For the first time in my life I’m struggling to write what I
am feeling. This is the fifth time I have started to write and it seems as if
each version gets erased. I desperately want to let everything inside me out
onto paper and yet…I falter. I read the words and it isn’t what I want to say.
So let’s try again.
Life has walloped me lately. It has not been anything big.
But it is a lot of little things that have just added up and I crashed this
week. I crashed hard.
Let’s take it back a few steps. By now you know that I’m
pretty much an open book. It is just how I have to operate. I spent a large
portion of my life hiding behind masks and I had to learn how to live without
them because they were killing me. They were smothering anything that was ME
behind a façade that was not me. I had a smile on my face and a crack running
straight down through me. So now I have to be an open book. It works for me. I
am very transparent. If I’m upset then you definitely know it. But I try my
best to be happy and positive. For the last 10 months that has been my focus in
life. Some days are more successful than others.
Fall is a difficult time of year for me. I’m coming up on
the anniversary of my dad’s death and sometimes I feel guilty. For the first
year I thought of him every single day without fail. And then I started to have
days when I didn’t think of him and cry. I remembered things that made me
smile. I have never stopped missing him. I’ve never stopped wanting to hear him
call me “Red” but some days pass and I haven’t thought about him. And then I
feel guilty. But the truth is that life goes on. It moves on. If we continue to
dwell on the hard things then our life becomes hard. We stop growing. We stop
living. The day we stop reaching for the next is the day that we just stop.
I have been very conflicted for a few weeks. I have so many
things happening that at times I feel lost. I have a teenage daughter that
spends more time screaming at me than she does anything else. My home has
become a battle ground. I don’t know how to communicate with her. I print out
therapist advice on communicating and being an enforcer but it never lasts. It
is just one series of battles to the next. I can’t seem to win. I’m not being
melodramatic. When your daughter is counting down the months until she can
leave…it isn’t good. I cry because I can’t give her everything she wants
monetarily. I cry because no matter what I do, I can’t teach her empathy for
others. I can’t communicate that she MUST learn the difference between a NEED
and a WANT. When we argue she blames me for bringing her to West Linn because
it is West Linn that is demanding that she have everything all of her friends
have.
I apologize to her for not being able to give her a new car.
I apologize to her because I can’t just hand her concert tickets whenever she
wants them. I apologize to her because I can’t buy her a brand new laptop
simply because she thinks the other laptop is too big. And so when the
screaming starts…I become a person I do not like. I yell back. I get tired and
cave because I’m tired of the fighting.
No one ever told me that teens can be this way. And
ultimately at the end of the day I blame myself. Somewhere along the way I
pushed too hard or I didn’t guide her enough. Somewhere along the way she
learned how to put up masks. That is what hurts me the most. She wears masks to
hide the things that hurt her. A bright smile hides frustration, pain, and
unhappiness.
See…that is what happens to us. We put up masks. It took me
more than twenty years to learn how to get rid of my masks. How long will it
take her?
So besides difficult teens, mourning, frustration at work,
and a missing husband, I am also learning how to deal with a mom that is
dating.
I kinda feel like a forgotten teen. She doesn’t call. She
doesn’t write. She doesn’t text. Ugg…what am I going to do with her? I’m still
dealing with those feelings regarding her moving forward with her life.
Obviously I love her and I support her decision but I’m anxious. I don’t quite
know how to talk about it because it is entirely new ground. I honestly feel
like a teen dealing with separation anxiety and worrying that I’ll be lost in
the shuffle of someone new.
Realistically I know that my mother loves me but she needs a
new direction in her life. She can’t mourn forever and still be healthy. Life does
go on. It is hard. It can be difficult but in the end you have to keep reaching
forward. I think, with time, my conflicted feelings and general weirdness of
the situation will mellow out. For as OCD as I am about rules and putting
people into specific boxes with guidelines, I know that in the end I’ll just
shrug and throw a Frake because it comes down to one very real thing: not my
circus. Not my monkey.
That phrase has guided me intensely over the past 6 months
and has given me some distance from problems that would have previously had me
in a complete meltdown. I’ve forgotten it in the last three weeks but I am
going to start writing it down on my hand until it becomes habit again. I
really must because if I don’t then I’ll go insane. Way too much on the plate
for me to take anything else on.
Boss being a dick? NMC.NMM (Not My Circus. Not My Monkey)
Other people throwing shit my way or throwing me under the
bus? NMC.NMM. Okay wait…gotta take that one back because technically it is my
circus but I’m not gonna let it get to me. In this circumstance I’m throwing a
Frake.
OH? You want to know what “throwing a Frake” means? Picture
it. You standing (or sitting, whatever floats your boat) and making that
universal rolling the dice motion with your hand. Then you gloriously release
it to the sky in an upward swoop! You might also think of the motion as a “catch
and release” if ya get what I’m sayin…wink…wink…nudge…nudge. Ya know, pri-vat-e
time with the one eyed monster.
Now apply the NMC.NMM throwing a Frake. It is the PERFECT
hand accoutrement for the saying. When you can’t say it out loud then you can
always throw the Frake.
I’ll get through this rough patch. I’ll guilt trip my mother
into calling me more, or at least calling me back because now she will read
this and feel guilty. (Yes mom…you should) but she’ll know that I love her. The
Kennedy situation will resolve itself eventually. It may take 15 years but
eventually we will be able to communicate effectively. I’ll have the surgery
that I’ve avoided for months. It’s either that or eventually lose more and more
muscle control. It will turn out just fine. Work will get better even if it
means me having a “come to Jesus” meeting one on one with some folks. Or I’ll
just throw a Frake and say “Fuck a duck” grab my sweet raspberry vodka and sit
watching the rain. Win, Win either way.
