Les Mots de Mme. Lazarus

Summertime rolls

It isn’t even June yet, and I’ve assimilated back into my usual routine: sleep until about 11, add a little Bailey’s to the coffee, enjoy a cigarette on the porch. Then what? There are so many things that I could be doing that I need a to-do list to remind myself of them: write a thank-you letter, dye my hair, write, read, clean more (there’s always more), get outside and walk around, work on a different syllabus, and so on. 

Yet here I am. My ass on the couch. TV on and traffic rumbling by outside. I’m annoyed at my own self-imposed stasis. Part of me wants to get out and the other half wants to do nothing at all. 

I should be returning back to work relatively soon. Should is the operative word, as classes in the summer time are never guaranteed until the night before they are slated to run. I was lucky last summer to get an interesting group of students - both young and older, and for the most part, interested in the course. It’s a crap-shoot in the summer; it could be continuing education students or people who failed the semester before.  The latter, of course, is the bigger challenge. It’s hard to get students interested in reading and writing when they spent the former semester either failing the course due to their skill level or due to other circumstances (and the more I teach, the more I realize that today’s college student is encountering different circumstances than I did in my day). Either way, it makes for a bumpy start.

It will be good for me to get out of the house either way. For me, teaching has always been the perfect escape. For a few hours, I get to step outside of myself and completely immerse myself in something else - in this case, a whole group of people. Instead of focusing on my own issues or getting trapped in my own head, I get to plan activities to get them thinking and interacting with each other, and hopefully, getting them excited about working on a particular skill area. If it’s successful, there’s a rewarding feeling attached. It’s a win-win. 

Until then, it’s just passing the time. Finding busy work. Finding busy things. Slowly, I’m moving on. It’s as laborious as watching the clock. 

Up way too early on a Sunday morning

Lately, I’ve perfected the art of sleeping in until about 11AM. With a considerably reduced work schedule, this has worked out well - a lazy, late entry into the day. 

But not this morning. Even with the shades pulled down tightly, the sun found me. 

And so here I am, 8am, the world quiet outside. It is beautiful and peaceful, but also entirely too abundant. What am I supposed to do with all this time in my lap?  Ah yes, write.

I had a friend that came over last night. It’s the first company I’ve had since the procedure - since this whole thing happened. I don’t think her boyfriend understood what he was coming over to: two people emotionally stretched to their limit. H. and I did what we do best - drink. H. was lost in it early, with all of it going to his mouth, weaving stories and swears. Neither of them knew what to do. Her BF kept looking over at me, confused. I did what I’ve done best over the past few weeks - sit back and watch it all from somewhere else, watch the strings move the body.

Another gratuitous free write

So in my last post, I stated that one of the benefits of having an anonymous blog is that I can say a lot of things that I may be compelled to skip over if writing with pen and paper. With a hard copy, god forbid something happens and someone reads it. 

One of the downsides of this mode, I suppose, is that it’s all too easy to get wrapped up in my own drama. All too often, it’s too tempting to fall in with the weight of the words. 

I was very candid in my last post, and in many ways, I think it was one of the first times I actually confronted what had been going on with me over the past few weeks. As I’ve discovered over the past few months, one of my main modes of dealing with hard times is to not deal with it at all - to section myself off somewhere, both spiritually and mentally. 

I’ve also learned, however, that this mode is really just the long way around to the same step I’d take anyway. Only more brooding and emotional energy are required than if just dealing with it directly. For me, it was easier to take the more self-centered approach than to let someone in and let them be there for me. 

But easier doesn’t always equate with healthier. 

So on a day like today, I write. This week has been especially silent. I’ve carried around the same anger, but I pause every once and a while to look at it candidly. Other times, I keep it busy with housework - washing down the walls, scouring the surfaces. 

So pretty in a clean cage.

Sigh

So now’s the time I suppose that the bad free-writes come out. In times like these, I suppose I’m happy this is more anonymous. The facelessness of it all makes the honesty easier.

When you lose something, suddenly everyone changes around you. On the day of the actual procedure, I lost count of how many times people said “I’m sorry for your loss”. It should have provided comfort to me, to know that strangers were empathetic and offering their support. 

But it just made me angry. It wasn’t their niceness or their instance on interaction. It’s anger at the entire situation. That over four weeks, I had gone from being (surprisingly) jubilant about the changes occurring - in my body and in my future - to realizing I was carrying around something not quite dead, but not quite there either. Everything else inside me was functioning on the suspension of disbelief. It refused to believe anything was wrong. The sac rested snug, either ignorant or obstinate of its emptiness. 

The difficulty occurs when the brain can’t disconnect itself from the chemistry occurring in the body. Try and tell a woman, whose body is swelling, whose emotions run rampant, whose nausea runs rampant, that she’s harboring nothing at all. No face. No heartbeat. Just some misplaced hope until the next week of ultra sounds confirm the same.

So yes, I am angry. I am back to all the bad habits I cut myself off from four weeks ago. I thought it would provide some relief, but it doesn’t feel good to be back to where I was before. During the four weeks, I missed all my old crutches. Now, however, the motivations feel different. Maybe this is because I was quite OK with my future and habits changing. Something bigger seemed on the horizon. Something that, despite all my aversions to children and babies in general, seemed worth it. 

At the sake of sounding overly dramatic (as these kinds of free-writes lead me to be), the numbness just functions now as a way station until the anger returns. It waits for times of vulnerability, like in the few moments of waiting before vicodin-induced sleep comes. That loss, so real and palpable, elbows its way in.  Unprepared, I have no choice but to stare directly at it: the loss, the helplessness, the unfairness of fate, the “everything happens for a reason” advice people have optimistically interjected, the pictures on FB of everyone’s budding families, the faces of happy family members when we made the announcement and the quietness that followed, the uncertainty of the future or what I even want anymore. 

How do you fill up the spaces around that? Today I have an entire day of solitude. For the past two weeks all I’ve wanted is quiet; now, I’m horrified of it. 

from a mother to her child that never was

i’m sorry that in those weeks

 i couldn’t make you

more than what you were:

black hole; white dwarf

burning out into darkness

regardless, my body

swelled around you held you

close and refused

to accept the truth, still

no hopes no vomiting

could make you appear

on the ultrasound screen

i could not let you go

until the last narcotic

plunged into the IV dropper

and the walls began to curve into 

each other as they wheeled me

into the stainless steel room

until i was standing with you

looking out across the flat calm surface

of water

no face but my own

staring back

and what she said

is that whatever is entrenched

deep in the convex

is unresolved. i pour

over pictures to dull

her; she is

youth glossed over

smooth as sand

warmed in the july sun. my own hands

35 etched in chaotic crevices. oh,

i was her 

once. that smile

coyly shy 

is really wild, waiting

for the signal to bare her teeth

to sink them in. every woman is born

with that siren song on her tongue

Mid-morning rant at my brain

Apparently the only predictable thing about my brain is that it it barfs up the same scenario weekly, and chooses to do so when I am trapped - in REM.

Perhaps it is punishment for skipping my last therapy appointment. However, this old song and dance is getting tiresome and redundant. I get it - I have insecurities when it comes to my personal relationships. I have anxieties about problematic behaviors repeating this summer. It’s also apparent from my dreams that I not only HATE this anxiety, but I’m anticipating it, too.

In this dream, I am living at home. H. lives in the in-law cottage, separate from me. He has friends over, and one of them mentions the coworker, and that sometime in the past, she and H. had been close enough that he revealed every inch of himself to her.

Of course I get mad in my dream - mostly because I’m tired of her even being brought up. But I have to press on and find out more. H. is annoyed that I am annoyed. This makes me feel both angered and guilty.  He explains it was long time ago, before we even met and got married, and that they’ve been good friends for a while.

Again, it is the stasis, the feeling of betrayal, and the unrelenting helplessness that I feel, and my utter inability to change it. In reality, she doesn’t exist anymore, and she wasn’t really the main problem. But in a fit of cerebral hiccups, there she is, bigger than life.

I’m waking inevitably frustrated. I want to yell at my subconscious state: Alright already, I get it!  I have a hard enough time working through it in waking life. Can’t a sister get a little respite?

Ah-so. It’s that vulnerability that is sticking out like a swollen welt, and my brain, that masochistic bitch, enjoys jabbing at it. Whether it’s out of curiosity or concern, I don’t know.

I should be grading…

So I am taking some time out of this sisyphean grading to clear the cacophony in my own mind. It comes rattling around in the day time, and I’ve done a good job of holding it up by its ankles.

It’s when I close my eyes that it comes back. I cannot control it in my dreamscapes; as a result, I’ve been waking most mornings angry and frustrated.

I am not surprised such dreams have returned - the themes within it (feeling ignored, neglected, betrayed, angered, and agonizingly static) have become somewhat relevant again. What I see with clarity is that 75% of it is my own issue/psychological hurdle. 

I had what I suppose can be considered a breakthrough recently. The recent feelings entrenched and unfurling in my gut have felt surprisingly familiar — it was the same feeling I would get when my father would be off on a tear. Although he tried to be a functioning alcoholic, there were times he would fall off beyond his mark: black out drunk, days of vomiting, driving until his car ran out of gas (and we had to go retrieve the car), or passing out in the car in front of our house. I remember the proud day my school bus dropped me off and drove past that. My mother, leaving and returning back to the car, pleading with him to inside to bed. The cop that lived next door that chose to ignore anything he did — especially on the nights he would come home, knocking over chairs and taking my mom down with them. 

That’s the feeling: knowing something is coming, burning everything down in its path, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. That utter helplessness no matter how much you want to change it. An animal trapped in the corner. 

I would be naive if I did not admit the fact that my experiences with my father (as a primary male figure) have shaped how I deal with my personal relationships today. The other day, when my gut was churning horribly, I realized that for 24+ years, my primary male figure was one I couldn’t trust, rely on, feel safe with, or respect.  ”Sorry” didn’t really have any meaning, except it alleviated the guilt of his actions so he could keep on his routine. Many promises of change were quickly forgotten or neglected. So I learned to expect betrayal. And I refused to alleviate his guilt. When he would often go back on his promises, my reactions became emotionless. I refused to look him in the eye; my responses were often terse. I wanted him to know how betrayed I felt. 

What I learned was that when we forgive, we give power back to that person and we make ourselves vulnerable for repeat offenses. 

That’s the feeling that’s been perched in my dreams. In the waking world, I have been learning how to trace the thread back to its root - why it worked when growing up and whether its serving the same purpose today. In my dream world, however, it becomes entangled and absorbed. I respond to every man in the same way. And in many ways, I am every single one of them.

How can something I own, like my mind, be something so beyond my own control?