Gremlins and the Baby Jesus

Gremlins have invaded my body. 

Little green and brown demons are scurrying throughout my limbs, causing me to feel itchy, twitchy, irritable and ugly. Ugly like feeling jealous over a friend's success in being published, ugly like feeling rejected in the dating world, and ugly like feeling too big for my favorite pair of jeans. 

I hate these gremlins.

Of course, they delight in my hatred. It makes them giggle in a high-pitched tone and move even faster through my body. They grow as I loathe. This makes me loathe them all the more and they multiply even faster. 

I hate myself for falling prey to these parasites.

As I explained the gremlin phenomenon to my dear friend, she said everything I felt was human. She'd feel that way too. I felt consoled but I told her the worst of it is that I can't appreciate the season; I feel nothing for Christmas this year. "I don't even care about the baby Jesus," I told her.

"It's ok," she said. "The baby Jesus understands." 

Christmas and I have an interesting relationship. I loved no holiday better in my youth. I felt transported by the magic of candles and carols, by the twinkling lights and the twinkling eyes. Santa once walked down my grandma's street when I was three. He saw me in the window, came to the door, and gave me a wooden car. As an adult, this joy for Christmas continued. I got married in December at an old train depot; there were cedar beams, white poinsettias, a chocolate cake--everything about this season felt like hope and magic to me.

Last year, during the separation and divorce, I survived Christmas through a deliberate plan. This year I have been trying to leave the country and avoid the whole deal altogether. 

God and NWA had other plans, though, and I have had to resign myself to staying put and dealing with the bittersweet memories of my Christmas pasts. Here, I think is where the gremlins come in. And possibly the baby Jesus. 

I am not a particularly religious person. The last time I went to church was in September for my nephew's baptism. But I don't want to be plagued by gremlins for the next three weeks. The comment I made to my friend about the baby Jesus surprised me, but it's not wholly unhelpful. Praying is too hard right now. God is too hard. But a baby? I am a sucker for babies.

Yesterday I walked down the hall of my apartment building and heard the raspy cough of a baby with a cold. I felt a pang of desire to hold that baby. My nephew is four months old, all smiles and drool. Carrying him around my parents' house is the most beautiful part of the holidays. It's that innocence--the ability to spark joy simply by lifting him up in the air and saying "Sooo big." 

Maybe this is why Jesus had to start out as a baby. Gremlins don't respond well to grown men or spiritual entities, but a baby? Well, who doesn't love a baby? Even the gremlins are forced to give up there tormenting, come to a stillness, and say, "Ohhh. How cute."

Shadowlands

Yesterday afternoon I did one of my favorite things--I pulled on a sweater dress, cute tights, and a pair of boots and joined two friends at the theater to watch a play. The theater feels like magic to me--dressing up, being transformed, the smell of the stage, the treats during intermission--all of it takes me out of my own existence and puts me in the one intended by the playwright and director. Yesterday was no different--I felt myself transported into Shadowlands, the play based on the life of C.S. Lewis and his wife Joy Davidson.

Lewis said of life that this world was merely the shadowlands of something more, something greater. He had the artist's vision of Narnia and a faith that made him believe in heaven and an afterlife. More than that, he learned through his love for his wife, a woman dying of cancer whom he married in the hospital, that suffering and happiness, and more importantly, suffering and growth are inextricably linked. The pain he felt during his wife's illness enhanced the joy he felt during her remission. The pain he felt when she died eventually pushed him to grow in his faith and understanding of the world. The shadows make us recognize the light.

As I consider this, instantly I see a path winding through the woods. Light blues are covered by dark blues and then blacks and then the whiteness of light bursts through. Leaves sway and the shadows move. Clouds pass and the shadows darken. Trees stand shoulder to shoulder and darkness covers the path altogether.

Life is a shadowland. Sometimes the shadows are darker than others. Sometimes we lose our way on the path and forget to even look for light.

Recently I completed a semester long class on the writings and life of Virginia Woolf. As I talked to a friend about the course he said, "Wasn't she the one who jumped in a river with rocks in her pocket?" Yes, she was. Why would she do it? What makes anyone do it? She didn't want to be a burden to her husband, didn't want to impede his work, the Nazis were coming, she was struggling with depression... "So killing herself would make it easier for her husband to work?"

The questions led me down a path thinking about suicide and depression. Having experienced two episodes of depression, one not medicated, one medicated, I would be lying to say I didn't understand the urge, didn't understand the total severity of self-loathing, didn't understand the desire to drop off the plane of existence and escape. But I share my friend's reaction to her suicide. When I read Woolf's biography I felt unaccountably, almost irrationally, angry with her, with the futility of her act--perhaps because of the anger I feel towards myself about my depression, perhaps because of the grief overwhelming that consumes when you know someone who has committed suicide. Depression is a greedy disease. It takes away its victim's perspective. It stems from deep forgotten pain and chemical imbalances. 

I think the reason it angers me so much is because there is no way to control depression. Like addiction, you have to surrender to it before you can be released. Or if not to the disease, then to God. Otherwise you are simply trying to harness a stream. A former student of mine committed suicide. His father walked into the house to hear the gun go off. The grief of that loss still lives in my knuckles. The senselessness of pain shook me for days. 

But pain wakes us up. Pain pushes us forward, whether we believe we are ready to move ahead or not. Lewis explained God allows us to suffer because, simply put, that's what it takes.

I feel blessed to have walked through shadows; blessed because it makes me recognize light. I know there will be dark times again, but I know how to recognize when the path becomes too dark; I am blessed enough to have beacons available to me--friends, doctors, medicine, support groups. 

Perhaps I haven't reached the darkest part of my path, but I hope, that like Lewis, I have learned something from suffering. Were it not for that unhappiness, I couldn't feel alive today as I do. I couldn't recognize the light around me, the miracle of being with friends, of being inspired by powerful words, of going to the theater and losing myself in another world, a world not on this plane of shadowlands.

For my best friend who requested a blog entry... and so I write for you despite my own misgivings

I am sitting in my bathroom on the floor on top of the red shag rug with my back against the bathtub. The fan is humming above me. My journal sits next to me--full of three pages of garbage from this morning's initial ramblings. This has been my routine for the last couple of weeks--I wake up, grab journal and laptop, and creep into the bathroom so as not to disturb the yorkie-poo sleeping in my studio apartment. I perch on the ledge of the tub to scribble in my journal for 20 minutes, then I shift to the floor, sit cross-legged, and work on my real writing. 

For the past two weeks I have had specific projects to work on-projects due for my graduate classes. I have felt comfortable in at least knowing what I had to work on even if the business of writing it filled me with the usual anxiety and self-doubt that accompanies so many writers. Now I am projectless and I find I have nothing to say.

Absolutely nada. I have no idea what to write in this blog.

I usually write blog entries with a sense of direction--after walking the yorkie poo, working out, and showering an idea will have worked itself out. I will have a plan. A direction. A question to ponder in my work and an image to jump start the essay. Now I got zilch. No image. No question--I am working on this on the fly. 

I suppose I could write about any one of the topics I wandered over in my mind--the anxiety of feeling lonely as I did last night after my last class of the semester, the tension I felt with a friend over opposite political views, the undergrads I read about online who discovered a planet and who looked like fifth graders at a history day project, or the incredible occurrence of a former classmate requesting me as a friend on facebook, a woman who I have not seen or heard of in 12 years, who was definitely part of the cool crowd, and who rumor said worked as a stripper during our senior year. Any of these topics might make for a good blog--

instead I'd like to talk about flying without a net.

Plans make me feel good. Direction comforts me. Without either one, anxiety creeps into the periphery.

As a teacher I crave an organized lesson plan. I still quake when life throws a wrench in the works and the computers in the lab all go offline, or the movie I had planned to show is missing from its spot in the English office. This sort of occurrence unhinges me, despite the fact that I have been in the classroom for seven years, despite the fact that unplanned lesson plans are often the best, despite the fact that I am not such a bad teacher and always manage to pull it off. 

It still rattles me to be without plan.

Why is this? Why can't I trust myself? The process? Realize that life takes care of itself really with very little push-pull on my part. 

Hmm... even as I write this I see the work I have been doing for the past year, I see the serenity prayer, I see the effort it takes for me to be present in the present, not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, I see the very concept I have been trying to learn--that we are all on a journey and that we are all exactly where we need to be at this moment. I want to be able to have faith in myself. I want to be able to worry less. To forgive myself flaws. To unclench the core muscles in my stomach that hold me together throughout the day. 

i want to feel safe flying with or without a net.

I guess I am still trying to learn how to relax my heart and trust God.

Board Game Philosophy

I have never been good at checkers.

While growing up in Fridley, Minnesota and attending Hayes Elementary school, I had the chance, like all of the students there, to play checkers against the principal. Dr. Switzer looked like a grandpa. He wore gray suits everyday. He smelled strongly of whatever products older gentlemen used to primp--old spice hair pomade, I don't know. He looked sternly at kids misbehaving, and kindly at kids who came to his office to play checkers. But he never let them win. 

I wanted to be the kid that beat Dr. Switzer at checkers. I marched into his office, right to his desk where a strange knick knack of a little green hand that would take coins and put them in a bank sat right next to the checkerboard. I don't think I said more than 10 words the whole time. The game couldn't have lasted more than five minutes. Towards the end, in a panic, I looked at my disappearing pieces. "It ain't-a-gonna be long now," said Dr. Switzer.

I was not to be known as the kid who beat Dr. Switzer at checkers.

I was never good at chess either. 

I remember playing against my dad. I would try so hard to protect my queen. Pawn after pawn I sacrificed thinking I could just somehow outlast the game and keep my queen safe without having to move her at all. I didn't want to risk it so I tried to make her stay put. 

This strategy didn't work in checkers, it didn't work in chess, and I'm starting to believe it doesn't work in life. By protecting the thing we don't want to sacrifice we end up losing it in the end. After the pain of my divorce this past year I wanted to keep my heart safe. I didn't want to put it out there, didn't want to be vulnerable. 

But where would that lead me? If I don't risk it, I end up alone. I may not lose my heart, but I might end up breaking it, or burying it so deep I no longer can access it. 

Hearts are resilient and queens are fearless. Better to send them both onto the battlefield than to make them stay at home.

Soul Mate Material

There are many perks to being a single gal living on her own in this day and age. For instance, there are no battles for the remote; if I want to watch "Sex in the City" despite the static and fuzzy reception, I can. Nor are there disputes over music--I can indulge my bad taste all I want and listen to the album Crash on repeat simply because I am too lazy to pick another cd and no one complains. And to be a single girl with a blog brings even more benefits--I can look up all sorts of ridiculous topics on the internet all in the name of "research" and "material" for my writing.

Yesterday I was stuck on the word soulmate, the concept that haunts and teases the single girl of today's society and causes her to forget about all the perks of living alone. What is a soulmate? Does it exist? Do we meet just one? What chance do any of us have at long term monogamy? Are we chasing a myth? I turned to the internet to see what I could find. 

First, of course, was the sheer volume of postings on the subject. Google told me that I was looking at results 1-10 of about 935,000 postings on "finding a soulmate." There are nearly a million articles on finding a soulmate; apparently I am not the only person indulging in the word. 

More surprising than the number of postings related to finding a soulmate was the content of the material out there. The second listing I found went to a website called soulmatekit.com.  That's right. Soulmate KIT. Like a jewelry kit, or a juggling kit, but for finding your one true love instead. For $397 I could order such a kit and be magically transformed, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. I must admit, there's a certain appeal here, just like with those jewelry parties people are always throwing. You know that it's a waste of money but you find you just can't turn away from the silver pendant that allows you to interchange synthetic stones of different colors.

Not only did this site offer a kit for true love, it offered a soul mate IQ quiz, which I decided to take in the name of "research" (of course).  Nine grueling questions later I learned I was 71.44% ready to meet my soulmate, but that there were still blocks in my life preventing me from meeting that special guy. I thought back to the questions--I did answer no when asked if my home was ready to receive my soulmate because laundry currently litters my bathroom floor. Perhaps a cleaner apartment will bring love to my life?

Next I turned to the ultimate authority on all subjects--Wikipedia. It revealed the standard definition of soulmate--a companion with whom one feels deep friendship, companionship, sexuality, spirituality, and compatibility. It also explained the mythological concept behind it from classical literature. Apparently humans were made originally with four arms, four legs, and two faces, but Zeus, fearing the power of these humans, split them all in half, condemning them all to spend the rest of their lives searching for their missing half. 

I don't know how I feel about this concept. Do I want to spend the rest of my life searching for a missing piece? What about the beautiful pieces I have already found? The friends that glitter and sparkle as a part of the mosaic of my soul? 

I think that is the concept I will choose to believe: my life as a collage of changeable pieces--picking up new colors and designs throughout the years, beautiful and shining... always, always shining.

Mind Games

A funny thing happened to me last week.

I went to the local Italian restaurant a few blocks away with the local characters I run with and encountered, after a few beers, a local waitress who wanted me to kiss her. Male companions were all for this, and before I knew it, amidst half-empty pint glasses and plates of spaghetti, I found myself being peer-pressured to do something.

"What is this, high school?" I asked.

"Oh, c'mon," said the perky brunette waitress, (I'm guessing she was a hockey cheerleader back in the day). "I bet you've never even kissed a girl before."

"Yes, I have. My very best friend." I wanted to add that she was far superior to the waitress in every way, but I didn't.

Now, of course, as a mature ADULT, I knew that this peer-pressure was ridiculous, silly, and far beneath me. I knew that whether or not I kissed this girl so that she could impress the boys that had accompanied me and were now harassing me, I would still be the same person and that my worth as an autonomous entity would not be determined by whether or not I pleased this crowd. It was embarrassing, really, that any of us were even entertaining this thought.

But then I did a strange thing. I leaned over to the short, cherubic, twenty-something gal and planted one quickly on her lips. 

Why did I do it?

I am still wondering myself. I could say it was just to shut them all up. To move on. To prove it was no big deal. I could even say it was because I suddenly became bi-curious and wanted to explore my own sexuality.

But then the bartender peer-pressured me into having another drink.

And I said yes once again!

Apparently no no longer exists in my vocabulary.

That is the thing about my new single life. In some ways the anchor is gone. Two years ago I was showering every night at 9pm on the dot and settling into bed with socks on my feet in order to read for half an hour before my husband came in to kiss my cheek and I fell asleep. Last year I was caught in the middle of transition and all routines gave way to crying and exhaustion. This year I'm staying out late on Monday night, kissing waitresses and drinking beer. It's a shocking phenomenon. Could I be experiencing what John Mayer coined as the quarter-life crisis?

I think rather a new chance for identity has landed before me and it is my job this year to embrace it all. I have cast off the numbness of my past and the trauma of divorce and now get to make out with the world. 

A Softer Kind of Armor

So I was sitting in the doctor's office last week, feet in stirrups, speculum looming in the immediate future and suddenly, I was tripping all over myself to explain to my new doctor (a woman as kind and gentle and compassionate as you would ever want to meet) exactly how to find my cervix. 

"Um, so- I guess have a really long vagina and my cervix is really hard to find, so I'll just tell you now that I need, like, the longest speculum you have." I said all of this through a cheerful smile, much like how someone would specify exactly how they liked their medium-skim-vanilla-wet-latte-in-a-large-cup, somewhat apologetic for the ridiculousness of the request, but also not willing to shell out $4.16 for a drink that is not quite right.

"Don't worry," said my doctor, "I am 100% confident in my abilities." And she proceeded to tell me where to relax and how. "Oh dear," she said as I forced myself to relax (a paradox particularly cruel when in stirrups) "you have had a bad pap."

I left, after a thoroughly improved gynecological experience thanks to my cheerful doctor and her new, softer, plastic speculum with light inside the tool. The whole procedure was so much better than my previous experiences-- the metal speculum, a hot bulb shining at my crotch, repeated insertions and removals, the smell of my own sweat, angling and agreement, that, well, yes, it is a tricky cervix to find, let's try one more time, just try to relax, don't tense. It was a relief. I had a renewed faith in the medical field.  

After leaving, I started to think about fear. I felt proud of myself. I feared the gynecologist and yet I went, again, and dealt with the fear. 

Of course, as a sexually active woman, I had no choice. I needed birth control pills, hence I needed a prescription, hence I needed a physical, hence I needed a pap. Fear was a luxury I sacrificed for the greater good.

It's not the only time I have sacrificed this luxury, fear. In fact, as I started to think about it, it's the only way I deal with fear. I plunge into the fear and beat at it. I slip on the gloves, pull on the shit-kickers, strap on my ammo belt... I don't allow myself to be afraid. Spider in the closet? WHAM! no more. Centipede running along the basement hallway? Not through the cloud of Raid I spray as thick as fog. Cute boy in the corner of the bar? I would much rather try to kiss him than fear talking to him. I don't do fear. 

Thinking about this method of attack made me realize I don't reserve my weapons and armor for my physical fears alone. I wear them everyday to cope with my fear of being disliked. My smile is my armor and my charm a weapon. I please people unconsciously and effortlessly, like scratching an itch or brushing hair out of my eye. I live behind a shield. I brandish  kindness daily. I barricade myself from the emotion of fear, from the fear of being disliked, from the heavy shame of perhaps being unlovable.

And to be honest, I think I am getting tired of all this fighting. I want to retire from the battlefield and hang up the weaponry. Of course, I am not exactly sure how to do this. How does a person begin to feel an emotion they have resisted for so long? Perhaps, just as I admitted my fear to my doctor, admitting my fear to myself is taking the first step.

On Wings