Visualization Entry - I Am Not Like Other Brides - 12-14-08

I am not like other brides. I did not get cold feet or the jitters. I did not cry as I took my vows, my voice trembling and weak. I did not stress out at making arrangements or micromanage my bridesmaids. I did not get so caught up in the machine of a well-planned day that I lost sight for even a moment of just what day this was. I did not even have a twinge of regret as I expected at the loss of my single life. Even though it was long, it was good, that single life, my “before,” and I expected to feel the loss of it. But that was just one more way I was not like other brides.

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I had always wanted, for my wedding day, to be filled with a pervasive, unrelenting awareness, a sense of appreciation so clear that each moment of that day would be crystallized into memory for the duration of my life. I would be different, I said, than all the other women who lost sight of what that day truly was in the onslaught of lace and programs and invitations and flowers and expectations and damage control and seating arrangements and torn hemlines.

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I just let go. All my life, I struggled against letting go, even as I longed to do so. I let go of anxiety and planning and questions. I just focused on how I wanted my day to go and released it. And the man who finally showed me how to let go stood at the end of the aisle, bursting with joy and pride. He taught me how to let go when he swept me off my feet and I had nothing left to hold onto except him. And my wedding day was marked indelibly like a magic marker scribbled all over a blank wall with the unshakeable certainty that I was home. I chose the right path. I ran the race and here was my first finish line.

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And I think the moment I felt that knowledge and peace the strongest was that first sight of him as I walked down the aisle. I had gone all day without seeing him and it hit me harder than I thought it would. I had gone my whole life without seeing him; what was one brief day? But through all the surreal excitement was the most prosaic thought of just, “I miss him. When will it be time to see him again?” So when I started down that aisle, my eyes sought him out immediately, thinking only of being so happy to see him, and I was struck, so powerfully my feet almost lost their steady rhythm, by what I saw on his face. My heart spluttered as I took in the look of absolute joy and focus on my face. He didn’t look nervous, he didn’t look away. There truly seemed to be no one in the room except the two of us. I have never seen such a naked love as I saw on his face in that moment; I wasn’t prepared to see it to quite that degree, even after all these weeks and months slowly coming to believe in what he kept telling and showing me – that he truly loved me.

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And as I finally reached him, slipping my small hand into his warm one, my heart beat strongly and steadily and I truly knew what this day was. This was the day a man as utterly sublime as this looked on me and before God and the world, declared to all in existence that I was the thing he wanted most. His face showed that more even than the words he spoke. He was saying he wanted nothing more than to tie his life and well-being and future to mine. He stood there, so close I could feel his heat, the strong, sure touch of his hand, and laid his name over me like a cloak, a mantle of belonging and protection. This was the day that begins a new life of being seen, of being someone’s only love, of being someone’s most cherished treasure. I matter to someone. I will always matter to this man. This was the day he declared that he would be here, that he would let me love him, that he would need me to be there, to see him and listen and care for him. It was really a wonder I could hit my vows on cue with all this blindingly bright awareness filling my brain to capacity.

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All of my stereotypes about men have been shattered by this one. And I have come to truly accept that a man can love me as well, as passionately, as I can love him. I never have to hide my desire for him, my single-minded focus on loving him. I never have to throw a casual light on the raw need, even as I hold to the solitude I often need. And through it all is a natural balance that suffuses us. No choke-hold to be found, nor any cold distance. We were meant to be together. Whatever the psychologists may claim, we complete each other. If you truly complete yourself, if you are complete in yourself with no need of anyone in your core, then what is to become of you? Where do you go if you don’t need to go anywhere? I need him. And it is so sweet to be needed just as much, just as unapologetically. If any psychologist was looked at the way he looks at me, like he can’t decide if he wants to devour me or protect me, they would take their notes and research and burn them.

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I am recklessly happy and after a lifetime of moderation, of sensible living, it feels so glorious to let go, to be swept up, to be in love, to leap and have no thought of where you’ll land and have no anxiety about it because you know who will catch you. I’m flying so high I’m light-headed and yet my feet are firmly planted in the conviction that this is where I am meant to be. My past has almost single-mindedly led me to this, my greatest desire. Let the world be stunned by the purity of our love. Let all who see it be inspired to reach for the same heedless heights. Let the two of us come together like supernovas to explode into one endless galaxy. All the clichés are true. Count on it. They are all true. I cannot contain them. My body burns from the light of his love, streaming out through my very skin. I am loved. I am loved more than anything.

The Tunnel Darkens - 12-7-08

It started with the Thanksgiving Day conversation about relicensure. Yes, that’s where it all began, the spiral downward, the devolution of my positivity, my power, my hope which is the cornerstone of the Secret. Steadily, like an accelerated dry-rot, I find myself here. I can no longer see meeting my mate, I can no longer see leaving teaching after this year to stay home with my family. I salt my food with tears and stain my pillow with them and dully accept that there is no way out, neither now nor later. I see going through this year at Newsome Park and the remotest possibility of transferring to another school in the district. I do not see somehow sliding into another district closer to home, nor getting a position outside of the classroom. I see this as my future.

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I did take something from Mom’s lecture about the economy and all the layoffs. It informs my perspective, perhaps in the way Mom intended. I see now no other job. Forget leaving the workforce entirely to be a housewife and stay-at-home mother. Talk about a pipe dream. No, there isn’t even an option outside this job, in this district. I saw that when TowneBank’s stock finally took a dive. I can’t risk joining any company now – last to join, first to go. These enormous layoffs are by no means the last we’ll see. The economy looks to be in store for these dismal conditions for at least several years. So I stay. I can appreciate the job security. In Newport News, I have tenure. I can’t be fired outside an act of God.

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And so I am left here, on a barren landscape and weak and blind enough not to see all the good in the face of all the hopelessness and pressure felt by those left with no job at all. But I do appreciate that fact, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am looking at a long haul ahead of me, struggling every day for peace and happiness, remaining a person of small things, of small pleasures. God, that’s a bleak picture. It will go on so long I will truly forget what lightness is like, what it feels like to be eager to wake up.

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Unlike my grief all those years ago, when I had the sharp-edged blessing of ignorance, with no idea how long I would have in the valley in which I found myself – and a good thing, or I never would have survived – in this situation, I may not have an ending date, but I do know I have at least seven months, and quite possibly a year or two past that. And the only comfort I have is knowing where my next paycheck is coming from – a significant blessing and one so many hunger for, but it can’t give me joy, only a quiet acquiescence. There is no joy in the world right now. Those with no jobs certainly have none, and it’s dying out with those who have the jobs left, with the added responsibility left by those who have gone. All belts are tight, all eyes shadowed, all shoulders bowed. And I am one of them.

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And I am afraid I don’t have enough faith to withstand reality, the reality of the economy. I don’t have hope enough to keep believing a man will come along and marry me soon and support me so I can escape this. As long as I see it as an escape, I suspect God will hold it away from me. Something about motive. He says he rescues us, but I rather think that’s from actual danger or emergencies, not a lingering despair and stubborn unhappiness that resists all attempts at manufactured happiness.

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When I had talked with Mom on her birthday about my quandary about Match.com, we talked a long time, and to help me see that the universe is working for me behind the scenes and that all of the creation of my future doesn’t rest solely on my shoulders, she told me that Jinxie, one of her neighbors who I absolutely love and who was quite taken with me, wants to bring her son, Tyler, to the house when I happen to be there and see if we hit it off. Mom hesitated to tell me that – Tyler and I were supposed to be ignorant of the well-meaning machinations of our mothers – but she told me in any case because she wanted to encourage me that my belief in my future was putting a lot of things in motion. And I didn’t get all my hopes up about Tyler even though he’s absolutely hot and has so many of the qualities I want, mainly because he lives in New York and shows no inclination to relocate back home. But I did start thinking, even wondering, if he might fall in love with me enough to move back here with no regret or bitterness, which did for the first time make me wonder if I could really ever be enough for a man to move to me willingly. But anyway. It did encourage me.

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But now I think dully why would it work with Tyler? Why should he be the One when no one else has been? Before, I saw that history with a new, more reasonable perspective, that my mate is so perfect for me, that there could only be one person for me, that of course it would take a little time. But now, I just can’t see things that way. So much for the interpretation that staying at this job would allow me to coast so I could focus all my attention on attracting my perfect mate. What is actually happening is that this job is stressing me out so much I can’t see myself investing any energy in anything else. I couldn’t respond to a man if I tried, and I can’t picture, with all this mental fuzziness, a man putting enough effort into a first meeting with me to warm me up enough to respond.

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So I’m left with the depressing, lonely picture of staying alone in this job for years. I weep when I think of my son, wanting him so bad and wondering if he’ll ever come. I supposed I don’t want him so well as I did before, as I’m not doing such a good job of investing that desire. And yet I think now that all this would be so much more bearable if I was in love. I probably shouldn’t think of love as such a drug, but it sure would dull the pain.

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And it’s cold, because it is now getting on to the middle of December, so the winter has begun, despite delaying for as long as it could for my sake. And that winter which would be the first winter I would spend not alone is starting to stretch on the way all the others have done.

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It’s Sunday night and I’ve been crying sporadically as the clock crawls closer to bedtime because it means I have a whole week at work ahead of me, and that’s how it is now. That’s how it will be, as I have lost hope having finally grasped how bad the economy is. This is what is in store for me. That is my future. And as depressed as I am about my present, how can I generate good feelings to bring about a different future? When everything is bad or worse, how can you turn things around? This would be where God comes in, but he’s giving every sign that I am supposed to stay where I am indefinitely, and giving no sign – as ever – that I can at least have the comfort of finally meeting my mate.

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My mother asked me to distinguish and prioritize my desire for marriage and my desire to stay home. I rebelled against separating the two, running true to form in wanting everything which should be beneficial with the Secret but hasn’t proven to be yet. But I had to admit to her I wanted marriage most of all desires. I want not to be alone. I want to be seen. I want to be touched. I want someone to tell me they are choosing, above all things, to be by my side. And after talking with Margaret today, the day of Morgan’s baby shower, jeez, again I just want to get it over and done with and stop dealing with comments and expectations. But how dismaying to face the possibility for the first time that I may have to pick and choose my future, take marriage now and maybe staying home with my family later. Will I have to wait to have children for long like so many others do for finances’ sake? Will we struggle with money like so many others do? I know I’m being greedy, but I have long since accepted that part of my nature is the unqualified desire to have all or nothing, despite my efforts at moderation. But if I had to choose, I would choose marriage. But I also don’t know why I’m killing my hand to explain all that. I don’t have any belief left. All I see, all I feel and hear and taste and smell, is more of the same I’ve always had, chained to this classroom and my empty bed. I am tired. I am so tired. And I fear I am only breaking up my future to add to the shards of my present laying jumbled at my feet.

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Is there anyone who would love me? Anyone who would like the look of me and be compelled to be near me? Is there any second glance in my future? And any man who could do the work at first because I can’t seem to raise my limp arms or dark eyes? Do I have to do all the work? Can I never feel the exhaustion, or doom myself if I do? Is there anything more in store for me?

"An (Off-Key) Christmas Carol" - 12-6-08

Last night, on our way to an aborted evening of entertainment at a showing of “A Christmas Carol” at the Wells Theater, Mom and I got into a confrontation that shook me and cracked some of the hard-earned, unquestioned trust I had placed squarely on Mom’s shoulders. By the time we had turned around and come right back home because I was too upset to enjoy the show or even be in the same room as Mom, we had communicated well enough for me to see that her lectures about how many tens of thousands of people have just been laid off and she didn’t want to hear any more complaints from me, were all from her perspective that that kind of “buck up” lecture helps her count her blessings. On Wednesday, I was overwhelmed with my misery and with the horrific prospect of staying in teaching at Newsome Park indefinitely and cried for an hour after I had talked with Margaret who, of anyone, would know of any crack at all I could slip through to get out of this school, told me sympathetically, “You just have no options.” I got off the phone as gracefully as I could and the bomb went off. A true crying jag. I have cried privately plenty often this year, but only have had a few actual crying jags – running mascara, face in my hands, whimpering tears instead of my usual silent sobs, an hour passing before I can talk coherently, the whole bit. And I called Mom because that is the long-standing agreement, tacit in many ways, that we have. And next day, as I started my day with an inexplicable calm and composure, she sent me an email, as she had the last time I had sobbed to her that I just didn’t know how I could go one more day, let alone all the dozens after. Her email was a buck-up, get over it, you have so much to be grateful for, etc., and crippled me again so I had to get it together a.s.a.p. before the kids came in. We emailed back and forth, and for the first time, I responded to her perennial concern over my lack of “resiliency,” not with a meek resignation, but with a clarification of my definition of resiliency. Basically, I told her that she is the only one who sees all that emotion, and that I am resilient because I go into work the next day and do my best and no one has a clue that I am any more stressed than any other teacher in that cursed building. I told her that it is because of her that I can be resilient. I thought I had clarified well enough the nature of those occasional sobbing phone calls to Mom, but apparently not. It took driving to and from Norfolk for me to understand that she had still been shaken up by the sheer force of emotion I had lobbed to her, crying about how I couldn’t see how I could go in the next day and the next week and month and year. She was thinking that could easily lead me to storming into Sherry’s office and screaming, “I quit!” even though I had specifically assured her that because I could still come to Mom when it got really bad, that scenario was forestalled. So her whole lecture and refusal to be the one I could go to when I was crying about my job was all coming from her fear of this economy and my actually chucking it all with no back-up plan.

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I was in disbelief that after all these years and all the time I had spent with her and all the me I had let her see, she wasn’t assured of my character to know I am far too much my father’s and mother’s daughter to be so reckless. I was also distantly alarmed to the point of horror that she had been my only safe outlet when things go that bad and she was effectively telling me she was taking herself out of that role and essentially I had no outlets now, after I had specifically communicated to her that it was only because I had her to turn to that I could go on and make the right choice.

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So to her, this discussion was just her being a good parent and showing me what a good life I had, basically stop sniveling and be grateful, because when things have gotten hard for her, she has gotten through it when she’s thought of how much she has. But for me, it was far more than a lecture; it surpassed that definition when she said, “So let’s not have any more complaints.” Ever? Really? This year and its stresses are by no means over, and there is nothing I can do with them? So everything we gained, all those pieces of trust that had finally all clicked together that day at Jim’s Beans years ago when I told her everything, about my chimera, my depression, my suicidal thoughts, and she handled it and I knew I could come to her with anything because she said, “I want you to come to me before it gets to that point because I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here on this earth,” when all that happened and all that trusted solidified now, I was only eventually going to have the rug pulled out from under me and have no one? No one? I couldn’t process it.

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Fortunately, by the end of the bad night, we had cleared up a lot of it. She saw what she had done and I saw what she had instead tried to do. I told her that not all my trust was broken – that could never happen; she had shown her true character well enough for so many years for that to ever happen – but my trust in coming to her when I’m only knees with the stress and the long months and years stretching ahead of me was damaged. How could I let her see all of that misery? How could she ever know the nature of it? How could I not edit myself? When I truly did not see how I would literally get dressed, walk out my door, drive that commute, and face the kids, what would I say? Would I offer disclaimers before every thought? I had done that for too much of my life, having to preface every thought with, “I know that…” I don’t do that anymore. I spent too many years feeling I didn’t have the right to any complaints or dissatisfaction because I had such a cushy life. It took 25 years to finally own that I had as much right as anyone else to a bad day. I told her this in that dark car. She said she still wanted me to come to her and not edit.

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She’s sense and I’m sensibility, I see that with a new clarity. She’s Eleanor and I’m Marianne. We love each other and are close and on the same page about most things, but at some point, we handle stress and unhappiness very differently. I told her this, too, and that while she responds to those stern lectures well, my nature is such that that only makes it harder for me to see clearly. I respond best to soft sympathy so I can see I’m not alone and maybe I can make it one more day. Maybe all this happened so she could understand that essential difference between our natures and respond better in the future.

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I emphasized to her that I would never be able to take such a self-indulgent risk as to quit and say to hell with my beloved condo and my whole life. But I don’t care about the economy and how high-pressured the remaining jobs become. My job is stressful, no matter which way you cut it. My workplace environment is unhappy, unsupportive, and incompetently managed, no matter how you look at it. There are certain objective truths that remain what they are regardless of the subjective emotion with which I may view them.

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I think she really understands and I think I do, too. I told her everything I’ve ever written in her birthday and Mother’s Day cards is still true, and we’d just have to get back to that trust. But once I got home and went for a run, I was faced with some hard questions. Was I really as strong as others? Am I just more delicate, that my breaking point was so much closer than others? I always knew I lacked a certain toughness that others had who had had to work from a young age and become independent so much sooner than I. I could never see how they could be happy when their lives were so hard, and shied away from what that meant in my own nature. I can’t help that I had a soft life, and Mom said she’s always been more reticent than Dad in giving me gifts and buying me things. But it is what it is. I told her I’ve done well with what I’ve had. I still make good choices, always trying to live well, and wisely. When things have gotten hard I’ve somehow managed to make it through. I just maybe feel more than she does, maybe feel truer and sharper than she does. Maybe that is where the essential difference comes from between me and others who seem to be able to take more in stoic silence.

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And as I sat there on the pier, looking up at the moon, I thought, “Am I then good enough? Is this a flaw in my fabric? Is my strength enough, good enough, worthy enough, in comparison with that of others?” I’m too old not to accept who I am, and even getting an unflattering picture of myself or a new knowledge of a long-held flaw can’t change that. I wasn’t asking that question with the fear that all I know of myself would crumble to the ground under the weight of a storm, however great. Any fault in the foundation of what I’d built of my understanding of myself won’t be great enough to topple that. But I still had to ask the question. “Am I good enough now? Am I strong enough?” I am not as tough as others. I know this. I’ve always wanted to be delicate, but I seem to be delicate in all the wrong ways. “Is my strength good enough?”

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But then I thought of how low I get, how I am on the floor sobbing in despair that this is my life no matter how much I want a different life, and I can still go into work the next day, dry-eyed and composed. I can hug my kids, laugh with them and tease them and speak softly to them to make them love me when I saw I had to, and never let them see how much I don’t want them. That is a kind of strength, isn’t it? It takes a certain strength to show love where there is none. Perhaps that’s a woman’s strength. At any rate, it seems to be my strength. But where will that leave me, I have to wonder?

Stuck - 12-3-08

Crying in the car on the way home. Jeez, I thought I was done with that. Evidently not. At our Wednesday planning meeting, we were hit with the one-two punch of more expectations and paperwork piled on us and even less accomplished on our next week’s lesson plans (read “nothing”). Yet again, we are overloaded even more, if that’s possible. I had to leave because I was going to lose it if I didn’t. I just keep thinking, “Hold it together till you get in the car.” And what truly burns is that all this work we are expected to do – much of it pointless – would be overwhelming for someone who actually wanted to do this, who still believed in this worthless profession. So to me, it is salt in the wound. I already hate teaching, loathe being around kids. So right there is a large measure of necessary energy missing, and I need every last bit of it for all the work required of teachers, let alone all the extra work required of us at Newsome Park because we didn’t meet AYP.

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I had already begun losing the ability to go day by day, beginning to see with dreaded clarity the sheer length of this school year, thanks to that discussion about license renewal. So today just compounded that inward groan I had been feeling for days. And as I got in the car and began my commute out of this passionately hated city, I alternated between squeezing tears and dull hopelessness. It seems incomprehensible to me that the year is not even half over, that I still have seven months left. I cannot fathom that, let alone another two years, God forbid.

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I’m stuck. I’m so terribly stuck. There’s no way out. Obviously. I can’t even use the Secret because I think it’s become quite clear that this is where I’m supposed to be. It made sense that TowneBank didn’t work out, but I can’t even comfort myself with the thought of how staying where I am is going to help me focus on attracting the future I really want, because I can’t feel, see, hear, sense that future anymore. I’ve gone dead. My transmission tower has shorted out. Flat cardboard cut-outs are all I have left of the vivid, beautiful future I envisioned. And it’s not even like I’m giving the lie to all the belief I had in that siren call out to my perfect mate. It’s just that I’ve fallen silent and can’t sing out to him anymore.

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And I could understand the reasoning that TowneBank would have really diffused my energies and diverted my attention from marriage and family. But would all new jobs have done that? At this point, I would leap at the chance to work in another school or district, even as a classroom teaching. Just anything in another building, out of the smoke of the burning ship I’m on. But no school or district will touch me without me losing my license. I’m under contract. So there is not even the prospect of me getting a job I could do easily so it wouldn’t divert my attention too much.

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And you know, that reasoning only goes so far. The silver lining of losing TowneBank was that I had a job I could coast through so I could focus on attracting my perfect mate. That only goes so far as my spirit remains intact. And this school and this job are crushing my spirit. So how does that reasoning make sense?

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So there’s no way out. And for a year, I’m trapped – and the year timeline is only IF marriage or a book contract pan out by August. I can’t help but think that I did such a good job for four years in this position. I worked extra hours, worked hard to become proficient and learn and hone my craft, took so many opportunities that I could easily have let slip by to mold and understand my students. I spent so much time and energy and heart to do good and make a difference, and for that I have earned a year in the pen? What did I do that I must be punished? Because that is what this feels like. Punishment. Retribution for a crime not committed. I don’t understand why I must go through this.

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It is draining me, and therefore my focus on my desired future. It is solidifying racial prejudice which could have been avoided if I had just been allowed to get out. And my loathing for children would have been able to stay at a distant, occasional frustration or distaste.

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I just don’t understand why I must stay here for another seven months, God help me. More to the point, I don’t understand how I can stay. Things are reaching a critical mass; they have to so somewhere. There has to be some resolution. And I thought on the way home, “God, you have to help me. You can’t possibly, you couldn’t possibly mean to just leave me here for a whole year!” And I thought, yes, he can. He can intend exactly that.

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I don’t know how I am going to go in tomorrow and teach all these different things to kids who won’t get it anyway, insist upon beating my head against a wall with them, and deal with all their shit, when I don’t even want to teach. I don’t want to be around children. I am sick of being around these children who have no self-control or home training. School is not a place for learning; it is merely the receptacle for any shit a child might be amused enough to throw. And I’m saying this after I’ve already finally built relationships with all of them and I basically like them, and yet I hate them. If I never had to see one of their faces again, I would rejoice. I just don’t want to do this with any of my time, resources, or energy. It is just an unending, frustrating, completely pointless repetition of rules, consequences, and concepts. I hate this job! I hate this job, I hate the building, I hate the kids, I hate the administration. And I just don’t know what to do, because there is no way out. I’m in prison.

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And I can’t go back to the way things were at the beginning of the year. I can’t. Not just I won’t; I can’t. I know part of that hell was my own making – my choices, m y reactions, my refusal to invest anything in my students. But most of it was not me. Most of it was just that it is a miserable profession to me, that it has become a horrible place to work, with incompetence laying out more work for teachers to do. I can’t go through that hell again, with crying at home and at work, never smiling, dreading every minute, having to work so much harder than I’m capable of. I got undressed today and thought, I wish there was a way I can wear khakis, my school shirt, and tennis shoes every day. I just don’t want to try anymore. I just want to pull my hair in a ponytail every day and wear minimal makeup and no jewelry, and just be comfortable. Because there’s no point in looking cute. There’s no point in being anything but comfortable because there’s too much crap to deal with. Yeah, another way keeping this job is preparing me for meeting a man – female-dominated, sucking my energy dry, crushing my spirit, and finally making me actually look like a teacher. Yeah, great plan.

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And when I finish this journal entry, what will have changed? I’ll be just as dead as I was before, and just as trapped. Will God come? Will help come? I certainly hope so, but if it does, it won’t be with my help, because I’m sinking. And I so wish I weren’t. I wish some way would show itself to get me out of this hell. Is there no hope for me? Am I destined to have to complete this year-long sentence? Is there nothing can be done?

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It just boggles me that there is no possibility. In this whole big, bright world, in this amazing modern world of millions of opportunities, there’s nothing for me? I really must stay the rest of this year? I just can’t fathom it, can’t wrap my brain around it. What happened that all my opportunities, all my possibilities, got taken away? All these years of working so hard to do the right thing, live a responsible life, get education and train, learn and learn and learn, only led me to a dead-end? How did this happen? How was it that I did all I was supposed to do, was such a good student of life, and all that did was drop me off in the middle of nowhere? How can I be left like this, with nowhere to go? Was it all a waste?

The Tunnel Begins to Form - 12-1-08

I’ve been having a lot of trouble with the Secret lately about the things I really want: my clear skin, my perfect mate, my perfect weight. I just keep feeling so tired. That’s the only word for it. When I think of what I truly desire, everything just gets fuzzy in my head. And it takes focus to really visualize and feel the feelings of having it now.

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Now I feel like I’m in this narrow, dark tunnel and every day that’s coming is precisely like the one that came before. I can’t picture so easily meeting the One without feeling those old feelings of pressure and what will we say and will I respond correctly so he doesn’t walk out of my life because he doesn’t think I’m interested. I try to remind myself that if it’s the One, it will feel natural and all those concerns will be moot, but then the fuzziness comes back at that moment. I feel like the same old Nicole, as if I’ve lost all the changes I earned so well. And that spirals into feelings anxious over those feelings, and the tiredness makes it impossible to counteract them with strong good feelings. I need help, but will it come? Am I holding a match to the manuscript of my future over which I’ve labored so long? Oh, please, don’t let it all go to waste simply because I am tired. Even young men grow weary and cannot go on. Even young women lose their strength. And what is to happen to them when they do?

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It just feels like there is nothing new on the horizon and everything I’ve created in my head is just a mirage, an effect of the heat that charged my brain for a while, a fever dream. I just can’t seem to open my eyes, or close them, rather, and see the possibilities.

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My father brought up my soon-to-expire teaching license, of all times right before I was to embark on my Thanksgiving Day cook-fest, which I had anticipated for 11 months. See the balloon? Now see the pin. Voila! Instant letdown. I promised to check into it when school started up again and said no more about it, but inside my brain was roiling, trying to see my way through this disturbing new thought forced into my head. It suddenly made me feel so foolish and naïve to think I could manifest a husband who would marry me by autumn of next year and be well-off enough and secure enough to support me as soon as we marry, so that this year would be the last year I would EVER have to enter Newsome Park’s doors, or those of any school. Listening to my dad talk about “just being smart” and “the job market now” and “people are losing their jobs all over the place” made me feel like not only would I have to finish out the year at Newsome Park but would have to bleed another year out of me. How trapped and disheartened that made me feel. I had sworn I wouldn’t invest one iota of my energy into a future in education, even a fall-back future.

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And today I went back to work, positive, managing even up until the parking lot and walk into school to live in the present, wasting no energy on dread. And the day went fine, I suppose, but I still ended the day bowed down. I investigated the relicensure scenario and I can take creative writing courses, which would help my writing and be paid for by NNPS. But all day I just couldn’t stop thinking, “I hate this fucking job,” over and over. Not even angrily. Just a fact that won’t be denied.

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99.5% of the time, I’m reconciled to the fact that I am here the rest of this year. But there are those 0.5% days when I allow myself to become aware of how I live day to day, borrowing neither trouble nor time from tomorrow or next week or next month. And I think, “How long can I go on, living day to day? How can I do that for another seven months?” And when I confided in Dad tonight as I cooked, his responses were, in this order, “A lot of people don’t even have jobs right now” and “You’ll find the strength” as he ate his huge helping of Thanksgiving leftovers. And I very nearly cried right there over the pasta. Because I didn’t want to have to find the strength, not for another two years. I can’t even fathom another two years when I don’t even allow myself to think of next month.

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When I confided to Mom my feelings, she actually listened to my hate for my job. She heard me when I said I don’t want to work with children at all, in any capacity, ever. She listened when I said that if I didn’t get out soon, I worried what it would do to my desire for my own children. Her ears were open when I said I didn’t want to hear another child say, “Ms. Parks.” I loathe this job. And even if I had to stay in education, God almighty forbid it, it would have to be out of the classroom and far away from children. And I said how faraway all my dreams seemed, like every day is just like the one before, and that it was like a wake-up call when that concern over relicensure came up: How could I actually get what I want? How could I marry my perfect mate by the time my paycheck runs out and actually get to quit this utterly despised profession? How silly and naïve was I to lose myself in such castles in the air.

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And Mom replied quite firmly I must not allow myself to be dragged off-course. That she and Dad were just being parents and thinking safe and sensible, but if that truly conflicts with what I want, then to focus instead on what I want, since no one knows my desires like me. She said if I truly hated teaching so passionately, then I shouldn’t bother renewing my license, even though Dad would disagree.
I objected that it wasn’t that I thought they were trying to drag me off-course, but rather than I was disheartened by the very real possibility that their suggestions is the universe showing me I need to prepare for the unexpected, and that it was tough not knowing if this is the case or not. Mom said it’s not my job to know how or why, just to stay focused on what I want. I conceded that it had occurred to me that maybe the whole conversation came up because this is a way to hone my craft with creative writing classes, which I wouldn’t do on my own coin but which would be paid for by the school district. That maybe relicensure was merely the vehicle. And how delightfully, wickedly ironic that my loathed reality should pay for my way out of it.

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Ever since I started writing a reinvention of the Rumplestiltskin fairy tale, I have wondered if there is a job out there I would want. If maybe I can write or get published by autumn so I can still quit teaching. I’ve considered that if it hadn’t been for going back this fall, I wouldn’t have rediscovered fairy tales for the sake of my poor, literature-deprived students, and I would never have gotten this idea for a book. And I’ve also considered that if this year hadn’t been so horrible from the start and if it hadn’t have driven the hatred for my profession so deep in me, I wouldn’t have such a motivation to write even when I don’t feel like it. If writing got me out of teaching, I have endless motivation to keep at it – anything to stay away from the pit of education.

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I don’t know. I did feel better after talking to Mom, although I still feel so worrisomely fuzzy with my focus on my future. I’m going over there tomorrow to hammer out some classes to take next spring.

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And somehow I will make it through the next seven months, though God please not another ten after that. After my shower tonight, I was gripped suddenly and unexpectedly with a shaking emotion as I felt what I would feel if I was told I didn’t have to go back tomorrow, or the next day, next week, or ever. I could feel the tears pushing at my throat, and I realized that if I heard the key turn in the lock of my prison door to let me out, I would not laugh or jump or squeal or dance. I would simply weep. I would weep for the freedom I had dreamed of so often and for so long, at the feel of it finally solid and crystalline in my parched hands.

What I Want For Christmas - 12-1-08

While out to lunch yesterday, my parents asked me what I would want for Christmas if I could have anything. It was one of those hypothetical, limitless questions I find so fun and invigorating. Anything? I thought about it, tossing ideas around as I thought aloud, purse, computer, clothing, boots, music. I finished my musing with a self-deprecating smile and a shrug and said, “Honestly, I’m pretty happy.” They smiled and the conversation turned to other things.

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When they asked that question, my mind automatically turned to things. Goods. That’s what you think of when someone asks you what you want for Christmas. And no one thing, no single item, inspired in me the kind of hunger that qualified such an item. Nothing came to mind that made something in me click and whisper, “Ah!” and I was a little disappointed. I always like reaching an answer to those types of questions. But there it was.

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I pondered the question later, though, driving home from my lovely Thanksgiving break at my parents’ house, and the answer slid into my mind with that corresponding click I had been waiting for before.

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I want to be in love for Christmas. That is the Christmas present I want above all others. I don’t need the boots or the DVD or the computer or the purse. What I want is to be head over heels in love with a man who’s topsy-turvy for me. I want to be kissed for Christmas.

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And if you took everything else on my Christmas list, I would still be replete. That is what I want for Christmas.

Sloughing My Skin - 11-29-08

This is another of those very few entries I must preface with a plea for mercy, that I be allowed to vent without throwing a wrench in the Secret works. I am frustrated, tired, angry, and totally stumped. The very first thing I chose to use the Secret on, back in January, now ten months ago, was my skin. It quickly became clear that, like my perfect mate, clear skin was a desire I needed to build stamina for. I accepted that I needed more and various successes to build the faith required for these two, huge, long-held desires.

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So I waited, frequently testing out my faith on my skin with visualization, gratitude, etc. And each time finding myself unable to follow through. I have never had clear skin. Even on those rare occasions where there is, miraculously, no new blemishes, the scars would be there. I have never been free of the mask I must wear. It rules every social event, every outing, every choice I make that brings me into contact with people. I can’t even take a freaking nap without deciding whether or not the nap is worth removing my makeup and reapplying it. I have always been a slave to my skin’s needs and dire imperfections, and always longed to be free. It is therefore frustrating when part of the Secret, part of God’s faith, is visualization. How can I visualize what I’ve NEVER known? For more than half m y life, I have known my diseased skin and the despair that accompanies it. How can I make believe that my skin is creamy and radiant without makeup and feel all the attendant feelings of excitement, joy, relief, happiness, and confidence, when that has never, not once, been in my experience? Just consider that reality for a moment: since I was 13, more than half of my entire life span so far, I have NEVER had clear, unmarked skin.

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So I wasn’t surprised I needed time with the Secret to really tackle this first desire. But I feel as if I’ve been teased for ten months. Especially this summer/fall, when I discovered Mary Kay and began drinking lots of water, the latter of which was nothing short of a miracle as I have tried more than once to drink more water. And it started to work. For a while. How supremely frustrating to find it takes a month or more of drinking like a fish, 8 or 10 or 12 cups a day, to begin to see some change, and only a few days of falling off the wagon to have a full-blown breakout. How terribly disheartening to discover that freedom from food doesn’t include anything with a hint of sugar, which is no freedom at all. And how heartbreaking to realize that after all this time consciously, consistently using the Secret and years of aching for this freedom, I still don’t have what it takes to manifest this. And I really thought I had broken through. I was whispering every day in the mirror as I washed or make up my face, “Thank you for pure, white skin” and really trying to picture it. Trying my damnedest to imagine my husband seeing me with no make-up and not flinching. Because, you see, that is the rub, the greatest and really only true fear I have of marriage (which explains why I’ve tried so hard to use the Secret to rise above the fear and only concentrate on the picture I want): the horrific thought of evening coming on my wedding night, taking off my makeup because I can’t sleep in my makeup, and having to face my new husband with ravaged skin. The thought is so horrific, so disturbing and dreadful, it almost makes my gorge rise. It’s the worst picture I can imagine and it’s my worst fear, and I can’t seem to let it go, throw it away from me. What can I do? How can I use the Secret on it? It plagues me, even though I have been drawing up feelings of joy, relief, gratitude for my pure, white skin. And I’ve never been able to free myself of this depression when my skin is particularly bad by thinking, “Well, I’m alone and single and no one has to see me until after I’ve applied my makeup” because I ALWAYS look ahead to my marriage and know that I would HATE to be seen like this.

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I started crying last night as I watched the wedding scene in “Fiddler on the Roof” and clasped my hands so tightly my knuckles turned white and thought with my loudest voice, “Please, God, let that be your wedding gift to me. Let perfectly clear, unmarked skin be your only wedding gift to me. I don’t need anything else.” I just shudder, weep, cringe at the thought of my husband seeing me with this face. I want to be beautiful for my husband, not just because he is looking through the eyes of love. I don’t want him to have to find me beautiful and desirable in spite of my skin. Beautiful skin is such a necessary component of physical beauty; it begs to be touched, stroked, and kissed. I desperately don’t want my husband to reach out to me and see me cringe at the prospect of his hand caressing my bumpy, pockmarked, spotted face. I am sick with this.

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My parents say I should get on birth control and not worry about the someday when I have to get off of it, but I can’t not look ahead to that time when I’m off birth control. There will be someone who has to see me, all of me, all of my skin, no makeup, and I so want that skin to be good, not diseased. And what just sucks, and makes me so angry at the unfairness of it, is that after their suggestion this summer, and my reluctance at taking it, Mary Kay and water seemed to finally make the difference and I thought, oh, finally! And it’s so easy because I’m thirsty for the water. And then my hopes have been dashed – I can’t deny it any more. It makes me so angry. Others can eat junk and have great skin, while I eat healthy but God forbid I should have a cookie without immediately downing 14 cups of water to flush it out before it can get to my skin.

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I don’t know what else to do and I’m panicking because will I ever be free for good from the breakouts so the scars can heal which will take months and months? What will I do if my wedding day approaches and I can’t even feel the perfect joy I’ve waited for because I’m sobbing inside at the knowledge that I will have to come to my husband on our wedding night scarred and poxy?

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I desperately don’t want this journal entry and all the bad, bad, bad feelings and images that go along with it to bring about more of this horror to my life. Why is that even though the Secret teaches that a positive thought is many times more powerful than a negative one and that it takes many negative thoughts to manifest negative things in your life, I have instead so often found that one negative thought (even when you immediately replace it with a positive one) immediately manifests, while I can invest positive thoughts all day, every day, for months and it takes forever? Why is it that I can stave off this flu that’s been dogging me for days by focusing on health, but my skin absolutely erupts after I’ve thanked God for pure, white skin and held my head high for the skin I’m going to get? Why is it that my perfect mate hasn’t manifested yet either but I have so much more stable, consistent faith in that than in clear skin, even though I have an equal lack of experience in both? Why is it that the Secret has worded for so many things, big and small, for me, from a stoplight staying green to a gorgeous condo, but after all that I STILL don’t have enough faith to manifest clear skin? Will I NEVER have the faith for that? Oh, God, what a horrific thought. What a truly terrible, dreadful thought. What a horror I feel at that. Oh, please, please, don’t make me go into my marriage so grossly marked!

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This is another case of how the Secret can’t just be dependent solely on human will and strength. I don’t see how this will ever change because I am, each time I get my hopes up, revealed to have feet of clay. Obviously, I do not, never have had, and maybe will never have, enough faith for this mountain. I’ve thought that maybe once my perfect mate is sitting next to me, I’ll know as deep as I need to know that anything is possible and will finally then have the faith required to finally manifest this Loch Ness monster of desires. But all I know is that I don’t know and have never had the faith to manifest this. Surely, there is yet hope for me. Surely, it does not all rest in my own two hands, because those hands keep dropping the ball like the shaking, arthritic, feeble hands of the old. Where there is no way and no how, a way will be made. I don’t know how but it has to be possible. Possibilities must be possible or what is the purpose in the world? I have much to be grateful for. At least much of my skin is soft and pure and white. At least I don’t have a worse skin disease than acne. I know it can always get worse. But oh, God, does it make a dent in the firmament of heaven that I want this so much? Maybe I’m finally to the point of expressing these thoughts instead of overwriting their silence with words of faith and promise because I’m just tired. Tired of being cruelly disappointed once more. Tired of waiting for my perfect mate. Just tired. Maybe I’m just at the end of my strength with certain desires. But is there maybe this one gift left in your bag, God? Have they maybe not yet all been doled out and one small neatly wrapped box is left accidentally at the bottom of the bag, lost in shadow till you happen to find it? Maybe I won’t keep reaffirming this and bringing it onto myself. Maybe someday I’ll read this journal, maybe in another five years, and think, “Wow, I’ve had clear skin for so long I forgot how horrible it used to be.” Maybe this journal entry will serve a purpose in five or ten years that the journal entry five years ago served me a few weeks ago. I don’t know what the future holds. It has been shown already to hold great things for me, some I had long since forgotten to want. Maybe, maybe, maybe this great desire will actually, finally, truly come to me, and maybe I will be free for good.