I'm really feeling sorry for myself, I feel unlovable. 


So where does this leave poor me? Still without a man to rescue me. I've tried dating. It was nothing short of disastrous each and every time. One date, "Barry" who seemed wonderful online, was spewing political rants with in minutes of my sitting down (and I do mean spewing, bits of saliva and all), but at least he paid for my soda water (I'm even a cheap date...), "Chuck" and I met at a Starbucks, and after he physically got up stood with his back to me while ordering his coffee, to make it crystal clear that he would not be buying me a coffee, we sat down chatted about how marvelous he was, how great his car was (it actually was a very nice little Audi), and when next week would I have an open afternoon to have sex with him. What I thought was a get to know you, he thought was a booty call arrangement. Should I be flattered that after talking with me for 15minutes he thought I was okay to have sex with? Anyway, if I'm going to put out, I at the very least require a meal, with dessert and coffee.

Okay, so men are not exactly queuing up to ask me out, much less show up on horseback; perhaps there's a protocol here that I'm not following. I've had 3 men tell me that they had lusted after me - one of them after he'd been married to someone he met on line to for about a year. So perhaps I'm looking for a Sugar Daddy on a horse? That sounds eewwie.

And here's where I start shoulding myself to death. I should have spoken up earlier in my marriage, maybe we could have started working on things 14years ago when it started to go wrong instead of pretending everything was fine. I should have left my husband and never moved here. I should have firmly, and compassionately stood up for myself countless times with countless people. I should have done a lot of things. I should have known better? I tried. Really I did. All I ever wanted to do was to make for my children a home like my cousins grew up in. My mom's sister had three kids, and was married to one of the best men I've know in my life. I loved having such a wonderful extended family. I look at them now, and they've been through some rough times - my Uncle dying 20years before we thought he should being the hardest - but they are still the loving, close happy family I watched growing up. So with my own kids I thought, if I couldn't have that growing up, I can at least give it to my family. It was a plan. I married a nice guy, I had three kids, stopped working before the second was born so I could be a full time mother to them. Then I tried to put down roots somewhere - my cousins grew up in only one house, on a street where every neighbour knew each other, where they could bike to school. There was a problem, with no job to hold me anywhere I had no say in where we moved when my husband got transferred, which was a lot. Still I kept trying to make that  life that existed only in my head.

So here I am. No family except my kids. All my extended family in another country, and while my Aunt and my cousins are friendly to me, I'm not their family, they don't invite me to holiday dinners or family celebrations. We have made ourselves a village here, and my kids have many stunt parents, mentors, and friends who support and love us, and we love them. I still long for my own family, for the extended family holiday dinners, for cousins for my kids to have and horse around with. It's nice here, but it's lonely too.

Honestly I don't really want a man to come in a rescue me. I know that if one should try to, I would most likely mock him, steal his horse and ride off. 


Maybe I just want a horse, and a plan of escape.

Or maybe just the horse, I'll figure out the escape route as I go.

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice --

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do --

determined to save

the only life you could save.  

Just for today

Once again I'm waiting in a coffee shop, but since the weather thinks it's July and it's over 80 outside I'm drinking iced green tea instead of coffee. I'm sure it's much healthier, and I swear its iced tea and not the beer it looks like in the photo. Also, who eats mini doughnuts with beer?!

My big news - I don't have cancer. Which is good, but there is a very small (very crazy) part of me that is disappointed. Like I said crazy, but here's my thinking, if I had cancer I could get a break from being in charge of everything, I'd have the best reason in the world to just focus on myself and the rest of my world would have to step up and start taking care of itself.  I'm that tired. That tired of the juggling, organizing, debating, deciding, driving (driving, driving), and being my family's emotional safe place that the thought of surgery, illness, baldness, deformity, and possible death sound like a vacation.

Very crazy part of my brain.

My more rational self just hired a cleaning woman, and could weep at the gleeming kitchen cupboards, spotless stove and all the bathrooms being clean AT THE SAME TIME. Also, I'm having a doughnut in the afternoon and NOT feeling guilty about it.

This too will pass, and we'll be on to the next adventure. An adventure that will not be anything I'm expecting, and once again I will adapt.

Today I don't have cancer. Today is a beautiful day, and today I can handle what comes my way.  That's how I handle this crazy life I have now, one day, one coffee shop at a time.


Cheers.

How I wait

Another meeting, another coffee shop. This time with tea, camomile, which is nice with the rain and the cold outside and no runners opening the door inside.  There's the addicts out huddled in the rain for a smoke, but they are not sending cold gusts my way.

I drive. A lot. Outpatient therapy, groups, meetings, appointments... I'm getting better at sitting quietly waiting in coffee shops inbetween trips. I remember hearing 20years (?30years) ago that the next big hangout was going to be coffee shops, I think it was Drew Barrymore who said it, I thought that was nuts. Of course then I wasn't interested in being any place I couldn't get a drink. Ironic now.

It seems sitting here with my tea that I am still, and all the world swirls around me. I like that. There's a basketball game in the "Gymatorium", a Food Bank being set up ( I'm in a church coffee shop this time), a lively debate going on behind the fireplace, and the meeting, of course, up the stairs and behind the closed door. That's why I'm waiting this time. Tomorrow it will be the coffee shop by The Education Center, Thrusday and Friday back to Outpatient, and that's my life now.

It's not so bad, really.


oh, and the picture, this is what happens when I blog from my phone

Bloody runners

Seriously, its COLD out there, wouldn't you rather be sitting at one of these tables sipping coffee instead of standing around them and constantly opening and closing the front door freezing the rest of us? In the words of my daughter Catherine who is trying to swear less, but still get her point arcross - "SHUT THE FRONT DOOR" , I'm sure you can translate. Or better yet, be home in bed, or up by a lovely fireplace? I don't get it. Of course this comes from someone who breaks boards over her head and spends 4 days a week in a grueling Hapkido school.
I woke up in a 57degree (13.5C) home, went out to a 17degree (-8C) car to drive my son in for his last (crosses fingers) detention. I love my quiet introvert time, but I would prefer to be warm and still puttering around in my pjs, coffee steaming from my newly purchased Dragon Mug. It's my year, Dragon that is, and I wanted my own commemorative (no spell check when you blog from your phone) mug.
Time to go back out in the cold and pick up my lad, the runners are gone, so I'm slightly warmer, and we can't have that. Soon I'll be in front of my own fire. That will be nice.

People Don't Behave, or Is There Another Adult in the House?

Runners are irritating.

Not in general, just specifically at 7am Saturday mornings at my downtown Starbucks, where a large group of them commune before heading out en mass for their morning mutual endorphin rush. They don't buy coffee, who needs it with utility belt loads of little Goo Gell bottles strapped around their Spandex bound bodies in a manner that would make Batman jealous? One by one their gang accrues, the front door constantly opening to admit yet another Spandex garbed member. My seat by the window gets a constant chilling breeze, which on it's own is not so bad, but my extra dry cappuccino in the lovely porcelain cup lightly sprinkled with chocolate is cooling at a faster rate than I would like.  This is suppose to be my morning getaway. When I have to drive my son in for his early Saturday morning detentions, something that is fast becoming a weekend tradition for us, I like to find something soothing for me to do while I wait to pick up my increasingly truant boy. Having long been on a first name basis with his guidance counselor and the school social worker, this year I am adding his Dean to my frequent call and email list.  So, when I arrive, at 7am to what is suppose to be a quiet escape in a coffee shop to mull over my overwhelming parenting responsibilities it would be nice to do so without a parade of Spandex covered backsides.

I am not, strictly speaking, a single parent, but I am the one that organizes, delivers and cares for most/all aspects of each of my three teenagers busy lives. I keep things running smoothly, but with an exponentially increasing load I have become exhausted with being the one in charge, the one who bears the brunt of their frustrations, and the one who has, bit by bit, given up chunks of my life to make sure my family is taken care of. I sound like an overwrought soccer mom. I'm not. My kid's extracurricular activities are a drop in the bucket, what is spreading me thin is the four nights a week of  three hour outpatient therapy with the 30 minute drive there and back that I take my son to, the 3 meetings a week he also goes to, the life coach and social worker appointments, the continuing dialogue with his teachers, counselors and Dean, and yes, I get him to Hapkido 2 or 3 times a week. And this does not include dealing with the defiant, difficult, manipulative and confusing behaviour at home that comes with living with a newly recovering addict. This is just one of my children. My worries for the other two would likely feature more prominently in my mind if I could manage it. As it is my oldest is becoming the stunt mom for my youngest, getting her to appointments and activities. My oldest, who is spending her first year of college at the local junior college and living at home; something I thought was a huge failure on my part, has become a lifesaver for me these last 6 very difficult months. So. Is it too much to ask, that when I find 2hours for myself, abet early on a Saturday morning when I really could use the sleep, for my sanctuary not to be overrun by endorphin junkies?  This is a place for caffeine junkies, a place where I can purchase a 500 calorie pumpkin scone and pick all the icing off while I scribble madly in my journal. The place for $200 running shoes, TMI Spandex and utility belts is the park around the corner, go there and do your pre-run cluster, and leave curmudgeonly me to my warm quite cafe.

Eventually they leave, nearly freezing me with the door held open for the mass of them to exit. They'll be back, red faced and, smug and steaming sweat from their moisture wicking active wear into my drama free coffee drinking refuge, where I have come to get away from all things annoying (read: people who do not behave the way I would like). I do not say anything as I look up sulkily from my coffee foam at the irritating  runners; they are a safer target for my frustrations. The thing that sends me running (ironic word choice) from my warm bed out into this cold morning so I could be anywhere but home, where I could be somewhere where I'm not the one who has to "mend lives", where I could have a moment before I am drawn back by their "pitiful cries" is sitting in a detention room at the school now, are at home in warm beds, is NOT here, except that I bring them with me. Like the Ghost of Christmas Present, they are the pitiful things clinging to my legs that I constantly carry. The runners have not had me out of my bed after midnight driving around in my pajamas searching, they have not dumped all their collective angst on me, they do toss thoughtless comments my way, that is why it is easier, right now, to spend my frustration on them. They are just as oblivious to the good I try to do, to how I work myself to stuporous exhaustion, that if I eat, I do it standing while accomplishing other tasks, to the fact that I am driving, always driving, just as oblivious to this as my family.

The Journey

by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

It was pointed out to me recently that "we carry our burdens alone, and if we are really lucky, maybe with a friend or family member". This idea has been bouncing around in my head and more and more, and I realize it is true. That I am alone in this, to wish for it to be different is to invite disappointment; expectations are just resentments waiting to happen after all. For all intents and purposes I have no extended family, and the friends I have here are busy with their own lives. This makes me sad but also relieved. If I am alone, I can stop putting on the "Happy Mask", can stop having the 30second "how are you coping conversations". I can put my head down and 'chop wood and carry water', or as it translates in my life, drive, feed, organize, counsel and "mend their lives". I hope I will be softer from this suffering, I hope this will not make me brittle with resentments from unrealistic expectations. One day this will change, everything does, and I will be changed as well. One day I will walk out on that road. One day I will be able to see the stars, to hear my own voice. One day, I hope.


 I hope.