My October Paradox

This morning I stepped out of my apartment at 5:45 in the morning into the just-frozen October morning to see the glint of ice on my windshield greet me. And despite the irritation I felt knowing I would have to begin a life of scraping my window now that I no longer live at the cushy studio apartment with the heated garage, I couldn’t help but notice the clear air filling my lungs, the belt of Orion gleaming in the black sky above me. I breathed in and also cursed the harsh beauty around me pressing the rubber straight edge of my window scraper against the film of ice on the glass.

 

An October paradox.

 

By mid-morning the frost was gone and by late afternoon I was wearing my hoodie without a coat out for a walk. But now it is night and I suppose frost is here again, just outside my door.

 

I just finished watching The Wrestler and so I cannot escape the idea of loneliness, of tragic ex-heroes of the 80’s, of men who end up alone clinging to their armor even as they realize behind it they touch no one.

 

My uncle died this summer. His grown-up biological children and stepchildren showed up like vets who had gone through a civil war of sorts, a bloodbath of divorce and abandonment that left scars that still smart when the weather isn’t right. They mourned not their father, but the relationship, the treaty lines that sent them scattering in different directions around the country. They wanted him back, it back, that life before the war.

 

We all did.

 

My once-upon-a-time husband lost his father to a similar war. I don’t know where his scars are or how they are doing now, but I know they must have ached when he rolled over in bed next to me years ago. I was no Nightengale, had no skills to treat his wounds, but I knew they were there, hidden below the surface. I could hear it in the tears he didn’t cry at the funeral.

 

My ninth graders just finished reading of Mice and Men and on a test I asked them to explain which theme in the novel was most important. “I think loneliness was the most important idea in the novel,” wrote one student named Patrick, “in the fact that it affected everyone in the story. I can relate to this theme because I have been lonely most of my life.”

 

“I think everyone has moments when they feel lonely,” I wrote on his test, because- what else could I say?

 

Loneliness crouches over me right now from the ropes at a ring. On this frost-filled night it is the wrestler in lime green pants and I am afraid that Mickey Rourke is about to “Ram Jam” me right into the floor.

 

I think this wrestler must visit other apartments as well. On Saturday, I went out for dinner with a man who said to me, “Don’t get me wrong, I love living alone. But I’m ready to have a relationship—it’s boring being single, and lonely.”

 

“What are you doing for Christmas?” asked another male friend of my mine on the phone the other day. His mom had been asking him about his plans and I think he felt the wrestler breathing down his neck when she did.

 

And these conversations make me worry because even in the face of the frost, even under the shadow of the wrestler, a part of me hears these comments as requests, as needs, and I want to hang up the phone and say good night early. The worry is not about these men. They are not saying anything wrong. They are being honest, which I like. What worries me is my own reaction.

 

“You’re kind of hard to reach,” said a man I went to a movie with this summer. “It’s hard to explain but it’s like there’s a wall around you.”

 

Am I one of the tragic ex-heroes of the 80’s? Am I clinging desperately to my armor?

 

I go to the place in my memory of funerals. Of armored knights on platforms in front of the people who tried to love them.

 

I am thinking of my uncle again.

 

He lost the war with some of his children. He loved them but couldn’t find a way to share that love with them. But he didn’t die alone.

 

In the end he adopted a third ex-wife’s daughter as his own and provided for her and her son, his grandson. He still spoke with his ex-wife (who was his daughter’s age), and her parents (who were his age). He still joked around with the people in his new life. He still pulled out a gun to shoot at rabbits in his front yard in Sauk Rapids. (A story shared that soothed the battle wounds at the funeral.)

 

I may have walls around me some of the time but I do not push everyone out of my life. There are people in my life with whom I can be completely honest, completely myself. There are friends who stop by for dinner, who help me when I need it, who call me every night at 10:02 to discuss the occurrences of the day. There are family members who are not perfect but who are as imperfect as myself and willing to learn how to connect.

 

Love is everywhere. It is all around us. Sometimes we mess it up. Sometimes we find ourselves fighting against something simple, we find ourselves fighting our own civil wars, but love never leaves. It is the starlight bouncing off the frost on a cold October morning, a beauty so harsh we aren’t sure what to do with it. 

My Relationship to Pain

Just below the orangish-red, newly painted toes of my pedicured foot, there is a puffy purple mark emerging.

 

I played soccer today. I played soccer during the 43-degree weather of a Minnesota October Sunday evening. I played soccer with a man who had a French accent and gray hair; a man who planted the entire weight of his body on cleats on the top of my foot.

 

I limped down the stairs tonight to let the yorkie-poo out.

 

This is not an uncommon occurrence for a soccer player. Even one who plays on a co-ed league for old folks, men over 35 and women over 30. Last week I went to school with a giant bruise on my elbow and a thumbprint bruise on my bicep. There was a purple olive on my thigh from a fist or a cleat. I don’t even want to tell you the number of toenails I’ve lost over the years to this game. Or the number of times I’ve rolled an ankle.

 

 

Many summers ago, my friend Emily once asked pointedly, lovingly, and mockingly, after seeing me hobble on yet another sprained ankle, “Do you have to play soccer? Would you like to just lay down on the ground while I beat you with a stick instead?”

 

“Would there be a way to win?” I asked earnestly, seriously considering the new sport, to the laughter of another soccer-playing friend.

 

 

 

I don’t know what my problem is.

 

I don’t know exactly what sort of crazy I am that makes me love this sport, makes me love the contact, the competition, the jostling and elbowing in front of the net. Why can’t I just be content to run? To swim? To move in a straight line without running into other people?

 

Ironically enough, in life, I find, I am trying hard to do just that—to move in a straight line, and avoid other people. I am finding myself so disinterested in men, at least the ones that are safe and doing all the right things, like calling in person promptly after getting my number, inviting me to dinner, and pursuing master’s degrees.

 

But then again, I am also avoiding the men not doing the right thing—the ones who are insincere or half-hearted or only half-interested.

 

I’m tempted, as the inwardly-introspective, prone to over-rumnination sort of person that I am, to focus only on the way I am disinterested in the nice guys who have asked me out. I am tempted declare myself masochistic- sadistically interested in inflicting pain on myself. I’m tempted to compare my dating life to my love for soccer, to classify myself as one of those women who loves bad boys and troubled relationships. I’m tempted to chastise and criticize and shame myself for bad choices and hasty decisions.

 

However, after careful consideration, I realize I am not shunning good guys in favor of bad. I’m not disinterested in someone just because he is nice. I’m also not dating a man who treats me like crap. I’m somewhere in dating limbo and mostly just waiting to see how things shake out.

 

 Maybe I don’t know what I want, but I know what I don’t want.

 

I know I don’t want to talk myself into anything. I know I don’t want to date a man because I feel like I should. Tell myself that he’s cute and other people admire him and I know he’s really a good guy.  I would never want to be the woman some guy convinced himself to date and so I respect these cute, nice men enough not to be that girl convincing herself to like them.

 

I know I won’t tolerate being lied to, I know I won’t tolerate being treated disrespectfully, and so I know I’m not just drawn to the bad boys either. I know I want someone who communicates sincerely, who listens with his ears, his mouth, and his heart.

 

Some men I have dated have said they hear me, but I don’t always feel it. I have tried to talk myself into feeling it, into trusting them, but in the end, I just can’t.  I did that for a decade once already.

 

So I have decided I am done arguing with my gut—I have decided to just accept that it’s right. I am not interested the men asking me out on dates, not because I am sadistically hoping for a man who treats me badly, but because nothing so far has felt right.

 

Thus I continue, in life, moving in a straight line, avoiding people, men, for the time being.

 

Maybe this is why I love soccer so much. Maybe the field is where I let the wild girl out- the one who loves the collisions.

 

Soccer has been showing up in my dreams lately. I’m taking penalty kicks on goals on a field of white carpet. I’m throwing the ball in bounds to myself because no one else is checking to me.

 

There is a woman inside me who loves fighting. One who loves puffy bruises below orangish-red, newly-painted toes. But she only seeks pain on the turf, or the field. Never after walking away from the game.

 

Maybe that’s because she’s been down that road already. 

New Nest

One of my many nicknames, my favorite nickname, given to me by my mother—a significant thing in my life, as my relationship with my mother is not always a peaceful one, and so it comforts me eternally to know always that at least she coined this most special name for me—is Bird.

 

Lately I’ve been in the mood for nesting.

 

And getting ready to migrate.

 

 

In fact, there are only a handful of nights left in my current roost, the studio apartment with nine foot ceilings, blue walls, bookshelves and granite countertops, where I’ve been living for the past two years. The place I moved into while under stress, under attack, during my divorce, during my personal ground zero moment.

 

At the time I wanted something safe and clean. The building was brand new. The hallways weren’t even painted. No one else had used my bathtub. I could see everything I owned from my bed. This felt comforting. This gave me peace. I felt safe enough to break apart. To weep on the bathroom floor until I was empty. To scotch tape my pieces back into place.

 

This place, this apartment, provided me with space enough to heal, no walls to hide emotions in other rooms.

 

But now-

 

Well, now I realize these four walls contain room enough only for me (and the yorkie-poo just barely). There is no room for other people in this space. Perhaps to visit. Perhaps to share a drink and a conversation. But there is no room, for instance, for a boyfriend in this apartment.

 

So I guess it’s time to move.

 

I don’t know if I’m ready for a boyfriend, but I’ve decided I’m ready for at least a bedroom. I’m ready for a dining room table and chairs instead of the four unevenly matched stools I bought for $14 a piece at IKEA. I’m ready for a desk in the second bedroom, a futon for friends who visit, a room entirely for curling up on a couch and watching a movie. I’m ready for rooms, living, family, and otherwise.

 

I visited the new two-bedroom apartment I will be living in—and by new, I only mean new to me because it lives in a building containing just three other apartments built in 1909- one hundred years ago. I stood in the living room wishing for different paint choices and getting used to the space. I picture this place full of life- full of other people- full of so much more than myself.

 

The mental nesting begins in the way of plans, my most comfortable tool, and leafing through catalogues, imagining what colors need to go where, picturing photos from trips decorating the walls. I see plants and rugs and a white enamel desk sitting in a room full of windows facing the coffee shop across the street. I hear music. I smell food. It’s like I can imagine my chosen family of various friends materializing in certain corners of the apartment. I am mentally buying a comfortable chair- one I would never want to get out of- to rest in the living room of my new place. The place where I want to not just stay, not just use to recover, but the place where I plan truly to live.

 

And in this mood, in the new apartment, I can’t help but feel that by finding a new roost, one big enough for more than just my sorrow, one big enough for my life, my joy, surely another person will appear in the space.

 

“Are you going to get a roommate?” a friend asked as I told him about the new two-bedroom place.

 

“No,” I say, “it’s not really big enough for a roommate. I mean, it’s big enough for something like a boyfriend to share it with, but not really a roommate.”

 

“Oh, so what, you have a boyfriend now?”

 

“No,” I say sheepishly. “But, you know, I figure I get the apartment and the boyfriend will appear eventually.”

 

“You’re planning ahead,” he said. “I like that.”

 

I do too.

 

 

 

Back at the studio, though, I think about the new spot and I wonder if I will be able to fill the space. What if there are no friends? No gatherings? No dinners? No boyfriends to make the walls of my new apartment burst with life? What if I wander lonely from room to room? What if I rattle and spin like a quarter through the empty, echoing walls, on the ancient, faded hardwood floors?

 

I can’t pretend that writing this has eased my mind. I can’t pretend that it makes me confident that I will suddenly be open to new relationships in my life.

 

But I guess I can trust the nickname. I guess I can trust those instincts stirring me to move and migrate, nestle and nest. I guess I can trust my mom knew me when she named me Bird. How do they find it? The place in the south where they need to fly? How do they know when it is time to leave? I’m pretty sure they don’t overanalyze it. I’m sure they don’t write lists and weigh pros and cons. It can’t be that they call friends and ask for advice. Or that they make appointments with their therapists.

 

I’m pretty sure they just go, just because something inside says fly. And so will I- not looking back over my wing.

The most heartbreaking blog yet...

I’m being haunted.

 

It’s October, so I suppose it’s only fitting, but the haunter is not a ghost or phantom, sadly not a monster or a zombie.

 

Instead it is a pile of white papers all trailing me from dawn to dusk and even into the night. A stack of the 150 narrative essays from my five classes of high school students this year- my year after the sabbatical.

 

They are in my car. They are on my counter. They are at my desk at school. I can’t go anywhere without seeing this gigantic collection of personal narratives reminding me that grading needs to happen. I estimate it will take twenty-seven hours to grade the essays, these essays about getting a dog, falling off of a horse, stepping onto the basketball court, hitting a homerun. Giving birth to a son. Finding out a friend has died in a car accident.

 

Despite the fact that I am moving to a new apartment and still taking a class at grad school and working full time and trying to have a life, I need to find an additional 27 hours to get this work done. And the problem is that my body is rejecting my plan to dutifully grade these papers and get them back quickly to my students. It keeps getting sick. It took me three weeks to get over a cold. I’m losing weight. I carry this giant stack of essays like a pack of sins from childhood around with me from coffee shop to apartment to school and it weighs me down with its guilt. I feel like a stick, unsteady and anxious, carrying a burden that keeps me off balance. 

 

It’s not a good situation.

 

Today I called in sick to work in order to spend eight hours grading these specters and writing comments in the margins, but my body had other plans.

 

“Lan,” I said last night to my friend. “I’m feeling so sniffly and I keep trying to pretend that it’s allergies but I think it might be another cold!”

 

“I think it probably is,” she said sagely, in an uncharacteristically pessimistic, yet pithy declamation. “I think this will be the year of the colds.”

 

And sure enough- this morning I woke feeling totally congested and miserable. I think the allergy my body cannot tolerate is my career.

 

My illnesses are not my only problem.

The other problem is that, unfortunately, I am a pretty good teacher.

 

I plan lessons, I design quizzes that build on skills we’ve worked on in class, I call parents, I post grades, I enter scores into the gradebook quickly. I design assignments that will be beneficial to students. I read what they write. I respect their efforts in my class. I greet each student personally when she walks in the room.

 

And it’s just killing me.

 

“How’s Cody Peterson doing in class?” asked my co-worker when I walked into the office at 6:30 am on Thursday morning.

 

“Pretty good so far,” I said, thinking of the cheerful, skinny boy who wears skinny jeans with sandy hair always in his face. The one I had put in the front row after he spent the first two days in class talking to friends. The one who lost his drafts of his essay and had to start over. The one who comes late at least once a week. Who reads clearly and competently, but softly. The one who raises his hand often and listens well now that he is in the front.

 

“Take him under your wing,” she said to me. “He’s a good kid and if he likes you he’ll do anything.”

 

“Ok,” I said, thinking about the many tasks I had to accomplish before class started at 7:20 and not really in the mood to adopt another student. There is already quite a collection living under my wing.

 

“He has a son,” she said.

 

He has a son? I think. Suddenly I am very tired.

 

“Yeah,” she said, “and he’s such a great kid. Last year was a lot of chaos and the mom wouldn’t let him see the baby, but things are better this year. Anyhow, we were talking about grades in advisory class and I asked him how English was going. He said, ‘I like Fuller. She’s really nice. It’s going good.’”

 

I nod.

 

“He’s happy in your classroom,” she says.

 

“Oh, great- that’s good to hear,” I say, but in my head I think I wish I was.

 

The truth is that even though Cody Peterson is a lovable kid, even though I am touched that he likes my class, even though I sincerely wish him success and happiness, I just can’t. I just can’t. I don’t know how to articulate this, but all I know is that I can’t teach without caring and doing a fairly decent job, but if I am doing a fairly decent job at teaching, it usually means I am doing a pretty awful job of living myself. I am getting sick, getting skinny, not writing, not sleeping. I am not well as a teacher.

 

I feel sad saying that.

 

Simply put- it is an impossible task. To teach students to write means thoughtful conversation one-on-one in which you are acting as coach/mentor/teacher and explaining complicated concepts like how to link ideas and be concise. In a room of 35 14 year-olds during a 47 minute class, I get one minute per student to do this. 

 

Two years ago, as a teacher going through the battle of divorce, I was a safety net for the bleeding hearts. I cared so deeply for the kids in my classroom that this year they beam when they see me and greet me with a hug. I don’t have room to take care of more students if I also want to take care of myself.

 

Who’s taking me under their wing? I thought after the conversation with my co-worker. I need help! I’m a mess too--  I thought about the ways I fail to take care of myself, the way I skip breakfast each day, the way I  sometimes skip lunch, the way I don’t get enough sleep. I thought about the unhealthy excitement of my weekend, the not-so-classy way in which I had repeatedly called a friend who pissed me off (at 3 a.m, and by repeatedly I mean about twelve times in a row), the way I continuously (adorably?) crash into my surroundings, the people in my life, and occasionally even stationary objects. Who am I to be a model of responsibility for my students? Who am I to be any kind of example? Who am I to be a mentor? To take someone under my wing?

 

I married and divorced a sex-addict. I attend a twelve-step program for codependents of sex addicts. Everything that I attained in my 20’s is lost. I have spent the last two years dredging up the skeletons of my past. I am clumsy and troubled and sensitive and honest. I’m not sure Cody Peterson would even want to be taken under my wing.

 

Thus I went to a coffee shop with my stack of papers and sat down to try to focus. I pressed on the sinus pressure on my face. I ordered breakfast. I graded an essay- I checked email. I graded an essay- I checked my bank statements. I graded an essay- I took an online quiz about whether or not “he” was more than just a friend.  I graded a dozen of the papers and couldn’t do any more. I needed to eat lunch. I needed more cold medicine.

 

I need to accept my limitations.

 

I need to find another way to do this.

 

I love teaching, but it doesn’t love me. I see this in the way I am getting sick constantly. I know I need to write more. I know I need a new plan for a career.

 

I need to not be haunted by these papers anymore.

 

 

 

October Morning

This is not the blog I intended to write. There is a better one about space and home and place lingering in my mind but I cannot access it just now. Instead I’m irritated. I’m really feeling cranky and so I must write to figure out why.

 

And I’m already bored with the problem but it’s still there- wiggling away in my brain.

 

It starts with an October morning of gloominess- weather sinking into the consciousness. Outside it is rainy and damp and gray and chilly and inside my head it is the perfect weather for curling up with a guy and watching movies… or for feeling sorry for myself that there is no such person in my life.

 

Thus, in this sort of self-pitying mood, the place where I feel a little lonely, I found myself annoyed when the loneliness was broken by the piercing chirp of a text message on my telephone, from a man I thought I had managed to get rid of months ago.

 

Perhaps I sound harsh.

 

But the thing is, six months ago he would text, I would get excited, we’d spend time together, then he’d disappear, and I would feel crushed, but he would eventually text again, and again, I would take the bait and get reeled in just so he could disappear. Again.

 

Hey!

 

Oh please, I thought. Hey? That’s it? Six months later you reach out with Hey?

 

How have you been?

 

And here’s where I get annoyed. With myself. I cannot be rude. I respond. He continues to ask questions. I am polite but I don’t ask questions back. I don’t prolong the conversation.

 

I’ve missed ya

 

Now I’m fuming. Not this game, I think. He doesn’t miss me. He’s lonely. And maybe it’s because I’m lonely too that I cannot tolerate his loneliness. His half-hearted attempt to connect with a girl who had been cute and fun and pretty easy to get along with and nice to meet out on the town six months ago. A relationship he hadn’t wanted to put much energy into at the time but now misses because the weather is getting colder and it’s harder to face winter alone.

 

I contemplate telling him that it’s nice that he says that but I’m dating someone. I am tempted to lie and be nice and take care of his feelings and not tell him how I feel which is that I’m not interested and a little annoyed since he is the one who walked away in the first place.

 

I still don’t understand my own anger. Maybe I’m angry because it feels so familiar, this constant reeling and pulling I feel from men, this game of drawing me close and pushing me away. Maybe it’s because this reminds me of my ex-husband when we were separated, when he would text me each night as I was falling asleep and need me.

 

I miss you. I love you. Don’t you love me? I am so sad without you. I thought we had something good. Look at our wedding pictures. We were so happy.

 

I would receive these texts and fall on my bed under the weight of his needs and emotions. I would feel so anguished, so guilty, for stating my needs. For walking away from an unhealthy situation. I would beat myself up for being so “mean” to this man who needed me so much.

 

Yuck.

 

Maybe I’m angry because it wasn’t just my husband who manipulated me with guilt. It’s my family, my co-workers, certain friends who can still activate my overwhelming sense of shame and duty. Maybe I’m upset because even though I stand up for myself and my needs now more than I ever have before, it still feels hard to do. It still feels like so much work. I still have to talk myself out of feeling like I’ve been mean, that I’ve been unreasonable.

 

I’ve missed ya

 

I run through several responses in my mind. I don’t think you really mean that, I write, choosing to be honest but not cruel. I have to get going. Talk to you later.

 

Have a nice day. What are you doing later?

 

By now I’m no longer worried about his feelings. I am wanting to not waste time on this particular conversation. Having dinner with a friend. Bye. And I resolve not to respond to any more texts. I’ve been polite but I’ve said I don’t have time to talk. I don’t need to keep responding anymore.

 

The thing is, I don’t have time for these conversations, with a guy I’ve dated or with anyone else. I don’t have time to feel like having needs makes me a cruel person. I don’t have time for the shame I feel for being myself. Toxic shame.

 

I’m proud of myself for setting this boundary, especially on a gray and gloomy day when it would be so easy to let someone into my life, even someone I worry wouldn’t ultimately treat me the way I need, just because he was cute and funny and pretty easy to get along with and nice to meet out on the town six months ago.

 

I’m realizing my irritation and my boredom with this problem is more about myself than the guy who sent me the text. I’m realizing the problem won’t leave me alone because I need to address it, but I don’t really want to, so I feel bored and irritated instead. I was getting mad at this guy for texting me because I felt like he had been disrespectful of my needs. But if I don’t own my needs why would he respect them? Why would anyone? I can’t ask someone just to be nice of his own accord. I have to make it clear I won’t tolerate anything else.

 

Brunch? I text to a friend. She responds immediately saying she’s busy but will call me later.

 

A little while later my phone chirps again. Hey! I’m planning to call you at 6, fyi. J

 

Thanks, I say to another friend, I will start the countdown. ;)

 

These are the people I want to make time for in my life, I think. This feels right. I need to remember that setting boundaries, while it feels hard, will ultimately lead me to a life filled with happier healthier respectful people in it. I need to remember it’s worth it to be strong around my needs.