Lost? Or Temporarily Misplaced?

It is that time of year again! Yes, the time of year when I am not sure who I am or what I am supposed to be doing. Like a college student trying to pick a major or a preschooler trying to decide what toy to take for show and tell I am floundering. Have any of you ever felt this way?

I used to say I felt lost. I felt like I was wondering about in the dark with no real purpose. Now, I think of this time of year as a temporary misplacement of myself.

I know the direction I want to go, but I have taken a wrong turn. I just have to back track and find my road. Easier said than done. Especially, when the doubts are screaming directions in your ear, “You can’t go that way!”, “are you crazy! How are you going to make a living doing that!” The ever present doubt of “What are you going to do when you fail?” Finally, the kick in the stomach, “Maybe it would be better if you tried something else.”

Those doubting voices are all too familiar. They come and go through out the year, but this time of year those voices take up residence in my soul. The unwanted guests make me question every choice I have ever made. The result is a feeling of being lost and alone.

I could blame a great number of events or a handful of people for these voices. I could, it would be so very simple to blame outside factors for the doubts that run through my head and my heart. In truth, these people and events are contributors but they are not responsible for my actions. Only I am responsible for my actions.

In the past I have let these doubts control my every thought and action. I let them harass me and tear me down. Not anymore, things have changed, I have changed. I am no longer lost. I am simply temporarily misplaced. I invite the doubts in for a conversation. They are welcome to stay for a little while. They fire their concerns at me and I answer each one as thoughtfully as possible.

“You can’t go that way!”

Why? Why can’t I go that way? If there is a barrier maybe I can bypass it somehow. Why shouldn’t I at least give that way a try? What’s the worse that could happen?

“Are you crazy! How are you going to make a living doing that?”

I don’t know if I can make a living at this, but I currently have a small amount of means and a whole lot of determination. Why shouldn’t I try?

“What are you going to do when you fail?”

Failure isn’t something to be feared. If I never fail how am I going to learn what won’t work? Failure is a very good teacher. I am 39 years old, by now failure is a familiar acquaintance. In fact, failure and I have had many good conversations.

“Maybe it would be better if you tried something else.”

You might be right. My feelings could get hurt, I might put more money into this than I should. Life just might be easier if I did something a little safer, more solid with a guaranteed income. There are many things I can do that will be “better” for me than writing books. I know, I’ve tried a few. Life is often too short to continue waiting for the right moment. The amount of time, the right amount of financial stability. I have learned that the right time is always now, because tomorrow may not come.

I have my answers and my direction. I just need to find my road again. It’s not that far away. Along the way I drop off each doubt, give a little wave and a see you next year .

I’m not lost. I’m temporarily misplaced.

Scar Tissue

Today, the scar on my heart burns.

The memories are not painful anymore, they are bittersweet. Today, though, today they ache and burn something fierce! The need to have you here is an all too familiar feeling, but today it is one that no words seem to be able to dispel. Life is tough and I have learned to live it in-spite of it’s rough edges. I have found joy in between the waves of pain. I have found strength in laughter and in tears. Life has not been easy but it has been doable.

Today, however, I feel as though I am putting on a facade. I have walked through the day with a burning scar heating up my chest, with an emptiness that is difficult to fill. I have smiled but not really felt happy. I have a bone deep weariness weighing me down. I’m not sure why this date this year is particularly hard. I have been thinking about you a lot of late. Not that you are ever very far from my mind. I feel the need to talk to you and hear your thoughts but you are not here. Friends and family are always willing to help. I love them for the generosity of their time, love, and patience. I’m not sure I would be where I am now if it were not for them. Unfortunately, they can not give me what you could. I miss your shoulder to rest my head on and your hand in mine.

Today will pass and you will still be gone, so I must attempt to quiet the pain in my heart. Ease the burn of the scar tissue. I have done it before and I will again, but the scar will always remain.

Love has a price but it is worth every penny.

Growing Up

My daughter is my only child. When she started preschool it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be, Kindergarten was harder. Kindergarten meant she was growing up. Yesterday my little kindergartener graduated from fifth grade. She is no longer an elementary school kid. My heart is heavy.

I am trying to figure out why her moving to middle school is having such an effect on me. Don’t get me wrong, I am so happy that she is doing well in school right now and is able to move up a grade, but at the same time, there is a cloud of profound sadness swirling around this milestone. Is this something every parent feels?

I am proud of my Baby Girl! She is growing into a wonderful young woman. I just wish that time didn’t seem to go so fast. Here is my girl,

One minute she was making goofy faces at me and singing into fake microphones the next minute she is helping with her baby cousin and swinging a sledgehammer during a kitchen demo. Kids grow up so fast! I sometimes wish I could have those little years back, but I know that the middle years will be just as interesting and challenging as the little years.

As much as I wish for those little years, I am just as excited to see what kind of person my Baby Girl grows to be.

Confused

Have you ever made a decision thinking it was a good one and then a week or a month later began to think maybe it was not such a good decision? That’s where I am at right now.

I took a promotion at work with some trepidation. I had been offered the job twice before and declined each time. I didn’t feel prepared to take the job. My daughter was still very young. She is a few years older now. The time I can spend with my daughter is very precious. I am lucky that I have a very supportive sister and mother who will care for my daughter anytime I ask. Being a single mother I worry about babysitters and child care services, I am not always trusting when it comes to my baby girl. Not to mention the money those services cost. When I was offered the job this time I considered it briefly before accepting. I asked for a 90 day probation period, I was given 60 but told they would prefer 30. After almost 30 days I spoke with the owner and received a salary offer that wasn’t quite what I hoped but was sufficient. I waited a few days and then accepted the offer. It has been 4 days and I am now wondering if I made the wrong choice. The scope of the work is quite a bit more than I have handled in several years. I am capable of doing the work, I just am not sure that I want to do the work. I was also hired with an assistant. She got a new job and will be leaving, no new assistant to be hired at this time. Looking to the future I wonder if a new assistant will be hired and worry that if one is not hired that I will not be able to keep up with the work my assistant did as well as my own work. I want to be fair to the Center Director and the owner and let them know how I am feeling. The truth is I am not sure I really want this job. I thought I did, but second thoughts are creeping around inside my head.

I feel like I am in one of those cartoons where the character has to decide between doing two things and the little angel and the tiny devil pop up on each shoulder. Instead of an angel and a devil, my little people are my daughter and my checkbook.

My checkbook is constantly yelling at me about the bills I have to pay. I feel like there are alarm bells ringing all the time, “IT’S TIME TO PAY ANOTHER BILL”! That damn checkbook always reminding me that there never seems to be enough money to pay for every necessity, every bill and still have a little fun. When I think maybe I have bit off a bit more than I can chew by taking on this new job my checkbook begins to whisper in my ear. Well, it starts whispering and then begins to scream a list of everything I am responsible for paying. House payment, gas, electric, car insurance, car maintenance, gas for the car, groceries, pet care, student loans, medical insurance, co-pays, clothes, shoes, camps for my daughter, debt relief program because at one time I couldn’t control my spending, Dad’s funeral bill that, according to my Aunt, should have been paid off awhile ago, the kitchen remodel that I started (and now have no time to keep working on because I am working more hours), school field trips, and next year school uniforms and the list just keeps going and going until I feel like I am drowning. Oh, how that checkbook makes me feel so damn guilty!

On the other shoulder is my beautiful, smart, loving daughter. She is backed up by my writing wants and needs, as well as at least one of her aunts. When I was trying to figure out if I should take this job I considered the impact it would have on my daughter. She is my priority, always. I thought about it and the bulk of my working hours are when she’s in school, with the exception of school breaks. I talked to her about it and she was all for me taking the job. Now I am left wondering what I am going to do with her for part of the summer. She has 3 weeks of day camp, but then what? Summer break is 9 weeks long. I am working extra hours and I feel like I cannot make some school functions and as though I am not spending much time with her, not like I was able to before. Despite the fact that I am at work mostly during the day while she is in school, I feel that I am taking something away from her. Then there is my writing, something that I really want to make a priority in my life. By the time I get off of work I am so tired that I am ready for bed after dinner is made. There are dishes in my sink and I haven’t done laundry in 2 weeks. One of my daughter’s aunts told me that she wouldn’t accept the job if she had social security like I do, she would stay home with her kids. If you are new to my blog I receive benefits from social security until my daughter turns 16 because my husband died 6 years ago. I can understand the aunt’s point. It was my intention to only work part time until I was no longer eligible for the social security and then go back to work full time. I don’t really care about money. My daughter isn’t going to remember all of the things that I buy her but she will remember the times we spent together. For this reason, it was a difficult decision to go to work full time. A decision that I am now struggling with.

I realize that in the grand scheme of things, my dilemma with work is small potatoes, but I could really use some advice. I feel like I have been deceptive to the owner and the Center Director and unfair to myself and my daughter. I am conflicted because I want to do well at this job and not give up so easily and yet I want to be able to give as much of my time to my daughter as I can. I don’t have another half that can pick up the slack for me when I fall short. I have a wonderful family that helps out, but it isn’t the same. I have roughly 2 months to make a decision before I will lose my social security benefits. I feel that taking those 2 months would be very unfair of me, so I am trying to do my best and decide what it is I want and make a decision within the next week. I am so very confused.

 

Healthy has no Size

found on peoplemagazine.com

I saw this cover of People while in line at the grocery store. Upon seeing this I had simultaneous thoughts. Yes I really did think two things at once. One part of me thought “she’s pretty, good for her!” while the other part of me thought “Who employees a size 22 person to be a model?” Not proud of the second thought, but there it is. Later at home, while fixing dinner, I asked myself why I had that last thought, Tess Holiday is beautiful, why shouldn’t she be a supermodel? She also seems very confidant in herself and that, in and of itself, is beautiful. So why did I react the way I did?

As realization dawned on me I stopped beating myself up for my not so generous and rather fleeting thought. I was born in 1978 so I grew up in the 80s to the mid 90s. What seemed to be drilled into me as I grew up is that being a larger person was wrong. Being large meant that you were fat. Wearing over a size 10 meant that you were fat. Supermodels were a size 2-4, anything bigger was fat. I don’t recall the words healthy or unhealthy ever being used, it was fat or skinny. The scale and clothing size determined if a person was healthy or not. What a person ate or if they exercised did not matter. No, not in the era of Cherry Coke and ice cream, when people ate salads, not because they were tasty, but because that’s what you ate when you were on a diet. I have brought those notions with me from childhood into adulthood. I honestly thought I had left them behind. When I started on my get healthy journey I thought I had left those thoughts in the past. After my reaction to this magazine cover I can see I was terribly mistaken.

I realize now that the numbers on the scale and on my clothes have meant more to me than I originally thought. I say this because last year my lab results came back quite good despite my 220 pounds. I wanted to keep them that way, to stay healthy and keep all of my families health problems at bay. I also wanted to be able to keep up with my daughter and not feel like i was going to faint after five minutes of playing. That’s why in January I really started exercising and thinking about the food I ate. That’s why I switched to a semi-vegetarian diet. I understand now that I also did these things to make the numbers move. There is a part of me that wants to be the size 10 or less, a part of me that wants to yell back at the mean people from my past, “See! See I’m thin! I am worthwhile! Will you let me in now?” That poor girl:( she just wanted to fit in, wanted to be like everyone else. She couldn’t see, because they couldn’t see, that she was just like them. She liked music and tv and talking about boys. She was lucky too though. She had a few really great friends. Good thing she did, because I’m not sure she would have made it through those rough years without them.

That girl is 36 almost 37 years old now and she is doing pretty good:) There are days though when she sees magazine covers with size 22 supermodels and she involuntarily goes back to the rough times. Healthy isn’t a size. That’s the thought that jumps out of all this babble. Healthy has no size. A person can be healthy at size 22 or size 2. It isn’t about the scale or the tag, it’s about how a person feels physically and emotionally. I don’t know Tess Holiday, but I know that she looks radiant on the cover of People magazine and that is where my thoughts now stop.