Journal & Musing

I could start by telling how little sleep I’ve been getting and how high my anxiety has been, but that would be old news. More interesting is the hurricane that’s about to hit —literally, though the metaphor fits.

Beryl is the perfect name for a hurricane, don’t you think?

Beryl barreled through my neighborhood and took with it my air conditioning and refrigeration.

We will find out in 24 to 48 hours whether that statement is true.

. . .

I’m moving to East Texas. My husband got a new job there…a three-day turn-around from idea to reality. He starts tomorrow and will be all the way over there while I’m all the way over here finishing the new school year and getting the house ready to sell. This all came about shortly after breaking my toe. The change is a good one, though sudden. So sudden, in fact, that I’m kinda freaking out about it. I’ve been at a cabin for the last four days, and every night I have lain awake staring at the ceiling, mind racing, heart pounding.

Among the unknowns, such as where I’m going to live, is what I’m going to do for income once I move. Getting a teaching job is easy enough. Getting one I’d like is not. I consider these last couple of years to be the pinnacle of my career. I am grateful for being able to work where I do, and though I don’t want to give the job up, I hold onto the comfort that I got to do what I never thought I would have the opportunity to. I have learned more at this school about the content and how to teach in general than I have anywhere else. It’s amazing what I can do when nobody tells me what to do and how to do it. My students have been the cream of the crop, and I’ve pushed them to the breaking point, which has required me to do the same to myself. I am 100% a better person after only two years of an 18-year teaching career. I can take that with me anywhere I go, and maybe that will be enough to make me happy in my next job. But I’m thinking I might take a new route. Maybe. After all, I reached the top. Time for a new mountain to climb, I think. Maybe.

…

About a year ago I learned about a company that connects writers and editors to people who need them. The job doesn’t pay much, but I’ve been told that there are many companies out there just like it, and if I use all of them and get my name thrown around then I can make a decent living. I imagine it takes awhile to get noticed, but maybe I have time. If nothing else, being a ghostwriter will give me experience. I’ll learn a few things. Maybe publish something of my own one day. Who knows. The world seems like an empty canvas these days, and I never thought I’d feel that way again. On the one hand, an empty canvas is exciting. On the other, I’m not sleeping.

And my scores come out tomorrow. At the very worst, they will be lower than last year’s. No. The worst would be having lower scores AND being surpassed by another school. I know these scores are not about me. But, well, they are.

On the upside, my broken toe isn’t as broken as it was three weeks ago. And like a freak, I’m excited about the hurricane. I will miss those.

Dog and I watched the sideways rain blast by until it was time to sit in the dark on the cold tile floor of the downstairs half-bath and wait for the roof to fly off. It didn’t.

And the door jam broke my toe, which is now taped to the one next to it.

But tonight, in a moment of inspiration I poured peach schnapps into a glass of strawberry lemonade. Nectar of the gods — that’s what I’m calling it. Its actual name is diabetes.

Summer, week one, composed by Chopin.

<insert melodramatic wrist to forehead>

Prelude in e minor, op. 28, no. 4

Did I do enough? Did I make things worse? Are they ready?

I thought they were, but today they were second guessing themselves. They are exhausted. They have been taking AP tests for two solid weeks, and the very last one, the one this Friday afternoon, is physics. The. Very. Last. One. And today, they didn’t know how to make a graph. They need sleep. I need sleep. God, let them shake this off.

Did you know that last year my students out-scored the entire district? The state? The nation? The effin’ world? They did. And this year, these kids can out-do last year. But today they were so tired that they couldn’t make a graph.

You know that thing I said once, the piece of wisdom that isn’t really wisdom but a harsh reality?

Today’s accomplishments are tomorrow’s expectations.

It is now tomorrow.

One of the things I dislike about my condition (and there are many things to dislike about my condition) is the certainty of judgment cast by those in the know, as innocent of intention they may be. Call it stigma, call it preconceptions or even experience that causes disenchantment. The mystery that could cast a spell is tainted with doubt of senility. But it’s all quite silly. Everyone has some level of genius and madness. For that, no one is free from judgement.

.

The last couple of days have teased my mind with a thought that came together this evening as I lay here staving off anxiety.

.

Many things have come to a head recently with many people in my life. Their situations are beyond my scope of understanding outside of the empathy I feel. Three people have admitted to thoughts of suicide. And I keep just enough distance to be present while guarding myself from spiraling with them. I am standoffish at times because I have to be. Because in the midst of their troubles my own surface, though some faintly. I thought to myself tonight that I have a lot to work on. But then that thing that has been tapping on the door to my mind entered and made itself clear as day. I don’t have to work on anything because I gave it up to God a long time ago. What I mean is that I spoke the words, only I didn’t really do it. I don’t have to work on anything while I keep my eyes on him. I understand that now, and I’m practicing. Sounds like avoidance to me. Sounds like a lot of things I learned while getting that counseling degree I never used. Sounds like a lot of things it isn’t.

Regarding my mental state, I’m in good company. Many people I admire are or were as afflicted as I am. Madness has its benefits.

I cannot in anyway put in a good light the physiological effects that my current situations have caused, however. Anxiety, for one. I’m tense and restless. My heart races. I can pinpoint several catalysts, all of which will pass. I’m grateful they are temporary.

I sure could use a Vicodin, though.

Teachers all over America are running on fumes. Aside from being tired all the time, I’m not clawing my way to the finish as usual. I’m actually quite sad. I can remember one other year I felt this level of sadness. That was the year my most difficult students graduated. They were the ones I had four years straight, the ones that made me get a masters degree to get out of teaching, and for them my tears started flowing in February of that last year. I never did get out of teaching. All the anguish they caused me was met with an unexpected feeling of loss when they left. This year has been by far the easiest of my career. I enjoyed this year more than the rest. I saw brains blossom in the last few weeks in a way I didn’t expect, and I recently witnessed the kids’ realizations that they understand what most people don’t and never will know. Today I watched them engage in random conversations as close friends, and I knew these friendships would last. I knew they made them in AP Physics. And my heart broke. In less than two weeks, they will be gone. One of the things they don’t tell people who are just starting their teaching careers is that at the end of every year you have to let go. You have to send your children off into the world. Over and over. Most years I am a little sad, but I welcome the summer breaks. This year is different. Letting go is extra hard.

Maybe it would’ve been easier if we hadn’t made the music videos. I’m compiling them for us to watch the last day. And I am adding a video of me playing a ukelele (badly) and singing them a song I wrote. It’s a funny video, and they aren’t expecting it. My original hope was to entertain them. My hope now is to hold it together.

So tomorrow I will mingle with them. Laugh. Gather memories to hold onto while I still can. Pretend my heart isn’t breaking.

This evening I got a call from a friend. Her son was admitted to the hospital, and she was waiting for word on his condition. As I waited with her over the phone, our conversation took many turns from serious to light to reminiscent. I have known her since she approached me in the library in college 30 years ago, and she told me something about herself that in all this time I never knew. We found reasons to laugh about it, which is something we both needed, and somehow we ended on whether people roll joints anymore and how all these edibles and Jules have removed one of the best parts of getting high. I don’t miss the high, but I do miss the shared experience. The glow of the lighter through the smoke. The scent. The friends. The calm. The music.

Her son is going to be okay.

Today I had exactly two conversations, and during both of them I learned amazing things about amazing people.

As I watched tv tonight, I thought about all the time I have wasted staring at that box on the wall, but then I remembered the juicy parts of the day and I felt okay.

I read once that offering your time is the greatest honor you can bestow.

Some of the best moments I have shared were spent in silence. Watching rain wash over a lake with someone I never got along with is one of them. Sitting in lawn chairs in a pasture in the middle of the night watching the stars with my brother is another. Listening to Joe Cocker on vinyl while eating habanero salsa and chips at the kitchen table with my father-in-law is a random memory but a cherished one. Likely best of all was lying in the grass holding kite strings with my three-year-old. She and I turned to look at each other while we held our kite as it soared way up high. I could relive that moment of silence for the rest of my life.

There are many others. I collect them.

For a while now, I have felt sad that my adventures are running out of time to find me and that life has fewer surprises ahead. But I have many more bottles to fill with precious, silent moments, and I have a good 40 or 50 years of shelf space left to store them.

I had a conversation this morning with an incredible woman who I didn’t know was so incredible despite having known her a year and a half. That’s what happens when you don’t talk to people–you never learn how truly amazing they are. I am blown away, and I am inspired by the number of extraordinary life stories this 70-year-old woman has to tell. I pleaded with her to write them down, to write a book, and I passed off that request as an encouragement to record her life story for posterity when in fact my intentions were entirely selfish. I want to read this book. I want to have lived a life as exciting as hers. And maybe I have. Margaret Atwood would be disappointed in me if I didn’t tell my story. But she doesn’t know me, and she would never read me. She simply planted a seed that she intended for anyone who would listen. I did.

To satisfy Margaret’s request and another of an old friend, here is a bit of my story.

. . . . . .

I was maybe five years old at the time, too young to be distracted by worries and too old to not notice the important things. I stood atop a hillside of tall yellow grass spotted with gray, jagged rocks and mammoth boulders. The rolling yellow hills extended in all directions until they met blue sky. Baboons perched on the boulders nearby, looking out over their home with the same wonder. I felt an intense sense of freedom. Standing in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of everywhere, looking out over the vast African landscape made an intense, profound, and everlasting impact. Freedom was a discovery I made through a combination of experiences there, witnessing a dichotomy of human bondage and the vast expanse of the savanna. But magic, the magic of the imagination, is the second most important thing I learned and carry with me still.

My mom kept my bookshelf well stocked from before I could read until our house burned down when I was in junior high. Middle-child syndrome is real, but very young, invisible me was given the gift of books to bide my time alone. One particularly lonely afternoon, I discovered a paperback on my bookshelf that had a picture of a dark, wild jungle, with images of boas hanging from twisted tree limbs and assorted glowing eyes peering out of the blackness. The illustrator had stolen the image right from my memory. My family lived in South Africa and travelled through the southern countries. Our travels led us through a mysterious jungle, the looks of which were amazingly torn right from the cover of that book, Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, of whom I became an instant fan. I wrote a research paper in high school over Kipling and discovered his imagination was like mine. The line between imagination and reality didn’t exist for him as a young boy in the jungles of India. As an adult, he recounted his magical experiences as though he were a child, as though they were real, as I have always done with my African experiences. But in a dark jungle, who’s to say what is or isn’t real?

. . . . . .

Eleanor lived a magical life in her mind and some might say an exciting one in reality. Perhaps she will peek outside from behind the heavy curtains in her living room and let some light in. Maybe even set aside the ruse a bit and put a little of herself into the world. Just kidding. Her ruse is often sabotaged by her inability to keep her own light in. She cannot help being her authentic self, as much as she tries to fool the world. Silly girl.

I had a dream once that I fell asleep on the edge of a plateau that looked out over a canyon. The ground I lay on and all around me was deep red orange, and the sun shone through a deep blue sky. I was warm as I basked in the bright sun overhead, and asleep next to me was another person who in the dream I knew but in reality didn’t. I felt intensely at peace. At times I experience this same surreal feeling while awake. I am certain that most of the world isn’t familiar with that lucid dream state outside of sleep. I count myself lucky. I could possibly blame it on my illness, but I have had these experiences my entire life, long before the illness showed up. I have always felt apart from other people. Awkward, even. Others can’t possibly exist in this world I live in, could they? I dare not ask them.

Bipolar disorder is a gift sometimes. Depression is what I struggle with mostly, but sometimes an overwhelming feeling of passion overcomes me. If I’m lucky, the result is something written or drawn worth of holding onto. Today I drove down the road with my chest ablaze. I turned the music up loud to block out the noise, and I held onto my shirt to keep my heart from bursting through.

When this disorder was new to me, my fear of the impending despair that would soon follow the flames would snuff them out. I eventually learned to hold onto the passion as long as it allowed itself to manifest, and I learned to make the most of the good moments and especially the great ones. I’ve been told that I inspire passion in other people in a variety of ways, but its not me doing the inspiring. I am at the mercy of this illness that only a handful of people know I fight.

Writing helps, but when the words don’t come, my fingers itch for a different kind of keys. My insides resonate with piano chords in a way that writing can’t. I don’t hear the music, I become it. I’ve mentioned this to other musicians, and they say they feel the same. I don’t have a piano anymore, and I fear this flame will burn clean through me without one. Today, I am settling for the keys connected to this screen, but the screen remains lifeless. I envy writers who have a greater gift for wordcraft. What power they have over people like me and, if they are anything like me, over themselves. I haven’t felt that power in a long time, but I hear it knocking. Knocking, knocking, this incessant phantom knocks. Tapping at my chamber door, it is.

. . . . . .

Back in 2006-ish, I wrote the beginning of a book. A chapter. I can never seem to write more than a chapter of anything I write. Not true, but the words are crap after one chapter, so I generally refrain from writing beyond an introduction. I can write a hell of an intro and a pretty good ending, but all the stuff in between lacks the same passion as the punch I put into each end of the middle.

So back in 2006-ish, I started writing. I had a playlist that I listened to obsessively as I spent weeks refining this one thing. The songs were stored on an iPod that has since disappeared, just as that one chapter and any further desire to write did. A few years later, I watched a snippet of Blood Diamond, enough to make me turn the movie off, and I plunged back into writing. The movie scene woke up a deeply-rooted part of me that I had forgotten or maybe didn’t know was there. I hadn’t realized how deeply Africa affected me. Little girl me absorbed, potently, people and places in that land, and they’ve lived in me ever since.

Everything I’ve written comes from that part of me. That’s where the words are buried.