The 8th Nerve

Interestingly enough, not long after I post the last entry, I begin to experience stabs of discouragement and grief. A recurring dream last night heightens a sense of loss. Fewer though, and further in between. It is an ongoing process.

Nielsen has sent us a TV Ratings Viewing Diary. Our Diary Week is Thursday, April 28 thru Wednesday, May 4. Not a problem, just the one week of the year that we are homeless and our TV is in a moving van.

Along with the TV Ratings Viewing Diary was a $5 dollar bill and five $1 bills in cold cash. Who sends cash through the mail? Nielsen does.

This past weekend was a packing marathon, typically a tedious chore that I greeted with enthusiasm, because it means we’re getting the fuck out of dodge. None too soon, as four more condos in this village go on the market. Cedar and Jen have been kind to agree to host us and our cats. I cannot imagine how our sheltered little cats are going to react when they meet the wizened and stubbly being who has survived a Vermont winter in the wild. A black soul of unpredictability who walks around as if the floor is a hypothetical premise that must be tested with each step and you are a blot upon her landscape, otherwise known as “Kitty”. It will be a good evening’s worth of entertainment.

I have been looking at Steve’s fishing map and there is a pond in Vermont called “Ticklenaked”. That is the best name for a pond EVER.

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Apr 26th 2005Everyday life & Vermont

This is probably going to be the cheesiest entry I have ever written. After two years of blogging and nearly two years of therapy, it may also be the most important.

I am ridiculously happy. It somehow feels wrong to say something like that. I am the happiest I have ever been. This happiness is partly due to the excitement of moving to our new house and the extraordinary series of coincidences and good luck that has allowed this to happen. The happiness also comes from something more.

With this realization, with the thought that This is too good to be true comes the superstition that something bad will happen. If you write about this, you are going to jinx this, whatever this is.

One of the first things I said to my therapist was “I want to be able to be myself”. Blogging became an important tool in this process, as I practiced and cringed after posting entries. Did I just really write that? Was it stupid? Weird? Did I really just stick it on there for anyone to read?

When my therapist asked me why I married Steve, I said “Because it is the right kind of love.” I could not see clearly then why it was, but still instinctively responded with this remark. Now I see that Steve’s ability to love me for who I am, unconditionally without bias or pressure for me to be any certain way to meet his own needs, is the greatest gift. This was hidden to me before because I did not feel ok with myself yet. I love and appreciate Steve more than I did the day I married him. Now something bad will happen. One of you will get cancer. Or die in a car crash.

The Century Project affected me in some profound way. I looked at each unique photo of a woman’s spirit over a lifetime. The expressions of hope and pain in the women in their teens and 20s. The expressions of joy and humor in the women in their 80s and 90s. I saw this spectrum laid out before me and it hit me then. I have one life and I am not going to waste my time on comparing myself to others, feeling critical or judgmental of myself. Why the hell would I do that to myself? I am not going to censor myself to the point that I can barely speak. I am not going to live another 30 years (if I should be so lucky) before I can embrace myself and my life.

Take risks. Let go. Say what you think. Go after what you want in life.

The biggest thing that hit me was how easily and quickly I gave myself away. When I did this, I lost all my power. Someone else had all this power over me. These women, in doing this project, got their power back and in doing so gave me something back.

I gave myself away. I gave myself away in the belief that if someone took it and valued it, I would be validated in some way. Their opinions and feelings were far more important to me than my own sense of self, my own spirit. I became mired in striving to be ‘good enough’ in the eyes of another and never making it. The less they validated me in the way that I wished for, the more lost I became. This is a state of constant preoccupation, pain and disappointment.

How can you be yourself when you’ve given yourself away?

I never gave myself away to Steve. I never needed to. He would never take it. In the act of reclaiming myself, I will always treasure him for this. I feel a freedom and okayness with myself that was never there before. I am still vulnerable to flare ups of insecurity and spite in situations but it will not plague me like before.

I lie in bed waiting for sleep and my mind starts searching. Too much good stuff here. Hey, let’s think about lousy situation that happened six years ago. You were so stupid...

I have a roof over my head and food to eat.
I love what I do.
I love my husband.
I love my body.
I love my life.
I am blessed in more ways than I can name.

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Apr 25th 2005Uncategorized

Steve and I, for our own amusement, enjoy discussing how we would sell our cats on e-bay:

Lesbian bulimic persian princess who loves a good female chest at bedtime. Half off at $200! A squinting albino acrobatic sidekick included for FREE. Both are in good working order and have a particular fondness for crayons, luggage and cardboard boxes.

Items guaranteed not DOA or your money back.

Persian princess shows minor signs of use (matted sections in fur coat,
disdain for life in general) but is 100% functional and demonstrates
precociousness when she thinks nobody is watching.

Sidekick item is “As-Is” and no guarantees are made for its proper
functionality. May insist on playing fetch, hiding toys, warble or excrete from the eyes for no reason at any time. Absolutely no returns.

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Apr 23rd 2005Uncategorized

Napoleon Dynamite. We should all be able to run suddenly from the room in a slight crouch.

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Apr 23rd 2005I Laughed When

It is interesting the responses I get sometimes when people find out what I do, or will be doing, for a living. Some occupations simply make people nervous. Minister or priest, funeral home director, therapist. Often this leads them to make some sort of joke. Sometimes the joke refers to how all I really do is “sit there and nod.”

A couple years ago, when I was studying psychology but not actually practicing therapy, I bought into this a bit. I would pay my therapist and secretly wonder what the heck she really did to earn that kind of money. She “just” listened to me talk.

There is no way you can know, or that anyone can know, until you actually sit in the therapist’s chair. This profession takes more courage and more energy than I ever imagined. The work that the therapist must do for their own awareness is only the beginning, and the work that they must partake with the client is a tremendous endeavor that I don’t even have the words to explain.

Then, the therapist must let go. The journey comes to an end, the client heads out into the world, and the therapist most likely will never know what becomes of him or her or how much the therapy was of value in the long run.

Sometimes therapy is beneficial. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes people do not have a good experience with a particular approach. Sometimes a client and a particular therapist are a bad match. Sometimes the client is not ready in the least. That is ok.

I worry that I do not have the energy or the courage to do this full time. I worry that my heart will break every time I must say goodbye or the client goes where I can’t follow. Addiction, madness, self-harm, schizophrenia, suicide, illness, violence.

Yet, when I think of what I have seen and heard in the course of a single day, the connections I make and what I help, or try to help, with, I can’t imagine any other calling. This is being human at its best and worst, the learning never ends, and it is life changing.

Sitting and nodding is the least of it.

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Apr 21st 2005Uncategorized

After Chloe hits Clark’s father in the face with an ax and he falls down the stairs and is knocked unconscious, he gets up as if nothing happened and says “Chloe is not herself.”

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Apr 21st 2005I Laughed When

Smallville SUCKS now, yet I can’t look away.

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Apr 21st 2005I Peeved When

I’ve missed the rain.

The closing on our place is scheduled April 29th. The closing on the house is scheduled May 3. We’re going to be HOMELESS FOR FOUR DAYS. Homeless with TWO CATS. We can live in a cardboard box and have woolly socks.

Our plans for the house.

1. Tear down part of the wall between the living room and third bedroom.

2. Re-paint everything, any color but white.

3. Re-carpet, any color but white.

4. New floors, any color but white.

4. Finish the basement and create an office/music room, TV room, laundry room and mudroom by the back door.

5. New siding.

6. New windows.

7. Forge a direct path through the woods to the river.

8. Get a dog.

But first we probably should pack this place up or something.

2 Comments »

Apr 20th 2005Uncategorized

So strange but so true. The Man Date. Men really need to relax about that stuff.

If this doesn’t make you laugh, then you are not my friend.

My parents and my brother Nate came up to visit us this weekend. We took them up to see our new house, which we will move into in two weeks, COME HELL OR HIGH WATER. Then we went for a drive through the Lake Champlain Islands. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect. We had lunch at a park overlooking the lake, then continued on. Steve was driving, and Mom, Nate and I were wedged in the back seat. What followed is a phenomenon that I will call the “Back Seat Regression”. There is something about being wedged in the backseat between two people that makes you feel like a kid again. For example, I didn’t want the rest of my sandwich and was about to throw it out the window.

Steve: Don’t throw that out the window.

Me: The birds will eat it!

Steve: No, absolutely not.

Me: What am I supposed to do with it? The birds will eat it.

Steve: You’re not throwing that out the window.

Me: But I don’t wanna hold it anymore!

Steve: (stops the car, gets out, shuts the door)

Mom: (in a little voice) uh oh, he’s going to give her a spanking.

Everyone else in the car: (Uproarious laughter which abruptly stops as soon as Steve opens the back door).

Steve, however, refrained from physical methods of discipline and gave me a plastic bag instead. We continued on, all the way up to Isle la Motte to see St Anne’s shrine, a place none of us understand dedicated to a saint of we have no idea. There was an elaborate gold statue overlooking the lake, with a tall base with what appeared to be LOUDSPEAKERS attached to it (note: I DO NOT understand Catholicism). There was a small shelf and on it was a rosary and a lot of change along with folded dollar bills under a rock. The money was just sitting out there. I looked at it and there, shining in the sun, was an IOWA QUARTER. The only quarter missing to date from our Fifty State Commemorative Quarters 1999-2008 book. What I did next is, as a Catholic friend later confirmed, indeed sacrilegious and I will go to hell. I TOOK the Iowa quarter and I replaced it with TWO non-Iowa quarters. I was going to put just one back in but then Steve suggested, in an appalled tone, that I put another one in. So the second quarter was to avoid a spanking.

At any rate, besides endangering my soul, I had a very nice time with my family. Steve’s brother and his girlfriend were also in town and they came over Sunday night, which called for an evening of Molson Dry, Ben and Jerry’s and cartwheels. In that order.

I’ve said this many times before but I wish all of Steve and my family lived near each other.

3 Comments »

Apr 18th 2005Uncategorized

Hi girls,

So, I just watched a canine tooth get pulled out of the lung of a cat. I was on the edge of my seat.
Monica

How did a dog tooth get into a cat’s lungs?? That must have been one really bad bite.
Sarah

All carnivors have canine teeth. They are just the large pointy ones that make dogs and cats look so viscious (sp). The tooth most likely fell out when the cat went “gasp” instead of “woosh”, and this minor detail cost the owners $1000.
Love,
Monica

LOL!!
Why did I think a canine’s tooth was a dog’s tooth?
How does a cat go “gasp” instead of “woosh”?? I cannot stop laughing.
Sarah

Roomie, I’m sure that Casper goes “gasp” instead of “woosh” all the time!!
Karrie

There sure is a lot of talk about teeth lately.
In my classroom, we are soaking real teeth in soda to
see what will happen. It’s pretty gross.
Melissa

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Apr 18th 2005Uncategorized